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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and writings of Henry Fuseli,
-Volume III (of 3), by Henry Fuseli and John Knowles
-
-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
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-Title: The life and writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume III (of 3)
-
-Author: Henry Fuseli
-        John Knowles
-
-Release Date: August 10, 2012 [EBook #40474]
-
-Language: English
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     THE LIFE
 
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 Volume III (of 3), by Henry Fuseli and John Knowles
 
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and writings of Henry Fuseli,
-Volume III (of 3), by Henry Fuseli and John Knowles
-
-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: The life and writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume III (of 3)
-
-Author: Henry Fuseli
-        John Knowles
-
-Release Date: August 10, 2012 [EBook #40474]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE, WRITINGS, HENRY FUSELI, VOL 3 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Margo von Romberg, Karl Eichwalder and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-    THE LIFE
-
-    AND
-
-    WRITINGS
-
-    OF
-
-    HENRY FUSELI, ESQ. M.A. R.A.
-
-    KEEPER, AND PROFESSOR OF PAINTING TO THE
-    ROYAL ACADEMY IN LONDON; MEMBER OF THE FIRST CLASS
-    OF THE ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE AT ROME.
-
-    THE FORMER WRITTEN, AND THE LATTER EDITED BY
-
-    JOHN KNOWLES, F.R.S.
-
-    CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AT ROTTERDAM,
-
-    HIS EXECUTOR.
-
-    "Animo vidit, ingenio complexus est, eloquentiâ illuminavit."
-          _Velleius Paterculus in Ciceronem._
-
-    IN THREE VOLUMES.
-
-    VOL. III.
-
-    LONDON:
-    HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,
-    NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
-    MDCCCXXXI.
-
-
-
-
-    LONDON:
-    PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
-    Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
-
-
-
-
-    CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
-
-    LECTURES.
-
-    XI. On the prevailing Method of treating
-    the History of Painting, with Observations
-    on the Picture of Lionardo da
-    Vinci of "The Last Supper"                             Page 1
-
-    XII. On the Present State of the Art, and the
-    Causes which check its Progress                            39
-
-
-    APHORISMS,
-    Chiefly relative to the Fine Arts                          61
-
-
-    A HISTORY OF ART IN THE SCHOOLS OF ITALY.
-
-    The Tuscan School                                         153
-
-    The School of Florence                                    193
-
-    The School of Siena                                       231
-
-    The Roman School                                          242
-
-    The School of Naples                                      279
-
-    The School of Venice                                      334
-
-    The School of Mantoua                                     361
-
-    The School of Bologna                                     399
-
-
-
-
-    ELEVENTH LECTURE.
-
-    ON THE PREVAILING METHOD OF TREATING THE HISTORY OF PAINTING,
-    WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE PICTURE OF LIONARDO DA VINCI OF
-    "THE LAST SUPPER."
-
-
-
-
-ELEVENTH LECTURE.
-
-
-In this Lecture I shall submit to your consideration some criticisms on
-the prevailing method of treating the History of our Art; attended by a
-series of observations on the magnificent picture of the Last Supper, by
-Lionardo da Vinci, now before you.
-
-History, mindless of its real object, sinking to Biography, has been
-swelled into a diffuse catalogue of individuals, who, tutored by
-different schools, or picking something from the real establishers of
-Art, have done little more than repeat, or imitate through the medium of
-either, what those had found in Nature, discriminated, selected, and
-applied to Art, according to her dictates. Without wishing to depreciate
-the merit of that multitude who felt, proved themselves strong enough,
-and strenuously employed life to follow, it must be pronounced below
-the historian's dignity to allow them more than a transitory glance.
-Neither originality, nor selection and combination of materials
-scattered over the various classes of Art by others, have much right to
-attention from him who only investigates the real progress of Art, if
-the first proves to have added nothing essential to the system by
-novelty, and the second to have only diluted energy, and by a popular
-amalgama to have pleased the vulgar. Novelty, without enlarging the
-circle of knowledge, may delight or strike, but is nearer allied to whim
-than to invention; and an eclectic system, without equality of parts, as
-it originated in want of comprehension, totters on the brink of
-mediocrity.
-
-The first ideas of Expression, Character, Form, Chiaroscuro, and Colour,
-originated in Tuscany: Masaccio, Lionardo da Vinci, M. Agnolo,
-Bartolomeo della Porta. The first was carried off before he could give
-more than hints of dramatic composition; the second appears to have
-established character on physiognomy, and to have seen the first vision
-of chiaroscuro, though he did not penetrate the full extent of its
-charm; the third had power, knowledge, and life sufficiently great,
-extensive, and long, to have fixed style on its basis, had not an
-irresistible bias drawn off his attention from the modesty and variety
-of Nature; Baccio gave amplitude to drapery, and colour to form.
-
-Of the Tuscan School that succeeded these, the main body not only added
-nothing to their discoveries, but, if their blind attachment to the
-singularities rather than the beauties of the third be excepted, equally
-inattentive to expression, character, propriety of form, the charms of
-chiaroscuro, and energies of colour, contented themselves to give to
-tame or puerile ideas, obvious and common-place conceptions, a kind of
-importance by mastery of execution and a bold but monotonous and always
-mannered outline; and though Andrea del Sarto, with Francia Bigio,
-Giacopo da Pontormo, and Rosso, may be allowed to have thought sometimes
-for themselves and struck out paths of their own, will it be asserted
-that they enlarged or even filled the circle traced out before? The most
-characteristic work of Andrea's original powers, is, no doubt, the
-historic series in S. Giovanni dei Scalzi; yet, when compared with the
-patriarchal simplicity of the groups in the Lunette of the Sistine
-Chapel, the _naïveté_ of his characters and imagery will be found too
-much tainted with contemporary, local, and domestic features, for
-Divine, Apostolic, and Oriental agents. His drapery, whenever he escapes
-from the costume of the day, combines with singular felicity the breadth
-of the _Frati_, and the acute angles of Albert Durer; but neither its
-amplitude, nor the solemn repose and tranquillity of his scenery, can
-supply the want of personal dignity, or consecrate vulgar forms and
-trivial features.
-
-The Roman school like an Oriental sun rose, not announced by dawn, and,
-setting, left no twilight. Raffaello established his school on the
-Drama; its scenery, its expression, its forms; History, Lyrics,
-Portrait, became under his hand the organs of passion and character.
-With his demise the purity of this principle vanished. Julio Romano, too
-original to adopt, formed a school of his own at Mantoua, which, as it
-was founded on no characteristic principle, added nothing to Art, and
-did not long survive its founder. Polydoro Caldara was more ambitious to
-emulate the forms of the antique than to propagate the style of his
-master, which was not comprehended by Penny, called Il Fattore, mangled
-by Perrino del Vaga, became common-place in the hands of the Zuccari,
-barbarous manner during the usurpation of Giuseppe Cesari, sunk to
-tameness in the timid imitation of Sacchi and Maratta, and expired under
-the frigid method of Mengs.
-
-A certain national, though original character, marks the brightest epoch
-of the Venetian School. However deviating from each other, Tiziano,
-Tintoretto, Jacopo da Ponte, and Paolo Veronese, acknowledge but one
-element of imitation, Nature herself: this principle each bequeathed to
-his school, and no attempt to adulterate its simplicity by uniting
-different methods, distinguishes their immediate successors: hence they
-preserved features of originality longer than the surrounding schools,
-whom the vain wish to connect incompatible excellence, soon degraded to
-mediocrity, and from that plunged to insignificance.
-
-If what is finite could grasp infinity, the variety of Nature might be
-united by individual energy; till then the attempt to amalgamate her
-scattered beauties by the imbecility of Art, will prove abortive.
-Genius is the pupil of Nature; perceives, is dazzled, and imperfectly
-transmits one of her features: thus saw M. Agnolo, Raffaello, Tiziano,
-Correggio; and such were their technic legacies, as inseparable from
-their attendant flaws, as in equal degrees irreconcilable. That Nature
-is not subject to decrepitude, is proved by the superiority of modern
-over ancient science; what hinders modern Art to equal that of classic
-eras, is the effect of irremovable causes.
-
-But I hasten to the principal object of this Lecture, the consideration
-of the technic character of Lionardo da Vinci, one, and in my opinion
-the first of the great restorers of modern Art, as deduced from his most
-important work, the Last Supper, surviving as a whole in the magnificent
-copy of Marco Uggione, rescued from a random pilgrimage by the courage
-and vigilance of our President, and by the Academy made our own. The
-original of this work, the ultimate test of his most vigorous powers,
-the proof of his theory, and what may be called with propriety the first
-characteristic composition since the revival of the Art, was the
-principal ornament of the Refectory in the Dominican Convent of S.
-Maria delle Gratie, at Milan.
-
-Let us begin with the centre, the seat of the principal figure, from
-which all the rest emanate like rays. Sublimely calm, the face of the
-Saviour broods over the immense, whilst every face and every limb around
-him, roused by his mysterious word, fluctuate in restless curiosity and
-sympathetic pangs.
-
-The face of the Saviour is an abyss of thought, and broods over the
-immense revolution in the economy of mankind, which throngs inwardly on
-his absorbed eye--as the spirit creative in the beginning over the
-water's darksome wave--undisturbed and quiet. It could not be lost in
-the copy before us: how could its sublime conception escape those who
-saw the original? It has survived the hand of Time in the study which
-Lionardo made in crayons, exhibited with most of the attendant heads in
-the British Gallery; and even in the feebler transcript of Del Testa.
-
-I am not afraid of being under the necessity of retracting what I am
-going to advance, that neither during the splendid period immediately
-subsequent to Lionardo, nor in those which succeeded to our own time,
-has a face of the Redeemer been produced which, I will not say equalled,
-but approached the sublimity of Lionardo's conception, and in quiet and
-simple features of humanity embodied divine, or, what is the same,
-incomprehensible and infinite powers. To him who could contrive and give
-this combination, the unlimited praise lavished on the inferior
-characters who surround the hero, whilst his success in that was
-doubted--appears to me not only no praise, but a gross injustice.
-
-Yet such was the judgment of Vasari, and in our days of Lanzi, both
-founded on the pretended impossibility of transcribing the beauty of
-forms and the varied energies of expression distributed by the artist
-among the disciples. "The moment," says Lanzi, and says well, "is that
-in which the Saviour says to the Disciples, "One of you will betray me!"
-On every one of the innocent men the word acts like lightning: he who is
-at a greater distance, distrusting his own ears, applies to his
-neighbour; others, according to their variety of character, betray
-raised emotions. One of them faints, one is fixed in astonishment; this
-wildly rises, the simple candour of another tells that he cannot be
-suspected: Judas, meanwhile, assumes a look of intrepidity, but, though
-he counterfeits innocence, leaves no doubt of being the traitor. Vinci
-used to tell, that for a year he wandered about, perplexed with the
-thought how to embody in one face the image of so black a mind; and
-frequenting a village which a variety of villains haunted, he met at
-last, by the help of some associated features, with his man. Nor was his
-success less conspicuous in furnishing both the Jameses with congenial
-and characteristic beauty; but being unable to find an ideal superior to
-theirs for Christ, he left the head, as Vasari affirms, imperfect,
-though Arminine ascribes a high finish even to that."
-
-Thus is the modesty and diffidence of the artist, who, in the midst of
-the most glorious success, always sought and wished for more, brought as
-evidence against him by all his pretended judges and critics, if we
-except the single Bottari, who finds in it, with the highest finish, all
-the fortitude of mind characteristic of the Saviour, united to lively
-consideration of the suffering that awaited him--though even that is,
-in my opinion, below the conception of Lionardo.
-
-Lest those who have read and recollect the character of Lionardo which I
-have submitted to the public, should, from the predilection with which I
-have dwelt on what I think the principal feature of his performance, the
-face and attitude of the hero, suspect I shift my ground, or charge me
-with inconsistency, I repeat what I said then, when I was nearly
-unacquainted with this work, that the distinguishing feature of his
-powers lay in the delineation of character, which he often raised to a
-species, and not seldom degraded to caricature. The triumphant proof of
-both is the great performance before us; the same mind that could unite
-divine power with the purest humanity, by an unaccountable dereliction,
-not only of the dignity due to his subject, but of sound sense, thought
-it not beneath him to haunt the recesses of deformity to unkennel a
-villain. Did he confine villainy to deformity? If he had, he would have
-disdained to give him two associates in feature; for the face of him who
-holds up his finger, and his who argues on the left extremity of the
-table, seem to have proceeded, if not absolutely from the same, from a
-very similar mould, yet they are in the number of the elect, and, though
-on the brink of caricature, have the air of good men. Expression alone
-separates them from the traitor, whom incapacity of remorse, hatred,
-rage at being discovered, and habitual meanness, seem to have divided
-into equal shares.
-
-The portrait of Cesar Borgia, by Giorgione, now hung up for your study
-in the Academy for Painting, proves that the most atrocious mind may
-lurk under good, sedate, and even handsome features. Though his hand
-were not drawing a dagger, who would expect mercy or remorse from the
-evil methodized villainy of that eye? But Judas was capable of remorse;
-intolerant of the dreadful suffering with which the horrid act had
-overwhelmed him, he rushed on confession of his crime, restitution, and
-suicide.
-
-To the countenance and attitude of St. John, blooming with youth,
-innocent, resigned, partaking perhaps somewhat too much of the feminine,
-and those of the two James's invigorated by the strength of virility,
-energetic and bold, none will refuse a competent praise of varied
-beauty; but they neither are nor ought to be ideal, and had they been
-so, they could neither compete nor interfere with the sublimity that
-crowns the Saviour's brow, and stamps his countenance with the God.
-
-The felicity, novelty, and propriety of Lionardo's conception and
-invention, are powerfully seconded by every part of execution:--the tone
-which veils and wraps actors and scene into one harmonious whole, and
-gives it breadth; the style of design, grand without affectation, and,
-if not delicate or ideal, characteristic of the actors; the draperies
-folded with equal simplicity, elegance, and costume, with all the
-propriety of presenting the highest finish, without anxiety of touch, or
-thronging the eye.
-
-So artless is the assemblage of the figures, that the very name of
-composition seems to degrade what appears arranged by Nature's own hand.
-That the nearest by relation, characters and age, should be placed
-nearest the master of the feast, and of course attract the eye soonest,
-was surely the most natural arrangement; but if they are conspicuous,
-they are not so at the expense of the rest: distance is compensated by
-action; the centre leads to all, as all lead to the centre. That the
-great restorer of light and shade sacrificed the effects and charms of
-_chiaroscuro_ at the shrine of character, raised him at once above all
-his future competitors; changes admiration to sympathy, and makes us
-partners of the feast.
-
-As expression sprang from the subject, so it gave rise to competition.
-That Raffaello was acquainted with Lionardo's work, and felt its power,
-is evident from his composition, engraved by M. Antonio: finding
-invention anticipated, he took refuge in imitation, and filled it with
-sentiments of his own; whether, beyond the dignity of attitude, he
-attempts to approach the profundity of Lionardo's Christ, cannot, from a
-print of very moderate dimensions, be decided. In the listening figure
-of Judas, with equal atrocity of guilt he appears to have combined
-somewhat more of apostolic consequence.
-
-The well-known Last Supper of the Loggia, painted, or what is more
-probable, superintended by Raffaello, is, by being made a night scene,
-by contrast and chiaroscuro, become an original conception; but as it
-presents little more than groups busy to arrange themselves for sitting
-down or breaking up, it cannot excite more interest than what is due to
-contrast and effect, and active groups eager to move yet not tumultuary.
-
-But if Lionardo disdained to consult the recesses of composition and the
-charms of artificial chiaroscuro, he did not debase his work to mere
-apposition: uniting the whole by tone, he gave it substance by truth of
-imitation, and effect by the disposition of the characters; the groups
-flanking each side of the Saviour, emerge, recede, and support each
-other with a roundness, depth, and evidence which leave all attempts at
-emendation or improvement hopeless. But why should I attempt to
-enumerate beauties which are before you, and which if you do not
-perceive yourselves, no words of mine can ever make you feel?
-
-The universality of Lionardo da Vinci is become proverbial: but though
-possessed of every element, he rather gave glimpses than a standard of
-form; though full of energy, he had not powers effectually to court the
-various graces he pursued. His line was free from meagreness, and his
-forms presented volume, but he appears not to have ever been much
-acquainted, or to have sedulously sought much acquaintance, with the
-Antique. Character was his favourite study, and character he has often
-raised from an individual to a species, and as often depressed to
-caricature. The strength of his execution lay in the delineation of male
-heads; those of his females owe nearly all their charms to chiaroscuro,
-of which he is the supposed inventor: they are seldom more discriminated
-than the children they fondle; they are sisters of one family. The
-extremities of his hands are often inelegant, though timorously drawn,
-like those of Christ among the Doctors in the picture we lately saw
-exhibited. Lionardo da Vinci touched in every muscle of his forms the
-master-key of the passion he wished to express, but he is ideal only in
-chiaroscuro.
-
-Such was the state of the Art before the appearance of M. Agnolo and
-Raffaello, and the establishment of style.
-
-Of M. Agnolo it is difficult to decide who have understood less, his
-encomiasts or his critics, though both rightly agree in dating from him
-an epoch--those of the establishment, these of the subversion of Art.
-
-It is the lot of Genius to be opposed, and to be invigorated by
-opposition. All extremes touch each other: frigid praise and frigid
-censure wait on easily attainable or common powers: but the successful
-adventurer in the realms of Discovery, in spite of the shrugs, checks,
-and sneers of the timid, the malign, and the envious, leaps on an
-unknown or long lost shore, ennobles it with his name, and grasps
-immortality.
-
-M. Agnolo appeared, and soon discovered that works worthy of perpetuity
-could neither be built on defective and unsubstantial forms, nor on the
-transient whim of fashion and local sentiment; that their stamina were
-the real stamina of Nature, the genuine feelings of humanity; and
-planned for painting what Homer had planned for poetry, the epic part,
-which, with the utmost simplicity of a whole, should unite magnificence
-of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts. His line became
-generic, but perhaps too uniformly grand: character and beauty were
-admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The
-child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately
-stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of
-poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are
-moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race
-of giants. This is the "terribil via," this is that "magic circle," in
-which we are told that none durst move but he. No, none but he who makes
-sublimity of conception his element of form. M. Agnolo himself offers
-the proof: for the lines that bear in a mass on his mighty tide of
-thought in the Gods and Patriarchs and Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel,
-already too ostentatiously show themselves in the Last Judgement, and
-rather expose than support his ebbing powers in the Chapel of Paul.
-Considered as a whole, the Crucifixion of St. Peter and the Conversion
-of Paul, in that place, are the dotage of M. Agnolo's style; but they
-have parts which make that dotage more enviable than the equal vigour of
-mediocrity.
-
-With what an eye M. Agnolo contemplated the Antique, we may judge from
-his Bacchus, the early production of his youth: in style it is at least
-equal, perhaps in pulp and fleshiness superior, to what is called the
-Antique Roman Style. His idea seems to have been the personification of
-youthful inebriety, but it is the inebriety of a superior being, not yet
-forsaken by grace, not yet relinquished by mind. In more advanced years,
-the Torso of Apollonius became his standard of form. But the Dæmons of
-Dante had too early tinctured his fancy to admit in their full majesty
-the Gods of Homer and of Phidias.
-
-Such was the opinion formed of the plan and style of M. Agnolo by the
-judges, the critics, the poets, the artists, the public, of his own and
-the following age, from Bembo to Ariosto, from Raffaello to Tiziano,
-down to Agostino and Annibale Carracci. Let us now compare it with the
-technical verdict given by the greatest professional critic, on the
-Continent, of our times. "M. Agnolo," says Mengs, "seeking always to be
-grand, was perhaps only bulky, and by the perpetual use of a convex
-line, over-spanned the forms and irrecoverably lost the line of Nature.
-This charged style attended him in his youth, and engrossed him when a
-man. For this reason his works will always be much inferior to the
-antique of the good style; for though they made robust and muscular
-figures, they never made them heavy:--an instance is the Hercules of
-Glycon, who, though so bulky, and of form so majestic, is easily seen to
-be swift like a stag, and elastic like a ball. The style of M. Agnolo
-could not give similar ideas, for the joints of his figures are too
-contracted, and seem only made for the posture into which he puts them.
-The forms of his flesh are too round, his muscles of a mass and shape
-always similar, which hides their springs of motion; nor do you ever see
-in his works a muscle in repose, than which a greater fault Design knows
-not. He perfectly knew what place each muscle ought to occupy, but never
-gave its form. Nor did he understand the nature of tendons, as he made
-them equally fleshy from end to end, and his bones too round. Raffaello
-partook of all these defects, without ever reaching the profundity of
-his muscular theory. Raffaello's strength lay in characterizing aged and
-nervous frames; he was too hard for delicacy, and in figures of grandeur
-an exaggerated copy of M. Agnolo." So far Mengs.
-
-M. Agnolo appears to have had no infancy; if he had, we are not acquainted
-with it. His earliest works are equal in principle and compass of
-execution to the vigorous proofs of his virility. Like an oriental sun, he
-burst upon us at once, without a dawn. Raffaello Sanzio we see in his
-cradle, we hear him stammer, but _propriety_ rocked the cradle, and
-_character_ formed his lips. Even in the trammels of Pietro Perugino, dry
-and servile in his style of design, he traced what was essential, and
-separated it from what was accidental in his model. The works of Lionardo
-da Vinci and the Cartoon of Pisa are said to have invigorated his eye, but
-it was the Antique that completed the system which he had begun to
-establish on Nature; from them he learned discrimination and choice of
-forms. He found that in the construction of the body the articulations of
-the bones were the true cause of ease and grace in the action of the
-limbs, and that the knowledge of this was the reason of the superiority of
-antique design. He found that certain features were fittest for certain
-expressions and peculiar to certain characters; that such a head, such
-hands, such feet, are the stamen or the growth of such a body, and on
-physiognomy established homogeneousness. Of all artists he was the
-greatest, the most precise, the most acute observer. When he designed, he
-first attended to the primary intention and motive of his figure, next to
-its general measure, then to the bones and their articulations; from them
-to the principal muscles, or the muscles eminently wanted, and their
-attendant nerves, and at last to the more or less essential minutiæ. But
-the characteristic part of the subject is infallibly the characteristic
-part of his design, if it be formed even by a few rapid or a single stroke
-of his pen or pencil. The strokes themselves are characteristic, they
-follow or indicate the texture or fibre of the part; flesh in their
-rounding, nerves in straight, bones in angular touches.
-
-Such was the felicity and such the propriety of Raffaello when employed
-in the dramatic evolutions of character,--both suffered when he
-attempted to abstract the forms of sublimity or beauty. The painter of
-humanity not often wielded with success superhuman weapons. His Gods
-never rose above prophetic or patriarchial forms: if the finger of M.
-Agnolo impressed the divine countenance oftener with sternness than awe,
-the Gods of Raffaello are sometimes too affable and mild, like him who
-speaks to Jacob in the ceiling of the Vatican; sometimes too violent,
-like him who separates light from darkness in the Loggia: but though
-made chiefly to walk with dignity on earth, he soared above it in the
-mild effulgence and majestic rapture of Christ on Tabor, not indeed as
-we see his face now from the repairs of the manufacturers in the Louvre,
-and still more in the frown of the angelic countenance that withers all
-the strength of the warrior Heliodorus. Of ideal female beauty, though
-he himself, in his letter to Count Castiglione, tells us that from its
-scarcity in life he made attempts to reach it by an idea formed in his
-own mind, he certainly wanted that standard which guided him in
-character. His Goddesses and mythologic females are no more than
-aggravations of the generic forms of M. Agnolo. Roundness, mildness,
-sanctimony, and insipidity, compose the features and air of his
-Madonnas: transcripts of the nursery, or some favourite face. The
-Madonna del Impanato, the Madonna Bella, the Madonna della Sedia, and
-even the longer proportions and greater delicacy and dignity of the
-Madonna formerly in the collection of Versailles, share more or less of
-this insipidity: it chiefly arises from the high, smooth, roundish
-forehead, the shaven vacuity between the arched semicircular eye-brows,
-their elevation above the eyes, and the ungraceful division, growth and
-scantiness of hair. This indeed might be the result of his desire not to
-stain the virgin character of sanctity with the most distant hint of
-coquetry or meretricious charms; for in his Magdalens, he throws it with
-luxuriant profusion, and surrounds the breast and shoulders with
-undulating waves and plaits of gold. The character of Mary Magdalen met
-his,--it was the character of a passion.
-
-It is evident from every picture or design at every period of his art in
-which she had a part, that he supposed her enamoured when she follows
-the body of the Saviour to the tomb, or throws herself dishevelled over
-his feet, or addresses him when he bears his cross. The cast of her
-features, her forms, her action, are the character of love in agony.
-When character inspired Raffaello, his women became definitions of grace
-and pathos at once.
-
-Such is the exquisite line and turn of the averted half-kneeling female
-with the two children among the spectators of Heliodorus. Her attitude,
-the turn of her neck, supplies all face, and intimates more than he ever
-expressed by features; and that she would not have gained by showing
-them, may be guessed from her companion on the foreground, who, though
-highly elegant and equally pathetic in her action, has not features
-worthy of either. The fact is, form and style were by Raffaello
-employed chiefly, if not always, as vehicles of character and pathos;
-the Drama is his element, and to that he has adapted them in a mode and
-with a propriety which leave all attempts at emendation hopeless: if
-his lines have been excelled or rivalled in energy, correctness,
-elegance,--considered as instruments of the passions, they have never
-been equalled, and as parts of invention, composition and expression
-relative to his story, have never been approached.
-
-The result of these observations on M. Agnolo and Raffaello is this,
-that M. Agnolo drew in generic forms the human race; that Raffaello
-drew the forms and characters of society diversified by artificial
-wants.
-
-We find therefore M. Agnolo more sublime, and we sympathise more with
-Raffaello, because he resembles us more. When Reynolds said that M.
-Agnolo had more _imagination_, and Raffaello more _fancy_, he meant to
-say, that the one had more sublimity, more elementary fire; the other
-was richer in social imagery, in genial conceits, and artificial
-variety. Simplicity is the stamen of M. Agnolo; varied propriety, with
-character, that of Raffaello.
-
-Of the great restorers of Art, the two we have considered, made Design
-and Style the basis of their plan, content with negative and unambitious
-colour; the two next inverted the principle, and employed Design and
-Style as vehicles of _colour_ or of _harmony_.
-
-The style of Tiziano's design has two periods: he began with copying
-what was before him without choice, and for some time continued in the
-meagre, anxious, and accidental manner of Giovanni Bellino; but
-discovering in the works of Giorgione that breadth of form produced
-breadth of colour, he endeavoured, and succeeded, to see Nature by
-comparison, and in a more ample light. That he possessed the theory of
-the human body, needs not to be proved from the doubtful designs which
-he is said to have made for the anatomical work of Vesalio; that he had
-familiarized himself with the style of M. Agnolo, and burned with
-ambition to emulate it, is less evident from adopting some of his
-attitudes in the pictures of Pietro Martyre and the Battle of
-Ghiaradadda, than from the elemental conceptions, the colossal style,
-and daring foreshortenings which astonish in the Cain and Abel, the
-Abraham and Isaac, the Goliath and David, on the ceiling of the fabric
-of St. Spirito at Venice. Here, and here alone, is the result of that
-union of tone and style which, in Tintoretto's opinion, was required to
-make a perfect painter,--for in general the male forms of Tiziano are
-those of sanguine health, often too fleshy for character, less elastic
-than muscular, or vigorous without grandeur. His females are the fair
-dimpled Venetian race, soft without delicacy, too full for elegance, for
-action too plump; his infants are poised between both, and preferable to
-either. In portrait he has united character and resemblance with
-dignity, and still remains unrivalled.
-
-A certain national character marks the brightest æra of the Venetian
-school: however deviating from each other, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassan,
-and Paolo, acknowledged but one element of imitation, Nature herself.
-This principle each bequeathed to his followers; and no attempt to
-adulterate its simplicity, by uniting different methods, distinguished
-their immediate successors. Hence they preserved features of originality
-longer than the surrounding schools, whom the vain wish to connect
-incompatible excellence soon degraded to mediocrity, and from that
-plunged to insignificance.
-
-The soft transitions from the convex to the concave line, which connect
-grandeur with lightness, form the style of Correggio; but using their
-coalition without balance, merely to obtain a breadth of demi-tint and
-uninterrupted tones of harmony, he became, from excess of roundness,
-oftener heavy than light, and frequently incorrect.
-
-It is not easy, from the unaccountable obscurity in which his life is
-involved, to ascertain whether he saw the Antique in sufficient degrees
-of quantity or beauty; but he certainly must have been familiar with
-modelling, and the helps of sculpture, to plan with such boldness, and
-conquer with such ease, the unparalleled difficulties of his
-foreshortenings. His grace is oftener beholden to convenience of place
-than elegance of line. The most appropriate, the most elegant attitudes
-were adopted, rejected, perhaps sacrificed to the most awkward ones, in
-compliance with his imperious principle: parts vanished, were absorbed,
-or emerged in obedience to it.
-
-The Danaë, of which we have seen duplicates, the head excepted, he seems
-to have painted from an antique female torso. But ideal beauty of face,
-if ever he conceived, he never has expressed; his beauty is equally
-remote from the idea of the Venus, the Niobe, and the best forms of
-Nature. The Magdalen, in the picture of St. Girolamo of Parma, is
-beholden for the charms of her face to chiaroscuro, and that
-incomparable hue and suavity of bloom which scarcely permit us to
-discover the defects of forms not much above the vulgar. But that he
-sometimes reached the sublime, by hiding the limits of his figures in
-the bland medium which inwraps them, his Jupiter and Io prove.
-
-Such were the principles on which the Tuscan, the Roman, the Venetian,
-and the Lombard schools established their systems of style, or rather
-the _manner_ which, in various directions and modes of application,
-perverted style. M. Agnolo lived to see the electric shock which his
-design had given to Art, propagated by the Tuscan and Venetian schools
-as the ostentatious vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic quibbles, or
-the palliative of empty pomp and degraded luxuriance of colour.
-
-Of his imitators, the two most eminent are Pellegrino Tibaldi, called
-"M. Agnolo riformato" by the Bolognese Eclectics, and Francesco
-Mazzuoli, called Parmegiano.
-
-Pellegrino Tibaldi penetrated the technic without the moral principle of
-his master's style; he had often grandeur of line without sublimity of
-conception; hence the _manner_ of M. Agnolo is frequently the _style_ of
-Pellegrino Tibaldi. Conglobation and eccentricity, an aggregate of
-convexities suddenly broken by rectangular, or cut by perpendicular
-lines, compose his system. His fame principally rests on the Frescoes
-of the Academic Institute at Bologna, and the Ceiling of the Merchants'
-Hall at Ancona. It is probably on the strength of those, that the
-Carracci, his countrymen, are said to have called him their "M. Agnolo
-riformato,"--M. Agnolo corrected. I will not do that injustice to the
-Carracci to suppose, that for one moment they could allude by this
-verdict to the Ceiling and the Prophets and Sibyls of the Capella
-Sistina; they glanced perhaps at the technic exuberance of the Last
-Judgement, and the senile caprices of the Capella Paolina. These, they
-meant to inform us, had been pruned, regulated, and reformed by
-Pellegrino Tibaldi. Do his works in the Institute warrant this verdict?
-So far from it, that it exhibits little more than the dotage of M.
-Agnolo. The single figures, groups, and compositions of the Institute,
-present a singular mixture of extraordinary vigour and puerile
-imbecility of conception, of character and caricature, of style and
-manner.
-
-The figure of Polypheme groping at the mouth of his cave for Ulysses,
-and the composition of Æolus granting to Ulysses favourable winds, are
-striking instances of both. Than the Cyclops, M. Agnolo himself never
-conceived a form of savage energy, provoked by sufferings and revenge,
-with attitude and limbs more in unison; whilst the God of Winds is
-degraded to the scanty and ludicrous semblance of Thersites, and Ulysses
-with his companions travestied by the semi-barbarous look and costume of
-the age of Constantine or Attila.
-
-From Pellegrino Tibaldi, the Germans, Dutch, and Flemings, Hemskerk,
-Goltzius, and Spranger, borrowed the compendium of the great Tuscan's
-peculiarities, dropsied the forms of vigour, or dressed the gewgaws of
-children in colossal shapes.
-
-Parmegiano poised his line between the grace of Correggio and the energy
-of M. Agnolo, and from contrast produced Elegance; but instead of making
-propriety her measure, degraded her to affectation. That disengaged play
-of delicate forms, the "sueltezza" of the Italians, is the prerogative
-of Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at the expense of
-proportion. He conceived the variety, but not the simplicity of beauty,
-and drove contrast to extravagance. The figure of St. John, in the
-altar-piece of St. Salvador at Città di Castello, now at the Marquis of
-Abercorn's, and known from the print of Giulio Bonasone, which less
-imitates than exaggerates its original in the Cartoon of Pisa, is one
-proof among many: his action is the accident of his attitude; he is
-conscious of his grandeur, and loses the fervour of the apostle in the
-orator.
-
-So his celebrated Moses, if I see right, has in his forms less of
-grandeur than agility, in his action more passion than majesty, and
-loses the legislator in the savage. This figure, together with Raphael's
-figure of God in the Vision of Ezekiel, is said to have furnished Gray
-with some of the master-traits of his Bard,--figures than which Painting
-cannot produce two more dissimilar: calm, placid contemplation, and the
-decided burst of passion in coalition.
-
-Whilst M. Agnolo was doomed to live and brood over the perversion of
-_his_ style, death prevented Raffaello from witnessing the gradual decay
-of his.
-
-Such was the state of style, when, toward the decline of the sixteenth
-century, Lodovico Carracci, with his cousins Agostino and Annibale,
-founded at Bologna, on the hints caught from Pellegrino Tibaldi, that
-Eclectic School which, by selecting the beauties, correcting the faults,
-supplying the defects, and avoiding the extremes of the different
-styles, attempted to form a perfect system. The specious ingredients of
-this technic panacea have been preserved in a complimentary sonnet of
-Agostino Carracci, and are compounded of the design and symmetry of
-Raffaello, the terrible manner of M. Agnolo, the sovereign purity of
-Correggio's style, Tiziano's truth and nature, Tintoretto's and Paolo's
-vivacity and chiaroscuro, Lombardy's tone of colour, the learned
-invention of Primaticcio, the decorum and solidity of Pellegrino
-Tibaldi, and a little of Parmegiano's grace, all amalgamated by Niccolo
-dell' Abbate.
-
-I shall not attempt a parody of this prescription by transferring it to
-Poetry, and prescribing to the candidate for dramatic fame the imitation
-of Shakspeare, Otway, Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Congreve, Racine, Addison,
-as amalgamated by Nicholas Rowe. Let me only ask whether such a mixture
-of demands ever entered with equal evidence the mind of any one artist,
-ancient or modern; whether, if it be granted possible that they did,
-they were ever balanced with equal impartiality; and grant this, whether
-they ever were or could be executed with equal felicity? A character of
-equal universal power is not a human character; and the nearest approach
-to perfection can only be in carrying to excellence one great quality
-with the least alloy of collateral defects: to attempt more will
-probably end in the extinction of character, and that, in
-mediocrity--the cypher of Art.
-
-And were the Carracci such? Separate the precept from the practice, the
-artist from the teacher, and the Carracci are in possession of my
-submissive homage. Lodovico is the inventor of that solemn hue, that
-sober twilight, which you have heard so often recommended as the proper
-tone of historic colour. Agostino, with learning, taste, and form,
-combined Corregiesque tints. Annibale, inferior to both in sensibility
-and taste, in the wide range of talent, undaunted execution and academic
-prowess, left either far behind. But if he preserved the breadth of the
-style we speak of, he added nothing to its dignity; his pupils were
-inferior to _him_, and to his pupils, their successors. _Style_
-continued to linger, with fatal symptoms of decay, in Italy; and if it
-survives, has not yet found a place to re-establish its powers on this
-side of the Alps.
-
-
-
-
-TWELFTH LECTURE.
-
-ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE ART, AND THE CAUSES WHICH CHECK ITS PROGRESS.
-
-
-
-
-TWELFTH LECTURE.
-
-
-Such is the influence of the plastic Arts on society, on manners,
-sentiments, the commodities and the ornaments of life, that we think
-ourselves generally entitled to form our estimate of times and nations
-by its standard. As our homage attends those whose patronage reared them
-to a state of efflorescence or maturity, so we pass with neglect, or
-pursue with contempt, the age or race which want of culture or of
-opportunity averted from developing symptoms of a similar attachment.
-
-A genuine perception of Beauty is the highest degree of education, the
-ultimate polish of man; the master-key of the mind, it makes us better
-than we were before. Elevated or charmed by the contemplation of
-superior works of Art, our mind passes from the images themselves to
-their authors, and from them to the race which reared the powers that
-furnish us with models of imitation or multiply our pleasures.
-
-This inward sense is supported by exterior motives in contact with a far
-greater part of society, whom wants and commerce connect with the Arts;
-for nations pay or receive tribute in proportion as their technic sense
-exerts itself or slumbers. Whatever is commodious, amene, or useful,
-depends in a great measure on the Arts: dress, furniture, and habitation
-owe to their breath what they can boast of grace, propriety, or shape:
-they teach Elegance to finish what Necessity invented, and make us
-enamoured of our wants.
-
-This benign influence infallibly spreads or diminishes in proportion as
-its original source, a sense of genuine Beauty, flows from an ample or a
-scanty vein, in a clear or turbid stream. As Taste is adulterated or
-sinks, Ornament takes a meagre, clumsy, barbarous, ludicrous, or
-meretricious form; Affectation dictates; Simplicity and elegance are
-loaded; interest vanishes: in a short time Necessity alone remains, and
-Novelty with Error go hand in hand.
-
-These obvious observations on the importance of the Arts, lead to the
-question so often discussed, and at no time more important than ours--on
-the causes that raised them at various times, and among different
-nations--on the means of assisting their progress, and how to check
-their decay. Of much that has been said on it, much must be repeated,
-and something added.
-
-The Greeks commonly lead the van of the arguments produced to answer
-this question. Their religious and civil establishments; their manners,
-games, contests of valour and of talents; the Cyclus of their Mythology,
-peopled with celestial and heroic forms; the honours, the celebrity of
-artists; the serene Grecian sky and mildness of the climate, are the
-causes supposed to have carried that nation within the ken of
-perfection.
-
-Without refusing to each of these various advantages its share of
-effect, History informs us that if Religion and Liberty prepared a
-public, and spread a technic taste over all Greece, Athens and Corinth
-must be considered as the principal nurses of Art, without whose
-fostering care the general causes mentioned could not have had so
-decided an effect; for nothing surely contributed so much to the gradual
-evolution of Art, as that perpetual opportunity which they presented to
-the artist of public exhibition; the decoration of temples, halls,
-porticoes, a succession of employments equally numerous, important, and
-dignified: hence that emulation to gain the heights of Art; the fervour
-of public encouragement, the zeal and gratitude of the artists were
-reciprocal: Polygnotus prepared with Cimon what Phidias with Pericles
-established, on public taste, Essential, Characteristic, and Ideal
-Styles.
-
-Whether human nature admitted of no more, or other causes prevented a
-farther evolution of powers, nothing greater did arise; Polish, Elegance,
-and Novelty supplied Invention: here is the period of decay; the Art
-gradually sunk to mediocrity, and its final reward--Indifference.
-
-The artist and the public are ever in the strictest reciprocity: if the
-Arts flourished nowhere as in Greece, no other nation ever interested
-itself with motives so pure in their establishment and progress, or
-allowed them so ample a compass. As long as their march was marked with
-such dignity, whilst their union excited admiration, commanded
-attachment, and led the public, they grew, they rose; but when
-individually to please, the artist attempted to monopolize the interest
-due to Art, to abstract by novelty and to flatter the multitude, ruin
-followed. To prosper, the Art not only must feel itself free, it ought
-to reign: if it be domineered over, if it follow the dictate of Fashion
-or a Patron's whims, then is its dissolution at hand.
-
-To attain the height of the Ancient was impossible for Modern Art,
-circumscribed by narrower limits, forced to form itself rapidly and on
-borrowed principles; still it owes its origin and support to nearly
-similar causes. During the fourteenth, and still more in the course of
-the fifteenth century, so much activity, so general a predilection for
-Art spread themselves over the greater part of Italy, that we are
-astonished at the farrago of various imagery produced at those periods.
-The artist and the Art were indeed considered as little more than
-craftsmen and a craft; but they were indemnified for the want of
-honours, by the dignity of their employment, by commissions to decorate
-churches, convents, and public buildings.
-
-Let no one to whom truth and its propagation are dear, believe or
-maintain that Christianism was inimical to the progress of Arts, which
-probably nothing else could have revived. Nothing less than Christian
-enthusiasm could give that lasting and energetic impulse whose magic
-result we admire in the works that illustrate the period of Genius and
-their establishment. Nor is the objection that England, France, and
-Germany professed Christianity, built churches and convents, and yet had
-no Art, an objection of consequence; because it might with equal
-propriety be asked, why it did not appear sooner in Italy itself. The
-Art forms a part of social education and the ultimate polish of man, nor
-can it appear during the rudeness of infant societies; and as, among the
-Western nations, the Italians were the first who extricated themselves
-from the bonds of barbarism and formed asylums for industry, Art and
-Science kept pace with the social progress, and produced their first
-legitimate essays among them.
-
-How favourably religious enthusiasm operated on Art, their sympathetic
-revolutions still farther prove; they flourished, they languished, they
-fell together. As zeal relented and public grandeur gave way to private
-splendour, the Arts became the hirelings of Vanity and Wealth; servile
-they roamed from place to place, ready to administer to the whims and
-wants of the best bidder: in this point of sight we can easily solve all
-the phænomena which occur in the history of Art,--its rise, its fall,
-eclipse, and re-appearance in various places, with styles as different
-as various tastes.
-
-The efficient cause, therefore, why higher Art at present is sunk to
-such a state of inactivity and languor that it may be doubted whether it
-will exist much longer, is not a particular one, which private
-patronage, or the will of an individual, however great, can remove; but
-a general cause, founded on the bent, the manners, habits, modes of a
-nation,--and not of one nation alone, but of all who at present pretend
-to culture. Our age, when compared with former ages, has but little
-occasion for great works, and that is the reason why so few are
-produced:[1]--the ambition, activity, and spirit of public life is
-shrunk to the minute detail of domestic arrangements--every thing that
-surrounds us tends to show us in private, is become snug, less, narrow,
-pretty, insignificant. We are not, perhaps, the less happy on account of
-all this; but from such selfish trifling to expect a system of Art built
-on grandeur, without a total revolution, would only be less presumptuous
-than insane.
-
-What right have we to expect such a revolution in our favour?
-
-Let us advert for a moment to the enormous difference of difficulty
-between forming and amending the taste of a public--between legislation
-and reform: either task is that of Genius; both have adherents,
-disciples, champions; but persecution, derision, checks will generally
-oppose the efforts of the latter, whilst submission, gratitude,
-encouragement, attend the smooth march of the former. No madness is so
-incurable as wilful perverseness; and when men can once, with Medea,
-declare that they know what is best, and approve of it, but must, or
-choose to follow the worst, perhaps a revolution worse to be dreaded
-than the disease itself, must precede the possibility of a cure. Though,
-as it has been observed, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries granted
-to the artists little more than the attention due to ingenious
-craftsmen; they were, from the object of their occupations and the taste
-of their employers, the legitimate precursors of M. Agnolo and
-Raffaello, who did no more than raise their style to the sublimity and
-pathos of the subject. These trod with loftier gait and bolder strides a
-path, on which the former had sometimes stumbled, often crept, but
-always advanced: the public and the artist went hand in hand--but on
-what spot of Europe can the young artist of our day be placed to meet
-with circumstances equally favourable? Arm him, if you please, with the
-epic and dramatic powers of M. Agnolo and Raffaello, where are the
-religious and civic establishments, where the temples and halls open to
-receive, where the public prepared to call them forth, to stimulate, to
-reward them?
-
-Idle complaints! I hear a thousand voices reply! You accuse the public
-of apathy for the Arts, while public and private exhibitions tread on
-each other's heels, panorama opens on panorama, and the splendour of
-galleries dazzles the wearied eye, and the ear is stunned with the
-incessant stroke of the sculptor's hammer, and our temples narrowed by
-crowds of monuments shouldering each other to perpetuate the memory of
-Statesmen who deluded, or of Heroes who bled at a Nation's call! Look
-round all Europe--revolve the page of history from Osymandias to
-Pericles, from Pericles to Constantine--and say what age, what race
-stretched forth a stronger arm to raise the drooping genius of Art? Is
-it the public's fault if encouragement is turned into a job, and
-dispatch and quantity have supplanted excellence and quality, as objects
-of the artist's emulation?--And do you think that accidental and
-temporary encouragement can invalidate charges founded on permanent
-causes? What blew up the Art, will in its own surcease terminate its
-success. Art is not ephemeral; Religion and Liberty had for ages
-prepared what Religion and Liberty were to establish among the ancients:
-the germ of the Olympian Jupiter, and the Minerva of Phidias, lay in the
-Gods of Aëgina, and that of Theseus, Hercules, and Alcibiades in the
-blocks of Harmodios and Aristogiton.
-
-If the revolution of a neighbouring nation emancipated the people from
-the yoke of superstition, it has perhaps precipitated them to
-irreligion. He who has no visible object of worship is indifferent about
-modes, and rites, and places; and unless some great civil provisional
-establishment replaces the means furnished by the former system, the
-Arts of France, should they disdain to become the minions and handmaids
-of fashion, may soon find that the only public occupation left for them
-will be a representation of themselves, deploring their new-acquired
-advantages. By a great establishment, I mean one that will employ the
-living artists, raise among them a spirit of emulation dignified by the
-objects of their occupation, and inspire the public with that spirit;
-not an ostentatious display of ancient and modern treasures of genius,
-accumulated by the hand of conquest or of rapine. To plunder the earth
-was a Roman principle, and it is not perhaps matter of lamentation that
-Modern Rome, by a retaliation of her own principle, is made to pay the
-debt contracted with mankind. But let none fondly believe that the
-importation of Greek and Italian works of Art is an importation of Greek
-and Italian genius, taste, establishments and means of encouragement;
-without transplanting and disseminating these, the gorgeous accumulation
-of technic monuments is no more than a dead capital, and, instead of a
-benefit, a check on living Art.
-
-With regard to ourselves, the barbarous, though then perhaps useful rage
-of image-breakers in the seventeenth century, seems much too
-gratuitously propagated as a principle in an age much more likely to
-suffer from irreligion than superstition. A public body inflamed by
-superstition, suffers, but it suffers from the ebullitions of radical
-heat, and may return to a state of health and life; whilst a public body
-plunged into irreligion, is in a state of palsied apathy, the cadaverous
-symptom of approaching dissolution. Perhaps neither of these two
-extremes may be precisely our own state; we probably float between both.
-But surely in an age of inquiry and individual liberty of _thought_,
-when there are almost as many sects as heads, there was little danger
-that the admission of Art to places of devotion could ever be attended
-by the errors of idolatry; nor have the motives which resisted the offer
-of ornamenting our churches perhaps any eminent degree of ecclesiastic
-or political sagacity to recommend them. Who would not rejoice if the
-charm of our Art, displaying the actions and example of the sacred
-Founder of our religion and of his disciples in temples and conventicles,
-contributed to enlighten the zeal, stimulate the feelings, sweeten the
-acrimony, or dignify the enthusiasm of their respective audiences? The
-source of the grand monumental style of Greece was Religion with Liberty.
-At that period the artist, as Pliny expresses himself, was the property of
-the public, or in other words, he considered himself as responsible for
-the influence of his works on public principle: with the decline of
-Religion and Liberty his importance and the Art declined; and though the
-Egyptian custom of embalming the dead and suffering the living to linger
-had not yet been adopted, from the organ of the public he became the tool
-of private patronage; and private patronage, however commendable or
-liberal, can no more supply the want of general encouragement, than the
-conservatories and hotbeds of the rich, the want of a fertile soil or
-genial climate. Luxury in times of taste keeps up execution in proportion
-as it saps the dignity and moral principle of the Art; gold is the motive
-of its exertions, and nothing that ennobles man was ever produced by gold.
-When Nero transported the Pontic Apollo to the golden house, and furnished
-the colossal shoulders of the god with his own head, Sculpture lent her
-hand to legitimate the sacrilege: why should Painting be supposed to have
-been more squeamish when applied to decorate the apartments of his
-pleasures and the cabinet of Poppæa with Milesian pollutions, or the
-attitudes of Elephantis?
-
-The effect of honours and rewards has been insisted on as a necessary
-incentive to artists: they ought indeed to be, they sometimes are, the
-result of superior powers; but accidental or partial honours cannot
-create Genius, nor private profusion supply public neglect. No genuine
-work of Art ever was or ever can be produced, but for its own sake; if
-the artist do not conceive to please himself, he never will finish to
-please the world. Can we persuade ourselves that all the treasures of
-the globe could suddenly produce an Iliad or Paradise Lost, or the
-Jupiter of Phidias, or the Capella Sistina? Circumstances may assist or
-retard parts, but cannot make them: they are the winds that now blow out
-a light, now animate a spark to conflagration. Nature herself has set
-her barriers between age and age, between genius and genius, which no
-mortal overleaps; all attempts to raise to perfection at once, what can
-only be reared by a succession of epochs, must prove abhortive and
-nugatory: the very proposals of premiums, honours, and rewards to excite
-talent or rouse genius, prove of themselves that the age is unfavourable
-to Art; for, had it the patronage of the public, how could it want them?
-
-We have now been in possession of an Academy more than half a century;
-all the intrinsic means of forming a style alternate at our commands;
-professional instruction has never ceased to direct the student;
-premiums are distributed to rear talent and stimulate emulation, and
-stipends are granted to relieve the wants of genius and finish
-education. And what is the result? If we apply to our Exhibition, what
-does it present, in the aggregate, but a gorgeous display of varied
-powers, condemned, if not to the beasts, at least to the dictates of
-fashion and vanity? What therefore can be urged against the conclusion,
-that, as far as the public is concerned, the Art is sinking, and
-threatens to sink still deeper, from the want of demand for great and
-significant works? Florence, Bologna, Venice, each singly taken,
-produced in the course of the sixteenth century alone, more great
-historic pictures than all Britain taken together, from its earliest
-attempts at painting to its present efforts. What are we to conclude
-from this? that the soil from which Shakspeare and Milton sprang, is
-unfit to rear the Genius of Poetic Art? or find the cause of this
-seeming impotence in that general change of habits, customs, pursuits,
-and amusements, which for near a century has stamped the national
-character of Europe with apathy or discountenance of the genuine
-principles of Art?
-
-But if the severity of these observations, this denudation of our
-present state moderates our hopes, it ought to invigorate our efforts
-for the ultimate preservation, and, if immediate restoration be
-hopeless, the gradual recovery of Art. To raise the Arts to a
-conspicuous height may not perhaps be in our power; we shall have
-deserved well of posterity if we succeed in stemming their farther
-downfall, if we fix them on the solid base of principle. If it be out of
-our power to furnish the student's activity with adequate practice, we
-may contribute to form his theory; and Criticism founded on experiment,
-instructed by comparison, in possession of the labours of every epoch of
-Art, may spread the genuine elements of taste, and check the present
-torrent of affectation and insipidity.
-
-This is the real use of our Institution, if we may judge from analogy.
-Soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, when the gradual
-evanescence of the great luminaries in Art began to alarm the public, an
-idea started at Florence of uniting the most eminent artists into a
-society, under the immediate patronage of the Grand Duke, and the title
-of Academy: it had something of a Conventual air, has even now its own
-chapel, and celebrates an annual festival with appropriate ceremonies;
-less designed to promote than to prevent the gradual debasement of Art.
-Similar associations in other places were formed in imitation, and at
-the time of the Carracci even the private schools of painters adopted
-the same name. All, whether public or private, supported by patronage or
-individual contribution, were and are symptoms of Art in distress,
-monuments of public dereliction and decay of Taste. But they are at the
-same time the asylum of the student, the theatre of his exercises, the
-repositories of the materials, the archives of the documents of our art,
-whose principles their officers are bound now to maintain, and for the
-preservation of which they are responsible to posterity, undebauched by
-the flattery, heedless of the sneers, undismayed by the frown of their
-own time.
-
-Permit me to part with one final observation. Reynolds has told us, and
-from _him_ whose genius was crowned with the most brilliant success
-during his life, from him it came with unexampled magnanimity, "that
-those who court the applause of their own time, must reckon on the
-neglect of posterity." On this I shall not insist as a general maxim;
-all depends on the character of the time in which an artist lives, and
-on the motive of his exertions. M. Agnolo, Raffaello, Tiziano, and
-Vasari, Giuseppe d'Arpino, and Luca Giordano, enjoyed equal celebrity
-during their own times. The three first enjoy it now, the three last are
-forgotten or censured. What are we to infer from this unequal verdict of
-posterity? What, but what Cicero says, that time obliterates the
-conceits of opinion or fashion, and establishes the verdicts of Nature?
-The age of Julio and Leone demanded genius for its own sake, and found
-it--the age of Cosmo, Ferdinand, and Urban, demanded talents and
-dispatch to flatter their own vanity, and found them too; but Cosmo,
-Ferdinand, and Urban, are sunk in the same oblivion, or involved in the
-same censure with their tools--Julio and Leone continue to live with the
-permanent powers which they had called forth.
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] Vel duo vel nemo--turpe et miserabile!
-
-
-
-
-APHORISMS, CHIEFLY RELATIVE TO THE FINE ARTS.
-
-
-
-
-APHORISMS.
-
-
-1. Life is rapid, art is slow, occasion coy, practice fallacious, and
-judgment partial.
-
-2. The price of excellence is labour, and time that of immortality.
-
-3. Art, like love, excludes all competition, and absorbs the man.
-
-4. Art is the attendant of nature, and genius and talent the ministers
-of art.
-
-5. Genius either discovers new materials of nature, or combines the
-known with novelty.
-
-6. Talent arranges, cultivates, polishes, the discoveries of genius.
-
-7. Intuition is the attendant of genius; gradual improvement that of
-talent.
-
-8. Arrangement presupposes materials: fruits follow the bud and foliage,
-and judgment the luxuriance of fancy.
-
-9. The fiery sets his subject in a blaze, and mounts its vapours; the
-melancholy cleaves the rock, or gropes through thorns for his; the
-sanguine deluges all, and seizes none; the phlegmatic sucks one, and
-drops off with repletion.
-
-10. Some enter the gates of art with golden keys, and take their seats
-with dignity among the demi-gods of fame; some burst the doors and leap
-into a niche with savage power; thousands consume their time in chinking
-useless keys, and aiming feeble pushes against the inexorable doors.
-
-11. Heaven and earth, advantages and obstacles, conspire to educate
-genius.
-
-12. Organization is the mother of talent; practice its nurse; the
-senses its dominion; but hearts alone can penetrate hearts.
-
-13. It is the lot of genius to be opposed, and to be invigorated by
-opposition: all extremes touch each other; frigid praise and censure
-wait upon attainable or common powers; but the successful adventurer in
-the realms of discovery leaps on an unknown or long-lost shore, ennobles
-it with his name, and grasps immortality.
-
-14. Genius without bias, is a stream without direction: it inundates
-all, and ends in stagnation.
-
-15. He who pretends to have sacrificed genius to the pursuits of
-interest or fashion; and he who wants to persuade you he has
-indisputable titles to a crown, but chooses to wave them for the
-emoluments of a partnership in trade, deserve equal belief.
-
-16. Taste is the legitimate offspring of nature, educated by propriety:
-fashion is the bastard of vanity, dressed by art.
-
-17. The immediate operation of taste is to ascertain the kind; the next,
-to appreciate the degrees of excellence.
-
-_Coroll._--Taste, founded on sense and elegance of mind, is reared by
-culture, invigorated by practice and comparison: scantiness stops short
-of it; fashion adulterates it: it is shackled by pedantry, and
-overwhelmed by luxuriance.
-
-Taste sheds a ray over the homeliest or the most uncouth subject.
-Fashion frequently flattens the elegant, the gentle, and the great, into
-one lumpy mass of disgust.
-
-If "foul and fair" be all that your gross-spun sense discerns, if you
-are blind to the intermediate degrees of excellence, you may perhaps be
-a great man--a senator--a conqueror; but if you respect yourself, never
-presume to utter a syllable on works of taste.
-
-18. If mind and organs conspire to qualify you for a judge in works of
-taste, remember that you are to be possessed of three things--the
-subject of the work which you are to examine; the character of the
-artist as such; and, before all, of impartiality.
-
-_Coroll._--All first impressions are involuntary and inevitable; but
-the knowledge of the subject will guide you to judge first of the whole;
-not to creep on from part to part, and nibble at execution before you
-know what it means to convey. The notion of a tree precedes that of
-counting leaves or disentangling branches.
-
-Every artist has, or ought to have, a character or system of his own;
-if, instead of referring that to the test of nature, you judge him by
-your own packed notions, or arraign him at the tribunal of schools which
-he does not recognize--you degrade the dignity of art, and add another
-fool to the herd of Dilettanti.
-
-But if, for reasons best known to yourself, you come determined to
-condemn what yet you have not seen, let me advise you to drop your
-pursuits of art for one of far greater importance--the inquiry into
-yourself; nor aim at taste till you are sure of justice.
-
-19. Misconception of its own powers is the injurious attendant of
-genius, and the most severe remembrancer of its vanity.
-
-_Coroll._--Much of Leonardo da Vinci's life evaporated in useless
-experiment and quaint research; Michael Angelo perplexed the limbs of
-grandeur with the minute ramifications of anatomy; Rafaelle forsook
-humanity to people a mythologic desert with clumsy gods and clumsier
-goddesses; Shakspeare, trusting time and chance with Hamlet and Othello,
-revised a frozen sonnet, or fondled his Adonis; whilst Milton dropt the
-trumpet that had astonished hell, left Paradise, and introduced a
-pedagogue to Heaven. When genius is surprised by such lethargic moments,
-we can forget that Johnson wrote Irene, and Hogarth made a solemn fool
-of Paul.
-
-20. Reality teems with disappointment for him whose sources of enjoyment
-spring in the elysium of fancy.
-
-21. Where perfection cannot take place, a very high degree of general
-excellence is impossible. Negligence is the shade of energy; where there
-is neither, expect mediocrity, the common expletive of society; capacity
-without elevation, industry without predilection, practice without
-choice.
-
-_Coroll._--"About this time," says Tacitus, "died Poppæus Sabinus, who,
-from a middling origin, rose to imperial friendships, the consulate,
-and the honours of the triumph: he was selected for the space of
-four-and-twenty years to govern the most important provinces,[2] not for
-any distinguished merit of his own, but because he was equal to his
-task, and not above it."
-
-Behold here the most comprehensive epitaph of mediocrity, and the most
-unambiguous solution of every riddle with which its brilliant success
-may have perplexed your mind.
-
-22. Determine the principle on which you commence your career of art:
-some woo the art itself, some its appendages; some confine their view to
-the present, some extend it to futurity: the butterfly flutters round a
-meadow; the eagle crosses seas.
-
-23. In ranging the phenomena of art, remember carefully, though you
-place it on the side of exceptions, that a decided bias is not always a
-sign of latent power; nor indolence, indifference, or even apathy, a
-sign of impotence.
-
-24. Circumstances may assist or retard parts, but cannot make them: they
-are the winds that now blow out a light, now animate a spark to
-conflagration.
-
-_Coroll._--Augustus and Mæcenas are said to have made Virgil: what was
-it, then, that prevented Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines,
-from producing at least a Lucan?
-
-25. Deserve, but expect not, to be praised by your contemporaries, for
-any excellence which they may be jealous of being allowed to possess
-themselves; leave the dispensation of justice to posterity.
-
-26. If wishes are the spawn of imbecility, precipitation is the bantling
-of fool-hardiness: legitimate will, investigates and acquires the means.
-Mistake not an itching finger for authentic will.
-
-27. Some of the most genuine effusions of genius in art, some of the
-most estimable qualities in society, may be beholden for our homage to
-very disputable principles.
-
-_Coroll._--The admission of a master's humanity to his slave supposes
-the validity of an execrable right; and the courage shown in a duel
-cannot be applauded without submitting to the dictates of feudal
-barbarity. Had the poet's conception prepared us for the rashness of
-Lear, the ambition of Macbeth's wife, and the villany of Iago, by the
-usual gradations of nature, he could not have rushed on our heart with
-the irresistibility that now subdues it. Had the line of Correggio
-floated in a less expanse, he would have lost that spell of light and
-shade which has enthralled all eyes; and Rubens, had he not invigorated
-bodies to hills of flesh, and tinged his pencil in the rainbow, would
-not have been the painter of magnificence.
-
-28. Genius has no imitator. Some can be poets and painters only at
-second-hand: deaf and blind to the tones and motions of Nature herself,
-they hear or see her only through some reflected medium of art; they are
-emboldened by prescription.
-
-29. Let him who has more genius than talent give up as impossible what
-he finds difficult. Talent may mimic genius with success, and
-frequently impose on all but the first judges; but genius is awkward in
-the attempt to use the tools of talent.
-
-_Coroll._--Hyperides, Lysias, Isocrates, might imitate much of
-Demosthenes; but he would have become ridiculous by stooping to collect
-their beauties.[3] The spear of Roland might be couched to gain a lady's
-favour; but its sole ornament was the heart, torn from the breast-plate
-of her foe.
-
-30. Mediocrity is formed, and talent submits, to receive prescription;
-that, the liveried attendant, this, the docile client of a patron's
-views or whims: but genius, free and unbounded as its _origin_, scorns
-to receive commands, or in submission, neglects those it received.
-
-_Coroll._--The gentle spirit of Rafaelle embellished the conceits of
-Bembo and Divizio, to scatter incense round the triple mitre of his
-prince; and the Vatican became the flattering annals of the court of
-Julius and Leo: whilst Michael Angelo refused admittance to master and
-to times, and doomed his purple critic to hell.[4]
-
-31. Distinguish between genius and singularity of character; an artist
-of mediocrity may be an odd man: let the nature of works be your guide.
-
-32. The most impotent, the most vulgar, and the coldest artists
-generally arrogate to themselves the most vigorous, the most dignified,
-and the warmest subjects.
-
-33. He has powers, dignity, and fire, who can inspire a trifle with
-importance.
-
-34. Know that nothing is trifling in the hand of genius, and that
-importance itself becomes a bauble in that of mediocrity:--the
-shepherd's staff of Paris would have been an engine of death in the
-grasp of Achilles; the ash of Peleus could only have dropped from the
-effeminate fingers of the curled archer.
-
-35. Art either imitates or copies, selects or transcribes; consults the
-class, or follows the individual.
-
-36. Imitative art, is either epic or sublime, dramatic or impassioned,
-historic or circumscribed by truth. The first astonishes, the second
-moves, the third informs.
-
-37. Whatever hides its limits in its greatness--whatever shows a feature
-of immensity, let the elements of Nature or the qualities of animated
-being make up its substance, is sublime.
-
-38. Whatever by reflected self-love inspires us with hope, fear, pity,
-terror, love, or mirth--whatever makes events, and time, and place, the
-ministers of character and pathos, let fiction or reality compose its
-tissue, is dramatic.
-
-39. That which tells us, not what might be, but what is; circumscribes
-the grand and the pathetic with truth of time, place, custom; what
-gives "a local habitation and a name," is historic.
-
-_Coroll._--No human performance is either purely epic, dramatic, or
-historic. Novelty and feelings will make the historian sometimes launch
-out into the marvellous; or will warm his bosom and extort a tear.
-
-The dramatist while gazing at some tremendous feature, or the pomp of
-superior agency, will drop the chain he holds, and be absorbed in the
-sublime; whilst the epic or lyric poet, forgetting his solitary
-grandeur, will sometimes descend and mix with his agents.
-
-The tragic and the comic dramatists formed themselves on Hector and
-Andromache, on Irus and Ulysses. The spirit from the prison-house
-breathes like the shade of Patroclus; Octavia and the daughter of
-Soranus[5] melt like Ophelia and Alcestis.
-
-40. Those who have assigned to the plastic arts beauty, strictly so
-called, as the ultimate end of imitation, have circumscribed the whole
-by a part.
-
-_Coroll._--The charms of Helen and of Niobe are instruments of
-sublimity: Meleager and Cordelia fall victims to the passions; Agrippina
-and Berenice give interest to truth.
-
-41. Beauty, whether individual or ideal, consists in the concurrence of
-parts to one end, or the union of the simple and the various.
-
-_Coroll._--Whatever be your powers, assume not to legislate on beauty:
-though always the same herself, her empire is despotic, and subject to
-the anarchies of despotism, enthroned to-day, dethroned to-morrow: in
-treating subjects of universal claim, most has been done by leaving most
-to the reader's and spectator's taste or fancy. "It is difficult," says
-Horace, "to pronounce exactly to every man's eye and mind, what every
-man thinks himself entitled to estimate by a standard of his own."[6]
-The Apollo and Medicean Venus are not by all received as the canons of
-male and female beauty; and Homer's Helen is the finest woman we have
-read of, merely because he has left her to be made up of the Dulcineas
-of his readers.
-
-42. Beauty alone, fades to insipidity; and like possession cloys.
-
-43. Grace is beauty in motion, or rather grace regulates the air, the
-attitudes and movements of beauty.
-
-44. Nature makes no parade of her means--hence all studied grace is
-unnatural.
-
-_Coroll._--The attitudes of Parmegiano are exhibitions of studied grace.
-The grace of Guido is become proverbial, but it is the grace of the art.
-
-45. All actions and attitudes of children are graceful, because they are
-the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment--divested of
-affectation, and free from all pretence.
-
-_Coroll._--The attitudes and motions of the figures of Rafaelle are
-graceful because they are poised by Nature.
-
-46. Proportion, or symmetry, is the basis of beauty; propriety, of
-grace.
-
-47. Creation gives, invention finds existence.
-
-48. Invention in general is the combination of the possible, the
-probable, or the known, in a mode that strikes with novelty.
-
-_Coroll._--Invention has been said to mean no more than the moment of
-any fact chosen by the artist.
-
-To say that the painter's invention is not to find or to combine its own
-subject, is to confine it to the poet's or historian's alms--is to
-annihilate its essence; it says in other words, that Macbeth or Ugolino
-would be no subjects for the pencil, if they had not been prepared by
-history and borrowed from Shakspeare and Dante.
-
-49. Ask not--Where is fancy bred? in the heart? in the head? how begot?
-how nourished?
-
-_Coroll._--The critic who inquires whether in the madness of Lear, grief
-for the loss of empire, or the resentment of filial ingratitude
-preponderated--and he who doubts whether it be within the limits of art
-to embody beings of fancy, agitate different questions, but of equal
-futility.
-
-50. Genius may adopt, but never steals.
-
-_Coroll._--An adopted idea or figure in the works of genius will be a
-foil or a companion; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity scorns
-the base alliance and crushes all its mean associates--it is the
-Cyclop's thumb, by which the pigmy measured his own littleness,--"or
-hangs like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."
-
-51. Genius, inspired by invention, rends the veil that separates
-existence from possibility; peeps into the dark, and catches a shape, a
-feature, or a colour, in the reflected ray.
-
-52. Talent, though panting, pursues genius through the plains of
-invention, but stops short at the brink that separates the real from the
-possible. Virgil followed Homer in making Mezentius speak to Rhoebus, but
-shrank from the reply of the prophetic courser.[7]
-
-53. Whenever the medium of any work, whether lines, colour, grouping,
-diction, becomes so predominant as to absorb the subject in its
-splendour, the work is degraded to an inferior order.
-
-54. The painter, who makes an historical figure address the spectator
-from the canvass, and the actor who addresses a soliloquy to you from
-the stage, have equal claims to your contempt or pity.
-
-55. Common-place figures are as inadmissible in the grand style of
-painting as common-place characters or sentiments in poetry.
-
-_Coroll._--Common-place figures were first introduced by the gorgeous
-machinists of Venice, and adopted by the Bolognese school of Eclectics;
-the modern school of Rome from Carlo Maratta to Battoni knew nothing
-else; and they have been since indiscriminately disseminated on this
-side of the Alps, by those whom mediocrity obliged to hide themselves in
-crowds, or a knack at grouping stimulated to aggregate a rabble.
-
-56. The copious is seldom grand.
-
-57. Glitter is the refuge of the mean.
-
-58. All apparatus destroys terror, as all ornament grandeur: the minute
-catalogue of the cauldron's ingredients in Macbeth destroys the terror
-attendant on mysterious darkness; and the seraglio-trappings of Rubens
-annihilate his heroes.
-
-59. All conceits, not founded upon probable combinations of nature, are
-absurd. The _capricci_ of Salvator Rosa, and of his imitators, are, to
-the fiends of Michael Angelo, what the paroxysms of a fever are to the
-sallies of vigorous fancy.
-
-60. Distinguish carefully between bold fancy and a daring hand; between
-the powers of nature and the acquisitions of practice: most of
-Salvator's banditti are a medley made up of starveling models and the
-shreds of his lumber-room brushed into notice by a daring pencil.
-
-61. Distinguish between boldness and brutality of hand, between the face
-of beauty and _the bark of a tree_.
-
-62. All mediocrity pretends.
-
-63. Invention, strictly speaking, being confined to _one_ moment, he
-invents best who in that moment combines the traces of the past, the
-energy of the present, and a glimpse of the future.
-
-64. Composition has been divided into natural and ornamental: that is
-dictated by the subject, this by effect or situation.
-
-65. Distinguish between composition and grouping: though none can
-compose without grouping, most group without composing.
-
-_Coroll._--The assertion that grouping may not be composing, has been
-said to make a distinction without a difference: as if there had not
-been, still are, and always will be squadrons of artists, whose skill in
-grouping can no more be denied, than their claim to invention, and
-consequently to composition, admitted, if invention means the true
-conception of a subject and composition the best mode of representing
-it. After the demise of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, their successors,
-however discordant else, uniformly agreed to lose the subject in the
-medium. Raffaello had no followers. Tiziano and something of Tintoretto
-excepted, what instance can there be produced of composition in the
-works of the Venetian school? Are the splendid masquerades of Paolo to
-be dignified with that name? If composition has a part in the effusions
-of the great founder of the Lombard school, it surely did not arrange
-the celestial hubbub of his cupolas, content to inspire his Io, the
-Zingaro, Christ in the Garden, perhaps (I speak with diffidence) his
-Notte. So characteristically separate from real composition are the most
-splendid assemblages, the most happy combinations of figures, if founded
-on the mere power of grouping, that one of the first, and certainly the
-most courteous critic in Art of the age, in compliment to the Venetian
-and Flemish Schools, has thought proper to divide composition into
-legitimate and ornamental.
-
-66. Ask not, what is the shape of composition? You may in vain climb the
-pyramid, wind with the stream, or point the flame; for composition,
-unbounded like Nature, and her subjects, though resident in all, may be
-in none of these.
-
-67. The nature of picturesque composition is depth, or to come forward
-and recede.
-
-_Coroll._--Pausias, in painting a sacrifice, foreshortened the victim,
-and threw its shade on part of the surrounding crowd, to show its height
-and length.[8]
-
-68. Sculpture composes in single groups or separate figures, but
-apposition is the element of basso-relievo.
-
-_Coroll._--Poussin painted basso-relievo, Algardi chiselled pictures.
-
-69. He who treats you with all the figures of a subject save the
-principal, is as civil or important as he who invites you to dine with
-all a nobleman's family, the master only excepted: this sometimes may
-be no loss, but surely you cannot be said to have dined with the chief
-of the family.
-
-70. Examine whether an artist treats you with a subject, or only with
-some of its limbs: many see only the lines, some the masses, others the
-colours, and not a few the mere back-ground of their subject.
-
-71. Second thoughts are admissible in painting and poetry only as
-dressers of the first conception; no great idea was ever formed in
-fragments.
-
-72. He alone can conceive and compose, who sees the whole at once before
-him.
-
-73. He who conceives the given point of a subject in many different
-ways, conceives it not at all. Appeal to the artist's own feelings; you
-will ever find him most reluctant to give up that part of it which he
-conceived intuitively, and readier to dismiss that which harassed him by
-alteration.
-
-74. Metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener
-mistaken for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of
-materials.
-
-_Coroll._--The School of Athens as it is called, by Raffaelle,
-communicates to few more than an arbitrary assemblage of speculative
-groups: yet if the subject be the dramatic representation of philosophy,
-as it prepares for active life, the parts of the building are not
-connected with more regular gradation than those groups: fitted by
-physical and intellectual harmony, man ascends from himself to society,
-from society to God.
-
-75. No excellence of execution can atone for meanness of conception.
-
-76. Grandeur of conception will predominate over the most vulgar
-materials--if in the subjects of Jesus before Pilate, by Rembrandt, and
-the Resuscitation of Lazarus by Lievens,[9] the materials had all been
-equal to the conception, they would have been works of superhuman
-powers.
-
-77. Repetition of attitude and gesture invigorates the expression of the
-grand: as a torrent gives its own direction to every object it sweeps
-along, so the impression of a sublime or pathetic moment absorbs the
-contrasts of inferior agents.
-
-78. Tameness lies on this side of expression, grimace overleaps it;
-insipidity is the relative of folly, eccentricity of madness.
-
-79. The fear of not being understood, or felt, makes some invigorate
-expression to grimace.
-
-80. The temple of expression, like that of religion, has a portico and a
-sanctuary; that is trod by all, this only admits her votaries.
-
-81. Propriety, modesty and delicacy, guard expression from the
-half-conceits of the weak, the intemperance of the extravagant, and the
-brutality of the vulgar.
-
-82. Sensibility is the mother of sympathy. How can he paint Beauty who
-has not throbbed at her charms? How shall he fill the eye with the dew
-of humanity whose own never shed a tear for others? How can he form a
-mouth to threaten or command, who licks the hereditary spittle of
-princes?
-
-83. He fails with greater dignity, who expresses the principal feature
-of his subject and misses or neglects all the secondary, than he who
-consumes his powers on what is subordinate and comes exhausted to the
-chief.
-
-_Coroll._--Those who have asserted that Lionardo, in finishing the Last
-Supper, was so exhausted by his exertions to trace the characters and
-emotions of the disciples, that, unable to fix the physiognomy of
-Christ, he found himself reduced to the necessity of leaving that head
-unfinished,--either never saw it, or if they did, were too low to reach
-the height, and too shallow to fathom the depth of the conception.
-
-84. The coward, driven to despair, leaps back into the face of danger;
-and the tame, stimulated to exertions and aiming at expression, puffs
-spirit into flutter; or tears the garb of passion and flourishes the
-rags.
-
-85. Affectation cannot excite sympathy. How can you feel for him who
-cannot feel for himself? How can he feel for himself, who exhibits the
-artificial graces of studied attitude?
-
-86. The loathsome is abominable, and no engine of expression.
-
-_Coroll._ When Spenser dragged into light the entrails of the serpent,
-slain by the Red-cross Knight, he dreamt a butcher's dream and not a
-poet's: and Fletcher,[10] or his partner, when rummaging the surgeon's
-box of cataplasms and trusses to assuage hunger, solicited the grunt of
-an applauding sty.
-
-87. Sympathy and disgust are the lines that separate terror from horror:
-though we shudder at, we scarcely pity what we abominate.
-
-_Coroll._--Rowe, when he congratulates the ghost on bidding Hamlet spare
-his mother, accuses _her_ of a crime with which the poet never charged
-her: that Shakspeare might be hurried on to horror let the "vile jelly"
-witness, which Cornwall treads from Gloster's bleeding sockets.
-
-88. Expression animates, convulses, or absorbs form. The Apollo is
-animated; the warrior of Agasias is agitated; the Laocoon is convulsed;
-the Niobe is absorbed.
-
-89. The being seized by an enormous passion, be it joy or grief, hope or
-despair, loses the character of its own individual expression, and is
-absorbed by the power of the feature that attracts it: Niobe and her
-family are assimilated by extreme anguish; Ugolino is petrified by the
-fate that sweeps his sons; and every metamorphosis from that of Clytie
-to the transfusion of Gianni Fucci[11] tells a new allegory of
-sympathetic power.
-
-90. Reject with indignant incredulity all self-congratulations of
-conscious villainy, though they be uttered by Richard or by Iago.
-
-91. The axe, the wheel, saw-dust, and the blood-stained sheet are not
-legitimate substitutes of terror.
-
-92. All division diminishes, all mixtures impair the simplicity and
-clearness of expression.
-
-93. The epoch which discovered expression, or what the Greeks called
-"manners,"[12] is marked by Pliny as that which gave importance and
-effect to art.
-
-_Coroll._--Homer invested his heroes with ideal powers, but copied
-nature in delineating their moral character. Achilles, the irresistible
-in arms, clad in celestial armour, is a splendid being, created by
-himself; Achilles the fool of passions, is the real man delivered to him
-by tradition.
-
-That the plastic artist should have had an aim beyond the poet is
-improbable, because the poet, in general, furnished him with materials;
-he composed his man of beauty and ideal limbs, not to obscure, but to
-invigorate his character and our attention.
-
-The limbs, the form of Ajax hurling defiance from the sea-swept rock
-unto the murky sky, were, no doubt, exquisite; but if the artist
-mitigated his expression, the indignation due to blasphemy from the
-spectator gave way to sterner indignation at the injustice of his gods.
-
-The expression of the ancients, from the heights and depths of the
-sublime, descended and emerged to search every nook of the human breast;
-from the ambrosial locks of Zeus, and the maternal phantom fluttering
-round Ulysses,[13] to the half-slain mother, shuddering lest the infant
-should suck the blood from her palsied nipple, and the fond attention of
-Penelope dwelling on the relation of her returned son.[14]
-
-The expression of the ancients explored nature even in the mute
-recesses, in the sullen organs of the brute; from the Argus of Ulysses,
-to the lamb, the symbol of expiatory resignation, on an altar, and to
-the untameable feature of the toad.
-
-The expression of the ancients roamed all the fields of licit and
-illicit pleasure; from the petulance with which Ctesilochus exhibited
-the pangs of a Jupiter delivered by celestial midwives, to the
-libidinous sports of Parrhasius, and from these to the indecent
-caricature[15] which furnished Crassus with a repartee.
-
-The ancients extended expression even to the colour of their materials
-in sculpture: to express the remorse of Athamas, Aristonidas the Theban
-mixed metals; and Alcon formed a Hercules of iron, to express the
-perseverance of the God.[16]
-
-94. Invention, before it attends to composition, group, or contrast,
-classes its subject and ascertains what kind of impression it is to make
-on the whole.
-
-95. Invention never suffers the action to expire, nor the spectator's
-fancy to consume itself in preparation, or stagnate into repose: it
-neither begins from the egg, nor coldly gathers the remains; for action
-and interest terminate together.
-
-96. The middle moment, the moment of suspense, the crisis, is the moment
-of importance, big with the past and pregnant with the future: we rush
-from the flames with the Warrior of Agasias, and look forward to his
-enemy; or we hang in suspense over the wound of the Expiring
-Soldier,[17] and poise with every drop which yet remains of life.
-
-97. Distinguish between the hero and the actor; between exertions of
-study and effects of impulse.
-
-98. Know that expression has its classes. The frown of the Hercynian
-phantom may repress the ardour, but cannot subdue the dignity of
-Drusus;[18] the terror of the Centurion at the Resurrection[19] is not
-the panic of his soldiers; the palpitation of Hamlet cannot degenerate
-into vulgar fright.
-
-_Coroll._--Of all the eclectics, Domenichino alone composed for
-expression; but his expression compared with Raffaello's is the
-expression of Theocritus compared with that of Homer. A detail of pretty
-images is rather calculated to diminish than to enforce energy with the
-whole: a lovely child taking refuge in the bosom of a lovely mother is
-an idea of nature, and pleasing in a lowly or domestic subject; but
-amidst the terrors of martyrdom, it is a shred tacked to a purple robe.
-In touching the circle that surrounds the Ananias of Raffaelle, you
-touch the electric chain; an irresistible spark darts from the last as
-from the first, and penetrates and subdues. At the Martyrdom of St.
-Agnes,[20] you saunter amidst the mob of a lane, where the silly chat of
-neighbouring gossips announces a topic as silly, till you find, with
-indignation, that instead of a broken pot, or a petty theft, you are to
-witness a scene for which Heaven opens, the angels descend, and Jesus
-rises from his throne.
-
-99. Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command
-over the eye.
-
-_Coroll._--On beauty, unsupported by vigour and expression, Homer dwells
-less than on active deformity; he tells us, in three lines, that Nireus
-led three ships, his parentage, his form, his effeminacy; but opens in
-Thersites a source of comedy and entertainment.
-
-Raffaelle not only subjected beauty to expression, but, at the command
-of invention, degraded it into a handmaid of deformity: thus the flowers
-of infancy and youth, virility and age, are scattered round the
-temple-gate, to impress us more by comparison with the distorted beings
-that crawl before and defy the powers of every other hand but the one
-delegated by Omnipotence.[21]
-
-100. Imitation seems to cease, where the ideal part begins.
-
-101. The imitator rises above the copyist by generalizing the individual
-to a class; the idealist mounts above the imitator by uniting classes.
-
-102. The imitator, by comparison and taste, unites the scattered limbs
-of kindred excellence; the idealist, by the "mind's eye," fixes,
-personifies, embodies possibility: modes and degrees of single powers
-are the province of the former; the latter unites whatever implies no
-contradiction in an assemblage of varied excellence.
-
-_Coroll._--This is best explained by the Ilias. Each individual of Homer
-forms a class, and is circumscribed by one quality of heroic power;
-Achilles alone unites their different energies.
-
-The height, the strength, the giant-stride and supercilious air of Ajax;
-the courage, the impetuosity, the never-failing aim, the never-bloodless
-stroke of Diomedes; the presence of mind, the powerful agility of
-Ulysses; the velocity of the lesser Ajax; Agamemnon's sense of
-prerogative and domineering spirit,--assign to each his separate class
-of heroism, yet lessen not their shades of imperfection. Ajax appears
-the warrior rather than the leader; Ulysses is too prudent to be more
-than brave; the hawk more than the eagle predominates in the son of
-Oileus; Agamemnon has the prerogative of power, but not of heroism;
-Diomede alone might appear to have been raised too high, had he been
-endowed with an assuming spirit. So far the poet found, ennobled,
-classified; but all these he sums up, and creates an ideal form from
-their assemblage, in Achilles:--he is the grandson of Jupiter, the son
-of a goddess, the favourite of Heaven--[22]"What arms can fit me but the
-shield of Ajax? The lance maddens not in the grasp of Diomede to chase
-the flames from the ships. Let him confer with thee, Ulysses, and the
-rest." Such is his language. Before the pursuer of Hector vanishes the
-velocity of Ajax; from destroying Agamemnon he is prevented by Minerva;
-he gives his armour to the son of Menoetius, and disperses all but the
-gods; his spear none can throw, and none tear from the ground when
-thrown; a miracle alone can save those that oppose him singly; when else
-he fights, 'tis not to gain a battle, but to subvert Troy.
-
-What Achilles is to his confederates, the Apollo, the Torso, the
-statues[23] of the Quirinal, are to all other known figures of gods, of
-demi-gods and heroes.
-
-103. Fancy not to compose an ideal form by mixing up a mass of
-promiscuous beauties; for, unless you consulted what was homogeneous and
-what was possible in Nature, you have hatched only a monster: this, we
-suppose, was understood by Zeuxis when he collected the beauties of
-Agrigentum to compose a perfect female.[24]
-
-104. If there be any thing serious in art, it certainly then ought to be
-exerted when religion is the subject; but idolaters and iconoclasts seem
-to have conspired, either to banish the author of their faith to the
-cold sphere of mythology, or to debase him to the dregs of mankind.
-
-_Coroll._--Majesty is the feature of the Supreme Being; no eternal
-Father of the moderns approaches the majesty of Jupiter.
-
-The gods of Michael Angelo are stern. The gods of Raffaelle are affable
-and weak. The gods of Guido have the air of ancient courtiers.
-
-In the race of Jupiter, majesty is tempered by emanations of beauty and
-of grace, but never softened into love.
-
-The Christ of Michael Angelo is severe. The Christ of Raffaelle is
-poised between the heraldry of church tradition and the dignified
-mildness of his own character. The Christ of Guido is a well suspended
-corpse.
-
-"The character corresponding with that of Christ," says a critic and a
-painter,[25] "is a mixture of the characters of Jupiter and Apollo,
-allowing only for the accidental expression of the moment." What magic
-shall amalgamate the superhuman airs of Rhea's and Latona's sons with
-sufferings and resignation? The critic, in his exultation, forgot the
-leading feature of his master--humility.
-
-Whatever be the ideal form of Christ, the Saviour of mankind, extending
-his arm to relieve the afflicted, the hopeless, the dying, is a subject
-that comes home to the breast of every one who calls himself after his
-name:--the artist is in the sphere of adoration with the Christian.
-
-A great and beneficent character, eminently exerting unknown healing
-powers over the family of disease and pain, claims the participation of
-every feeling man, though he be no believer:--the artist is in the
-sphere of sentiment with the Deist or Mahometan.
-
-But a mean man marked with the features of a mean sect, surrounded by a
-beggarly ill-shaped rabble and stupid masks--is probably a juggler that
-claims the attention of no one.
-
-The Resurrection of Christ derives its interest from its rapidity, the
-Ascension from its slowness.
-
-In the Resurrection, the hero, like a ball of fire, shoots up resistless
-from the bursting tomb, and scatters terror and astonishment,--what
-apprehension could not dream of, what the eye had never beheld, and
-tongue had never uttered, blazes before us,--tumultuous agitation rends
-the whole. Such is the spirit of the Resurrection by Raffaelle.
-
-The Ascension is the last of many similar scenes: no longer with the
-rapidity of a conqueror, but with the calm serenity of triumphant power,
-the hero is borne up in splendour, and gradually vanishes from those
-who, by repeated visions, had been taught to expect whatever was
-amazing. Silent and composed, with eyes more absorbed in adoration than
-wonder, they followed the glorious emanation, till addressed by the
-white-robed messengers of their departed King.
-
-105. We are more impressed by Gothic than by Greek mythology, because
-the bands are not yet rent which tie us to its magic: he has a powerful
-hold of us, who holds us by our superstition or by a theory of honour.
-
-106. The east expands, the north concentrates images.
-
-107. Disproportion of parts is the element of hugeness,--proportion, of
-grandeur; all Oriental, all Gothic styles of Architecture, are huge; the
-Grecian alone, is grand.
-
-108. The female, able to invigorate her taste without degenerating into
-a pedant, sloven or virago, may give her hand to the man of elegance,
-who scorns to sacrifice his sense to the presiding phantoms of an
-effeminate age.
-
-109. The collector who arrogates not to himself the praise bestowed on
-his collections, and the reader who fancies himself not the author of
-the beauties he recites to an admiring circle--are not the last of men.
-
-110. The epoch of rules, of theories, poetics, criticisms in a nation,
-will add to their stock of authors in the same proportion as it
-diminishes their stock of genius: their productions will bear the stamp
-of study, not of nature; they will adopt, not generate; sentiment will
-supplant images, and narrative invention; words will be no longer the
-dress but the limbs of composition, and feeble elegance will supply the
-want of nerves.
-
-111. He "lisped not in numbers, no numbers came to him," though he count
-his verses by thousands, who has not learnt to distinguish the harmony
-of two lines from that of a period--whom dull monotony of ear condemns
-to the drowsy psalmody of one returning couplet.
-
-112. Some seek renown as the Parthians sought victory--by seeming to fly
-from it.
-
-113. He has more than genius--he is a hero--who can check his powers in
-their full career to glory, merely not to crush the feeble on his road.
-
-114. He who could have the choice, and should prefer to be the first
-painter of insects, of flowers, or of drapery, to being the second in
-the ranks of history, though degraded to the last class of art, would
-undoubtedly be in the first of men by the decision of Cæsar.
-
-115. Such is the aspiring nature of man, that nothing wounds the copyist
-more sorely than the suspicion of being thought what he is.
-
-116. He who depends for all upon his model, should treat no other
-subject but his model.
-
-117. The praises lavished on the sketches of vigorous conception, only
-sharpen the throes of labour in finishing.
-
-118. As far as the medium of an art can be taught, so far is the artist
-confined to the class of mere mechanics; he only then elevates himself
-to talent, when he imparts to his method, or his tool, some unattainable
-or exclusive excellence of his own.
-
-119. None but the first can represent the first. Genius, absorbed by the
-subject, hastens to the centre; and from that point disseminates, to
-that leads back the rays: talent, full of its own dexterities, begins to
-point the rays before they have a centre, and aggregates a mass of
-secondary beauties.
-
-120. The ear absorbed in harmonies of its own creation, is deaf to all
-external ones.
-
-121. Harmony disposes, melody determines.
-
-122. There is not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of fashion, which
-may not be caught with advantage by the hand of art.
-
-_Coroll._--Shakspeare has been excused for seeking in the Roman senate
-what he knew all senates could furnish--a buffoon. Paulo of Verona, with
-equal strength of argument, may be excused for cramming on the
-foreground of an assembly or a feast, what he knew a feast or assembly
-could furnish--a dog, an ape, a scullion, a parrot, or a dwarf.
-
-123. He has done much in art who raises your curiosity--he has done all
-who has raised it and keeps it up restless and uniform; prostrate
-yourself before the genius of Homer.
-
-124. Difficulties surmounted to obtain what in itself is of no real
-value, deserve pity or contempt: the painted catalogue of wrinkles by
-Denner are not offsprings of art, but fac-similes of natural history.
-
-125. Love for what is called deception in painting, marks either the
-infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste.
-
-126. Indiscriminate execution, like the monkey's rasor, cuts shear
-asunder the parts it meant to polish.
-
-_Coroll._--Francesco Barbieri broke like a torrent over the academic
-rules of his masters. As the desire of disseminating character over
-every part of his composition made Raphael less attentive to its general
-effect, so an ungovernable itch of copying all that lay in his way made
-this man sacrifice order, costume, mind, to mere effects of colour: a
-map of flesh, a pile of wood, a sleeve, a hilt, a feathered hat, a
-table-cloth, or a gold-tissued robe, were for Guercino what a quibble
-was for Shakspeare. The countenance of his Dido has that sublimity of
-woe which affects us in the Æneis, but she is pierced with a toledo and
-wrapped in brocade; Anna is an Italian Duenna; the scene, the Mole of
-Ancona or of Naples, the spectators a brace of whiskered Spaniards, and
-a deserting Amorino winds up the farce. In his St. Petronilla the rags
-and brawny limbs of two gigantic porters crush the effect which the
-saint ought to have, and all the rest is frittered into spots. Yet is
-that picture a tremendous instance of mechanic powers and intrepidity of
-hand. As a firm base supports, pervades, unites the tones of harmony, so
-a certain stern virility inspires, invigorates and gives a zest to all
-Guercino's colour. The gayer tints of Guido vanish before his as
-insipid,[26] Domenichino appears laboured, and the Carracci dim. Nor was
-Guercino a stranger to the genuine expressions of untaught nature, and
-there is more of pathos in the dog which he introduced caressing the
-returned prodigal, than in all the Farnese gallery; as the Argus of
-Ulysses, looking up at his old master, then dropping his head and dying,
-moves more than all the metamorphoses of Ovid. If his male figures be
-brought to the test of style, it may be said, that he never made a man;
-their virility is tumour or knotty labour; to youth he gave emaciated
-lankness, and to old age little besides decrepitude and beards--meanness
-to all: and though he was more cautious in female forms, they owe the
-best part of their charms to chiaroscuro.
-
-127. Execution has its classes.
-
-_Coroll._--Satan summoning the Princes of Hell stretched over the fiery
-flood; or the giant snake of the Norway seas hovering over a storm-vexed
-vessel, by Gerard Douw, or Vanderverf--are incongruous ideas; would be
-incongruous though Michael Angelo had planned their design and Rembrandt
-massed their light and shade.
-
-128. It has been said, but let us repeat it: the proportion of will and
-power is not always reciprocal. A copious measure of will is sometimes
-assigned to ordinary and contracted minds; whilst the greatest faculties
-as frequently evaporate in indolence and languor.
-
-129. Mighty execution of impotent conception, and vigour of conception
-with trembling execution, are coalitions equally deplorable.
-
-130. He is a prince of artists and of men who knows the moment when his
-work is done. On this Apelles founded his superiority over his
-contemporaries; the knowledge when to stop, left Sylla nothing to fear,
-though disarmed; the want of knowing this, exposed Cæsar to the dagger
-of Brutus.
-
-131. Next to him who can finish, is he who has hid from you that he
-cannot.
-
-132. If finishing be to terminate all the parts of a performance in an
-equal degree, no artist ever finished his work. A great part of
-conception or execution is always sacrificed to some individual
-excellence which either he possesses or thinks he possesses. The
-colourist makes lines only the vehicle of colour; the designer
-subordinates hue to his line; the man of breadth or chiaroscuro
-overwhelms sometimes both, and the subject itself to produce effect.
-
-133. The fewer the traces that appear of the means by which any work has
-been produced, the more it resembles the operations of Nature, and the
-nearer it is to sublimity.
-
-134. Indiscriminate pursuit of perfection infallibly leads to
-mediocrity.
-
-_Coroll._--Take the design of Rome, Venetian motion and shade,
-Lombardy's tone of colour, add the terrible manner of Angelo, Titian's
-truth of nature, and the supreme purity of Corregio's style; mix them up
-with the decorum and solidity of Tibaldi, with the learned invention of
-Primaticcio, and a few grains of Parmegiano's grace: and what do you
-think will be the result of this chaotic prescription, such elemental
-strife? Excellence, perhaps, equal to one or all of the names that
-compose these ingredients? You are deceived, if you fancy that a
-multitude of dissimilar threads can compose a uniform texture--that
-dissemination of spots will make masses, or a little of many things
-produce a whole. If Nature stamped you with a character, you will either
-annihilate it by indiscriminate imitation of heterogeneous excellence,
-or debase it to mediocrity and add one to the ciphers of art. Yet such
-is the prescription of Agostino Carracci,[27] and such in general must
-be the dictates of academics.
-
-135. If you mean to reign dictator over the arts of your own times,
-assail not your rivals with the blustering tone of condemnation and
-rigid censure;--sap with conditional or lamenting praise--confine them
-to unfashionable excellence--exclude them from the avenues of fame.
-
-136. If you wish to give consequence to your inferiors, answer their
-attacks.
-
-_Coroll._--Michael Angelo, advised to resent the insolence of some
-obscure upstart who was pushing forward to notice by declaring himself
-his rival, answered: "Chi combatte con dappochi, non vince a nulla:" who
-contests with the base, loses with all!
-
-137. Genius knows no partner. All partnership is deleterious to poetry
-and art: one must rule.[28]
-
-138. The wish of perpetuating a name by enlisting under the banners of
-another, is the ambition of inferior minds: biography, with all its
-branches of "Ana," translation and engraving, however useful to man or
-dear to art, is the unequivocal homage of inferiority offered by taste
-and talent to the majesty of genius.
-
-139. Dive in the crowd, meet beauty: follow vigour, compare character,
-snatch the feature that moves unobserved and the sudden burst of
-passion--and you are at the school of nature with Lysippus.[29]
-
-140. The lessons of disappointment, humiliation and blunder, impress
-more than those of a thousand masters.
-
-141. There are artists, who have wasted much of life in abstruse
-theories on proportion, who have measured the Antique in all its forms
-and characters, compared it with Nature, and mixed up amalgamas of both,
-yet never made a figure stand or move.
-
-_Coroll._--"The Apollo is altogether composed of lines sweetly convex,
-of very small obtuse angles, and of flats, but the soft convexities
-predominate the character of the figure, being a compound of strength,
-dignity and delicacy. The artist has expressed the first by convex
-outlines, the second by their uniformity, and the third by undulation of
-forms. The convex line predominates in the Laocoon, and the forms of the
-muscles are angular at their insertions and ends to express agitation;
-for by these means the nerves and tendons become more visible, straight
-lines meeting with concave and convex ones, form those angles which
-produce violence of action. The sculptor of the Farnesian Hercules
-invented a style totally different; to obtain fleshiness, he composed
-the figure of round and convex muscles, but made their insertions flat
-to signify that they are nervous and unincumbered with fat, the
-characteristic of strength."
-
-"In the Gladiator there is a mixture of the Herculean and the Laocoontic
-forms, the muscles in action are angulated, whilst those at rest are
-short and round, a variety conformable to nature," &c.
-
-    Opere di A.R. MENGS, t. i. p. 203.
-
-142. Neither he who forms lines without the power of embodying them, nor
-he who floats on masses, can be said to draw: the one is the slave of a
-brush, the other of a point.
-
-143. Pulp without solidity absorbs, and relentless tension tears
-character.
-
-144. In following too closely a model, there is danger in mistaking the
-individual for Nature herself; in relying only on the schools, the
-deviation into manner seems inevitable: what then remains, but to
-transpose _yourself_ into your subject?
-
-145. Style is the selection of forms and groups and tones to suit a
-subject.
-
-_Coroll._--The Italian _Style Grandioso_, the French _Il y a du style_,
-the English _great style and breadth_, when applied to a performance,
-only mean, that the artist followed those who have enlarged the
-principles of imitation and execution.
-
-146. Style pervades the object; manner floats on the surface.
-
-147. Antient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece, and
-the servant of Rome.
-
-148. The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of
-climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the
-uniformity of their means. If they had schools, the Ionian, that of
-Athens and of Sicyon appear to have directed their instruction to one
-grand principle, proportion: this was the stamen which they drew out
-into one immense connected web; whilst modern art, with its schools of
-designers, colourists, machinists, eclectics, is but a tissue of
-adventitious threads. Apollonius and the sculptor of the small Hesperian
-Hercules in bronze are distinguished only by the degree of execution;
-whilst M. Angelo and Bernini had no one principle in common but that of
-making groups and figures.
-
-149. Art among a religious race produces reliques; among a military one,
-trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.
-
-150. Modern art, reared by superstition in Italy, taught to dance in
-France, plumped up to unwieldiness in Flanders, reduced to "chronicle
-small beer" in Holland, became a rich old woman by "suckling fools" in
-England.
-
-151. The rules of art are either immediately supplied by Nature herself,
-or selected from the compendiums of her students who are called masters
-and founders of schools. The imitation of Nature herself leads to style,
-that of the schools to manner.
-
-_Coroll._--The line of Michael Angelo is uniformly grand; character and
-beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to
-grandeur:--the child, the female, meanness, deformity were indiscriminately
-stamped with grandeur; a beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of
-poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are
-moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man, his men are a race
-of giants.
-
-The design of Raphael is either historic or poetic. The forms of his
-historic style are characteristic, those of his poetic style he himself
-calls ideal:[30] the former are regulated by nature, but these are only
-exaggerations of another style.
-
-The forms of Julio Pipi are poised between character and caricature, but
-verge to this; even his dresses and ornaments are caricatures; but no
-poet or painter ever rocked the cradle of infant mythology with simpler
-or more primitive grace; none ever imparted to allegory a more
-insinuating power, or swayed the strife of elemental war with a bolder
-hand. What ever equalled the exuberance of invention scattered over the
-T of Mantoua?
-
-The line of Polydoro, is that of the antique basso-relievo, seen from
-beneath (da sotto in su).
-
-The forms of Titian are those of sanguine health; robust, not grand;
-soft without delicacy.
-
-Tintoretto attempted to fill the line of Michael Angelo with colour,
-without tracing its principle.
-
-As Michael Angelo was impressed with an idea of grandeur, so Correggio
-was charmed with a notion of harmony: his line was correct when harmony
-permitted; it strayed as harmony commanded.
-
-Elegance (sueltezza) was the principle of Parmegiano's line, but he
-forgot proportion.
-
-Annibale Carracci, one of the founders of the Eclectic school, attempted
-to combine in his line the appearance of Nature with style, and became
-the standard of academic drawing.
-
-The medium, not the thing, was the object of the _Tuscan_ and _Venetian_
-schools; the school of Urbino[31] aimed at subjecting the medium to the
-character of things; the _Lombards_ strove to unite the separate
-attainments of the three with the unattainable spell of Correggio; the
-_Germans_, with their Flemish and Dutch branches, now humbly followed,
-now boldly attempted to improve their Italian masters; the French passed
-the Alps to study at Rome and Venice what they were to forget at Paris.
-
-Domenichino aimed at the characteristic line of Raffaelle, the
-compactness of Annibale, and the beauty of the antique; and mixing
-something of each fell short of all.
-
-Rosso carried anatomy, and the Bolognese Abbate the poetry of their art
-to the court of Francis. To the haggard melancholy of the Tuscan and the
-laboured richness of the Lombard, the French added their own cold
-gaiety, and the French school arose.
-
-The forms of Guido's female heads are abstracts of the antique. The
-forms of his male bodies are transcripts of models, such as are found in
-a genial climate, though sometimes distorted by fatigue or emaciated by
-want.
-
-Pietro Testa copied the Torsos of antiquity, and supplied them with
-extremities drawn from the dregs of Nature.
-
-The forms[32] of Caravaggio are either substantial flesh or the
-starveling produce of beggary rendered important by ideal light and
-shade.
-
-The limbs of Joseph Ribera are excrescences of disease on hectic bodies.
-
-Andrea Mantegna was in Italy what Albert Durer was at Nuremberg; Nature
-seems not to have existed in any shape of health in his time: though a
-servile copyist of the antique, he never once adverted from the
-monuments he copied to the originals that inspired them.
-
-The forms of Albert Durer are blasphemies on Nature, the thwarted growth
-of starveling labour and dry sterility--formed to inherit his hell of
-paradise. To extend the asperity of this verdict beyond the forms of
-Albert Durer, would be equally unjust and ungrateful to the father of
-German art, on whom invention often flashed, whom melancholy marked for
-her own, whose influence even on Italian art was such that he produced a
-temporary revolution in the style of the Tuscan school. Andrea del Sarto
-and Giacopo da Puntormo became his imitators and his copyists; nor was
-his influence unfelt by Raffaelle himself, but his Christ led to the
-Cross (engraved by E. Sadler),[33] compared with that of the Madonna del
-Spasimo, leaves the claim of superiority doubtful for sublimity and
-pathos. It is a likewise probable that we owe the horrors of the St.
-Felicitas to the abominations of his Martyr scenes. The felicity of his
-organs, the delicacy of his finger, the freedom and sweep of his touch,
-have found an encomiast in the author of the life prefixed to the Latin
-edition of his works. What would have been the result of his intended
-interview, when in Italy, with Andrea Mantegna, had the death of the
-latter (1505) not prevented it, is difficult to guess: if some
-amelioration, certainly not the entire change of style, which the
-uninterrupted study of the antique, during a long life, had failed to
-produce in Andrea himself.
-
-The forms of Luke of Leyden are the vegetation of a swamp.
-
-The forms of Martin Hemskerck are dislocated lankness.[34]
-
-The forms of Spranger and Goltzius are blasphemies on art; the monstrous
-incubations of dropsied fancy on phlegm run mad. This verdict, though
-uniformly true of every male figure of Goltzius that demanded energy of
-exertion, cannot be equally applied to his females, the features of the
-face excepted. On limbs and bodies resembling the antique in elegance if
-not correctness, he placed heads with Dutch features, ideally, often
-voluptuously dressed: such are his Venus between Ceres and Bacchus; and
-still more his Diana and Calisto, a composition which in elegance and
-dignity excels that of Tiziano. In the dreadful familiarity with which
-the guardian snake of the Beotian well approaches the companions of
-Cadmus, he has touched the true vein of terror and its limits, and
-atoned in some degree for the loathsome horror that had polluted his
-graver, when he condescended to copy the abominable process of that
-scene from the design of Pistor.
-
-The male forms of Rubens are the brawny pulp of slaughtermen, his
-females are hillocks of roses: overwhelmed muscles, dislocated bones,
-and distorted joints are swept along in a gulph of colours, as herbage,
-trees and shrubs are whirled, tossed, or absorbed by vernal inundation.
-
-The female forms of Rembrandt are prodigies of deformity; his males are
-the crippled produce of shuffling industry and sedentary toil.
-
-The line of Vandycke is balanced between Flemish corpulence and English
-slenderness.
-
-Sebastian Bourdon, sublime in his conceptions, filled classic ground and
-eastern vests with local limbs and Gallic actors.
-
-Poussin renounced his national character to follow the antique; but
-could not separate the spirit from the stone.
-
-152. The imitator seldom mounts to the investigation of the principles
-that formed his model; the copier probably never.
-
-153. Many beauties in art come by accident, that are preserved by
-choice.
-
-_Coroll._--Neither the froth formed on the mouth of Jalysus' hound by a
-lucky dash from the sponge of Protogenes, nor the modern experiments of
-extracting composition from an ink-splashed wall, are relatives of the
-beauties alluded to in this aphorism.
-
-154. The praise due to a work, reflects not always on its master; and
-superiority may beam athwart the blemishes that we despise or pity;
-some, says Milton, praised the work and some the master: would you
-prefer him who is able to finish the image which he was unable to
-conceive, to its inventor?
-
-155. It is the privilege of Nature alone to be equal. Man is the slave
-of a part; the most equal artist is only the first in the list of
-mediocrity.
-
-156. He who seeks the grand, will find it in a trifle: but some seem
-made to find it only there. Rösel saw man like an insect, and insects as
-Michael Angelo men.
-
-157. Physiognomy teaches what is homogeneous and what is heterogeneous
-in forms.
-
-158. The solid parts of the body are the base of physiognomy, the
-muscular that of pathognomy; the former contemplates the animal at rest,
-this its action.
-
-159. Pathognomy allots expression to character.
-
-160. Those who allow physiognomy to regulate the great outlines of
-character, and reject its minute discriminations, admit a language and
-reject its elements.
-
-161. The difficulty of physiognomy is to separate the essence from
-accident, growth from excrescence.
-
-162. He who aims at the sublime, consults the classes assigned to
-character by physiognomy, not its anatomy of individuals; the oak in its
-full majesty, and not the thwarted pollard.
-
-163. None ever escaped from himself by crossing seas; none ever peopled
-a barren fancy and a heart of ice with images or sympathies by
-excursions into the deserts of mythology or allegory.
-
-164. The principles of allegory and votive composition are the same;
-they unite with equal right the most distant periods of time and the
-most opposite modes of society: both surround a real being, or allude to
-a real act, with symbols by long general consent adopted, as expressive
-of the qualities, motives, and circumstances that distinguished or gave
-evidence to the person or the transaction. Such is the gallery of the
-Luxembourg, such the Attila of the Vatican.
-
-165. Pure history rejects allegory.
-
-_Coroll._--The armed figure of Rome, with Fortune behind her frowning at
-Coriolanus, surrounded by the Roman matrons in the Volscian camp (by
-Poussin), is a vision seen by that warrior, and not an allegory; it is a
-sublime image, which, without diminishing the credibility of the fact,
-adds to its importance, and raises the hero, by making him submit, not
-to the impulse of private ties, but to the destiny of his country.
-
-166. All ornament ought to be allegoric.
-
-167. Dignity is the salt of art.
-
-_Coroll._--In the Salutation of Michael Angelo,[35] the angelic
-messenger emerges from solitary twilight, his countenance seems to
-labour with the awful message, and his knees to bend as he approaches
-the mysterious personage: with virgin majesty and humble grace Mary bows
-to the extended arm of the lucid herald, as if waked from sacred
-meditation, and appears entranced by celestial sounds.
-
-The Madonnas of Raffaelle, whether hailed parents of a God, or pressing
-the divine offspring to their breast, whether receiving him from his
-slumbers, or contemplating his infant motions, are uniformly transcripts
-from the daily domestic images of common life and of some favourite face
-matronized: the eyes of his Fornarina beamed with other fires than those
-of sanctity; the sense and native dignity of her lover could veil their
-fierceness, but not change their language.
-
-The Madonna of Titiano receives her celestial visitant under an open
-portico of Palladian structure, and skirted by gay gardens; the usual
-ray precedes the floating angel; gold-ringleted and in festive attire,
-he waves a lily wand: in sable weeds the Virgin receives the gorgeous
-homage, proudly devout, like a young abbess amidst her cloistered lambs.
-
-Tintoretto has turned salutation into irruption. The angel bursts
-through the shattered casement and terrifies a vulgar female; but his
-wings are tipped in heaven.[36]
-
-168. Dignity gives probability to the impossible: we listen to the
-monstrous tale of Ulysses with all the devotion due to a creed. By
-dignity, even deformity becomes an instrument of art: Vulcan limps like
-a god at the hand of Homer: the hump and withered arm of Richard are
-engines of terror or persuasion in Shakspeare; the crook-back of Michael
-Angelo strikes with awe.
-
-169. Luxuriance of ornament destroys simplicity and repose, the
-attendants of dignity.
-
-_Coroll._--"Simon Mosca, one of the most distinguished sculptors of
-ornament and foliage in the sixteenth century, when proposed by Vasari
-to embellish by his designs the monument of the Cardinal di Monte, was
-discountenanced by Michael Angelo on this principle." Vasari, vita de
-Simone Mosca.
-
-170. Judge not an artist from the exertions of accidental vigour or some
-unpremeditated flights of fancy, but from the uniform tenor, the
-never-varying principle of his works: the line and style of Titian
-sometimes expand themselves like those of Michael Angelo; the heads and
-groups of Raphael sometimes glow and palpitate with Titiano's tints; and
-there are masses of both united in Correggio: but if you aim at
-character, let Raphael be your guide; if at colour, Tiziano; if harmony
-allure, Correggio: they indulged in alternate excursions, but never lost
-sight of their own domain.
-
-_Coroll._--No one, of whatever period of art, of whatever eminence or
-school, out-told Rembrandt in telling the story of a subject, in the
-choice of its real crisis, in simplicity, in perspicuity: still, as the
-vile crust that involves his ore, his local vulgarity of style, the
-ludicrous barbarity of his costume, prepossess eyes less penetrating
-than squeamish against him, it requires some confidence to place him
-with the classics of invention. Yet with all these defects, with every
-prejudice or superiority of taste and style against him, what school has
-produced a work (M. Angelo's Creation of Adam, and the Death of Ananias
-by Raffaelle excepted,) which looks not pale in the superhuman splendour
-that irradiates his conception of Christ before Pilate, unless it be the
-raising of Lazarus by Lievens, a name comparatively obscure, whose awful
-sublimity reduces the same subject as treated by Rembrandt and
-Sebastian of Venice, to artificial parade or common-place?
-
-171. Tone is the moral part of colour.
-
-172. If tone be the legitimate principle of colour, he who has not tone,
-though he should excel in individual imitation, colours in fragments and
-produces discord.
-
-173. Harmony of colour consists in the due balance of all, equally
-remote from monotony and spots.
-
-174. The eye tinges all nature with its own hue. The eye of the Dutch
-and Flemish schools, though shut to forms, tipped the cottage, the boor,
-the ale-pot, the shambles, and even the haze of winter, with orient hues
-and the glow of setting suns.
-
-175. Clearness, freshness, force of colour, are produced by simplicity;
-one pure, is more than a mixture of many.
-
-176. Colour affects or delights like sound. Scarlet or deep crimson
-rouses, determines, invigorates the eye, as the war-horn or the trumpet
-the ear; the flute soothes the ear, as pale celestial blue or rosy red
-the eye.
-
-177. The colours of sublimity are negative or generic--such is the
-colouring of Michael Angelo.
-
-178. The passions that sway features and limbs equally reside,
-fluctuate, flash and lower in colour.
-
-179. The colours of pleasure and love are hues.
-
-180. The colour of gravity, reverie, solemnity, approaches to twilight.
-
-181. Colour in Raffaelle was the assistant of expression; to Titian it
-was the vehicle of truth; Correggio made it the minister of harmony. It
-was sometimes seized, and though reluctant held, but oftener neglected
-by the first; it was embraced, it domineered over, it coalesced with
-the second; it attended the third like an enchanted spirit.
-
-182. Lodovico Carracci was the first who gave in oil the colours of
-gravity, the dignified twilight of cloistered meditation.
-
-183. Annibale Carracci, from want of feelings, though impressed by a
-grave principle, changed the mild evening-ray of his master to the bleak
-light of a sullen day.
-
-184. Colour owes its effect sometimes more to position and gradation
-than to its intrinsic value.[37]
-
-185. The colour of Titian is the most independent of surrounding
-objects; their union may assist, but their discrepance cannot destroy
-it.
-
-186. The harmony of Correggio is independent of colour.
-
-187. Historic colour imitates, but copies not.
-
-188. The portrait-painter copies the colour of his object, but chooses
-the medium through which that object is seen.
-
-189. The mixtures that anticipate the beauties of time are big with the
-seeds of premature decay.
-
-190. The colours of health are neither cadaverous nor flushed like
-meteors.
-
-191. There are works whose effect is entirely founded on the contrast of
-tints, of what is termed warm and cold colour, and on reflected hues:
-strip them of this charm, reduce them to the principles of light and
-shade and masses, and as far as the want of those can degrade a
-picture, they will be fit to take their places on sign-posts.
-
-192. Him who has freshness without frigidity, who glows without being
-adust, whose tints luxuriate though not fermented by putrefaction; who
-is juicy yet not clammy, though broad not empty, sharp without dryness,
-clear not pellucid, airy not volatile, without being clumsy plump--him
-you may venture to call a colourist.
-
-193. Breadth is not vacuity--Breadth might easily be obtained if
-emptiness could give it.
-
-194. The forms of virtue are erect, the forms of pleasure undulate:
-Minerva's drapery descends in long uninterrupted lines; a thousand
-amorous curves embrace the limbs of Flora.
-
-195. Subordination is the character of drapery. The heraldry of dress,
-the rows of aggregated mitres and pontifical trappings, are noticed only
-for the sake of their wearers in the compositions of the Vatican.
-
-_Coroll._--The superiority of style in drapery over that of the limbs
-which it covers in the earliest essays of art after its restoration, is
-not accounted for by the assertion that it is transcribed from the
-antique: if it is, by what unaccountable perverseness did the forms of
-the nudities uniformly escape observation? In painting, this dissonance
-continues more or less offensively from the epoch of Cimabue to that of
-Masaccio, and, him excepted, down to Pinturicchio; and ceases not to
-shock us in sculpture from the Pisani, to the appearance of Lorenzo
-Ghiberti. Nor did that style of drapery mark only the productions of
-Italian art; on this side of the Alps it invested that of Germany, from
-the Angels and Madonnas of Martin Schongaver and Albert Durer, to those
-of Aldegraver and Sebald Behm: in nearly all their performances, Trans
-and Cisalpine, the wearer is the appendix of his garment, chucked into
-vestments not his own, a dwarfish thief hid in a giant's robe.
-
-196. Raffael's drapery is the assistant of character; in Michael Angelo
-it envelopes grandeur; it is in Rubens the ponderous robe of pomp.
-
-197. If Nature has not taught you to sketch, you apply in vain to art to
-finish your work.[38]
-
-198. Some must be idle lest others should want work.[39]
-
-199. He who submits to follow, is not made to precede.[40]
-
-200. Consider it as the unalterable law of Nature that all your power
-upon others depends on your own emotions. Shakspeare wept, trembled,
-laughed first at what now sways the public feature; and where he did
-not, he is stale, outrageous or disgusting.
-
-201. None but indelible materials can support the epic. Whatever is
-local, or the volatile creature of the time, beauties of fashion and
-sentiments of sects, tears shed over roses, epigrammatic sparkling,
-passions taught to rave, and graces trained to move, the antiquary's
-mouldering stores, the bubbles of allegorists--are all with equal
-contempt passed over or crushed by him who claims the lasting empire of
-the human heart.
-
-202. The invention of machines to supersede manual labour will at length
-destroy population and commerce;[41] and the methods contrived to
-shorten the apprenticeship of artists annihilate art.
-
-203. Expect no religion in times when it is easier to meet with a saint
-than a man; and no art in those that multiply their artists beyond their
-labourers.
-
-204. Expect nothing but trifles in times when those who ought to
-encourage the arts are content to debase them by their own
-performances.
-
-205. Mediocrity despatches and exults; the man of talent congratulates
-himself on the success of his exertions--Genius alone mourns over
-defeated expectation.
-
-206. Pride.--Call not him proud who is influenced by the tide and ebb of
-opinion.
-
-207. Modesty.--The touchstone of genuine modesty is the attention paid
-to criticism, and the temper with which it is received, or its advice
-adopted; the most arrogant pretence, the most fiery ambition, the most
-towering conceit, may fence themselves with smoothness, silence and
-submissive looks--Oil, the smoothest of substances, swims on all.
-
-208. Praise.--Despise all praise but what he gives who has been praised
-for similar efforts; or his whose interest it is to blame.
-
-209. Emulation.--The vindication of the innate powers, of the individual
-dignity of man, careless of appendages and accidental advantage, grasps
-the substance of its object.
-
-210. Envy, the bantling of desperate self-love, grasps the appendages,
-heedless of things. Emulation embalms the dead; Envy the vampire, blasts
-the living.
-
-211. Flattery, the midwife of half-born conceits and struggling wishes,
-sometimes persuades, a boy that he is a man, a dwarf that he is a giant,
-but too often enervates the limbs of energy.
-
-212. Vanity.--The vain is the most humble of mortals: the victim of a
-pimple.
-
-213. Those reduced to live on the alms of genius, are the first to deny
-its existence.
-
-214. Shakspeare is to Sophocles what the incessant flashes of a
-tempestuous night are to daylight.
-
-215. Things came to Raffaelle and Shakspeare; Michael Angelo and Milton
-came to things.
-
-216. The women of Michael Angelo are the sex.
-
-_Coroll._--Eve emerging from the side of Adam; Eve reclining under the
-tree of knowledge, in the Capella Sistina; the figures of Night and Dawn
-on the tombs of the Medici, are pure generic forms, little discriminated
-by character, and more expressive by action than emotion of features;
-solidity without heaviness separates them from the females in the Last
-Judgment, which, with the exception of the Madonna and St. Catharine,
-are less beholden to grace than anatomy. The Cartoon of the Leda proves
-that he was not inattentive to the detail of female charms, but beauty
-did not often visit his slumbers, guide his hand, or interrupt the
-gravity of his meditation.
-
-217. The women of Raffaelle are either his own mistress, or mothers.
-
-_Coroll._--This relates chiefly to his Madonnas--Of his saints the St.
-Cecilia at Bologna has most of antique beauty, and, whether imitated or
-conceived, resembles the Niobe; but pride is absorbed in devotion, she
-is the enraptured victim of divine love, and glows with celestial fire:
-the goddesses of the Farnesina, however gracefully imagined, are too
-ponderous for aërial forms and amorous conceits.
-
-218. The women of Correggio are seraglio beauties.
-
-_Coroll._--The enchantment of the Magdalen, in the picture of the St.
-Jerome in the Pilotta at Parma, is produced by chiaroscuro and attitude.
-Sensuality personified is the general character of his females, and the
-grace of his children, less naiveté than grimace, the caricature of
-jollity.
-
-219. The women of Titiano are the plump, fair, marrowy Venetian race.
-
-_Coroll._--Venus taking a reluctant farewell of Adonis; Diana starting
-at the intrusion of Acteon, with every allure of attitude, with heads
-dressed by the Graces, are local beauties, sink under the weight of
-Venetian limbs, and are only distinguished by contrast from the model
-that plumped herself down for his Danae. The reposing figure commonly
-called the Venus of the Tribuna, is an exquisite portrait of some
-favourite female, but not a Venus.
-
-220. The women of Parmegiano are coquettes.
-
-221. The women of Annibale Carracci are made up by imitation and
-vulgarity.
-
-_Coroll._--Venus with Anchises, Juno with Jupiter, Omphale with
-Hercules, Diana and Calisto in the Farnese gallery, owe their charms and
-dignity of action to imitation; the celebrated three Maries, Magdalen
-penitent in her hempen shroud, are the conceptions of his own mind.
-
-222. The women of Guido are actresses.
-
-223. The forms of Domenichino's female faces are ideal; their expression
-is poised between pure helpless virginity and sainted ecstasy.
-
-224. The veiled eyes of Guercino's females dart insidious fire.
-
-225. Such is the fugitive essence, such the intangible texture of female
-genius, that few combinations of circumstances ever seemed to favour its
-transmission to posterity.
-
-226. In an age of luxury women have taste, decide and dictate; for in an
-age of luxury woman aspires to the functions of man, and man slides into
-the offices of woman. The epoch of eunuchs was ever the epoch of
-viragoes.
-
-227. Female affection is ever in proportion to the impression of
-superiority in the object. Woman fondles, pities, despises and forgets
-what is below her; she values, bears and wrangles with her equal; she
-adores what is above her.
-
-228. Be not too squeamish in the choice of your materials; you will
-disgrace the best, if you cannot give value to the worst: the gold and
-azure wasted on Rosselli's[42] draperies cannot give value to their
-folds or hide the wants beneath.
-
-229. There are moments when all are men, and only men, and ought to be
-no more; but the artist, who when his daily task is over can lock his
-meditation up with his tools--ranks with mechanics.
-
-230. Date the death of emulation and of excellence from the moment of
-your employer's indifference; and mediocrity of success from the moment
-of his meddling with the process of your work.
-
-231. One of the most unexplored regions of art are dreams, and what may
-be called the personification of sentiment: the Prophets, Sibyls and
-Patriarchs of Michael Angelo are so many branches of one great
-sentiment. The dream of Raffaello is a characteristic representation of
-a dream; the dream of Michael Angelo is moral inspiration, a sublime
-sentiment.
-
-_Coroll._--Of three visionary subjects ascribed to Raffaello and known
-from the prints of Marc Antonio, Georgio Mantuano, and Agostino
-Veneziano, this alludes to the last, called by the Italians Stregozzo,
-by the French "La Carcasse:" an association of ideas big with the very
-elements of dreams, and almost a definition. That it be a conception of
-Raffaello rests on no other proof than the tablet of Marc Antonio and
-its own internal merit; which is so uniform that although one principal
-figure is undoubtedly transcribed from another in the cartoon of Pisa,
-the whole can never be considered as a pasticcio.
-
-232. A trite subject becomes interesting by the introduction of
-appropriate ornaments; a small statue of Moses breaking the tables in
-the back-ground of a Salutation; and a number of Baptists in that of a
-Madonna with her son and Joseph, expressing the dissolution of the old
-and the institution of the new doctrine, both by Michael Angelo,[43]
-give unexpected sublimity to subjects for which Raffaelle and Titiano
-had ransacked in vain the nursery and heaven.
-
-233. Compilation is the lowest degree in art, but let him who means to
-borrow with impunity, follow the statesman's maxim: "strip the mean and
-spare the great."
-
-_Coroll._--A composition of which every thing was borrowed from himself,
-being shown to Michael Angelo, and his opinion asked, "I commend it,"
-said he, "but when on the day of judgement each body shall claim its
-original limbs, what will remain in this picture?"
-
-234. He ought to possess some himself, who attempts to make use of
-borrowed excellence: a golden goblet on a beggar's table, serves only to
-expose its companions of lead.
-
-235. Resemblance, character, costume, are the three requisites of
-portrait: the first distinguishes, the second classifies, the third
-assigns place and time to an individual.
-
-236. Landscape is either the transcript of a spot, or a picturesque
-combination of homogeneous objects, or the scene of a phenomenon. The
-first pleases by precision and taste; the second adds variety and
-grandeur; the third may be an instrument of sublimity, affect our
-passions, or wake a sentiment.
-
-237. Selection is the invention of the landscape painter.
-
-238. He never can be great who honours what is little.
-
-_Coroll._--Grandeur of style and execution do not exclusively depend
-upon dimensions: but in an age and amidst a race who have erected
-littleness or rather diminutiveness of size to the only credentials of
-admissibility into collections, to the passports without which Raffaelle
-himself finds it difficult to penetrate the sanctuaries of pigmy art,
-that which ennobled the age of Pericles, of Julio, and Leone, must be
-content to look to posterity for its reward. If it were physiognomically
-true, that the structure of every human face bears some analogy to that
-of some brute, it might reasonably surprise, that an individual marked
-by nature with no very remote resemblance to a Hippopotamus, should be
-considered as the legislator of a taste equally noted for tameness of
-conception and effeminate finish; but as it is improbable that one
-individual, however favoured by circumstances or endowed with
-all-persevering activity, or arrogance, could stamp the taste of a
-nation exclusively with his own, it may be fairly surmised that he did
-no more than find and rear the seeds of that Micromania which infects
-the public taste.
-
-239. The medium of poetry is time and action; that of the plastic arts,
-space and figure. Poetry then is at its summit, when its hand arrests
-time and embodies action: and these, when they wing the marble or the
-canvass, and from the present moment dart rays back to the past and
-forward to the future.
-
-_Coroll._--Subjects are positive, negative, repulsive. The first are the
-proper materials, the voluntary servants of invention; to the second she
-gives interest and value; from the last she can escape only by the help
-of execution, for execution alone can palliate her defeat by the last.
-The Laocoon, the Hæmon and Antigone, the Niobe and her daughters, the
-death of Ananias, the Sacrifice at Lystra, Elymas struck blind, are
-positive subjects, speak their meaning with equal evidences to the
-scholar and the unlettered man, and excite the sympathy due to the calls
-of terror and pity with equal energy in every breast. St. Jerome
-presenting the translation of his Bible to the Infant Jesus, St. Peter
-at the feet of the Madonna receiving the thanksgivings of victorious
-Venice, with every other votive altar-piece, little interesting to
-humanity in general, owe the impression they make on us to the dexterous
-arrangement, the amorous or sublime enthusiasm of the artist;--but we
-lament to see invention waste its powers, and execution its skill, to
-excite our feelings for an action or event that receives its real
-interest from a motive which cannot be rendered intuitive; such as
-Alceste expiring, the legacy of Eudamidas, the cause of Demetrius's
-disorder.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[2] Tacit. Annal. lib. VI. "Nullam ob eximiam artem, sed quod par
-negotiis, neque supra erat."
-
-[3] D. Longin. peri upsous, § 34.
-
-[4] "Les hommes qui ont changé l'univers, n'y sont jamais parvenus en
-gagnant des chefs; mais toujours en remuant des masses. Le premier moyen
-est du ressort de l'intrigue, et n'amène que des résultats secondaires; le
-second est la marche du Génie, et change la face du monde."--_Napoleon._
-
-[5] Tacit. Annal. lib. xiv. et xvi.
-
-[6] Difficile est proprie communia dicere. Hor. A.P.
-
-[7] Ton d' ar' hypo zugophin prosephe podas aiolos ippos. Iliad xix. 404.
-----Rhoebe diu, etc.--_Virg._ x.
-
-[8] Plin. lib. xxxv.
-
-[9] This picture, during a period of nearly half a century, graced the
-collection of Charles Lambert, Esq. of Paper-buildings, Temple; where it
-remained without having been washed or varnished. At his death it was
-purchased by my friend Mr. Knowles, has been cleaned by a skilful hand,
-and restored to nearly its pristine state.
-
-[10] Sea Voyage, Act 3rd. sc. 1st.
-
-[11] Dante Inferno, Cant. xxiv.
-
-[12] ETHE. Mores. Plin. l. xxxv.
-
-[13] The Necromantia of Nicias--the sacking of a town, by Aristides.
-Plin. l. xxxv.
-
-[14] A group of Stephanus in the Villa Ludovisi, known by the name of
-Papyrius and his mother, called a Phædra and Hippolytus, or an Electra
-with Orestes, by J. Winkelmann, bears more resemblance to an Æthra with
-Theseus, or a Penelope with Telemachus.
-
-[15] Gallum inficetissime linguam exserentem.--Plin. l. xxxv.
-
-[16] Plin. l. xxx. W. c. xiv.
-
-[17] Commonly named the Dying Gladiator; by J. Winkelmann called a
-Herald; with more probability the "Vulneratus deficiens, in quo possit
-intelligi quantum restet animæ." A work of Ctesilas in bronze, was
-probably the model of this. Plin. l. xxxiv.
-
-[18] Sueton. l. vi.
-
-[19] In one of the cartoons of Raffaello, now lost, but still in some
-degree existing in tapestry and in print.
-
-[20] Engraved by G. Audran.
-
-[21] In the cartoon of Peter and John.
-
-[22] Iliad, L. xviii. l. 93; L. xvi. l. 74 and 75; L. ix. l. 346.
-
-[23] Commonly called the Castor and Pollux of Monte Cavallo,--the name
-given from their horses to the Quirinal.
-
-[24] Plin. N.H. l. xxxv. c. ix. Tantus diligentia, ut Agrigentinis
-facturus tabulam, quam in templo Junonis Lucinæ publice dicarent,
-inspexerit virgines eorum nudas, et quinque elegerit, ut quod in quaque
-laudatissimum esset, pictura redderet.
-
-[25] Mengs Lettera à don A. Ponz. Opere di A.R. Mengs, t. ii. p. 83.
-
-[26] Such was probably that austerity of tone in the works of Athenion,
-which the ancients preferred to the sweetness or gayer tints of
-Nicias--"austerior colore et in austeritate jucundior."--Plin. l. xxxv.
-c. xi.
-
-[27] See the sonnet of Agostino Carracci, which begins "Chi farsi un bon
-Pittor cerca e desia," &c. which the author himself seems to ridicule by
-the manner in which he concludes.
-
-[28] Ouk agathon polukoiranie eis koiranos esto. Il. ii. 204. The
-conception of every great work must originate in one, though it may be
-above the power or strength of one to execute the whole.
-
-[29] Pliny, l. xxxiv. c. 8.
-
-[30] In the Letter to C.B. Castiglione. Ideal is properly the
-representation of pure human essence.
-
-[31] Raffaelle and the best of his pupils; their successors, commonly
-known by the name of the Roman school, followed principles diametrically
-opposite.
-
-[32] "Macinava carne," said Annibale Carracci.
-
-[33] Ægidius Sadeler sculpsit ex Prototypo Alberti Dureri.
-
-[34] "Elumbis," as applied by the author of the Dialogue on Orators to
-the style of Brutus, will nearly suit all imitators of Michael Angelo.
-
-[35] In the Sacristy of St. Giovanni in Laterano, painted from the
-cartoon by Marcello Venusti.
-
-[36] This and the foregoing picture are in the Scuola di S. Rocco at
-Venice. The skeleton of the former is known by an etching of _Le Fevre_.
-
-[37] "Whoever looks at a picture by Correggio of a glorified Madonna
-with a St. Sebastian and other figures, at Dresden, is instantly
-surprised by the light of the glory, which has all the splendour of a
-sun, though painted with a low-toned yellow, and dim at the
-extremities."
-
-Opere di R. Mengs, t. ii. p. 161.
-
-[38] John, called da Bologna, showed a model to Michael Angelo smoothly
-polished; Michael Angelo took, and, heedless of its finish, twisted it
-about; then giving it back to the student, "Learn," said he, "to sketch
-before you attempt to finish."
-
-[39] Such was the proud answer of Frà Sebastian del Piombo, grown fat by
-the signet of St. Peter, when asked why he had entirely resigned all
-exercise of his art.
-
-[40] Said Michael Angelo, when asked whether the copy of the Laocoon by
-Baccio Bandinelli was not equal or superior to the original. Titiano,
-with more mordacity though surely with less discrimination, ridiculed
-the copyist by a caricature in which the Trojan with his sons were
-changed to baboons.
-
-[41] "Sineret se plebeculam pascere," said Vespasian to the artist who
-had contrived a machine to convey some large columns with a trifling
-expense to the Capitol, and rewarded him without accepting his offer.
-
-[42] Cosmo Rosselli, one of the Tuscan painters who preceded Michael
-Angelo in decorating the Chapel of Sixtus IV.
-
-[43] This is the Madonna painted for Angelo Doni, now in the Tribuna of
-Florence, and probably the only existing oil-picture of Michael Angelo,
-though Lanzi rejects its title to that. Vasari mentions it with his
-usual extravagance of praise, but appears ignorant of the real meaning
-of the figures.
-
-
-
-
-A HISTORY OF ART IN THE SCHOOLS OF ITALY.
-
-
-
-
-THE TUSCAN SCHOOL.
-
-
-The analogy of style observable in the figures impressed on Tuscan coins
-of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth century, and those found in the
-miniatures that decorate the manuscripts of the contemporary periods,
-proves that Tuscany had its artists long before the epoch which Vasari
-and his copyists fix for the importation of Greek art with Greek
-artists: whether those paintings be all pure Tuscan, or here and there
-interspersed with Greek ones, none will venture to decide, who knows the
-impossibility of drawing a limitary line sufficiently severe to
-distinguish the last spasms of an expiring art from the first
-stammerings of an infant one. Of the still surviving monuments of
-painting during those epochs, it may be sufficient to mention the famed
-Christ, painted on canvass and glued to a wooden cross, of a date
-anterior to 1003.
-
-In subsequent times, the earliest and least unsuccessful essays in art,
-were made by the Pisano. Whilst a Greek sarcophagus at Pisa, storied
-with the incidents of Hippolytus and Phædra, furnished some elements of
-form to the sculptors Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano, painting made some
-progress with Giunta Pisano: his composition of Christ on the Cross at
-the Angeli of Assisi, though defective in design, possesses life and
-expression.[44]
-
-A similar progress was made by his contemporary Guido or Guidone of
-Sienna; a name not mentioned by Vasari, though in his frequent
-excursions to Sienna, he could not remain unacquainted with the works of
-Guido, at least one which still exists in the chapel of the Malevolti
-in S. Dominico, with the following often repeated inscription and
-date:--
-
-    Me Guido de senis diebus depinxit amenis
-    Quem Christus lenis nullis velit agere penis.
-          A.D. M.CCXXI.
-
-This Madonna, twenty years anterior to the birth of Cimabue, is superior
-to his Madonna in expression, and nearly equal in taste and colour,
-though inferior in style.
-
-Duccio di Boninsegna, probably of his school, was celebrated as the
-restorer of that inlaid kind of Mosaic, called "Lavoro di Commesso." His
-works are from 1275, the year in which he received a commission for
-Sta. Maria Novella at Florence, to 1311, the period at which he was
-employed in the Domo of Sienna. If these dates be genuine, he can
-scarcely have lived till 1357, the year at which Fiorillo fixes his
-death. It is not probable that he should have stretched his span beyond
-a century, which must have been the case, if we suppose that he was
-twenty at the time he painted in S. Maria Novella; it is not probable
-that he should have chosen, or been suffered, to remain idle with the
-celebrity he had acquired in the labours of the Domo; and it is still
-less probable, that, if he was employed, what he produced in the
-interval, between that period and his death, should have perished or
-been destroyed, whilst we are still in possession of the paintings in
-the Domo, which made nearly an epoch in art, at which he laboured three
-years, for which he was paid upwards of 3000 scudi d'oro, the expense of
-gilding and ultramarine included. That part of it which faced the
-audience, represented in large figures the Madonna and various saints;
-that which fronted the choir, divided into many compartments, exhibited
-numerous compositions of Gospel subjects in figures of small proportion;
-it cannot be denied, that with all its copiousness, the whole savours
-strongly of the Greek manner.
-
-Andrea Taffi, born 1213, the scholar of Apollonius, a Greek painter, and
-his assistant in some mosaics at S. Giovanni of Florence, is not
-mentioned out of that line by Vasari and Baldinucci: but the discovery
-of a picture with his name by Ignazio Stugford adds another legitimate
-name to the predecessors of Cimabue.
-
-Buonamico di Cristofano, or Buffalmacco, of facetious memory, was the
-pupil of Taffi. His best works are lost, but from the remains it may be
-suspected that he owes at least as much to the tales of Boccaccio and
-Sacchetti, for the preservation of his name, as to his own powers. There
-still exists in Campo Santo at Pisa, a fresco of the Creation with a God
-Father five ells high, supporting Heaven and the elements; and three
-other stories of Adam, Noah and his Sons; a Crucifix, a Resurrection,
-and an Ascension. We must not look here for much symmetry of design or
-Giottesque elegance; his heads have little variety, and less beauty;
-sameness of features, a vulgar cast, and a gaping deformity of mouth,
-characterize his women; but now and then attention rests on the vivacity
-or physiognomy of some male countenance, especially that of Cain.
-Sometimes he snatches some movement from nature, such as that of the
-terrified man who flies from Calvary: he overflows in particoloured
-drapery, and delights in laboured ornaments of flowers and lace. A St.
-John the Baptist of his, yet existing, deserves to be mentioned as an
-instance of the utility of comparing works in painting and sculpture
-with contemporary coins, in order to ascertain their dates; for the
-same figure is exactly repeated on the Florentine scudo d'oro of that
-age. A jocular host of artists, scholars of this school, we pass over,
-as more important to the reader of the Decamerone and the Novelle, than
-to the student of art.
-
-Lucca, about 1235, possessed Bonaventura Berlingieri, whose St. Francis
-still exists in the castle of Guiglia, near Modena, and is described as
-a work of considerable merit for its time: Margaritone of Arezzo, a
-pupil and follower of the Greeks, appears to have been several years
-anterior to Cimabue. He painted on canvass, and was the first, according
-to Vasari, who found the method of giving a more solid texture to
-pictures. Some crucifix of his is still seen at Arezzo, and another at
-Santa Croce in Florence, facing one of Cimabue. The style of both is
-antiquated, but not so different in merit to make us refuse a painter's
-name to Margaritone if we grant it to Cimabue.
-
-Giovanni Cimabue,[45] of noble lineage, was an architect and painter. He
-is considered as the father of Italian art, because with him legitimate
-history and a less interrupted series of dates, begin; because he
-succeeded better than his predecessors in disentangling himself from the
-shackles of Greek barbarity, and chiefly because he discovered and
-called forth the genius of Giotto. Vasari may be right in making him the
-scholar of those Greeks whom the Florentine Government had employed to
-paint the Church of Santa Maria Novella; but he errs in placing them in
-the Chapel Gondi, which, with the body of the church, was not erected
-till the subsequent century; he should have assigned them another chapel
-under the church, where time has discovered some vestiges of ancient
-painting. It seems, however, more probable, that Giunta Pisano gave
-Cimabue instruction, if it be ascertained, as Fiorillo asserts, that he
-worked in the great church of Assisi, 1253, when he was in his
-thirteenth year, and Giunta superintended the decorations of that
-fabric.
-
-The pompous visit which Charles of Anjou paid to Cimabue in passing
-through Florence, sufficiently proves the celebrity he enjoyed, if it
-has not been sanctioned by the authority of Dante, who calls him the
-unrivalled champion of his day. Cimabue was then painting the Madonna
-with the Infant adored by six angels; the picture when finished was
-carried in procession from Borgo Allegro to Santa Maria Novella, and
-placed in the Chapel Rucellai, where it still exists. The heraldic
-arrangement of the figures, their physiognomic monotony, the exility of
-the detail and barbarous execution, contrast strangely with the
-elevation and novelty of the artist's conception. Cimabue lost the
-female and the mother in the Queen of Heaven. Insensible to the
-blandishments of beauty, fierce like the age in which he lived, he
-excelled in male, especially aged characters; these he impressed with
-something of a stern grandeur, not often surpassed since. Vast and
-comprehensive in his ideas, he seized on subjects of numerous
-composition, and expressed them in large proportions; those features of
-prophetic grandeur which surprise in his frescoes at the Dominicans and
-Santa Trinità of Florence, are still excelled by the features which he
-displayed in the upper church of Assisi--meteors of the age in which he
-lived. They still exist, nor is it easily conceived how works of so
-different style, against the testimony of Vasari, and the uniform
-tradition of five centuries, could, as they were of late, be ascribed
-to the more regulated hand and gentler spirit of Giotto.
-
-Giotto's year of birth has been disputed; Vasari fixes it to 1276,
-Baldinucci to 1265. He was the son of a cottager at Vespignano, and bred
-to be a shepherd; but, a painter born, he amused himself from infancy
-with attempts to draw whatever object struck his fancy. A sheep which he
-had copied on a flat stone caught the eye of Cimabue, who was in the
-neighbourhood, happened to pass by, demanded him of his father, and
-carried him to Florence to instruct him; but he soon rivalled, and in a
-short time eclipsed his master by a grace and an amenity of execution
-which remained unequalled to the time of Masaccio.
-
-For the rapidity of this progress, unless we were to ascribe it to
-inspiration, we must account from the happy coincidence of external
-advantages with the genius of the man. A period so obscure, admits of
-little more than conjecture, but there is no improbability in supposing
-that Giotto outstripped his master and the times by the same means which
-rendered Michael Agnolo so soon superior to Ghirlandaio,--modelling
-and the study of the antique. We know that he was a sculptor, and that
-his models still existed in the time of Lorenzo Ghiberti. Good originals
-he could find among the fragments of antiquity discovered before his
-time, and scattered over Florence and Rome: from what other source could
-he derive the character of his male heads, and that squareness of form
-so different from the exility and indecision of all contemporary styles?
-The few majestic natural folds of his draperies, and the composure and
-unaffected air of his figures, breathe the spirit of the antique. His
-very defects are the consequences of such a study. His manner has been
-charged with a kind of _statuine_ precision (del statuino), unknown to
-other schools, and unknown to artists who do not form themselves on the
-antique.
-
-If to these conjectures it be objected, that the want of uniformity,
-dryness of design, extremities either faulty or hid under a preposterous
-length of drapery, rather betray a nurseling of Pisa than a pupil of the
-ancients; it ought to be considered that uniformity is the result of
-settled principles; that he who had to remove the rubbish could not be
-expected to give the polish; that he who had to teach eyes to look,
-hands to move, and feet to stand, could not be supposed to make them do
-it with all the correctness, propriety or elegance, they were capable
-of; that a certain gymnophobia equally attends the infancy and the
-decrepitude of taste, and that the approbation of a public and an
-artist's flattery are always reciprocal.
-
-And no artist commanded more of public favour than Giotto. Legislator of
-taste, not in Tuscany alone, but at Rome, Naples, Bologna, and the
-Venetian State, he excelled his master as much in celebrity as he had
-excelled him in grace and method. How soon he did this may be seen on
-comparing his earliest works at Assisi with those of his master in the
-same place. Genuine elements of composition, expressions inspired by
-Nature, accuracy of design, progressively appear. It is no hyperbole to
-affirm, that in certain characters no artist ever went nearer the source
-of expression than Giotto, and that in the maiden airs of untainted
-virginity none ever excelled, and perhaps, Raphael and Domenichino
-excepted, few ever approached him.
-
-Though not the inventor, Giotto was the restorer of portrait-painting;
-resemblance, with character of face and attitude, date from him. He gave
-us Dante, Brunetto Latini, Corso Donato, &c. Mosaic was improved by him,
-and his powers in it shown by the celebrated Navicella, or boat of Saint
-Peter, in the portico of the Basilica at Rome; though restoration has
-transformed it to a work of shreds and patches, and reduced his claim on
-it to the mere name. Missal painting likewise owes him some gratitude;
-and in architecture the grand steeple of the Domo at Florence is the
-work of Giotto.
-
-Implicit imitation checks progress; the numerous school of Giotto were
-for the greater part content to walk behind their master. Taddeo Gaddi,
-the most familiar and most favoured of his pupils, is said by Vasari,
-whom time still suffered to judge with some competence, to have excelled
-him in colouring and mellowness. The works of Taddeo in Sta. Croce
-are inferior in originality and execution to his compositions in the
-Capitolo degli Spagnuoli, where, in the ceiling, he represented some
-Gospel subjects, and in the Cenacolo the Descent of the Holy Spirit, one
-of the beautiful relics of the fourteenth century. On the sides he
-painted the Sciences, with their most eminent professors under each, no
-unfair specimen of poetic conception; here is what remains of vivacity
-and brightness in his tints. Taddeo outlived the period assigned him by
-Vasari; we find him mentioned as late as 1352, which still might not be
-the ultimate date of his life.
-
-Another conspicuous name among his pupils is Stefano of Florence,
-(Fiorentino,) whom Vasari, without hesitation, in every part of the art
-prefers to his master. He was the son of one Catharina, a daughter of
-Giotto; an ardent and inquisitive spirit, quick to discover and eager to
-overcome difficulties; the first who ventured on foreshortening, and if
-success did not fully second his efforts in that, it favoured him in
-perspective, which he much improved, and in the attitudes, variety and
-vivacity of heads. Landino fancied to compliment his memory by repeating
-the silly epithet of "Scimia della Natura," "Ape of Nature," which, from
-the resemblance of his portraits, was given him by the vulgar and the
-dilettanti of his day. His works in Ara Coeli at Rome, at S. Spirito of
-Florence, and elsewhere, perished, and nothing can safely be stamped
-with his name, if it be not a Madonna in Campo Santo at Pisa, grander in
-style than those of his master, but retouched.
-
-Of Tommaso, his son and reputed scholar, a Pietà, which might be taken
-for a work of Giotto, exists at S. Remigi of Florence; and still some
-frescoes at Assisi. They entitle him to the surname of "Giottino," given
-him by his fellow-citizens, who used to say that the spirit of Giotto
-had passed into him and animated his hand.
-
-Without embarrassing ourselves with conjectures on Ugolino da Sienna, we
-pass to the more celebrated name of Simone Memmi, or Simon di Martino, a
-native of the same place, the painter of Laura, and the friend of
-Petrarca, who in two affected sonnets has transmitted him to posterity.
-Whether Simone were the pupil of Maestro Mino as the Siennese, or of
-Giotto as the Florentine writers pretend, is a point beyond decision: he
-restored a picture of the first, and his style has some analogy to that
-of the second, though with more suavity of colour, and more poetry of
-conception. He was the first who dared to fill a spacious façade with
-one composition without dividing it into compartments. Such is that in
-the Capitolo degli Spagnuoli of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, where
-Vasari discovered every beauty of his own time, and where, in the crowd
-of introduced portraits, many have fancied, in spite of chronology, to
-discover the portraits of Laura and her friend; whom probably he did not
-become personally acquainted with till four years after the completion
-of that work, 1336, when he was sent to the Pope at Avignon, became
-familiar with Petrarca, painted Laura, and, strange to tell, reached the
-expectation of the lover, who saw
-
-    "Il lampegiar dell' angelico riso."
-
-Miniature, though the last object of this work, was not the least of
-Memmi's powers. Lanzi has noticed one which fronts a MS. Virgil with the
-commentary of Servius, now in the Ambrosiana at Milan, but formerly
-possessed by Petrarca, who probably dictated the subject, and added the
-following lines:-
-
-    Mantua Virgilium qui talia carmina finxit,
-    Sena tulit Simonem digito qui talia pinxit.
-
-The painting represents Virgil in a sitting attitude ready to write,
-with his face turned upwards as invoking the Muse. Æneas, in martial
-vest and attitude, stands before him, and pointing to his sword, alludes
-to the subject of the Æneis, "Arma Virumque." A shepherd and a
-husbandman, symbols of the Pastorals and Georgics, placed somewhat
-lower, listen to the theme; whilst Servius draws a transparent curtain,
-to denote his labours in unveiling the beauties and removing the
-obscurities of the poet. In this miniature, the originality of
-conception, the beauty and harmony of colour, the varied and appropriate
-drapery, are, however, balanced by rudeness of design, vulgarity of
-character, and deformed extremities.
-
-It was a barbarous singularity of Simone, promiscuously to admit
-different proportions on the same plane: to flank or cross figures of
-natural size with figures a third less than nature.
-
-Lippo, or Filippo Memmi, was the relative, scholar, and imitator, of
-Simone: assisted by his designs, Lippo often executed works, which, had
-he not marked them with his name, would be ascribed to the master: when
-left to his own invention, he rose in nothing above mediocrity, but in
-colour. Sometimes they were partners in the same picture, as in that at
-S. Ansano di Castel Vecchio, at Sienna; sometimes the second finished
-what the first began, as in some works at Ancona and Assisi; and at
-Sienna there remains still something entirely executed by Lippo.
-
-Simone co-operated in the works of S. Maria Novella with Taddeo Gaddi,
-who, with his son, Angelo Gaddi, left a number of pupils, imitators
-through him of Giotto, inferior to both, not much distinguished by
-tradition, and less favoured by time. Of Jacopo di Casentino, the most
-conspicuous, what vestiges remain in the church of Orsanmichele at
-Florence, are in conformity with the style of Taddeo; barriers soon
-overleaped by the vivid fancy of his scholar, Spinello the Aretine, whom
-his own conception of a demon is said to have terrified into insanity
-and death. His son, Parri Spinelli, with barbarous incongruities of
-line, possessed exquisite colour; and his pupil, Lorenzo di Bicci, has
-been compared to Vasari, for the number, dispatch, and opinion of his
-works. Antonio, surnamed Veneziano, whether he were a Venetian or a
-Florentine, is, against evidence of dates and style, supposed to have
-been a pupil of Angelo Gaddi, and to have educated Paolo Uccello, the
-first master of perspective, and Gherardo Starnina, an artist of gay
-style, whose relics live still a chapel of Sta. Croce. They are
-numbered among the last productions of Giotto's expiring epoch, and the
-verge of the fourteenth century, in which we have still to mark, though
-pupils of some other school, the family of Orcagna; Bernardo, a painter;
-Jacopo, a sculptor; but chiefly Andrea, conspicuous for writing,
-painting, sculpture, and architecture, in a degree little inferior to
-Giotto himself. Architects date from him the abolition of the acute
-angle and restoration of semicircular arches, as in the Loggia of the
-Lanzi, which he likewise decorated with sculpture. Some, without
-attention to time, have supposed him the pupil of Angelo Gaddi, but he
-was probably trained to the art by his brother Bernardo, jointly with
-whom he painted in the Capella Strozzi of Sta. Maria Novella, in the
-Campo Santo at Pisa, and alone and better in Sta. Croce, Death,
-Judgement, Paradise, and Hell, placing with Dantesque licence his
-friends among the elect, his enemies with the damned.
-
-The downfall of Pisa had raised Florence to the metropolis of Tuscany,
-and the spirit of its citizens to render its appearance worthy of that
-pre-eminence. Cosmo, styled the father of his country, who tuned the
-public affairs, might with better right have been called the father of
-distinguished talents: never was tyranny meditated on a less suspicious
-plan, or approached by more popular means. The house of the Medici, in
-the quaint Italian phrase, became the Lyceum of Philosophers, the
-Arcadia of Poets, the Academy of Artists. Dello, Paolo, Masaccio, the
-two Peselli, both the Lippi, Benozzo, Sandro, the Ghirlandai, were the
-clients of the family, and emulated each other in their homage. Their
-pictures, according to the usage of the age, full of portraits,
-perpetually presented to the people likenesses of the Medici, and often
-in the characters of the Magi royally robed, the sceptre firmly held in
-the gripe of the Medici, to prepare the public eye gradually for what it
-was soon to witness, the firm establishment of sovereignty in that
-House. The competition of rival citizens, and still more the
-wide-extended influence of religion, diffused Taste and beckoned Talent
-to Florence as to its centre, from every part of Italy. At her call
-Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Filarete, the Rossellini, Verrocchio
-arose, and with their works spread the Elements of Art.
-
-Poetry, that supplies the real features and materials of expression when
-it inspires the thought, arrives at the full display of its powers long
-before its sisters have disentangled themselves from the impediments of
-infancy; and of these, Sculpture, whose aim is infinitely less complex,
-raises the vigorous fabric of forms, whilst Painting is still impotently
-struggling with the rudiments of line, perspective, keeping,
-chiaroscuro, colour; which to unite in an equal degree has hitherto been
-found above the lot of humanity. The imitators of Giotto were in this
-state of struggle; they saw little in chiaroscuro, and less in
-perspective and line; their figures still slip from their planes, their
-fabrics have no true point of sight, their fore-shortenings depended
-solely on the eye: Stefano dal Ponte rather saw than overcame; the rest
-either avoided or palliated these difficulties. The Umbrian Pietro della
-Francesca seems to have been the first who called geometry to the
-assistance of painting, and taught by his works at Arezzo the
-principles of perspective; Brunelleschi formed it into system for
-architecture, and the mathematician Manetti roused the attention of
-Paolo Uccello, who owes the perpetuity of his name nearly exclusively to
-the study of that science. His immoderate attachment to perspective is
-become proverbial;[46] and almost equalled his fondness for birds, from
-which he got his surname. He applied it, from grounds and buildings, to
-the human body, which he foreshortened with a skill unknown to his
-predecessors: and some proofs of it still exist in the figures of God
-and Noè among the chiaroscuroes in the chiostro of Sta. Maria
-Novella, and in the equestrian colossus of Gio. Aguto (John Montacute),
-which he painted in chiaroscuro of terra verde, and which is still in
-the duomo. The art, since its revival, perhaps for the first time showed
-that, if it had dared much, it had dared well: nor did he fall short of
-it in the gigantic imagery of the House Vitali at Bologna; he was,
-however, more employed in painting private furniture: the triumphs of
-Petrarch on some small presses in the gallery of Florence are supposed
-to come from his hand. That he was a master of expression, the instances
-adduced by Vasari leave no doubt; and in describing the flying drapery
-of some friar in the series of pictures relative to S. Benedetto, the
-same writer tells us, that it served as a model to all succeeding
-artists: to such powers, praise of variety is added by the truth and
-diligence with which he copied trees, plants, birds and animals, and for
-which some critic styles him the Bassano of the first epoch. In the
-nearly general wreck of Paolo's works, it is difficult to form a
-judgment of his technic character independent of tradition: but,
-comparing what remains with what we are told, it is evident that he
-reached from one extreme of the Art to the other; and that, if he was
-blameable for frequently playing with a tool instead of using it,
-mistaking an instrument of the Art for Art itself, and means for the end
-of execution, he has been deprived by partiality of the praise due to
-powers which he appears to have possessed in a degree unknown to the
-times that preceded Masaccio.
-
-Masolino da Panicale cultivated chiaroscuro: he was enabled to treat it
-with more truth than his predecessors, by a long practice of modelling
-under the tuition of Lorenzo Ghiberti, the master of design and grouping
-in those days, but whose animation he did not attain. Starnina
-instructed him in colour; and thus by uniting the characteristics of two
-schools, he produced that new style, which, though still infected by
-dryness and clogged by inelegance, possesses grandeur, union and
-breadth: the proofs still remain in the chapel of S. Pietro al Carmine,
-where, besides the Evangelists, he painted several subjects from the
-story of that Apostle. The remaining ones, which he did not live to
-finish, were some years afterward added by his scholar Tomaso Gisioli,
-celebrated by the name of Masaccio from his careless way of living.
-
-Historians, biographers, and poets, unite in dating a new period from
-Masaccio. The compass of his mind led him to uniformity of pursuit, and
-the introduction of style; he had formed his principles on the works of
-Ghiberti and Donatello; perspective he had learnt of Brunelleschi, and
-in an excursion to Rome, it is unreasonable to suppose that he did not
-improve himself on the antique. Gentile da Fabriano and Vittore
-Pisanello were then at Rome, and the high opinion which they are said to
-have expressed of him[47] as the first painter of the age has been
-recorded: it is, however, difficult to say on what that opinion could be
-founded: they were too far advanced in life to see more of Masaccio than
-his juvenile essays, perhaps such as the S. Anna in S. Ambrogio at
-Florence, or what he painted in the chapel of St. Catherine, in the
-church of St. Clemens of Rome, the figures of the ceiling excepted, all
-retouched, and though fine works for the time, of doubtful authority,
-and in no manner to be compared to the pictures del Carmine. Here appear
-the virility of his powers and the legitimacy of his superior claim:
-here the figures, however varied by attitude, pose or are foreshortened
-with that truth and uniformity of success which the less established
-principles of Paolo Uccello did not always reach. In expression,
-sublimity distinguishes Donatello; he always aims at, and sometimes
-succeeds in personifying a sentiment or a passion.[48] Masaccio, more
-dramatic, poises expression by character and propriety; hence he has
-been said, and truly said, to resemble Raffaello.
-
-To be praised immoderately for what, with regard to judgment, deserved
-it least, has, as of others, been likewise the lot of Masaccio: the
-introduction and masterly execution of the man who, in the baptism of
-St. Peter, appears to shiver with cold, is extolled by Vasari, and
-makes, by the verdict of Lanzi, an epoch in art. Had the apostle
-immersed the race of a Northern clime, a man frost-bitten, (_assiderando
-di freddo_,) or impatient of cold, might have been admitted without
-impropriety, but under an Asiatic sun he is worse than superfluous. This
-either Masaccio did not consider, or if he did, fondly sacrificed
-propriety to the expression of an incident, which, had it even been
-admissible, had in itself less dignity, and incomparably less pathos,
-than that of the sick monk on whose eyes and lips the hope of recovery
-seemed to tremble, introduced among the series of pictures from the life
-of St. Benedict, by Paolo Uccello.[49]
-
-A higher and more legitimate praise of Masaccio's expression is, that
-Raffaello not only imitated its general character, but in the same or
-similar subjects sometimes individually adopted it, as in the gesture of
-Paul in the Cartoon of the Areopagus, and that of Adam dismissed from
-Paradise, in the Loggia; and that, if he improved the taste and added
-elegance to the Tuscan's drapery, he closely adhered to its principles,
-simplicity, propriety, and breath.
-
-Of Masaccio's colour, what remains possesses truth, variety, delicacy,
-union, and great relief. He lived not to finish the whole of the Chapel,
-some stories still remaining to be added in 1443, the reputed year of
-his death,[50] which was not without suspicion of having been hastened
-by poison. His other frescoes at Florence have been destroyed by time,
-and perhaps no gallery can produce an authentic picture by his hand, if
-we except the portrait of a youth in the Pitti palace, a work that
-breathes life.
-
-Ghiberti and Donatello had taught Masaccio to find style by selection
-from nature; his followers for half a century, content to look at him
-without adhering to his method, gradually shrunk back to the exility and
-meagreness of the preceding age: without embarrassing ourselves with the
-angelic prettinesses of Frà Giovanni da Fiesole, a name dearer to
-sanctity than to art, and whom both his age and missal-taste prove the
-nursling of another school, we pass to Benozzo Gozzoli, his pupil, who
-strove to forget his puny lessons in the bolder dictates of Masaccio.
-
-That he could not soon do it, is evident from the profusion of
-ornamental glitter and tinsel colouring in the frescoes of the Chapel
-Riccardi. He succeeded better at Pisa, where his Scripture stories cover
-an entire wing of Campo Santo. This enormous enterprise, which, in the
-phrase of Vasari might smite with fear a legion of painters,[51] he is
-said to have completely achieved in two years. Everywhere inferior to
-his model in composition, design, and expression, he often goes beyond
-him in vastness and amenity of scenery, a certain play of ideas and
-picturesque exuberance. After all, perhaps more than one hand shared in
-the execution. Benozzo lived long, and lies buried near his work, where
-public gratitude had placed his sepulchre, and inscribed it with an
-eulogy.[52]
-
-Filippo Lippi, a Carmelitan friar, studied and imitated the works of
-Masaccio, especially in compositions of small proportion, with great
-success. Suavity of conception and colour animates his angels and
-Madonnas: in the large historic frescoes at Pieve di Prato, he
-introduced proportions exceeding the natural size, praised as his
-masterpieces by Vasari, who has related Lippi's escape from the convent;
-his captivity among the Moors; the pictures which he painted at Naples,
-Padoua, and elsewhere; his premature death by poison from the relatives
-of the female by whom he had a natural son, Filippino Lippi. Frà Filippo
-died at Spoleti, 1469, on the point of finishing his great work in the
-dome, where Lorenzo de' Medici, who had demanded but not obtained his
-ashes from the citizens, entombed them under a stately monument
-inscribed by Angelo Poliziano. His scholars and imitators were F.
-Diamante of Prato, the partner of his last work; F. Pesello of Florence,
-and Pesellino his son, whom, if we believe Vasari, shortness of life
-alone intercepted from superior excellence.
-
-About this period the first attempts of painting in oil were made at
-Florence, by Andrea dal Castagno, of detested memory, who had improved
-himself by looking at Masaccio. Domenico, called Veneziano, to whom
-Antonello of Messina had communicated the novel mystery of Johan Van
-Eyk, after practising it with success at home, Loretto, and other parts
-of the Papal State, came to exercise it at Florence: caressed and
-encouraged, he excited the envy and cupidity of Castagno, who under the
-mask of submissive attachment, wheedled himself into his confidence,
-obtained the secret, and then assassinated the hapless donor. The
-treacherous but complete acquisition added lustre to his practice during
-life, but time has swept the sacrilegious produce of his hand, and left
-nothing to the memory of "Andrea degli Impiccati," but the execration of
-posterity.[53]
-
-The farther we leave Masaccio behind, the nearer we approach the golden
-epoch, the more lurid becomes the atmosphere of art. Mediocrity, tinsel
-ostentation, and tasteless diligence mark the greater number of that
-society of craftsmen whom Sixtus IV. conscribed (1474, Manni,) to
-decorate or rather to disfigure the panels of the grand Chapel which
-took its name from him (La Sistina): one of its sides was to be occupied
-by subjects from the Pentateuch, the other by Gospel stories. Pietro
-Perugino excepted, the artists convoked were nearly all Florentines or
-Tuscans; viz. Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Bigordi, Cosimo Rosselli,
-Luca, Signorelli of Cortona, and Don Bartolomeo of Arezzo, with their
-assistants. The superintendence of the whole the Pope, with the usual
-vanity and ignorance of princes, gave to Sandro, the least qualified of
-the group, whose barbarous taste and dry minuteness palsied, or
-assimilated with his own, the powers of his associates, and rendered the
-whole a monument of puerile ostentation, and conceits unworthy of its
-place. Nor is it from what there remains of either, that the names of
-Luca Signorelli and Domenico Bigordi claim that attention which history
-owes to the first as the real precursor of Michael Angelo, and to the
-second as the master of his rudiments.
-
-Luca Egidio Signorelli, of Cortona,[54] less to be considered as the
-reviver of Masaccio's style than as the founder of that which
-distinguished the succeeding epoch, might have led its banners, as his
-life stretched beyond that of Raphael and Lionardo, had his principle
-been more uniform. The greater part of his works exhibit the evident
-struggle of his own perceptions with the prescriptive ones of his time,
-and a kind of coalition between the barbarity of the expiring and the
-emancipated taste of the rising æra. The best evidence of this is in the
-Duomo of Orvieto, where in the mixed imagery of final dissolution and
-infernal punishment, he has scattered ideas of original conception,
-character and attitude, in copious variety, but not without numerous
-remnants of Gothic alloy. The angels who announce the impending doom or
-scatter plagues, exhibit with awful simplicity bold foreshortenings,
-whilst the St. Michael presents only the tame heraldic figure and
-attitude of a knight all cased in armour. In the expression of the
-condemned groups and dæmons, he chiefly dwells on the supposed perpetual
-renewal of the pangs attending on the last struggles of life with death,
-contrasted with the inexorable scowl or malignant grin of fiends
-methodizing torture: a horrid feature reserved by Dante for the last pit
-of his Inferno, and far beyond the culinary abominations of Sandro
-Botticelli.[55]
-
-Though Luca's style of design was no more that of Masaccio than Michael
-Agnolo's that of Raphael, less characteristic than grand, and fit to be
-the vehicle of those conceptions and attitudes which furnished hints of
-imitation to the painter of the Last Judgement in the Sistina, yet he
-was master of a grace in celestial scenery and angelic attitudes
-unapproached by his contemporaries, seldom equalled and never surpassed
-by his successors.
-
-Luca Signorelli was a painter of much popularity. Urbino, Volterra,
-Florence, Rome, his native and many other towns, possess or possessed
-works of his. He was related to the family of the Vasari of Arezzo, and
-caressed and encouraged to the art his infant biographer.[56]
-
-Another of the artists employed in the Sistina, inferior to Luca, but
-of no despicable (though, if we look at Masaccio, too highly rated)
-powers, was Domenico Bigordi, commonly called Del Ghirlandajo;[57] this
-is he under whose auspices not only his son Ridolfo, but even Bonaroti
-and the best artists of the succeeding epoch, began their course.
-Precision of outline, decorum of countenance, variety of ideas, facility
-and diligence, distinguish his works. He is the first of Florentines,
-who gave depth and keeping to composition: if gold and tinsel glitter
-are not entirely banished from his colours, they appear at least less
-often. He was fond of introducing portraits among his actors, but with
-selection and of distinguished characters; though hands and feet had no
-part in his attention to physiognomy. The churches Degli Innocenti,
-Santa Trinità, and Sta. Maria Novella at Florence, possess his most
-celebrated productions, and many are scattered over Tuscany and the
-Ecclesiastic State. Of the two which he painted in the Sistina, the
-Resurrection of Christ perished; the Vocation of Peter and Andrew to the
-Apostolate Survives.
-
-Cosimo Rosselli and Pier di Cosimo likewise employed at the Sistina,
-inferior in all essential parts to their competitors, owe the perpetuity
-of their names less to their parti-coloured glare and immoderate display
-of gold and azure, which attracted the vulgar eye of their employer the
-Pope, than to the luck of having been the masters of Bartolomeo della
-Porta, and Andrea del Sarto.
-
-Piero and Antonio Pollajuoli, though employed only as statuaries in the
-same Chapel, possessed no inconsiderable powers as painters. Piero's
-pictures at S. Miniato discover the scholar of Castagno, austere
-countenances and deep and massy colour; but in novelty of composition
-and design he yields to his brother and pupil Antonio, whose Martyrdom
-of St. Sebastian in the Chapel Pucci of that church, though humble in
-style, crude in colour, and oddly rather than originally conceived, has
-been numbered with the first productions of the age, because with the
-earliest traces of legitimate anatomy it exhibits its application, and
-subordinates enumeration to function. Both the Pollajuoli died at Rome.
-
-Don Bartolomeo of Arezzo, having nothing to add of his own to the works
-of the Sistina, is mentioned here only as the helper of Luca Signorelli
-and Pietro Perugino; nor is Filippino Lippi, the natural son of Frà
-Filippo, numbered among the companions of Sandro his master, though the
-perpetual recurrence of antique customs and dresses in his works makes
-it probable that he formed his juvenile studies at Rome. Inferior in
-real capacity to his father, he may be praised rather for the accessory
-than the substantial parts of his works: he filled with an unequal hand
-the remaining panels left by Masaccio al Carmine; and in the Minerva at
-Rome, yields the palm in expression and amenity of ideas to his own
-scholar Raffaelino del Garbo, whose early works at Monte Oliveto of
-Florence, and elsewhere, give sufficient evidence that he might have
-raised himself to the first artists of his day, had not the cravings of
-a numerous family crushed his powers, and poverty and dejection hastened
-his death. His contemporary Andrea Verocchio, though a celebrated
-statuary, and a designer of style, has deserved our notice as a
-painter, only because he was the master of Lionardo da Vinci, the first
-name in the annals of Tuscany's golden epoch.
-
-Vinci, a burgh of Lower Valdarno, had the honour of giving a surname to
-Lionardo, the natural son[58] of one Ser Piero, a state notary at
-Florence. Elevated by nature above the common standard of men, born to
-discover, he joined to boundless inquiry intrepidity of pursuit, and
-lofty conception to minute investigation, nor only in the arts connected
-with his own, music and poesy, but in science, philosophy, mathematics,
-mechanics, hydrostatics: this wide mental range, supported by equal
-vigour and gracefulness of body, was commended by every accomplishment
-of a gentleman. Such was the genius whom Nature had destined to
-establish art on elements, to open the realms of light and shade, to
-inspire the subject with its tone, and to poise expression between
-insipidity and caricature.
-
-Notwithstanding the distractions of so many diverging inclinations, for
-powers they could not yet be called, an innate attachment to the art
-appears to have predominated at the earliest period to such a degree
-that Ser Piero determined to place Lionardo under his friend Verocchio,
-whom he soon excelled in painting,[59] and in modelling equalled.
-
-The obscurity which involves the life of Lionardo from his boyish years,
-through the bloom of youth, to the vigour of manhood, can only be
-accounted for by that independence of mind which made him prefer
-indulgence of his own various inclinations to a decided, steady, and if
-more confined, more lucrative pursuit of art. By what means he, whom
-Vasari describes as possessing "nothing,"[60] was enabled to gratify
-studies and fancies equally expensive, no where appears; it appears not
-that he was patronized by the great and rich; he escaped the eye of the
-Medici;[61] it was reserved for Lodovico Sforza to discover and to
-conduct the first citizen of Florence to Milano, and for aught we are
-told, rather from expectation of amusement than motives of homage.
-Lodovico was a dilettante in music, and wished to increase the harmony
-of his concerts with the silver tones of the lyre, invented and
-constructed by Lionardo, who, we are told, soon distanced all rival
-performers, and by the aid of his powers as an "Improvisatore," became
-the object of general admiration: it was then, and perhaps not till
-then, that the Duke cast a steadier eye on his superior accomplishments,
-and allowed the musician to become a benefactor to the public in
-adopting his plans for the establishment and direction of an academy;
-and granting the means for carrying into effect the still more important
-ones of conducting the Adda to Milano, and a navigable canal from
-Martisana to Chiavenna, and the Valteline, &c. plans and effects only
-interrupted by the fall of the Sforzas and the captivity of Lodovico.
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[44] This picture has been confounded with another of the same subject
-by the same master, and the addition of the Donor's portrait, Frate
-Elia, which exists no more. The mutilated inscription on that mentioned
-above, has been thus restored by Lanzi,
-
-    JuNTA PISanus
-    JunTINI Me fecit.
-
-
-[45] Born 1240, died 1300.
-
-[46] "Oh che dolce cosa è questa prospettiva!" Oh what a dulcet thing is
-this perspective! This exclamation, usual with Paolo nodding over his
-compasses when his wife called him to bed, though too late to furnish
-the hint of a Novel to Boccaccio, has been fondly repeated by some grave
-writers from Vasari to the author of Lorenzo de' Medici, and has
-contributed to place Paolo, with the mystic help of his surname, in
-rather a ludicrous light.
-
-[47] Maffei's Verona Illustrata, t. iii. p. 277.
-
-[48] He was the precursor of Michael Agnolo, and deserved the motto by
-which Borghini marked some of their designs in the portfolio of Vasari,
-(Vita di Donato.) viz.
-
-    E Donatos Bonarrotizei,
-    E Bonarrotos Donatizei.
-
-
-[49] "Vi è un monacho vecchio con due grucce sotto le braccia, nel qual
-si vide un affetto mirabile, e forse speranza di riaver la
-sanità."--Vasari, Vita di P. Uccello, t. ii. p. 56.
-
-[50] Born in 1401.
-
-[51] "Opera Terribilissima--impresa chi arebbe giustamente fatto paura a
-una legione di pittori." On the whole, Vasari seems to lay more stress
-on the quantity than the quality of Benozzo's works.
-
-[52] 1478.
-
-[53] 1478, when by the conspiracy of the Pazzi and their adherents,
-Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated in S. Maria del Fiore, and his
-brother Lorenzo wounded, it was resolved by the Signoria that paintings
-of the conspirators, hung by their feet, should be exposed in front of
-the Governor's palace; and the commission being given to Andrea, he
-executed it with such felicity of resemblance, such variety of hanging
-attitudes, and so much to the contentment of connoisseurs, that from
-that instant he lost the name of Andrea dal Castagno in that of "Andrea
-degli Impiccati," or of the hanged.--_Vasari._ Of this exhibition the
-loss may be regretted, as it would have showed us Andrea in his element.
-
-[54] 1439-40--1521.
-
-[55] There is to the old edition in folio, of Dante, by Niccolo della
-Magna, a print of the Inferno annexed, which bears the name of Sandro
-Botticelli; Vasari in his Life says, that he commented a part of Dante
-and figured his Inferno and published it.
-
-[56] He was the nephew of Lazzaro Vasari, a helper of Pietro della
-Francesca, and great uncle of Giorgio the biographer; who in the Life of
-Luca, with not less fondness than vanity, relates the admonition and
-encouragement he gave to his father and himself, in a visit which he
-paid in his old age to their family at Arezzo.--Vita di L. Signorelli,
-t. iii. p. 9.
-
-[57] His father, who was a goldsmith, invented and first manufactured
-the garlands which were at that time the fashionable head-dress of the
-Florentine girls.--Vasari, Vita di D. Ghirlandajo, vol. ii. p. 410.
-
-[58] Among the uncertainties of dates, those relative to the birth of
-illegitimate children, for obvious reasons the most frequent, are the
-most perplexing. The birth of Lionardo has been fixed at various dates,
-viz. 1443; Lett. Pittor. t. ii. p. 192; 1445, according to the
-computation of Vasari; 1455, by Dargenville; 1467, by Padre Resta; with
-more probability 1444, by D.V. Pagave of Milano, followed by Fiorillo;
-but with most at 1452, by Durazzini, adopted by Lanzi. It seems
-improbable that Verocchio, the friend of Ser Piero, should have been
-only twelve years older than his pupil. Lionardo died in 1519.
-
-[59] In the figure of the Angel, conceived and executed by him, in the
-Baptism of the Saviour, at St. Salvi, which excelled the work of
-Verocchio so much, that indignant to be outdone by a boy, he dropped the
-pencil, and for ever abandoned painting. The statues of St. Thomas, in
-Orsanmichele at Florence, and of the Horse of Collevere at Venice, prove
-that Verocchio's real talent was sculpture: but the models of the three
-statues cast in bronze, by Rustici, for S. Giov. at Florence, and that
-of the great horse at Milano, place the pupil at least upon a level with
-the master in that branch of art.
-
-[60] "E non avendo egli, si può dir nulla, e poco lavorando, del
-continuo tenne servitori, e cavalli, &c." For all this it is the more
-difficult to account, as an attempt to possess himself of the
-philosopher's stone has never been mentioned among Lionardo's
-eccentricities, though he was familiar with alchymists.
-
-[61] Lorenzo de' Medici occurs not in the Life of Lionardo, and his
-acquaintance with Leo X. and Giuliano de' Medici relates to the latter
-periods of it.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF FLORENCE.
-
-
-We are now arrived at the epoch which forms the distinctive character of
-the Tuscan school, the epoch of Michael Agnolo. In placing him here,
-chronology has been less attended to than the spirit of works; for Frà
-Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, and others, his contemporaries or juniors,
-belong more properly to the period of Lionardo than his; the elements of
-which he gave in the Cartoon of Pisa, and the consummation in the
-Capella Sistina, on which his school and the imitation of his style were
-founded; and to which the politics of his time, the splendid oligarchy
-of the Medici, and the fierce republican spirit of their opponents, gave
-an energy and produced efforts, unknown to society in repose.
-
-Notwithstanding the insinuating arts by which the Medici had debauched
-public affection, and that undermining power which at last changed
-influence to tyranny, they were in less than a century[62] three times
-exiled from their country. The first, the banishment of Cosmo, called
-the Father of his Country, lasted not above one year, and drew no
-consequences; for the interval between it and the next (1494) was marked
-with uniform success, and its last twenty years[63] with the splendid
-administration and the extended patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
-His Garden near the church of S. Marco, which he opened as a repository
-and a school of art, has been little less celebrated than the Hesperian
-ones of old: it contained, if not all that had been discovered, what
-could be purchased of antique statues, basso-relievoes, and fragments of
-every kind; and the apartments were hung with pictures, cartoons, and
-designs of Donatello, Brunellesco, Paolo Uccello. Frà Giovanni da
-Fiesole, Masaccio, &c.; here the student was not only instructed, but,
-by the magnificence of the founder, supported; and it may without
-exaggeration be asserted, that whatever rose to eminence in the art at
-that period, was the offspring of Lorenzo's garden.
-
-His death was followed by the expulsion of his sons, Pietro, Giovanni,
-afterwards Leo X., and Julian, in the sequel Duke of Nemours. An
-immediate anarchy succeeded the expulsion; the populace broke into their
-houses, destroyed or carried off their furniture, and demolished the
-residence of Giovanni, the garden of Lorenzo, and the palace on the Via
-Larga,[64] at once. The numerous partisans of the family, however,
-contrived to save much.[65]
-
-Other circumstances conspired to render this interval of anarchy
-pernicious to art, till the return of the Medici in 1512. Towards the
-close of the fifteenth century, the Dominican Frà Girolamo Savonarola,
-of enthusiastic memory, by prophecies and sermons, loaded with
-democratic principles, gained gradually such an ascendancy over the
-minds of the people, that the Signoria found themselves forced to adopt
-a senate at large; in other words, to submit to a democracy. But
-Savonarola, not content with political victory, aimed at a total
-revolution in morals, and continued to lash the profligacy of public
-manners, overflowing in voluptuous song and music, or gazing at the
-lascivious nudities of statues and pictures, as irresistible incentives
-to vice. It had been customary during carnival, to erect certain cabins
-in the market-place, to set them on fire on the eve of Ash-Wednesday,
-and bid them farewell amid the shouts of convivial mirth and the frolic
-of amorous dalliance. Savonarola instituted in 1497 a public festival of
-another kind: a large scaffold was erected in the market-place, a vast
-number of the finest specimens in painting and sculpture, offensive from
-their nudities, were collected; the pictures placed on the first step;
-the sculptures, especially when portraits of first-rate Florentine
-belles, disposed on the second; the whole inclosed by foreign precious
-tapestry, and that, with great solemnity, set on fire. The scaffolding
-of the next year excelled the first in magnificence; its gorgeous
-apparel invested the busts of the most celebrated beauties of former
-years; those of the Bencina, Lena Morella, Bina and Maria de'Lenzi,
-works of the most eminent sculptors; on it was placed a copy of
-Petrarca, decorated with gold, missal-painting, and miniatures,
-estimated at fifty scudi d'oro; and to prevent theft, the whole was
-constantly guarded. The procession approached, surrounded the scaffold,
-and amid a concert of consecrating hymns, bells, trumpets, cymbals, and
-the acclamations of the Signoria and the people, the victims, sprinkled
-with holy water, were delivered to flame by the torches of the
-guards.[66] Such was the epidemic influence of this enthusiasm, that
-even artists, the gentle Frà Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and many more
-caught the infection, and contributed to the sacrifice, till the death
-of Savonarola and the return of the Medici extinguished the furor.[67]
-
-The democracy, however, gave origin to two works, which not only atoned
-for the ravages it had committed, but whose splendour no subsequent æra
-of art has been able to eclipse, or perhaps to equal: the two Cartoons
-of Lionardo da Vinci and M. Angelo Buonarroti, destined to decorate the
-senatorial hall, by order of Pietro Soderini. They produced an immediate
-revolution in art, but disappeared like meteors in the tumult that
-attended the reinstatement of the Medici and the fall of the
-Gonfaloniere, 1512.
-
-The third expulsion of the Medici--Hippolyto and Alessandro, the sons of
-Giuliano the Magnificent, and all their relatives--was the consequence
-of the sack of Rome, 1527, and the Pontificate of Clemente VII. The
-Medici, pressed by the moment, consigned part of their technic treasure,
-their bronzes, cameos, &c. to the care of their client Baccio
-Bandinelli.[68] During the havoc, Michael Angelo's statue of David lost
-an arm,[69] and the waxen figures of Leo X. and Clemente VII. in the
-church of the "Annunciata," were mutilated and carried off; and perhaps
-much more was lost in the demolition of the suburbs, which took place to
-secure the town itself against the siege of 1529. But active resistance
-and lampoons proved equally ineffectual; the destiny of the Medici
-prevailed, and Florence paid ducal homage in 1530 to Alessandro; whose
-assassination, indeed, by Lorenzo his relative, commonly called
-Lorenzino, produced, six years afterwards, another sedition and farther
-damage to their stores of art by the soldiers, who, at the instigation
-of Alessandro Vitelli, broke into and plundered both their houses. Cosmo
-the First succeeded Alessandro, and left uninterrupted dominion to his
-heirs: but if the consolidation of monarchy prevented the momentary
-devastations of insurrection, it failed to re-produce the splendid
-period that flashed athwart the storms of democracy.
-
-
-MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI.
-
-1474--1564.
-
-M. Angelo was born at Castel Caprese, and showed such early proofs of a
-decided attachment to art, that he was put into the school of Domenico
-del Ghirlandaio. Here he soon advanced beyond the principles of the
-master, who, jealous of a rival in his pupil, recommended him to Lorenzo
-de Medici, for admission among the students of sculpture in his garden;
-where, under the tuition of Bertoldo,[70] an ancient scholar of
-Donatello, he soon mastered the elements, and, equally conspicuous for
-his superiority and diligence, attracted the attention and gained the
-patronage of Lorenzo, but excited the envy of his fellow-students, one
-of whom, Torrigiano, on some slight provocation, with a blow of the fist
-shattered his nose, which left him with a mark for life.
-
-That predilection for sculpture imbibed from his earliest days and now
-invigorated by the incessant study of the antique with practice, the
-successful specimens mentioned in copies and productions of his own,[71]
-leave little authority to the tradition that he studied much after
-Masaccio.
-
-His mind appears to have anticipated the expulsion of the Medici, and he
-left Florence for Bologna, where he found a protector in Aldrovandi, for
-whom he executed two small statues, of an Angel and of a St. Petronius
-on the tomb of S. Dominico. After his return to Florence he continued to
-work in sculpture, and a legend, less probable than amusing, of an Amor
-sold for an antique to Cardinal Riario, has been fondly repeated by his
-biographers. He now went to Rome and produced two of his most surprising
-works--the Bacchus of the Museo Fiorentino, and the Madonna della Pietà
-in one of the chapels of the Basilica of S. Pietro. On his return to
-Florence, Pietro Soderini tried his powers on a huge block of marble,
-mutilated by the ignorance of one Maestro Simone: he contrived to rear
-from it the statue of David, which, in 1504, was placed, and still
-remains in front of the old palace. These works, not less discriminated
-by peculiarity of character, than connected by propriety of style and
-energy of finish, were produced within the short period of six years,
-and equally prove the wide range of his powers, and the perseverance of
-his application to sculpture.
-
-What he did as painter, during, or soon after this period, is for us
-reduced to the single specimen which he executed for Angelo Doni; for
-the far-famed Cartoon of Pisa, of which we soon shall have occasion to
-speak, begun in contest with Lionardo da Vinci, but not finished till
-after his second return from Rome, perished, as a whole, long before the
-middle of the sixteenth century.
-
-Soon after his election to the Pontificate, Giulio II. smitten with the
-wish of a sepulchral monument, called M. Angelo to Rome for that
-purpose. His first plan was to make it colossal, and on all sides
-detached, but the obstacles which were thrown in its way for a number of
-years, reduced it at length to the form in which it now appears at S.
-Pietro in Vincoli, with probably one figure only by M. Angelo's own
-hand, the celebrated statue of Moses in front. The attachment of Giulio
-to M. Angelo was great, but the independent spirit of the artist
-greater. Indignant at being refused access once to the Pontiff, whose
-mind was worried by the disturbances at Bologna, he fled, and though
-pursued by five messengers with letters pressing him to come back,
-obstinately went on to Florence; nor could his three breves[72]
-addressed to the Signoria, draw him from his asylum; till Pier Soderini
-guaranteed his safety by investing him with the title of envoy from the
-Republic. Thus equipped, and accompanied by Cardinal Soderini, brother
-to the Gonfaloniere, he set out for Bologna, was reconciled to the Pope,
-and made his statue in bronze. It was placed over the gate of S.
-Petronio, but was thrown down in 1511 by the party of the Bentivogli,
-and, with the exception of the head, said to have been preserved by Duke
-Alfonso of Ferrara, converted into a piece of heavy artillery.
-
-Scarcely returned to Rome, M. Angelo, by command of Giulio, instigated
-as it is supposed by Bramante and Giuliano da Sangallo, found himself
-forced to try his powers on a novel theatre of art, the decoration of
-the ceiling and lunette of the Capella Sistina. Whatever were the
-motives of the two architects, whether private pique, or envy of M.
-Angelo's influence over the Pontiff, or friendship for Raffaello, and
-the desire of showing his superiority over one whom they deemed a novice
-in fresco, they deserved the thanks of their own and every succeeding
-epoch, for the most eminent service ever rendered to art. Vasari owns
-that M. Angelo, conscious of his want of practice, endeavoured to escape
-from the commission, and even proposed Raffaello as fitter for the task;
-but his powers soon supplied what circumstances had refused, and single
-conquered with every obstacle Time itself; for, nearly fabulous to
-relate, the whole, though interrupted more than once by the Pontiff's
-impatience, was sufficiently finished to be exhibited to the public in
-one year and ten months.
-
-This task finished, M. Angelo, eager to resume his labours on the
-monument, was disappointed by the sudden death of Giulio, (1513,) and
-the election of Leo X. produced a total change in his situation; he was
-ordered to Florence to construct the front of the Laurentian Library.
-
-Though the death of Leo, or rather the accession of Adrian VI. had
-paralysed art, Michael Angelo employed the dull interim by adding some
-statues to the monument of Giulio; till, in 1523, Clemente VII.
-reappointed him to the superintendence of the new sacristy and library
-of S. Lorenzo. It was about this time that he finished and sent to Rome
-the statue of Christ, still placed in the Minerva.
-
-The arts received a new shock from the sack of Rome, 1527, and the
-expulsion of the Medici from Florence, at which crisis the Signoria
-conferred on Michael Angelo, who was a warm Republican,[73] the
-superintendence of the fortifications and the defence of Monte Miniato,
-on which the safety of the city depended. Meanwhile what time he could
-save from his public trust, he secretly[74] employed to finish or
-advance the symbolic and monumental statues of S. Lorenzo, and from the
-cartoon to paint in distemper a Leda for the Duke of Ferrara. Finding,
-however, that no defence could save the city, he saved himself by the
-secret paths of S. Miniato, and escaped to Venice, 1529; from whence he
-only returned to find the dominion of the Medici once more established,
-himself pardoned, again employed by Clemente at S. Lorenzo, and soon
-after sent for to Rome on a plan of painting two central frescoes, the
-Last Judgement and the Fall of Lucifer, for the Sistine Chapel,--long
-favourite ideas of the artist,[75] but with the works at Florence for
-that time checked by the death of Clemente, 1534. He now with redoubled
-ardour applied to the monument of Giulio, urged by his devotion to the
-house of De Rovere, the considerable pecuniary advance he had received,
-and the threats of the executors and the Duke of Urbino; but the
-accession of Paul III. again frustrated his exertions: the Pontiff
-resolved to have the exclusive boast of powers he had so long admired,
-interposed his authority, and obliged the executors and agents of the
-Duke to give up the original circumambient plan, and content themselves
-with the storied front which exists now.
-
-This adjusted, Michael Angelo immediately proceeded to comply with the
-wishes of the Pope: if Paolo was inferior to Giulio in impetuosity, he
-was his equal in fervour of attachment to art, and excelled him, if not
-every other name which patronage has distinguished, in personal respect
-and public homage to the artist. No work ever received countenance and
-honours equal to those conferred on the Last Judgement of Michael
-Angelo, from its plan to its ultimate finish by Paolo Farnese. His first
-visit to the artist was attended by a train of ten cardinals:[77] though
-ambitious to have the work consecrated to his own name, in deference to
-Michael Angelo's attachment to the memory of Giulio, he submitted to his
-refusal of displacing the arms of De Rovere at the top of the picture,
-in favour of the Farnesian.[78] Induced by the specious sophistry of
-Sebastian del Piombo to prefer oil to fresco in the execution of the
-work, he permitted the wall to be prepared for that purpose, but on
-Michael Angelo's declaring oil painting an art for women only and
-sedentary tameness, he yielded to the decision, and patiently saw the
-whole apparatus dashed to the ground. When, before its final disclosure
-to the public, he took a private view of the whole composition at the
-Chapel, less convinced than irritated by the bigoted philippic of an
-attendant prelate against the daring display of immodest nudity, he
-acquiesced in the artist's well-known revenge, and refused to revoke or
-mitigate the punishment inflicted on the unlucky critic.[79]
-
-The first conception of the Last Judgement, which completes the plan
-originally laid down for the decoration of the Chapel, notwithstanding
-the obstacles which protracted the execution, must find its date in the
-Pontificate of Giulio, from the Cartoons probably begun under Clemente.
-M. Angelo proceeded to the fresco itself at an early period, if not
-immediately after the accession of Paolo, 1534, and finished it in 1541,
-or perhaps 1542; for both these years are mentioned by Vasari; who, if
-not present at the removal of the scaffolding, attended its immediate
-display to the public. The completion of this 'multitudinous' work, M.
-Angelo, at an age of 68, or somewhat beyond, might justly consider as
-the consummation of his public career in painting: but the Pontiff,
-still ambitious to possess exclusive specimens of his powers in a fabric
-built by his own orders and consecrated to his own name, obliged him to
-continue his labours in two huge frescoes of the Capella Paolina,
-representing the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St.
-Peter. The lassitude inseparable from the waste of so much energy on the
-Last Judgement, the mental and bodily fatigue attendant on the
-arrangement and execution of new plans, if less enormous less congenial,
-protracted their ultimate completion to his 75th year, proved them
-children of necessity rather than choice, and confirmed the truth of
-his observation to Vasari, that painting in fresco, the union of powers
-required for a great public work, is not an art of old age.
-
-And here indeed terminates the career of the Painter; the remainder of
-his life was divided between architecture and sculpture. This, which had
-always been his favourite pursuit, was now become the darling companion
-of his private hours, the amusement of his solitude, and the
-preservative of his health--for this purpose he furnished his study with
-a colossal block, destined for the complicated group of a Pietà: but
-though age had neither tamed his conception nor palsied his hand,[80] it
-checked his perseverance; he no longer struggled to subdue the flaws of
-his materials or to give them the air of beauties; he dismissed the
-group unfinished, and continued to exercise himself on another of
-inferior size.
-
-The death of Antonio da S. Gallo, 1546, put it in the power of Paolo to
-create M. Angelo architect of S. Pietro, a trust of which he acquitted
-himself with a superiority which baffled all the opposition of venality
-and envy. He was probably, from Ictinus to our time, the first and the
-last of architects who refused salary and emolument, and consecrated his
-labours to divine love. Some of his successors, perhaps, might insinuate
-that he indemnified himself with being at the same time architect of the
-Campidoglio and the Farnese Palace.
-
-After the demise of Paolo, Cosmo I. Duke of Florence, by means of
-Vasari, earnestly intreated him to pass the remainder of his life at
-Florence; but the infirmities of age, and still more, inward grief for
-the subversion of the republic, with indignation at the established
-usurpation of the Medici, rendered these intreaties ineffectual.
-Equally unshaken by them and the vile rumour of his dotage, spread by
-the venal gang of Pirrho Ligorio, after crowning the Basilica with its
-cupola, he steered through calm and tempest on to his ninetieth year,
-the last of his life, 1564, and was buried in S. Apostoli; but, by the
-orders of Cosmo, secretly conveyed to Florence, where the pomp of
-academical exequies, the starched eloquence of Varchi, and a monument in
-Santa Croce from a design of Vasari, awaited his remains.
-
-It is difficult to decide who understood Michael Angelo less, his
-admirers or his censors; though both rightly agree in placing him at the
-head of an epoch; those of the re-establishment, these of the
-perversion, of style.
-
-All extremes touch each other: languid praise and frigid censure belong
-to the paths of mediocrity, but he who enlarges the circle of knowledge,
-passes from the realm of talents to that of genius, leaps on an
-undiscovered or long-lost shore, and stamps it with his name, commands
-indiscriminate homage, and provokes irreconcilable censure. He who
-reflects on the "Più che Uman, Angelo divino" of Ariosto, the "via
-terribile" of Agostino Carracci, and for centuries on the general
-homage of a nation allowed to legislate in art, will not be easily
-persuaded that these epithets, this prerogative, were granted to an
-artist merely for correctness of design or anatomic discrimination, or
-that he exclusively obtained them for uniting sculpture, painting, and
-architecture in himself; three branches of one stem, and diverging only
-in mechanism and application, they have been more than once eminently
-united by others, and were seldom altogether separated before the time
-of Carlo Maratta. And yet this is all on which the eminence of Michael
-Angelo has been hitherto supposed to rest, all that can be gathered from
-the astrologic nonsense and the Tuscan loquacity of his blind adorer,
-Vasari--and what he found not, it would be time idly lost to search for
-in his contemporaries and successors, down to Reynolds, who, though
-chiefly smitten with the breadth of Michael Angelo, knew him better than
-all the copyists of his school.
-
-The art preceded Michael Angelo as a craft; more or less practice alone
-distinguishes Pietro Perugino from Cimabue: whilst copy and imitation
-remain synonymes, there can be no choice in art; instead of the real
-nature it will copy the accidents of objects, and substitute the model
-for the man.
-
-Michael Angelo appeared and soon felt that the candidate of legitimate
-fame is to build his works, not on the imbecile forms of a degenerate
-race, disorganized by clime, country, education, laws, and society; not on
-the transient refinements of fashion or local sentiment, unintelligible
-beyond their circle and century to the rest of mankind; but to graft them
-on Nature's everlasting forms and those general feelings of humanity,
-which no time can efface, no mode of society obliterate;--and in
-consequence of these reflections discovered the epic part of painting:
-that basis, that indestructibility of forms and thoughts, that simplicity
-of machinery on which Homer defied the ravages of time, which sooner or
-later must sweep to oblivion every work propped by baser materials and
-factitious refinements.
-
-The subject of the Sistine Chapel is Theocracy and Religion, the Origin
-and the first Duty of Man. All minute discrimination of character is
-alien to the primeval simplicity of the moment--God and Man alone
-appear. The veil of Eternity is rent; Time, Space, and Matter teem; life
-darts from God, and adoration from the creature; deviation from this
-principle is the origin of Evil; the economy of Justice and Grace
-commences; Prophets and Sibyls in awful synod are the heralds of the
-Redeemer, and the host of patriarchs the pedigree of the Son of Man. The
-brazen Serpent and the fall of Haman, the Giant subdued by the
-Stripling, and the Conqueror destroyed by female weakness, are types of
-His mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces Him immortal, and the
-magnificence of the Last Judgement sums up the whole and re-unites the
-Founder and the race.
-
-Michael Angelo, in his Last Judgement, with a few exceptions, has wound
-up the life of man, considered as the subject of religion, faithful or
-rebellious; and in a generic manner has distributed happiness and
-misery.
-
-The more finished a character, the more, discriminated by his actions and
-turn of thought from his contemporaries, he pursues paths of his own, so
-much the more he attracts, so much the more he repels; the ardour of the
-one is equal to the violence of the other: he is not merely disliked, he
-is detested by all who have no sense for him; whilst by those who enter
-his train of thought, or sympathise with him, he is adored. Indifference
-has no share in what relates to him, it is a softer word for antipathy--it
-resembles the indifference of a female wooed; her indifference, her
-apathy, is a refusal without a verbal repulse. Where yes or no must
-decide, the mouth that can form neither, rejects. The principles, the
-style of Michael Angelo, are of that so closely-connected magnitude, that
-they are either all true or all false: pretended gold is either gold or
-not--the purer, the simpler a substance, the less it can coalesce with
-another; a pretended diamond of the size of a fist, is either of
-inestimable value or of none. If Michael Angelo did not establish art on a
-solid basis, he subverted it; he can claim only the heresies of paradox
-and receive their reward--disgust.
-
-What Armenini relates as a proof of his nearly intuitive power of
-conception and execution, may be repeated as a much stronger instance of
-his deference and gratitude for the most humble claims. "Meeting one
-day, behind S. Pietro, with a young Ferrarese, a potter who had baked
-some model of his, M. Angelo thanked him for his care, and in return
-offered him any service in his power: the young man, emboldened by his
-condescension, fetched a sheet of paper, and requested him to draw the
-figure of a standing Hercules: M. Angelo took the paper, and retiring to
-a small shed near by, put his right foot on a bench, and with his elbow
-on the raised knee and his face on his hand stood meditating a little
-while, then began to draw the figure, and having finished it in a short
-time, beckoned to the youth, who stood waiting at a small distance, to
-approach, gave it him, and went away toward Belvedere. That design, as
-far as I was then able to judge, in precision of outline, shadow, and
-finish, no miniature could excel; it afforded matter of astonishment to
-see accomplished in a few minutes what might have been reasonably
-supposed to have taken up the labour of a month."
-
-After the demise of Raffaello, legislation in Art was no longer disputed
-with M. Angelo; he not only became the oracle of youth, but appears to
-have inherited all the popularity of his great rival. A signal, though
-little known proof of this, is told by Bellori, in the Life of Federigo
-Barrocci, who, he says, used to tell, that when, drawing one day in
-company with Taddeo Zuccari a frieze of Polidoro, Michael Angelo, as
-usual, passed by on his little mule on his way to the palace, all the
-youths rose and ran to meet him with their drawings in their hands;
-Federigo alone remained bashfully behind in his place, which when Taddeo
-saw, he took his little portfolio to Michael Angelo, who attentively
-examined the designs, among which was a careful copy of his Moses; he
-praised it, and desiring to see the lad who had drawn that figure,
-animated him to pursue the method of study which he had begun.
-
-The deference which he paid to the unassuming and the humble, he amply
-redeemed by the full assumption of his rights, and conscious assertion
-of superiority, when provoked to the contest by those who considered
-themselves as his equals, entered into competition with him, or
-attempted to share in his labours. Thus he repaid the sarcasms of Pietro
-Perugino, by calling him publicly a dunce in art; and when Pietro
-smarting, impatient of the ridicule, summoned him to the Tribunal of the
-Eight, he made good his charge, and saw him dismissed with contempt.
-Thus he rejected all partnership with Jacopo Sansovino, in the execution
-of the Facciata of San Lorenzo at Florence, though Leone X. appears to
-have intended it, by sending both together to Pietra Santa to provide
-the marbles necessary for that purpose, and examining both their models.
-
-When Paolo III. had resolved on the fortifications of the Borgo, and, in
-order to ascertain the best mode of doing it, had assembled many persons
-of rank, with Antonio da Sangallo, Michael Angelo, as architect of the
-fortifications of S. Miniato at Florence, was likewise invited to join
-the assembly, and, after much contest, his opinion asked; he freely told
-it, though contrary to that of Sangallo and others present; and when the
-architect bade him to be content with the prerogatives of sculpture and
-painting without pretending to skill in fortification, he replied, that
-of the former two he knew little, but that of fortification, considering
-the time his mind had dwelt on it, and the proofs he had given of the
-solidity of his theory, he did not hesitate to claim more knowledge than
-what came to the share of Sangallo and all his relatives; and then
-proceeded, in the presence of all, to point out the many errors which
-Antonio had committed.
-
-Another instance of a still greater independence of mind, Vasari[81] has
-recorded in the peremptory answer which M. Angelo gave to the Committee
-of Cardinals, &c. instigated by the partisans of Sangallo, (La Setta
-Sangallesca, Vasari,) to inspect the process of the fabric of S. Pietro,
-and to examine his plan. Ignorant of his design to derive the main light
-of the edifice from the cupola, they found fault with the scanty
-distribution of light, and told the Pontiff that M. Angelo had spoiled
-S. Pietro, and instead of a luminous temple, was erecting a gloomy
-vault. Giulio having communicated this to him at a general meeting of
-the deputies and inspectors, M. Angelo replied, I wish to hear these
-deputies talk myself: "Here we are," answered Cardinal Marcello--"Then
-know, Monsignore," said he, "that over these windows, in the vault which
-is to be raised, there are to be placed three more."--"You never told us
-this before!" said Cervino.--"No," replied M. Angelo, "I am not, nor
-ever will be bound to tell your Eminence, or any other person, what I
-must or what I mean to do: your duty is to provide money and take care
-that it be not stolen; what belongs to the plan and execution of the
-building you are to leave to me." Then turning to the Pope, "Holy
-Father," continued he, "you see what I gain; the fatigue I undergo is
-time and labour lost, unless my soul gain by it." The Pope, who loved
-him, and rejoiced at the defeat of the cabal, laying hands on his
-shoulders, said, "Doubt not your soul and body shall be equal gainers by
-it."
-
-Among the many expectations in which he was disappointed, that which he
-appears to have formed on the early talent of Jacopo Carucci, as it was
-the most sanguine, must have been the most distressing; for, on seeing
-his figures of Faith and Charity with attendant Infants, in fresco, at
-the Nunziata, and considering them as produced by a youth of nineteen,
-he said, in the words of Vasari, "This young man, from what appears,
-grant life and pursuit, will raise this art to heaven."
-
-But Jacopo did neither long pursue the same principles nor adopt
-superior ones: infected, like Andrea del Sarto, by the temporary fever
-which the style of Albert Durer had spread over Florence. He was,
-however, the favourite copyist in oil of M. Angelo's Cartoons, and as
-such, in preference, recommended by him to Alfonso D'Avalo, Marchese del
-Guasto, and Bartolomeo Bettini, his friend, who had obtained cartoons,
-the former of a Noli-me-tangere; this of a naked Venus caressed by
-Cupid.[82]
-
-The name of Giuliano Bugiardini, supported only by its own feeble powers,
-would probably long have sunk to oblivion, had it not been kept afloat by
-the personal attachment of M. Angelo. In Vasari, Giuliano is the synonyme,
-of helpless impotence; he had certainly neither the dexterity nor the
-grasp of the Aretine biographer; but he also had neither the pretension
-nor the craft. There is, and chiefly among artists, a singular class of
-men, who, with great moral simplicity, but a capacity less than moderate,
-court with ungovernable passion an art which they are doomed never to
-possess, but to whom self-complacency compensates for every disappointment
-of the most ungrateful perseverance, public neglect and private irrision:
-they neither envy nor suspect, and though not intimidated by a superiority
-which they do not fully comprehend, are ready to respect the part that
-comes within their compass. Such a man was Bugiardini; and such a
-character M. Angelo was likely to appreciate;[83] and though aware that he
-was not equal to serious communication in art, to select him as a
-companion of his leisure, and to assist or submit to him, as the
-simplicity of his character required;--of either we shall select from
-Vasari an instance. When he was occupied with the picture of Sta.
-Catherina, for the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, he requested the advice
-of M. Angelo on the arrangement of a file of soldiers which he meant to
-place on the foreground, flying, fallen, wounded, killed; because the idea
-of their having formed a file, could not be expressed within the scanty
-space he had allotted them, without having recourse to fore-shortenings,
-which he confessed to be beyond his power. M. Angelo, to please him, took
-a coal, and with his own comprehension drew on the panel a file of naked
-figures, variously fore-shortened, falling different ways, forwards,
-backwards, with others dead or wounded: but the whole being merely in
-outlines, left Giuliano still at a loss. Tribolo, therefore, to draw him
-from this dilemma, undertook to form them in clay, leaving the surface of
-each figure rough, to increase more forcibly the chiaroscuro: this method,
-however, so little pleased the neatness of Giuliano, that the moment
-Tribolo left him, he with a wet pencil licked them into a polish, which
-took away grain and effect together, and when the picture was finished,
-left no trace of M. Angelo's ever having seen it.
-
-Messer Ottaviano de' Medici had requested Giuliano to paint him a
-portrait of M. Angelo. He obtained the consent of M. Angelo: having held
-him between chat and work two hours at the first sitting--for M. Angelo
-delighted to hear him talk--Giuliano got up, and said, "M. Angelo, if
-you want to see yourself, rise: I have settled the character of the
-face." M. Angelo rose, looked at the portrait, and said, smiling, "What
-the devil (che diavolo) have you been doing? you have clapt one of the
-eyes into one of the temples--look to it." Giuliano having for some time
-looked silently at the portrait, and the sitter, resolutely replied, "I
-do not see what you said; but take your place, and I'll give another
-glance at nature." M. Angelo, who knew where the defect lay, sat down
-again sneering; and Giuliano, having eyed repeatedly now the picture and
-now M. Angelo, at last rose and said, "It appears to me that the thing
-is as I have drawn it, and that nature shows it so." "Oh, then it is a
-defect of nature!" replied Michael Angelo, "go on and prosper in your
-work."
-
-Francesco Granacci, the companion of his early studies, and Jacopo,
-called L'Indaco, the enlivener of his solitude, enjoyed the same degree
-of his familiarity; but as the real basis of friendship is equality, and
-mutual esteem founded on similarity of character and powers, attachments
-merely formed by early habits or congenial humour between men too
-dissimilar else to admit of comparison, never can aspire to its
-privileges and name. Condescension is not always delicate, and the
-indiscretions of simplicity sooner or later provoke the pride, contempt,
-and arrogance of superior powers. Giuliano, Granacci, and L'Indaco,
-experienced all three from Michael Angelo; they were among his
-conscripts for assisting in the frescoes of the Capella; but finding
-their pigmy capacities unequal to his colossal style, he not only, in
-lofty silence, destroyed what they had begun, but barring all access to
-the Chapel and himself, forced them to return, vainly grumbling, to
-Florence.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[62] 1433--1527. They underwent three banishments in less than a
-century.
-
-[63] 1472--1492. Most splendid period of Florence this.
-
-[64] Nardi Storia, lib. 1. Bernardo Rucellai de Bello Italico, Lond.
-1733, 4to. p. 52. Pauli Jovii Histor. sui temporis, lib. 1. Memoires de
-Philippe de Comines, l. vii. c. 9.
-
-[65] Vasari, Vita di B. Bandinelli, Ed. del Bottari, t. ii. p. 576; e
-Vita del Torrigiano, t. ii. p. 75.
-
-[66] Nardi, Storia di Firenze, lib. ii. Vasari, Vita di Frà Bartolomeo;
-but chiefly the Life of Savonarola, by Burlamachi, inserted in Balusii
-Miscell. ed. Mansi, t. i. p. 558, &c.
-
-[67] Giovanni dalle Carniole, a celebrated engraver on stone, was an
-adherent of Savonarola; there is a portrait of that reformer by him, on
-a cornelian of uncommon size, in the Museo Flor. with this inscription,
-
-    Hieronymus Ferrariensis Ord. Præd.
-    Propheta Vir et Martyr.
-
-It is known from impressions in paste and bronze. In politics, at least,
-Michael Angelo was a votary of Frà Girolamo, although the nursling of
-the Medici.
-
-[68] Vasari, Vita di B.B. t. ii. p. 557.
-
-[69] Varchi, Storia Fiorent. p. 36.
-
-[70] "The two masters of Michael Angelo," says Fiorillo, "descend in
-equidistant degrees from the School of Cimabue and Giotto: the following
-scale shows the technic pedigree of M. Angelo at one glance:
-
-                     _Cimabue._
-                     _Giotto._
-                     _Taddeo Gaddi._
-    Angelo Gaddi.                     Jacopo Casentino.
-    Ant. Veneziano.                   Spinello.
-    Paolo Uccello.                    Lorenzo Bicci.
-    Aless. Baldovinetti.              Donatello.
-    Dom. del Ghirlandaio.             Bertoldo.
-                    M.A. Buonarroti."
-
-What pity that this laboured scale, which has all the air of an
-astrologic conceit of Vasari, and gives to chance the sanction of
-predestination, could not be extended to Architecture! As the notion of
-a writer who dates the subversion of Art from the epoch and style of M.
-Angelo, it must appear ludicrous even to the most declared votary of
-that great name on this side of idolatry.
-
-[71] The mask of an antique Satyr, and the basso-relievo of the
-Centaurs, undertaken at the suggestion of Poliziano.
-
-[72] One has been preserved, and as a document of the relation in which
-_power_ at that time stood with _art_, may interest the reader.
-
-"Julius P.P. II. Dilectis Filiis Prioribus Libertatis, et Vexillifero
-Justitiae Populi Florentini."
-
-"Dilecti filii, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Michael Angelus
-sculptor, qui a nobis leviter et inconsulte discessit, redire, ut
-accepimus, ad nos timet, cui nos non succensemus: Novimus hujusmodi
-hominum ingenia. Ut tamen omnem suspicionem deponat, devotionem vestram
-hortamur, velit ei nomine nostro promittere, quod si ad nos redierit,
-illæsus inviolatusque erit, et in ea gratia apostolica nos habiturus,
-quâ habebatur ante discessum. Datum Romæ, 8 Julii, 1506, Pontificatûs
-nostri Anno iii."
-
-[73] There went a tale that Michael Angelo proposed to demolish the
-palace of the Medicis, like that of the Bentivogli at Bologna, and to
-call the site "Piazza de' Muli," the place of Bastards, in allusion to
-the illegitimacy of Clemente VII. Alessandro, and others of that family.
-"A feature," says Fiorillo, "if true, as characteristic of his natural
-ferocity as disgraceful to his heart, after the benefits heaped on him
-from his infancy by that family. Varchi, however, defends him against
-this charge."[76] Whether this tale confutes itself or not, may be left
-to the reader; but on an estimate of his private and public conduct, as
-man and artist during the long course of his life, it must be owned,
-that this is the period which offers the most specious opportunity to a
-sceptic in morals, of fixing some doubts on the integrity of his
-principles. His earliest actions prove that he drew a severe line
-between the duty which he owed to his country, and gratitude imposed by
-private obligations. He left the family of Pier de' Medici on finding
-his principles incompatible with the laws of a free state; and on the
-expulsion of the petty tyrants, without lending a hand to the
-devastation of their property, felt it his duty to act as a free man on
-the re-establishment of liberty, and to obey the laws of a state whose
-right to legislate for itself had been acknowledged by all Italy. It
-will not be said, that it is palliating duplicity to assert, that as a
-private individual he had a right to accept the behests of Leo X. and
-Clemente VII. for decorating a sacred edifice; but when he became a
-leader of the revolution, the trustee of his country's safety, the main
-defender of the city, did he not more than degrade himself, by
-forgetting the patriot in the artist, and "secretly" sacrificing time to
-raise monuments to men whose titles he opposed and whose principles he
-detested? Thus, whilst his conduct may prove the absurdity of the tale,
-that he publicly, and with illiberal sarcasms, advised the demolition of
-palaces belonging to a family whose memory he secretly laboured to
-perpetuate in monuments inspired by the most amorous phantasy; it
-certainly does not screen his character from the imputation of a
-duplicity to which no other period of his life offers a parallel.
-
-[74] "Lavorava," says Vasari, "le statue per le sepolture di S. Lorenzo
-segretamente,"--p. 224, ed. B. And again, "Lavorando egli con
-sollecitudine e con amore grandissimo tali opere, crebbe (che pur troppo
-gli impedi il fine) lo assedio."--p. 229. Impossible as the secrecy of
-his labours for the Chapel of S. Lorenzo may appear, the publicity of
-his situation considered, it must be admitted, to account for the
-confidence placed in him by the City.
-
-[75] Of the Fall of Lucifer and his Host, which was to face the
-altar-piece of the Last Judgement, no sketch that could give an idea of
-the whole has yet been discovered; its place over the grand door of the
-Chapel was reserved for the sacrilegious 'bravura' of the Neapolitan
-Matteo da Lecca, under the pontificate of Gregorio XIII.: his
-composition, if impudence of grouping deserve that name, must be
-supposed to bear infinitely less analogy to the original conception of
-Michael Angelo, than the tumultuary fresco of the Sicilian; who, says
-Vasari, having lived many months with Michael Angelo as a servant and
-colour-grinder, became possessed of some design of his for that subject,
-and painted it in fresco in a chapel of the Trinità del Monte.
-Notwithstanding the incompetence of the adventurer to manage such
-materials, the naked groups showering from Heaven, and the hubbub of
-transformed fiends grappling below in the abyss, struck the beholder
-with terror and surprise;--a mass of Dantesque images, and in Dantesque
-language described by the biographer.--V. di M.A. t. vi. 237.
-
-[76] Stor. Fior. lib. vi. p. 154.
-
-[77] This pompous visit appears to have been made for the purpose of
-inspecting the Cartoon; to remove the obstacles to its completion which
-the unfinished state of the Giulian monument still presented; and to
-convince the artist of the value he set on the exclusive service of his
-genius. But, besides the obligation of fulfilling his contract with the
-House of De Rovere, Vasari seems to think that one principal reason of
-Michael Angelo's tardiness to comply with the wishes of the Pope, was
-the Pontiff's age, (vedendolo tanto vecchio,) _i. e._ apprehension, if
-he lived long enough to prevent the termination of the monument, of his
-dying too soon for the completion of the fresco, and thus leaving him
-exposed to the revenge of the Duke of Urbino: a conjecture not
-countenanced by the Pontiff's age, who, at his accession, was only
-eight years older than the artist.
-
-[78] Bastiano, says Vasari, was a favourite of Michael Angelo, but a
-disagreement took place between them about the best method of painting
-the Last Judgement. Frà Bastiano had persuaded the Pontiff to give the
-preference to oil, but Michael Angelo resolved to execute it only in
-fresco. On seeing the Frate's preparation adopted, without agreeing to
-it or opposing it, he remained inactive for several months; till, on
-being pressed, he finally declared, that he would either do it in fresco
-or not at all; that oil paint was a woman's art, and the refuge of
-idlers at their ease like Frà Bastiano. In consequence of which, the
-Frate's incrustation being dashed to the ground, and the wall duly
-prepared for fresco, he set about the work, but never forgot the insult
-he fancied to have received from the friar during life.--Vasari, Vita di
-F.S.
-
-[79] Michael Angelo had finished more than three-fourths of the work,
-when the Pontiff visited the Chapel, and on inspection, turning to
-Messer Biagio, of Cesena, then master of ceremonies, in his train, asked
-him what he thought of the work? The scrupulous prelate replied, that so
-daring an aggregate of shameless nudities in a sacred place was obscene
-profanation, and an exhibition fitter for a tavern or a brothel than a
-papal chapel. Michael Angelo, indignant, and eager to revenge the
-affront, only waited for his departure, and then, from memory, drew him
-in the character of Dante's Minos, with a snake encircling his body and
-gnawing his middle, in the midst of a hillock of fiends. In vain did
-Messer Biagio supplicate the Pontiff and Michael Angelo to take him out;
-he remained, and is there still. So far Vasari; but tradition adds, that
-on Biagio's application, the Pope asked in what part of the picture he
-was placed, and being answered, in Hell, replied, had you been lodged in
-Purgatory, you might perhaps have been dismissed, "sed ex Inferno nulla
-est redemptio." Condivi notices the story not at all.
-
-In the Diary of Paris de' Grassi, Messer Biagio is said to have been
-appointed master of ceremonies by Leo X. 1518, in the room of Nicola da
-Viterbo, and, if we believe Ducange, (Table des Auteurs dans le
-Supplement du Glossaire,) he has written a diary himself.--See Fiorillo,
-i. p. 389.
-
-[80] Blaise de Vigenere, the translator of Philostratus and Callistratus,
-tells us, in his observations on the latter, page 855, that "he saw M.
-Angelo, at the age of sixty, strike off more marble from a block in one
-quarter of an hour, than four stonemasons usually did in three or four
-hours." If this happened in 1550, as will appear from the following
-passage, M. Angelo was then in his seventy-sixth year.--"L'entrepris aussi
-de Michel l'Ange estoit hautaine et fort hardie, sentant bien sa main
-assurée, le quel commança l'an 1550, que j'estois à Rome, un Crucifiement
-où il y avoit de dix à douze personnages, non pas moindres que le naturel,
-le tout d'une seule pièce de marbre, qui était un chapiteau de l'une de
-ces huict grandes colomnes du temple de la Paix de Vespasian, dont il s'en
-void encore une toute entière et debout, mais la mort----"
-
-[81] Vol. vi. p. 272.
-
-[82] Vasari's account of both pictures is sufficiently curious to be
-communicated in his own words. "Alfonso D'Avalo, Marchese del Guasto,
-having obtained from Michael Angelo, by means of Frà Nicolo della Magna,
-a cartoon of Christ appearing to Magdalen in the Garden, made every
-exertion to have it executed in painting by Puntormo, as he had been
-told by Michael Angelo that no one could serve him better. Jacopo
-undertook the work, and succeeded to a degree of excellence, which made
-Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the Florentine guards, bespeak a second
-copy of him, which he placed in his house at Cività di Castello."
-
-"Michael Angelo, to oblige his intimate friend Bartolomeo Bettini, made
-him a Cartoon of Venus naked and Cupid kissing her, to be executed by
-Puntormo in oil, for the centre piece of an apartment, on the sides of
-which Bronzino had begun to paint Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, to be
-followed by the rest of Tuscan love-songsters. The picture of Puntormo
-was miraculous, but instead of being given to Bettini for the price
-stipulated, was, by some favour-hunters, his enemies, nearly extorted
-from Jacopo, and carried off as a present to Duke Alessandro, returning
-the cartoon to Bettini. A transaction which, when he heard it, irritated
-Michael Angelo, who loved his friend, and made him dislike Jacopo for
-it."--Vasari, Vita di Jacopo da, P.V.
-
-[83] They had been fellow-scholars in the garden of Lorenzo de' Medici.
-
-
-
-
-SCHOOL OF SIENA.
-
-
-In the enumeration of Tuscan art, some lovers of subdivision have
-fancied, with more refinement than solidity, to discover in the style of
-Sienese artists a characteristic sufficiently distinct from the
-Florentine, to erect Siena into a school. This characteristic, we are
-told, is a peculiar gaiety in the selection of colour, and an air of
-physiognomic vivacity and serenity of face; both, it seems, the
-inheritance of the Sienese race. They have, accordingly, divided this
-school into three epochs: the first is that of the _ancients_ (gli
-antichi); and its first palpable patriarch, Guido, or Guidone, commonly
-called _Guido da Siena_, and noticed already in the beginning of our
-chapter on the Florentine school. He flourished before the birth of
-Cimabue, in the first half of the thirteenth century, and is followed
-by the names of Ugolino da Siena and Duccio surnamed di Boninsegna,
-the precursors of Simone Memmi, the contemporary of Giotto, who painted
-Laura and survives in the sonnets of her lover. Lippo Memmi and Cecco da
-Martino, his relatives, float in the obscurity which prevailed till the
-appearance of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. Of the first there still
-exists an extensive work in the public palace, or rather a didactic
-poem, which in suitable allegories and in varied views, exhibits the
-vices of a bad government, and personifies the qualities necessary to
-form the rulers of a virtuous republic--a work which, with less monotony
-of features, and more judgment in the division of the subjects, would,
-in the opinion of Lanzi, find little to envy in the best-treated
-histories of Pisa's Campo Santo. In partnership with his brother Pietro,
-he painted, in the Hospital of Siena, the Presentation and the Espousal
-of the Madonna--pictures destroyed in 1720. This is that Pietro who, in
-the Campo Santo of Pisa, painted the Hermits of the Desert, and the
-Terrors of Solitude invaded by an Infernal Apparition, with a novelty of
-conception and a richness of fancy, that render his work the most
-interesting of the whole series. That, notwithstanding the plague, which
-had wasted the population of Siena at that period, the art continued to
-flourish, is proved by the numbers who formed themselves into a civil
-body under the immediate patronage of the Republic itself. In some
-families it became an heirloom: such were the Vanni and the Bartoli.
-Andrea di Vanni, or more properly, di Giovanni, not only figured as an
-artist in his native city, but was delegated by the Republic to the Pope
-at Avignon, and appears in the records as "Capitano del Popolo;" and
-among the letters of Santa Caterina da Siena, there are three addressed
-to him.[84] Vasari has mentioned Taddeo di Bartolo, (1351--1410.) whose
-works still exist in the public palace and the adjoining hall. They
-pretend to represent a number of celebrated republicans, and chiefly
-Greeks and Romans, but their physiognomies are all ideal, and their
-dresses the costume of Siena. Something was added to the monotony of
-these family styles under the Pontificate of Pio II. or Enea Silvio,
-(1503,) by Matteo di Giovanni, in disposition, variety, expression,
-drapery; he has accordingly been complimented by some as the Masaccio of
-Siena, but remained unknown to Vasari. The art gained still more under
-the auspices of a second Piccolomini, Pio III. (1503.) He employed
-Pinturicchio, Raffaello, and other strangers, to perpetuate the
-achievements of his predecessor Enea; and they, Raffaello excepted,
-continued with Signorelli and Genga to exercise their talents in
-decorating the Palace of Pandolfo Petrucci, who had usurped supreme
-power in the Republic.
-
-The second period of Sienese art opens with the sixteenth century, and
-the works of Giacomo Pacchiarotto, or Pacchiarotti. They resemble the
-produce of Perugino's school, though distinguished by more vigour of
-composition. But what entitles this epoch to the claim of establishing
-the peculiar style of this school, must be looked for in the works of
-Giannantonio Razzi, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi.
-
-Giannantonio Razzi,[85] commonly called "Il Soddoma," is said by some to
-have been a native of Vergille, in the territory of Siena; by others, of
-Vercelli, in Piedmont. Long residence, however, supplied the want of
-birthright: Siena claims him for her own; and if a charming whole,
-suavity of tint combined with force of chiaroscuro, be the principal
-characteristic of that school, no native has expressed it with equal
-evidence and felicity. This gaiety of tone and manner some have traced
-to the jovial turn of the man himself; as careless as gay, ever in
-pursuit of youth and beauty, though with an indiscretion that brands him
-with the stain tacked to his name, from a character so volatile and
-dissipated, that inequality of execution might be expected which marks
-his happiest effusions. Thus, in the Church of S. Domenico, where he
-represented Sta. Caterina of Siena, on receiving the stigmata,
-fainting in the arms of two sister nuns, we forgive to the energy of
-conception, the pathos of expression, and the sympathy of tone that
-press the principal group on our hearts, that neglect which left the
-figure of the Saviour below mediocrity, and own, with Baldassare
-Peruzzi, that we never saw mental dereliction and fainting beauty
-expressed with deeper sentiment and truth; a verdict which receives
-full sanction from him who relates it, Vasari, less the biographer than
-the merciless censor of the obnoxious Razzi, for whose moral turpitude
-and technic slovenliness his sanctimonious asperity found no other
-excuse than that of madness, which swayed him to neglect or misapply the
-powers of genius. Thus, in speaking of the fresco at Monte Oliveto, in
-which Soddoma had chosen to represent a bevy of harlots let loose with
-song and dance on St. Benedetto and his flock, to try their sanctity, he
-reprobates the licentiousness that had larded the subject with
-additional obscenity, whilst he concludes by owning that it is one of
-the best pictures in the Convent. How are we to reconcile the neglect
-which, disdaining to consult Nature, or to regulate a picture by cartoon
-or design, relied for the whole on practice and on chance, with the
-praise bestowed on Razzi's composition, the faces that speak, the
-breasts that palpitate, the torsos compared by some to the antique, by
-others to Michael Angelo, but by that indifference which often
-distinguishes the man of genius from the man of talent, him who
-possesses by Nature from him who acquires by art? Capacity and
-attachment unite not always; and to Soddoma, vain, whimsical, volatile,
-art appears to have been no more than the readiest means of procuring
-amusement or pleasure. "My art dances to the sound of your purse," said
-he to the Abbot of Monte Oliveto.
-
-Agostino Chigi, pleased with the art, and still more the whimsies of
-Soddoma, if we believe Vasari, carried him to Rome, and introduced him
-to Giulio II. to co-operate with Pietro Perugino, &c. in the Vatican;
-but his labours being superseded by the novel powers of Raffaelle,
-Agostino, whose attachments were not regulated by the Pontiff's whims,
-employed him in the decorations of his own palace, now the Farnesina;
-where, in a principal apartment leading to the great saloon reserved for
-Raffaelle, he painted the Nuptials of Alexander and Roxana in a style no
-doubt inferior to the Loves of Amor and Psyche, but not of an
-inferiority sufficient to account for the enormous disparity of fame
-that separates both.
-
-Domenico Mecherino,[86] the son of a Sienese peasant, better known by
-the adopted name of Beccafumi, inferior to Razzi in elegance of line
-and suavity of colour, excelled him in energy of conception and style.
-Vasari, who invests Beccafumi with every excellence and virtue, of which
-the defect or opposite vice disgraced Razzi, still owns that he did not
-reach the physiognomic suavity that marks the faces of Soddoma; and
-after leading him from the scanty elements of Pietro Perugino to Rome,
-the Antique, the Chapel of M. Angelo, and the works of Raffaelle, by a
-kind of anticlimax brings him back to Siena to complete his studies by
-adopting the principles of Giannantonio. A modern writer,[87] on the
-contrary, has discovered that the talents of Domenico, overpowered by
-the genius of M. Angelo, turned their current awry, and failed to
-produce the legitimate efforts which might have been expected from a
-steady adherence to the principles of Raffaelle--opinions less founded
-on the character of the artist and the spirit of his works than on the
-partiality and prejudice of the critics. Beccafumi was not of the first
-class, less made to lead than to follow with an air of originality; to
-amalgamate principles not absolutely discordant--thus, in single
-figures, he sometimes more than imitates, he equals M. Angelo, as in
-those noticed by Bottari;--and again, in larger compositions, such as
-those on the pavement of the Cathedral, works by which he is chiefly
-known, we see him on the traces of Raffaelle, and emulating the variety
-and graces of Polydoro: these graces frequently vanished, and
-correctness as often ceased with the increased size of his figures: the
-foreshortenings, in which he delighted, savour more of the "sotto in
-su," introduced by Correggio to Upper Italy, than of the principles of
-M. Angelo; they are generally attended by a magic chiaroscuro, like that
-of the figure of Justice, on which Vasari expatiates, on the ceiling of
-the public hall at Siena, which, from profound darkness gradually rising
-into light, seems to vanish in celestial splendour. He is said by Vasari
-to have preferred fresco and distemper to oil paint, as a purer,
-simpler, and of course more durable medium; and though the predominant
-red of his flesh-tints has more freshness than glow, such is the
-solidity of his impasto and the purity of his method, that his panels
-present us to this day less with the injuries than the improvements of
-time.
-
-The style of Mecherino did not survive him: for Giorgio da Siena, his
-pupil, confined himself to grotesque work, in imitation of Giovanni da
-Udine; Giannella, or Giovanni of Siena, turned to architecture: of Marco
-Pino, commonly called Marco da Siena, his reputed pupil, the style,
-decidedly built on the principles of M. Angelo, renders all notion of
-his having received more than the first rudiments from Beccafumi or any
-other master, nugatory: but the conjecture of Lanzi, that Domenico was
-the master of Danielle Ricciarelli, known to have begun his studies at
-Siena, though unsupported by tradition, acquires an air of probability
-less from the supposed mutual attachments to M. Angelo, than the
-versatility of their talents and similarity of pursuits.
-
-Baldassare Peruzzi,[88] born in the diocese of Volterra, but in the
-Sienese State, and of a citizen of Siena, with considerable talents for
-painting, possessed a decided genius in architecture. His style of
-design is temperate and correct, but quantity is the element of his
-composition, if _indeed_ an aggregate of fortuitous figures deserve that
-name. The Adoration of the Magi, preserved in various coloured copies
-from his original chiaroscuro, embraces every fault of ornamental
-painting without its only charm: it is not exaggeration to say, that the
-principal figures are the least conspicuous, that the leaders are
-sacrificed to their equipage, that the architect every where crosses the
-painter, and that the quadrupeds, however brutally placed or
-impertinently introduced, for conception, chiaroscuro, spirit and style,
-give to the work what merit it can claim. The same principle prevails in
-his fresco of the Presentation at the Pace, and both are so evidently
-opposite to Raffaello's system of composition, that it is not easily
-understood how he could be supposed to have been a pupil or imitator of
-that master in propriety. If he resembles him any where, it is in single
-expressions, as in the Judgement of Paris at the Castello di Belcaro,
-according to Lanzi; and still more in the prophetic countenance of the
-celebrated Sibyl predicting the birth of the Virgin to Augustus, at
-Fonte Giusta, in Siena, whose divine enthusiasm no prophetess of
-Raffaello has excelled, and no Sibyl of Guido or Guercino approached.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[84] Lettere della Beata Vergine, S. Caterina da Siena. Venez. 1562.,
-4to. p. 286, 242. The last was written at the period of Vanni's dignity.
-
-[85] 1481-1554.
-
-[86] 1484-1549?
-
-[87] Fiorillo, i. 335.
-
-[88] 1481-1536.
-
-
-
-
-THE ROMAN SCHOOL.
-
-
-The Roman School comprises, besides the natives of the metropolis, those
-of the whole Ecclesiastic State, Bologna, Ferrara, and some part of
-Romagna excepted.
-
-The origin of this school recedes into the earlier periods of modern
-art, if we consider Oderigi of Gubbio, a painter of miniature,
-contemporary with Cimabue, as one of its founders. His death, which
-preceded that of the Florentine at least one year, the branch of art he
-exercised, missal-painting, and what we know of his situation, make it
-extremely improbable that he owed the elements of design to that master,
-with whom he seems to have had little in common but the honour of
-rearing a pupil, who in the sequel eclipsed his name, and became the
-founder of another school.
-
-Perhaps he made some scholars too at home: in 1321 we find Cecco and
-Puccio of Gubbio, engaged as painters to the Dome of Orvieto; and about
-1324, Guido Palmerucci Eugubino, employed in the Town-hall of Gubbio; a
-few half figures yet remaining of this evanescent work are in a style
-not inferior to that of Giotto, at whose period we are now arrived.
-
-Giotto, at Rome, gave instructions to Pietro Cavallini in painting and
-mosaic, and with what success we may form some idea from the
-wonder-working Christ in S. Paolo at Rome, the Salutation at S. Marco of
-Florence, and a Crucifixion at Assisi; a crowded composition of
-soldiers, mob, and horses, varied in dress and not ill discriminated by
-expression, with groups of angels hovering over them in sable robes. In
-vastness of conception and spirit it resembles Memmi, and in one of the
-crucified men, foreshortening is not unsuccessfully attempted; the
-colours have still a degree of freshness, especially the blue, which
-here and in other places of the church forms, in the metaphor of Lanzi,
-a ceiling of oriental sapphire.
-
-After the demise of Cavallini, who, notwithstanding a life of
-eighty-five years, appears to have left taste nearly in the state he
-found it; a band of obscure and insignificant artists led the art in a
-style neither Giottesque nor Greek to the verge of the fifteenth
-century--that important period when the Popes, re-established at Rome,
-searched for the best hands to decorate its Vatican and temples. The
-first name that occurs, is that of Ottaviano Martis, whose Madonna in
-Sta. Maria Nuova at Gubbio, bears the date of 1403; she has a choir
-of stripling angels round her in attitudes not ungraceful, but with
-faces as like to each other as if they had all been cast in one mould.
-
-The name of Gentile da Fabriano is of more consequence; it is he whose
-style Michael Angelo compared to his name (Gentile.) About 1417 we find
-him at Orvieto among the painters of its Dome, registered with the title
-of Magister Magistrorum. Under Martin V. he painted with Pisanello in
-the Lateran at Rome: what he did there perished, and so did his works in
-the public palace at Venice, where he resided, was pensioned, and raised
-to the rank of Patrician. "In that city," says Vasari, "he was the
-master and like a parent to Giacopo Bellini, the father of Giovanni and
-Gentile Bellini, founders of the Venetian school and masters of
-Giorgione and Tizian. Of his numerous works the remains are in the Marca
-d'Ancona, the state of Urbino, at Gubbio and Perugia: Florence still
-preserves two of his pictures, one in S. Nicolo with the image and
-histories of that bishop, another in the sacristy of the Trinità, with
-an Epiphany and the date of 1423. His style resembles that of Frà
-Angelico da Fiesole, with the exception of forms less elegant, less
-female grace, and more profusion of gold lace and brocade. _Antonio da
-Fabriano_, with the date 1454, and _Bartholomæus Magistri Gentilis de
-Urbino_, 1497 and 1508, are inscriptions on pictures at Matelica,
-Pesaro, and Monte Cicardo, that have no other claim to attention than
-the relation their names seem to indicate with Gentile.
-
-Piero della Francesca, or Piero Borghese, an Umbrian, of Borgo S.
-Sepolcro, is a superior name. He must have been born about 1398, as,
-according to Vasari, his works were about 1458; he grew blind at sixty,
-and died eighty-five years old. He was instructed in painting at the age
-of fifteen, after having laid a foundation in mathematics, and
-distinguished himself in both. His beginnings were minute; his master
-has escaped search. The first scene of his talent was the Court of
-Guidobaldo Feltro the old, Duke of Urbino, where the perspective of a
-vase drawn by him, provokes the astonishment of his biographer; but
-besides perspective, Painting owes to him her first notions of the
-effects of light, of muscular precision, and the method of preparing
-clay models for the study of drapery.[89]
-
-He painted much at Rome, and in the Floreria of the Vatican there still
-exists a large fresco reputed his, representing Niccolo V. with some
-cardinals and prelates, whose faces interest by a character of truth. At
-Arezzo, he seems to have improved even upon Giotto and his school, by
-the novelty of his foreshortenings, vigour of tone, and powers which
-attended by equal grace, would have set him on a level with Masaccio.
-
-Nicolo Alunno of Foligno, advanced the art still farther; this is
-evident on comparing a picture of his painted 1480, with another at S.
-Nicolo of Foligno, dated 1492. The tone of his colour, even in
-distemper, has novelty and vigour; his heads have vivacity, though with
-trivial and sometimes caricatured characters: and in gilding he is
-moderate. Vasari, who places him in the time of Pinturicchio, praises
-above all a Pietà in a chapel of the Domo, in which, he says, "there are
-two angels who weep with such expression of grief, that, in my opinion,
-no other painter, however excellent, could have done much more."
-
-Nor was Urbino without painters at this period: Fiorillo names Lorenzo
-da San Severino. At Urbino some pictures still remain of Giovanni
-Sanzio, the father of Raphael, who by the Duchess Giovanna della Rovere
-is called a very ingenious artist: a foreshortened figure of St.
-Sebastian, painted by him for the church of that saint, has been
-imitated by Raphael in an early picture of Our Lady's Wedding, at Città
-di Castello. He subscribed himself Io. Sanctis Urbi.; viz. Urbinas. Such
-at least is the inscription on his Annunciation at Sinigaglia, a work of
-high finish, but unequal in its parts, and in the best, though less
-genial, approaching the style of Pietro Perugino, with whom he had for
-some time co-operated. But the most distinguished Urbinese artist was
-Bartolommeo Corradini, a Dominican, commonly called Frà Carnevale: at
-the Osservanza there is a picture of his, defective in perspective, with
-draperies frittered into the usual tatters of the time, but with faces
-that breathe and speak, and airs of dignity and ease: he was one of the
-first who introduced portrait into historic composition, a method
-adopted and often practised by Raphael, who at Urbino had studied his
-works.
-
-Perugia laid an early claim to Art, at least as a craft. Mariotti tells
-of one Tullio a Perugine painter about 1219, and in a long file of
-quattrocentists, allots the most conspicuous places to Lorenzo di
-Lorenzo, Bartolommeo Caporali, whose works are dated about 1487, but
-above all to Benedetto Bonfigli. Yet with this abundance of home-bred
-artists, Perugia employed in its public works the hands of strangers,
-and chiefly Tuscans; it was to Florence, States and Princes looked for
-that master-style which could give splendour to a great commission. When
-Sisto IV. planned the decorations of the Sistina, the greater number of
-conscripts for the work were Tuscans, and Pietro Perugino the only
-artist drawn from his subjects among them.
-
-Pietro Vannucci, of Città della Pieve, as he subscribed some pictures,
-or of Perugia, as he did others, being a citizen of that place, studied,
-if we believe Vasari, under a master of little eminence; but according
-to the more authentic researches of Mariotti,[90] was a pupil, and
-sufficiently advanced himself by the instructions of Bonfigli and Piero
-della Francesca, to finish his style on the works of Giotto and Masaccio
-at Florence, without entering the school of Verrocchio.
-
-Those who have contemplated the works of Pietro will without much
-difficulty discover two styles of composition, form, colour, and
-execution: the first was the result of the instructions he received in
-the Roman, the second, that of the impression made on his mind and hand
-by the Tuscan School: what he painted in oil and of small dimensions,
-generally belongs to the first; what he executed in fresco to the second
-period. There we find the hardness, the haggard forms, the miserly
-scantiness of drapery, the Gothic apposition and anxious finish with
-which he is charged, relieved by azure blues, emerald greens, violet and
-crimson hues, the legacies of missal-painting, and a certain air of
-juvenile and female grace, with suavity of countenance and colour:
-beauties which not only followed him in his second style, but were
-rendered more impressive by rudiments of that breadth which seems to be
-the privilege of fresco, by keeping, mellowness, tone, and approaches to
-composition, as in the altar-piece of the Kindred of the Saviour and the
-fresco in the Hall of the Change, at Perugia.
-
-Whilst the physiognomic monotony which had hitherto dulled the human
-feature, began to give way to expression and character in the works of
-this period, it is not easy to explain why its companion, that Gothic
-symmetry in the arrangement of the whole, should not only have been
-retained but aggravated into a studied parallelism; not that pathetic
-repetition of attitude and gesture which forces the moment of the
-subject more irresistibly on the mind than the most varied contrasts,
-but a nearly rectilinear apposition, whose principal law was to place,
-by a central figure, on each side of the picture, an equal number of
-subordinate ones; a law that extended itself to the most minute detail,
-and bade buildings, flowers, clouds and pebbles, re-echo each other; and
-all this in the face of Giotto, whose Navicella, Death of Maria, and
-other works, gave evidence that his composition had, a century before,
-disdained to move in the trammels which were now suffered to check that
-of Pietro Perugino, and for no inconsiderable time the composition of
-Raphael himself.
-
-Invention was not the element of Pietro. His crucifixions, depositions,
-burials, ascensions, and assumptions, are the brothers and sisters of
-one family. He was blamed for this sterility even in his own time, and
-defended himself by saying that, if he possessed little, he owed
-nothing, and that what had pleased in one place could not displease in
-another. It does not indeed offend to find the scenery of his St. Peter
-receiving the keys in the Sistina, repeated in the Wedding of our Lady
-at Perugia, and to meet the beauties here concentrated which he had
-singly scattered over various places.
-
-Pietro had vigour of constitution and length of life, and if he profited
-by the works of Raphael, whom he outlived, might have done so by those
-of Lionardo and Buonarroti. In few men so many contradictory qualities
-seem to have united: ridiculed for a degree of avarice, which, it was
-said, made him withhold the necessary drapery from his figures, he is
-yet allowed by Vasari to have been greedier to accumulate than sordid in
-the use of wealth, and to have pleased himself by marrying "a beautiful
-damsel, whom he so much delighted in seeing elegantly dressed both
-abroad and at home, that he was often suspected of having dressed her
-himself." By her he had children, but no records enable us to judge of
-him as a parent. That he was a good and kind master, is proved by the
-numerous scholars he reared, and still more by the pride which the most
-eminent and best of them took, by introducing him more than once in his
-works, to perpetuate with his own gratitude the memory of his master.
-With this kindness for his pupils, Pietro connected intolerance of
-rivals and a mordacity of language, which provoked Michael Agnolo to
-call him publicly a dunce (_goffo_) in art. His life was spent in
-receiving commissions from the clergy, in meditating and composing
-subjects of devotion; and yet, if we believe his biographer, he carried
-infidelity to a degree which resisted all arguments for the immortality
-of the soul, and with words dictated by an obstinacy worthy of his
-marble brains,[91] rejected all invitations to better information. Of
-the numerous scholars whom he had reared, the greater part followed his
-manner with servile attachment; hence many of their works have been
-ascribed to him, by those who did not form their judgment at Perugia, or
-at Florence in Sta. Chiara and the Ducal palace: thus he pays forfeit
-for many a holy family of Guerino da Pistoia, Rocco Zoppo, or some other
-of his Tuscan scholars. The best and least enthralled of his pupils
-belong to the Roman school: Bernardino Pinturicchio, less praised by
-Vasari than he deserves, without the correctness of his master, and with
-more Gothic profusion of gold-lace and brocade, possesses magnificence
-of plan, expression of countenance, and propriety of composition.
-Familiar with Raphael, who was his assistant at Siena, he made attempts
-to imitate his grace, and sometimes not without success: at Rome, the
-Vatican and Araceli Temple possess some of his works; at Siena he
-painted, in ten pictures, the history of Pio II. and added one of Pio
-III. his employer, and these, with what he left in the Dome of Spello,
-are the best of his labours.
-
-Of at more independent and grander spirit was Andrea Luigi, of Assisi,
-surnamed L'Ingegno, the Genius. He assisted Pietro in the Change-hall
-at Perugia, and there and in his Prophets and Sibyls at Assisi,
-aggrandized and mellowed the style of his master to a degree, which led
-Sandrart, with others, to ascribe the latter work to Raphael; but
-blindness checked his career in the bloom of life, and left the art to
-Raphael without a rival.
-
-Domenico di Paris Alfani added, likewise, some improvements to the style
-of Pietro. His name was nearly sunk in that of his son or brother
-Orazio, and time and dates alone have re-asserted its right to some
-excellent works long adjudged to the other; and which, were it not for
-an insipid sweetness of tone bordering on that of Baroccio, seem to have
-been inspired by the principles of Raphael.
-
-Of Pietro's many ultramontane pupils, Giovanni Spagnuolo, a Spaniard,
-called Lo Spagna, who settled at Spoleto, is considered by Vasari as the
-most eminent. But all these names united confer less celebrity on
-Pietro, than the felicity of having reared the powers of Raffaello
-Sanzio, if not the founder, the great establisher of the Roman School.
-
-Raffaello Sanzio, born at Urbino on Holy Friday, April 1483, was the son
-of Giovanni Sanzio, named among the contemporaries and occasional
-helpers of Pietro, in whose school, after having imparted the first
-rudiments of Art to his son, conscious of his own inferiority, he had
-the modesty to place him. Here his progress was so rapid that he soon
-rendered himself completely master of Vannucci's style, soon became his
-favourite pupil, soon his co-adjutor, and in a short period more than
-his competitor: for though the pictures which he painted at Cività di
-Castello and Perugia, and are so amorously dwelt on by Lanzi, still
-betray in composition, design, and colour, the principles of the master,
-they exhibit symptoms of that expression, that beauty, those simple
-graces, that refinement and precision of finish, which not only had
-remained unknown to Pietro, but in their purity were never attained by
-any subsequent artist.--Some of these are perceivable already, if
-scantily, in the Procession to Golgotha, preceded by horsemen and
-attended by the Madonna and her female train; and still less perceptibly
-in one of its predelle which exhibits the Saviour held extended by his
-Mother, Magdalen and John: they cannot be mistaken in the predelle
-which represents him among the sleeping disciples praying in the
-garden,--performances of his puerility, and most probably before he left
-the school of Pietro.
-
-After an enumeration of Raffaello's juvenile works at Cività di Castello
-and at Perugia, we are told that he who ascribed Sanzio's art to length
-of study and not to nature, was not acquainted with the powers of his
-mind.[92]
-
-That such was the verdict of Michael Agnolo, is recorded by Condivi; and
-from aught that appears, it does not seem either invidious or
-incompetent. If Art be a complete system of invariable rules, he only is
-a master of Art who substantiates its precepts by equal uniformity of
-execution and taste; and till he arrives at that point, he can only be
-said to have seized more or less of its parts in making approaches to
-the whole, and to be indebted to "study" and not to "nature," if he put
-himself at last in possession of it.
-
-Such was the progress of Raffaello; he arrived by degrees at style in
-design, by degrees at style in composition, by degrees at invention,
-expression, and at what appeared to him colour. His genius emancipated
-him from the shackles of prescription and fashion, rapidly, if we
-compare his progress with the shortness of his life or the progress of
-the rest of his contemporaries, but slowly, if we compare him with
-Michael Angelo, whose system of Art seems to have been born with him,
-whose infancy, virility, age, exhibit one uniform principle. Every
-element of the system displayed in the Capella Sistina and on the tombs
-in S. Lorenzo, may be traced in his essays at the garden of the Medici
-and in the Holy Family painted for Angelo Doni: but what eye will
-discover the future painter of the Heliodorus, or the composer of the
-Cartoons in the bridal arrangements of our Lady's Wedding at Cività di
-Castello, or even in the Cartoons for the sacristy of the Duomo at
-Sienna?
-
-Though the commission of painting in that place a series of the most
-memorable events in the life of Pope Pio II. (a Siennese celebrated by
-the name of Enea Silvio,) had been given to Pinturicchio, who had
-sufficient modesty and taste to avail himself of the superior and
-growing powers of his friend,--it has been asked what enterprise of
-equal magnitude had in that infant state of Art ever been consigned to
-a single hand, without considering that the co-operation of Raffaello
-was adventitious, and less owing to the opinion which he had established
-of himself in the public mind than to the modesty of Pinturicchio. And
-had not Luca Signorelli singly been entrusted with a work at Orvieto,
-whose tremendous and universally interesting subjects beyond comparison
-excelled whatever the embassies, the poetic and papal honours, the
-canonization of a nun, the ceremonies of a council, the death of the
-hero himself, and the transportation of his corpse from Ancona to Rome,
-however varied by character, impressed by the sensibility of the artist,
-or raised above the heraldry of the times, could pretend to achieve
-beyond the precincts of Sienna?
-
-Whether Raffaello furnished the whole of the Cartoons for that work, or
-only part, cannot be ascertained from the contradictory account of
-Vasari,[93] who in the life of Pinturicchio asserts the first, and in
-that of Raffaello, the second. As he, however, did not leave Sienna for
-Florence till 1504, it is probable that he continued to assist his
-friend in completing the whole historic series: the work itself is in
-perfect preservation, and though better informed eyes than those of
-Bottari[94] might not be competent to discriminate the parts which
-exclusively belong to Raffaello, it is certain that in the progress of
-the pictures there is an evident progress toward style.
-
-Aggrandisement of style might reasonably be supposed to have been the
-motive that drew Raffaello to Florence. The David of M. Angiolo was
-placed; he had begun his cartoon, which from its very inaccessibility,
-and the high character of the artist whom it opposed, must have been an
-object of eager curiosity to the public, and of tremulous expectation to
-the student. Florence was, no doubt, at that period divided into two
-technic factions, Vinciists and Bonarotists; it does not, however,
-appear that Raffaello adhered to either of the two leaders; neither the
-learning and energy of Bonaroti, nor the magic chiaroscuro of Lionardo,
-could divert the future painter of the passions from his course; he
-therefore attached himself to the study of Masaccio, as a more direct
-guide to the drama. The implicit application of that master's
-conceptions in the same or similar subjects, when he was in the vigour
-of his powers, if it be the most celebrated proof of this, is a less
-convincing one than the similarity of taste and vein of thought which
-pervades their works, and might, to men of bolder conjecture than I
-pretend to, prove that Masaccio might have been what Raffaello was, had
-time and means conspired.
-
-According to the account of Vasari,[95] Raffaello went three times to
-Florence: the first time when, according to the biographer, roused by
-the fame of Lionardo and M. Angiolo, he left the partnership of
-Pinturicchio, 1504--the date of the recommendatory letter with the
-affixed name of Joanna Feltria, Duchess of Urbino, addressed to the
-Gonfaloniere Pietro Soderini, and said to be still preserved at Florence
-among the papers of the Gaddi family. Supposing the date of the letter
-(1st October, 1504) to be correct, and the writer of it to have been
-acquainted with the person she recommends, its genuineness, as Fiorillo
-observes, is liable to strong suspicion. Its expressions might fit a lad
-of ten or twelve years, but certainly not a young man of one-and-twenty,
-the age of Raffaello, who had painted many pictures, was at that very
-time employed in a great public work, and only three years after was
-called to Rome by Giulio the Second.
-
-Though Raffaello's talents had spread his name, and attracted the
-attention and the wishes of Giulio the Second to employ him in the
-decoration of the Vatican, it may be presumed that the persuasive
-influence of his relative, Bramante Lazzari, decided the Pontiff to
-distinguish him by that immediate and exclusive call to Rome, which
-raised him above all rival competition, and opened the most splendid
-period of his life, most probably 1507. Which was the picture he began
-with, would not have been contested by his biographers, encomiasts, and
-critics, from Vasari to Mengs, had they attended less to hearsay, for
-tradition it cannot be called, than to the evidence of the works
-themselves. To date the dispute on the Sacrament after the School of
-Athens, equally inverts the progressive powers of the artist in
-conception, taste, style, and execution. Everywhere that composition
-betrays a young performer, enviably successful in each individual part,
-but whom experience has not yet enabled to spread an harmonious whole.
-The connection of its upper with the lower scene, less divided than rent
-asunder, depends entirely on a mental effort in the spectator. The
-parallelism of the celestial synod, impresses more with formal monotony
-than awful energy, and the ostentatious abuse of gold impairs its
-dignity. In the lower part of the picture, less sublime than dramatic,
-the artist moves in his own element; its parallelism and its contrasts,
-no longer the result of ceremonious symmetry, but of the inspiring
-principle, warms contemplation to sympathy, and its characteristic
-correctness exhibits in Raffaello's own unassisted, or rather unalloyed
-hand, the style of the School of Athens, the Mass of Bolsena, the
-female part of the Heliodorus, and with a felicity unattained in the
-Parnassus and the Attila,--the more ample outlines and the increased
-volume of forms in the Angels, and the Heliodorus and his accomplices on
-the foreground.
-
-
-    _A description of two Drawings by Raffaello, from an account of
-    the Collection of Drawings and Prints in the Gallery of Duke
-    Albrecht, of Sachsen Teschen, at Vienna_.[96]
-
-I.
-
-Two naked male figures, apparently studies from Nature, on one leaf,
-drawn in red chalk: one with nearly all his back turned to the eye,
-rests the left hand on his hip, and with the right points to something
-before him. Somewhat behind you see the other, sideways, in perfect
-repose, leaning with both hands on a long spear-like staff; the
-background has some rudiments of a sketched head. To the right of the
-spectator, at the side of the first figure, you read, "1515,
-Raffahell di Urbin der so hoch vom Pobst geacht ist gwest, hat diese
-nakte Bild gemacht, und hat sy dem Albrecht Dürer gen Nornberg
-geschikt, in sein hand zu weissen."[97]
-
-That Raffaello in his last years, and when at the height of his
-celebrity, did exchange drawings with Albert Durer, is attested by the
-biographers of both: and that the design here described is one of that
-number, is incontestably proved, not only by the peculiarity of style,
-the elegance and facility of outline, the characteristic contrast of
-solid and muscular parts, but by the identity of the handwriting with
-the manuscripts of Albert still existing at Nürnberg, his native city.
-
-I therefore think it no improbable conjecture to suppose that Raffaello,
-by transmitting this specimen of his hand to Albert, intended to make
-him sensible of the difference between imitating Nature and dryly
-copying a model, and so impress him with the necessity of contrasting
-his outline according to the different texture of the parts in the
-bodies before him.
-
-This interesting leaf is one foot three inches three lines in height,
-and ten inches eight lines in width, Vienna measure; and in perfect
-preservation.
-
-
-II.
-
-This design differs in nothing from the well-known picture of the
-Transfiguration, but the absolute nudity of all the figures.
-
-That Raffaello was accustomed to sketch in naked outlines, may be known
-from most collections that possess something of his hand; but perhaps
-none but this may be able to produce a design, of a numerous and
-complete composition, in which every figure is rendered with anatomical
-correctness and finished chiaroscuro.
-
-Another singularity of this important leaf is, the characteristic
-disparity of execution in the figures; for though all are drawn with the
-pen, and on the first glance seem hatched in one uniform manner, it soon
-appears on close inspection, that they cannot have been produced by the
-same hand.
-
-The figures of the three Disciples on the Mount, especially the
-foreshortened one, are treated with that spirited facility and
-confident decision which always mark the pen of Raffaello. Those of the
-Saviour and the collateral prophets, though drawn with less precision
-and contours here and there, by repeated strokes, corrected, still
-exhibit on the whole the same spirit, facility, and confidence of hand.
-Of the actors below, the figure of John, with hands crossed on his
-breast, and the three next to him have the same Raffaellesque
-characteristics, and so the whole of the females kneeling on the
-foreground; but of the adjoining apostle, with the book in his hand, the
-projected leg and foot are absolutely out of drawing; whilst the
-Demoniac and his father, with all the remaining figures, drawn by mere
-practice, without a symptom of the master spirit, give palpable proofs
-of a different hand.
-
-It appears no improbable conjecture that Raffaello, after settling the
-plan and fully arranging the figures of his picture, drew the nudities
-of this design as the bases of his draperies: for this reason only, the
-principal parts of the forms, and those muscles that would act most
-visibly on the draperies, are designed correctly, and finished with
-decision; whilst the heads, and what was either to be naked in the
-picture or did not act immediately on the drapery, remained in careless
-and superficial lines.
-
-That Raffaello suffered parts of his Transfiguration, and in my opinion
-some of the most important parts, to receive all but the last finish from
-a pupil, if tradition had not told us, there is ocular demonstration in
-the picture itself. The proportions of the Demoniac's father are neglected
-as a whole, in relation of limb to limb, and the figure is sacrificed to
-place. The face of Christ himself, as it was seen in the Louvre, is
-unworthy of Raffaello's hand and conception.[98]
-
-The reason why some of the figures are drawn in the true spirit of the
-artist, and others in a bald and insignificant manner, may be, that
-after slightly sketching the whole, he gave his own finish in the design
-to those parts only which he intended to execute with his own hand in
-the picture; and less solicitous for the rest, left them to the hand of
-some inferior pupil.
-
-The height of this extraordinary design is one foot eight inches four
-lines; its breadth one foot two inches five lines; it is without injury.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Taddeo and Federigo Zuccari, the first declared mannerists of this
-school, sons of Ottaviano Zuccari, a mediocre painter of S. Angiolo in
-Vado, came to Rome successively, formed a school, and filled towns and
-states with an immense farrago of good, tolerable, and bad pictures.
-From the instructions of Pompeo da Fano and Giacomone da Faenza, but
-chiefly from an obstinate study of Raffaello's works, Taddeo, at no
-protracted period, gathered enough to diffuse over his own, an air,
-though not reality, of style, and to anticipate by contrivance and
-facility the rewards which time owes to invention and genius. Courting
-the senses of the multitude, he became the hero of the day; they saw
-their portraits in his faces, their limbs in his forms, their action in
-his attitudes; his draperies, hair, beards, had a cut of fashion. The
-simplicity of his disposition is often contrasted by half figures
-emerging from his foregrounds; perhaps less from a principle of
-imitating his more remote predecessors, than to invigorate the effect of
-his chiaroscuro, a method not unknown to Parmegiano.
-
-Rome possesses vast works in fresco of Taddeo; among the best of these
-are some Gospel stories at the Consolazione. He seldom painted in oil,
-and less commendably in large than small: some of these are cabinet
-pictures of exquisite finish,--such a one, (formerly in the collection
-of the Duke of Urbino, but more recently at Osimo in the Palace
-Leopardi,) is the Nativity of the Saviour, and in Taddeo's very best
-style. But the work on which his fame chiefly rests, are the paintings
-of the Palazzo Farnese, at Caprarola (engraved in a moderate volume, by
-Prenner, 1748). They represent the Feats of the Farnese Family, in peace
-and war; to which are joined other stories, both sacred and profane;
-but what attracts attention most, is the celebrated "Stanza del Sonno,"
-an apartment dedicated to Sleep, replete with a great variety of
-allegoric imagery, suggested to him by Annibale Caro, in a long, quaint
-letter, printed among his familiar ones, and reproduced among the
-"Lettere Pittoriche," t. iii. l. 99.
-
-Dissimilar in the pursuits of life, Taddeo resembled Raffaello in death;
-he completed thirty-seven years, and obtained a monument close to
-Sanzio, in the "Rotonda."
-
-His brother and pupil Federigo, inferior in design, resembles him in
-taste, though more mannered, more capricious in conceit, more crowded in
-composition. He completed what death had prevented Taddeo from finishing
-in the Sala Regia, that of Farnese, the Trinità de' Monti, and
-elsewhere, with the airs of heir-at-law to his brother's talents. Thus
-he raised an opinion of capacity for greater enterprise, and was invited
-by Francis I. to paint the great Cupola of the metropolitan church at
-Florence, which death alone had saved from Vasari's hands. There
-Federigo painted more than three hundred figures of fifty feet in
-height each, besides that of Lucifer, "so enormous," to use his own
-phrase, "that it makes the other figures appear infants;[99]--figures,"
-he adds, "larger than the world ever witnessed before in Art." So
-little, however, hugeness excepted, is there to admire in this work,
-that at the time of Pier da Cortona, a painting of that master would
-have been substituted for it, had it not been feared that he would not
-live long enough to terminate the whole. After the Cupola, every work of
-consequence at Rome appeared his due, and he was recalled by Gregorio to
-paint the ceiling of the Paolina, and give a successor to Michael
-Angelo. It was at that period, that, on a charge preferred against him
-by some courtiers or domestics of Gregorio, he painted and exhibited the
-picture of Calumny, and his accusers with asses-ears, which raised a
-clamour that obliged him to fly from Rome. During his exile, which
-lasted some years, he visited Flanders, Holland, England; had a call
-even from Venice to paint a subject in the Ducal Palace, was everywhere
-caressed and remunerated, and, the Pope being mitigated, returned to
-reassume his interrupted labours in the Capella; the best work perhaps
-which, without the assistance of his brother, he has produced at Rome,
-though the larger altar-piece of S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and that of the
-Angioli at Gesù, with some others dispersed in other churches, may claim
-their share of merit. He built a house on Monte Pincio, rapidly and with
-the assistance of his scholars furnished with family portraits,
-conversations, and other whims in fresco, and left to prove him a
-trifler in Art, and the leader of decay.
-
-Invited by Philip II. he went to Madrid, but failed to please; his place
-was supplied by Tibaldi, and he sent back with a good pension to Italy.
-Towards the end of his life he made another journey, scouring the
-principal towns of Italy, and leaving his works wherever he could place
-them: of these the Assumption of the Madonna in an oratorio at Rimini on
-which he wrote his name, and her Death at Sta. Maria in Acumine of the
-same place, with figures more than usually studied, deserve notice. His
-Presepio in the Duomo of Foligno, has simplicity and grace; nor less
-have the two stories relative to the Madonna, painted for the Duke of
-Urbino in a chapel at Loretto. The Miracle of the Snow, in the library
-of the Cistercians at Milano, is a multitudinous composition filled with
-portraits as usual, variously coloured and well preserved. The Borromean
-College at Pavia, has a saloon painted in fresco from incidents in the
-life of S. Carlo: the most approved of these is the Saint praying in his
-recess: nor might the other two, that of the consistory in which he
-received the Cardinal's hat, and the Pest of Milano, want commendation
-had they overflowed less in figures. At Torino he painted for the
-Jesuits a St. Paul; began to ornament a gallery for the Duke, Charles
-Emanuel; published his _Idea de' Pittori Scultori ed Architetti_, and
-dedicated it to the Duke. This was followed, at his return to Lombardy,
-by two other treatises; "_La dimora di Parma del Sig. Cav. Federico
-Zuccaro_; and _Il passaggio per Italia, colla dimora di Parma del Sig.
-Cav. Federigo Zuccari_," both printed at Bologna 1608. Next year, on his
-return to Rome, he fell sick at Ancona, and there died. His talents,
-which extended to sculpture and architecture, were inferior to his
-fortune, which preceded that of all his contemporaries, and was in a
-great measure the effect of personal qualities; lordly aspect and
-demeanour, some literary culture, persuasive manners, and a liberality
-that absorbed the wealth which his hand had accumulated.
-
-Emulation seems to have been his chief motive of writing: he longed to
-break a lance with Vasari, whom, from whatever cause, as appears from
-the postils tacked to the _Vite_, he disliked. They have been sometimes,
-especially in the Life of Taddeo, quoted and treated as effusions of
-envy and malignity by the annotator of the Roman edition. To prove his
-superiority over the Tuscan, he chose a style as obscure and inflated as
-that of Giorgio is diffuse and plain; the whole of the treatise printed
-at Torino reels in a round of internal and external design, and contains
-less precept than peripatetic speculation, which rendered the schools of
-that day more loquacious than learned. His language runs over in
-intellective[100] and formative conceits, in substantial substances and
-formal forms; even the titles of his chapters are larded with equal
-fulsomeness of phrase, like that of the XIIth., that "philosophy and to
-philosophize, is metaphoric and similitudinarious design." These are the
-bait of fools--for none but fools can hope to gather meaning from the
-bubbles of sophistry, or stoop to disentangle etymologies which derive
-_disegno_ from "Dei signum," the sign of God!
-
-This treatise was probably the offspring of his presidency in the
-Academy of St. Luke; for office gives insolence. The Academy dates its
-origin from the Pontificate of Gregorio XIII., who granted the brief of
-its foundation[101] to Muziano. It had not, however, its full effect
-till after the return of Zuccari from Spain, who put it in force and was
-unanimously declared "Principe," or President. That was his day of
-triumph; he returned from the inauguration in the church of S. Martino
-at the foot of the Campidoglio, accompanied by a great concourse of
-artists and litterators to his own house, where shortly after he built a
-saloon for the accommodation of the Academy, in whose praise he
-overflowed in prose and poems, more than once quoted in his larger
-treatise; and to seal his extreme affection, bequeathed like Muziano, in
-case his own line should fail, the bulk of his fortune to the
-establishment.
-
-Giuseppe Cesari, sometimes distinguished by the name of Il Cavaliere
-d'Arpino,[102] his native place, was in art what Marino was in
-poetry--brilliancy without substance is the characteristic of both, and
-either proved the ancient observation, that Arts and Republics receive
-the greatest damage from the greatest capacities. The talent of Cesari
-bubbled up from his infancy, made him an object of admiration, procured
-him through F. Danti, the protection of Gregorio XIII., and in a short
-time the reputation of the first master at Rome. Less than the felicity
-with which he is said to have executed some pictures from certain
-designs of M. Agnolo, in the possession of Giacomo Rocca, his exuberance
-alone was sufficient to establish supremacy of name among a race who
-measured genius by quantity, and science by confidence of method. If his
-numbers were rabble, he arranged them with the skill of a general; if
-common-place furnished him with features, arrogance of touch brushed
-them into notice; and the horses which he drew with equal truth and
-fire, supplied the incorrectness or imbecility of the rider. The
-excellence of his colour in fresco, the gaiety which he spread over a
-vast surface, hid from the common eye monotony of manner, poverty of
-character, and want of finish in the detail of parts.
-
-They were observed, reprobated and opposed by M.A. Caravaggio, A.
-Caracci, and the few who saw and thought with them. Quarrels arose, and
-challenges were given: that of Caravaggio, Cesari refused to accept,
-because he had not yet been knighted, and Annibale rejected that of
-Cesari, because, said he, "I know no other weapon than my pencil." They
-both experienced the difference of the difficulties that attend
-legislation and reform of taste, and were left ineffectually to struggle
-with an empiric, who outlived either upwards of thirty years, and then
-left a race worse than himself behind him.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[89] Bramante.
-
-[90] Lett. Perug. V.
-
-[91] "Cervello di porfido."
-
-[92] See Vasari on Michael Angelo's observations on Tizian.
-
-[93] "Fece li Schizzi e i Cartoni di tutte le Istorie."
-
-    _Vita di Pinturicchio._
-
-"Fece alcuni de' disegni e Cartoni di quell' opera."
-
-    _Vita di Raffaello._
-
-
-[94] In the picture on the facciata, Bottari says, "Si vede non solo il
-disegno, ma in molte teste anche il colore di Raffaello."
-
-[95] Essendo con Pinturicchio a Siena--messo da parte quell' opera, e
-ogni utile e commodo suo, se ne venne a Fiorenza. Morta la Madre, partì
-e andò a Urbino, e accomodate le cose sue, ritornò a Perugia. Prima che
-partisse, &c.--Così venuto a Firenze, fece il cartone per il quadro di
-Madonna Atalanta Baglioni; dipinse per A. Doni e Dom. Canigiani; studiò
-le cose vecchie di Masaccio; acquistò miglioramento dai lavori di
-Lionardo e di Michelagnolo; ebbe stretta domestichezza con Frà
-Bartolomeo di S. Marco; ma in su la maggior frequenza di questa pratica
-fu richiamato a Perugia, dove finì l'opera della gia detta Madonna
-Atalanta Baglioni, &c.--Finito questo lavoro e tornato a Fiorenza, gli
-fu dai Dei cittadini Fiorentini allegata una tavola, &c. ma chiamato da
-Bramante si trasferì a Roma.--Vasari, Vita di Raffaello da Urbino, ed.
-Firenze, 1771. p. 163, 167, 172.
-
-According to this account of Vasari, Raffaelle went three times to
-Florence; the first time, when roused by the fame of Lionardo and
-Michael Angelo, he left Pinturicchio 1504, and continued at Florence
-till he was called away by the death of his mother to Urbino, from
-whence, having settled his affairs, and painted certain things, he went
-to Perugia, and after some public works there, returned again to
-Florence with a commission from A. Baglioni. This is the period fixed by
-Vasari of his acquaintance with Bartolomeo di S. Marco, the progressive
-improvements of his style, and his pictures for A. Doni and D.
-Canigiani, and must have been his longest stay in that capital, though
-interrupted by a new call to Perugia, during which he finished the
-picture of the Burial of Christ, now in the Borghese Palace, for the
-Chapel Baglioni, and then returned for the third time to Florence.
-
-[96] From the "Annalen der bildenden Künste für die Osterreichischen
-Staaten, Von Hans Rudolph Füessli." Erster theil. Wien. 1801. Annals of
-the Plastic Arts in Austria.
-
-[97] 1515. Raffahell di Urbin, who was so highly esteemed by the Pope,
-has made these naked figures, and has sent them to Albrecht Durer at
-Nornberg, to show him his hand.
-
-[98] This observation is founded on close inspection of this picture, in
-the room of the "Restoration," in 1802. The face of Christ not only
-appeared no longer that which all thought it to be who had seen it at S.
-Pietro in Montorio, but even inferior to that in the print of Dorigny,
-had assumed an expression nearer allied to meanness than to dignity,
-without sublimity austere, and forbidding. It is probable, however, that
-these changes originated under the sacrilegious hands of the restorers,
-who had before destroyed the better part of the Madonna di Foligno.
-
-[99] "Sì smisurata, che fa parere le altre, figure di Bambini," &c. Idea
-de' Pittori, Scultori, e Architetti, inserted among the Lettere
-Pittoriche, t. vi. p. 147.
-
-[100] Disegno interiore ed esteriore; concetti intellettivi e formativi;
-sostanze sostanziali, forme formali.--Titolo del capitolo XII. che la
-filosofia e il filosofare è disegno metaforico similitudinario.--Disegno,
-Segno di Dio.
-
-[101] Baglioni, Vita di Muziano.
-
-[102] 1560-1640.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES.
-
-
-Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their
-splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had
-learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum,
-Stabiæ, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of
-legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished
-in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman
-empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts
-made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair
-their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art
-itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom
-of the middle ages.
-
-But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of
-Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the
-contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage
-through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage,
-on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded
-church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[103] avails
-himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as
-if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand
-against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[104] who from them, judged him
-inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.
-
-The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and
-emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli,
-named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the
-Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some
-sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel
-of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo
-a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some
-fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was
-the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta
-the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has
-reached our time.[105]
-
-About 1325, Giotto was invited by King Robert to Naples, for the purpose
-of painting the church of Sta. Chiara; he came and filled it with
-Gospel history, and apocalyptic mysteries, from inventions, said in the
-time of Vasari to have been formerly communicated to him by Dante. These
-works, because they darkened the church, were whitewashed in the
-beginning of the last century, with the exception of a Madonna called
-della Grazia, and some other sainted image, preserved by female piety.
-Giotto conducted other works in Sta. Maria Coronata, and still others,
-which no longer exist in the Castle dell' Uovo. Maestro Simone, a
-Cremonese, according to some, but more probably a native of Naples, was
-the chosen partner of these works, and from so distinguished a choice,
-acquired some celebrity himself: from the resemblance of his style to
-Tesauro and to Giotto, he might have been the pupil of either, and was
-perhaps of both. Certain it is, that after the departure of Giotto, he
-received from Robert and Queen Sancia, many important commissions for
-various churches, and especially that of S. Lorenzo; there he painted
-Robert receiving the crown from his brother Lewis, Bishop of Toulouse,
-but died before he could finish the compartment of the chapel dedicated
-to that prelate after his demise and canonization. Though confessedly
-inferior in invention, character, and suavity of tone, he has nearly
-reached Giotto in some of his works: such as the dead Christ supported
-by his mother, in the church dell' Incoronata, and the Madonna with the
-Infant, on a gold-ground, now in the convent of the church della Croce,
-supposed by some to have been painted in oil.[106]
-
-Simone had a son, Francesco di Simone, who died in 1360. His works are
-not numerous, but what has reached our days in the Capitolo di S.
-Lorenzo, is distinguished by an air of superior dignity and grace. Two
-other pupils of Simone, Gennaro di Cola and Stefanone, a similarity of
-manner associated in several public works, such as the chapel of S.
-Lewis, begun by Simone, and what still exists in S. Giovanni da
-Carbonara of subjects relative to our Lady. They are similar, however,
-without monotony. Gennaro, impressed by the difficulties of his art, and
-bent to overcome each obstacle by labour, appears precise, studied, and
-hard. Stefanone, guided by a spirit which in better days might have been
-called genius, boldly executed what he had conceived with warmth.
-
-The pretended improvements of Colantonio del Fiore, (born 1352, died
-1444,) a pupil of Francesco, neither appear to have been considerable
-enough in themselves, nor sufficiently authenticated, to place him at
-the head of a new epoch in style. Those barbarous relics of the middle
-ages, that meagerness of contour, dryness of colour, and want of
-perspective, which he is said to have abolished, had in a great measure
-vanished before, at the glance of Giotto. The gold grounds continued
-after both;[107] and if in enumerating some of his works his encomiast
-is in doubt whether they may not rather belong to M. Simone, what is it
-but a tacit confession, that the art had made no considerable progress
-during the course of a century?
-
-The life of Colantonio grasped nearly the half of two centuries, and the
-refinements for which he has been extolled must be looked for in those
-of his works, on whose authenticity there is no hesitation, produced on
-the verge of life. Such is the Madonna, &c. in Sta. Maria Nuova, a
-compound of harmonious hues, though painted on a gold ground; and still
-more in S. Lorenzo, Saint Jerome drawing a thorn from the lion's foot,
-the date 1436, a picture full of truth, in high esteem with foreigners,
-and for its better preservation removed by the fathers of the convent
-from the church itself to the sacristy. He had a scholar in Angiolo
-Franco, who has obtained the praise of Marco di Siena, for having
-invigorated the most successful imitation of Giotto by the tone and
-chiaroscuro of his master.
-
-But a name of far greater importance to art is that of Antonio Solario,
-commonly called Lo Zingaro, the reputed son-in-law of Colantonio. His
-story, still more romantic than that which in Quintin Metsis transformed
-a blacksmith to a painter, tells that Solario, bred to the forge, became
-enamoured of a daughter of Colantonio, forsook the anvil, and by
-successful submission to a ten years' trial of painting, and the
-mediation of a queen, obtained the idol of his soul. Let those who told
-the tale vouch for its truth: what is less disputable, and interests
-this history more, are his travels from Naples to Bologna, where for
-several years he studied under Lippo Dalmasio, and from thence over
-Italy, to become acquainted with the principles of other masters; those
-of Vivarini at Venice; of Bicci at Florence; of Galasso at Ferrara; of
-Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano at Rome. These two, it is believed
-that he assisted, and Luca Giordano asserted that some heads in their
-pictures at the Lateran bore the legitimate marks of Solario's pencil.
-In heads he excelled; he inspired them, according to Marco da Siena,
-with the air of life. In perspective, if the times be weighed, his skill
-was considerable; in composition not contemptible. There is variety in
-his scenery; and if his dresses be not drapery, they are at least
-naturally folded. In the design of the extremities he was less happy;
-his attitudes often border on caricature, as his colour on crudeness. On
-his return to Naples, nine years after his departure, applauded by
-Colantonio and the public, he enjoyed the patronage of King Alfonso. His
-greatest work is the Life of S. Benedetto, in the compartments of the
-cloister of S. Severino,--frescoes filled with an incredible variety of
-objects. Other churches possess some altarpieces by him: he left many
-portraits and some very attractive Madonnas; but in the Dead Christ of
-S. Domenico Maggiore, and the S. Vincent of S. Pier Martire, including
-some stories of that Saint's life, he is said to have excelled himself.
-Zingaro reared a school, which with more or less felicity disseminated
-his principles for nearly half a century, and retained his name. Of its
-pupils, Niccola di Vito, long forgot in his works, is barely remembered
-as a buffoon; Simone Papa and Angiotillo di Roccadirame, scarcely
-emerged to mediocrity; Pietro and Ippolito (Polito) del Donzello deserve
-less transient attention. Sons-in-law of Angiolo Franco, and pupils of
-Giuliano da Majano in architecture, they were, according to Vasari,[108]
-employed by him to decorate with paintings the fabric of Poggio Reale,
-which he had constructed for King Alfonso, where, continuing to operate
-under his son and successor Ferdinand, they represented the story of the
-Conspiracy formed in against him, a work celebrated by Jacopo
-Sannazaro.[109] Ippolito, alone or with his brother, filled the
-refectory of Sta. Maria Nuova with a number of subjects for the same
-prince, and then retired to Florence, where, not long after, he died.
-Piero remained at Naples distinguished and followed. Their style is that
-of their master, but with more suavity of colour. The first successful
-imitation of friezes, trophies, and storied basso-relievoes in
-chiaroscuro, may with probability be dated from them. That Pietro
-excelled in portraits, is evident from some animated heads saved among
-the ruins of certain frescoes of his on a wall of the Palace Matalona.
-Both were, however, surpassed in tone, and force of light and shade, and
-mellowness of outline, by Silvestro de Buoni, their pupil, whose
-pictures, scattered over the temples of Naples, have been enumerated by
-Dominici. Silvestro himself yields to Tesauro of questionable name,[110]
-whose works approach much nearer to the succeeding epoch than the united
-labours of his predecessors in vigour of invention, in judgment,
-propriety of attitude, truth of expression, and general harmony of the
-whole, with a relief beyond what seems credible in an artist
-unacquainted with other schools and other works than those of his
-native place. Such was his power of execution, that it challenged the
-wonder of Luca Giordano in the vigour of his career, when he
-contemplated the ceiling of San Giovanni de' Pappacodi, where Tesauro
-had painted the Seven Sacraments. They have been minutely described, and
-the portraits of Alfonso II. and of Ippolita Sforza, whom he is said to
-have represented, for the work itself is no more, in the Sacrament of
-Matrimony, afford some light as to the time in which it was painted.
-Another of his works, equally praised, in the Chapel Tocco of the
-Episcopal church, which represented a series of subjects from the life
-of Saint Asprenas, perished under the hands of one of Solimena's pupils.
-He was the father or uncle of Raimo Epifanio Tesauro, a considerable
-Frescante, who, according to Stanzioni, rekindled the evanescent spark
-of Zingaro's principles. Some few vestiges of his works remain in Sta.
-Maria Nuova and Monte Vergine. His dates reach from 1480 to 1501, and he
-may be considered as the last of this school, for Gio. Antonio d'Amato
-acquired fame by abandoning its style for that of Pietro Perugino.
-
-Such were the masters that marked the first epoch of the Neapolitan
-school; neither inconsiderable in number, nor contemptible in progress,
-for a state nearly always perplexed by war: it derives, however, its
-greatest lustre from having produced within the state the memorable
-artist whose resolution and perseverance made Italy mistress of the
-new-discovered method in oil-painting, and changed the face of art.[111]
-
-Antoniello, a Messinese, of the Antonj family, universally known by the
-name of Antoniello da Messina, educated, according to Vasari, to the art
-at Rome, returned from that place to Sicily, and after some successful
-practice at Palermo and Messina, sailed to Naples, where he saw an
-historical picture painted in oil by John ab Eyk, which had been
-presented or disposed of to king Alfonso, by some Florentine traders.
-Charmed by the method, Antoniello forgot every other concern, passed
-into Flanders, and by close attendance, and some presents of Italian
-designs, captivated the heart of the old painter, who made him
-completely master of the secret, and soon after died. Antoniello then
-left Flanders, and after some months spent at Messina, repaired to
-Venice, where he practised with general admiration of his new method;
-communicated it to Domenico there, and he at Florence to the felon
-Castagna, till by gradual progress it embraced all Italy. What remains
-to be related of Antoniello, is reserved for the history of the Venetian
-school, to which by residence and practice he properly belongs, and
-which alone carried his new discovered method to the height it was
-capable of.
-
-The second epoch of Neapolitan art was auspicious. P. Perugino had
-painted for the Cathedral an Assumption of the Virgin, now lost, a work
-which led to a better taste. Already, Amato, as we observed, had
-abandoned the manner of Zingaro to follow Pietro, though his style had
-still too much of the former to form more than the connecting link
-between the two epochs; when Raffaello and his school came into vogue,
-Naples was the first of exterior towns to profit by them, and they,
-about the middle of the century, were followed by some adherents of
-Michael Angiolo; nor till near 1600, was any attention paid to other
-masters, if we except Tiziano.
-
-The new series begins with Andrea Sabbatini[112] of Salerno. Smitten
-with the style of P. Perugino, Andrea set out for Perugia, to enter his
-school; but hearing some painters at an inn on the road talk of
-Raffaello and the Vatican, he altered his mind and route, and went to
-Rome. Though not long under the guidance of Sanzio, being by the death
-of his father, 1513, obliged to return to Naples, he returned another
-man. He is said to have painted with Raffaello at the Pace and in the
-Vatican. A good copyist, and what is rare, a better imitator, if he did
-not soar with Giulio, he kept pace with the best of that school, and
-excelled some in correctness, and a style equally remote from
-affectation and manner, with depth of chiaroscuro, breadth of drapery,
-and a colour which has defied time. His works in oil and fresco,
-scattered over the metropolis and the kingdom at large, have been
-celebrated as miracles of art, though now either lost or greatly
-impaired.
-
-Of his scholars all persevered not in his manner: thus Cesare Turco, as
-commendable in oil as unsuccessful in fresco, drew nearer to P.
-Perugino. More of Andrea was retained by Francesco Santafede, the father
-and master of Fabrizio,--painters whom few of that school equal in
-colour, and so uniform that their works can only be discriminated by the
-superior tinge and chiaroscuro of the father. But the scholar who most
-resembled Andrea was one Paolillo, whose works, nearly all ascribed to
-his master, till restored to their real author by Dominici, leave little
-doubt of his right to the first honours of that school, had his career
-not been intercepted by a violent death, occasioned by intrigue.
-Polidoro Caldara, of Caravaggio, escaped to Naples in 1527, from the
-sack of Rome, but not, as Vasari with less information than credulity
-relates, to starve. Received in the house of Andrea, formerly his fellow
-scholar, he soon acquired acquaintance, commissions, and even formed
-pupils before his departure for Sicily. He had been celebrated for his
-chiaroscuros at Rome: at Naples and Messina he attempted colour. The
-shadowy and pallid specimens he has left, leave a doubt whether he would
-ever have arrived at a degree of strength or brilliancy worthy of
-invention and style, though he has been praised with enthusiasm by
-Vasari for the colour of the Christ led to Calvary, a numerous
-composition, and the last before his assassination at Messina.
-
-Gian Bernardo Lama left the school of Amato to attach himself to
-Polidoro, whom he more than once imitated with sufficient success to
-incur the suspicion of having been assisted by the master: he had,
-however, more sweetness than energy, and, in the sequel, was noted for
-his opposition to the vigorous inroads of the Tuscan style and the
-prevalence of Marco di Pino.
-
-Francesco Rubiales, a Spaniard, from his felicity of imitation called
-Polidorino, is likewise named in Naples among the scholars of Caldara,
-whom he assisted in painting for the Orsini, and singly conducted
-several works at Monte Oliveto, and elsewhere, the greater part of which
-are no more.
-
-There are who class with the scholars of Polidoro, Marco Cardisco,
-called Marco Calabrese.[113] Him Vasari prefers to all the natives of
-that epoch, and admires as a plant sprung from a soil not its own: he
-knew not, perhaps, that, of Magna Grecia, modern Calabria was the spot
-most favoured by the arts. Possessed of a dextrous hand and florid
-colour, Cardisco spread his labours over Napoli and the State: of what
-remains, the most praised is the Dispute of Saint Augustine at Aversa.
-Gio. Batista Crescione and Lionardo Castellani are slightly mentioned by
-Vasari as his scholars.
-
-Gio. Francesco Penni, called "Il Fattore," came to Naples some time
-after Polidoro; and, during the short time which he lived, for he died
-in 1528, contributed to the advancement of the art by leaving his great
-copy of Raffaello's Transfiguration and his pupil Lionardo Grazia, of
-Pistoia, behind him, a name more celebrated for colour, and far less for
-design, than might have been expected from a nurseling of the Roman
-School. He is said to have been one of the masters of Francesco Curia,
-who went to Rome to study the style of Raffaello, but returned with the
-manner of Zucchero. His composition is, however, praised for decorum and
-suavity, his angels and female countenances for beauty, and his colour
-for a tone of nature:--their full display distinguished that
-Circumcision at the Church della Pietà, which Ribera, Giordano, and
-Solimene placed among the masterpieces of Naples. Curia left a close
-imitator in Ippolito Borghese, of whom little is seen at home, where he
-seldom resided, but the Assumption of Maria at the Monte della
-Pietà,--an extensive work, marked by equal vigour of execution.
-
-Perino del Vaga, at Rome, instructed, and was assisted by, two
-Neapolitans, Giovanni Corso and Gianfilippo Criscuolo. The best that
-remains of Corso at Naples, is a Christ bearing his Cross, in S.
-Lorenzo. Long a pupil of Sabbatini, Criscuolo, during the little time of
-his stay at Rome, studied the works of Raffaello with a perseverance
-which acquired him the name of the Studious Neapolitan; but without
-native vigour, timid, correct, and dry, he remained fitter to teach than
-to lead. Such were the principal followers of the Roman School at
-Naples; for neither Francesco Imparato, who abandoned the dry precepts
-of Criscuolo for the genial example of Tiziano, nor his son Girolamo,
-who long after followed the same principles with more pretence and less
-success, can properly be classed among the pupils of Rome. About
-1544[114] a Tuscan introduced at Naples, what is as commonly as
-impertinently called, the style of Michael Angiolo: a cold enumeration
-of sesquipedalian muscles, groups uninspired by thought, feeble in
-effect, and crude or faint in colour, methodized by manner and
-despatched by practice. Thus Giorgio Vasari filled the Refectory of
-Monte Oliveto, during one year of residence, with an enormous work,
-which he considered as the electric stroke that was to animate that
-indolent taste, till then vainly solicited by Raffaello and his school.
-Whether he disgusted the national pride by such insolent civility, or
-provoked the indignation of those who, in Andrea Sabbatini, venerated a
-superior name, it appears that, so far from creating a school, he was
-discountenanced by the public, and incurred the perpetual censure of
-every Neapolitan writer on art. He ought to have known, that he who
-challenges a nation, courts an eternal feud.
-
-Another, less pompous, but more effectual follower of Michael Angiolo,
-was Marco da Pino, or Marco da Siena: the date[115] of his arrival at
-Naples ought probably to be placed after 1560. He was well received,
-presented with the freedom of the city, and deserved the courtesy by the
-amenity of his manners and sincerity of character. With the reputation
-of the first artist, Marco was employed in the most conspicuous churches
-of the city and the state. Though he sometimes repeated his inventions,
-he approached Michael Angiolo nearer than any other Tuscan, because he
-affected less to do it. His forms are appealed to by Lomazzo as
-instances of just proportion, and, in keeping and aërial perspective, he
-is ranked with Lionardo and Robusti. As his design is less charged, so
-is his colour more vigorous and glowing than the usual tinge of the
-Tuscan School: sometimes, however, he is unequal, trusts to practice,
-and deviates into manner. He was an able architect, and of the good
-writers on that art.
-
-Of many pupils reared in his school, none was comparable to Gio. Angiolo
-Criscuolo, brother of G. Filippo. Though bred a notary, he had practised
-miniature from his youth; emulation with his brother prompted him to
-attempt larger proportions; and, under the tuition of Marco, he became a
-good imitator of his style.[116]
-
-To dwell circumstantially on the crowd of artists that fill the
-biographic pages of this period, humiliating as mere nomenclature may
-appear, is below the dignity of an art, which, like poetry, admits not
-of mediocrity. Reputation during life, the partiality of friends and
-countrymen, some single work which escaped to excellence from the
-insignificant productions of a long career, are but equivocal claims on
-the homage of posterity: and more legitimate ones in oil or fresco, have
-neither Silvestro Bruno, Simone del Papa, the younger Amato, Mazzolini,
-Cola dell' Amatrice, Pompeo dell' Aquila, Giuseppe Valeriani, Marco
-Mazzaroppi, Gio. Pietro Russo, Pietro Negrone of Calabria, nor the
-Sicilian Gio. Borghese. Pirro Ligorio, the favourite architect of Pio
-IV. in Rome, and the engineer of Alphonso II. at Ferrara, owes the
-preservation of his name more to his Augean collections of antiquarian
-lumber and the intrigues by which he perplexed the last years of M.
-Angiolo, than to the flimsy exertions of his pencil.
-
-Matteo da Leccè, of obscure education, displayed in Rome a perverse
-attachment to the manner of M. Angiolo by the usual conglobation of
-muscles and extravagance of action. He worked chiefly in fresco, and
-with a relief, which, in the phrase of Baglioni, makes some of his
-figures burst from the wall. Though many Florentines were then at Rome,
-he alone appeared capable of completing the plan of Buonarroti, in the
-Sistina, by facing the Last Judgement with the Fall of the Rebel Angels.
-Matteo girt himself boldly for the work, and left it a lamentable proof
-of the ridicule that must attend the presumption of a mere craftsman to
-ally himself with a man of genius. He worked likewise in Malta and in
-Spain, and, passing from thence to the Indies, became a thriving trader,
-till duped by the rage of digging for treasures, he dissipated his
-wealth, and died of penury and grief.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-After the middle of the sixteenth century, the flame-like rapidity of
-Tintoretto's style at Venice, and soon after, the powerful contrast of
-Caravaggio's method at Rome, and the eclectic system of the Carracci, at
-Bologna, spread general emulation over Italy, and divided Naples into
-three parties, of nearly equal strength, led by Corenzio, Ribera, and
-Caracciolo, differing from each other, but ready to unite against all
-foreign competition. During their flourish, Guido, Domenichino,
-Lanfranco, Artemisia Gentileschi were at Naples, and formed some
-pupils;--a period as enviable in the number of excellent artists and the
-progressive powers of execution, as disgraceful for the dark manoeuvres
-and the vile intrigues that fill it--intrigues and manoeuvres too closely
-interwoven with the history of Neapolitan art, and, unfortunately, too
-well attested, merely to be dismissed with silence and contempt.
-
-Belisario Corenzio,[117] an Achæan Greek, after passing five years in
-the school of Tintoretto, fixed his abode at Naples about 1590. A native
-stream of ideas and unparalleled celerity of hand placed him, perhaps,
-on a level with his master in the dispatch of a prodigious number, even
-of most extensive works; but his rage was too ungovernable often to
-admit of more distinguished comparisons with Robusti; though few
-excelled him in design, and his works abound in conceptions, attitudes,
-and airs of heads confessedly inimitable to the Venetians themselves.
-The work in which he has best succeeded as an imitator of Tintoretto, is
-the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd by the Saviour, in the Refectory of
-the Benedictines, a huge performance, but, under his hands, a task of
-forty days. Though generally too much of a mannerist to sacrifice the
-readiest to the best, he still preserves a character of his own, an air
-of originality, in glories especially, which he embosomed in darkness
-and clouds pregnant with showers. With a decided turn for works of large
-dimension in fresco, which seldom allowed him to submit to the finish of
-oil colour, he contrived to please by various compositions of sacred
-history, in small proportions, and is even said to have enlivened the
-perspectives of the Frenchman Desiderio with diminutive figures
-admirably toned and adapted to the scenery.
-
-The native country of Giuseppe Ribera[118] was a subject of dispute
-between the Spaniards and Neapolitans, till the production of an
-extract from the baptismal register of Xativa (Antologia di Roma, 1795)
-decided the claim in favour of Spain, and proved him a native of that
-place, now "San Felipe," in the district of Valencia. If the date of his
-birth, January 12, 1588, be correct, he must have come to Italy and
-entered the school of Caravaggio at a very early period. From him Ribera
-went to Rome, Modena, Parma, saw Raffaello, Annibale, Correggio, and in
-imitation of their works attempted to form a more luminous and gayer
-style, in which he had little success, dismissed it soon after his
-return to Naples, and once more embraced the method of Caravaggio, as
-more eminently calculated by its force, truth, and effect to fix the eye
-of the multitude, the object of his ambition; he soon became painter to
-the court, and by degrees the arbiter of its taste.
-
-The studies he had pursued enabled him to go beyond Caravaggio in
-invention, mellowness, and design: the grand Deposition from the Cross
-at the Certosa proves the success of his emulation, a work, by the
-verdict of Giordano, alone sufficient to form a painter: the Martyrdom
-of S. Gennaro in the royal chapel, and the S. Jerome of the Trinità,
-excel his usual style, and possess Titianesque beauties. S. Jerome was
-among his darling subjects; S. Jerome he painted, he etched in numerous
-repetition, in whole-length and in half figures. He delighted in the
-representation of hermits, anchorets, apostles, prophets, perhaps less
-to impress the mind with gravity of character and the venerable looks of
-age, than to strike the eye with the imitation of incidental deformities
-attendant on decrepitude, and the picturesque display of bone, veins,
-and tendons athwart emaciated muscle. A shrivelled arm, a dropsied leg,
-were to Ribera what a breast-plate and a gaberdine were to Rembrandt. As
-in objects of imitation he courted meagreness or excrescence, so in the
-choice of historic subjects he preferred to the terrors of ebullient
-passions, features of horror or loathsomeness, the spasms of Ixion, St.
-Bartholomew under the butcher's knife. Nor are the few ideas of gaiety
-by which he endeavoured to soothe his exasperated fancy, less
-disgusting: Bacchus and his attendants are grinning Lazaroni or bloated
-wine-sacks; brutality under his hand distorts the feature of mirth.
-
-Giambatista Caracciolo,[119] first attached to Franc. Imparato, then to
-Caravaggio, grew to manhood before he had produced any work of
-consequence: roused afterward by the fame and the impression made on his
-mind by some picture of Annibale, he went to Rome, and by a pertinacious
-study of the Farnese Gallery became one of the best imitators of that
-style. This was the basis of his fame on his return to Naples, and by
-this, whenever provoked to competition, he maintained it: such are the
-Madonna of S. Anna de' Lombardi; S. Carlo, in the church of S. Agnello;
-and the Christ under the Cross, at the Incurabili. The rest of his
-performances, by their strength of chiaroscuro, betray the school of
-Caravaggio. From so considerate and finished an artist, haste and
-flimsiness were not to be feared, and yet there exist productions of his
-so feeble that his biographer[120] is reduced to account for them from
-the artist's wish of retaliating by paltry work for paltrier prices; or
-from suffering them to be finished by Mercurio d'Aversa, no very
-estimable pupil.
-
-Such were the three leaders of that cabal which for some years
-persecuted every stranger of eminence in the art who freely came, or was
-invited to come, to Naples. Reputation, fiction, violence, had raised
-Belisario to the tyranny of fresco; the most lucrative commissions he
-considered as due to himself, the rest he distributed among his
-dependants, the greater number of whom possessed little merit. Massimo
-Santafede, though independent of him, remained neuter, afraid to
-interfere with a man who, to obtain his purpose, would stop at neither
-fraud nor crime; a proof of which he is said to have given, in
-administering poison to the gentlest and best of his pupils, Luigi
-Roderigo, whose growing powers he envied.
-
-To maintain his primacy in fresco, the exclusion of every stranger who
-excelled in that branch became, of course, his principal object.
-Annibale Caracci arrived at Naples in 1609, to paint the churches "dello
-Spirito Santo" and "di Gesu Nuovo," and produced a small picture as a
-specimen of his style. The Greek and his associates, called upon to give
-their opinion of it, unanimously condemned it as cold, and its master
-far too tame to manage an extensive work. Thus baffled, Annibale
-returned to Rome during the most oppressive heats of summer, and soon
-after died. But the work most contested with strangers was the royal
-chapel of S. Gennaro, which the deputies had reserved for Giuseppe
-d'Arpino, then painting the choir of the Certosa. Belisario, leaguing
-himself with Spagnoletto, not less fierce and arrogant, and with
-Caracciolo, who both aspired to that commission, attacked Cesari with a
-fury which forced him, before he could terminate his choir, to fly for
-safety, first to Monte Cassino, and then back to Rome. The commission
-was now given to Guido; but not long after, two men unknown cudgelled
-his servant and dismissed him with a message to his master immediately
-to depart or to prepare for death. Guido fled; but Gessi his pupil, not
-intimidated, having demanded and obtained the grand commission, repaired
-to Naples with two assistants, G. Batista Ruggieri and Lorenzo Menini;
-both were decoyed on board a galley, that immediately slipped its cable
-and transported them to some place which no researches could discover,
-and Gessi was obliged to return with his disappointment to Rome.
-
-Dispirited by the violence of these manoeuvres, the deputies began to
-give way to the cabal of the monopolists, allotting the frescoes to
-Correnzio and Caracciolo, and flattering Spagnoletto with the hope of
-being intrusted with the altar-pieces; when all at once, repenting of
-their agreement, they ordered the two fresco painters to throw up their
-work, and transferred the whole of the chapel to Domenichino, at the
-splendid price of a hundred ducats for every entire, fifty for each half
-figure, and twenty-five for every head.[121] They likewise took measures
-for his personal safety, by obtaining the Viceroy's protection, but in
-vain. The faction, not content with crying him down as a cold insipid
-painter and discrediting him with those who see with their ears and fill
-every place, alarmed him with anonymous letters, threw down what he had
-painted, mixed ashes with his materials to crack the ground he had
-prepared, and, by a stroke of the most refined malice, persuaded the
-Viceroy to give him a commission of some pictures for the Court of
-Spain. These, when little more than dead-coloured, they carried from
-his study to court, where Ribera superciliously ordered what alterations
-he thought proper, and then, without allowing him leisure to terminate
-the whole, dispatched them to Spain. The insolence of the rival, the
-complaints of the deputies on the successive interruptions of their
-work, and hence the suspicion of mischief, induced Domenichino at last
-secretly to depart for Rome, in hopes of being able from thence to bring
-his affairs into a better train,--and not without success; the rumours
-of his flight subsided, new measures for his safety were taken, he
-returned to Naples, and, without more interruption, completed the
-greater part of the frescoes, and considerably advanced the
-altar-pieces.
-
-Here death surprised him, accelerated, as some have suspected, by
-poison, certainly by repeated causes of disgust from his relations,
-competitors, and, above all, the arrival of his old adversary Lanfranco.
-He succeeded to Domenichino in the remaining fresco, Spagnoletto in one
-of the oil pictures, and Stanzioni in another. Caracciolo was dead;
-Belisario, excluded by age from sharing in the spoil, soon after was
-destroyed by a ruinous fall from a scaffold. Nor had Ribera, if the
-prevailing fame be true,[122] a desirable end; dishonoured in his
-daughter, gnawed by remorse for the vile persecutions in which he had
-shared, odious to himself, and sick of light, he escaped to sea, and
-none tells where he perished.
-
-Opposed at its onset by these three, the School of Bologna triumphed
-after their demise, and Naples was divided into its imitators; for the
-mannered style of Cesari, which approached that of Belisario, terminated
-with Luigi Roderigo, and his relative Gian Bernardino.
-
-At the head of those who adopted Caracciesque principles with success,
-may be placed Massimo Stanzioni[123] a scholar of Caracciolo, and, as he
-himself asserts, of Lanfranco in fresco, in portrait of Santafede. At
-Rome he strove to embody the forms of Annibale with the tints of Guido.
-Thus equipped, he braved the foremost talents at Naples, and opposed at
-the Certosa a Dead Christ among the Maries to Spagnoletto, who, to
-escape comparisons, persuaded the friars to have the picture of his
-rival washed to recover its somewhat darkened tone, and with a corrosive
-liquor so defaced it, that Stanzioni, declaring so black a fraud ought
-to remain an object of public indignation, refused to retouch it; he
-left, however, other specimens of his powers at that repository of rival
-talents, and above all the masterpiece of S. Bruno. The ceilings of Gesu
-Nuovo and of S. Paolo give him a distinguished rank among fresco
-painters. His gallery pictures, though not rare at Naples, are seldom
-met with elsewhere. Whilst single, he sought and aimed at excellence,
-and courted the art for its own sake; after his marriage, with a woman
-of fashion, gain became necessary to maintain her in a state of
-splendour, and he sunk by degrees to mediocrity.
-
-The School of Massimo is celebrated for the number and excellence of its
-pupils, but the two who promised most, Muzio Rossi and Antonio de
-Bellis, perished in the bloom of life. The first, who had entered the
-School of Guido at Bologna, was at the age of eighteen thought worthy
-to face at the Certosa men of the first ability, and shrinks from no
-comparison, but scarcely survived his work. The second, whose style is
-nearly balanced between Guido and Guercino, began at the church of S.
-Carlo various pictures from the life of that Saint, which he lived not
-to finish.
-
-Francesco di Rosa, called Pacicco, another pupil of that school, gave
-himself up to the imitation of Guido, by Massimo's own advice. Pacicco
-is one of the few artists mentioned by Paolo de Matteio in a MS. which
-admits no name of mediocrity. His forms, his colour, the elegance of his
-extremities, the grace and dignity of his characters, are equally
-commended. He had models of beauty in three nieces, one of whom, Aniella
-di Rosa, in charms, talents, and manner of death has been compared to
-Elizabeth Sirani: poison, administered by the malignity of strangers,
-swept the Bolognese--a dagger and a husband's jealousy, the Neapolitan:
-he was Agostin Beltrano, her fellow pupil, and frequent partner of her
-works.
-
-The remaining scholars of this school, Paul Domenico Finoglia, Giacinto
-de' Popoli, and Giuseppe Marullo, all three of Orta,--Andrea
-Malinconico, and Bernardo Cavallino, were, if we except the last, with
-more or less felicity, imitators of their master. Cavallino, more
-original, is said to have provoked the jealousy of Massimo, who advised
-him to paint in small: this ought to be admitted with hesitation, for it
-is difficult to believe, that he who feels himself made for the grand,
-could be persuaded to waste his life on trifles.
-
-Another convert to the Caracci School, was Andrea Vaccaro,[124] the
-friend and competitor of Massimo, a man made for imitation, says Lanzi,
-and says too much; for, if he had no equal in that of Caravaggio, he
-was, when imitating Guido, inferior to Massimo: nor did he, till after
-the demise of Stanzioni, acquire that supremacy at Naples which remained
-undisputed till the arrival of Giordano, young, vigorous, and fraught
-with the novel style of Pietro Beretini. Both concurred for the great
-altar-piece of Sta. Maria del Pianto, both presented their sketches, and
-Vaccaro obtained preference by the verdict of Pietro da Cortona himself,
-who declared him equally superior in experience and correctness of style
-to his own scholar; but, when contending with Giordano in fresco, to
-which he had not been trained by early practice, Vaccaro lost the
-honours he had gained. The best of his school was Giacomo Farelli, whom
-Luca found no contemptible antagonist: had he been content to follow the
-style of his master, without aspiring at that of Domenichino, for which
-he was unfit, he might have deserved the historian's notice for more
-than one picture.
-
-On the School of Domenichino, the Sicilians, Pietro, Giacomo, and Teresa
-del Po, cannot confer much honour. The father had more theory than
-practice, the son less evidence than ostentation, the daughter shone in
-miniature. Nearer to the master, both in style and temper, was Francesco
-di Maria: correct, slow, irresolute, author of few but eminent works,
-especially the subjects relative to S. Lawrence, at the Conventuals of
-Naples. He excelled in portraits, one of which, exhibited at Rome with
-one of Vandyk and another by Rubens, was, by Poussin, Cortona, and
-Sacchi, preferred to both. He often has been mistaken for his master,
-and commands high prices: the want of grace alone betrays him--of grace
-Nature had not been liberal to Francesco. Hence he became the proverb
-of Giordano, "that sickening over bone and muscle, he rendered beauty
-tame." He, in retort, held up Giordano's style as heresy in art, a
-flowery medley of incoherent charms.
-
-Though the reputed master, Lanfranco was not the model of Massimo; his
-principal imitator was Giambatista Benaschi, or Bernaschi, numbered with
-Roman artists by Orlandi, but who fixed his residence at Naples, and
-opened a numerous school; a decided machinist, but with a grasp of fancy
-which never suffered him to repeat a figure in the same attitude. His
-points of sight from below upward, are correct, and his foreshortenings
-dextrously contrived. None ever approached a master nearer, and forsook
-him with less success.
-
-Guercino never saw Naples, but Mattia Preti,[125] commonly called
-Calabrese, smit with his novel style, went to study it at Cento; not
-indeed exclusively, for no Italian school escaped the attention of
-Preti. Unpractised in colour to his twenty-sixth year, he attended
-solely to design, less to form beauty or trace characters of delicacy,
-than to express robust and energetic ones: in such he often succeeded,
-but sometimes sunk to heaviness. His colour resembled his line, not soft
-and airy, but dense, cut into masses of chiaroscuro, and with a general
-tone of ashy hues, tints of sorrow, contrition, anguish, the favourite
-topics of his pencil. The frescoes of Calabrese at Modena, Naples,
-Malta, have a stamp of grandeur. At Rome, in S. Andrea della Valle, he
-appears to less advantage, too enormous for the place, and too ponderous
-at the side of Domenichino. Italy is filled with his oil pictures, for
-his life was long, his hand rapid, and every place he visited, a scene
-of exercise: what he painted for galleries consisted commonly of half
-figures, like those of Guercino. He long, and nearly alone, contested
-the field with Giordano, to whose captivating airiness his weight was at
-last forced to yield. He retired and died in Malta, a Knight of its
-order, without leaving a pupil who rose above mediocrity.
-
-After this survey of the Bolognese School at Naples, the native one of
-Ribera claims attention. None ever swore more implicitly to a master's
-dictates: the energy of his style absorbed their eye, the atrocity of
-his character too often debauched their hearts. Inferiority alone
-discriminates the works of Giovanni Do and Bartolommeo Passante from
-those of Spagnoletto; though, in the advance of life, the first
-attempted to tinge with less vulgarity, and the second now and then
-affected a more select outline. Francesco Fracanzani had a certain
-grandeur of execution and bloom of colour: his "Transito," or Death of
-St. Joseph, at the Pellegrini, is among the first pictures of the city.
-But, by the pressure of poverty, he first became a dauber, then a
-criminal, and received sentence of death, which respect for his
-profession, from the public ignominy of the halter, mitigated to secret
-execution by poison.
-
-Aniello Falcone[126] and Salvator Rosa, who is to be mentioned more at
-large elsewhere, are the greatest boast of this school, though Rosa
-frequented it for a short time only, and chiefly profited by the
-instruction of Falcone. The strength of Falcone lay in battles, which he
-painted in all dimensions, from the Sacred books, history, or poems.
-Countenance, arms, dresses were in unison with the national character
-of the combatants. His expression was vivid, the figures and movements
-of his horses select and natural, and his tactics correct, though he had
-neither served in, nor seen a battle. He drew with precision, everywhere
-consulted the life, and laid his colour on with equal strength and
-finish. That he instructed Borgognone is not probable. Baldinucci, who
-published the Memoirs of that Jesuit, is silent on that head; but they
-knew and esteemed each other. He had a numerous set of scholars, and
-with them, and the assistance of some other painters, contrived to
-revenge the murder of some relative and of a pupil assassinated by the
-presidial Spaniards: for, at the revolutionary hubbub of Maso Aniello,
-he and his gang formed themselves into a troop, which they called "the
-Company of Death," and, protected by Ribera, who palliated their
-proceedings at court, spread horrid massacre, till, scared by the return
-of order, this band of homicides dispersed, and sought their safety in
-flight. Falcone himself retired for some years to France, which has many
-of his works; the rest escaped to Rome, or sought the usual asylums of
-revenge and murder.
-
-A numerous set of various but inferior artists, in power and pursuit,
-fills the remaining period of this epoch and the Neapolitan catalogues
-of art: the best of these issued from the desperate School of Falcone,
-to whose method they adhered in all their diverging branches. Of these
-Domenico Gargiuoli, nicknamed Micco Spadaro, a character as fierce as
-pliant, leads the van--no contemptible figurist in large, but of endless
-combination in groups of small proportion. The perspectives of Viviano
-Codagora, his sworn brother, receive an exclusive lustre from his
-figures. The battles of their fellow scholar, Carlo Coppola, might
-sometimes be mistaken for those of Falcone, had he given less fulness to
-his horses. Paolo Porpora left battles to paint quadrupeds, but chiefly
-and best, fish and sea-shells: in fruit and flowers he was far surpassed
-by Abraham Brueghel, who at that time had settled at Naples. Giuseppe
-Recco and Andrea Belvedere, from the same school, excelled in game and
-birds; and the last still more in flowers and fruit, so as to contest
-superiority in that branch with Giordano, asserting that no figurist
-could reach the polish, or give the finish required in minute objects.
-Luca maintained, that the more implies the less, and, composing a
-picture of game, fruit, and flowers, gave it such an air of illusion,
-that Andrea, shrinking from his presence crestfallen, retired among the
-literati of the day, of whom he was not the least.
-
-After the middle of the seventeenth century, the revolutionary style of
-Luca Giordano[127] reversed every preceding principle, and, by the
-suavity of its ornamental magic, enchanted the public taste. A vast,
-resolute, creative, talent attended him from infancy: in his eighth year
-he is said to have painted, and not for the first time in fresco, two
-infant angels, for the church of Sta. Maria La Nuova.[128] Struck with
-wonder, the Vice Rè Duke Medina de Las Torres placed him with Ribera,
-whose principles he studied for some time, but, aspiring to a more ample
-theatre of art, escaped to Rome, followed by his father, Antonio, a weak
-artist, but an unceasing monitor, and the more relentless because he
-placed all his hopes on the rapid success of his son. To insure it, he
-did not, if we believe one writer, suffer Luca to intermit his labours
-by regular meals, but fed him whilst at work, as birds their callow
-young, perpetually chirping into his ear, Luca, dispatch![129]--Luca,
-dispatch! repeated his fellow-students, till the joke became nickname,
-by which he is oftener distinguished than by his own.
-
-So brutal a method would have excited in a mind less vigorous nothing
-but weariness and despondency, but to the combining spirit of Luca gave
-with portentous velocity of hand the rudiments of that varied power,
-which, to a degree of deception, taught him to imitate the predominant
-air of every master's style in line and colour, which he was set or
-chose to copy,[130] and he had in nearly endless repetition, copied the
-best of what Rome possessed of its own, the Lombard, Venetian, and
-foreign schools, when he entered that of Pietro da Cortona, whose
-wide-extended and ostentatious plans met most congenially his own.
-
-No single master's manner did he, however, exclusively adopt. His first
-works exhibit the pupil of Ribera, with evident aims at the energy of
-that style; his subsequent and best manner is marked by the beauties and
-the faults of Pietro da Cortona, the same contrast of composition, the
-same masses of light, with equal monotony of expression, which in female
-features was often supplied by his wife; a predilection for the
-ornamental splendour of Paolo Veronese distinguishes with less advantage
-a third class of his works--in this, stuffs are mixed with draperies,
-the tints are less vigorous, the chiaroscuro less decided, the execution
-heavier. It has been observed, that his works, when compared with the
-finished masterpieces of the classic schools, are little better than
-embryos, that he carried nothing to perfection, and that the delusive
-power alone, by which he united a number of jarring parts in one
-pleasing whole, can save him from sinking to the mediocrity which
-overwhelmed his imitators. But it ought likewise to be considered, what
-was the object of his exertions, and the end which he pursued;--they
-were, by conquering the eye, to become the favourite of the public, and
-he was made for both. Others see by degrees, arrange, reject,
-select;--into the fancy of Giordano, the subject with its parts showered
-at once; the picture stood complete before him. In colour, little
-solicitous about the dictates of art, or the real hues of Nature, he
-created an ideal and arbitrary tone, which represented the air of things
-without diving into their substance, and, content with absolute dominion
-over the eye, left it to others to inform the mind. If his method was
-compendiary; none ever knew better how to improve an accident to a
-beauty, and give to the random strokes of haste the look of deliberate
-practice. That he knew the laws of design, we know, but debauched by
-facility and the rage of gain, neglected the toil of correctness: hence
-likewise the superficial manner in which he often laid on his colours,
-diluted, unembodied, and unable to retain the fugitive imagery of his
-pencil.
-
-Naples is full of Giordano--few, if any in so vast a metropolis, are the
-churches that want his hand. In that of the P.P. Girolamini, the
-Expulsion of the Venders is one of his most admired works; but the best
-of his frescoes, in which he seems to have concentrated his powers, are
-those in the treasury of the Certosa. The cupola of S. Brigida, rapidly
-painted in competition with Francesco di Maria, exhibits the first
-specimens of that flattering tone which baffled the learning of his
-rival, intoxicated the vulgar, and corrupted the growing taste. The
-admired picture of St. Xavier, of copious composition and the most
-seductive colour, was the work of one day and a half. Among the public
-and private paintings at Florence, the chapel Corsini and the gallery
-Riccardi are by the hand of Luca; nor was he unemployed by the
-Sovereign; and Cosmo III., in whose presence he invented and coloured a
-large composition with momentary velocity, declared him a painter
-formed for princes. He obtained the same praise from Charles II. of
-Spain, whom he served for thirteen years, but from the multitude of his
-works might be supposed to have served during a long life. There he
-continued the series of pictures begun by Cambiasi, in the church of the
-Escurial, on the most extensive plan, but inferior in style and
-execution to the frescoes of Buon-Ritiro. Of his oil pictures, that of
-the Nativity, for the Queen Mother, has shared unlimited praise, as
-combining with superior felicity of execution, a research and a depth of
-study seldom found in his other works.
-
-Grown old, he returned to Naples, loaded with riches and honours, and
-soon after died, regretted as the first painter of his time.
-
-Though Giordano did not propose his process as a model of imitation to
-his scholars, it may easily be guessed that his success made a deeper
-impression on them than his precepts, and that without previously
-submitting to the labours of his education, they attempted to snatch
-with the charms the profits of his manner. Hence a swarm of bold
-craftsmen and mannerists was let loose upon the public, who with gay
-mediocrity overwhelmed what yet was left of principles in art. Of these,
-his favourites were Aniello Rossi, and Matteo Pacelli, who accompanied
-him to Spain, returned well pensioned, and continued to live in obscure
-ease. Niccolo Rossi, Giuseppe Simonelli, Andrea Miglionico and Ramondo
-de Dominici, came nearer their master; and the Spaniard Franceschitto,
-as he had raised the hopes, might have excited the jealousy of Luca, had
-he not been intercepted by death. He left a specimen of his powers in
-the picture of S. Pasquale, at Sta. Maria del Monte.
-
-But the best of his pupils, and heir of his dispatch, was Paolo de'
-Matteis, a name that ranks with the foremost of that day, not unknown to
-France or Rome; his chief abode was, however, Naples, where his frescoes
-are spread over churches, galleries, halls and ceilings; if unequal to
-those of his master in merit, nearly always produced with equal speed.
-It was his unexampled vaunt to have painted the enormous Cupola del Gesù
-Nuovo in sixty-six days, a boast which Solimene checked with the cool
-reply, that the work told its own tale without assistance: and yet it
-possesses beauties, especially in the parts that imitate Lanfranco,
-which excite wonder, considering the fury of execution. Nor, if he chose
-to work with previous study and with diligence, as in the church of the
-'Pii Operai,' in the gallery Matatona, and in many private pictures, was
-he destitute of composition, grace of outline, or beauty of countenance,
-though little varied. His colour at the onset was Giordanesque; in the
-sequel he increased the force of his chiaroscuro, though not without
-delicate gradation of tints: particularly in Madonnas and Infants, which
-give an idea of Albano's suavity, and the Roman style. A school more
-numerous than distinguished by talent, contributes little to his
-celebrity.
-
-Francesco Solimene,[131] called "L'Abate Ciccio," born at Nocera de'
-Pagani, took the elements of art from his father Angelo, formerly a
-pupil of Massimo, and went to Naples. He successively frequented the
-schools of Francesco di Maria and of Giac. del Po, and left both to
-follow his own inclination, which at first exclusively led him to
-imitate the style of Pietro da Cortona, and even to adopt his figures.
-He next formed a manner which, of all others, approached next to Preti;
-the design, indeed, is less exact, the colour less true, but the faces
-handsomer, now in imitation of Guido, then nearer to Maratta, and often
-picked from life: hence the byname of "the Gentler Calabrese."[132] To
-Preti he joined Lanfranco, whom he surnamed the "Master," and from him
-borrowed and exaggerated that serpentine sweep of composition: his
-chiaroscuro, balanced between both, lost some of its vigour and became
-softer with the advance of life. He drew and revised his forms from
-Nature with much accuracy before he painted, but often sacrificed his
-outline to the fire of execution in the process. The facility and
-elegance which distinguish him in poetry, mark his invention in
-painting, to no branch of which he could be called a stranger, and might
-have excelled singly in each. His works are scattered over Europe, for
-he lived to the age of ninety, and yielded in velocity of hand to
-Giordano only, his competitor and friend, at whose demise he succeeded
-to the Primacy of taste.
-
-Of the public works that most distinguish Solimene, are the stories of
-the sacristy in S. Paolo Maggiore de' P.P. Teatini, nor less the
-pictures substituted for those of Giacomo del Po on the arches of the
-Chapels in the Church de' S.S. Apostoli. Specimens of his high finish
-may be seen in the Chapel of S. Filippo in the Church dell' Oratorio; he
-painted the principal altar-piece of the Nuns di "S. Gaudioso," and the
-four large histories in the choir of the church at Monte Cassino. Of
-private works, the gallery of Sanfelice is the most conspicuous at
-Naples; at Rome, some stories in the Albani and Colonna palaces; and at
-Macerata, in the Buonacorsi collection, among several mythologic
-subjects, the Death of Dido, a picture of large dimensions and striking
-effect. In the refectory of the Conventuals of Assisi, the Last Supper
-of our Lord, a polished performance, is by his hand.
-
-Of that most numerous band of pupils whom he let loose upon the public,
-the most celebrated was, no doubt, Sebastiano Conca, a native of Gaeta,
-generally classed with the Roman school, for Rome became his residence
-and the theatre of his talent. After having served a pupilage of sixteen
-years under Solimene, and persevered in the practice of that style for
-several years at Rome, he ominously proved the futility of attempting at
-an advanced period to escape from the tyranny of early habits. At forty
-he dared to leave his brushes, became once more a student, and spent
-five years in drawing after the antique and the masters of design: but
-his hand and eye, debauched by manner, refused to obey his mind, till,
-wearied by hopeless fatigue, he followed the advice of the sculptor Le
-Gros, and returned to his former practice, though not without
-considerable improvements, and nearer to Pietro da Cortona than to his
-master. Conca had fertile brains, a rapid pencil, and a colour which at
-first sight fascinated every eye by its splendour, contrast, and the
-delicacy of its flesh-tints. His dispatch in fresco and in oil was equal
-to his employment, and there is scarcely a collection of any consequence
-without its Conca. He was courted by sovereigns and princes, and Pope
-Clement XI. ennobled him at a full assembly of the academicians of St.
-Luke. He was assisted in his labours by his brother Giovanni, a man of
-similar taste, but less power, and an excellent copyist. The maxims of
-Conca are considered[133] as having completed the ruin of art; but every
-school had its own canker, and his influence did not extend to all.
-Without deviating into a catalogue of mediocrity, it may be sufficient
-to name three of his principal scholars, Gaetano Lapis of Cagli,
-Salvator Monosilio, a Messinese, and Gaspero Serenari, a Palermitan.
-Lapis had too much originality of conception and too much solidity of
-taste to adopt the flowery style of his master. The public works he left
-at home, and the Birth of Venus in a ceiling of the Borghese Palace, as
-correct as graceful, deserved and would have attained more celebrity,
-had not self-contempt and diffidence intercepted the fortune which his
-talent might have commanded. The two Sicilians, complete machinists,
-shared with the imitation the success of their master.
-
-Next to Conca, the most successful pupil of Solimene was Francesco de
-Mura, surnamed Franceschiello, born at Naples and greatly employed in
-its churches and private galleries: the works, however, to which he owes
-most of his celebrity, were the frescoes painted in various apartments
-of the royal palace at Torino, in competition with Claudio Beaumont, who
-was then at the height of his vigour. Mura ornamented the ceiling of
-some rooms, chiefly filled with Flemish pictures, with subjects widely
-different, Olympic games, and actions of Achilles.
-
-Corrado Giaquinto of Molfetta, may conclude what yet deserves to be
-recorded of this school. He too left Naples, came to Rome, and attached
-himself to Conca, whose maxims he made nearly all his own; as resolute,
-as easy, but less correct. Rome, Macerata, and other parts of the Roman
-state, are acquainted with his works. He painted in Piemont, was
-employed by Charles III. in Spain, appointed Director of the Academy of
-S. Fernando, pleased and continued to please the greater part of the
-public, even after the arrival of A.R. Mengs.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[103] Dominici.
-
-[104] "Le opere superstiti ne deon decidere; e secondo queste Marco da
-Siena, ch'è il padre della Storia pittorica Napolitana, giudicò _che in
-grandezza di fare_ Cimabue prevalepe."--Lanzi, ii. I. 580.
-
-[105] Tommaso had a brother Pietro de' Stefani, who professed painting,
-but practised sculpture: of his works the monuments of Pope Innocenzio
-IV., who died at Naples 1254, of Charles the First and Second, are the
-most eminent. The two sitting statues of these two kings are still seen
-over the small gates of the Episcopal palace.
-
-[106] Signorelli Vicende della Coltura delle due Sicilie,--t. iii. 116.
-
-[107] The Vatican alone is sufficient to prove that gold-grounds were
-still recurred to in the best years of the sixteenth century.
-
-[108] In the life of Giuliano da Majano. They are the first painters of
-the Neapolitan schools mentioned by him, though with an ambiguity which
-might induce us to believe that he meant to give them for Tuscany.
-
-[109] In the forty-first sonnet, addressed to King Federigo: "Vedi
-invitto Signor come risplende," &c.
-
-[110] Some call him Giacomo, some Andria, most, and with greater
-probability, Bernardo.
-
-[111] See the remarks relative to Antoniello, in the history of Venetian
-art; but it is in place here to observe on the assertions of the
-Neapolitan writers, that, if the tradition of a Greek picture in oil at
-the Duomo of Messina be not fabulous, Antoniello could not have remained
-ignorant of it. If Colantonio was in possession of oil painting, how is
-the astonishment to be accounted for, which the method of John ab Eyk
-excited at Naples? How came the name of an obscure Fleming to fill in a
-short period all Europe, every prince to solicit his pencil, every
-painter to submit to his dictates or those of his scholars? Who, on the
-contrary, who out of Naples or its state, knew then Colantonio? who
-courted Solario? a man so apt, the son-in-law and scholar of the former,
-and before of Lippo Dalmasio--how forgot he to learn, or why did he
-neglect a method they are said to have practised so well, for the vulgar
-one of distemper? Either they knew nothing of the mystery at all, or in
-a degree too insignificant to affect the authority of Vasari, and the
-claims of John ab Eyk and Antoniello.
-
-[112] A. Sabbatini from 1480 to 1545.
-
-[113] 1508 to 1542.
-
-[114] Vasari.
-
-[115] Said to be in 1587.
-
-[116] These two laid the foundation of a History of Neapolitan Art. The
-transient manner in which Vasari had mentioned Marco in the new edition
-of his Lives, his silence on many Sienese, and omission of most
-Neapolitan painters, were probably the causes that provoked the literary
-opposition of Marco. His pupil, the Notary, furnished him with
-materials, from the archives and domestic tradition, for the Discourse
-which he composed in 1569, the year after the edition of Vasari; though
-it remained in MS. till 1742, when, jointly with the Memoirs of
-Criscuolo, in the Neapolitan dialect, &c., the greater part of it was,
-published by Dominici.
-
-[117] B. Corenzio, 1558 to 1643.
-
-[118] In an inscription on one of his pictures, mentioned by
-Palomino, he styles himself "Jusepe de Ribera Español de la Ciutad de
-Xativa, e reyno de Valencia, Academico Romano, año 1630;" but the
-Neapolitans, who maintained that he was born of Spanish parents in the
-neighbourhood of Lecce, ascribe this and similar subscriptions on his
-works rather to his ambition of ingratiating himself with the
-government, which was Spanish, than to a genuine desire of acquainting
-posterity with his native country.
-
-Lo Spagnoletto 1588, vivo in 1649.
-
-[119] Caracciolo di Batistiello, died 1641.
-
-[120] Dominici.
-
-[121] As it is evident that the deputies broke a formal contract with
-Correnzio and Batistiello, it is not easily discovered on what principle
-Lanzi has praised their conduct.
-
-[122] It is contradicted only by the unsupported assertion of Bermudez,
-who tells that Ribera died rich and honoured 1656 at Naples.
-
-[123] M. Stanzioni, 1585 to 1656.
-
-[124] Vaccaro, 1598 to 1671.
-
-[125] M. Preti, 1613 to 1699.
-
-[126] A. Falcone, 1600 to 1665.
-
-[127] Born 1632, died 1705.
-
-[128] The assent of Carlo Celano (Giornata IV.) seems to authenticate
-this tradition.
-
-[129] Luca, fa Presto!
-
-[130] He used to tell, that then he had drawn twelve times the Stanze
-and the Loggia of Rafaello, and nearly twenty the Battle of Constantine,
-without mentioning his copies from the Sistina, Polidoro, A. Caracci,
-&c.; hence, some one has called him by a bold but pertinent allusion
-"The Thunderbolt of Art," as others its Proteus, from the singular
-talent of mimicking the manner and touch of every master. Many are the
-pictures painted by him, which passed for works of Albert Durer,
-Bassano, Tiziano, and Rubens, not only with connoisseurs, a task less
-difficult, but with his rivals, whose eyes malignity as well as
-discernment might have sharpened: these deceptions fetched at sales
-doubly and trebly the price of an ordinary Giordano. Specimens are still
-to be found in the churches of Naples; for instance, the two
-altar-pieces in that of S. Teresa, which have all the air of Guido,
-especially that which represents the Nativity of the Saviour.
-
-[131] Born 1657; died 1748.
-
-[132] Il Calabrese ringentilito.
-
-[133] Mengs.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF VENICE.
-
-
-The conquests, commerce and possessions of Venice in the Levant, and
-thence its uninterrupted intercourse with the Greeks, give probability
-to the conjecture, that Venetian art drew its origin from the same
-source, and that the first institution of a company, or, as it is there
-called, a School (Schola) of Painters, may be dated up to the Greek
-artists who took refuge at Venice from the fury of the Iconoclasts at
-Constantinople. The choice of its Patron, which was not St. Luke, but
-Sta. Sophia, the patroness of the first temple at that time, and
-prototype of St. Mark's, distinguishes it from the rest of the Italian
-Schools. _Anchona_, the vulgar name of a picture in the technic
-language, the statutes,[134] and documents of those times, is evidently
-a depravation of the Greek _Eikon_. The school itself is of considerable
-antiquity; its archives contain regulations and laws made in 1290, which
-refer to anterior ones; and though not yet separated from the mass of
-artisans, its members began to enjoy privileges of their own.
-
-In various cities of the Venetian State we meet with vestiges of art
-anterior in date[135] to the relics of painting and mosaic in the
-metropolis, which prove that it survived the general wreck of society
-here, as in other parts of Italy. Of the oldest Venetian monuments,
-Zanetti has given a detailed account, with shrewd critical conjectures
-on their chronology; though all attempts to discriminate the nearly
-imperceptible progress of art in a mass of works equally marked by dull
-servility, must prove little better than nugatory; for it does not
-appear that Theophilus of Byzantium, who publicly taught the art at
-Venice about 1200, or his Scholar Gelasio[136], had availed themselves
-of the improvements made in form, twenty years before, by Joachim the
-Abbot, in a picture of Christ. Nor can the notice of Vasari, who informs
-us that Andrea Tafi repaired to Venice to profit by the instructions of
-Apollonios in mosaic, prove more than that, from the rivalship of Greek
-mechanics, that branch of art was handled with greater dexterity there
-than at Florence, to which place he was, on his return, accompanied by
-Apollonios. The same torpor of mind continued to characterise the
-succeeding artists till the first years of the fourteenth century, and
-the appearance of Giotto, who, on his return from Avignon 1316, by his
-labours at Padua, Verona, and elsewhere in the state, threw the first
-effectual seeds of art, and gave the first impulse to Venetian energy
-and emulation[137] by superior example.
-
-He was succeeded by Giusto, surnamed of Padova, from residence and city
-rights, but else a Florentine and of the Menabuoi. To Padovano, Vasari
-ascribes the vast work of the church of St. John the Baptist; incidents
-of whose life were expressed on the altar-piece. The walls Giusto spread
-with gospel history and mysteries of the Apocalypse, and on the Cupola a
-glory filled with a consistory of saints in various attire: simple
-ideas, but executed with incredible felicity and diligence. The names
-'Joannes & Antonius de Padova,' formerly placed over one of the doors,
-as an ancient MS. pretends, related probably to some companions of
-Giusto, fellow pupils of Giotto, and show the unmixed prevalence of his
-style, to which Florence itself had not adhered with more scrupulous
-submission, beyond the middle of the century, and the less bigoted
-imitation of Guarsiento, a Padovan of great name at that period, and the
-leader of Ridolfi's history. He received commissions of importance from
-the Venetian senate, and the remains of his labours in fresco and on
-panel at Bassano and at the Eremitani of Padova, confirm the judgment of
-Zanetti, that he had invention, spirit, and taste, and without those
-remnants of Greek barbarity which that critic pretends to discover in
-his style.
-
-Of a style still less dependant on the principles of Giotto, are the
-relicks of those artists whom Lanzi is willing to consider as the
-precursors of the legitimate Venetian schools, and whose origin he dates
-in the professors of miniature and missal-painting, many contemporary,
-many anterior to Giotto. The most conspicuous is Niccolo Semitecolo,
-undoubtedly a Venetian, if the inscription on a picture on panel in the
-Capitular Library at Padova be genuine, viz., _Nicoleto Semitecolo da
-Venezia_, 1367. It represents a Pietà, with some stories of S.
-Sebastian, in no contemptible style: the nudities are well painted, the
-proportions, though somewhat too long, are not inelegant, and what adds
-most to its value as a monument of national style, it bears no
-resemblance to that of Giotto, which, though it be inferior in design,
-it equals in colour. Indeed the silence of Baldinucci, who annexes no
-Venetian branch to his Tuscan pedigree of Art, gives probability to the
-presumption, that a native school existed in the Adriatic long before
-Cimabue.
-
-A fuller display of this native style, and its gradual approaches to the
-epoch of Giorgione and Tizian, were reserved for the fifteenth century:
-an island prepared what was to receive its finish at Venice. Andrea da
-Murano, who flourished about 1400, though still dry, formal, and vulgar,
-designs with considerable correctness, even the extremities, and what is
-more, makes his figures stand and act. There is still of him at Murano
-in S. Pier Martire, a picture, on the usual gold ground of the times,
-representing, among others, a Saint Sebastian, with a Torso, whose
-beauty made Zanetti suspect that it had been copied from some antique
-statue. It was he who formed to art the family of the Vivarini, his
-fellow-citizens, who in uninterrupted succession maintained the school
-of Murano for nearly a century, and filled Venice with their
-performances.
-
-Of Luigi, the reputed founder of the family, no authentic notices
-remain. The only picture ascribed to him, in S. Giovanni and Paolo, has,
-with the inscription of his name and the date 1414, been retouched.[138]
-Nor does much more evidence attend the names of Giovanni and Antonio de'
-Vivarini, the first of which belonged probably to a German, the partner
-of Antonio,[139] who is not heard of after 1447, whilst Antonio, singly
-or in society with his brother Bartolommeo Vivarini, left works
-inscribed with his name as far as 1451.
-
-Bartolommeo, probably considerably younger than Antonio, was trained to
-art in the principles before mentioned, till he made himself master of
-the new-discovered method of oil-painting, and towards the time of the
-two Bellini became an artist of considerable note. His first picture in
-oil bears the date of 1473; his last, at S. Giovanni in Bragora, on the
-authority of Boschini, that of 1498; it represents Christ risen from the
-grave, and is a picture comparable to the best productions of its time.
-He sometimes added A Linnel Vivarino to his name and date, allusive to
-his surname.
-
-With him flourished Luigi, the last of the Vivarini, but the first in
-art. His relics still exist at Venice, Belluno, Trevigi, with their
-dates; the principal of these is in the school of St. Girolamo at
-Venice, where, in competition with Giovanni Bellini, whom he equals, and
-with Vittore Carpaccia, whom he surpasses, he represented the Saint
-caressing a Lion, and some monks who fly in terror at the sight.
-Composition, expression, colour, for felicity, energy, and mellowness,
-if not above every work of the times, surpass all else produced by the
-family of the Vivarini.
-
-At the beginning of the century, Gentile da Fabriano, styled Magister
-Magistrorum, and mentioned in the Roman School, painted, in the public
-palace at Venice, a naval battle, now vanished, but then so highly
-valued that it procured him an annual provision, and the privilege of
-the Patrician dress. He raised disciples in the state: Jacopo Nerito, of
-Padova, subscribes himself a disciple of Gentile, in a picture at S.
-Michele of that place, and from the style of another in S. Bernardino,
-at Bassano, Lanzi surmises that Nasocchio di Bassano was his pupil or
-imitator. But what gives him most importance, is the origin of the great
-Venetian School under his auspices, and that Jacopo Bellini, the father
-of Gentile and Giovanni, owned him for his master. Jacopo is indeed more
-known by the dignity of his son's than his own works, at present either
-destroyed, in ruins, or unknown. What he painted in the church of St.
-Giovanni at Venice, and, about 1456, at the Santo of Padova, the chapel
-of the family Gattamelata, are works that exist in history only. One
-single picture, subscribed by his name, Lanzi mentions to have seen in a
-private collection, resembling the style of Squarcione, whom he seems to
-have followed in his maturer years.
-
-A name then still more conspicuous, though now nearly obliterated, is
-that of Jacopo, or as he is styled Jacobello, or as he wrote himself,
-Jacometto del Fiore, whose father Francesco del Fiore, a leader of art
-in his day, was honoured with a monument and an epitaph in Latin verse
-at S. Giovanni and Paolo: of him it is doubtful whether any traces
-remain, but of the son, who greatly surpassed him, several performances
-still exist, from 1401 to 1436. Vasari has wantonly taxed him with
-having suspended all his figures, in the Greek manner, on the points of
-their feet: the truth is, that he was equalled by few of his
-contemporaries, for few like him dared to represent figures as large as
-life, and fewer understood to give them beauty, dignity, and that air of
-agility and ease, which his forms possess; nor would the lions in his
-picture of Justice at the Magistrato del Proprio, have shared the first
-praise, had not the principal figures, in subservience to the time, been
-loaded with tinsel ornament and golden glitter.
-
-Two scholars of his are mentioned: Donato, superior to him in style, and
-Carlo Crivelli, of obscure fame, but deserving attention for the colour,
-union, grace, and expression, of the small histories in which he
-delighted.
-
-The ardour of the capital for the art was emulated by every town of the
-state; all had their painters, but all did not submit to the principles
-of Venice and Murano. At Verona the obscure names of Aldighieri and
-Stefano Dazevio, were succeeded[140] by the vaunted one of Vittore
-Pisanello, of S. Vito: though accounts grossly vary on the date in which
-he flourished, and the school from which he sprang, that his education
-was Florentine is not improbable, but whoever his master, fame has
-ranked him with Masaccio as an improver of style. His works at Rome and
-Venice, in decay at the time of Vasari, are now no more; and fragments
-only remain of what he did at Verona. S. Eustachio caressing a Dog, and
-S. Giorgio sheathing his Sword and mounting his horse, figures extolled
-to the skies by Vasari, are, with the places which they occupied,
-destroyed: works which seem to have contained elements of truth and
-dignity in expression with novelty of invention, and of contrast, style,
-and foreshortening in design: a loss so much the more to be lamented, as
-the remains of his less considerable works at S. Firmo and Perugia, far
-from sanctioning the opinion which tradition has taught us to entertain
-of Pisano, are finished indeed with the minuteness of miniature, but are
-crude in colour, and drawn in lank and emaciated proportions. It appears
-from his works, that he understood the formation, had studied the
-expression, and attempted the most picturesque attitudes of animals. His
-name is well known to antiquaries, and to the curious in coins, as a
-medallist, and he has been celebrated as such by many eminent pens of
-his own and the subsequent century.[141]
-
-From the crowd[142] of obscure contemporary artists, which the
-neighbouring Vicenza produced, the name of Marcello, or as Ridolfi calls
-him Gio. Battista Figolino, deserves to be distinguished: a man of
-original manner, whose companion, in variety of character, intelligence
-of keeping, landscape, perspective, ornament, and exquisite finish, will
-not easily be discovered at Venice, or elsewhere in the State, at that
-period; and were it certain that he was anterior to the two Bellini,
-sufficiently eminent to claim the honours of an epoch in the history of
-Art: in proof of which Vicenza may still produce his Epiphany in the
-church of St. Bartolommeo.
-
-But the man who had the most extensive influence on Art, if not as the
-first artist, as the first and most frequented teacher, was Francesco
-Squarcione,[143] of Padova; in whose numerous school perhaps originated
-that eclectic principle which characterised part of the Adriatic and all
-the Lombard schools. Opulent and curious, he not only designed what
-ancient art offered in Italy, but passed over to Greece, visited many an
-isle of the Archipelago in quest of monuments, and on his return to
-Padova formed, from what he had collected, by copy or by purchase, of
-statues, basso-relievos, torsos, fragments, and cinerary urns, the most
-ample museum of the time, and a school in which he counted upwards of
-150 students, and among them Andrea Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, Girolamo
-Schiavone, Jacopo Bellini.
-
-Of Squarcione, more useful by precept than by example, little remains,
-and of that little, perhaps, not all his own. From the variety of
-manner observable in what is attributed to him, it may be suspected that
-he too often divided his commissions among his scholars; such as some
-stories of St. Francis, in a cloister of his church, and the miniatures
-of the Antifonario in the temple della Misericordia, attributed by the
-vulgar to Mantegna. Only one indisputably genuine, though retouched work
-of his, is mentioned by Lanzi; which, in various compartments,
-represents different saints, subscribed 'Francesco Squarcione,' and
-conspicuous for felicity of colour, expression, and perspective.
-
-These outlines of the infancy of Venetian art show it little different
-from that of the other schools hitherto described; slowly emerging from
-barbarity, and still too much busied with the elements to think of
-elegance and ornament. Even then, indeed, canvass instead of panels was
-used by the Venetian painters; but their general vehicle was, a tempera,
-prepared water-colour: a method approaching the breadth of fresco, and
-friendly to the preservation of tints, which even now retain their
-virgin purity; but unfriendly to union and mellowness. It was reserved
-for the real epoch of oil-painting to develope the Venetian character,
-display its varieties, and to establish its peculiar prerogative.
-
-Tiziano, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, was born at Piave, the principal of
-Cadore on the Alpine verge of Friuli, 1477.[144] His education is said
-to have been learned, and Giov. Battista Egnazio is named as his master
-in Latin and Greek;[145] but his proficiency may be doubted, for if it
-be true that his irresistible bent to the art obliged the father to send
-him in his tenth year to the school of Giov. Bellini at Venice, he could
-be little more than an infant when he learnt the rudiments under
-Sebastiano Zuccati.[146]
-
-At such an age, and under these masters, he acquired a power of copying
-the visible detail of the objects before him with that correctness of
-eye and fidelity of touch which distinguishes his imitation at every
-period of his art. Thus when, more adult, in emulation of Albert Durer,
-he painted at Ferrara[147] Christ to whom a Pharisee shows the tribute
-money, he out-stript in subtlety of touch even that hero of minuteness:
-the hair of the heads and hands may be counted, the pores of the skin
-discriminated, and the surrounding objects seen reflected in the pupils
-of the eyes; yet the effect of the whole is not impaired by this extreme
-finish: it increases it at a distance, which effaces the fac-similisms
-of Albert, and assists the beauties of imitation with which that work
-abounds to a degree seldom attained, and never excelled by the master
-himself, who has left it indeed as a single monument, for it has no
-companion, to attest his power of combining the extremes of finish and
-effect.
-
-
-GIACOMO ROBUSTI, SURNAMED IL TINTORETTO.
-
-1512-1594.
-
-"It might almost be said that vice is the virtue of the Venetian school,
-because it rests its prerogative on despatch in execution, and
-therefore is proud of Tintoretto, who had no other merit."[148] Such, in
-speaking of the great genius before us, is the equally rash, ignorant,
-unphilosophic verdict of a man exclusively dubbed "The Philosophic
-Painter."
-
-G. Robusti of Venice was the son of a dyer, who left him that byname as
-an heir-loom.[149] He entered the school of Tiziano when yet a boy; but
-he, soon discovering in the daring spirit of his nursling the symptoms
-of a genius which threatened future rivalship to his own powers, with
-that suspicious meanness which marks his character as an artist, after a
-short interval, ordered his head pupil, Girolamo Dante, to dismiss the
-boy; but as envy generally defeats its own designs, the uncourteous
-dismissal, instead of dispiriting, roused the energies of the heroic
-stripling, who, after some meditation on his future course, and
-comparing his master's superiority in _colour_ with his defects in
-_form_, resolved to surpass him by an union of both: the method best
-suited to accomplish this he fancied to find in an intense study of
-Michael Angelo's style, and boldly announced his plan by writing on the
-door of his study, THE DESIGN OF M. ANGELO, AND THE COLOUR OF TIZIAN.
-
-But neither form nor colour alone could satisfy his eye; the
-uninterrupted habit of nocturnal study discovered to him what Venice had
-not yet seen, not even in Giorgione, if we may form an opinion from what
-remains of him--the powers of that ideal chiaroscuro which gave motion
-to action, raised the charms of light, and balanced or invigorated
-effect by dark and lucid masses opposed to each other.
-
-The first essays of this complicated system, in single figures, are
-probably the frescoes of the palace Gussoni;[150] and in numerous
-composition, the Last Judgement, and its counterpart, the Adoration of
-the Golden Calf, in the church of Sta. Maria dell' Orfo.
-
-It is evident that the spirit of Michael Angelo domineered over the
-fancy of Tintoretto in the arrangement of the Last Judgement, though not
-over its design; but grant some indulgence to that, and the storm in
-which the whole fluctuates, the awful division of light and darkness
-into enormous masses, the living motion of the agents, notwithstanding
-their frequent aberrations from their centre of gravity,[151] and the
-harmony that rules the whirlwind of that tremendous moment, must for
-ever place it among the most astonishing productions of art. Its
-sublimity as a whole triumphs even over the hypercriticisms of Vasari,
-who thus describes it:--"Tintoretto has painted the Last Judgement with
-an extravagant invention, which, indeed, has something awful and
-terrible, inasmuch as he has united in groups a multitudinous assemblage
-of figures of each sex and every age, interspersed with distant views of
-the blessed and condemned souls. You see likewise the boat of Charon,
-but in a manner as novel and uncommon as highly interesting. Had this
-fantastic conception been executed with a correct and regular design,
-had the painter estimated its individual parts with the attention which
-he bestowed on the whole, so expressive of the confusion and the tumult
-of that day, it would be the most admirable of pictures. Hence he who
-casts his eye only on the whole, remains astonished, whilst to him who
-examines the parts it appears to have been painted in jest."
-
-In the Adoration of the Golden Calf, the counterpart in size of the Last
-Judgement, Tintoretto has given full reins to his invention; and here,
-as in the former, though their scanty width does not very amicably
-correspond with their height, which is fifty feet, he has filled the
-whole so dexterously that the dimension appears to be the result of the
-composition. Here too, as in the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, some
-short-sighted sophist may pretend to discover two separate subjects and
-a double action; for Moses receives the tables of the decalogue in the
-upper part, whilst the idolatrous ceremony occupies the lower; but the
-unity of the subject may be proved by the same argument which defended
-and justified the choice of Sanzio. Both actions are not only the
-offspring of the same moment, but so essentially relate to each other
-that, by omitting either, neither could with sufficient evidence have
-told the story. Who can pretend to assert, that the artist who has found
-the secret of representing together two inseparable moments of an event
-divided only by place, has impaired the unity of the subject?
-
-Nowhere, however, does the genius of Tintoretto flash more irresistibly
-than in the Schools of S. Marco and S. Rocco, where the greater part of
-the former and almost the whole of the latter are his work, and exhibit
-in numerous specimens, and on the largest scale, every excellence and
-every fault that exalts or debases his pencil: equal sublimity and
-extravagance of conception; purity of style and ruthless manner;
-bravura of hand with mental dereliction; celestial or palpitating hues
-tacked to clayey, raw, or frigid masses; a despotism of chiaroscuro
-which sometimes exalts, sometimes eclipses, often absorbs subject and
-actors. Such is the catalogue of beauties and defects which characterize
-the Slave delivered by St. Marc; the Body of the Saint landed; the
-Visitation of the Virgin; the Massacre of the Innocents; Christ tempted
-in the Desert; the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd; the Resurrection of
-the Saviour; and though last, first, that prodigy which in itself sums
-up the whole of Tintoretto, and by its anomaly equals or surpasses the
-most legitimate offsprings of art, the Crucifixion.[152]
-
-It is singular that the most finished and best preserved work of
-Tintoretto should be one which he had least time allowed him to
-terminate--the Apotheosis of S. Rocco in the principal ceiling-piece of
-the Schola, conceived, executed, and presented, instead of the sketch
-which he had been commissioned with the rest of the concurrent artists
-to produce for the examination of the fraternity: a work which equally
-strikes by loftiness of conception, a style of design as correct as
-bold, and a suavity of colour which entrances the eye. Though
-constructed on the principles of that _sotto in su_, then ruling the
-platfonds and cupolas of upper Italy, unknown to or rejected by M.
-Angelo, its figures recede more gradually, yet with more evidence, than
-the groups of Correggio, whose ostentatious foreshortenings generally
-sacrifice the actor to his posture.
-
-That Tintoretto acquired, during his stay with or after his dismissal
-from the study of Tiziano's principles, the power of representing the
-surface and the texture of bodily substance with a truth bordering on
-illusion, is proved with more irresistible because more copious
-evidence, in the picture of the Angelic Salutation; though it cannot be
-denied that the admiration due to the magic touch of the paraphernalia
-is extorted at the expense of the essential parts: Gabriel and Maria are
-little more than foils of her husband's tools; for their display, the
-artist's caprice has turned the solemn approach of the awful messenger
-into boisterous irruption, the silent recess of the mysterious mother
-into a public dismantled shed, and herself into a vulgar female. Nowhere
-would the superiority of refined over vulgar art, of taste and judgment
-over unbridled fancy, have appeared more irresistibly than in the
-sopraporta by Tiziano on the same subject and in the same place, had
-that exquisite master been inspired more by the sanctity of the subject
-than the lures of courtly or the ostentatious bigotry of monastic
-devotion. If Maria was to be rescued from the brutal hand that had
-travestied her to the mate of a common labourer, it was not to be
-transformed to a young abbess, elegantly devout, submitting to
-canonization, amongst her delicate lambs; if the angel was not to rush
-through a shattered casement on a timid female with a whirlwind's blast,
-the waving grace and calm dignity of his gesture and attitude, ought to
-have been above the assistance of theatrical ornament; nor should
-Palladio have been consulted to construct classic avenues for the humble
-abode of pious meditation. It must however be owned that we become
-reconciled to this mass of factitious embellishments by a tone which
-seems to have been inspired by Piety itself; the message whispers in a
-celestial atmosphere,
-
-    THeie amphechut' omphe----
-
-and so forcibly appears its magic effect to have influenced Tintoretto
-himself, ever ready to rush from one extreme to another, that he
-imitated it in the Annunciata of the Arimani Palace:[153] not without
-success, but far below the mannerless unambitious purity of tone that
-pervades the effusion of his master, and of which he himself gave a
-blazing proof in the Resurrection of the Saviour,--a work in which
-sublimity of conception, beauty and dignity of form, velocity and
-propriety of motion, irresistible flash, mellowness and freshness of
-colour, tones inspired by the subject, and magic chiaroscuro, less for
-"mastery strive," than relieve each other and entrance the absorbed eye.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[134] Thus in an order of the Justiziarii we read: "MCCCXXII. Indicion
-Sexta die primo de Octub. Ordenado e fermado fo per Misier Piero Veniero
-& per Miser Marco da Mugla Justixieri Vieri, lo terzo compagno vacante.
-Ordenado fo che da mo in avanti alguna persona si venedega come
-forestiera non osa vender in Venexia alcuna _Anchona_ impenta, salvo li
-empentori, sotto pena, &c. Salvo da la sensa, che alora sia licito a
-zaschun de vinder _anchone_ infin chel durerà la festa," &c. And a
-picture in the church of S. Donato at Murano, has the following
-inscription: "Corendo MCCCX. indicion viii. in tempo de lo nobele homo
-Miser Donato Memo honorando Podestà facta fo questa _Anchona_ de Miser
-S. Donato."
-
-[135] In the church at Cassello di Sesto, which has an abbey founded in
-762, there are pictures of the ninth century.
-
-[136] Gelasio di Nicolo della Masuada di S. Giorgio, was of Ferrara, and
-flourished about 1242. Vid. Historia almi Ferrariensis Gymnasii,
-Ferraria, 1735.
-
-[137] At that time he painted in the palace of Cari della Scala at
-Verona, and at Padoua a chapel in the church 'del Sarto;' he repeated
-his visit in the latter years of his life to both places. Of what he did
-at Verona no traces remain, but at Padoua the compartments of Gospel
-histories round the Oratorio of the Nunziata all' Arena, by the
-freshness of the fresco and that blended grace and grandeur peculiar to
-Giotto, still surprise.
-
-[138] Fiorillo has confounded this questionable name with the real one
-of Luigi, who painted about 1490.--See Fiorillo Geschichte, ii. p. 11.
-
-[139] In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a St. Stephen and Sebastian, with the
-inscription:
-
-           1445.
-    Johannes de Alemania
-    et Antonius de Muriano.
-             P.
-
-from which, another picture at Padova, inscribed "Antonio de Muran e
-Zohan Alamanus pinxit," and some traces of foreign style where his name
-occurs, Lanzi suspects that the inscription in S. Pantaleone, "Zuane, e
-Antonio da Muran, pense 1444," on which the existence of Giovanni is
-founded, means no other than the German partner of Antonio.
-
-[140] In no instance seems Vasari to have given a more decisive proof of
-his attachment to the Florentine school, than by building the fame of
-Pisano on having been the pupil of Andrea del Castagno, and having been
-allowed to terminate the works which he had left unfinished behind him
-about 1480; an anachronism the more absurd as the Commendator del Pozzo
-was possessed of a picture by Pisano, inscribed 'Opera di Vittor
-Pisanello de San V. Veronese, MCCCCVI.' a period at which probably
-Castagno was not born. The truth is, that Vasari, whose rage for
-dispatch and credulity kept pace with each other, composed the first
-part of Pisano's life nearly without materials, and the second from
-hearsay.
-
-[141] What Vasari says of the dog of S. Eustachio and the horse of St.
-Giorgio, though on the authority of Frà Marco de' Medici, warrants the
-assertion; and still more the foreshortened horse on the reverse of a
-medal struck in 1419, in honour and with the head of John Palæologus.
-The horse, like that of M. Antoninus, has an attitude of parallel
-motion. The medal has been published by Ducange in the appendix to his
-Latin Glossary, by Padre Banduri, Gori and Maffei.
-
-[142] See their lists in _Descrizione delle Architetture, Pitture e
-Sculture di Vicenza con alcune osservazioni, &c._ Vicenza, 1779, 8vo. p.
-I. II.
-
-[143] Ridolfi, i. 68. Vasari, who treats his art with contempt, calls
-him Jacopo; and Orlandi, afraid of choosing between them, used both, and
-made two different artists.
-
-[144] Vasari dates his birth 1480.
-
-[145] Liruti, Notizie de' Letterati del Friuli, t. ii. p. 285.
-
-[146] Sebastiano Zuccati of Trevigo, flourished about 1490. He had two
-sons, Valerio and Francesco, celebrated for mosaic about and beyond the
-middle of the sixteenth century. Flaminio Zuccati, the son of Valerio,
-who inherited his father's talent and fame, flourished about 1585. See
-Zanetti.
-
-[147] See Ridolfi. The original went to Dresden; but Italy abounds in
-copies of it. Lanzi mentions one which he saw at S. Saverio in Rimini,
-with Tiziano's name written on the fillet of the Pharisee, a performance
-of great beauty, and by many considered less a copy than a duplicate.
-The most celebrated copy, that of Flaminio Torre, is preserved at
-Dresden with the original.
-
-[148] "Si può quasi dire, che il vizio sia la virtù della Scuola
-Veneziana, poichè fa pompa della sollecitudine nel dipingere; e perciò
-fa stima di Tintoretto, che non avea altro merito." Mengs, Opere, t. i.
-p. 175. ed. Parm.
-
-[149] It has supplanted, was probably perpetuated in allusion to his
-rapidity of execution, and remains familiar to ears that never heard of
-Robusti.
-
-[150] See Varie Pitture a fresco de' principali Maestri Veneziani, &c.
-Venez. fol. 1760. Tab. 8, 9, p. viii. No one who has seen the original
-figures of the Aurora and Creposcolo in S. Lorenzo, can mistake their
-imitation, or rather transcripts, in these.
-
-[151] The frequent want of equilibration found in Tintoretto's figures,
-even where no violence of action can palliate or account for it, has not
-without probability been ascribed to his method of studying foreshortening
-from models loosely suspended and playing in the air; to which he at last
-became so used that he sometimes employed it even for figures resting on
-firm ground, and fondly sacrificed solidity and firmness to the affected
-graces of undulation.
-
-[152] It would be mere waste of time to recapitulate what has been said
-on the efficient beauties of this astonishing work in the lectures on
-colour and chiaroscuro, and in the article of Tintoretto, in the last
-edition of Pilkington's Dictionary. It has been engraved on a large
-scale by Agostino Carracci, if that can be called engraving which
-contents itself with the mere enumeration of the parts, totally
-neglecting the medium of that tremendous twilight which hovers over the
-whole and transposes us to Golgotha. If what Ridolfi says be true, that
-Tintoretto embraced the engraver when he presented the drawing to him,
-he must have had still more deplorable moments of dereliction as a man
-than as an Artist, or the drawing of Agostino, must have differed
-totally from the print.
-
-[153] It is engraved by Pietro Monaco, as that of Tiziano, by Le Fevre,
-but in a manner which makes us lament the lot of those who have no means
-to see the original.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF MANTOUA.
-
-
-Mantoua,[154] the birth-place of Virgil, a name dear to poetry, by the
-adoption of Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Pippi claims a distinguished
-place in the history of Art, for restoring and disseminating style among
-the schools of Lombardy.
-
-Mantoua, desolated by Attila, conquered by Alboin, wrested from the
-Longobards by the Exarch of Ravenna, was taken and fortified by Charles
-the Great: from Bonifazio of Canossa it descended to Mathilda; after her
-demise, 1115, became a republic tyrannized by Bonacorsi, till the people
-conferred the supremacy on Lodovico Gonzaga, under whose successors it
-rose from a marquisate, 1433, to a dukedom, 1531, and finished as an
-appendage to the spoils of Austria.
-
-Revolutions so uninterrupted, aggravated by accidental devastations of
-floods and fire, may account for the want of earlier monuments of art in
-Mantoua and its districts, than the remains from the epoch of
-Mathilda.[155] A want perhaps more to be regretted by the antiquary
-than the historian of art, whose real epoch begins with the patronage of
-Lodovico Gonzaga and the appearance of Andrea Mantegna.[156]
-
-This native of Padova[157] was the adopted son and pupil of Squarcione,
-in whose school he acquired that taste for the antique which marks his
-works at every period of his practice; if sometimes mitigated, never
-supplanted by the blandishments of colour and the precepts of Giovanni
-Bellino, whose daughter he had married.
-
-Perhaps no question has been discussed with greater anxiety, and
-dismissed from investigation with less success, than that of
-Correggio's origin, circumstances, methods of study, and death.
-
-The date of his birth is uncertain, some place it in 1475, others in
-1490; were we to follow a MS. gloss in the Library at Gottingen,
-mentioned by Fiorillo, which says he died at the age of forty in 1512,
-he must have been born in 1472; but the true date is, no doubt, that of
-the inscription set him at Correggio, viz. that he died in 1534, aged
-forty. The honour of his birth-place is allowed to Correggio, though not
-without dispute.[158] His father's name was Pellegrino Allegri,
-according to Orlandi, countenanced by Mengs. He was instructed in the
-elements of literature, philosophy, and mathematics; however doubtful
-this, there can be no doubt entertained on the very early period in
-which he must have applied to Painting. The brevity of his life, and the
-surprising number of his works, evince that he could not devote much
-time to literature, and, of mathematics, probably contented himself with
-what related to perspective and architecture. On the authority of
-Vedriani and of Scannelli, Mengs and his follower Ratti make Correggio
-in Modena the pupil of Franc. Bianchi Ferrari, and in Mantoua of Andr.
-Mantegna, without vouchers of sufficient authenticity for either: the
-passage quoted by Vedriani from the chronicle of Lancillotto, an
-historian contemporary with Correggio, is an interpolation; and
-Mantegna, who died in 1505, could not have been the master of a boy who
-at that time was scarcely in his twelfth year.
-
-Some supposed pictures of Correggio at Mantoua, in the manner of
-Mantegna, may have given rise to this opinion. An imitation of that
-style is visible in some whose originality has never been disputed: such
-as in the St. Cecilia of the Palace Borghese, and a piece in his first
-manner of the Gallery at Dresden.
-
-Father Maurizio Zapata, a friar of Casino, in a MS. quoted by
-Tiraboschi, affirms that the two uncles of Parmegianino, Michele and
-Pier Stario Mazzuoli, were the masters of Correggio,--a supposition
-without foundation; it is more probable, though not certain, that he
-gained the first elements from Lorenzo Allegri his uncle, and not, as
-the vulgar opinion states, his grandfather.
-
-Equal doubts prevail on his skill and power of execution in architecture
-and plastic: the common opinion is, that for this he was beholden to
-Antonio Begarelli. Scannelli, Resta, and Vedriani, pretend that
-Correggio, terrified by the enormous mass and variety of figures to be
-seen foreshortened from below in the cupola of the Domo at Parma, had
-the whole modelled by Begarelli, and thus escaped from the difficulty,
-correct, and with applause. They likewise tell in Parma, that by
-occasion of some solemn funeral, many of those models were found on the
-cornices of the cupola, and considered as the works of Begarelli: hence
-they pretend that Correggio was his regular pupil, and as such finished
-those three statues which a tradition as vague as silly has placed to
-his account in Begarelli's celebrated composition of the Deposition from
-the Cross in the church of St. Margareta.
-
-That either Correggio himself or Begarelli made models for the cupola
-admits no doubt, the necessity of such a process is evident from the
-nature and the perfection of the work; but there is surely none to
-conclude from it to that of a formal apprenticeship in sculpture. He who
-had arrived at the power of painting the cupola at Parma, may without
-rashness be supposed to have possessed that of making for his own use
-small models of clay, without the instructions of a master, especially
-in an age when painting, sculpture, and architecture frequently met in
-the same artist; and, as we have elsewhere[159] observed, when sketching
-in clay was a practice familiar to those of Lombardy.
-
-Correggio's pretended journey to Rome is another point in dispute: two
-writers of his century, Ortensio Landi and Vasari, reject it. The first
-says[160] Correggio died young without having been able to visit Rome;
-the second affirms that Antonio had a genius which wanted nothing but
-acquaintance with Rome to perform miracles. Padre Resta, a great
-collector of Correggio's works, was the first who opposed their
-authority.[161] He pretends, in some writing of his own, to have adduced
-twelve proofs of Correggio's having twice visited Rome, viz. in 1520 and
-1530. But the allegations of a crafty monk, a dealer in drawings and
-pictures, cannot weigh against authorities like those of Vasari and
-Landi. His conjectures rest partly on some supposed drawings of
-Correggio's in his possession, from the Loggie of the Vatican, and
-partly on an imaginary journey, in which, he tells us, Correggio
-traversed Italy incognito, and made everywhere copies, which all had the
-good luck to fall into his own reverend hands. These lures, held out to
-ensnare the ignorant and wealthy, he palliated by a pretended plan of
-raising a monument to the memory of the immortal artist at Correggio,
-the expenses of which were to be defrayed by the produce of his stock in
-hand. He had even face enough to solicit from that town an attestation
-that their citizen had travelled as a journeyman painter.
-
-Mengs, and of course Batti, embrace the same opinion. Mengs draws his
-conclusion from the difference between Correggio's first and second
-style, which he considers less as the imperceptible progress of art than
-as the immediate effect of the works of Raphael and Michel Agnolo. Mengs
-was probably seduced to believe in this visionary journey on the
-authority of Winkelmann, who pretended to have discovered, in the museum
-of Cardinal Albani, some designs after the antique by Mantegna,
-Correggio's reputed master. Bracci, in opposition, assert that Allegri
-was beholden to none but himself for his acquirements, and appeals to a
-letter of Annibale Carracci, who says that Correggio found in himself
-those materials for which the rest were obliged to extraneous help. The
-words of Carracci, however, with all due homage to the genius of
-Correggio and the originality of his style, appear to refer rather to
-invention and the poetic, than to the executive part of his works.
-
-If there be any solidity in the observation of Mengs on Correggio's
-first manner, as a mixture of Pietro Perugino's and Lionardo's style,
-and of course not very different from Raphael's, how comes it that in
-the works of his second and best manner all resemblance to either, and
-consequently to Raphael, disappears? The simplicity of Raphael's forms
-is little beholden to that contrast and those foreshortenings which are
-the element of Correggio's style. Raphael sacrificed all to the subject
-and expression; Correggio, in an artificial medium, sacrifices all to
-the air of things and harmony. Raphael speaks to our heart; Correggio
-insinuates himself into our affections by charming our senses. The
-essence of Raphael's beauty is dignity of mind; petulant _naïveté_ that
-of Correggio's. Raphael's grace is founded on propriety; Correggio's on
-convenience and the harmony of the whole. The light of Raphael is simple
-daylight; that of Correggio artificial splendour. In short, the history
-of artists scarcely furnishes characteristics more opposite than what
-discriminate these two. And though it may appear a paradox to
-superficial observation, were it necessary to find an object of
-imitation for Allegri's second and best style, the artificial medium,
-the breadth of manner and mellowness of transition, with the enormous
-forms and foreshortenings of Michel Angelo, though adopted by so
-different a mind, from as different motives, for an end still more
-different, will be found to be much more congenial with his principles
-of seeing and executing, than the style of any preceding or coetaneous
-period.
-
-The authenticity of Correggio's celebrated "Anch' io son Pittore," is
-less affected by the improbability of his journey to Rome, than by its
-own legendary weakness: though not at Modena or Parma, for there were no
-pictures of Raphael in either place during Antonio's life, he might have
-seen the St. Cecilia at Bologna; and if the story be true, perhaps no
-large picture of that master that we are acquainted with could furnish
-him with equal matter of exultation. He was less made to sympathize with
-the celestial trance of the heroine, the intense meditation of the
-Apostles, and the sainted grace of the Magdalen, than to be disgusted by
-a parallelism of the whole which borders on primitive apposition, by the
-total neglect of what is called picturesque, the absence of chiaroscuro,
-the unharmonious colour, and dry severity of execution.
-
-The next point is to fix the dates of Correggio's works; the certain,
-the probable, the conjectural.
-
-The theatre of Correggio's first essays in art is supposed to have been
-his native place and the palace of its princes; but that palace perished
-with whatever it might contain. From a document in the parochial archive
-of Correggio, of 1514, it appears that in the same year he painted an
-altar-piece for one hundred zechini, a considerable price for a young
-man of twenty. This picture was in the church of the Minorites, where it
-remained till 1638, when a copy was unawares put into the place of the
-original. The citizens alarmed, in vain made representations to Annibale
-Molza, their governor; it even appears from a letter of his to the Court
-of Modena, in whose name he governed, that, many years before, two other
-pieces of Antonio had been removed from the same chapel by order of Don
-Siro, the last prince of the House of Correggio; those represented a St.
-John and a St. Bartholomew; the subject of the altar-piece was the
-Madonna with the child, Joseph and St. Francis.
-
-The fraternity of the Hospital della Misericordia possessed likewise an
-altar-piece of Antonio. The centre piece represented the Deity of the
-Father; the two wings, St. John and Bartholomew. According to a contract
-which still remains in the archives, it was estimated by a painter of
-Novellara, Jacopo Borboni, at three hundred ducats, bought for Don Siro
-in 1613, and a copy put in its place. The originals of all these
-pictures are lost.
-
-The picture with the Madonna and child on a throne, St. John the
-Baptist, the Sts. Catharina, Francis, and Antony, inscribed "Antonius de
-Allegris P." now in the gallery of Dresden, was, as Tiraboschi correctly
-supposes, an altar-piece in the church of St. Nicolas of the Minorites,
-at Carpi: a copy of it by Aretusi, is at Mantoua. To this period, and
-perhaps even an earlier one, belongs the St. Cecilia of the Borghese
-palace. The general style of this picture is dry and hard, and the
-draperies in Mantegna's taste; but the light which proceeds from a glory
-of angels, and imperceptibly expands itself over the whole, is a
-characteristic too decisive to leave any doubt of its originality.
-
-In the gallery of Count Brühl was the Wedding (sposalizio) of St.
-Catharine, with the following inscription on the back:--"Laus Deo: per
-Donna Metilde d'Este Antonio Lieto da Correggio fece il presente quadro
-per sua divozione, anno 1517." This inscription appears, however,
-suspicious, as at that time there was no princess of that name at the
-court of Ferrara. At the purchase of the principal pictures in the
-Modenese gallery by Augustus III. this was presented by the Duke to
-Count Brühl; from him it went to the Imperial Gallery at Petersburg. A
-similar one was in the collection of Capo di Monte at Naples, and Mengs
-considers both as originals. Copies of merit by Gabbiani and Volterrano
-are in England and Toscana. It is singular that an artist, than whom
-none had more scholars and copyists, and whose short life was occupied
-by the most important works, should be supposed to have painted so many
-duplicates, and that a set of men, as impudent as ignorant, should meet
-with dupes as credulous as wealthy, eager to purchase their trash at
-enormous prices, in the face of the few legitimate originals.
-
-In 1519, Antonio went to Parma, and soon after his arrival is said to have
-painted a room in the Nunnery of St. Paul. The authenticity of this work,
-placed within the clausure of the convent and consequently inaccessible,
-has been recently disputed, and the author of a certain dialogue even
-attempts to prove the whole a fable. To ascertain the fact, a special
-licence to visit the place was obtained for some painters and architects
-of note, and on their declaring the paintings one of Correggio's best
-works, Don Ferdinando de Bourbon, with some of the courtiers and Padre
-Iveneo Affo, followed to inspect it. What he tells us of monastic
-constitution in those times accounts for the admission of so profane an
-ornament in such a place; for in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
-clausure was yet unknown to nunneries; abbesses were elected for life,
-their power over the revenue of the convent was uncontrolled, their style
-of life magnificent, and their political influence not inconsiderable.
-Such was the situation of nunneries when Donna Giovanna da Piacenza,
-descended from an eminent family at Parma, the new-elected abbess of St.
-Paul's, ordered two saloons of her elegant apartments to be decorated with
-paintings; one by Correggio, and another, as it is conjectured, either by
-Alessandro Araldi of Parma, or Cristoforo Casella, called Temperello.
-Padre Affo proves that Correggio must have painted his apartment before
-1520, immediately after his arrival at Parma, and four or five years
-before the introduction of the clausure. Of a work so singular and
-questionable, it will not appear superfluous to repeat some of the most
-striking outlines from his account:--"The chimney-piece represents Diana
-returned from the chase, to whom an infant Amor offers the head of a
-new-slain stag; the ceiling is vaulted, raised in arches over sixteen
-lunettes; four on each side of the walls; the paintings are raised about
-an ell from the floor, and form a series of mythologic and allegoric
-figures, which breathe the simplicity, the suavity, and the decorum of
-Art's golden age. Of these the three Graces naked, in three different
-attitudes, offer a charming study of female beauty, and a striking
-contrast with the Parcæ placed opposite; the most singular subject is a
-naked female figure, suspended by a cord from the sky, with her hands tied
-over her head--her body extended by two golden anvils fastened with chains
-to her feet, floating in the attitude of which the Homeric Jupiter reminds
-his Juno.[162] The high-arched roof embowers the whole with luxuriant
-verdure and fruit, and is divided into sixteen large ovals, overhung with
-festoons of tendrils, vine-leaves, and grapes, between which appear groups
-of infant Amorini, above the size of children, gamboling in various
-picturesque though not immodest attitudes."
-
-Neither the pretended inaccessibility of place, nor the veil thrown by
-monastic austerity over the profaneness of the subject, can sufficiently
-account for the silence of tradition, and the obscurity in which this
-work was suffered to linger for nearly three centuries. Supposing it, on
-the authorities adduced, to be the legitimate produce of Correggio, and
-considering its affinity to the ornamental parts of the Loggie in the
-Vatican, it affords a stronger argument of Allegri's having seen Rome,
-studied the antique, and imitated Raphael, than any of those that have
-been adduced by Mengs, who (with his commentator D'Azara,) appears to
-have been totally uninformed of it, notwithstanding his familiarity at
-Parma with every work of Correggio, his perseverance of inquiry and
-eager pursuit of whatever related to his idol, the influence he enjoyed
-at Court, and unlimited access to every place that might be supposed to
-contain or hide some work of art.
-
-Soon after his arrival at Parma, Antonio probably received the
-commission of the celebrated cupola of S. Giovanni, which he completed
-in 1524, as appears from an acquittance for the last payment subscribed
-'Antonio Lieto,' still existing at Parma.
-
-In the cupola he represented the Ascension of the Saviour, with the
-Apostles, the Madonna, &c. and the Coronation of the Virgin on the
-tribune of the principal altar, whose enlargement in 1584 occasioned,
-with the destruction of the choir, that of the painting: a few fragments
-escaped; an exact copy had, however, been provided before, by Annibale
-Carracci, from which it was repainted on the same place by Aretusi. The
-same church preserved two pictures in oil of Correggio, the martyrdom of
-St. Placidus and Flavia, and Christ taken from the cross on the lap of
-his mother; both are now (1802) in the collection of the Louvre.
-
-The success of the cupola of S. Giovanni encouraged the inspectors of
-the Domo to commit the decoration of theirs to the same master. Of their
-contract with him, the original still remains in the archive of their
-chapter; it was concluded in 1522, and amounted to about one thousand
-zecchini, no inconsiderable sum for those times, and alone sufficient to
-do away the silly tradition of the artist's mendicity. The decorations
-of the chapel, next to the cupola, were distributed among three of the
-best Parmesan painters at that time, Parmegianino, Franc. Maria Rondani,
-and Michael Angelo Anselmi. From all the papers hitherto found, it
-appears, however, that Correggio did not actually begin to paint the
-cupola before 1526: it represents the Ascension of the Virgin, and
-without recurring to an individual verdict, has received the sanction of
-ages, as the most sublime in its kind, of all that were produced before
-and after it; a work without a rival, though now dimmed with smoke, and
-in decay by time. These were the two first cupolas painted entire, all
-former ones being painted in compartments. Nothing occurs to make us
-surmise that Correggio had partners of his labour in these two works;
-for Lattanzio Gambara of Brescia, mentioned by Rossi as his assistant in
-the Domo, was born eight years after Correggio's death.
-
-During the progress of these two great works, Correggio produced others
-of inferior size but equal excellence; the principal of which are the
-two votive pictures of St. Jerome, and La Notte. That of St. Jerome
-represents the Saint offering his Translation to the Infant Christ, who
-is seated in his Mother's lap, with St. Magdalen reclining on and
-kissing his feet, and flanked by Angels. The commission for this picture
-is said to have been given in 1523, by Donna Briseide Colla, the widow
-of Orazio or Ottaviano Bergonzi of Parma, who in 1528 gave it as a
-votive offering to the church of S. Antonio del Fuoco. The price agreed
-on, was 400 lire; 40,000 ducats were offered for it afterwards by the
-King of Portugal; and the then Abbot of the convent was on the point of
-concluding the bargain, when the citizens of Parma, to prevent the loss,
-applied to the Infante Don Philippo. He ordered it in 1749 to be
-transposed from S. Antonio to the Domo; there it remained till 1756,
-when, on the application of a French painter, expelled by the Canons for
-his attempt to trace it, the Prince had it transferred under an escort
-of twenty-four grenadiers to Colorno; and from thence to the newly
-instituted academy, where it remained till 1797, and now, (1802,) with
-other transported works of Art, glitters among the spoils of the Louvre.
-
-The second picture known by the name of "La Notte," represents the
-birthnight of the Saviour, and was the commission of Alberto Pratonieri,
-as appears from a writing dated in 1522, though it was not finished till
-1527 according to Mengs, or 1530 as Fiorillo surmised, when it was
-dedicated in the Chapel Pratonieri of S. Prospero at Reggio: from
-whence, 1640, it was carried to the gallery of Modena, by order, of Duke
-Francesco I. and from thence at length to that of Dresden.
-
-A chapel in the church del S. Sepolcro at Parma, possessed formerly the
-altar-piece known by the name of "La Madonna della Scodella," because
-the Virgin, represented on her flight to Egypt, holds a wooden bowl in
-her hand: a figure, whom Mengs fancies the Genius of the Fountain, pours
-water into it; and in the back ground an angel, whose action and
-expression he considers as too graceful for the business, ties up the
-ass. This picture, he tells us, was, thirteen years before the date in
-which he wrote, nearly swept out of the panel by the barbarous wash of a
-Spanish journeyman painter who had obtained permission to copy it. It is
-now in the Louvre, and how much of its present florid colour is
-legitimate, must be left to the decision of the committee "de la
-Restoration."
-
-If the most sublime degree of expression be entitled to the right of
-originality, Mengs must be followed in his decision on the Ecce Homo,
-formerly in the Palace Colonna, without much anxiety whether it be the
-same that belonged to the family of Prati at Parma, or that which
-Agostino Carracci engraved.
-
-The Madonna seated beneath a palm-tree, bending in somnolently pensive
-contemplation over the Infant on her lap, watched by an Angel above her,
-and attended by a Leveret, known by the name of "La Zingarella" or the
-Egyptian, from the sash round her head, formerly in the gallery of
-Parma, and now at Naples in that of Capo di Monte, has suffered so
-much from a modern hand, that little of the master remains but the
-conception. Nearly a duplicate of it was presented by Cardinal
-Alessandro Albani to king Augustus of Poland; but Mengs hesitates to
-pronounce it an original.
-
-In the period of these, about 1530, we may probably place the two
-celebrated pictures of Leda and Danae, than which no modern works of art
-have suffered more from accident and wanton or bigoted barbarity, or
-been tossed about by more contradictory tradition.
-
-If the subject that takes its name from Leda be, as Mengs says, rather
-an allegory than a fable, it alludes to what would aggravate even the
-story of that mistress of Jupiter. The central figure represents a
-female seated on the verge of a rivulet with a swan between her thighs,
-who attempts to insinuate his bill into her lips; but at her side, and
-deeper in the water, is a tender girl, who with an air of innocence
-playfully struggles to defend herself from the attacks of another
-swimming swan; farther on, a girl more grown up to woman, gazes, whilst
-a female servant dresses her, with an air of satiate pleasure after a
-swan on the wing, that seems just to have left her; at some distance
-appears half a figure of an aged woman, draped, and with looks of
-regret. On the other side of the principal group, the graceful form of a
-full-grown Amor strikes the lyre, and two Amorini contrive to wind some
-horn instruments. The scene of all this is a charming grove on the brink
-of a pellucid lake.
-
-The second picture represents the daughter of Acrisius, but with poetic
-spirit. The virgin gracefully reclines on her bed; a full-grown Cupid,
-perhaps a Hymen, lifts with one hand the border of the sheet on her lap
-that receives the celestial shower, whilst his other presents the mystic
-drops to her enchanted glance: two Amorini at the foot of the bed try
-on a touchstone, that, one of the golden drops, this, the point of an
-arrow, and he, says Mengs, has a vigour of character much superior to
-the other, plainly to express, that Love proceeds from the arrow, and
-its ruin from gold; he likewise finds that the head and head-dress of
-Danae are imitated from those of the Medicean Venus.
-
-Vasari, and after him Mengs with others, tell that in 1530, Federigo
-Gonzaga, then created Duke of Mantoua, intended to present Charles the
-Fifth at the ceremonial of his coronation with two pictures worthy of
-him, and in the choice of artists gave the preference to Correggio. From
-this, a correct inference is drawn against that pretended obscurity in
-which Correggio is said to have lingered; for at that time Giulio Romano
-lived at the Court of Mantoua, and Tizian was in the service of the
-Emperor. Vasari is silent on the date of the pictures, but he affirms
-that, at their sight, Giulio Romano declared he had never seen a style
-of colour approaching theirs. So far all seems correct; but that they
-were actually presented to Charles, sent to Prague, and after the
-sacking of that city by Gustavus Adolphus, carried to Stockholm, is
-unproved or erroneous. If it is not likely that the Emperor, instead of
-sending them to Madrid, the darling depository of his other works of
-art, should have sent them into a kind of exile to Prague, it is an
-error to pretend they were removed from thence by Gustavus Adolphus, who
-was slain at Lutzen sixteen years before the Swedes sacked that city,
-1648. The truth is, that these pictures were not given to the Emperor,
-but placed in his own gallery by the Duke, where they remained till
-1630, when the Imperial General Colalto stormed Mantoua, sacked it,
-deprived it of its cabinet of treasures, of the celebrated vase since
-possessed by the House of Brunswick, and transmitted its beautiful
-collection of pictures to Prague, from whence by the event of war we
-have mentioned, they became the property of Queen Christina, at whose
-abdication, when the whole was packing up for Rome, the two pictures in
-question were discovered in the royal stables, where they had served as
-window-blinds, mutilated and despised. Whether so unaccountable a
-neglect be imputable to the Queen's want of taste, as Tessin asserts, or
-to accident, or, what is most unlikely, to her modesty, cannot now be
-decided. They were repaired, and at her demise left to Cardinal
-Azzolini, of whose heirs they were purchased by Don Livio Odescalchi,
-and by him left to the Duke of Bracciano, were sold to the Regent of
-France, whose son, from a whim of bigotry, had the picture of the Leda
-cut to pieces in his own presence, in which state Charles Coypel
-requested and obtained it for his private study. At his death it was
-vamped up, repieced, disposed of by auction, and, at a high price, sold
-to the King of Prussia. What became of the Danae is matter of
-dispute.[163]
-
-The picture of Io embraced by Jupiter, inbosomed in clouds, by a silent
-water in which a stag quenches his thirst, was their companion: a work
-to which the most lavish fame has done no justice, and beyond which no
-fancy ever soared. The Io shared a still more barbarous fate. Not
-content with mangling her like the Leda, the bigot prince burnt her
-head; and, were it not for the beautiful duplicate which fortune
-preserved in the Gallery of Vienna,[164] we should be reduced to guess
-at Correggio in the fragments at Sans Souci, and the prints of Surregue
-and Bartolozzi. The Imperial Gallery possesses, likewise, the Rape of
-Ganymede, by Correggio, of the same size with the Io; a Mountain Scene;
-a full-grown Cupid, seen from behind, with his head turned to the
-spectator, shaping a bow, accompanied by a laughing and a weeping
-infant, in struggling attitudes, which was likewise sold by the heirs of
-Don Livio Odescalchi, has equally exercised opinion. Vasari, Tassoni, Du
-Bois, de St. Gelais, &c. ascribe it to Parmegiano; Mengs and Fiorillo,
-who judge from the duplicate at Vienna, with greater probability give it
-to Correggio. The contrast of the attitudes is produced more by naïveté
-than affectation, the lines have more simplicity than the style of
-Mazzuola admitted of, and the colour more breadth. The conception of the
-whole, whether the infants be the symbols of successful and unsuccessful
-love, or denote the dangers of love, or be simply children, though not
-beyond the fancy of Parmegiano, has more the air of a Correggiesque
-conceit. Numberless copies were made after it, some by Parmegiano
-himself, whose handling may be recognized in the picture at Paris.
-
-We are now arrived at those works of Correggio's which cannot be fixed
-to a certain period. Such are probably, in the Gallery of Dresden, those
-known under the names of S. Giorgio and S. Sebastiano, of both of which
-Mengs gives a circumstantial account. He is, however, mistaken when he
-imagines the last to have been voted by the City of Modena after a
-plague: the commission of it was given by the fraternity of St.
-Sebastian.
-
-The half-length portrait, formerly known at Modena as that of
-Correggio's Physician, belongs to the same doubtful period. Mengs,
-though he praises the colour and the impasto of it, is inclined to think
-it painted about the time of his first Cupola, when he had not yet
-sufficiently studied detail of forms and variety of tints. The style
-resembles that of Giorgione, but is less vivid, though of equal pasto,
-and somewhat more limpid.
-
-The last, though not least celebrated piece of Antonio in this Gallery,
-is the small Meditating Magdalena: of the pictures mentioned, it is the
-only one painted on copper, the rest are on panel. It is little more
-than a palm in height, and not quite a palm and a half long. It was,
-with other small pictures, stolen out of the Gallery in 1788, but soon
-recovered. The purchase price, according to Mengs, when the Gallery was
-disposed of, was 27,000 Roman crowns. It has been copied by Albani, and,
-if we believe Richardson, by Tizian.
-
-Besides the spoils of Parma, there is now (1802) in the Gallery of the
-Louvre, from the former collection of Versailles, a picture representing
-in half-length figures of natural size the Wedding of St. Catherine,
-with a St. Sebastian, and their Martyrdom in the distance. It does not
-appear that Mengs ever saw more than some good copy of it, or the prints
-engraved from it, else his praise would have probably been nearer to
-astonishment than admiration; and though none would dare to repeat what
-he ventures to say of the Magdalen's head in the St. Jerome, it might
-safely be asserted, that perhaps no other picture can boast to have
-united in the same degree the tints of Tizian, the glow and impasto of
-Giorgione, and the breadth of Guido, with that bloom of hue and suavity
-of manner peculiar to Correggio.
-
-This divine performance was presented by Cardinal Barberino to Cardinal
-Mazarin, with two others painted in water colours on canvass,
-representing in allegoric figures the heroism of Virtue and the
-debasement of Vice. The first, in physiognomy and attitudes, abounds in
-what is commonly called the grace of Correggio; the second in
-picturesque energy and expression: they are likewise placed among the
-collections of the Louvre. An unfinished repetition of the first in the
-House Doria Panfili at Rome, is adduced by Mengs as a proof of
-Correggio's intelligence in sketching, and the superiority of his
-principle in the progress of a work.
-
-Of two pictures in the Cabinet at Madrid, the principal is that of
-Christ praying in the Garden, with an Angel on high pointing to a Cross
-and a Crown of Thorns on the ground, scarcely discernible. The open but
-drooping arms of the Saviour express his entire resignation to the will
-of his Father. The most poetic singularity of this picture is its
-chiaroscuro: Christ receives his light from Heaven, the Angel from
-Christ: at a distance on lower ground, and nearly evanescent, are the
-three Disciples _in graceful and picturesque attitudes_, and farther
-off, the approaching host of captors. At first sight, the whole seems to
-be divided into two masses only of light and darkness, but on
-inspection, the ambient medium and the more and less of distinctness in
-the objects as they approach the light or recede from it, is divinely
-expressed. There is a tale, which even Lomazzo and Scanelli repeat, that
-Correggio parted with this picture to his apothecary for four scudi,
-which he owed him; that afterwards it was sold for five hundred crowns
-to Pirrho Count Visconti, who resold it for seven hundred and fifty gold
-doubloons, to the Marchese Camarena, Governor of Milan, by whom it was
-bought in commission for Philip the Fourth. Every day discovers some
-copy, or, if you choose to believe those who wish to dispose of them,
-some duplicate or triplicate of this picture. Padre Resta possessed not
-one, but four, all of which he insisted on being believed in as
-originals: one on copper, another on wood, which Lelio Orsi was said to
-have copied on canvass; a third, likewise on panel but somewhat
-worm-eaten, disposed of to Monsignor Marchetti, and a fourth again on
-copper. Some of these are probably in England.
-
-The companion of this picture is the Madonna dressing the Infant, with
-Joseph planing a board in the back-ground; a performance though inferior
-in style to the former, not less original from the pentimenti still
-discoverable in the two principal figures.
-
-The Duke of Alba possesses of Correggio, in figures somewhat less than
-Nature, Mercury teaching Cupid to read in the presence of Venus. Venus
-has the singular attribute of wings, and of a bow in her left hand; and
-Mengs persuades himself to discover in her forms a reminiscence of an
-imitation of the Apollino, formerly in the Villa Medici at Rome. The
-characteristic excellence of the execution, and an evident pentimento in
-the arm of the Mercury, leave no doubt of its having a better claim to
-originality than the duplicates in France and Germany. It formerly made
-part of the collection of Charles the First, and Sandrart saw it in the
-Palace of Whitehall, from whence it was purchased by an ancestor of the
-Duke of Alba.
-
-Not to waste time on conjectural works, we finish this list with a
-picture formerly in the house Barberini, now supposed to be in England:
-it is painted on panel, and represents from the narrative of S. Marc,
-the young man who followed our Saviour at the moment of his captivity,
-but fled on being laid hold of, and left his garment in the hands of the
-captors. Mengs describes a duplicate of this picture, painted on
-canvass, at his time in the hands of an Englishman at Rome, and though,
-in his opinion, only the study for the other, in the principal parts,
-especially the figure of the youth, highly finished: his expression,
-form and attitude, remind the critic so strongly of the same in the
-eldest son of the Laocoon, that he is persuaded they are an imitation,
-though in a style more consonant with Correggio's manner.
-
-The cause and circumstances of his death we are not acquainted with,
-since the idle tale has been discarded which Vasari tells, of his
-perishing in consequence of having carried home a load of sixty scudi in
-copper, which he had received in payment at Parma. He who considers what
-strength would be required to carry sixty crowns in quattrini, will find
-its confutation in the tale itself; let it be added that the extreme
-heat which is said to have aggravated the fatigue, and accelerated his
-death, is, even in Italy, not coincident with the season in which he
-must have taken the journey,[165] as he died on the fifth of March. The
-magnificence and number of his commissions; the deference paid to his
-powers in the face of rival artists, by the very patrons of those men,
-or societies, that might have saved expense by admitting concurrence;
-the handsome, though not quite metropolitan prices, which he received,
-and what Mengs has observed, the expensive goodness of his colours, of
-his panels, and canvasses--make it not only extremely improbable that he
-should have lived in the depressed circumstances, to which vulgar
-tradition has sunk him; but add an air of truth to the opinion of those
-who thought him, if not opulent, yet nearer allied to affluence than
-want.
-
-Correggio was a monument without a tomb; but it appears strange that a
-century and a half should have elapsed before the thought of erecting
-him one occurred to the Senate and citizens of his native place, and
-then was suffered to evaporate in ineffectual projects. The boastful
-intentions of Padre Resta proved equally nugatory: the tombstone set and
-inscribed by Girolamo Conti still remains a solitary offering to his
-genius:
-
-                        D. O. M.
-                Antonio. Allegri. Civi.
-                 Vulgo. Il Correggio.
-          Arte. Picturæ. Habitu. Probitatis.
-                        Eximio.
-                  Monum. Hoc. Posuit.
-                Hier. Conti. Concivis.
-            Siccine. Separas. Amara. Mors.
-        Obiit. Anno. Ætatis. XL. Sal. MDXXXIV.
-
-On such a face as Correggio's, physiognomy might have established
-principles or drawn some inferences from it, had not a perverse destiny
-left us as ignorant of it, as of his complexion, stature, character, and
-habits. Vasari's exertions to obtain a portrait of him were not only
-unsuccessful, but hopeless; and the profile which is shown in the dome
-of Parma as his, becomes inadmissible from the very name of the artist
-to whom it is ascribed.[166] The head which found its way into the third
-and every following edition of Vasari, has certainly nothing repugnant
-with the notions we may form of his character, but age. Meditation,
-simplicity, serenity, compose it. It is said to have been copied from a
-picture not quite finished, which appears to have the touch of
-Correggio, and came from Sicily to Naples. He is represented
-contemplating a design, the original of which, report has placed at
-Vienna with Prince Esterhazy. The portrait which is at Turin, in the
-"Vigna della Regina," engraved by Valperga, with the epigraph, in part
-hid by the frame, but read by Lanzi "Antonius Corrigius f." (_i. e._
-fecit) though by some believed genuine, appears spurious from this very
-circumstance, the large character of the letters and the space they
-occupy; a manner of writing often used to indicate the person painted,
-never the painter. Another portrait, which from Genoua is said to have
-been carried to England, with the indorsed inscription "Dosso Dossi
-dipinse questo ritratto di Antonio da Correggio," fronts the Memorie of
-Ratti. Without examining the authenticity of this inscription, it is
-sufficient to observe, that Antonio da Correggio is likewise the name of
-Antonio Bernieri, a celebrated miniature painter, and fellow citizen of
-Allegri, whose date coincides with that of Dosso, and whom there will be
-occasion to mention again.
-
-Of Correggio's numerous pretending imitators, Lodovico Carracci appears
-to be the only one who penetrated his principle. The axiom, that the
-less the traces appear of the means by which a work has been produced,
-the more it resembles the operations of Nature, is not an axiom likely
-to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour,
-the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation,
-which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the
-contemplation of some preceding style, analogous to his own feelings and
-its comparison with Nature; and where could that be met with in a degree
-equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of Correggio's
-effusions? They inspired his frescoes in the cloisters of S. Michele in
-Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the hermitage,
-and of the ponderous demon that mocks their toil; the warlike splendour
-in the Homage of Totila; the Nocturnal Conflagration of Monte Casino;
-the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidious charms of the
-sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of
-Correggio.
-
-His triumph in oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching in a chapel
-of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil,
-and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in
-tones austere, pronounced, and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ
-in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the
-open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrors on the
-astonished sense.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[154] Mantoua preserved a certain attachment to Virgil in the darkest
-ages; for besides numerous coins stamped with his image, his statue,
-honoured by annual festivals, remained in the forum, till the brutal
-fanaticism of Carlo Malatesta condemned it to the river. Vide _Ant.
-Possevini Junioris Gonzaga_, lib. v. p. 486. Paul of Florence and Peter
-Paul Vergerius wrote against Malatesta: the latter under the following
-title, 'De Diruta Statua Virgilii P.P.V. eloquentissimi Oratoris
-epistola ex tugurio Blondi sub Apolline.' No date.
-
-[155] Some codices decorated with miniatures and the portrait of that
-Countess: the most conspicuous of which is that by Donizone, a
-Benedictine at Canossa, in the diocese of Reggio, but a German by
-extraction, who lived at the court of Mathilda, and in two books of
-barbarous verse composed her life and history. It is preserved in the
-Vatican Library, No. 4922, and was first published by Sebastian
-Tagnagolio, at Ingolstadt, 1612. 4to.
-
-The original portrait of Mathilda, by an unknown hand, drawn from her
-monument at Polirone, has been published by _J. Bat. Visi in Notizie
-Storiche della città di Mantoua e dello stato_, t. ii. p. 122. She is
-represented on a horse with a pomegranate in her hand.
-
-[156] In the Convent "alle Grazie," tradition dates the remains of
-several old pictures from the time of Mantegna. That miniature or rather
-missal painting had attained a high degree of excellence at that period,
-is proved by a large folio Bible, in the Estensian Library, decorated
-with admirable copies of insects, plants, and animals. The contract made
-between Duca Borso, 1455, and the two artists who painted it, Taddeo de
-Crivelli and Zuanne de Russi da Mantova, has been preserved by
-Bettshelli, Lett. Mant. Mantova, 1774. 4to.
-
-[157] Vasari, whom rage of dispatch and eager credulity seldom suffered
-to wait for authentic information, not content, in spite of his epitaph,
-to tell us that he was born of low parents in some district of Mantoua,
-confounds the date of his death with that of the inscription itself.
-
-[158] See Nic. Vleughels, in his notes to Dolci.
-
-[159] Garofalo.
-
-[160] Cataloghi, p. 498.
-
-[161] Indice del Pam. de' Pittori, p. 21.
-
-[162] ----"peri chersi de desmon iela
-     CHryseon, arrekton."--Ilias, xv. 19.
-
-[163] Du Change. Copy of the Leda in the Colonna.
-
-[164] In the palace Godolphin.
-
-[165] In the obituary of the Franciscans at Correggio we read, "A di 5
-Marzo 1534 mori Maestro Antonio Allegri Dipintore e fu sepolto a 6 detto
-in S. Francesco sotto il Portico."
-
-[166] Lattanzio Gambara.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF BOLOGNA.
-
-
-Three epochs divide the history of painting in Bologna and the
-neighbouring districts. The first is from its restoration to the time of
-Francesco Raibolini, or Francia; the second reaches from him to the
-Carracci, when it attained its height, and gradually decayed in the
-variety of deviations which mark the third.
-
-Bologna, at an early period of the fifth century, appears to have been
-considered as a nursery of sciences and arts; the foundation of its
-University is dated up to Petronius, its bishop at that period;
-afterwards, under the successive invasions of barbarians, when the
-alternate prey of clerical and secular rapacity, as a powerful republic,
-or oppressed by civic usurpation, and at last reduced to a Papal
-province, Bologna never lost its predilection for sciences and arts.
-
-Of the progress made in painting anterior to the time of Cimabue, some
-monumental relics still remain, though by far the greater part were
-ignorantly destroyed at the beginning of the last century. Some that
-escaped the whitewasher's hand are ascribed to an artist who marked his
-work with the letters _P.F._ Of these, one which represents a Maria, is
-preserved in the Church della Baroncella, and was done about 1120. Two
-others are in the Basilica of S. Stephano.
-
-Baldi, a collector of antique pictures, in a MS. quoted by Malvasia,
-mentions some of _Guido da Bologna_, painted in 1178 and 1180, and
-others executed by _Ventura da Bononia_ in 1197. Of this last something
-still remains, especially one picture with the date 1217, and the
-inscription _Ventura pinsit_: and the name of _Urso_, or _Ursone_, a
-contemporary of _Guido da Siena_, is found on a picture inscribed _Urso
-f. 1226_; and some others ascribed to him have dates of 1242 and 1244.
-In those times painting, sculpture, architecture, chasing, were
-frequently exercised by one man. A certain _Manno_, contemporary with
-Cimabue, is mentioned as the painter of a Madonna by Baldi, and as the
-sculptor of Pope Bonifazio VIII. by Ghirardacci who calls him likewise a
-goldsmith. His dates are from 1260 to 1301. Some remains or rather ruins
-of these masters are still visible in the palace Malvezzi.
-
-The age of Giotto and Dante gives Art an air of greater certainty.
-Tradition and monument go hand in hand. Franco of Bologna, with his
-supposed master Oderigi of Gubbio, are celebrated in the poet's poem of
-the Purgatory. Franco was called to Rome by Bonifazio VIII. to decorate
-the books and missals of the Vatican library with miniature; and on his
-return to Bologna founded a school which numbered among its scholars
-_Vitale_, _Lorenzo_, _Simone_, and _Jacopo d'Avanzi_, whose works,
-especially what remains of the two last, make it probable that Vasari is
-correct when he asserts that Franco excelled in large as well as in
-miniature painting. Michael Agnolo and the Carracci are said to have
-been struck with the fire of conception and the tone of colour in the
-pictures still preserved of Simone and Jacopo d'Avanzi, at the Madonna
-di Mezzaratta, and to have advised a careful restoration of the
-decaying parts. Simone, who loved to paint the crucifix, from the number
-which he executed obtained the surname of "de' Crocefissi;" and Jacopo,
-smitten with the love of Maria, was marked by the title "dalle Madonne."
-He excelled, however, in subjects of a martial kind, if the conflict in
-the Chapel of S. Jacopo del Santo at Padova, and the Capture of
-Jugurtha, with the Triumph of Marius, in a saloon at Verona, be his
-performances: works which excited the wonder of Mantegna. As he
-sometimes subscribed "Jacobus Pauli," it has been surmised that he was
-of Venetian extraction, and perhaps the son and assistant of that Paolo
-who painted the Ancona of S. Marc.
-
-Of the artists who at that period painted in Mezzaratta, Cristoforo,
-whether of Ferrara, Modena, or Bologna, for he is claimed by all, seems
-to have shared the highest repute. He had the commission of the
-principal altar, where he painted on panel the Madonna with the Infant
-between her knees, and some figures kneeling before her; it still
-exists, marked with his name Christofano, 1380. A most copious work of
-his, divided into ten compartments of saints, rudely designed, languid
-in colour, but of original style, is preserved among the fragments of
-the house Malvezzi.
-
-Lippo di Dalmatio,--who was supposed to have been a Carmelite, till
-Bianconi, in Piacenza's edition of Baldinucci, produced proofs of his
-wife and family,--came from the school of Vitale, and from his
-predilection for the Mother of Christ acquired, like Jacopo d'Avanzi,
-the byname of "Lippo dalle Madonne." There goes a tale that he gave
-instruction to Saint Catherine Vigri, of whom certain miniatures and an
-Infant Christ on panel still remain. A better union of tints, and some
-easier arrangement in the folds of his draperies, though with a
-profusion of gold lace, is all that discriminates him from the crudeness
-and exility of the ancient style. Such, however, was his felicity in the
-character of Madonnas, that they captivated Guido Reni,[167] who used to
-repeat that Lippo, in expressing at once the majesty, the sanctity, and
-the mildness of the divine mother, must have been assisted by a
-celestial power. Some of these Madonnas are said to be in oil colours,
-with dates of 1376, 1405, and 1407. Guido is likewise the guarantee of
-certain frescoes representing facts of Elia, painted with great spirit
-by the same master.
-
-After 1409, the last date of Lippo's pictures, the School of Bologna
-somewhat declined, nor could it be otherwise: no vigorous school ever
-sprang from the timid precepts of a portrait painter, and Dalmatio
-possessed more of that than of historic power: this, rather than the
-supposed imitation of certain images imported from Constantinople, was
-the cause of that insignificance which consigned, with few exceptions,
-his school and successors to oblivion. Of Pietro Lianori, Michele di
-Matteo, Bombologno, Severo and Erçole Bologna, Catherina di Vigri,
-Giacopo Ripanda, Marco Zoppo, time has left little but the names, and of
-that little, enough not to regret the loss of what vanished. Let us not,
-however, be too fastidious to repeat what tradition has persevered to
-report of some; if Bombologno may be left to the votaries of the
-crucifix, and Catherina to the rubric that saints her, Michele
-Lambertini claims the attention of artists for a mellowness of tints
-which Albano judged superior to the tints of Francia; Giacopo Ripanda
-for the dangers which he braved in designing the groups of the Trajan
-pillar;[168] and Marco Zoppo as no despicable competitor of Andrea
-Mantegna, and the reputed master of Francesco Francia.
-
-Francesco Raibolini, surnamed Francia, born in 1450, may be considered
-as the head of the Bolognese school, because his works appear to have
-been framed on that collective principle which became its leading
-feature in the sequel, and was probably the result of the long theory
-that preceded his practice, assisted by that readiness in design which
-distinguished him as a goldsmith, chaser,[169] and die-cutter,
-professions to which he had been trained up from his infancy, and which
-he raised to celebrity before he attained complete manhood.
-
-Francia was fortunate in contemporaries; the School of Squarcione had
-furnished him with style and form; the genius of Lionardo da Vinci, with
-effect and chiaroscuro; Pietro Vanucchi with arrangement if not
-composition, and though not beauty, with amenity of aspect; and Bellino
-with tone, breadth of drapery and colour. Ardour of mind, energy of
-application and dexterity, supplied the want of early practice, and we
-find him in the palace of Giov. Bentivoglio on a par with the most
-expert Frescanti conscribed from Ferrara and Modena, and soon after
-intrusted with the commission of painting the altar-piece of his chapel
-at S. Jacopo, a work of great subtlety of execution; though modestly
-inscribed "Opus Francia Aurificis," and a pledge of that superior
-style at which he aimed and in the sequel attained.
-
-If from what has been premised of Bolognese artists anterior to Cimabue,
-it is evident that the germs of art belong to their own soil, their
-claim to originality in the progress of style has been and still is
-matter of dispute between the champions of the Tuscan school and those
-of their own. The Florentines insist on having taught the Bolognese,
-what the Bolognese deny to have learnt from the Florentines.[170] As in
-a dispute of this kind, candour is often sacrificed to the fervour of
-patriotic vanity, and the obstinacy of local attachment, the real state
-of the question is better learnt from those monuments of the fourteenth
-century, which still remain scattered over Romagna or collected and more
-classically arranged in Bologna itself. Among all these some specimens
-will be found evidently Greek, others as evidently Giottesque; some in a
-Venetian style, and not a few in a manner peculiar to Bologna only.
-These have a body of colour, a taste in perspective, a mode of design
-in figures, and a choice of forms and hues in draperies, which no other
-school practised. From all which it appears, that if Giotto during his
-stay at Bologna raised pupils, and formed imitators, his own school had
-no influence on, nor dislodged, that aboriginal one which continued to
-disseminate and to improve the principles imbibed from the antique
-mosaics and the painters of miniature.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[167] Malvasia.
-
-[168] "Floret item nunc Romæ Jacobus Bononiensis, qui Trajani Columnæ
-picturas omnes ordine delineavit, magna omnium admiratione, magnoque
-periculo circum machinis scandendo."--V. Raphaelis Volaterrani
-Anthropologia, p. 774. A. ed. 1603. fol.
-
-[169] "Unum apud modernos reperio, de quo apud antiquos nulla extat
-memoria, de incisoribus seu sculptoribus in argento; quæ sculptura
-Niellum appellatur. Virum cognosco in hoc celeberrimum et summum, nomine
-Franciscum Bononiensem, aliter Franza, qui adeo in tam parvo orbiculo
-seu argenti lamina, tot homines, tot animalia, tot montes, arbores,
-castra ac tot diversa ratione situque posita figurat seu incidit, quod
-dictu ac visu mirabile apparet."--Camillo Leonardi, Speculo Lapidum,
-lib. iii. c. 2.
-
-The assertion that Niello was unknown to the ancients, it is unnecessary
-to refute here. Francia was master of the mint during the usurpation of
-the Bentivogli, after their expulsion by Giulio the Second, and
-continued to superintend its issue to the Pontificate of Leo. His coins
-and medals are said by Vasari to equal those of the Milanese Caradosso;
-and it is probably for their excellence that he was looked up to as a
-god (un Dio) at Bologna.
-
-[170] Dyo----eneikeon----
-     ----o men eucheto, pant' apodounai,
-     Demo piphayskon{~GREEK ANO TELEIA~} o d' anaineto, meden elesthai.
-
-Ilias. Lib. xviii. l. 498.
-
-
-    THE END.
-
-    LONDON:
-    PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
-    Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
-
-Obvious typos have been silently corrected.
-
-Italicised words and phrases are marked _like this_.
-
-Idiosyncratic spellings have been left unchanged. This includes
-inconsistent spellings of proper names, hyphenated words, oe ligatures
-and capitalisation.
-
-For example: Julio Pipi on p. 118 and Giulio Pippi on p. 361.
-
-Similarly, the spellings "domo" and "duomo" both appear, and have been
-left unchanged.
-
-
-There are numerous Greek quotations, in which accents and smooth
-breathings are used only occasionally, and rough breathings are nearly
-always marked. Missing accents and breathings have NOT been added.
-
-
-The following items are worth special note:
-
-1) The phrase "terribil via" on p. 19 should possibly be "terribilis
-via" or "terribile via", but has been left unchanged.
-
-2) On p. 28 "Goliah" has been amended to "Goliath", but the spelling
-"Goliah" also appears in vol. 2 and may have been an accepted spelling.
-
-3) In footnote 96 on p. 264, "Osteireichischen" has been amended to
-"Osterreichischen".
-
-4) On p. 265, "seini" has been amended to "sein".
-
-5) "Matatona" on p. 328 should possibly be "Matalona", as on p. 288, but
-has been left unchanged.
-
-6) On p. 330, "Buoancorsi" has been amended to "Buonacorsi".
-
-7) The phrase "sotto in sù" (page 357) has been amended to match "sotto
-in su", which appears twice elsewhere.
-
-8) The spelling "pinsit" instead of "pinxit" on p. 400 has been retained
-as it may record an error in the original inscription.
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and writings of Henry Fuseli,
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-Title: The life and writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume III (of 3)
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 <p class="p1">THE LIFE</p>
 
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+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40474 ***</div>
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and writings of Henry Fuseli,
-Volume III (of 3), by Henry Fuseli and John Knowles
-
-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: The life and writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume III (of 3)
-
-Author: Henry Fuseli
-        John Knowles
-
-Release Date: August 10, 2012 [EBook #40474]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE, WRITINGS, HENRY FUSELI, VOL 3 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Margo von Romberg, Karl Eichwalder and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-    THE LIFE
-
-    AND
-
-    WRITINGS
-
-    OF
-
-    HENRY FUSELI, ESQ. M.A. R.A.
-
-    KEEPER, AND PROFESSOR OF PAINTING TO THE
-    ROYAL ACADEMY IN LONDON; MEMBER OF THE FIRST CLASS
-    OF THE ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE AT ROME.
-
-    THE FORMER WRITTEN, AND THE LATTER EDITED BY
-
-    JOHN KNOWLES, F.R.S.
-
-    CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AT ROTTERDAM,
-
-    HIS EXECUTOR.
-
-    "Animo vidit, ingenio complexus est, eloquentia illuminavit."
-          _Velleius Paterculus in Ciceronem._
-
-    IN THREE VOLUMES.
-
-    VOL. III.
-
-    LONDON:
-    HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,
-    NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
-    MDCCCXXXI.
-
-
-
-
-    LONDON:
-    PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
-    Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
-
-
-
-
-    CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
-
-    LECTURES.
-
-    XI. On the prevailing Method of treating
-    the History of Painting, with Observations
-    on the Picture of Lionardo da
-    Vinci of "The Last Supper"                             Page 1
-
-    XII. On the Present State of the Art, and the
-    Causes which check its Progress                            39
-
-
-    APHORISMS,
-    Chiefly relative to the Fine Arts                          61
-
-
-    A HISTORY OF ART IN THE SCHOOLS OF ITALY.
-
-    The Tuscan School                                         153
-
-    The School of Florence                                    193
-
-    The School of Siena                                       231
-
-    The Roman School                                          242
-
-    The School of Naples                                      279
-
-    The School of Venice                                      334
-
-    The School of Mantoua                                     361
-
-    The School of Bologna                                     399
-
-
-
-
-    ELEVENTH LECTURE.
-
-    ON THE PREVAILING METHOD OF TREATING THE HISTORY OF PAINTING,
-    WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE PICTURE OF LIONARDO DA VINCI OF
-    "THE LAST SUPPER."
-
-
-
-
-ELEVENTH LECTURE.
-
-
-In this Lecture I shall submit to your consideration some criticisms on
-the prevailing method of treating the History of our Art; attended by a
-series of observations on the magnificent picture of the Last Supper, by
-Lionardo da Vinci, now before you.
-
-History, mindless of its real object, sinking to Biography, has been
-swelled into a diffuse catalogue of individuals, who, tutored by
-different schools, or picking something from the real establishers of
-Art, have done little more than repeat, or imitate through the medium of
-either, what those had found in Nature, discriminated, selected, and
-applied to Art, according to her dictates. Without wishing to depreciate
-the merit of that multitude who felt, proved themselves strong enough,
-and strenuously employed life to follow, it must be pronounced below
-the historian's dignity to allow them more than a transitory glance.
-Neither originality, nor selection and combination of materials
-scattered over the various classes of Art by others, have much right to
-attention from him who only investigates the real progress of Art, if
-the first proves to have added nothing essential to the system by
-novelty, and the second to have only diluted energy, and by a popular
-amalgama to have pleased the vulgar. Novelty, without enlarging the
-circle of knowledge, may delight or strike, but is nearer allied to whim
-than to invention; and an eclectic system, without equality of parts, as
-it originated in want of comprehension, totters on the brink of
-mediocrity.
-
-The first ideas of Expression, Character, Form, Chiaroscuro, and Colour,
-originated in Tuscany: Masaccio, Lionardo da Vinci, M. Agnolo,
-Bartolomeo della Porta. The first was carried off before he could give
-more than hints of dramatic composition; the second appears to have
-established character on physiognomy, and to have seen the first vision
-of chiaroscuro, though he did not penetrate the full extent of its
-charm; the third had power, knowledge, and life sufficiently great,
-extensive, and long, to have fixed style on its basis, had not an
-irresistible bias drawn off his attention from the modesty and variety
-of Nature; Baccio gave amplitude to drapery, and colour to form.
-
-Of the Tuscan School that succeeded these, the main body not only added
-nothing to their discoveries, but, if their blind attachment to the
-singularities rather than the beauties of the third be excepted, equally
-inattentive to expression, character, propriety of form, the charms of
-chiaroscuro, and energies of colour, contented themselves to give to
-tame or puerile ideas, obvious and common-place conceptions, a kind of
-importance by mastery of execution and a bold but monotonous and always
-mannered outline; and though Andrea del Sarto, with Francia Bigio,
-Giacopo da Pontormo, and Rosso, may be allowed to have thought sometimes
-for themselves and struck out paths of their own, will it be asserted
-that they enlarged or even filled the circle traced out before? The most
-characteristic work of Andrea's original powers, is, no doubt, the
-historic series in S. Giovanni dei Scalzi; yet, when compared with the
-patriarchal simplicity of the groups in the Lunette of the Sistine
-Chapel, the _naivete_ of his characters and imagery will be found too
-much tainted with contemporary, local, and domestic features, for
-Divine, Apostolic, and Oriental agents. His drapery, whenever he escapes
-from the costume of the day, combines with singular felicity the breadth
-of the _Frati_, and the acute angles of Albert Durer; but neither its
-amplitude, nor the solemn repose and tranquillity of his scenery, can
-supply the want of personal dignity, or consecrate vulgar forms and
-trivial features.
-
-The Roman school like an Oriental sun rose, not announced by dawn, and,
-setting, left no twilight. Raffaello established his school on the
-Drama; its scenery, its expression, its forms; History, Lyrics,
-Portrait, became under his hand the organs of passion and character.
-With his demise the purity of this principle vanished. Julio Romano, too
-original to adopt, formed a school of his own at Mantoua, which, as it
-was founded on no characteristic principle, added nothing to Art, and
-did not long survive its founder. Polydoro Caldara was more ambitious to
-emulate the forms of the antique than to propagate the style of his
-master, which was not comprehended by Penny, called Il Fattore, mangled
-by Perrino del Vaga, became common-place in the hands of the Zuccari,
-barbarous manner during the usurpation of Giuseppe Cesari, sunk to
-tameness in the timid imitation of Sacchi and Maratta, and expired under
-the frigid method of Mengs.
-
-A certain national, though original character, marks the brightest epoch
-of the Venetian School. However deviating from each other, Tiziano,
-Tintoretto, Jacopo da Ponte, and Paolo Veronese, acknowledge but one
-element of imitation, Nature herself: this principle each bequeathed to
-his school, and no attempt to adulterate its simplicity by uniting
-different methods, distinguishes their immediate successors: hence they
-preserved features of originality longer than the surrounding schools,
-whom the vain wish to connect incompatible excellence, soon degraded to
-mediocrity, and from that plunged to insignificance.
-
-If what is finite could grasp infinity, the variety of Nature might be
-united by individual energy; till then the attempt to amalgamate her
-scattered beauties by the imbecility of Art, will prove abortive.
-Genius is the pupil of Nature; perceives, is dazzled, and imperfectly
-transmits one of her features: thus saw M. Agnolo, Raffaello, Tiziano,
-Correggio; and such were their technic legacies, as inseparable from
-their attendant flaws, as in equal degrees irreconcilable. That Nature
-is not subject to decrepitude, is proved by the superiority of modern
-over ancient science; what hinders modern Art to equal that of classic
-eras, is the effect of irremovable causes.
-
-But I hasten to the principal object of this Lecture, the consideration
-of the technic character of Lionardo da Vinci, one, and in my opinion
-the first of the great restorers of modern Art, as deduced from his most
-important work, the Last Supper, surviving as a whole in the magnificent
-copy of Marco Uggione, rescued from a random pilgrimage by the courage
-and vigilance of our President, and by the Academy made our own. The
-original of this work, the ultimate test of his most vigorous powers,
-the proof of his theory, and what may be called with propriety the first
-characteristic composition since the revival of the Art, was the
-principal ornament of the Refectory in the Dominican Convent of S.
-Maria delle Gratie, at Milan.
-
-Let us begin with the centre, the seat of the principal figure, from
-which all the rest emanate like rays. Sublimely calm, the face of the
-Saviour broods over the immense, whilst every face and every limb around
-him, roused by his mysterious word, fluctuate in restless curiosity and
-sympathetic pangs.
-
-The face of the Saviour is an abyss of thought, and broods over the
-immense revolution in the economy of mankind, which throngs inwardly on
-his absorbed eye--as the spirit creative in the beginning over the
-water's darksome wave--undisturbed and quiet. It could not be lost in
-the copy before us: how could its sublime conception escape those who
-saw the original? It has survived the hand of Time in the study which
-Lionardo made in crayons, exhibited with most of the attendant heads in
-the British Gallery; and even in the feebler transcript of Del Testa.
-
-I am not afraid of being under the necessity of retracting what I am
-going to advance, that neither during the splendid period immediately
-subsequent to Lionardo, nor in those which succeeded to our own time,
-has a face of the Redeemer been produced which, I will not say equalled,
-but approached the sublimity of Lionardo's conception, and in quiet and
-simple features of humanity embodied divine, or, what is the same,
-incomprehensible and infinite powers. To him who could contrive and give
-this combination, the unlimited praise lavished on the inferior
-characters who surround the hero, whilst his success in that was
-doubted--appears to me not only no praise, but a gross injustice.
-
-Yet such was the judgment of Vasari, and in our days of Lanzi, both
-founded on the pretended impossibility of transcribing the beauty of
-forms and the varied energies of expression distributed by the artist
-among the disciples. "The moment," says Lanzi, and says well, "is that
-in which the Saviour says to the Disciples, "One of you will betray me!"
-On every one of the innocent men the word acts like lightning: he who is
-at a greater distance, distrusting his own ears, applies to his
-neighbour; others, according to their variety of character, betray
-raised emotions. One of them faints, one is fixed in astonishment; this
-wildly rises, the simple candour of another tells that he cannot be
-suspected: Judas, meanwhile, assumes a look of intrepidity, but, though
-he counterfeits innocence, leaves no doubt of being the traitor. Vinci
-used to tell, that for a year he wandered about, perplexed with the
-thought how to embody in one face the image of so black a mind; and
-frequenting a village which a variety of villains haunted, he met at
-last, by the help of some associated features, with his man. Nor was his
-success less conspicuous in furnishing both the Jameses with congenial
-and characteristic beauty; but being unable to find an ideal superior to
-theirs for Christ, he left the head, as Vasari affirms, imperfect,
-though Arminine ascribes a high finish even to that."
-
-Thus is the modesty and diffidence of the artist, who, in the midst of
-the most glorious success, always sought and wished for more, brought as
-evidence against him by all his pretended judges and critics, if we
-except the single Bottari, who finds in it, with the highest finish, all
-the fortitude of mind characteristic of the Saviour, united to lively
-consideration of the suffering that awaited him--though even that is,
-in my opinion, below the conception of Lionardo.
-
-Lest those who have read and recollect the character of Lionardo which I
-have submitted to the public, should, from the predilection with which I
-have dwelt on what I think the principal feature of his performance, the
-face and attitude of the hero, suspect I shift my ground, or charge me
-with inconsistency, I repeat what I said then, when I was nearly
-unacquainted with this work, that the distinguishing feature of his
-powers lay in the delineation of character, which he often raised to a
-species, and not seldom degraded to caricature. The triumphant proof of
-both is the great performance before us; the same mind that could unite
-divine power with the purest humanity, by an unaccountable dereliction,
-not only of the dignity due to his subject, but of sound sense, thought
-it not beneath him to haunt the recesses of deformity to unkennel a
-villain. Did he confine villainy to deformity? If he had, he would have
-disdained to give him two associates in feature; for the face of him who
-holds up his finger, and his who argues on the left extremity of the
-table, seem to have proceeded, if not absolutely from the same, from a
-very similar mould, yet they are in the number of the elect, and, though
-on the brink of caricature, have the air of good men. Expression alone
-separates them from the traitor, whom incapacity of remorse, hatred,
-rage at being discovered, and habitual meanness, seem to have divided
-into equal shares.
-
-The portrait of Cesar Borgia, by Giorgione, now hung up for your study
-in the Academy for Painting, proves that the most atrocious mind may
-lurk under good, sedate, and even handsome features. Though his hand
-were not drawing a dagger, who would expect mercy or remorse from the
-evil methodized villainy of that eye? But Judas was capable of remorse;
-intolerant of the dreadful suffering with which the horrid act had
-overwhelmed him, he rushed on confession of his crime, restitution, and
-suicide.
-
-To the countenance and attitude of St. John, blooming with youth,
-innocent, resigned, partaking perhaps somewhat too much of the feminine,
-and those of the two James's invigorated by the strength of virility,
-energetic and bold, none will refuse a competent praise of varied
-beauty; but they neither are nor ought to be ideal, and had they been
-so, they could neither compete nor interfere with the sublimity that
-crowns the Saviour's brow, and stamps his countenance with the God.
-
-The felicity, novelty, and propriety of Lionardo's conception and
-invention, are powerfully seconded by every part of execution:--the tone
-which veils and wraps actors and scene into one harmonious whole, and
-gives it breadth; the style of design, grand without affectation, and,
-if not delicate or ideal, characteristic of the actors; the draperies
-folded with equal simplicity, elegance, and costume, with all the
-propriety of presenting the highest finish, without anxiety of touch, or
-thronging the eye.
-
-So artless is the assemblage of the figures, that the very name of
-composition seems to degrade what appears arranged by Nature's own hand.
-That the nearest by relation, characters and age, should be placed
-nearest the master of the feast, and of course attract the eye soonest,
-was surely the most natural arrangement; but if they are conspicuous,
-they are not so at the expense of the rest: distance is compensated by
-action; the centre leads to all, as all lead to the centre. That the
-great restorer of light and shade sacrificed the effects and charms of
-_chiaroscuro_ at the shrine of character, raised him at once above all
-his future competitors; changes admiration to sympathy, and makes us
-partners of the feast.
-
-As expression sprang from the subject, so it gave rise to competition.
-That Raffaello was acquainted with Lionardo's work, and felt its power,
-is evident from his composition, engraved by M. Antonio: finding
-invention anticipated, he took refuge in imitation, and filled it with
-sentiments of his own; whether, beyond the dignity of attitude, he
-attempts to approach the profundity of Lionardo's Christ, cannot, from a
-print of very moderate dimensions, be decided. In the listening figure
-of Judas, with equal atrocity of guilt he appears to have combined
-somewhat more of apostolic consequence.
-
-The well-known Last Supper of the Loggia, painted, or what is more
-probable, superintended by Raffaello, is, by being made a night scene,
-by contrast and chiaroscuro, become an original conception; but as it
-presents little more than groups busy to arrange themselves for sitting
-down or breaking up, it cannot excite more interest than what is due to
-contrast and effect, and active groups eager to move yet not tumultuary.
-
-But if Lionardo disdained to consult the recesses of composition and the
-charms of artificial chiaroscuro, he did not debase his work to mere
-apposition: uniting the whole by tone, he gave it substance by truth of
-imitation, and effect by the disposition of the characters; the groups
-flanking each side of the Saviour, emerge, recede, and support each
-other with a roundness, depth, and evidence which leave all attempts at
-emendation or improvement hopeless. But why should I attempt to
-enumerate beauties which are before you, and which if you do not
-perceive yourselves, no words of mine can ever make you feel?
-
-The universality of Lionardo da Vinci is become proverbial: but though
-possessed of every element, he rather gave glimpses than a standard of
-form; though full of energy, he had not powers effectually to court the
-various graces he pursued. His line was free from meagreness, and his
-forms presented volume, but he appears not to have ever been much
-acquainted, or to have sedulously sought much acquaintance, with the
-Antique. Character was his favourite study, and character he has often
-raised from an individual to a species, and as often depressed to
-caricature. The strength of his execution lay in the delineation of male
-heads; those of his females owe nearly all their charms to chiaroscuro,
-of which he is the supposed inventor: they are seldom more discriminated
-than the children they fondle; they are sisters of one family. The
-extremities of his hands are often inelegant, though timorously drawn,
-like those of Christ among the Doctors in the picture we lately saw
-exhibited. Lionardo da Vinci touched in every muscle of his forms the
-master-key of the passion he wished to express, but he is ideal only in
-chiaroscuro.
-
-Such was the state of the Art before the appearance of M. Agnolo and
-Raffaello, and the establishment of style.
-
-Of M. Agnolo it is difficult to decide who have understood less, his
-encomiasts or his critics, though both rightly agree in dating from him
-an epoch--those of the establishment, these of the subversion of Art.
-
-It is the lot of Genius to be opposed, and to be invigorated by
-opposition. All extremes touch each other: frigid praise and frigid
-censure wait on easily attainable or common powers: but the successful
-adventurer in the realms of Discovery, in spite of the shrugs, checks,
-and sneers of the timid, the malign, and the envious, leaps on an
-unknown or long lost shore, ennobles it with his name, and grasps
-immortality.
-
-M. Agnolo appeared, and soon discovered that works worthy of perpetuity
-could neither be built on defective and unsubstantial forms, nor on the
-transient whim of fashion and local sentiment; that their stamina were
-the real stamina of Nature, the genuine feelings of humanity; and
-planned for painting what Homer had planned for poetry, the epic part,
-which, with the utmost simplicity of a whole, should unite magnificence
-of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts. His line became
-generic, but perhaps too uniformly grand: character and beauty were
-admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The
-child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately
-stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of
-poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are
-moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race
-of giants. This is the "terribil via," this is that "magic circle," in
-which we are told that none durst move but he. No, none but he who makes
-sublimity of conception his element of form. M. Agnolo himself offers
-the proof: for the lines that bear in a mass on his mighty tide of
-thought in the Gods and Patriarchs and Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel,
-already too ostentatiously show themselves in the Last Judgement, and
-rather expose than support his ebbing powers in the Chapel of Paul.
-Considered as a whole, the Crucifixion of St. Peter and the Conversion
-of Paul, in that place, are the dotage of M. Agnolo's style; but they
-have parts which make that dotage more enviable than the equal vigour of
-mediocrity.
-
-With what an eye M. Agnolo contemplated the Antique, we may judge from
-his Bacchus, the early production of his youth: in style it is at least
-equal, perhaps in pulp and fleshiness superior, to what is called the
-Antique Roman Style. His idea seems to have been the personification of
-youthful inebriety, but it is the inebriety of a superior being, not yet
-forsaken by grace, not yet relinquished by mind. In more advanced years,
-the Torso of Apollonius became his standard of form. But the Daemons of
-Dante had too early tinctured his fancy to admit in their full majesty
-the Gods of Homer and of Phidias.
-
-Such was the opinion formed of the plan and style of M. Agnolo by the
-judges, the critics, the poets, the artists, the public, of his own and
-the following age, from Bembo to Ariosto, from Raffaello to Tiziano,
-down to Agostino and Annibale Carracci. Let us now compare it with the
-technical verdict given by the greatest professional critic, on the
-Continent, of our times. "M. Agnolo," says Mengs, "seeking always to be
-grand, was perhaps only bulky, and by the perpetual use of a convex
-line, over-spanned the forms and irrecoverably lost the line of Nature.
-This charged style attended him in his youth, and engrossed him when a
-man. For this reason his works will always be much inferior to the
-antique of the good style; for though they made robust and muscular
-figures, they never made them heavy:--an instance is the Hercules of
-Glycon, who, though so bulky, and of form so majestic, is easily seen to
-be swift like a stag, and elastic like a ball. The style of M. Agnolo
-could not give similar ideas, for the joints of his figures are too
-contracted, and seem only made for the posture into which he puts them.
-The forms of his flesh are too round, his muscles of a mass and shape
-always similar, which hides their springs of motion; nor do you ever see
-in his works a muscle in repose, than which a greater fault Design knows
-not. He perfectly knew what place each muscle ought to occupy, but never
-gave its form. Nor did he understand the nature of tendons, as he made
-them equally fleshy from end to end, and his bones too round. Raffaello
-partook of all these defects, without ever reaching the profundity of
-his muscular theory. Raffaello's strength lay in characterizing aged and
-nervous frames; he was too hard for delicacy, and in figures of grandeur
-an exaggerated copy of M. Agnolo." So far Mengs.
-
-M. Agnolo appears to have had no infancy; if he had, we are not acquainted
-with it. His earliest works are equal in principle and compass of
-execution to the vigorous proofs of his virility. Like an oriental sun, he
-burst upon us at once, without a dawn. Raffaello Sanzio we see in his
-cradle, we hear him stammer, but _propriety_ rocked the cradle, and
-_character_ formed his lips. Even in the trammels of Pietro Perugino, dry
-and servile in his style of design, he traced what was essential, and
-separated it from what was accidental in his model. The works of Lionardo
-da Vinci and the Cartoon of Pisa are said to have invigorated his eye, but
-it was the Antique that completed the system which he had begun to
-establish on Nature; from them he learned discrimination and choice of
-forms. He found that in the construction of the body the articulations of
-the bones were the true cause of ease and grace in the action of the
-limbs, and that the knowledge of this was the reason of the superiority of
-antique design. He found that certain features were fittest for certain
-expressions and peculiar to certain characters; that such a head, such
-hands, such feet, are the stamen or the growth of such a body, and on
-physiognomy established homogeneousness. Of all artists he was the
-greatest, the most precise, the most acute observer. When he designed, he
-first attended to the primary intention and motive of his figure, next to
-its general measure, then to the bones and their articulations; from them
-to the principal muscles, or the muscles eminently wanted, and their
-attendant nerves, and at last to the more or less essential minutiae. But
-the characteristic part of the subject is infallibly the characteristic
-part of his design, if it be formed even by a few rapid or a single stroke
-of his pen or pencil. The strokes themselves are characteristic, they
-follow or indicate the texture or fibre of the part; flesh in their
-rounding, nerves in straight, bones in angular touches.
-
-Such was the felicity and such the propriety of Raffaello when employed
-in the dramatic evolutions of character,--both suffered when he
-attempted to abstract the forms of sublimity or beauty. The painter of
-humanity not often wielded with success superhuman weapons. His Gods
-never rose above prophetic or patriarchial forms: if the finger of M.
-Agnolo impressed the divine countenance oftener with sternness than awe,
-the Gods of Raffaello are sometimes too affable and mild, like him who
-speaks to Jacob in the ceiling of the Vatican; sometimes too violent,
-like him who separates light from darkness in the Loggia: but though
-made chiefly to walk with dignity on earth, he soared above it in the
-mild effulgence and majestic rapture of Christ on Tabor, not indeed as
-we see his face now from the repairs of the manufacturers in the Louvre,
-and still more in the frown of the angelic countenance that withers all
-the strength of the warrior Heliodorus. Of ideal female beauty, though
-he himself, in his letter to Count Castiglione, tells us that from its
-scarcity in life he made attempts to reach it by an idea formed in his
-own mind, he certainly wanted that standard which guided him in
-character. His Goddesses and mythologic females are no more than
-aggravations of the generic forms of M. Agnolo. Roundness, mildness,
-sanctimony, and insipidity, compose the features and air of his
-Madonnas: transcripts of the nursery, or some favourite face. The
-Madonna del Impanato, the Madonna Bella, the Madonna della Sedia, and
-even the longer proportions and greater delicacy and dignity of the
-Madonna formerly in the collection of Versailles, share more or less of
-this insipidity: it chiefly arises from the high, smooth, roundish
-forehead, the shaven vacuity between the arched semicircular eye-brows,
-their elevation above the eyes, and the ungraceful division, growth and
-scantiness of hair. This indeed might be the result of his desire not to
-stain the virgin character of sanctity with the most distant hint of
-coquetry or meretricious charms; for in his Magdalens, he throws it with
-luxuriant profusion, and surrounds the breast and shoulders with
-undulating waves and plaits of gold. The character of Mary Magdalen met
-his,--it was the character of a passion.
-
-It is evident from every picture or design at every period of his art in
-which she had a part, that he supposed her enamoured when she follows
-the body of the Saviour to the tomb, or throws herself dishevelled over
-his feet, or addresses him when he bears his cross. The cast of her
-features, her forms, her action, are the character of love in agony.
-When character inspired Raffaello, his women became definitions of grace
-and pathos at once.
-
-Such is the exquisite line and turn of the averted half-kneeling female
-with the two children among the spectators of Heliodorus. Her attitude,
-the turn of her neck, supplies all face, and intimates more than he ever
-expressed by features; and that she would not have gained by showing
-them, may be guessed from her companion on the foreground, who, though
-highly elegant and equally pathetic in her action, has not features
-worthy of either. The fact is, form and style were by Raffaello
-employed chiefly, if not always, as vehicles of character and pathos;
-the Drama is his element, and to that he has adapted them in a mode and
-with a propriety which leave all attempts at emendation hopeless: if
-his lines have been excelled or rivalled in energy, correctness,
-elegance,--considered as instruments of the passions, they have never
-been equalled, and as parts of invention, composition and expression
-relative to his story, have never been approached.
-
-The result of these observations on M. Agnolo and Raffaello is this,
-that M. Agnolo drew in generic forms the human race; that Raffaello
-drew the forms and characters of society diversified by artificial
-wants.
-
-We find therefore M. Agnolo more sublime, and we sympathise more with
-Raffaello, because he resembles us more. When Reynolds said that M.
-Agnolo had more _imagination_, and Raffaello more _fancy_, he meant to
-say, that the one had more sublimity, more elementary fire; the other
-was richer in social imagery, in genial conceits, and artificial
-variety. Simplicity is the stamen of M. Agnolo; varied propriety, with
-character, that of Raffaello.
-
-Of the great restorers of Art, the two we have considered, made Design
-and Style the basis of their plan, content with negative and unambitious
-colour; the two next inverted the principle, and employed Design and
-Style as vehicles of _colour_ or of _harmony_.
-
-The style of Tiziano's design has two periods: he began with copying
-what was before him without choice, and for some time continued in the
-meagre, anxious, and accidental manner of Giovanni Bellino; but
-discovering in the works of Giorgione that breadth of form produced
-breadth of colour, he endeavoured, and succeeded, to see Nature by
-comparison, and in a more ample light. That he possessed the theory of
-the human body, needs not to be proved from the doubtful designs which
-he is said to have made for the anatomical work of Vesalio; that he had
-familiarized himself with the style of M. Agnolo, and burned with
-ambition to emulate it, is less evident from adopting some of his
-attitudes in the pictures of Pietro Martyre and the Battle of
-Ghiaradadda, than from the elemental conceptions, the colossal style,
-and daring foreshortenings which astonish in the Cain and Abel, the
-Abraham and Isaac, the Goliath and David, on the ceiling of the fabric
-of St. Spirito at Venice. Here, and here alone, is the result of that
-union of tone and style which, in Tintoretto's opinion, was required to
-make a perfect painter,--for in general the male forms of Tiziano are
-those of sanguine health, often too fleshy for character, less elastic
-than muscular, or vigorous without grandeur. His females are the fair
-dimpled Venetian race, soft without delicacy, too full for elegance, for
-action too plump; his infants are poised between both, and preferable to
-either. In portrait he has united character and resemblance with
-dignity, and still remains unrivalled.
-
-A certain national character marks the brightest aera of the Venetian
-school: however deviating from each other, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassan,
-and Paolo, acknowledged but one element of imitation, Nature herself.
-This principle each bequeathed to his followers; and no attempt to
-adulterate its simplicity, by uniting different methods, distinguished
-their immediate successors. Hence they preserved features of originality
-longer than the surrounding schools, whom the vain wish to connect
-incompatible excellence soon degraded to mediocrity, and from that
-plunged to insignificance.
-
-The soft transitions from the convex to the concave line, which connect
-grandeur with lightness, form the style of Correggio; but using their
-coalition without balance, merely to obtain a breadth of demi-tint and
-uninterrupted tones of harmony, he became, from excess of roundness,
-oftener heavy than light, and frequently incorrect.
-
-It is not easy, from the unaccountable obscurity in which his life is
-involved, to ascertain whether he saw the Antique in sufficient degrees
-of quantity or beauty; but he certainly must have been familiar with
-modelling, and the helps of sculpture, to plan with such boldness, and
-conquer with such ease, the unparalleled difficulties of his
-foreshortenings. His grace is oftener beholden to convenience of place
-than elegance of line. The most appropriate, the most elegant attitudes
-were adopted, rejected, perhaps sacrificed to the most awkward ones, in
-compliance with his imperious principle: parts vanished, were absorbed,
-or emerged in obedience to it.
-
-The Danae, of which we have seen duplicates, the head excepted, he seems
-to have painted from an antique female torso. But ideal beauty of face,
-if ever he conceived, he never has expressed; his beauty is equally
-remote from the idea of the Venus, the Niobe, and the best forms of
-Nature. The Magdalen, in the picture of St. Girolamo of Parma, is
-beholden for the charms of her face to chiaroscuro, and that
-incomparable hue and suavity of bloom which scarcely permit us to
-discover the defects of forms not much above the vulgar. But that he
-sometimes reached the sublime, by hiding the limits of his figures in
-the bland medium which inwraps them, his Jupiter and Io prove.
-
-Such were the principles on which the Tuscan, the Roman, the Venetian,
-and the Lombard schools established their systems of style, or rather
-the _manner_ which, in various directions and modes of application,
-perverted style. M. Agnolo lived to see the electric shock which his
-design had given to Art, propagated by the Tuscan and Venetian schools
-as the ostentatious vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic quibbles, or
-the palliative of empty pomp and degraded luxuriance of colour.
-
-Of his imitators, the two most eminent are Pellegrino Tibaldi, called
-"M. Agnolo riformato" by the Bolognese Eclectics, and Francesco
-Mazzuoli, called Parmegiano.
-
-Pellegrino Tibaldi penetrated the technic without the moral principle of
-his master's style; he had often grandeur of line without sublimity of
-conception; hence the _manner_ of M. Agnolo is frequently the _style_ of
-Pellegrino Tibaldi. Conglobation and eccentricity, an aggregate of
-convexities suddenly broken by rectangular, or cut by perpendicular
-lines, compose his system. His fame principally rests on the Frescoes
-of the Academic Institute at Bologna, and the Ceiling of the Merchants'
-Hall at Ancona. It is probably on the strength of those, that the
-Carracci, his countrymen, are said to have called him their "M. Agnolo
-riformato,"--M. Agnolo corrected. I will not do that injustice to the
-Carracci to suppose, that for one moment they could allude by this
-verdict to the Ceiling and the Prophets and Sibyls of the Capella
-Sistina; they glanced perhaps at the technic exuberance of the Last
-Judgement, and the senile caprices of the Capella Paolina. These, they
-meant to inform us, had been pruned, regulated, and reformed by
-Pellegrino Tibaldi. Do his works in the Institute warrant this verdict?
-So far from it, that it exhibits little more than the dotage of M.
-Agnolo. The single figures, groups, and compositions of the Institute,
-present a singular mixture of extraordinary vigour and puerile
-imbecility of conception, of character and caricature, of style and
-manner.
-
-The figure of Polypheme groping at the mouth of his cave for Ulysses,
-and the composition of AEolus granting to Ulysses favourable winds, are
-striking instances of both. Than the Cyclops, M. Agnolo himself never
-conceived a form of savage energy, provoked by sufferings and revenge,
-with attitude and limbs more in unison; whilst the God of Winds is
-degraded to the scanty and ludicrous semblance of Thersites, and Ulysses
-with his companions travestied by the semi-barbarous look and costume of
-the age of Constantine or Attila.
-
-From Pellegrino Tibaldi, the Germans, Dutch, and Flemings, Hemskerk,
-Goltzius, and Spranger, borrowed the compendium of the great Tuscan's
-peculiarities, dropsied the forms of vigour, or dressed the gewgaws of
-children in colossal shapes.
-
-Parmegiano poised his line between the grace of Correggio and the energy
-of M. Agnolo, and from contrast produced Elegance; but instead of making
-propriety her measure, degraded her to affectation. That disengaged play
-of delicate forms, the "sueltezza" of the Italians, is the prerogative
-of Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at the expense of
-proportion. He conceived the variety, but not the simplicity of beauty,
-and drove contrast to extravagance. The figure of St. John, in the
-altar-piece of St. Salvador at Citta di Castello, now at the Marquis of
-Abercorn's, and known from the print of Giulio Bonasone, which less
-imitates than exaggerates its original in the Cartoon of Pisa, is one
-proof among many: his action is the accident of his attitude; he is
-conscious of his grandeur, and loses the fervour of the apostle in the
-orator.
-
-So his celebrated Moses, if I see right, has in his forms less of
-grandeur than agility, in his action more passion than majesty, and
-loses the legislator in the savage. This figure, together with Raphael's
-figure of God in the Vision of Ezekiel, is said to have furnished Gray
-with some of the master-traits of his Bard,--figures than which Painting
-cannot produce two more dissimilar: calm, placid contemplation, and the
-decided burst of passion in coalition.
-
-Whilst M. Agnolo was doomed to live and brood over the perversion of
-_his_ style, death prevented Raffaello from witnessing the gradual decay
-of his.
-
-Such was the state of style, when, toward the decline of the sixteenth
-century, Lodovico Carracci, with his cousins Agostino and Annibale,
-founded at Bologna, on the hints caught from Pellegrino Tibaldi, that
-Eclectic School which, by selecting the beauties, correcting the faults,
-supplying the defects, and avoiding the extremes of the different
-styles, attempted to form a perfect system. The specious ingredients of
-this technic panacea have been preserved in a complimentary sonnet of
-Agostino Carracci, and are compounded of the design and symmetry of
-Raffaello, the terrible manner of M. Agnolo, the sovereign purity of
-Correggio's style, Tiziano's truth and nature, Tintoretto's and Paolo's
-vivacity and chiaroscuro, Lombardy's tone of colour, the learned
-invention of Primaticcio, the decorum and solidity of Pellegrino
-Tibaldi, and a little of Parmegiano's grace, all amalgamated by Niccolo
-dell' Abbate.
-
-I shall not attempt a parody of this prescription by transferring it to
-Poetry, and prescribing to the candidate for dramatic fame the imitation
-of Shakspeare, Otway, Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Congreve, Racine, Addison,
-as amalgamated by Nicholas Rowe. Let me only ask whether such a mixture
-of demands ever entered with equal evidence the mind of any one artist,
-ancient or modern; whether, if it be granted possible that they did,
-they were ever balanced with equal impartiality; and grant this, whether
-they ever were or could be executed with equal felicity? A character of
-equal universal power is not a human character; and the nearest approach
-to perfection can only be in carrying to excellence one great quality
-with the least alloy of collateral defects: to attempt more will
-probably end in the extinction of character, and that, in
-mediocrity--the cypher of Art.
-
-And were the Carracci such? Separate the precept from the practice, the
-artist from the teacher, and the Carracci are in possession of my
-submissive homage. Lodovico is the inventor of that solemn hue, that
-sober twilight, which you have heard so often recommended as the proper
-tone of historic colour. Agostino, with learning, taste, and form,
-combined Corregiesque tints. Annibale, inferior to both in sensibility
-and taste, in the wide range of talent, undaunted execution and academic
-prowess, left either far behind. But if he preserved the breadth of the
-style we speak of, he added nothing to its dignity; his pupils were
-inferior to _him_, and to his pupils, their successors. _Style_
-continued to linger, with fatal symptoms of decay, in Italy; and if it
-survives, has not yet found a place to re-establish its powers on this
-side of the Alps.
-
-
-
-
-TWELFTH LECTURE.
-
-ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE ART, AND THE CAUSES WHICH CHECK ITS PROGRESS.
-
-
-
-
-TWELFTH LECTURE.
-
-
-Such is the influence of the plastic Arts on society, on manners,
-sentiments, the commodities and the ornaments of life, that we think
-ourselves generally entitled to form our estimate of times and nations
-by its standard. As our homage attends those whose patronage reared them
-to a state of efflorescence or maturity, so we pass with neglect, or
-pursue with contempt, the age or race which want of culture or of
-opportunity averted from developing symptoms of a similar attachment.
-
-A genuine perception of Beauty is the highest degree of education, the
-ultimate polish of man; the master-key of the mind, it makes us better
-than we were before. Elevated or charmed by the contemplation of
-superior works of Art, our mind passes from the images themselves to
-their authors, and from them to the race which reared the powers that
-furnish us with models of imitation or multiply our pleasures.
-
-This inward sense is supported by exterior motives in contact with a far
-greater part of society, whom wants and commerce connect with the Arts;
-for nations pay or receive tribute in proportion as their technic sense
-exerts itself or slumbers. Whatever is commodious, amene, or useful,
-depends in a great measure on the Arts: dress, furniture, and habitation
-owe to their breath what they can boast of grace, propriety, or shape:
-they teach Elegance to finish what Necessity invented, and make us
-enamoured of our wants.
-
-This benign influence infallibly spreads or diminishes in proportion as
-its original source, a sense of genuine Beauty, flows from an ample or a
-scanty vein, in a clear or turbid stream. As Taste is adulterated or
-sinks, Ornament takes a meagre, clumsy, barbarous, ludicrous, or
-meretricious form; Affectation dictates; Simplicity and elegance are
-loaded; interest vanishes: in a short time Necessity alone remains, and
-Novelty with Error go hand in hand.
-
-These obvious observations on the importance of the Arts, lead to the
-question so often discussed, and at no time more important than ours--on
-the causes that raised them at various times, and among different
-nations--on the means of assisting their progress, and how to check
-their decay. Of much that has been said on it, much must be repeated,
-and something added.
-
-The Greeks commonly lead the van of the arguments produced to answer
-this question. Their religious and civil establishments; their manners,
-games, contests of valour and of talents; the Cyclus of their Mythology,
-peopled with celestial and heroic forms; the honours, the celebrity of
-artists; the serene Grecian sky and mildness of the climate, are the
-causes supposed to have carried that nation within the ken of
-perfection.
-
-Without refusing to each of these various advantages its share of
-effect, History informs us that if Religion and Liberty prepared a
-public, and spread a technic taste over all Greece, Athens and Corinth
-must be considered as the principal nurses of Art, without whose
-fostering care the general causes mentioned could not have had so
-decided an effect; for nothing surely contributed so much to the gradual
-evolution of Art, as that perpetual opportunity which they presented to
-the artist of public exhibition; the decoration of temples, halls,
-porticoes, a succession of employments equally numerous, important, and
-dignified: hence that emulation to gain the heights of Art; the fervour
-of public encouragement, the zeal and gratitude of the artists were
-reciprocal: Polygnotus prepared with Cimon what Phidias with Pericles
-established, on public taste, Essential, Characteristic, and Ideal
-Styles.
-
-Whether human nature admitted of no more, or other causes prevented a
-farther evolution of powers, nothing greater did arise; Polish, Elegance,
-and Novelty supplied Invention: here is the period of decay; the Art
-gradually sunk to mediocrity, and its final reward--Indifference.
-
-The artist and the public are ever in the strictest reciprocity: if the
-Arts flourished nowhere as in Greece, no other nation ever interested
-itself with motives so pure in their establishment and progress, or
-allowed them so ample a compass. As long as their march was marked with
-such dignity, whilst their union excited admiration, commanded
-attachment, and led the public, they grew, they rose; but when
-individually to please, the artist attempted to monopolize the interest
-due to Art, to abstract by novelty and to flatter the multitude, ruin
-followed. To prosper, the Art not only must feel itself free, it ought
-to reign: if it be domineered over, if it follow the dictate of Fashion
-or a Patron's whims, then is its dissolution at hand.
-
-To attain the height of the Ancient was impossible for Modern Art,
-circumscribed by narrower limits, forced to form itself rapidly and on
-borrowed principles; still it owes its origin and support to nearly
-similar causes. During the fourteenth, and still more in the course of
-the fifteenth century, so much activity, so general a predilection for
-Art spread themselves over the greater part of Italy, that we are
-astonished at the farrago of various imagery produced at those periods.
-The artist and the Art were indeed considered as little more than
-craftsmen and a craft; but they were indemnified for the want of
-honours, by the dignity of their employment, by commissions to decorate
-churches, convents, and public buildings.
-
-Let no one to whom truth and its propagation are dear, believe or
-maintain that Christianism was inimical to the progress of Arts, which
-probably nothing else could have revived. Nothing less than Christian
-enthusiasm could give that lasting and energetic impulse whose magic
-result we admire in the works that illustrate the period of Genius and
-their establishment. Nor is the objection that England, France, and
-Germany professed Christianity, built churches and convents, and yet had
-no Art, an objection of consequence; because it might with equal
-propriety be asked, why it did not appear sooner in Italy itself. The
-Art forms a part of social education and the ultimate polish of man, nor
-can it appear during the rudeness of infant societies; and as, among the
-Western nations, the Italians were the first who extricated themselves
-from the bonds of barbarism and formed asylums for industry, Art and
-Science kept pace with the social progress, and produced their first
-legitimate essays among them.
-
-How favourably religious enthusiasm operated on Art, their sympathetic
-revolutions still farther prove; they flourished, they languished, they
-fell together. As zeal relented and public grandeur gave way to private
-splendour, the Arts became the hirelings of Vanity and Wealth; servile
-they roamed from place to place, ready to administer to the whims and
-wants of the best bidder: in this point of sight we can easily solve all
-the phaenomena which occur in the history of Art,--its rise, its fall,
-eclipse, and re-appearance in various places, with styles as different
-as various tastes.
-
-The efficient cause, therefore, why higher Art at present is sunk to
-such a state of inactivity and languor that it may be doubted whether it
-will exist much longer, is not a particular one, which private
-patronage, or the will of an individual, however great, can remove; but
-a general cause, founded on the bent, the manners, habits, modes of a
-nation,--and not of one nation alone, but of all who at present pretend
-to culture. Our age, when compared with former ages, has but little
-occasion for great works, and that is the reason why so few are
-produced:[1]--the ambition, activity, and spirit of public life is
-shrunk to the minute detail of domestic arrangements--every thing that
-surrounds us tends to show us in private, is become snug, less, narrow,
-pretty, insignificant. We are not, perhaps, the less happy on account of
-all this; but from such selfish trifling to expect a system of Art built
-on grandeur, without a total revolution, would only be less presumptuous
-than insane.
-
-What right have we to expect such a revolution in our favour?
-
-Let us advert for a moment to the enormous difference of difficulty
-between forming and amending the taste of a public--between legislation
-and reform: either task is that of Genius; both have adherents,
-disciples, champions; but persecution, derision, checks will generally
-oppose the efforts of the latter, whilst submission, gratitude,
-encouragement, attend the smooth march of the former. No madness is so
-incurable as wilful perverseness; and when men can once, with Medea,
-declare that they know what is best, and approve of it, but must, or
-choose to follow the worst, perhaps a revolution worse to be dreaded
-than the disease itself, must precede the possibility of a cure. Though,
-as it has been observed, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries granted
-to the artists little more than the attention due to ingenious
-craftsmen; they were, from the object of their occupations and the taste
-of their employers, the legitimate precursors of M. Agnolo and
-Raffaello, who did no more than raise their style to the sublimity and
-pathos of the subject. These trod with loftier gait and bolder strides a
-path, on which the former had sometimes stumbled, often crept, but
-always advanced: the public and the artist went hand in hand--but on
-what spot of Europe can the young artist of our day be placed to meet
-with circumstances equally favourable? Arm him, if you please, with the
-epic and dramatic powers of M. Agnolo and Raffaello, where are the
-religious and civic establishments, where the temples and halls open to
-receive, where the public prepared to call them forth, to stimulate, to
-reward them?
-
-Idle complaints! I hear a thousand voices reply! You accuse the public
-of apathy for the Arts, while public and private exhibitions tread on
-each other's heels, panorama opens on panorama, and the splendour of
-galleries dazzles the wearied eye, and the ear is stunned with the
-incessant stroke of the sculptor's hammer, and our temples narrowed by
-crowds of monuments shouldering each other to perpetuate the memory of
-Statesmen who deluded, or of Heroes who bled at a Nation's call! Look
-round all Europe--revolve the page of history from Osymandias to
-Pericles, from Pericles to Constantine--and say what age, what race
-stretched forth a stronger arm to raise the drooping genius of Art? Is
-it the public's fault if encouragement is turned into a job, and
-dispatch and quantity have supplanted excellence and quality, as objects
-of the artist's emulation?--And do you think that accidental and
-temporary encouragement can invalidate charges founded on permanent
-causes? What blew up the Art, will in its own surcease terminate its
-success. Art is not ephemeral; Religion and Liberty had for ages
-prepared what Religion and Liberty were to establish among the ancients:
-the germ of the Olympian Jupiter, and the Minerva of Phidias, lay in the
-Gods of Aegina, and that of Theseus, Hercules, and Alcibiades in the
-blocks of Harmodios and Aristogiton.
-
-If the revolution of a neighbouring nation emancipated the people from
-the yoke of superstition, it has perhaps precipitated them to
-irreligion. He who has no visible object of worship is indifferent about
-modes, and rites, and places; and unless some great civil provisional
-establishment replaces the means furnished by the former system, the
-Arts of France, should they disdain to become the minions and handmaids
-of fashion, may soon find that the only public occupation left for them
-will be a representation of themselves, deploring their new-acquired
-advantages. By a great establishment, I mean one that will employ the
-living artists, raise among them a spirit of emulation dignified by the
-objects of their occupation, and inspire the public with that spirit;
-not an ostentatious display of ancient and modern treasures of genius,
-accumulated by the hand of conquest or of rapine. To plunder the earth
-was a Roman principle, and it is not perhaps matter of lamentation that
-Modern Rome, by a retaliation of her own principle, is made to pay the
-debt contracted with mankind. But let none fondly believe that the
-importation of Greek and Italian works of Art is an importation of Greek
-and Italian genius, taste, establishments and means of encouragement;
-without transplanting and disseminating these, the gorgeous accumulation
-of technic monuments is no more than a dead capital, and, instead of a
-benefit, a check on living Art.
-
-With regard to ourselves, the barbarous, though then perhaps useful rage
-of image-breakers in the seventeenth century, seems much too
-gratuitously propagated as a principle in an age much more likely to
-suffer from irreligion than superstition. A public body inflamed by
-superstition, suffers, but it suffers from the ebullitions of radical
-heat, and may return to a state of health and life; whilst a public body
-plunged into irreligion, is in a state of palsied apathy, the cadaverous
-symptom of approaching dissolution. Perhaps neither of these two
-extremes may be precisely our own state; we probably float between both.
-But surely in an age of inquiry and individual liberty of _thought_,
-when there are almost as many sects as heads, there was little danger
-that the admission of Art to places of devotion could ever be attended
-by the errors of idolatry; nor have the motives which resisted the offer
-of ornamenting our churches perhaps any eminent degree of ecclesiastic
-or political sagacity to recommend them. Who would not rejoice if the
-charm of our Art, displaying the actions and example of the sacred
-Founder of our religion and of his disciples in temples and conventicles,
-contributed to enlighten the zeal, stimulate the feelings, sweeten the
-acrimony, or dignify the enthusiasm of their respective audiences? The
-source of the grand monumental style of Greece was Religion with Liberty.
-At that period the artist, as Pliny expresses himself, was the property of
-the public, or in other words, he considered himself as responsible for
-the influence of his works on public principle: with the decline of
-Religion and Liberty his importance and the Art declined; and though the
-Egyptian custom of embalming the dead and suffering the living to linger
-had not yet been adopted, from the organ of the public he became the tool
-of private patronage; and private patronage, however commendable or
-liberal, can no more supply the want of general encouragement, than the
-conservatories and hotbeds of the rich, the want of a fertile soil or
-genial climate. Luxury in times of taste keeps up execution in proportion
-as it saps the dignity and moral principle of the Art; gold is the motive
-of its exertions, and nothing that ennobles man was ever produced by gold.
-When Nero transported the Pontic Apollo to the golden house, and furnished
-the colossal shoulders of the god with his own head, Sculpture lent her
-hand to legitimate the sacrilege: why should Painting be supposed to have
-been more squeamish when applied to decorate the apartments of his
-pleasures and the cabinet of Poppaea with Milesian pollutions, or the
-attitudes of Elephantis?
-
-The effect of honours and rewards has been insisted on as a necessary
-incentive to artists: they ought indeed to be, they sometimes are, the
-result of superior powers; but accidental or partial honours cannot
-create Genius, nor private profusion supply public neglect. No genuine
-work of Art ever was or ever can be produced, but for its own sake; if
-the artist do not conceive to please himself, he never will finish to
-please the world. Can we persuade ourselves that all the treasures of
-the globe could suddenly produce an Iliad or Paradise Lost, or the
-Jupiter of Phidias, or the Capella Sistina? Circumstances may assist or
-retard parts, but cannot make them: they are the winds that now blow out
-a light, now animate a spark to conflagration. Nature herself has set
-her barriers between age and age, between genius and genius, which no
-mortal overleaps; all attempts to raise to perfection at once, what can
-only be reared by a succession of epochs, must prove abhortive and
-nugatory: the very proposals of premiums, honours, and rewards to excite
-talent or rouse genius, prove of themselves that the age is unfavourable
-to Art; for, had it the patronage of the public, how could it want them?
-
-We have now been in possession of an Academy more than half a century;
-all the intrinsic means of forming a style alternate at our commands;
-professional instruction has never ceased to direct the student;
-premiums are distributed to rear talent and stimulate emulation, and
-stipends are granted to relieve the wants of genius and finish
-education. And what is the result? If we apply to our Exhibition, what
-does it present, in the aggregate, but a gorgeous display of varied
-powers, condemned, if not to the beasts, at least to the dictates of
-fashion and vanity? What therefore can be urged against the conclusion,
-that, as far as the public is concerned, the Art is sinking, and
-threatens to sink still deeper, from the want of demand for great and
-significant works? Florence, Bologna, Venice, each singly taken,
-produced in the course of the sixteenth century alone, more great
-historic pictures than all Britain taken together, from its earliest
-attempts at painting to its present efforts. What are we to conclude
-from this? that the soil from which Shakspeare and Milton sprang, is
-unfit to rear the Genius of Poetic Art? or find the cause of this
-seeming impotence in that general change of habits, customs, pursuits,
-and amusements, which for near a century has stamped the national
-character of Europe with apathy or discountenance of the genuine
-principles of Art?
-
-But if the severity of these observations, this denudation of our
-present state moderates our hopes, it ought to invigorate our efforts
-for the ultimate preservation, and, if immediate restoration be
-hopeless, the gradual recovery of Art. To raise the Arts to a
-conspicuous height may not perhaps be in our power; we shall have
-deserved well of posterity if we succeed in stemming their farther
-downfall, if we fix them on the solid base of principle. If it be out of
-our power to furnish the student's activity with adequate practice, we
-may contribute to form his theory; and Criticism founded on experiment,
-instructed by comparison, in possession of the labours of every epoch of
-Art, may spread the genuine elements of taste, and check the present
-torrent of affectation and insipidity.
-
-This is the real use of our Institution, if we may judge from analogy.
-Soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, when the gradual
-evanescence of the great luminaries in Art began to alarm the public, an
-idea started at Florence of uniting the most eminent artists into a
-society, under the immediate patronage of the Grand Duke, and the title
-of Academy: it had something of a Conventual air, has even now its own
-chapel, and celebrates an annual festival with appropriate ceremonies;
-less designed to promote than to prevent the gradual debasement of Art.
-Similar associations in other places were formed in imitation, and at
-the time of the Carracci even the private schools of painters adopted
-the same name. All, whether public or private, supported by patronage or
-individual contribution, were and are symptoms of Art in distress,
-monuments of public dereliction and decay of Taste. But they are at the
-same time the asylum of the student, the theatre of his exercises, the
-repositories of the materials, the archives of the documents of our art,
-whose principles their officers are bound now to maintain, and for the
-preservation of which they are responsible to posterity, undebauched by
-the flattery, heedless of the sneers, undismayed by the frown of their
-own time.
-
-Permit me to part with one final observation. Reynolds has told us, and
-from _him_ whose genius was crowned with the most brilliant success
-during his life, from him it came with unexampled magnanimity, "that
-those who court the applause of their own time, must reckon on the
-neglect of posterity." On this I shall not insist as a general maxim;
-all depends on the character of the time in which an artist lives, and
-on the motive of his exertions. M. Agnolo, Raffaello, Tiziano, and
-Vasari, Giuseppe d'Arpino, and Luca Giordano, enjoyed equal celebrity
-during their own times. The three first enjoy it now, the three last are
-forgotten or censured. What are we to infer from this unequal verdict of
-posterity? What, but what Cicero says, that time obliterates the
-conceits of opinion or fashion, and establishes the verdicts of Nature?
-The age of Julio and Leone demanded genius for its own sake, and found
-it--the age of Cosmo, Ferdinand, and Urban, demanded talents and
-dispatch to flatter their own vanity, and found them too; but Cosmo,
-Ferdinand, and Urban, are sunk in the same oblivion, or involved in the
-same censure with their tools--Julio and Leone continue to live with the
-permanent powers which they had called forth.
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] Vel duo vel nemo--turpe et miserabile!
-
-
-
-
-APHORISMS, CHIEFLY RELATIVE TO THE FINE ARTS.
-
-
-
-
-APHORISMS.
-
-
-1. Life is rapid, art is slow, occasion coy, practice fallacious, and
-judgment partial.
-
-2. The price of excellence is labour, and time that of immortality.
-
-3. Art, like love, excludes all competition, and absorbs the man.
-
-4. Art is the attendant of nature, and genius and talent the ministers
-of art.
-
-5. Genius either discovers new materials of nature, or combines the
-known with novelty.
-
-6. Talent arranges, cultivates, polishes, the discoveries of genius.
-
-7. Intuition is the attendant of genius; gradual improvement that of
-talent.
-
-8. Arrangement presupposes materials: fruits follow the bud and foliage,
-and judgment the luxuriance of fancy.
-
-9. The fiery sets his subject in a blaze, and mounts its vapours; the
-melancholy cleaves the rock, or gropes through thorns for his; the
-sanguine deluges all, and seizes none; the phlegmatic sucks one, and
-drops off with repletion.
-
-10. Some enter the gates of art with golden keys, and take their seats
-with dignity among the demi-gods of fame; some burst the doors and leap
-into a niche with savage power; thousands consume their time in chinking
-useless keys, and aiming feeble pushes against the inexorable doors.
-
-11. Heaven and earth, advantages and obstacles, conspire to educate
-genius.
-
-12. Organization is the mother of talent; practice its nurse; the
-senses its dominion; but hearts alone can penetrate hearts.
-
-13. It is the lot of genius to be opposed, and to be invigorated by
-opposition: all extremes touch each other; frigid praise and censure
-wait upon attainable or common powers; but the successful adventurer in
-the realms of discovery leaps on an unknown or long-lost shore, ennobles
-it with his name, and grasps immortality.
-
-14. Genius without bias, is a stream without direction: it inundates
-all, and ends in stagnation.
-
-15. He who pretends to have sacrificed genius to the pursuits of
-interest or fashion; and he who wants to persuade you he has
-indisputable titles to a crown, but chooses to wave them for the
-emoluments of a partnership in trade, deserve equal belief.
-
-16. Taste is the legitimate offspring of nature, educated by propriety:
-fashion is the bastard of vanity, dressed by art.
-
-17. The immediate operation of taste is to ascertain the kind; the next,
-to appreciate the degrees of excellence.
-
-_Coroll._--Taste, founded on sense and elegance of mind, is reared by
-culture, invigorated by practice and comparison: scantiness stops short
-of it; fashion adulterates it: it is shackled by pedantry, and
-overwhelmed by luxuriance.
-
-Taste sheds a ray over the homeliest or the most uncouth subject.
-Fashion frequently flattens the elegant, the gentle, and the great, into
-one lumpy mass of disgust.
-
-If "foul and fair" be all that your gross-spun sense discerns, if you
-are blind to the intermediate degrees of excellence, you may perhaps be
-a great man--a senator--a conqueror; but if you respect yourself, never
-presume to utter a syllable on works of taste.
-
-18. If mind and organs conspire to qualify you for a judge in works of
-taste, remember that you are to be possessed of three things--the
-subject of the work which you are to examine; the character of the
-artist as such; and, before all, of impartiality.
-
-_Coroll._--All first impressions are involuntary and inevitable; but
-the knowledge of the subject will guide you to judge first of the whole;
-not to creep on from part to part, and nibble at execution before you
-know what it means to convey. The notion of a tree precedes that of
-counting leaves or disentangling branches.
-
-Every artist has, or ought to have, a character or system of his own;
-if, instead of referring that to the test of nature, you judge him by
-your own packed notions, or arraign him at the tribunal of schools which
-he does not recognize--you degrade the dignity of art, and add another
-fool to the herd of Dilettanti.
-
-But if, for reasons best known to yourself, you come determined to
-condemn what yet you have not seen, let me advise you to drop your
-pursuits of art for one of far greater importance--the inquiry into
-yourself; nor aim at taste till you are sure of justice.
-
-19. Misconception of its own powers is the injurious attendant of
-genius, and the most severe remembrancer of its vanity.
-
-_Coroll._--Much of Leonardo da Vinci's life evaporated in useless
-experiment and quaint research; Michael Angelo perplexed the limbs of
-grandeur with the minute ramifications of anatomy; Rafaelle forsook
-humanity to people a mythologic desert with clumsy gods and clumsier
-goddesses; Shakspeare, trusting time and chance with Hamlet and Othello,
-revised a frozen sonnet, or fondled his Adonis; whilst Milton dropt the
-trumpet that had astonished hell, left Paradise, and introduced a
-pedagogue to Heaven. When genius is surprised by such lethargic moments,
-we can forget that Johnson wrote Irene, and Hogarth made a solemn fool
-of Paul.
-
-20. Reality teems with disappointment for him whose sources of enjoyment
-spring in the elysium of fancy.
-
-21. Where perfection cannot take place, a very high degree of general
-excellence is impossible. Negligence is the shade of energy; where there
-is neither, expect mediocrity, the common expletive of society; capacity
-without elevation, industry without predilection, practice without
-choice.
-
-_Coroll._--"About this time," says Tacitus, "died Poppaeus Sabinus, who,
-from a middling origin, rose to imperial friendships, the consulate,
-and the honours of the triumph: he was selected for the space of
-four-and-twenty years to govern the most important provinces,[2] not for
-any distinguished merit of his own, but because he was equal to his
-task, and not above it."
-
-Behold here the most comprehensive epitaph of mediocrity, and the most
-unambiguous solution of every riddle with which its brilliant success
-may have perplexed your mind.
-
-22. Determine the principle on which you commence your career of art:
-some woo the art itself, some its appendages; some confine their view to
-the present, some extend it to futurity: the butterfly flutters round a
-meadow; the eagle crosses seas.
-
-23. In ranging the phenomena of art, remember carefully, though you
-place it on the side of exceptions, that a decided bias is not always a
-sign of latent power; nor indolence, indifference, or even apathy, a
-sign of impotence.
-
-24. Circumstances may assist or retard parts, but cannot make them: they
-are the winds that now blow out a light, now animate a spark to
-conflagration.
-
-_Coroll._--Augustus and Maecenas are said to have made Virgil: what was
-it, then, that prevented Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines,
-from producing at least a Lucan?
-
-25. Deserve, but expect not, to be praised by your contemporaries, for
-any excellence which they may be jealous of being allowed to possess
-themselves; leave the dispensation of justice to posterity.
-
-26. If wishes are the spawn of imbecility, precipitation is the bantling
-of fool-hardiness: legitimate will, investigates and acquires the means.
-Mistake not an itching finger for authentic will.
-
-27. Some of the most genuine effusions of genius in art, some of the
-most estimable qualities in society, may be beholden for our homage to
-very disputable principles.
-
-_Coroll._--The admission of a master's humanity to his slave supposes
-the validity of an execrable right; and the courage shown in a duel
-cannot be applauded without submitting to the dictates of feudal
-barbarity. Had the poet's conception prepared us for the rashness of
-Lear, the ambition of Macbeth's wife, and the villany of Iago, by the
-usual gradations of nature, he could not have rushed on our heart with
-the irresistibility that now subdues it. Had the line of Correggio
-floated in a less expanse, he would have lost that spell of light and
-shade which has enthralled all eyes; and Rubens, had he not invigorated
-bodies to hills of flesh, and tinged his pencil in the rainbow, would
-not have been the painter of magnificence.
-
-28. Genius has no imitator. Some can be poets and painters only at
-second-hand: deaf and blind to the tones and motions of Nature herself,
-they hear or see her only through some reflected medium of art; they are
-emboldened by prescription.
-
-29. Let him who has more genius than talent give up as impossible what
-he finds difficult. Talent may mimic genius with success, and
-frequently impose on all but the first judges; but genius is awkward in
-the attempt to use the tools of talent.
-
-_Coroll._--Hyperides, Lysias, Isocrates, might imitate much of
-Demosthenes; but he would have become ridiculous by stooping to collect
-their beauties.[3] The spear of Roland might be couched to gain a lady's
-favour; but its sole ornament was the heart, torn from the breast-plate
-of her foe.
-
-30. Mediocrity is formed, and talent submits, to receive prescription;
-that, the liveried attendant, this, the docile client of a patron's
-views or whims: but genius, free and unbounded as its _origin_, scorns
-to receive commands, or in submission, neglects those it received.
-
-_Coroll._--The gentle spirit of Rafaelle embellished the conceits of
-Bembo and Divizio, to scatter incense round the triple mitre of his
-prince; and the Vatican became the flattering annals of the court of
-Julius and Leo: whilst Michael Angelo refused admittance to master and
-to times, and doomed his purple critic to hell.[4]
-
-31. Distinguish between genius and singularity of character; an artist
-of mediocrity may be an odd man: let the nature of works be your guide.
-
-32. The most impotent, the most vulgar, and the coldest artists
-generally arrogate to themselves the most vigorous, the most dignified,
-and the warmest subjects.
-
-33. He has powers, dignity, and fire, who can inspire a trifle with
-importance.
-
-34. Know that nothing is trifling in the hand of genius, and that
-importance itself becomes a bauble in that of mediocrity:--the
-shepherd's staff of Paris would have been an engine of death in the
-grasp of Achilles; the ash of Peleus could only have dropped from the
-effeminate fingers of the curled archer.
-
-35. Art either imitates or copies, selects or transcribes; consults the
-class, or follows the individual.
-
-36. Imitative art, is either epic or sublime, dramatic or impassioned,
-historic or circumscribed by truth. The first astonishes, the second
-moves, the third informs.
-
-37. Whatever hides its limits in its greatness--whatever shows a feature
-of immensity, let the elements of Nature or the qualities of animated
-being make up its substance, is sublime.
-
-38. Whatever by reflected self-love inspires us with hope, fear, pity,
-terror, love, or mirth--whatever makes events, and time, and place, the
-ministers of character and pathos, let fiction or reality compose its
-tissue, is dramatic.
-
-39. That which tells us, not what might be, but what is; circumscribes
-the grand and the pathetic with truth of time, place, custom; what
-gives "a local habitation and a name," is historic.
-
-_Coroll._--No human performance is either purely epic, dramatic, or
-historic. Novelty and feelings will make the historian sometimes launch
-out into the marvellous; or will warm his bosom and extort a tear.
-
-The dramatist while gazing at some tremendous feature, or the pomp of
-superior agency, will drop the chain he holds, and be absorbed in the
-sublime; whilst the epic or lyric poet, forgetting his solitary
-grandeur, will sometimes descend and mix with his agents.
-
-The tragic and the comic dramatists formed themselves on Hector and
-Andromache, on Irus and Ulysses. The spirit from the prison-house
-breathes like the shade of Patroclus; Octavia and the daughter of
-Soranus[5] melt like Ophelia and Alcestis.
-
-40. Those who have assigned to the plastic arts beauty, strictly so
-called, as the ultimate end of imitation, have circumscribed the whole
-by a part.
-
-_Coroll._--The charms of Helen and of Niobe are instruments of
-sublimity: Meleager and Cordelia fall victims to the passions; Agrippina
-and Berenice give interest to truth.
-
-41. Beauty, whether individual or ideal, consists in the concurrence of
-parts to one end, or the union of the simple and the various.
-
-_Coroll._--Whatever be your powers, assume not to legislate on beauty:
-though always the same herself, her empire is despotic, and subject to
-the anarchies of despotism, enthroned to-day, dethroned to-morrow: in
-treating subjects of universal claim, most has been done by leaving most
-to the reader's and spectator's taste or fancy. "It is difficult," says
-Horace, "to pronounce exactly to every man's eye and mind, what every
-man thinks himself entitled to estimate by a standard of his own."[6]
-The Apollo and Medicean Venus are not by all received as the canons of
-male and female beauty; and Homer's Helen is the finest woman we have
-read of, merely because he has left her to be made up of the Dulcineas
-of his readers.
-
-42. Beauty alone, fades to insipidity; and like possession cloys.
-
-43. Grace is beauty in motion, or rather grace regulates the air, the
-attitudes and movements of beauty.
-
-44. Nature makes no parade of her means--hence all studied grace is
-unnatural.
-
-_Coroll._--The attitudes of Parmegiano are exhibitions of studied grace.
-The grace of Guido is become proverbial, but it is the grace of the art.
-
-45. All actions and attitudes of children are graceful, because they are
-the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment--divested of
-affectation, and free from all pretence.
-
-_Coroll._--The attitudes and motions of the figures of Rafaelle are
-graceful because they are poised by Nature.
-
-46. Proportion, or symmetry, is the basis of beauty; propriety, of
-grace.
-
-47. Creation gives, invention finds existence.
-
-48. Invention in general is the combination of the possible, the
-probable, or the known, in a mode that strikes with novelty.
-
-_Coroll._--Invention has been said to mean no more than the moment of
-any fact chosen by the artist.
-
-To say that the painter's invention is not to find or to combine its own
-subject, is to confine it to the poet's or historian's alms--is to
-annihilate its essence; it says in other words, that Macbeth or Ugolino
-would be no subjects for the pencil, if they had not been prepared by
-history and borrowed from Shakspeare and Dante.
-
-49. Ask not--Where is fancy bred? in the heart? in the head? how begot?
-how nourished?
-
-_Coroll._--The critic who inquires whether in the madness of Lear, grief
-for the loss of empire, or the resentment of filial ingratitude
-preponderated--and he who doubts whether it be within the limits of art
-to embody beings of fancy, agitate different questions, but of equal
-futility.
-
-50. Genius may adopt, but never steals.
-
-_Coroll._--An adopted idea or figure in the works of genius will be a
-foil or a companion; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity scorns
-the base alliance and crushes all its mean associates--it is the
-Cyclop's thumb, by which the pigmy measured his own littleness,--"or
-hangs like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."
-
-51. Genius, inspired by invention, rends the veil that separates
-existence from possibility; peeps into the dark, and catches a shape, a
-feature, or a colour, in the reflected ray.
-
-52. Talent, though panting, pursues genius through the plains of
-invention, but stops short at the brink that separates the real from the
-possible. Virgil followed Homer in making Mezentius speak to Rhoebus, but
-shrank from the reply of the prophetic courser.[7]
-
-53. Whenever the medium of any work, whether lines, colour, grouping,
-diction, becomes so predominant as to absorb the subject in its
-splendour, the work is degraded to an inferior order.
-
-54. The painter, who makes an historical figure address the spectator
-from the canvass, and the actor who addresses a soliloquy to you from
-the stage, have equal claims to your contempt or pity.
-
-55. Common-place figures are as inadmissible in the grand style of
-painting as common-place characters or sentiments in poetry.
-
-_Coroll._--Common-place figures were first introduced by the gorgeous
-machinists of Venice, and adopted by the Bolognese school of Eclectics;
-the modern school of Rome from Carlo Maratta to Battoni knew nothing
-else; and they have been since indiscriminately disseminated on this
-side of the Alps, by those whom mediocrity obliged to hide themselves in
-crowds, or a knack at grouping stimulated to aggregate a rabble.
-
-56. The copious is seldom grand.
-
-57. Glitter is the refuge of the mean.
-
-58. All apparatus destroys terror, as all ornament grandeur: the minute
-catalogue of the cauldron's ingredients in Macbeth destroys the terror
-attendant on mysterious darkness; and the seraglio-trappings of Rubens
-annihilate his heroes.
-
-59. All conceits, not founded upon probable combinations of nature, are
-absurd. The _capricci_ of Salvator Rosa, and of his imitators, are, to
-the fiends of Michael Angelo, what the paroxysms of a fever are to the
-sallies of vigorous fancy.
-
-60. Distinguish carefully between bold fancy and a daring hand; between
-the powers of nature and the acquisitions of practice: most of
-Salvator's banditti are a medley made up of starveling models and the
-shreds of his lumber-room brushed into notice by a daring pencil.
-
-61. Distinguish between boldness and brutality of hand, between the face
-of beauty and _the bark of a tree_.
-
-62. All mediocrity pretends.
-
-63. Invention, strictly speaking, being confined to _one_ moment, he
-invents best who in that moment combines the traces of the past, the
-energy of the present, and a glimpse of the future.
-
-64. Composition has been divided into natural and ornamental: that is
-dictated by the subject, this by effect or situation.
-
-65. Distinguish between composition and grouping: though none can
-compose without grouping, most group without composing.
-
-_Coroll._--The assertion that grouping may not be composing, has been
-said to make a distinction without a difference: as if there had not
-been, still are, and always will be squadrons of artists, whose skill in
-grouping can no more be denied, than their claim to invention, and
-consequently to composition, admitted, if invention means the true
-conception of a subject and composition the best mode of representing
-it. After the demise of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, their successors,
-however discordant else, uniformly agreed to lose the subject in the
-medium. Raffaello had no followers. Tiziano and something of Tintoretto
-excepted, what instance can there be produced of composition in the
-works of the Venetian school? Are the splendid masquerades of Paolo to
-be dignified with that name? If composition has a part in the effusions
-of the great founder of the Lombard school, it surely did not arrange
-the celestial hubbub of his cupolas, content to inspire his Io, the
-Zingaro, Christ in the Garden, perhaps (I speak with diffidence) his
-Notte. So characteristically separate from real composition are the most
-splendid assemblages, the most happy combinations of figures, if founded
-on the mere power of grouping, that one of the first, and certainly the
-most courteous critic in Art of the age, in compliment to the Venetian
-and Flemish Schools, has thought proper to divide composition into
-legitimate and ornamental.
-
-66. Ask not, what is the shape of composition? You may in vain climb the
-pyramid, wind with the stream, or point the flame; for composition,
-unbounded like Nature, and her subjects, though resident in all, may be
-in none of these.
-
-67. The nature of picturesque composition is depth, or to come forward
-and recede.
-
-_Coroll._--Pausias, in painting a sacrifice, foreshortened the victim,
-and threw its shade on part of the surrounding crowd, to show its height
-and length.[8]
-
-68. Sculpture composes in single groups or separate figures, but
-apposition is the element of basso-relievo.
-
-_Coroll._--Poussin painted basso-relievo, Algardi chiselled pictures.
-
-69. He who treats you with all the figures of a subject save the
-principal, is as civil or important as he who invites you to dine with
-all a nobleman's family, the master only excepted: this sometimes may
-be no loss, but surely you cannot be said to have dined with the chief
-of the family.
-
-70. Examine whether an artist treats you with a subject, or only with
-some of its limbs: many see only the lines, some the masses, others the
-colours, and not a few the mere back-ground of their subject.
-
-71. Second thoughts are admissible in painting and poetry only as
-dressers of the first conception; no great idea was ever formed in
-fragments.
-
-72. He alone can conceive and compose, who sees the whole at once before
-him.
-
-73. He who conceives the given point of a subject in many different
-ways, conceives it not at all. Appeal to the artist's own feelings; you
-will ever find him most reluctant to give up that part of it which he
-conceived intuitively, and readier to dismiss that which harassed him by
-alteration.
-
-74. Metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener
-mistaken for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of
-materials.
-
-_Coroll._--The School of Athens as it is called, by Raffaelle,
-communicates to few more than an arbitrary assemblage of speculative
-groups: yet if the subject be the dramatic representation of philosophy,
-as it prepares for active life, the parts of the building are not
-connected with more regular gradation than those groups: fitted by
-physical and intellectual harmony, man ascends from himself to society,
-from society to God.
-
-75. No excellence of execution can atone for meanness of conception.
-
-76. Grandeur of conception will predominate over the most vulgar
-materials--if in the subjects of Jesus before Pilate, by Rembrandt, and
-the Resuscitation of Lazarus by Lievens,[9] the materials had all been
-equal to the conception, they would have been works of superhuman
-powers.
-
-77. Repetition of attitude and gesture invigorates the expression of the
-grand: as a torrent gives its own direction to every object it sweeps
-along, so the impression of a sublime or pathetic moment absorbs the
-contrasts of inferior agents.
-
-78. Tameness lies on this side of expression, grimace overleaps it;
-insipidity is the relative of folly, eccentricity of madness.
-
-79. The fear of not being understood, or felt, makes some invigorate
-expression to grimace.
-
-80. The temple of expression, like that of religion, has a portico and a
-sanctuary; that is trod by all, this only admits her votaries.
-
-81. Propriety, modesty and delicacy, guard expression from the
-half-conceits of the weak, the intemperance of the extravagant, and the
-brutality of the vulgar.
-
-82. Sensibility is the mother of sympathy. How can he paint Beauty who
-has not throbbed at her charms? How shall he fill the eye with the dew
-of humanity whose own never shed a tear for others? How can he form a
-mouth to threaten or command, who licks the hereditary spittle of
-princes?
-
-83. He fails with greater dignity, who expresses the principal feature
-of his subject and misses or neglects all the secondary, than he who
-consumes his powers on what is subordinate and comes exhausted to the
-chief.
-
-_Coroll._--Those who have asserted that Lionardo, in finishing the Last
-Supper, was so exhausted by his exertions to trace the characters and
-emotions of the disciples, that, unable to fix the physiognomy of
-Christ, he found himself reduced to the necessity of leaving that head
-unfinished,--either never saw it, or if they did, were too low to reach
-the height, and too shallow to fathom the depth of the conception.
-
-84. The coward, driven to despair, leaps back into the face of danger;
-and the tame, stimulated to exertions and aiming at expression, puffs
-spirit into flutter; or tears the garb of passion and flourishes the
-rags.
-
-85. Affectation cannot excite sympathy. How can you feel for him who
-cannot feel for himself? How can he feel for himself, who exhibits the
-artificial graces of studied attitude?
-
-86. The loathsome is abominable, and no engine of expression.
-
-_Coroll._ When Spenser dragged into light the entrails of the serpent,
-slain by the Red-cross Knight, he dreamt a butcher's dream and not a
-poet's: and Fletcher,[10] or his partner, when rummaging the surgeon's
-box of cataplasms and trusses to assuage hunger, solicited the grunt of
-an applauding sty.
-
-87. Sympathy and disgust are the lines that separate terror from horror:
-though we shudder at, we scarcely pity what we abominate.
-
-_Coroll._--Rowe, when he congratulates the ghost on bidding Hamlet spare
-his mother, accuses _her_ of a crime with which the poet never charged
-her: that Shakspeare might be hurried on to horror let the "vile jelly"
-witness, which Cornwall treads from Gloster's bleeding sockets.
-
-88. Expression animates, convulses, or absorbs form. The Apollo is
-animated; the warrior of Agasias is agitated; the Laocoon is convulsed;
-the Niobe is absorbed.
-
-89. The being seized by an enormous passion, be it joy or grief, hope or
-despair, loses the character of its own individual expression, and is
-absorbed by the power of the feature that attracts it: Niobe and her
-family are assimilated by extreme anguish; Ugolino is petrified by the
-fate that sweeps his sons; and every metamorphosis from that of Clytie
-to the transfusion of Gianni Fucci[11] tells a new allegory of
-sympathetic power.
-
-90. Reject with indignant incredulity all self-congratulations of
-conscious villainy, though they be uttered by Richard or by Iago.
-
-91. The axe, the wheel, saw-dust, and the blood-stained sheet are not
-legitimate substitutes of terror.
-
-92. All division diminishes, all mixtures impair the simplicity and
-clearness of expression.
-
-93. The epoch which discovered expression, or what the Greeks called
-"manners,"[12] is marked by Pliny as that which gave importance and
-effect to art.
-
-_Coroll._--Homer invested his heroes with ideal powers, but copied
-nature in delineating their moral character. Achilles, the irresistible
-in arms, clad in celestial armour, is a splendid being, created by
-himself; Achilles the fool of passions, is the real man delivered to him
-by tradition.
-
-That the plastic artist should have had an aim beyond the poet is
-improbable, because the poet, in general, furnished him with materials;
-he composed his man of beauty and ideal limbs, not to obscure, but to
-invigorate his character and our attention.
-
-The limbs, the form of Ajax hurling defiance from the sea-swept rock
-unto the murky sky, were, no doubt, exquisite; but if the artist
-mitigated his expression, the indignation due to blasphemy from the
-spectator gave way to sterner indignation at the injustice of his gods.
-
-The expression of the ancients, from the heights and depths of the
-sublime, descended and emerged to search every nook of the human breast;
-from the ambrosial locks of Zeus, and the maternal phantom fluttering
-round Ulysses,[13] to the half-slain mother, shuddering lest the infant
-should suck the blood from her palsied nipple, and the fond attention of
-Penelope dwelling on the relation of her returned son.[14]
-
-The expression of the ancients explored nature even in the mute
-recesses, in the sullen organs of the brute; from the Argus of Ulysses,
-to the lamb, the symbol of expiatory resignation, on an altar, and to
-the untameable feature of the toad.
-
-The expression of the ancients roamed all the fields of licit and
-illicit pleasure; from the petulance with which Ctesilochus exhibited
-the pangs of a Jupiter delivered by celestial midwives, to the
-libidinous sports of Parrhasius, and from these to the indecent
-caricature[15] which furnished Crassus with a repartee.
-
-The ancients extended expression even to the colour of their materials
-in sculpture: to express the remorse of Athamas, Aristonidas the Theban
-mixed metals; and Alcon formed a Hercules of iron, to express the
-perseverance of the God.[16]
-
-94. Invention, before it attends to composition, group, or contrast,
-classes its subject and ascertains what kind of impression it is to make
-on the whole.
-
-95. Invention never suffers the action to expire, nor the spectator's
-fancy to consume itself in preparation, or stagnate into repose: it
-neither begins from the egg, nor coldly gathers the remains; for action
-and interest terminate together.
-
-96. The middle moment, the moment of suspense, the crisis, is the moment
-of importance, big with the past and pregnant with the future: we rush
-from the flames with the Warrior of Agasias, and look forward to his
-enemy; or we hang in suspense over the wound of the Expiring
-Soldier,[17] and poise with every drop which yet remains of life.
-
-97. Distinguish between the hero and the actor; between exertions of
-study and effects of impulse.
-
-98. Know that expression has its classes. The frown of the Hercynian
-phantom may repress the ardour, but cannot subdue the dignity of
-Drusus;[18] the terror of the Centurion at the Resurrection[19] is not
-the panic of his soldiers; the palpitation of Hamlet cannot degenerate
-into vulgar fright.
-
-_Coroll._--Of all the eclectics, Domenichino alone composed for
-expression; but his expression compared with Raffaello's is the
-expression of Theocritus compared with that of Homer. A detail of pretty
-images is rather calculated to diminish than to enforce energy with the
-whole: a lovely child taking refuge in the bosom of a lovely mother is
-an idea of nature, and pleasing in a lowly or domestic subject; but
-amidst the terrors of martyrdom, it is a shred tacked to a purple robe.
-In touching the circle that surrounds the Ananias of Raffaelle, you
-touch the electric chain; an irresistible spark darts from the last as
-from the first, and penetrates and subdues. At the Martyrdom of St.
-Agnes,[20] you saunter amidst the mob of a lane, where the silly chat of
-neighbouring gossips announces a topic as silly, till you find, with
-indignation, that instead of a broken pot, or a petty theft, you are to
-witness a scene for which Heaven opens, the angels descend, and Jesus
-rises from his throne.
-
-99. Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command
-over the eye.
-
-_Coroll._--On beauty, unsupported by vigour and expression, Homer dwells
-less than on active deformity; he tells us, in three lines, that Nireus
-led three ships, his parentage, his form, his effeminacy; but opens in
-Thersites a source of comedy and entertainment.
-
-Raffaelle not only subjected beauty to expression, but, at the command
-of invention, degraded it into a handmaid of deformity: thus the flowers
-of infancy and youth, virility and age, are scattered round the
-temple-gate, to impress us more by comparison with the distorted beings
-that crawl before and defy the powers of every other hand but the one
-delegated by Omnipotence.[21]
-
-100. Imitation seems to cease, where the ideal part begins.
-
-101. The imitator rises above the copyist by generalizing the individual
-to a class; the idealist mounts above the imitator by uniting classes.
-
-102. The imitator, by comparison and taste, unites the scattered limbs
-of kindred excellence; the idealist, by the "mind's eye," fixes,
-personifies, embodies possibility: modes and degrees of single powers
-are the province of the former; the latter unites whatever implies no
-contradiction in an assemblage of varied excellence.
-
-_Coroll._--This is best explained by the Ilias. Each individual of Homer
-forms a class, and is circumscribed by one quality of heroic power;
-Achilles alone unites their different energies.
-
-The height, the strength, the giant-stride and supercilious air of Ajax;
-the courage, the impetuosity, the never-failing aim, the never-bloodless
-stroke of Diomedes; the presence of mind, the powerful agility of
-Ulysses; the velocity of the lesser Ajax; Agamemnon's sense of
-prerogative and domineering spirit,--assign to each his separate class
-of heroism, yet lessen not their shades of imperfection. Ajax appears
-the warrior rather than the leader; Ulysses is too prudent to be more
-than brave; the hawk more than the eagle predominates in the son of
-Oileus; Agamemnon has the prerogative of power, but not of heroism;
-Diomede alone might appear to have been raised too high, had he been
-endowed with an assuming spirit. So far the poet found, ennobled,
-classified; but all these he sums up, and creates an ideal form from
-their assemblage, in Achilles:--he is the grandson of Jupiter, the son
-of a goddess, the favourite of Heaven--[22]"What arms can fit me but the
-shield of Ajax? The lance maddens not in the grasp of Diomede to chase
-the flames from the ships. Let him confer with thee, Ulysses, and the
-rest." Such is his language. Before the pursuer of Hector vanishes the
-velocity of Ajax; from destroying Agamemnon he is prevented by Minerva;
-he gives his armour to the son of Menoetius, and disperses all but the
-gods; his spear none can throw, and none tear from the ground when
-thrown; a miracle alone can save those that oppose him singly; when else
-he fights, 'tis not to gain a battle, but to subvert Troy.
-
-What Achilles is to his confederates, the Apollo, the Torso, the
-statues[23] of the Quirinal, are to all other known figures of gods, of
-demi-gods and heroes.
-
-103. Fancy not to compose an ideal form by mixing up a mass of
-promiscuous beauties; for, unless you consulted what was homogeneous and
-what was possible in Nature, you have hatched only a monster: this, we
-suppose, was understood by Zeuxis when he collected the beauties of
-Agrigentum to compose a perfect female.[24]
-
-104. If there be any thing serious in art, it certainly then ought to be
-exerted when religion is the subject; but idolaters and iconoclasts seem
-to have conspired, either to banish the author of their faith to the
-cold sphere of mythology, or to debase him to the dregs of mankind.
-
-_Coroll._--Majesty is the feature of the Supreme Being; no eternal
-Father of the moderns approaches the majesty of Jupiter.
-
-The gods of Michael Angelo are stern. The gods of Raffaelle are affable
-and weak. The gods of Guido have the air of ancient courtiers.
-
-In the race of Jupiter, majesty is tempered by emanations of beauty and
-of grace, but never softened into love.
-
-The Christ of Michael Angelo is severe. The Christ of Raffaelle is
-poised between the heraldry of church tradition and the dignified
-mildness of his own character. The Christ of Guido is a well suspended
-corpse.
-
-"The character corresponding with that of Christ," says a critic and a
-painter,[25] "is a mixture of the characters of Jupiter and Apollo,
-allowing only for the accidental expression of the moment." What magic
-shall amalgamate the superhuman airs of Rhea's and Latona's sons with
-sufferings and resignation? The critic, in his exultation, forgot the
-leading feature of his master--humility.
-
-Whatever be the ideal form of Christ, the Saviour of mankind, extending
-his arm to relieve the afflicted, the hopeless, the dying, is a subject
-that comes home to the breast of every one who calls himself after his
-name:--the artist is in the sphere of adoration with the Christian.
-
-A great and beneficent character, eminently exerting unknown healing
-powers over the family of disease and pain, claims the participation of
-every feeling man, though he be no believer:--the artist is in the
-sphere of sentiment with the Deist or Mahometan.
-
-But a mean man marked with the features of a mean sect, surrounded by a
-beggarly ill-shaped rabble and stupid masks--is probably a juggler that
-claims the attention of no one.
-
-The Resurrection of Christ derives its interest from its rapidity, the
-Ascension from its slowness.
-
-In the Resurrection, the hero, like a ball of fire, shoots up resistless
-from the bursting tomb, and scatters terror and astonishment,--what
-apprehension could not dream of, what the eye had never beheld, and
-tongue had never uttered, blazes before us,--tumultuous agitation rends
-the whole. Such is the spirit of the Resurrection by Raffaelle.
-
-The Ascension is the last of many similar scenes: no longer with the
-rapidity of a conqueror, but with the calm serenity of triumphant power,
-the hero is borne up in splendour, and gradually vanishes from those
-who, by repeated visions, had been taught to expect whatever was
-amazing. Silent and composed, with eyes more absorbed in adoration than
-wonder, they followed the glorious emanation, till addressed by the
-white-robed messengers of their departed King.
-
-105. We are more impressed by Gothic than by Greek mythology, because
-the bands are not yet rent which tie us to its magic: he has a powerful
-hold of us, who holds us by our superstition or by a theory of honour.
-
-106. The east expands, the north concentrates images.
-
-107. Disproportion of parts is the element of hugeness,--proportion, of
-grandeur; all Oriental, all Gothic styles of Architecture, are huge; the
-Grecian alone, is grand.
-
-108. The female, able to invigorate her taste without degenerating into
-a pedant, sloven or virago, may give her hand to the man of elegance,
-who scorns to sacrifice his sense to the presiding phantoms of an
-effeminate age.
-
-109. The collector who arrogates not to himself the praise bestowed on
-his collections, and the reader who fancies himself not the author of
-the beauties he recites to an admiring circle--are not the last of men.
-
-110. The epoch of rules, of theories, poetics, criticisms in a nation,
-will add to their stock of authors in the same proportion as it
-diminishes their stock of genius: their productions will bear the stamp
-of study, not of nature; they will adopt, not generate; sentiment will
-supplant images, and narrative invention; words will be no longer the
-dress but the limbs of composition, and feeble elegance will supply the
-want of nerves.
-
-111. He "lisped not in numbers, no numbers came to him," though he count
-his verses by thousands, who has not learnt to distinguish the harmony
-of two lines from that of a period--whom dull monotony of ear condemns
-to the drowsy psalmody of one returning couplet.
-
-112. Some seek renown as the Parthians sought victory--by seeming to fly
-from it.
-
-113. He has more than genius--he is a hero--who can check his powers in
-their full career to glory, merely not to crush the feeble on his road.
-
-114. He who could have the choice, and should prefer to be the first
-painter of insects, of flowers, or of drapery, to being the second in
-the ranks of history, though degraded to the last class of art, would
-undoubtedly be in the first of men by the decision of Caesar.
-
-115. Such is the aspiring nature of man, that nothing wounds the copyist
-more sorely than the suspicion of being thought what he is.
-
-116. He who depends for all upon his model, should treat no other
-subject but his model.
-
-117. The praises lavished on the sketches of vigorous conception, only
-sharpen the throes of labour in finishing.
-
-118. As far as the medium of an art can be taught, so far is the artist
-confined to the class of mere mechanics; he only then elevates himself
-to talent, when he imparts to his method, or his tool, some unattainable
-or exclusive excellence of his own.
-
-119. None but the first can represent the first. Genius, absorbed by the
-subject, hastens to the centre; and from that point disseminates, to
-that leads back the rays: talent, full of its own dexterities, begins to
-point the rays before they have a centre, and aggregates a mass of
-secondary beauties.
-
-120. The ear absorbed in harmonies of its own creation, is deaf to all
-external ones.
-
-121. Harmony disposes, melody determines.
-
-122. There is not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of fashion, which
-may not be caught with advantage by the hand of art.
-
-_Coroll._--Shakspeare has been excused for seeking in the Roman senate
-what he knew all senates could furnish--a buffoon. Paulo of Verona, with
-equal strength of argument, may be excused for cramming on the
-foreground of an assembly or a feast, what he knew a feast or assembly
-could furnish--a dog, an ape, a scullion, a parrot, or a dwarf.
-
-123. He has done much in art who raises your curiosity--he has done all
-who has raised it and keeps it up restless and uniform; prostrate
-yourself before the genius of Homer.
-
-124. Difficulties surmounted to obtain what in itself is of no real
-value, deserve pity or contempt: the painted catalogue of wrinkles by
-Denner are not offsprings of art, but fac-similes of natural history.
-
-125. Love for what is called deception in painting, marks either the
-infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste.
-
-126. Indiscriminate execution, like the monkey's rasor, cuts shear
-asunder the parts it meant to polish.
-
-_Coroll._--Francesco Barbieri broke like a torrent over the academic
-rules of his masters. As the desire of disseminating character over
-every part of his composition made Raphael less attentive to its general
-effect, so an ungovernable itch of copying all that lay in his way made
-this man sacrifice order, costume, mind, to mere effects of colour: a
-map of flesh, a pile of wood, a sleeve, a hilt, a feathered hat, a
-table-cloth, or a gold-tissued robe, were for Guercino what a quibble
-was for Shakspeare. The countenance of his Dido has that sublimity of
-woe which affects us in the AEneis, but she is pierced with a toledo and
-wrapped in brocade; Anna is an Italian Duenna; the scene, the Mole of
-Ancona or of Naples, the spectators a brace of whiskered Spaniards, and
-a deserting Amorino winds up the farce. In his St. Petronilla the rags
-and brawny limbs of two gigantic porters crush the effect which the
-saint ought to have, and all the rest is frittered into spots. Yet is
-that picture a tremendous instance of mechanic powers and intrepidity of
-hand. As a firm base supports, pervades, unites the tones of harmony, so
-a certain stern virility inspires, invigorates and gives a zest to all
-Guercino's colour. The gayer tints of Guido vanish before his as
-insipid,[26] Domenichino appears laboured, and the Carracci dim. Nor was
-Guercino a stranger to the genuine expressions of untaught nature, and
-there is more of pathos in the dog which he introduced caressing the
-returned prodigal, than in all the Farnese gallery; as the Argus of
-Ulysses, looking up at his old master, then dropping his head and dying,
-moves more than all the metamorphoses of Ovid. If his male figures be
-brought to the test of style, it may be said, that he never made a man;
-their virility is tumour or knotty labour; to youth he gave emaciated
-lankness, and to old age little besides decrepitude and beards--meanness
-to all: and though he was more cautious in female forms, they owe the
-best part of their charms to chiaroscuro.
-
-127. Execution has its classes.
-
-_Coroll._--Satan summoning the Princes of Hell stretched over the fiery
-flood; or the giant snake of the Norway seas hovering over a storm-vexed
-vessel, by Gerard Douw, or Vanderverf--are incongruous ideas; would be
-incongruous though Michael Angelo had planned their design and Rembrandt
-massed their light and shade.
-
-128. It has been said, but let us repeat it: the proportion of will and
-power is not always reciprocal. A copious measure of will is sometimes
-assigned to ordinary and contracted minds; whilst the greatest faculties
-as frequently evaporate in indolence and languor.
-
-129. Mighty execution of impotent conception, and vigour of conception
-with trembling execution, are coalitions equally deplorable.
-
-130. He is a prince of artists and of men who knows the moment when his
-work is done. On this Apelles founded his superiority over his
-contemporaries; the knowledge when to stop, left Sylla nothing to fear,
-though disarmed; the want of knowing this, exposed Caesar to the dagger
-of Brutus.
-
-131. Next to him who can finish, is he who has hid from you that he
-cannot.
-
-132. If finishing be to terminate all the parts of a performance in an
-equal degree, no artist ever finished his work. A great part of
-conception or execution is always sacrificed to some individual
-excellence which either he possesses or thinks he possesses. The
-colourist makes lines only the vehicle of colour; the designer
-subordinates hue to his line; the man of breadth or chiaroscuro
-overwhelms sometimes both, and the subject itself to produce effect.
-
-133. The fewer the traces that appear of the means by which any work has
-been produced, the more it resembles the operations of Nature, and the
-nearer it is to sublimity.
-
-134. Indiscriminate pursuit of perfection infallibly leads to
-mediocrity.
-
-_Coroll._--Take the design of Rome, Venetian motion and shade,
-Lombardy's tone of colour, add the terrible manner of Angelo, Titian's
-truth of nature, and the supreme purity of Corregio's style; mix them up
-with the decorum and solidity of Tibaldi, with the learned invention of
-Primaticcio, and a few grains of Parmegiano's grace: and what do you
-think will be the result of this chaotic prescription, such elemental
-strife? Excellence, perhaps, equal to one or all of the names that
-compose these ingredients? You are deceived, if you fancy that a
-multitude of dissimilar threads can compose a uniform texture--that
-dissemination of spots will make masses, or a little of many things
-produce a whole. If Nature stamped you with a character, you will either
-annihilate it by indiscriminate imitation of heterogeneous excellence,
-or debase it to mediocrity and add one to the ciphers of art. Yet such
-is the prescription of Agostino Carracci,[27] and such in general must
-be the dictates of academics.
-
-135. If you mean to reign dictator over the arts of your own times,
-assail not your rivals with the blustering tone of condemnation and
-rigid censure;--sap with conditional or lamenting praise--confine them
-to unfashionable excellence--exclude them from the avenues of fame.
-
-136. If you wish to give consequence to your inferiors, answer their
-attacks.
-
-_Coroll._--Michael Angelo, advised to resent the insolence of some
-obscure upstart who was pushing forward to notice by declaring himself
-his rival, answered: "Chi combatte con dappochi, non vince a nulla:" who
-contests with the base, loses with all!
-
-137. Genius knows no partner. All partnership is deleterious to poetry
-and art: one must rule.[28]
-
-138. The wish of perpetuating a name by enlisting under the banners of
-another, is the ambition of inferior minds: biography, with all its
-branches of "Ana," translation and engraving, however useful to man or
-dear to art, is the unequivocal homage of inferiority offered by taste
-and talent to the majesty of genius.
-
-139. Dive in the crowd, meet beauty: follow vigour, compare character,
-snatch the feature that moves unobserved and the sudden burst of
-passion--and you are at the school of nature with Lysippus.[29]
-
-140. The lessons of disappointment, humiliation and blunder, impress
-more than those of a thousand masters.
-
-141. There are artists, who have wasted much of life in abstruse
-theories on proportion, who have measured the Antique in all its forms
-and characters, compared it with Nature, and mixed up amalgamas of both,
-yet never made a figure stand or move.
-
-_Coroll._--"The Apollo is altogether composed of lines sweetly convex,
-of very small obtuse angles, and of flats, but the soft convexities
-predominate the character of the figure, being a compound of strength,
-dignity and delicacy. The artist has expressed the first by convex
-outlines, the second by their uniformity, and the third by undulation of
-forms. The convex line predominates in the Laocoon, and the forms of the
-muscles are angular at their insertions and ends to express agitation;
-for by these means the nerves and tendons become more visible, straight
-lines meeting with concave and convex ones, form those angles which
-produce violence of action. The sculptor of the Farnesian Hercules
-invented a style totally different; to obtain fleshiness, he composed
-the figure of round and convex muscles, but made their insertions flat
-to signify that they are nervous and unincumbered with fat, the
-characteristic of strength."
-
-"In the Gladiator there is a mixture of the Herculean and the Laocoontic
-forms, the muscles in action are angulated, whilst those at rest are
-short and round, a variety conformable to nature," &c.
-
-    Opere di A.R. MENGS, t. i. p. 203.
-
-142. Neither he who forms lines without the power of embodying them, nor
-he who floats on masses, can be said to draw: the one is the slave of a
-brush, the other of a point.
-
-143. Pulp without solidity absorbs, and relentless tension tears
-character.
-
-144. In following too closely a model, there is danger in mistaking the
-individual for Nature herself; in relying only on the schools, the
-deviation into manner seems inevitable: what then remains, but to
-transpose _yourself_ into your subject?
-
-145. Style is the selection of forms and groups and tones to suit a
-subject.
-
-_Coroll._--The Italian _Style Grandioso_, the French _Il y a du style_,
-the English _great style and breadth_, when applied to a performance,
-only mean, that the artist followed those who have enlarged the
-principles of imitation and execution.
-
-146. Style pervades the object; manner floats on the surface.
-
-147. Antient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece, and
-the servant of Rome.
-
-148. The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of
-climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the
-uniformity of their means. If they had schools, the Ionian, that of
-Athens and of Sicyon appear to have directed their instruction to one
-grand principle, proportion: this was the stamen which they drew out
-into one immense connected web; whilst modern art, with its schools of
-designers, colourists, machinists, eclectics, is but a tissue of
-adventitious threads. Apollonius and the sculptor of the small Hesperian
-Hercules in bronze are distinguished only by the degree of execution;
-whilst M. Angelo and Bernini had no one principle in common but that of
-making groups and figures.
-
-149. Art among a religious race produces reliques; among a military one,
-trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.
-
-150. Modern art, reared by superstition in Italy, taught to dance in
-France, plumped up to unwieldiness in Flanders, reduced to "chronicle
-small beer" in Holland, became a rich old woman by "suckling fools" in
-England.
-
-151. The rules of art are either immediately supplied by Nature herself,
-or selected from the compendiums of her students who are called masters
-and founders of schools. The imitation of Nature herself leads to style,
-that of the schools to manner.
-
-_Coroll._--The line of Michael Angelo is uniformly grand; character and
-beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to
-grandeur:--the child, the female, meanness, deformity were indiscriminately
-stamped with grandeur; a beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of
-poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are
-moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man, his men are a race
-of giants.
-
-The design of Raphael is either historic or poetic. The forms of his
-historic style are characteristic, those of his poetic style he himself
-calls ideal:[30] the former are regulated by nature, but these are only
-exaggerations of another style.
-
-The forms of Julio Pipi are poised between character and caricature, but
-verge to this; even his dresses and ornaments are caricatures; but no
-poet or painter ever rocked the cradle of infant mythology with simpler
-or more primitive grace; none ever imparted to allegory a more
-insinuating power, or swayed the strife of elemental war with a bolder
-hand. What ever equalled the exuberance of invention scattered over the
-T of Mantoua?
-
-The line of Polydoro, is that of the antique basso-relievo, seen from
-beneath (da sotto in su).
-
-The forms of Titian are those of sanguine health; robust, not grand;
-soft without delicacy.
-
-Tintoretto attempted to fill the line of Michael Angelo with colour,
-without tracing its principle.
-
-As Michael Angelo was impressed with an idea of grandeur, so Correggio
-was charmed with a notion of harmony: his line was correct when harmony
-permitted; it strayed as harmony commanded.
-
-Elegance (sueltezza) was the principle of Parmegiano's line, but he
-forgot proportion.
-
-Annibale Carracci, one of the founders of the Eclectic school, attempted
-to combine in his line the appearance of Nature with style, and became
-the standard of academic drawing.
-
-The medium, not the thing, was the object of the _Tuscan_ and _Venetian_
-schools; the school of Urbino[31] aimed at subjecting the medium to the
-character of things; the _Lombards_ strove to unite the separate
-attainments of the three with the unattainable spell of Correggio; the
-_Germans_, with their Flemish and Dutch branches, now humbly followed,
-now boldly attempted to improve their Italian masters; the French passed
-the Alps to study at Rome and Venice what they were to forget at Paris.
-
-Domenichino aimed at the characteristic line of Raffaelle, the
-compactness of Annibale, and the beauty of the antique; and mixing
-something of each fell short of all.
-
-Rosso carried anatomy, and the Bolognese Abbate the poetry of their art
-to the court of Francis. To the haggard melancholy of the Tuscan and the
-laboured richness of the Lombard, the French added their own cold
-gaiety, and the French school arose.
-
-The forms of Guido's female heads are abstracts of the antique. The
-forms of his male bodies are transcripts of models, such as are found in
-a genial climate, though sometimes distorted by fatigue or emaciated by
-want.
-
-Pietro Testa copied the Torsos of antiquity, and supplied them with
-extremities drawn from the dregs of Nature.
-
-The forms[32] of Caravaggio are either substantial flesh or the
-starveling produce of beggary rendered important by ideal light and
-shade.
-
-The limbs of Joseph Ribera are excrescences of disease on hectic bodies.
-
-Andrea Mantegna was in Italy what Albert Durer was at Nuremberg; Nature
-seems not to have existed in any shape of health in his time: though a
-servile copyist of the antique, he never once adverted from the
-monuments he copied to the originals that inspired them.
-
-The forms of Albert Durer are blasphemies on Nature, the thwarted growth
-of starveling labour and dry sterility--formed to inherit his hell of
-paradise. To extend the asperity of this verdict beyond the forms of
-Albert Durer, would be equally unjust and ungrateful to the father of
-German art, on whom invention often flashed, whom melancholy marked for
-her own, whose influence even on Italian art was such that he produced a
-temporary revolution in the style of the Tuscan school. Andrea del Sarto
-and Giacopo da Puntormo became his imitators and his copyists; nor was
-his influence unfelt by Raffaelle himself, but his Christ led to the
-Cross (engraved by E. Sadler),[33] compared with that of the Madonna del
-Spasimo, leaves the claim of superiority doubtful for sublimity and
-pathos. It is a likewise probable that we owe the horrors of the St.
-Felicitas to the abominations of his Martyr scenes. The felicity of his
-organs, the delicacy of his finger, the freedom and sweep of his touch,
-have found an encomiast in the author of the life prefixed to the Latin
-edition of his works. What would have been the result of his intended
-interview, when in Italy, with Andrea Mantegna, had the death of the
-latter (1505) not prevented it, is difficult to guess: if some
-amelioration, certainly not the entire change of style, which the
-uninterrupted study of the antique, during a long life, had failed to
-produce in Andrea himself.
-
-The forms of Luke of Leyden are the vegetation of a swamp.
-
-The forms of Martin Hemskerck are dislocated lankness.[34]
-
-The forms of Spranger and Goltzius are blasphemies on art; the monstrous
-incubations of dropsied fancy on phlegm run mad. This verdict, though
-uniformly true of every male figure of Goltzius that demanded energy of
-exertion, cannot be equally applied to his females, the features of the
-face excepted. On limbs and bodies resembling the antique in elegance if
-not correctness, he placed heads with Dutch features, ideally, often
-voluptuously dressed: such are his Venus between Ceres and Bacchus; and
-still more his Diana and Calisto, a composition which in elegance and
-dignity excels that of Tiziano. In the dreadful familiarity with which
-the guardian snake of the Beotian well approaches the companions of
-Cadmus, he has touched the true vein of terror and its limits, and
-atoned in some degree for the loathsome horror that had polluted his
-graver, when he condescended to copy the abominable process of that
-scene from the design of Pistor.
-
-The male forms of Rubens are the brawny pulp of slaughtermen, his
-females are hillocks of roses: overwhelmed muscles, dislocated bones,
-and distorted joints are swept along in a gulph of colours, as herbage,
-trees and shrubs are whirled, tossed, or absorbed by vernal inundation.
-
-The female forms of Rembrandt are prodigies of deformity; his males are
-the crippled produce of shuffling industry and sedentary toil.
-
-The line of Vandycke is balanced between Flemish corpulence and English
-slenderness.
-
-Sebastian Bourdon, sublime in his conceptions, filled classic ground and
-eastern vests with local limbs and Gallic actors.
-
-Poussin renounced his national character to follow the antique; but
-could not separate the spirit from the stone.
-
-152. The imitator seldom mounts to the investigation of the principles
-that formed his model; the copier probably never.
-
-153. Many beauties in art come by accident, that are preserved by
-choice.
-
-_Coroll._--Neither the froth formed on the mouth of Jalysus' hound by a
-lucky dash from the sponge of Protogenes, nor the modern experiments of
-extracting composition from an ink-splashed wall, are relatives of the
-beauties alluded to in this aphorism.
-
-154. The praise due to a work, reflects not always on its master; and
-superiority may beam athwart the blemishes that we despise or pity;
-some, says Milton, praised the work and some the master: would you
-prefer him who is able to finish the image which he was unable to
-conceive, to its inventor?
-
-155. It is the privilege of Nature alone to be equal. Man is the slave
-of a part; the most equal artist is only the first in the list of
-mediocrity.
-
-156. He who seeks the grand, will find it in a trifle: but some seem
-made to find it only there. Roesel saw man like an insect, and insects as
-Michael Angelo men.
-
-157. Physiognomy teaches what is homogeneous and what is heterogeneous
-in forms.
-
-158. The solid parts of the body are the base of physiognomy, the
-muscular that of pathognomy; the former contemplates the animal at rest,
-this its action.
-
-159. Pathognomy allots expression to character.
-
-160. Those who allow physiognomy to regulate the great outlines of
-character, and reject its minute discriminations, admit a language and
-reject its elements.
-
-161. The difficulty of physiognomy is to separate the essence from
-accident, growth from excrescence.
-
-162. He who aims at the sublime, consults the classes assigned to
-character by physiognomy, not its anatomy of individuals; the oak in its
-full majesty, and not the thwarted pollard.
-
-163. None ever escaped from himself by crossing seas; none ever peopled
-a barren fancy and a heart of ice with images or sympathies by
-excursions into the deserts of mythology or allegory.
-
-164. The principles of allegory and votive composition are the same;
-they unite with equal right the most distant periods of time and the
-most opposite modes of society: both surround a real being, or allude to
-a real act, with symbols by long general consent adopted, as expressive
-of the qualities, motives, and circumstances that distinguished or gave
-evidence to the person or the transaction. Such is the gallery of the
-Luxembourg, such the Attila of the Vatican.
-
-165. Pure history rejects allegory.
-
-_Coroll._--The armed figure of Rome, with Fortune behind her frowning at
-Coriolanus, surrounded by the Roman matrons in the Volscian camp (by
-Poussin), is a vision seen by that warrior, and not an allegory; it is a
-sublime image, which, without diminishing the credibility of the fact,
-adds to its importance, and raises the hero, by making him submit, not
-to the impulse of private ties, but to the destiny of his country.
-
-166. All ornament ought to be allegoric.
-
-167. Dignity is the salt of art.
-
-_Coroll._--In the Salutation of Michael Angelo,[35] the angelic
-messenger emerges from solitary twilight, his countenance seems to
-labour with the awful message, and his knees to bend as he approaches
-the mysterious personage: with virgin majesty and humble grace Mary bows
-to the extended arm of the lucid herald, as if waked from sacred
-meditation, and appears entranced by celestial sounds.
-
-The Madonnas of Raffaelle, whether hailed parents of a God, or pressing
-the divine offspring to their breast, whether receiving him from his
-slumbers, or contemplating his infant motions, are uniformly transcripts
-from the daily domestic images of common life and of some favourite face
-matronized: the eyes of his Fornarina beamed with other fires than those
-of sanctity; the sense and native dignity of her lover could veil their
-fierceness, but not change their language.
-
-The Madonna of Titiano receives her celestial visitant under an open
-portico of Palladian structure, and skirted by gay gardens; the usual
-ray precedes the floating angel; gold-ringleted and in festive attire,
-he waves a lily wand: in sable weeds the Virgin receives the gorgeous
-homage, proudly devout, like a young abbess amidst her cloistered lambs.
-
-Tintoretto has turned salutation into irruption. The angel bursts
-through the shattered casement and terrifies a vulgar female; but his
-wings are tipped in heaven.[36]
-
-168. Dignity gives probability to the impossible: we listen to the
-monstrous tale of Ulysses with all the devotion due to a creed. By
-dignity, even deformity becomes an instrument of art: Vulcan limps like
-a god at the hand of Homer: the hump and withered arm of Richard are
-engines of terror or persuasion in Shakspeare; the crook-back of Michael
-Angelo strikes with awe.
-
-169. Luxuriance of ornament destroys simplicity and repose, the
-attendants of dignity.
-
-_Coroll._--"Simon Mosca, one of the most distinguished sculptors of
-ornament and foliage in the sixteenth century, when proposed by Vasari
-to embellish by his designs the monument of the Cardinal di Monte, was
-discountenanced by Michael Angelo on this principle." Vasari, vita de
-Simone Mosca.
-
-170. Judge not an artist from the exertions of accidental vigour or some
-unpremeditated flights of fancy, but from the uniform tenor, the
-never-varying principle of his works: the line and style of Titian
-sometimes expand themselves like those of Michael Angelo; the heads and
-groups of Raphael sometimes glow and palpitate with Titiano's tints; and
-there are masses of both united in Correggio: but if you aim at
-character, let Raphael be your guide; if at colour, Tiziano; if harmony
-allure, Correggio: they indulged in alternate excursions, but never lost
-sight of their own domain.
-
-_Coroll._--No one, of whatever period of art, of whatever eminence or
-school, out-told Rembrandt in telling the story of a subject, in the
-choice of its real crisis, in simplicity, in perspicuity: still, as the
-vile crust that involves his ore, his local vulgarity of style, the
-ludicrous barbarity of his costume, prepossess eyes less penetrating
-than squeamish against him, it requires some confidence to place him
-with the classics of invention. Yet with all these defects, with every
-prejudice or superiority of taste and style against him, what school has
-produced a work (M. Angelo's Creation of Adam, and the Death of Ananias
-by Raffaelle excepted,) which looks not pale in the superhuman splendour
-that irradiates his conception of Christ before Pilate, unless it be the
-raising of Lazarus by Lievens, a name comparatively obscure, whose awful
-sublimity reduces the same subject as treated by Rembrandt and
-Sebastian of Venice, to artificial parade or common-place?
-
-171. Tone is the moral part of colour.
-
-172. If tone be the legitimate principle of colour, he who has not tone,
-though he should excel in individual imitation, colours in fragments and
-produces discord.
-
-173. Harmony of colour consists in the due balance of all, equally
-remote from monotony and spots.
-
-174. The eye tinges all nature with its own hue. The eye of the Dutch
-and Flemish schools, though shut to forms, tipped the cottage, the boor,
-the ale-pot, the shambles, and even the haze of winter, with orient hues
-and the glow of setting suns.
-
-175. Clearness, freshness, force of colour, are produced by simplicity;
-one pure, is more than a mixture of many.
-
-176. Colour affects or delights like sound. Scarlet or deep crimson
-rouses, determines, invigorates the eye, as the war-horn or the trumpet
-the ear; the flute soothes the ear, as pale celestial blue or rosy red
-the eye.
-
-177. The colours of sublimity are negative or generic--such is the
-colouring of Michael Angelo.
-
-178. The passions that sway features and limbs equally reside,
-fluctuate, flash and lower in colour.
-
-179. The colours of pleasure and love are hues.
-
-180. The colour of gravity, reverie, solemnity, approaches to twilight.
-
-181. Colour in Raffaelle was the assistant of expression; to Titian it
-was the vehicle of truth; Correggio made it the minister of harmony. It
-was sometimes seized, and though reluctant held, but oftener neglected
-by the first; it was embraced, it domineered over, it coalesced with
-the second; it attended the third like an enchanted spirit.
-
-182. Lodovico Carracci was the first who gave in oil the colours of
-gravity, the dignified twilight of cloistered meditation.
-
-183. Annibale Carracci, from want of feelings, though impressed by a
-grave principle, changed the mild evening-ray of his master to the bleak
-light of a sullen day.
-
-184. Colour owes its effect sometimes more to position and gradation
-than to its intrinsic value.[37]
-
-185. The colour of Titian is the most independent of surrounding
-objects; their union may assist, but their discrepance cannot destroy
-it.
-
-186. The harmony of Correggio is independent of colour.
-
-187. Historic colour imitates, but copies not.
-
-188. The portrait-painter copies the colour of his object, but chooses
-the medium through which that object is seen.
-
-189. The mixtures that anticipate the beauties of time are big with the
-seeds of premature decay.
-
-190. The colours of health are neither cadaverous nor flushed like
-meteors.
-
-191. There are works whose effect is entirely founded on the contrast of
-tints, of what is termed warm and cold colour, and on reflected hues:
-strip them of this charm, reduce them to the principles of light and
-shade and masses, and as far as the want of those can degrade a
-picture, they will be fit to take their places on sign-posts.
-
-192. Him who has freshness without frigidity, who glows without being
-adust, whose tints luxuriate though not fermented by putrefaction; who
-is juicy yet not clammy, though broad not empty, sharp without dryness,
-clear not pellucid, airy not volatile, without being clumsy plump--him
-you may venture to call a colourist.
-
-193. Breadth is not vacuity--Breadth might easily be obtained if
-emptiness could give it.
-
-194. The forms of virtue are erect, the forms of pleasure undulate:
-Minerva's drapery descends in long uninterrupted lines; a thousand
-amorous curves embrace the limbs of Flora.
-
-195. Subordination is the character of drapery. The heraldry of dress,
-the rows of aggregated mitres and pontifical trappings, are noticed only
-for the sake of their wearers in the compositions of the Vatican.
-
-_Coroll._--The superiority of style in drapery over that of the limbs
-which it covers in the earliest essays of art after its restoration, is
-not accounted for by the assertion that it is transcribed from the
-antique: if it is, by what unaccountable perverseness did the forms of
-the nudities uniformly escape observation? In painting, this dissonance
-continues more or less offensively from the epoch of Cimabue to that of
-Masaccio, and, him excepted, down to Pinturicchio; and ceases not to
-shock us in sculpture from the Pisani, to the appearance of Lorenzo
-Ghiberti. Nor did that style of drapery mark only the productions of
-Italian art; on this side of the Alps it invested that of Germany, from
-the Angels and Madonnas of Martin Schongaver and Albert Durer, to those
-of Aldegraver and Sebald Behm: in nearly all their performances, Trans
-and Cisalpine, the wearer is the appendix of his garment, chucked into
-vestments not his own, a dwarfish thief hid in a giant's robe.
-
-196. Raffael's drapery is the assistant of character; in Michael Angelo
-it envelopes grandeur; it is in Rubens the ponderous robe of pomp.
-
-197. If Nature has not taught you to sketch, you apply in vain to art to
-finish your work.[38]
-
-198. Some must be idle lest others should want work.[39]
-
-199. He who submits to follow, is not made to precede.[40]
-
-200. Consider it as the unalterable law of Nature that all your power
-upon others depends on your own emotions. Shakspeare wept, trembled,
-laughed first at what now sways the public feature; and where he did
-not, he is stale, outrageous or disgusting.
-
-201. None but indelible materials can support the epic. Whatever is
-local, or the volatile creature of the time, beauties of fashion and
-sentiments of sects, tears shed over roses, epigrammatic sparkling,
-passions taught to rave, and graces trained to move, the antiquary's
-mouldering stores, the bubbles of allegorists--are all with equal
-contempt passed over or crushed by him who claims the lasting empire of
-the human heart.
-
-202. The invention of machines to supersede manual labour will at length
-destroy population and commerce;[41] and the methods contrived to
-shorten the apprenticeship of artists annihilate art.
-
-203. Expect no religion in times when it is easier to meet with a saint
-than a man; and no art in those that multiply their artists beyond their
-labourers.
-
-204. Expect nothing but trifles in times when those who ought to
-encourage the arts are content to debase them by their own
-performances.
-
-205. Mediocrity despatches and exults; the man of talent congratulates
-himself on the success of his exertions--Genius alone mourns over
-defeated expectation.
-
-206. Pride.--Call not him proud who is influenced by the tide and ebb of
-opinion.
-
-207. Modesty.--The touchstone of genuine modesty is the attention paid
-to criticism, and the temper with which it is received, or its advice
-adopted; the most arrogant pretence, the most fiery ambition, the most
-towering conceit, may fence themselves with smoothness, silence and
-submissive looks--Oil, the smoothest of substances, swims on all.
-
-208. Praise.--Despise all praise but what he gives who has been praised
-for similar efforts; or his whose interest it is to blame.
-
-209. Emulation.--The vindication of the innate powers, of the individual
-dignity of man, careless of appendages and accidental advantage, grasps
-the substance of its object.
-
-210. Envy, the bantling of desperate self-love, grasps the appendages,
-heedless of things. Emulation embalms the dead; Envy the vampire, blasts
-the living.
-
-211. Flattery, the midwife of half-born conceits and struggling wishes,
-sometimes persuades, a boy that he is a man, a dwarf that he is a giant,
-but too often enervates the limbs of energy.
-
-212. Vanity.--The vain is the most humble of mortals: the victim of a
-pimple.
-
-213. Those reduced to live on the alms of genius, are the first to deny
-its existence.
-
-214. Shakspeare is to Sophocles what the incessant flashes of a
-tempestuous night are to daylight.
-
-215. Things came to Raffaelle and Shakspeare; Michael Angelo and Milton
-came to things.
-
-216. The women of Michael Angelo are the sex.
-
-_Coroll._--Eve emerging from the side of Adam; Eve reclining under the
-tree of knowledge, in the Capella Sistina; the figures of Night and Dawn
-on the tombs of the Medici, are pure generic forms, little discriminated
-by character, and more expressive by action than emotion of features;
-solidity without heaviness separates them from the females in the Last
-Judgment, which, with the exception of the Madonna and St. Catharine,
-are less beholden to grace than anatomy. The Cartoon of the Leda proves
-that he was not inattentive to the detail of female charms, but beauty
-did not often visit his slumbers, guide his hand, or interrupt the
-gravity of his meditation.
-
-217. The women of Raffaelle are either his own mistress, or mothers.
-
-_Coroll._--This relates chiefly to his Madonnas--Of his saints the St.
-Cecilia at Bologna has most of antique beauty, and, whether imitated or
-conceived, resembles the Niobe; but pride is absorbed in devotion, she
-is the enraptured victim of divine love, and glows with celestial fire:
-the goddesses of the Farnesina, however gracefully imagined, are too
-ponderous for aerial forms and amorous conceits.
-
-218. The women of Correggio are seraglio beauties.
-
-_Coroll._--The enchantment of the Magdalen, in the picture of the St.
-Jerome in the Pilotta at Parma, is produced by chiaroscuro and attitude.
-Sensuality personified is the general character of his females, and the
-grace of his children, less naivete than grimace, the caricature of
-jollity.
-
-219. The women of Titiano are the plump, fair, marrowy Venetian race.
-
-_Coroll._--Venus taking a reluctant farewell of Adonis; Diana starting
-at the intrusion of Acteon, with every allure of attitude, with heads
-dressed by the Graces, are local beauties, sink under the weight of
-Venetian limbs, and are only distinguished by contrast from the model
-that plumped herself down for his Danae. The reposing figure commonly
-called the Venus of the Tribuna, is an exquisite portrait of some
-favourite female, but not a Venus.
-
-220. The women of Parmegiano are coquettes.
-
-221. The women of Annibale Carracci are made up by imitation and
-vulgarity.
-
-_Coroll._--Venus with Anchises, Juno with Jupiter, Omphale with
-Hercules, Diana and Calisto in the Farnese gallery, owe their charms and
-dignity of action to imitation; the celebrated three Maries, Magdalen
-penitent in her hempen shroud, are the conceptions of his own mind.
-
-222. The women of Guido are actresses.
-
-223. The forms of Domenichino's female faces are ideal; their expression
-is poised between pure helpless virginity and sainted ecstasy.
-
-224. The veiled eyes of Guercino's females dart insidious fire.
-
-225. Such is the fugitive essence, such the intangible texture of female
-genius, that few combinations of circumstances ever seemed to favour its
-transmission to posterity.
-
-226. In an age of luxury women have taste, decide and dictate; for in an
-age of luxury woman aspires to the functions of man, and man slides into
-the offices of woman. The epoch of eunuchs was ever the epoch of
-viragoes.
-
-227. Female affection is ever in proportion to the impression of
-superiority in the object. Woman fondles, pities, despises and forgets
-what is below her; she values, bears and wrangles with her equal; she
-adores what is above her.
-
-228. Be not too squeamish in the choice of your materials; you will
-disgrace the best, if you cannot give value to the worst: the gold and
-azure wasted on Rosselli's[42] draperies cannot give value to their
-folds or hide the wants beneath.
-
-229. There are moments when all are men, and only men, and ought to be
-no more; but the artist, who when his daily task is over can lock his
-meditation up with his tools--ranks with mechanics.
-
-230. Date the death of emulation and of excellence from the moment of
-your employer's indifference; and mediocrity of success from the moment
-of his meddling with the process of your work.
-
-231. One of the most unexplored regions of art are dreams, and what may
-be called the personification of sentiment: the Prophets, Sibyls and
-Patriarchs of Michael Angelo are so many branches of one great
-sentiment. The dream of Raffaello is a characteristic representation of
-a dream; the dream of Michael Angelo is moral inspiration, a sublime
-sentiment.
-
-_Coroll._--Of three visionary subjects ascribed to Raffaello and known
-from the prints of Marc Antonio, Georgio Mantuano, and Agostino
-Veneziano, this alludes to the last, called by the Italians Stregozzo,
-by the French "La Carcasse:" an association of ideas big with the very
-elements of dreams, and almost a definition. That it be a conception of
-Raffaello rests on no other proof than the tablet of Marc Antonio and
-its own internal merit; which is so uniform that although one principal
-figure is undoubtedly transcribed from another in the cartoon of Pisa,
-the whole can never be considered as a pasticcio.
-
-232. A trite subject becomes interesting by the introduction of
-appropriate ornaments; a small statue of Moses breaking the tables in
-the back-ground of a Salutation; and a number of Baptists in that of a
-Madonna with her son and Joseph, expressing the dissolution of the old
-and the institution of the new doctrine, both by Michael Angelo,[43]
-give unexpected sublimity to subjects for which Raffaelle and Titiano
-had ransacked in vain the nursery and heaven.
-
-233. Compilation is the lowest degree in art, but let him who means to
-borrow with impunity, follow the statesman's maxim: "strip the mean and
-spare the great."
-
-_Coroll._--A composition of which every thing was borrowed from himself,
-being shown to Michael Angelo, and his opinion asked, "I commend it,"
-said he, "but when on the day of judgement each body shall claim its
-original limbs, what will remain in this picture?"
-
-234. He ought to possess some himself, who attempts to make use of
-borrowed excellence: a golden goblet on a beggar's table, serves only to
-expose its companions of lead.
-
-235. Resemblance, character, costume, are the three requisites of
-portrait: the first distinguishes, the second classifies, the third
-assigns place and time to an individual.
-
-236. Landscape is either the transcript of a spot, or a picturesque
-combination of homogeneous objects, or the scene of a phenomenon. The
-first pleases by precision and taste; the second adds variety and
-grandeur; the third may be an instrument of sublimity, affect our
-passions, or wake a sentiment.
-
-237. Selection is the invention of the landscape painter.
-
-238. He never can be great who honours what is little.
-
-_Coroll._--Grandeur of style and execution do not exclusively depend
-upon dimensions: but in an age and amidst a race who have erected
-littleness or rather diminutiveness of size to the only credentials of
-admissibility into collections, to the passports without which Raffaelle
-himself finds it difficult to penetrate the sanctuaries of pigmy art,
-that which ennobled the age of Pericles, of Julio, and Leone, must be
-content to look to posterity for its reward. If it were physiognomically
-true, that the structure of every human face bears some analogy to that
-of some brute, it might reasonably surprise, that an individual marked
-by nature with no very remote resemblance to a Hippopotamus, should be
-considered as the legislator of a taste equally noted for tameness of
-conception and effeminate finish; but as it is improbable that one
-individual, however favoured by circumstances or endowed with
-all-persevering activity, or arrogance, could stamp the taste of a
-nation exclusively with his own, it may be fairly surmised that he did
-no more than find and rear the seeds of that Micromania which infects
-the public taste.
-
-239. The medium of poetry is time and action; that of the plastic arts,
-space and figure. Poetry then is at its summit, when its hand arrests
-time and embodies action: and these, when they wing the marble or the
-canvass, and from the present moment dart rays back to the past and
-forward to the future.
-
-_Coroll._--Subjects are positive, negative, repulsive. The first are the
-proper materials, the voluntary servants of invention; to the second she
-gives interest and value; from the last she can escape only by the help
-of execution, for execution alone can palliate her defeat by the last.
-The Laocoon, the Haemon and Antigone, the Niobe and her daughters, the
-death of Ananias, the Sacrifice at Lystra, Elymas struck blind, are
-positive subjects, speak their meaning with equal evidences to the
-scholar and the unlettered man, and excite the sympathy due to the calls
-of terror and pity with equal energy in every breast. St. Jerome
-presenting the translation of his Bible to the Infant Jesus, St. Peter
-at the feet of the Madonna receiving the thanksgivings of victorious
-Venice, with every other votive altar-piece, little interesting to
-humanity in general, owe the impression they make on us to the dexterous
-arrangement, the amorous or sublime enthusiasm of the artist;--but we
-lament to see invention waste its powers, and execution its skill, to
-excite our feelings for an action or event that receives its real
-interest from a motive which cannot be rendered intuitive; such as
-Alceste expiring, the legacy of Eudamidas, the cause of Demetrius's
-disorder.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[2] Tacit. Annal. lib. VI. "Nullam ob eximiam artem, sed quod par
-negotiis, neque supra erat."
-
-[3] D. Longin. peri upsous, Sec. 34.
-
-[4] "Les hommes qui ont change l'univers, n'y sont jamais parvenus en
-gagnant des chefs; mais toujours en remuant des masses. Le premier moyen
-est du ressort de l'intrigue, et n'amene que des resultats secondaires; le
-second est la marche du Genie, et change la face du monde."--_Napoleon._
-
-[5] Tacit. Annal. lib. xiv. et xvi.
-
-[6] Difficile est proprie communia dicere. Hor. A.P.
-
-[7] Ton d' ar' hypo zugophin prosephe podas aiolos ippos. Iliad xix. 404.
-----Rhoebe diu, etc.--_Virg._ x.
-
-[8] Plin. lib. xxxv.
-
-[9] This picture, during a period of nearly half a century, graced the
-collection of Charles Lambert, Esq. of Paper-buildings, Temple; where it
-remained without having been washed or varnished. At his death it was
-purchased by my friend Mr. Knowles, has been cleaned by a skilful hand,
-and restored to nearly its pristine state.
-
-[10] Sea Voyage, Act 3rd. sc. 1st.
-
-[11] Dante Inferno, Cant. xxiv.
-
-[12] ETHE. Mores. Plin. l. xxxv.
-
-[13] The Necromantia of Nicias--the sacking of a town, by Aristides.
-Plin. l. xxxv.
-
-[14] A group of Stephanus in the Villa Ludovisi, known by the name of
-Papyrius and his mother, called a Phaedra and Hippolytus, or an Electra
-with Orestes, by J. Winkelmann, bears more resemblance to an AEthra with
-Theseus, or a Penelope with Telemachus.
-
-[15] Gallum inficetissime linguam exserentem.--Plin. l. xxxv.
-
-[16] Plin. l. xxx. W. c. xiv.
-
-[17] Commonly named the Dying Gladiator; by J. Winkelmann called a
-Herald; with more probability the "Vulneratus deficiens, in quo possit
-intelligi quantum restet animae." A work of Ctesilas in bronze, was
-probably the model of this. Plin. l. xxxiv.
-
-[18] Sueton. l. vi.
-
-[19] In one of the cartoons of Raffaello, now lost, but still in some
-degree existing in tapestry and in print.
-
-[20] Engraved by G. Audran.
-
-[21] In the cartoon of Peter and John.
-
-[22] Iliad, L. xviii. l. 93; L. xvi. l. 74 and 75; L. ix. l. 346.
-
-[23] Commonly called the Castor and Pollux of Monte Cavallo,--the name
-given from their horses to the Quirinal.
-
-[24] Plin. N.H. l. xxxv. c. ix. Tantus diligentia, ut Agrigentinis
-facturus tabulam, quam in templo Junonis Lucinae publice dicarent,
-inspexerit virgines eorum nudas, et quinque elegerit, ut quod in quaque
-laudatissimum esset, pictura redderet.
-
-[25] Mengs Lettera a don A. Ponz. Opere di A.R. Mengs, t. ii. p. 83.
-
-[26] Such was probably that austerity of tone in the works of Athenion,
-which the ancients preferred to the sweetness or gayer tints of
-Nicias--"austerior colore et in austeritate jucundior."--Plin. l. xxxv.
-c. xi.
-
-[27] See the sonnet of Agostino Carracci, which begins "Chi farsi un bon
-Pittor cerca e desia," &c. which the author himself seems to ridicule by
-the manner in which he concludes.
-
-[28] Ouk agathon polukoiranie eis koiranos esto. Il. ii. 204. The
-conception of every great work must originate in one, though it may be
-above the power or strength of one to execute the whole.
-
-[29] Pliny, l. xxxiv. c. 8.
-
-[30] In the Letter to C.B. Castiglione. Ideal is properly the
-representation of pure human essence.
-
-[31] Raffaelle and the best of his pupils; their successors, commonly
-known by the name of the Roman school, followed principles diametrically
-opposite.
-
-[32] "Macinava carne," said Annibale Carracci.
-
-[33] AEgidius Sadeler sculpsit ex Prototypo Alberti Dureri.
-
-[34] "Elumbis," as applied by the author of the Dialogue on Orators to
-the style of Brutus, will nearly suit all imitators of Michael Angelo.
-
-[35] In the Sacristy of St. Giovanni in Laterano, painted from the
-cartoon by Marcello Venusti.
-
-[36] This and the foregoing picture are in the Scuola di S. Rocco at
-Venice. The skeleton of the former is known by an etching of _Le Fevre_.
-
-[37] "Whoever looks at a picture by Correggio of a glorified Madonna
-with a St. Sebastian and other figures, at Dresden, is instantly
-surprised by the light of the glory, which has all the splendour of a
-sun, though painted with a low-toned yellow, and dim at the
-extremities."
-
-Opere di R. Mengs, t. ii. p. 161.
-
-[38] John, called da Bologna, showed a model to Michael Angelo smoothly
-polished; Michael Angelo took, and, heedless of its finish, twisted it
-about; then giving it back to the student, "Learn," said he, "to sketch
-before you attempt to finish."
-
-[39] Such was the proud answer of Fra Sebastian del Piombo, grown fat by
-the signet of St. Peter, when asked why he had entirely resigned all
-exercise of his art.
-
-[40] Said Michael Angelo, when asked whether the copy of the Laocoon by
-Baccio Bandinelli was not equal or superior to the original. Titiano,
-with more mordacity though surely with less discrimination, ridiculed
-the copyist by a caricature in which the Trojan with his sons were
-changed to baboons.
-
-[41] "Sineret se plebeculam pascere," said Vespasian to the artist who
-had contrived a machine to convey some large columns with a trifling
-expense to the Capitol, and rewarded him without accepting his offer.
-
-[42] Cosmo Rosselli, one of the Tuscan painters who preceded Michael
-Angelo in decorating the Chapel of Sixtus IV.
-
-[43] This is the Madonna painted for Angelo Doni, now in the Tribuna of
-Florence, and probably the only existing oil-picture of Michael Angelo,
-though Lanzi rejects its title to that. Vasari mentions it with his
-usual extravagance of praise, but appears ignorant of the real meaning
-of the figures.
-
-
-
-
-A HISTORY OF ART IN THE SCHOOLS OF ITALY.
-
-
-
-
-THE TUSCAN SCHOOL.
-
-
-The analogy of style observable in the figures impressed on Tuscan coins
-of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth century, and those found in the
-miniatures that decorate the manuscripts of the contemporary periods,
-proves that Tuscany had its artists long before the epoch which Vasari
-and his copyists fix for the importation of Greek art with Greek
-artists: whether those paintings be all pure Tuscan, or here and there
-interspersed with Greek ones, none will venture to decide, who knows the
-impossibility of drawing a limitary line sufficiently severe to
-distinguish the last spasms of an expiring art from the first
-stammerings of an infant one. Of the still surviving monuments of
-painting during those epochs, it may be sufficient to mention the famed
-Christ, painted on canvass and glued to a wooden cross, of a date
-anterior to 1003.
-
-In subsequent times, the earliest and least unsuccessful essays in art,
-were made by the Pisano. Whilst a Greek sarcophagus at Pisa, storied
-with the incidents of Hippolytus and Phaedra, furnished some elements of
-form to the sculptors Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano, painting made some
-progress with Giunta Pisano: his composition of Christ on the Cross at
-the Angeli of Assisi, though defective in design, possesses life and
-expression.[44]
-
-A similar progress was made by his contemporary Guido or Guidone of
-Sienna; a name not mentioned by Vasari, though in his frequent
-excursions to Sienna, he could not remain unacquainted with the works of
-Guido, at least one which still exists in the chapel of the Malevolti
-in S. Dominico, with the following often repeated inscription and
-date:--
-
-    Me Guido de senis diebus depinxit amenis
-    Quem Christus lenis nullis velit agere penis.
-          A.D. M.CCXXI.
-
-This Madonna, twenty years anterior to the birth of Cimabue, is superior
-to his Madonna in expression, and nearly equal in taste and colour,
-though inferior in style.
-
-Duccio di Boninsegna, probably of his school, was celebrated as the
-restorer of that inlaid kind of Mosaic, called "Lavoro di Commesso." His
-works are from 1275, the year in which he received a commission for
-Sta. Maria Novella at Florence, to 1311, the period at which he was
-employed in the Domo of Sienna. If these dates be genuine, he can
-scarcely have lived till 1357, the year at which Fiorillo fixes his
-death. It is not probable that he should have stretched his span beyond
-a century, which must have been the case, if we suppose that he was
-twenty at the time he painted in S. Maria Novella; it is not probable
-that he should have chosen, or been suffered, to remain idle with the
-celebrity he had acquired in the labours of the Domo; and it is still
-less probable, that, if he was employed, what he produced in the
-interval, between that period and his death, should have perished or
-been destroyed, whilst we are still in possession of the paintings in
-the Domo, which made nearly an epoch in art, at which he laboured three
-years, for which he was paid upwards of 3000 scudi d'oro, the expense of
-gilding and ultramarine included. That part of it which faced the
-audience, represented in large figures the Madonna and various saints;
-that which fronted the choir, divided into many compartments, exhibited
-numerous compositions of Gospel subjects in figures of small proportion;
-it cannot be denied, that with all its copiousness, the whole savours
-strongly of the Greek manner.
-
-Andrea Taffi, born 1213, the scholar of Apollonius, a Greek painter, and
-his assistant in some mosaics at S. Giovanni of Florence, is not
-mentioned out of that line by Vasari and Baldinucci: but the discovery
-of a picture with his name by Ignazio Stugford adds another legitimate
-name to the predecessors of Cimabue.
-
-Buonamico di Cristofano, or Buffalmacco, of facetious memory, was the
-pupil of Taffi. His best works are lost, but from the remains it may be
-suspected that he owes at least as much to the tales of Boccaccio and
-Sacchetti, for the preservation of his name, as to his own powers. There
-still exists in Campo Santo at Pisa, a fresco of the Creation with a God
-Father five ells high, supporting Heaven and the elements; and three
-other stories of Adam, Noah and his Sons; a Crucifix, a Resurrection,
-and an Ascension. We must not look here for much symmetry of design or
-Giottesque elegance; his heads have little variety, and less beauty;
-sameness of features, a vulgar cast, and a gaping deformity of mouth,
-characterize his women; but now and then attention rests on the vivacity
-or physiognomy of some male countenance, especially that of Cain.
-Sometimes he snatches some movement from nature, such as that of the
-terrified man who flies from Calvary: he overflows in particoloured
-drapery, and delights in laboured ornaments of flowers and lace. A St.
-John the Baptist of his, yet existing, deserves to be mentioned as an
-instance of the utility of comparing works in painting and sculpture
-with contemporary coins, in order to ascertain their dates; for the
-same figure is exactly repeated on the Florentine scudo d'oro of that
-age. A jocular host of artists, scholars of this school, we pass over,
-as more important to the reader of the Decamerone and the Novelle, than
-to the student of art.
-
-Lucca, about 1235, possessed Bonaventura Berlingieri, whose St. Francis
-still exists in the castle of Guiglia, near Modena, and is described as
-a work of considerable merit for its time: Margaritone of Arezzo, a
-pupil and follower of the Greeks, appears to have been several years
-anterior to Cimabue. He painted on canvass, and was the first, according
-to Vasari, who found the method of giving a more solid texture to
-pictures. Some crucifix of his is still seen at Arezzo, and another at
-Santa Croce in Florence, facing one of Cimabue. The style of both is
-antiquated, but not so different in merit to make us refuse a painter's
-name to Margaritone if we grant it to Cimabue.
-
-Giovanni Cimabue,[45] of noble lineage, was an architect and painter. He
-is considered as the father of Italian art, because with him legitimate
-history and a less interrupted series of dates, begin; because he
-succeeded better than his predecessors in disentangling himself from the
-shackles of Greek barbarity, and chiefly because he discovered and
-called forth the genius of Giotto. Vasari may be right in making him the
-scholar of those Greeks whom the Florentine Government had employed to
-paint the Church of Santa Maria Novella; but he errs in placing them in
-the Chapel Gondi, which, with the body of the church, was not erected
-till the subsequent century; he should have assigned them another chapel
-under the church, where time has discovered some vestiges of ancient
-painting. It seems, however, more probable, that Giunta Pisano gave
-Cimabue instruction, if it be ascertained, as Fiorillo asserts, that he
-worked in the great church of Assisi, 1253, when he was in his
-thirteenth year, and Giunta superintended the decorations of that
-fabric.
-
-The pompous visit which Charles of Anjou paid to Cimabue in passing
-through Florence, sufficiently proves the celebrity he enjoyed, if it
-has not been sanctioned by the authority of Dante, who calls him the
-unrivalled champion of his day. Cimabue was then painting the Madonna
-with the Infant adored by six angels; the picture when finished was
-carried in procession from Borgo Allegro to Santa Maria Novella, and
-placed in the Chapel Rucellai, where it still exists. The heraldic
-arrangement of the figures, their physiognomic monotony, the exility of
-the detail and barbarous execution, contrast strangely with the
-elevation and novelty of the artist's conception. Cimabue lost the
-female and the mother in the Queen of Heaven. Insensible to the
-blandishments of beauty, fierce like the age in which he lived, he
-excelled in male, especially aged characters; these he impressed with
-something of a stern grandeur, not often surpassed since. Vast and
-comprehensive in his ideas, he seized on subjects of numerous
-composition, and expressed them in large proportions; those features of
-prophetic grandeur which surprise in his frescoes at the Dominicans and
-Santa Trinita of Florence, are still excelled by the features which he
-displayed in the upper church of Assisi--meteors of the age in which he
-lived. They still exist, nor is it easily conceived how works of so
-different style, against the testimony of Vasari, and the uniform
-tradition of five centuries, could, as they were of late, be ascribed
-to the more regulated hand and gentler spirit of Giotto.
-
-Giotto's year of birth has been disputed; Vasari fixes it to 1276,
-Baldinucci to 1265. He was the son of a cottager at Vespignano, and bred
-to be a shepherd; but, a painter born, he amused himself from infancy
-with attempts to draw whatever object struck his fancy. A sheep which he
-had copied on a flat stone caught the eye of Cimabue, who was in the
-neighbourhood, happened to pass by, demanded him of his father, and
-carried him to Florence to instruct him; but he soon rivalled, and in a
-short time eclipsed his master by a grace and an amenity of execution
-which remained unequalled to the time of Masaccio.
-
-For the rapidity of this progress, unless we were to ascribe it to
-inspiration, we must account from the happy coincidence of external
-advantages with the genius of the man. A period so obscure, admits of
-little more than conjecture, but there is no improbability in supposing
-that Giotto outstripped his master and the times by the same means which
-rendered Michael Agnolo so soon superior to Ghirlandaio,--modelling
-and the study of the antique. We know that he was a sculptor, and that
-his models still existed in the time of Lorenzo Ghiberti. Good originals
-he could find among the fragments of antiquity discovered before his
-time, and scattered over Florence and Rome: from what other source could
-he derive the character of his male heads, and that squareness of form
-so different from the exility and indecision of all contemporary styles?
-The few majestic natural folds of his draperies, and the composure and
-unaffected air of his figures, breathe the spirit of the antique. His
-very defects are the consequences of such a study. His manner has been
-charged with a kind of _statuine_ precision (del statuino), unknown to
-other schools, and unknown to artists who do not form themselves on the
-antique.
-
-If to these conjectures it be objected, that the want of uniformity,
-dryness of design, extremities either faulty or hid under a preposterous
-length of drapery, rather betray a nurseling of Pisa than a pupil of the
-ancients; it ought to be considered that uniformity is the result of
-settled principles; that he who had to remove the rubbish could not be
-expected to give the polish; that he who had to teach eyes to look,
-hands to move, and feet to stand, could not be supposed to make them do
-it with all the correctness, propriety or elegance, they were capable
-of; that a certain gymnophobia equally attends the infancy and the
-decrepitude of taste, and that the approbation of a public and an
-artist's flattery are always reciprocal.
-
-And no artist commanded more of public favour than Giotto. Legislator of
-taste, not in Tuscany alone, but at Rome, Naples, Bologna, and the
-Venetian State, he excelled his master as much in celebrity as he had
-excelled him in grace and method. How soon he did this may be seen on
-comparing his earliest works at Assisi with those of his master in the
-same place. Genuine elements of composition, expressions inspired by
-Nature, accuracy of design, progressively appear. It is no hyperbole to
-affirm, that in certain characters no artist ever went nearer the source
-of expression than Giotto, and that in the maiden airs of untainted
-virginity none ever excelled, and perhaps, Raphael and Domenichino
-excepted, few ever approached him.
-
-Though not the inventor, Giotto was the restorer of portrait-painting;
-resemblance, with character of face and attitude, date from him. He gave
-us Dante, Brunetto Latini, Corso Donato, &c. Mosaic was improved by him,
-and his powers in it shown by the celebrated Navicella, or boat of Saint
-Peter, in the portico of the Basilica at Rome; though restoration has
-transformed it to a work of shreds and patches, and reduced his claim on
-it to the mere name. Missal painting likewise owes him some gratitude;
-and in architecture the grand steeple of the Domo at Florence is the
-work of Giotto.
-
-Implicit imitation checks progress; the numerous school of Giotto were
-for the greater part content to walk behind their master. Taddeo Gaddi,
-the most familiar and most favoured of his pupils, is said by Vasari,
-whom time still suffered to judge with some competence, to have excelled
-him in colouring and mellowness. The works of Taddeo in Sta. Croce
-are inferior in originality and execution to his compositions in the
-Capitolo degli Spagnuoli, where, in the ceiling, he represented some
-Gospel subjects, and in the Cenacolo the Descent of the Holy Spirit, one
-of the beautiful relics of the fourteenth century. On the sides he
-painted the Sciences, with their most eminent professors under each, no
-unfair specimen of poetic conception; here is what remains of vivacity
-and brightness in his tints. Taddeo outlived the period assigned him by
-Vasari; we find him mentioned as late as 1352, which still might not be
-the ultimate date of his life.
-
-Another conspicuous name among his pupils is Stefano of Florence,
-(Fiorentino,) whom Vasari, without hesitation, in every part of the art
-prefers to his master. He was the son of one Catharina, a daughter of
-Giotto; an ardent and inquisitive spirit, quick to discover and eager to
-overcome difficulties; the first who ventured on foreshortening, and if
-success did not fully second his efforts in that, it favoured him in
-perspective, which he much improved, and in the attitudes, variety and
-vivacity of heads. Landino fancied to compliment his memory by repeating
-the silly epithet of "Scimia della Natura," "Ape of Nature," which, from
-the resemblance of his portraits, was given him by the vulgar and the
-dilettanti of his day. His works in Ara Coeli at Rome, at S. Spirito of
-Florence, and elsewhere, perished, and nothing can safely be stamped
-with his name, if it be not a Madonna in Campo Santo at Pisa, grander in
-style than those of his master, but retouched.
-
-Of Tommaso, his son and reputed scholar, a Pieta, which might be taken
-for a work of Giotto, exists at S. Remigi of Florence; and still some
-frescoes at Assisi. They entitle him to the surname of "Giottino," given
-him by his fellow-citizens, who used to say that the spirit of Giotto
-had passed into him and animated his hand.
-
-Without embarrassing ourselves with conjectures on Ugolino da Sienna, we
-pass to the more celebrated name of Simone Memmi, or Simon di Martino, a
-native of the same place, the painter of Laura, and the friend of
-Petrarca, who in two affected sonnets has transmitted him to posterity.
-Whether Simone were the pupil of Maestro Mino as the Siennese, or of
-Giotto as the Florentine writers pretend, is a point beyond decision: he
-restored a picture of the first, and his style has some analogy to that
-of the second, though with more suavity of colour, and more poetry of
-conception. He was the first who dared to fill a spacious facade with
-one composition without dividing it into compartments. Such is that in
-the Capitolo degli Spagnuoli of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, where
-Vasari discovered every beauty of his own time, and where, in the crowd
-of introduced portraits, many have fancied, in spite of chronology, to
-discover the portraits of Laura and her friend; whom probably he did not
-become personally acquainted with till four years after the completion
-of that work, 1336, when he was sent to the Pope at Avignon, became
-familiar with Petrarca, painted Laura, and, strange to tell, reached the
-expectation of the lover, who saw
-
-    "Il lampegiar dell' angelico riso."
-
-Miniature, though the last object of this work, was not the least of
-Memmi's powers. Lanzi has noticed one which fronts a MS. Virgil with the
-commentary of Servius, now in the Ambrosiana at Milan, but formerly
-possessed by Petrarca, who probably dictated the subject, and added the
-following lines:-
-
-    Mantua Virgilium qui talia carmina finxit,
-    Sena tulit Simonem digito qui talia pinxit.
-
-The painting represents Virgil in a sitting attitude ready to write,
-with his face turned upwards as invoking the Muse. AEneas, in martial
-vest and attitude, stands before him, and pointing to his sword, alludes
-to the subject of the AEneis, "Arma Virumque." A shepherd and a
-husbandman, symbols of the Pastorals and Georgics, placed somewhat
-lower, listen to the theme; whilst Servius draws a transparent curtain,
-to denote his labours in unveiling the beauties and removing the
-obscurities of the poet. In this miniature, the originality of
-conception, the beauty and harmony of colour, the varied and appropriate
-drapery, are, however, balanced by rudeness of design, vulgarity of
-character, and deformed extremities.
-
-It was a barbarous singularity of Simone, promiscuously to admit
-different proportions on the same plane: to flank or cross figures of
-natural size with figures a third less than nature.
-
-Lippo, or Filippo Memmi, was the relative, scholar, and imitator, of
-Simone: assisted by his designs, Lippo often executed works, which, had
-he not marked them with his name, would be ascribed to the master: when
-left to his own invention, he rose in nothing above mediocrity, but in
-colour. Sometimes they were partners in the same picture, as in that at
-S. Ansano di Castel Vecchio, at Sienna; sometimes the second finished
-what the first began, as in some works at Ancona and Assisi; and at
-Sienna there remains still something entirely executed by Lippo.
-
-Simone co-operated in the works of S. Maria Novella with Taddeo Gaddi,
-who, with his son, Angelo Gaddi, left a number of pupils, imitators
-through him of Giotto, inferior to both, not much distinguished by
-tradition, and less favoured by time. Of Jacopo di Casentino, the most
-conspicuous, what vestiges remain in the church of Orsanmichele at
-Florence, are in conformity with the style of Taddeo; barriers soon
-overleaped by the vivid fancy of his scholar, Spinello the Aretine, whom
-his own conception of a demon is said to have terrified into insanity
-and death. His son, Parri Spinelli, with barbarous incongruities of
-line, possessed exquisite colour; and his pupil, Lorenzo di Bicci, has
-been compared to Vasari, for the number, dispatch, and opinion of his
-works. Antonio, surnamed Veneziano, whether he were a Venetian or a
-Florentine, is, against evidence of dates and style, supposed to have
-been a pupil of Angelo Gaddi, and to have educated Paolo Uccello, the
-first master of perspective, and Gherardo Starnina, an artist of gay
-style, whose relics live still a chapel of Sta. Croce. They are
-numbered among the last productions of Giotto's expiring epoch, and the
-verge of the fourteenth century, in which we have still to mark, though
-pupils of some other school, the family of Orcagna; Bernardo, a painter;
-Jacopo, a sculptor; but chiefly Andrea, conspicuous for writing,
-painting, sculpture, and architecture, in a degree little inferior to
-Giotto himself. Architects date from him the abolition of the acute
-angle and restoration of semicircular arches, as in the Loggia of the
-Lanzi, which he likewise decorated with sculpture. Some, without
-attention to time, have supposed him the pupil of Angelo Gaddi, but he
-was probably trained to the art by his brother Bernardo, jointly with
-whom he painted in the Capella Strozzi of Sta. Maria Novella, in the
-Campo Santo at Pisa, and alone and better in Sta. Croce, Death,
-Judgement, Paradise, and Hell, placing with Dantesque licence his
-friends among the elect, his enemies with the damned.
-
-The downfall of Pisa had raised Florence to the metropolis of Tuscany,
-and the spirit of its citizens to render its appearance worthy of that
-pre-eminence. Cosmo, styled the father of his country, who tuned the
-public affairs, might with better right have been called the father of
-distinguished talents: never was tyranny meditated on a less suspicious
-plan, or approached by more popular means. The house of the Medici, in
-the quaint Italian phrase, became the Lyceum of Philosophers, the
-Arcadia of Poets, the Academy of Artists. Dello, Paolo, Masaccio, the
-two Peselli, both the Lippi, Benozzo, Sandro, the Ghirlandai, were the
-clients of the family, and emulated each other in their homage. Their
-pictures, according to the usage of the age, full of portraits,
-perpetually presented to the people likenesses of the Medici, and often
-in the characters of the Magi royally robed, the sceptre firmly held in
-the gripe of the Medici, to prepare the public eye gradually for what it
-was soon to witness, the firm establishment of sovereignty in that
-House. The competition of rival citizens, and still more the
-wide-extended influence of religion, diffused Taste and beckoned Talent
-to Florence as to its centre, from every part of Italy. At her call
-Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Filarete, the Rossellini, Verrocchio
-arose, and with their works spread the Elements of Art.
-
-Poetry, that supplies the real features and materials of expression when
-it inspires the thought, arrives at the full display of its powers long
-before its sisters have disentangled themselves from the impediments of
-infancy; and of these, Sculpture, whose aim is infinitely less complex,
-raises the vigorous fabric of forms, whilst Painting is still impotently
-struggling with the rudiments of line, perspective, keeping,
-chiaroscuro, colour; which to unite in an equal degree has hitherto been
-found above the lot of humanity. The imitators of Giotto were in this
-state of struggle; they saw little in chiaroscuro, and less in
-perspective and line; their figures still slip from their planes, their
-fabrics have no true point of sight, their fore-shortenings depended
-solely on the eye: Stefano dal Ponte rather saw than overcame; the rest
-either avoided or palliated these difficulties. The Umbrian Pietro della
-Francesca seems to have been the first who called geometry to the
-assistance of painting, and taught by his works at Arezzo the
-principles of perspective; Brunelleschi formed it into system for
-architecture, and the mathematician Manetti roused the attention of
-Paolo Uccello, who owes the perpetuity of his name nearly exclusively to
-the study of that science. His immoderate attachment to perspective is
-become proverbial;[46] and almost equalled his fondness for birds, from
-which he got his surname. He applied it, from grounds and buildings, to
-the human body, which he foreshortened with a skill unknown to his
-predecessors: and some proofs of it still exist in the figures of God
-and Noe among the chiaroscuroes in the chiostro of Sta. Maria
-Novella, and in the equestrian colossus of Gio. Aguto (John Montacute),
-which he painted in chiaroscuro of terra verde, and which is still in
-the duomo. The art, since its revival, perhaps for the first time showed
-that, if it had dared much, it had dared well: nor did he fall short of
-it in the gigantic imagery of the House Vitali at Bologna; he was,
-however, more employed in painting private furniture: the triumphs of
-Petrarch on some small presses in the gallery of Florence are supposed
-to come from his hand. That he was a master of expression, the instances
-adduced by Vasari leave no doubt; and in describing the flying drapery
-of some friar in the series of pictures relative to S. Benedetto, the
-same writer tells us, that it served as a model to all succeeding
-artists: to such powers, praise of variety is added by the truth and
-diligence with which he copied trees, plants, birds and animals, and for
-which some critic styles him the Bassano of the first epoch. In the
-nearly general wreck of Paolo's works, it is difficult to form a
-judgment of his technic character independent of tradition: but,
-comparing what remains with what we are told, it is evident that he
-reached from one extreme of the Art to the other; and that, if he was
-blameable for frequently playing with a tool instead of using it,
-mistaking an instrument of the Art for Art itself, and means for the end
-of execution, he has been deprived by partiality of the praise due to
-powers which he appears to have possessed in a degree unknown to the
-times that preceded Masaccio.
-
-Masolino da Panicale cultivated chiaroscuro: he was enabled to treat it
-with more truth than his predecessors, by a long practice of modelling
-under the tuition of Lorenzo Ghiberti, the master of design and grouping
-in those days, but whose animation he did not attain. Starnina
-instructed him in colour; and thus by uniting the characteristics of two
-schools, he produced that new style, which, though still infected by
-dryness and clogged by inelegance, possesses grandeur, union and
-breadth: the proofs still remain in the chapel of S. Pietro al Carmine,
-where, besides the Evangelists, he painted several subjects from the
-story of that Apostle. The remaining ones, which he did not live to
-finish, were some years afterward added by his scholar Tomaso Gisioli,
-celebrated by the name of Masaccio from his careless way of living.
-
-Historians, biographers, and poets, unite in dating a new period from
-Masaccio. The compass of his mind led him to uniformity of pursuit, and
-the introduction of style; he had formed his principles on the works of
-Ghiberti and Donatello; perspective he had learnt of Brunelleschi, and
-in an excursion to Rome, it is unreasonable to suppose that he did not
-improve himself on the antique. Gentile da Fabriano and Vittore
-Pisanello were then at Rome, and the high opinion which they are said to
-have expressed of him[47] as the first painter of the age has been
-recorded: it is, however, difficult to say on what that opinion could be
-founded: they were too far advanced in life to see more of Masaccio than
-his juvenile essays, perhaps such as the S. Anna in S. Ambrogio at
-Florence, or what he painted in the chapel of St. Catherine, in the
-church of St. Clemens of Rome, the figures of the ceiling excepted, all
-retouched, and though fine works for the time, of doubtful authority,
-and in no manner to be compared to the pictures del Carmine. Here appear
-the virility of his powers and the legitimacy of his superior claim:
-here the figures, however varied by attitude, pose or are foreshortened
-with that truth and uniformity of success which the less established
-principles of Paolo Uccello did not always reach. In expression,
-sublimity distinguishes Donatello; he always aims at, and sometimes
-succeeds in personifying a sentiment or a passion.[48] Masaccio, more
-dramatic, poises expression by character and propriety; hence he has
-been said, and truly said, to resemble Raffaello.
-
-To be praised immoderately for what, with regard to judgment, deserved
-it least, has, as of others, been likewise the lot of Masaccio: the
-introduction and masterly execution of the man who, in the baptism of
-St. Peter, appears to shiver with cold, is extolled by Vasari, and
-makes, by the verdict of Lanzi, an epoch in art. Had the apostle
-immersed the race of a Northern clime, a man frost-bitten, (_assiderando
-di freddo_,) or impatient of cold, might have been admitted without
-impropriety, but under an Asiatic sun he is worse than superfluous. This
-either Masaccio did not consider, or if he did, fondly sacrificed
-propriety to the expression of an incident, which, had it even been
-admissible, had in itself less dignity, and incomparably less pathos,
-than that of the sick monk on whose eyes and lips the hope of recovery
-seemed to tremble, introduced among the series of pictures from the life
-of St. Benedict, by Paolo Uccello.[49]
-
-A higher and more legitimate praise of Masaccio's expression is, that
-Raffaello not only imitated its general character, but in the same or
-similar subjects sometimes individually adopted it, as in the gesture of
-Paul in the Cartoon of the Areopagus, and that of Adam dismissed from
-Paradise, in the Loggia; and that, if he improved the taste and added
-elegance to the Tuscan's drapery, he closely adhered to its principles,
-simplicity, propriety, and breath.
-
-Of Masaccio's colour, what remains possesses truth, variety, delicacy,
-union, and great relief. He lived not to finish the whole of the Chapel,
-some stories still remaining to be added in 1443, the reputed year of
-his death,[50] which was not without suspicion of having been hastened
-by poison. His other frescoes at Florence have been destroyed by time,
-and perhaps no gallery can produce an authentic picture by his hand, if
-we except the portrait of a youth in the Pitti palace, a work that
-breathes life.
-
-Ghiberti and Donatello had taught Masaccio to find style by selection
-from nature; his followers for half a century, content to look at him
-without adhering to his method, gradually shrunk back to the exility and
-meagreness of the preceding age: without embarrassing ourselves with the
-angelic prettinesses of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, a name dearer to
-sanctity than to art, and whom both his age and missal-taste prove the
-nursling of another school, we pass to Benozzo Gozzoli, his pupil, who
-strove to forget his puny lessons in the bolder dictates of Masaccio.
-
-That he could not soon do it, is evident from the profusion of
-ornamental glitter and tinsel colouring in the frescoes of the Chapel
-Riccardi. He succeeded better at Pisa, where his Scripture stories cover
-an entire wing of Campo Santo. This enormous enterprise, which, in the
-phrase of Vasari might smite with fear a legion of painters,[51] he is
-said to have completely achieved in two years. Everywhere inferior to
-his model in composition, design, and expression, he often goes beyond
-him in vastness and amenity of scenery, a certain play of ideas and
-picturesque exuberance. After all, perhaps more than one hand shared in
-the execution. Benozzo lived long, and lies buried near his work, where
-public gratitude had placed his sepulchre, and inscribed it with an
-eulogy.[52]
-
-Filippo Lippi, a Carmelitan friar, studied and imitated the works of
-Masaccio, especially in compositions of small proportion, with great
-success. Suavity of conception and colour animates his angels and
-Madonnas: in the large historic frescoes at Pieve di Prato, he
-introduced proportions exceeding the natural size, praised as his
-masterpieces by Vasari, who has related Lippi's escape from the convent;
-his captivity among the Moors; the pictures which he painted at Naples,
-Padoua, and elsewhere; his premature death by poison from the relatives
-of the female by whom he had a natural son, Filippino Lippi. Fra Filippo
-died at Spoleti, 1469, on the point of finishing his great work in the
-dome, where Lorenzo de' Medici, who had demanded but not obtained his
-ashes from the citizens, entombed them under a stately monument
-inscribed by Angelo Poliziano. His scholars and imitators were F.
-Diamante of Prato, the partner of his last work; F. Pesello of Florence,
-and Pesellino his son, whom, if we believe Vasari, shortness of life
-alone intercepted from superior excellence.
-
-About this period the first attempts of painting in oil were made at
-Florence, by Andrea dal Castagno, of detested memory, who had improved
-himself by looking at Masaccio. Domenico, called Veneziano, to whom
-Antonello of Messina had communicated the novel mystery of Johan Van
-Eyk, after practising it with success at home, Loretto, and other parts
-of the Papal State, came to exercise it at Florence: caressed and
-encouraged, he excited the envy and cupidity of Castagno, who under the
-mask of submissive attachment, wheedled himself into his confidence,
-obtained the secret, and then assassinated the hapless donor. The
-treacherous but complete acquisition added lustre to his practice during
-life, but time has swept the sacrilegious produce of his hand, and left
-nothing to the memory of "Andrea degli Impiccati," but the execration of
-posterity.[53]
-
-The farther we leave Masaccio behind, the nearer we approach the golden
-epoch, the more lurid becomes the atmosphere of art. Mediocrity, tinsel
-ostentation, and tasteless diligence mark the greater number of that
-society of craftsmen whom Sixtus IV. conscribed (1474, Manni,) to
-decorate or rather to disfigure the panels of the grand Chapel which
-took its name from him (La Sistina): one of its sides was to be occupied
-by subjects from the Pentateuch, the other by Gospel stories. Pietro
-Perugino excepted, the artists convoked were nearly all Florentines or
-Tuscans; viz. Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Bigordi, Cosimo Rosselli,
-Luca, Signorelli of Cortona, and Don Bartolomeo of Arezzo, with their
-assistants. The superintendence of the whole the Pope, with the usual
-vanity and ignorance of princes, gave to Sandro, the least qualified of
-the group, whose barbarous taste and dry minuteness palsied, or
-assimilated with his own, the powers of his associates, and rendered the
-whole a monument of puerile ostentation, and conceits unworthy of its
-place. Nor is it from what there remains of either, that the names of
-Luca Signorelli and Domenico Bigordi claim that attention which history
-owes to the first as the real precursor of Michael Angelo, and to the
-second as the master of his rudiments.
-
-Luca Egidio Signorelli, of Cortona,[54] less to be considered as the
-reviver of Masaccio's style than as the founder of that which
-distinguished the succeeding epoch, might have led its banners, as his
-life stretched beyond that of Raphael and Lionardo, had his principle
-been more uniform. The greater part of his works exhibit the evident
-struggle of his own perceptions with the prescriptive ones of his time,
-and a kind of coalition between the barbarity of the expiring and the
-emancipated taste of the rising aera. The best evidence of this is in the
-Duomo of Orvieto, where in the mixed imagery of final dissolution and
-infernal punishment, he has scattered ideas of original conception,
-character and attitude, in copious variety, but not without numerous
-remnants of Gothic alloy. The angels who announce the impending doom or
-scatter plagues, exhibit with awful simplicity bold foreshortenings,
-whilst the St. Michael presents only the tame heraldic figure and
-attitude of a knight all cased in armour. In the expression of the
-condemned groups and daemons, he chiefly dwells on the supposed perpetual
-renewal of the pangs attending on the last struggles of life with death,
-contrasted with the inexorable scowl or malignant grin of fiends
-methodizing torture: a horrid feature reserved by Dante for the last pit
-of his Inferno, and far beyond the culinary abominations of Sandro
-Botticelli.[55]
-
-Though Luca's style of design was no more that of Masaccio than Michael
-Agnolo's that of Raphael, less characteristic than grand, and fit to be
-the vehicle of those conceptions and attitudes which furnished hints of
-imitation to the painter of the Last Judgement in the Sistina, yet he
-was master of a grace in celestial scenery and angelic attitudes
-unapproached by his contemporaries, seldom equalled and never surpassed
-by his successors.
-
-Luca Signorelli was a painter of much popularity. Urbino, Volterra,
-Florence, Rome, his native and many other towns, possess or possessed
-works of his. He was related to the family of the Vasari of Arezzo, and
-caressed and encouraged to the art his infant biographer.[56]
-
-Another of the artists employed in the Sistina, inferior to Luca, but
-of no despicable (though, if we look at Masaccio, too highly rated)
-powers, was Domenico Bigordi, commonly called Del Ghirlandajo;[57] this
-is he under whose auspices not only his son Ridolfo, but even Bonaroti
-and the best artists of the succeeding epoch, began their course.
-Precision of outline, decorum of countenance, variety of ideas, facility
-and diligence, distinguish his works. He is the first of Florentines,
-who gave depth and keeping to composition: if gold and tinsel glitter
-are not entirely banished from his colours, they appear at least less
-often. He was fond of introducing portraits among his actors, but with
-selection and of distinguished characters; though hands and feet had no
-part in his attention to physiognomy. The churches Degli Innocenti,
-Santa Trinita, and Sta. Maria Novella at Florence, possess his most
-celebrated productions, and many are scattered over Tuscany and the
-Ecclesiastic State. Of the two which he painted in the Sistina, the
-Resurrection of Christ perished; the Vocation of Peter and Andrew to the
-Apostolate Survives.
-
-Cosimo Rosselli and Pier di Cosimo likewise employed at the Sistina,
-inferior in all essential parts to their competitors, owe the perpetuity
-of their names less to their parti-coloured glare and immoderate display
-of gold and azure, which attracted the vulgar eye of their employer the
-Pope, than to the luck of having been the masters of Bartolomeo della
-Porta, and Andrea del Sarto.
-
-Piero and Antonio Pollajuoli, though employed only as statuaries in the
-same Chapel, possessed no inconsiderable powers as painters. Piero's
-pictures at S. Miniato discover the scholar of Castagno, austere
-countenances and deep and massy colour; but in novelty of composition
-and design he yields to his brother and pupil Antonio, whose Martyrdom
-of St. Sebastian in the Chapel Pucci of that church, though humble in
-style, crude in colour, and oddly rather than originally conceived, has
-been numbered with the first productions of the age, because with the
-earliest traces of legitimate anatomy it exhibits its application, and
-subordinates enumeration to function. Both the Pollajuoli died at Rome.
-
-Don Bartolomeo of Arezzo, having nothing to add of his own to the works
-of the Sistina, is mentioned here only as the helper of Luca Signorelli
-and Pietro Perugino; nor is Filippino Lippi, the natural son of Fra
-Filippo, numbered among the companions of Sandro his master, though the
-perpetual recurrence of antique customs and dresses in his works makes
-it probable that he formed his juvenile studies at Rome. Inferior in
-real capacity to his father, he may be praised rather for the accessory
-than the substantial parts of his works: he filled with an unequal hand
-the remaining panels left by Masaccio al Carmine; and in the Minerva at
-Rome, yields the palm in expression and amenity of ideas to his own
-scholar Raffaelino del Garbo, whose early works at Monte Oliveto of
-Florence, and elsewhere, give sufficient evidence that he might have
-raised himself to the first artists of his day, had not the cravings of
-a numerous family crushed his powers, and poverty and dejection hastened
-his death. His contemporary Andrea Verocchio, though a celebrated
-statuary, and a designer of style, has deserved our notice as a
-painter, only because he was the master of Lionardo da Vinci, the first
-name in the annals of Tuscany's golden epoch.
-
-Vinci, a burgh of Lower Valdarno, had the honour of giving a surname to
-Lionardo, the natural son[58] of one Ser Piero, a state notary at
-Florence. Elevated by nature above the common standard of men, born to
-discover, he joined to boundless inquiry intrepidity of pursuit, and
-lofty conception to minute investigation, nor only in the arts connected
-with his own, music and poesy, but in science, philosophy, mathematics,
-mechanics, hydrostatics: this wide mental range, supported by equal
-vigour and gracefulness of body, was commended by every accomplishment
-of a gentleman. Such was the genius whom Nature had destined to
-establish art on elements, to open the realms of light and shade, to
-inspire the subject with its tone, and to poise expression between
-insipidity and caricature.
-
-Notwithstanding the distractions of so many diverging inclinations, for
-powers they could not yet be called, an innate attachment to the art
-appears to have predominated at the earliest period to such a degree
-that Ser Piero determined to place Lionardo under his friend Verocchio,
-whom he soon excelled in painting,[59] and in modelling equalled.
-
-The obscurity which involves the life of Lionardo from his boyish years,
-through the bloom of youth, to the vigour of manhood, can only be
-accounted for by that independence of mind which made him prefer
-indulgence of his own various inclinations to a decided, steady, and if
-more confined, more lucrative pursuit of art. By what means he, whom
-Vasari describes as possessing "nothing,"[60] was enabled to gratify
-studies and fancies equally expensive, no where appears; it appears not
-that he was patronized by the great and rich; he escaped the eye of the
-Medici;[61] it was reserved for Lodovico Sforza to discover and to
-conduct the first citizen of Florence to Milano, and for aught we are
-told, rather from expectation of amusement than motives of homage.
-Lodovico was a dilettante in music, and wished to increase the harmony
-of his concerts with the silver tones of the lyre, invented and
-constructed by Lionardo, who, we are told, soon distanced all rival
-performers, and by the aid of his powers as an "Improvisatore," became
-the object of general admiration: it was then, and perhaps not till
-then, that the Duke cast a steadier eye on his superior accomplishments,
-and allowed the musician to become a benefactor to the public in
-adopting his plans for the establishment and direction of an academy;
-and granting the means for carrying into effect the still more important
-ones of conducting the Adda to Milano, and a navigable canal from
-Martisana to Chiavenna, and the Valteline, &c. plans and effects only
-interrupted by the fall of the Sforzas and the captivity of Lodovico.
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[44] This picture has been confounded with another of the same subject
-by the same master, and the addition of the Donor's portrait, Frate
-Elia, which exists no more. The mutilated inscription on that mentioned
-above, has been thus restored by Lanzi,
-
-    JuNTA PISanus
-    JunTINI Me fecit.
-
-
-[45] Born 1240, died 1300.
-
-[46] "Oh che dolce cosa e questa prospettiva!" Oh what a dulcet thing is
-this perspective! This exclamation, usual with Paolo nodding over his
-compasses when his wife called him to bed, though too late to furnish
-the hint of a Novel to Boccaccio, has been fondly repeated by some grave
-writers from Vasari to the author of Lorenzo de' Medici, and has
-contributed to place Paolo, with the mystic help of his surname, in
-rather a ludicrous light.
-
-[47] Maffei's Verona Illustrata, t. iii. p. 277.
-
-[48] He was the precursor of Michael Agnolo, and deserved the motto by
-which Borghini marked some of their designs in the portfolio of Vasari,
-(Vita di Donato.) viz.
-
-    E Donatos Bonarrotizei,
-    E Bonarrotos Donatizei.
-
-
-[49] "Vi e un monacho vecchio con due grucce sotto le braccia, nel qual
-si vide un affetto mirabile, e forse speranza di riaver la
-sanita."--Vasari, Vita di P. Uccello, t. ii. p. 56.
-
-[50] Born in 1401.
-
-[51] "Opera Terribilissima--impresa chi arebbe giustamente fatto paura a
-una legione di pittori." On the whole, Vasari seems to lay more stress
-on the quantity than the quality of Benozzo's works.
-
-[52] 1478.
-
-[53] 1478, when by the conspiracy of the Pazzi and their adherents,
-Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated in S. Maria del Fiore, and his
-brother Lorenzo wounded, it was resolved by the Signoria that paintings
-of the conspirators, hung by their feet, should be exposed in front of
-the Governor's palace; and the commission being given to Andrea, he
-executed it with such felicity of resemblance, such variety of hanging
-attitudes, and so much to the contentment of connoisseurs, that from
-that instant he lost the name of Andrea dal Castagno in that of "Andrea
-degli Impiccati," or of the hanged.--_Vasari._ Of this exhibition the
-loss may be regretted, as it would have showed us Andrea in his element.
-
-[54] 1439-40--1521.
-
-[55] There is to the old edition in folio, of Dante, by Niccolo della
-Magna, a print of the Inferno annexed, which bears the name of Sandro
-Botticelli; Vasari in his Life says, that he commented a part of Dante
-and figured his Inferno and published it.
-
-[56] He was the nephew of Lazzaro Vasari, a helper of Pietro della
-Francesca, and great uncle of Giorgio the biographer; who in the Life of
-Luca, with not less fondness than vanity, relates the admonition and
-encouragement he gave to his father and himself, in a visit which he
-paid in his old age to their family at Arezzo.--Vita di L. Signorelli,
-t. iii. p. 9.
-
-[57] His father, who was a goldsmith, invented and first manufactured
-the garlands which were at that time the fashionable head-dress of the
-Florentine girls.--Vasari, Vita di D. Ghirlandajo, vol. ii. p. 410.
-
-[58] Among the uncertainties of dates, those relative to the birth of
-illegitimate children, for obvious reasons the most frequent, are the
-most perplexing. The birth of Lionardo has been fixed at various dates,
-viz. 1443; Lett. Pittor. t. ii. p. 192; 1445, according to the
-computation of Vasari; 1455, by Dargenville; 1467, by Padre Resta; with
-more probability 1444, by D.V. Pagave of Milano, followed by Fiorillo;
-but with most at 1452, by Durazzini, adopted by Lanzi. It seems
-improbable that Verocchio, the friend of Ser Piero, should have been
-only twelve years older than his pupil. Lionardo died in 1519.
-
-[59] In the figure of the Angel, conceived and executed by him, in the
-Baptism of the Saviour, at St. Salvi, which excelled the work of
-Verocchio so much, that indignant to be outdone by a boy, he dropped the
-pencil, and for ever abandoned painting. The statues of St. Thomas, in
-Orsanmichele at Florence, and of the Horse of Collevere at Venice, prove
-that Verocchio's real talent was sculpture: but the models of the three
-statues cast in bronze, by Rustici, for S. Giov. at Florence, and that
-of the great horse at Milano, place the pupil at least upon a level with
-the master in that branch of art.
-
-[60] "E non avendo egli, si puo dir nulla, e poco lavorando, del
-continuo tenne servitori, e cavalli, &c." For all this it is the more
-difficult to account, as an attempt to possess himself of the
-philosopher's stone has never been mentioned among Lionardo's
-eccentricities, though he was familiar with alchymists.
-
-[61] Lorenzo de' Medici occurs not in the Life of Lionardo, and his
-acquaintance with Leo X. and Giuliano de' Medici relates to the latter
-periods of it.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF FLORENCE.
-
-
-We are now arrived at the epoch which forms the distinctive character of
-the Tuscan school, the epoch of Michael Agnolo. In placing him here,
-chronology has been less attended to than the spirit of works; for Fra
-Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, and others, his contemporaries or juniors,
-belong more properly to the period of Lionardo than his; the elements of
-which he gave in the Cartoon of Pisa, and the consummation in the
-Capella Sistina, on which his school and the imitation of his style were
-founded; and to which the politics of his time, the splendid oligarchy
-of the Medici, and the fierce republican spirit of their opponents, gave
-an energy and produced efforts, unknown to society in repose.
-
-Notwithstanding the insinuating arts by which the Medici had debauched
-public affection, and that undermining power which at last changed
-influence to tyranny, they were in less than a century[62] three times
-exiled from their country. The first, the banishment of Cosmo, called
-the Father of his Country, lasted not above one year, and drew no
-consequences; for the interval between it and the next (1494) was marked
-with uniform success, and its last twenty years[63] with the splendid
-administration and the extended patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
-His Garden near the church of S. Marco, which he opened as a repository
-and a school of art, has been little less celebrated than the Hesperian
-ones of old: it contained, if not all that had been discovered, what
-could be purchased of antique statues, basso-relievoes, and fragments of
-every kind; and the apartments were hung with pictures, cartoons, and
-designs of Donatello, Brunellesco, Paolo Uccello. Fra Giovanni da
-Fiesole, Masaccio, &c.; here the student was not only instructed, but,
-by the magnificence of the founder, supported; and it may without
-exaggeration be asserted, that whatever rose to eminence in the art at
-that period, was the offspring of Lorenzo's garden.
-
-His death was followed by the expulsion of his sons, Pietro, Giovanni,
-afterwards Leo X., and Julian, in the sequel Duke of Nemours. An
-immediate anarchy succeeded the expulsion; the populace broke into their
-houses, destroyed or carried off their furniture, and demolished the
-residence of Giovanni, the garden of Lorenzo, and the palace on the Via
-Larga,[64] at once. The numerous partisans of the family, however,
-contrived to save much.[65]
-
-Other circumstances conspired to render this interval of anarchy
-pernicious to art, till the return of the Medici in 1512. Towards the
-close of the fifteenth century, the Dominican Fra Girolamo Savonarola,
-of enthusiastic memory, by prophecies and sermons, loaded with
-democratic principles, gained gradually such an ascendancy over the
-minds of the people, that the Signoria found themselves forced to adopt
-a senate at large; in other words, to submit to a democracy. But
-Savonarola, not content with political victory, aimed at a total
-revolution in morals, and continued to lash the profligacy of public
-manners, overflowing in voluptuous song and music, or gazing at the
-lascivious nudities of statues and pictures, as irresistible incentives
-to vice. It had been customary during carnival, to erect certain cabins
-in the market-place, to set them on fire on the eve of Ash-Wednesday,
-and bid them farewell amid the shouts of convivial mirth and the frolic
-of amorous dalliance. Savonarola instituted in 1497 a public festival of
-another kind: a large scaffold was erected in the market-place, a vast
-number of the finest specimens in painting and sculpture, offensive from
-their nudities, were collected; the pictures placed on the first step;
-the sculptures, especially when portraits of first-rate Florentine
-belles, disposed on the second; the whole inclosed by foreign precious
-tapestry, and that, with great solemnity, set on fire. The scaffolding
-of the next year excelled the first in magnificence; its gorgeous
-apparel invested the busts of the most celebrated beauties of former
-years; those of the Bencina, Lena Morella, Bina and Maria de'Lenzi,
-works of the most eminent sculptors; on it was placed a copy of
-Petrarca, decorated with gold, missal-painting, and miniatures,
-estimated at fifty scudi d'oro; and to prevent theft, the whole was
-constantly guarded. The procession approached, surrounded the scaffold,
-and amid a concert of consecrating hymns, bells, trumpets, cymbals, and
-the acclamations of the Signoria and the people, the victims, sprinkled
-with holy water, were delivered to flame by the torches of the
-guards.[66] Such was the epidemic influence of this enthusiasm, that
-even artists, the gentle Fra Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and many more
-caught the infection, and contributed to the sacrifice, till the death
-of Savonarola and the return of the Medici extinguished the furor.[67]
-
-The democracy, however, gave origin to two works, which not only atoned
-for the ravages it had committed, but whose splendour no subsequent aera
-of art has been able to eclipse, or perhaps to equal: the two Cartoons
-of Lionardo da Vinci and M. Angelo Buonarroti, destined to decorate the
-senatorial hall, by order of Pietro Soderini. They produced an immediate
-revolution in art, but disappeared like meteors in the tumult that
-attended the reinstatement of the Medici and the fall of the
-Gonfaloniere, 1512.
-
-The third expulsion of the Medici--Hippolyto and Alessandro, the sons of
-Giuliano the Magnificent, and all their relatives--was the consequence
-of the sack of Rome, 1527, and the Pontificate of Clemente VII. The
-Medici, pressed by the moment, consigned part of their technic treasure,
-their bronzes, cameos, &c. to the care of their client Baccio
-Bandinelli.[68] During the havoc, Michael Angelo's statue of David lost
-an arm,[69] and the waxen figures of Leo X. and Clemente VII. in the
-church of the "Annunciata," were mutilated and carried off; and perhaps
-much more was lost in the demolition of the suburbs, which took place to
-secure the town itself against the siege of 1529. But active resistance
-and lampoons proved equally ineffectual; the destiny of the Medici
-prevailed, and Florence paid ducal homage in 1530 to Alessandro; whose
-assassination, indeed, by Lorenzo his relative, commonly called
-Lorenzino, produced, six years afterwards, another sedition and farther
-damage to their stores of art by the soldiers, who, at the instigation
-of Alessandro Vitelli, broke into and plundered both their houses. Cosmo
-the First succeeded Alessandro, and left uninterrupted dominion to his
-heirs: but if the consolidation of monarchy prevented the momentary
-devastations of insurrection, it failed to re-produce the splendid
-period that flashed athwart the storms of democracy.
-
-
-MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI.
-
-1474--1564.
-
-M. Angelo was born at Castel Caprese, and showed such early proofs of a
-decided attachment to art, that he was put into the school of Domenico
-del Ghirlandaio. Here he soon advanced beyond the principles of the
-master, who, jealous of a rival in his pupil, recommended him to Lorenzo
-de Medici, for admission among the students of sculpture in his garden;
-where, under the tuition of Bertoldo,[70] an ancient scholar of
-Donatello, he soon mastered the elements, and, equally conspicuous for
-his superiority and diligence, attracted the attention and gained the
-patronage of Lorenzo, but excited the envy of his fellow-students, one
-of whom, Torrigiano, on some slight provocation, with a blow of the fist
-shattered his nose, which left him with a mark for life.
-
-That predilection for sculpture imbibed from his earliest days and now
-invigorated by the incessant study of the antique with practice, the
-successful specimens mentioned in copies and productions of his own,[71]
-leave little authority to the tradition that he studied much after
-Masaccio.
-
-His mind appears to have anticipated the expulsion of the Medici, and he
-left Florence for Bologna, where he found a protector in Aldrovandi, for
-whom he executed two small statues, of an Angel and of a St. Petronius
-on the tomb of S. Dominico. After his return to Florence he continued to
-work in sculpture, and a legend, less probable than amusing, of an Amor
-sold for an antique to Cardinal Riario, has been fondly repeated by his
-biographers. He now went to Rome and produced two of his most surprising
-works--the Bacchus of the Museo Fiorentino, and the Madonna della Pieta
-in one of the chapels of the Basilica of S. Pietro. On his return to
-Florence, Pietro Soderini tried his powers on a huge block of marble,
-mutilated by the ignorance of one Maestro Simone: he contrived to rear
-from it the statue of David, which, in 1504, was placed, and still
-remains in front of the old palace. These works, not less discriminated
-by peculiarity of character, than connected by propriety of style and
-energy of finish, were produced within the short period of six years,
-and equally prove the wide range of his powers, and the perseverance of
-his application to sculpture.
-
-What he did as painter, during, or soon after this period, is for us
-reduced to the single specimen which he executed for Angelo Doni; for
-the far-famed Cartoon of Pisa, of which we soon shall have occasion to
-speak, begun in contest with Lionardo da Vinci, but not finished till
-after his second return from Rome, perished, as a whole, long before the
-middle of the sixteenth century.
-
-Soon after his election to the Pontificate, Giulio II. smitten with the
-wish of a sepulchral monument, called M. Angelo to Rome for that
-purpose. His first plan was to make it colossal, and on all sides
-detached, but the obstacles which were thrown in its way for a number of
-years, reduced it at length to the form in which it now appears at S.
-Pietro in Vincoli, with probably one figure only by M. Angelo's own
-hand, the celebrated statue of Moses in front. The attachment of Giulio
-to M. Angelo was great, but the independent spirit of the artist
-greater. Indignant at being refused access once to the Pontiff, whose
-mind was worried by the disturbances at Bologna, he fled, and though
-pursued by five messengers with letters pressing him to come back,
-obstinately went on to Florence; nor could his three breves[72]
-addressed to the Signoria, draw him from his asylum; till Pier Soderini
-guaranteed his safety by investing him with the title of envoy from the
-Republic. Thus equipped, and accompanied by Cardinal Soderini, brother
-to the Gonfaloniere, he set out for Bologna, was reconciled to the Pope,
-and made his statue in bronze. It was placed over the gate of S.
-Petronio, but was thrown down in 1511 by the party of the Bentivogli,
-and, with the exception of the head, said to have been preserved by Duke
-Alfonso of Ferrara, converted into a piece of heavy artillery.
-
-Scarcely returned to Rome, M. Angelo, by command of Giulio, instigated
-as it is supposed by Bramante and Giuliano da Sangallo, found himself
-forced to try his powers on a novel theatre of art, the decoration of
-the ceiling and lunette of the Capella Sistina. Whatever were the
-motives of the two architects, whether private pique, or envy of M.
-Angelo's influence over the Pontiff, or friendship for Raffaello, and
-the desire of showing his superiority over one whom they deemed a novice
-in fresco, they deserved the thanks of their own and every succeeding
-epoch, for the most eminent service ever rendered to art. Vasari owns
-that M. Angelo, conscious of his want of practice, endeavoured to escape
-from the commission, and even proposed Raffaello as fitter for the task;
-but his powers soon supplied what circumstances had refused, and single
-conquered with every obstacle Time itself; for, nearly fabulous to
-relate, the whole, though interrupted more than once by the Pontiff's
-impatience, was sufficiently finished to be exhibited to the public in
-one year and ten months.
-
-This task finished, M. Angelo, eager to resume his labours on the
-monument, was disappointed by the sudden death of Giulio, (1513,) and
-the election of Leo X. produced a total change in his situation; he was
-ordered to Florence to construct the front of the Laurentian Library.
-
-Though the death of Leo, or rather the accession of Adrian VI. had
-paralysed art, Michael Angelo employed the dull interim by adding some
-statues to the monument of Giulio; till, in 1523, Clemente VII.
-reappointed him to the superintendence of the new sacristy and library
-of S. Lorenzo. It was about this time that he finished and sent to Rome
-the statue of Christ, still placed in the Minerva.
-
-The arts received a new shock from the sack of Rome, 1527, and the
-expulsion of the Medici from Florence, at which crisis the Signoria
-conferred on Michael Angelo, who was a warm Republican,[73] the
-superintendence of the fortifications and the defence of Monte Miniato,
-on which the safety of the city depended. Meanwhile what time he could
-save from his public trust, he secretly[74] employed to finish or
-advance the symbolic and monumental statues of S. Lorenzo, and from the
-cartoon to paint in distemper a Leda for the Duke of Ferrara. Finding,
-however, that no defence could save the city, he saved himself by the
-secret paths of S. Miniato, and escaped to Venice, 1529; from whence he
-only returned to find the dominion of the Medici once more established,
-himself pardoned, again employed by Clemente at S. Lorenzo, and soon
-after sent for to Rome on a plan of painting two central frescoes, the
-Last Judgement and the Fall of Lucifer, for the Sistine Chapel,--long
-favourite ideas of the artist,[75] but with the works at Florence for
-that time checked by the death of Clemente, 1534. He now with redoubled
-ardour applied to the monument of Giulio, urged by his devotion to the
-house of De Rovere, the considerable pecuniary advance he had received,
-and the threats of the executors and the Duke of Urbino; but the
-accession of Paul III. again frustrated his exertions: the Pontiff
-resolved to have the exclusive boast of powers he had so long admired,
-interposed his authority, and obliged the executors and agents of the
-Duke to give up the original circumambient plan, and content themselves
-with the storied front which exists now.
-
-This adjusted, Michael Angelo immediately proceeded to comply with the
-wishes of the Pope: if Paolo was inferior to Giulio in impetuosity, he
-was his equal in fervour of attachment to art, and excelled him, if not
-every other name which patronage has distinguished, in personal respect
-and public homage to the artist. No work ever received countenance and
-honours equal to those conferred on the Last Judgement of Michael
-Angelo, from its plan to its ultimate finish by Paolo Farnese. His first
-visit to the artist was attended by a train of ten cardinals:[77] though
-ambitious to have the work consecrated to his own name, in deference to
-Michael Angelo's attachment to the memory of Giulio, he submitted to his
-refusal of displacing the arms of De Rovere at the top of the picture,
-in favour of the Farnesian.[78] Induced by the specious sophistry of
-Sebastian del Piombo to prefer oil to fresco in the execution of the
-work, he permitted the wall to be prepared for that purpose, but on
-Michael Angelo's declaring oil painting an art for women only and
-sedentary tameness, he yielded to the decision, and patiently saw the
-whole apparatus dashed to the ground. When, before its final disclosure
-to the public, he took a private view of the whole composition at the
-Chapel, less convinced than irritated by the bigoted philippic of an
-attendant prelate against the daring display of immodest nudity, he
-acquiesced in the artist's well-known revenge, and refused to revoke or
-mitigate the punishment inflicted on the unlucky critic.[79]
-
-The first conception of the Last Judgement, which completes the plan
-originally laid down for the decoration of the Chapel, notwithstanding
-the obstacles which protracted the execution, must find its date in the
-Pontificate of Giulio, from the Cartoons probably begun under Clemente.
-M. Angelo proceeded to the fresco itself at an early period, if not
-immediately after the accession of Paolo, 1534, and finished it in 1541,
-or perhaps 1542; for both these years are mentioned by Vasari; who, if
-not present at the removal of the scaffolding, attended its immediate
-display to the public. The completion of this 'multitudinous' work, M.
-Angelo, at an age of 68, or somewhat beyond, might justly consider as
-the consummation of his public career in painting: but the Pontiff,
-still ambitious to possess exclusive specimens of his powers in a fabric
-built by his own orders and consecrated to his own name, obliged him to
-continue his labours in two huge frescoes of the Capella Paolina,
-representing the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St.
-Peter. The lassitude inseparable from the waste of so much energy on the
-Last Judgement, the mental and bodily fatigue attendant on the
-arrangement and execution of new plans, if less enormous less congenial,
-protracted their ultimate completion to his 75th year, proved them
-children of necessity rather than choice, and confirmed the truth of
-his observation to Vasari, that painting in fresco, the union of powers
-required for a great public work, is not an art of old age.
-
-And here indeed terminates the career of the Painter; the remainder of
-his life was divided between architecture and sculpture. This, which had
-always been his favourite pursuit, was now become the darling companion
-of his private hours, the amusement of his solitude, and the
-preservative of his health--for this purpose he furnished his study with
-a colossal block, destined for the complicated group of a Pieta: but
-though age had neither tamed his conception nor palsied his hand,[80] it
-checked his perseverance; he no longer struggled to subdue the flaws of
-his materials or to give them the air of beauties; he dismissed the
-group unfinished, and continued to exercise himself on another of
-inferior size.
-
-The death of Antonio da S. Gallo, 1546, put it in the power of Paolo to
-create M. Angelo architect of S. Pietro, a trust of which he acquitted
-himself with a superiority which baffled all the opposition of venality
-and envy. He was probably, from Ictinus to our time, the first and the
-last of architects who refused salary and emolument, and consecrated his
-labours to divine love. Some of his successors, perhaps, might insinuate
-that he indemnified himself with being at the same time architect of the
-Campidoglio and the Farnese Palace.
-
-After the demise of Paolo, Cosmo I. Duke of Florence, by means of
-Vasari, earnestly intreated him to pass the remainder of his life at
-Florence; but the infirmities of age, and still more, inward grief for
-the subversion of the republic, with indignation at the established
-usurpation of the Medici, rendered these intreaties ineffectual.
-Equally unshaken by them and the vile rumour of his dotage, spread by
-the venal gang of Pirrho Ligorio, after crowning the Basilica with its
-cupola, he steered through calm and tempest on to his ninetieth year,
-the last of his life, 1564, and was buried in S. Apostoli; but, by the
-orders of Cosmo, secretly conveyed to Florence, where the pomp of
-academical exequies, the starched eloquence of Varchi, and a monument in
-Santa Croce from a design of Vasari, awaited his remains.
-
-It is difficult to decide who understood Michael Angelo less, his
-admirers or his censors; though both rightly agree in placing him at the
-head of an epoch; those of the re-establishment, these of the
-perversion, of style.
-
-All extremes touch each other: languid praise and frigid censure belong
-to the paths of mediocrity, but he who enlarges the circle of knowledge,
-passes from the realm of talents to that of genius, leaps on an
-undiscovered or long-lost shore, and stamps it with his name, commands
-indiscriminate homage, and provokes irreconcilable censure. He who
-reflects on the "Piu che Uman, Angelo divino" of Ariosto, the "via
-terribile" of Agostino Carracci, and for centuries on the general
-homage of a nation allowed to legislate in art, will not be easily
-persuaded that these epithets, this prerogative, were granted to an
-artist merely for correctness of design or anatomic discrimination, or
-that he exclusively obtained them for uniting sculpture, painting, and
-architecture in himself; three branches of one stem, and diverging only
-in mechanism and application, they have been more than once eminently
-united by others, and were seldom altogether separated before the time
-of Carlo Maratta. And yet this is all on which the eminence of Michael
-Angelo has been hitherto supposed to rest, all that can be gathered from
-the astrologic nonsense and the Tuscan loquacity of his blind adorer,
-Vasari--and what he found not, it would be time idly lost to search for
-in his contemporaries and successors, down to Reynolds, who, though
-chiefly smitten with the breadth of Michael Angelo, knew him better than
-all the copyists of his school.
-
-The art preceded Michael Angelo as a craft; more or less practice alone
-distinguishes Pietro Perugino from Cimabue: whilst copy and imitation
-remain synonymes, there can be no choice in art; instead of the real
-nature it will copy the accidents of objects, and substitute the model
-for the man.
-
-Michael Angelo appeared and soon felt that the candidate of legitimate
-fame is to build his works, not on the imbecile forms of a degenerate
-race, disorganized by clime, country, education, laws, and society; not on
-the transient refinements of fashion or local sentiment, unintelligible
-beyond their circle and century to the rest of mankind; but to graft them
-on Nature's everlasting forms and those general feelings of humanity,
-which no time can efface, no mode of society obliterate;--and in
-consequence of these reflections discovered the epic part of painting:
-that basis, that indestructibility of forms and thoughts, that simplicity
-of machinery on which Homer defied the ravages of time, which sooner or
-later must sweep to oblivion every work propped by baser materials and
-factitious refinements.
-
-The subject of the Sistine Chapel is Theocracy and Religion, the Origin
-and the first Duty of Man. All minute discrimination of character is
-alien to the primeval simplicity of the moment--God and Man alone
-appear. The veil of Eternity is rent; Time, Space, and Matter teem; life
-darts from God, and adoration from the creature; deviation from this
-principle is the origin of Evil; the economy of Justice and Grace
-commences; Prophets and Sibyls in awful synod are the heralds of the
-Redeemer, and the host of patriarchs the pedigree of the Son of Man. The
-brazen Serpent and the fall of Haman, the Giant subdued by the
-Stripling, and the Conqueror destroyed by female weakness, are types of
-His mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces Him immortal, and the
-magnificence of the Last Judgement sums up the whole and re-unites the
-Founder and the race.
-
-Michael Angelo, in his Last Judgement, with a few exceptions, has wound
-up the life of man, considered as the subject of religion, faithful or
-rebellious; and in a generic manner has distributed happiness and
-misery.
-
-The more finished a character, the more, discriminated by his actions and
-turn of thought from his contemporaries, he pursues paths of his own, so
-much the more he attracts, so much the more he repels; the ardour of the
-one is equal to the violence of the other: he is not merely disliked, he
-is detested by all who have no sense for him; whilst by those who enter
-his train of thought, or sympathise with him, he is adored. Indifference
-has no share in what relates to him, it is a softer word for antipathy--it
-resembles the indifference of a female wooed; her indifference, her
-apathy, is a refusal without a verbal repulse. Where yes or no must
-decide, the mouth that can form neither, rejects. The principles, the
-style of Michael Angelo, are of that so closely-connected magnitude, that
-they are either all true or all false: pretended gold is either gold or
-not--the purer, the simpler a substance, the less it can coalesce with
-another; a pretended diamond of the size of a fist, is either of
-inestimable value or of none. If Michael Angelo did not establish art on a
-solid basis, he subverted it; he can claim only the heresies of paradox
-and receive their reward--disgust.
-
-What Armenini relates as a proof of his nearly intuitive power of
-conception and execution, may be repeated as a much stronger instance of
-his deference and gratitude for the most humble claims. "Meeting one
-day, behind S. Pietro, with a young Ferrarese, a potter who had baked
-some model of his, M. Angelo thanked him for his care, and in return
-offered him any service in his power: the young man, emboldened by his
-condescension, fetched a sheet of paper, and requested him to draw the
-figure of a standing Hercules: M. Angelo took the paper, and retiring to
-a small shed near by, put his right foot on a bench, and with his elbow
-on the raised knee and his face on his hand stood meditating a little
-while, then began to draw the figure, and having finished it in a short
-time, beckoned to the youth, who stood waiting at a small distance, to
-approach, gave it him, and went away toward Belvedere. That design, as
-far as I was then able to judge, in precision of outline, shadow, and
-finish, no miniature could excel; it afforded matter of astonishment to
-see accomplished in a few minutes what might have been reasonably
-supposed to have taken up the labour of a month."
-
-After the demise of Raffaello, legislation in Art was no longer disputed
-with M. Angelo; he not only became the oracle of youth, but appears to
-have inherited all the popularity of his great rival. A signal, though
-little known proof of this, is told by Bellori, in the Life of Federigo
-Barrocci, who, he says, used to tell, that when, drawing one day in
-company with Taddeo Zuccari a frieze of Polidoro, Michael Angelo, as
-usual, passed by on his little mule on his way to the palace, all the
-youths rose and ran to meet him with their drawings in their hands;
-Federigo alone remained bashfully behind in his place, which when Taddeo
-saw, he took his little portfolio to Michael Angelo, who attentively
-examined the designs, among which was a careful copy of his Moses; he
-praised it, and desiring to see the lad who had drawn that figure,
-animated him to pursue the method of study which he had begun.
-
-The deference which he paid to the unassuming and the humble, he amply
-redeemed by the full assumption of his rights, and conscious assertion
-of superiority, when provoked to the contest by those who considered
-themselves as his equals, entered into competition with him, or
-attempted to share in his labours. Thus he repaid the sarcasms of Pietro
-Perugino, by calling him publicly a dunce in art; and when Pietro
-smarting, impatient of the ridicule, summoned him to the Tribunal of the
-Eight, he made good his charge, and saw him dismissed with contempt.
-Thus he rejected all partnership with Jacopo Sansovino, in the execution
-of the Facciata of San Lorenzo at Florence, though Leone X. appears to
-have intended it, by sending both together to Pietra Santa to provide
-the marbles necessary for that purpose, and examining both their models.
-
-When Paolo III. had resolved on the fortifications of the Borgo, and, in
-order to ascertain the best mode of doing it, had assembled many persons
-of rank, with Antonio da Sangallo, Michael Angelo, as architect of the
-fortifications of S. Miniato at Florence, was likewise invited to join
-the assembly, and, after much contest, his opinion asked; he freely told
-it, though contrary to that of Sangallo and others present; and when the
-architect bade him to be content with the prerogatives of sculpture and
-painting without pretending to skill in fortification, he replied, that
-of the former two he knew little, but that of fortification, considering
-the time his mind had dwelt on it, and the proofs he had given of the
-solidity of his theory, he did not hesitate to claim more knowledge than
-what came to the share of Sangallo and all his relatives; and then
-proceeded, in the presence of all, to point out the many errors which
-Antonio had committed.
-
-Another instance of a still greater independence of mind, Vasari[81] has
-recorded in the peremptory answer which M. Angelo gave to the Committee
-of Cardinals, &c. instigated by the partisans of Sangallo, (La Setta
-Sangallesca, Vasari,) to inspect the process of the fabric of S. Pietro,
-and to examine his plan. Ignorant of his design to derive the main light
-of the edifice from the cupola, they found fault with the scanty
-distribution of light, and told the Pontiff that M. Angelo had spoiled
-S. Pietro, and instead of a luminous temple, was erecting a gloomy
-vault. Giulio having communicated this to him at a general meeting of
-the deputies and inspectors, M. Angelo replied, I wish to hear these
-deputies talk myself: "Here we are," answered Cardinal Marcello--"Then
-know, Monsignore," said he, "that over these windows, in the vault which
-is to be raised, there are to be placed three more."--"You never told us
-this before!" said Cervino.--"No," replied M. Angelo, "I am not, nor
-ever will be bound to tell your Eminence, or any other person, what I
-must or what I mean to do: your duty is to provide money and take care
-that it be not stolen; what belongs to the plan and execution of the
-building you are to leave to me." Then turning to the Pope, "Holy
-Father," continued he, "you see what I gain; the fatigue I undergo is
-time and labour lost, unless my soul gain by it." The Pope, who loved
-him, and rejoiced at the defeat of the cabal, laying hands on his
-shoulders, said, "Doubt not your soul and body shall be equal gainers by
-it."
-
-Among the many expectations in which he was disappointed, that which he
-appears to have formed on the early talent of Jacopo Carucci, as it was
-the most sanguine, must have been the most distressing; for, on seeing
-his figures of Faith and Charity with attendant Infants, in fresco, at
-the Nunziata, and considering them as produced by a youth of nineteen,
-he said, in the words of Vasari, "This young man, from what appears,
-grant life and pursuit, will raise this art to heaven."
-
-But Jacopo did neither long pursue the same principles nor adopt
-superior ones: infected, like Andrea del Sarto, by the temporary fever
-which the style of Albert Durer had spread over Florence. He was,
-however, the favourite copyist in oil of M. Angelo's Cartoons, and as
-such, in preference, recommended by him to Alfonso D'Avalo, Marchese del
-Guasto, and Bartolomeo Bettini, his friend, who had obtained cartoons,
-the former of a Noli-me-tangere; this of a naked Venus caressed by
-Cupid.[82]
-
-The name of Giuliano Bugiardini, supported only by its own feeble powers,
-would probably long have sunk to oblivion, had it not been kept afloat by
-the personal attachment of M. Angelo. In Vasari, Giuliano is the synonyme,
-of helpless impotence; he had certainly neither the dexterity nor the
-grasp of the Aretine biographer; but he also had neither the pretension
-nor the craft. There is, and chiefly among artists, a singular class of
-men, who, with great moral simplicity, but a capacity less than moderate,
-court with ungovernable passion an art which they are doomed never to
-possess, but to whom self-complacency compensates for every disappointment
-of the most ungrateful perseverance, public neglect and private irrision:
-they neither envy nor suspect, and though not intimidated by a superiority
-which they do not fully comprehend, are ready to respect the part that
-comes within their compass. Such a man was Bugiardini; and such a
-character M. Angelo was likely to appreciate;[83] and though aware that he
-was not equal to serious communication in art, to select him as a
-companion of his leisure, and to assist or submit to him, as the
-simplicity of his character required;--of either we shall select from
-Vasari an instance. When he was occupied with the picture of Sta.
-Catherina, for the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, he requested the advice
-of M. Angelo on the arrangement of a file of soldiers which he meant to
-place on the foreground, flying, fallen, wounded, killed; because the idea
-of their having formed a file, could not be expressed within the scanty
-space he had allotted them, without having recourse to fore-shortenings,
-which he confessed to be beyond his power. M. Angelo, to please him, took
-a coal, and with his own comprehension drew on the panel a file of naked
-figures, variously fore-shortened, falling different ways, forwards,
-backwards, with others dead or wounded: but the whole being merely in
-outlines, left Giuliano still at a loss. Tribolo, therefore, to draw him
-from this dilemma, undertook to form them in clay, leaving the surface of
-each figure rough, to increase more forcibly the chiaroscuro: this method,
-however, so little pleased the neatness of Giuliano, that the moment
-Tribolo left him, he with a wet pencil licked them into a polish, which
-took away grain and effect together, and when the picture was finished,
-left no trace of M. Angelo's ever having seen it.
-
-Messer Ottaviano de' Medici had requested Giuliano to paint him a
-portrait of M. Angelo. He obtained the consent of M. Angelo: having held
-him between chat and work two hours at the first sitting--for M. Angelo
-delighted to hear him talk--Giuliano got up, and said, "M. Angelo, if
-you want to see yourself, rise: I have settled the character of the
-face." M. Angelo rose, looked at the portrait, and said, smiling, "What
-the devil (che diavolo) have you been doing? you have clapt one of the
-eyes into one of the temples--look to it." Giuliano having for some time
-looked silently at the portrait, and the sitter, resolutely replied, "I
-do not see what you said; but take your place, and I'll give another
-glance at nature." M. Angelo, who knew where the defect lay, sat down
-again sneering; and Giuliano, having eyed repeatedly now the picture and
-now M. Angelo, at last rose and said, "It appears to me that the thing
-is as I have drawn it, and that nature shows it so." "Oh, then it is a
-defect of nature!" replied Michael Angelo, "go on and prosper in your
-work."
-
-Francesco Granacci, the companion of his early studies, and Jacopo,
-called L'Indaco, the enlivener of his solitude, enjoyed the same degree
-of his familiarity; but as the real basis of friendship is equality, and
-mutual esteem founded on similarity of character and powers, attachments
-merely formed by early habits or congenial humour between men too
-dissimilar else to admit of comparison, never can aspire to its
-privileges and name. Condescension is not always delicate, and the
-indiscretions of simplicity sooner or later provoke the pride, contempt,
-and arrogance of superior powers. Giuliano, Granacci, and L'Indaco,
-experienced all three from Michael Angelo; they were among his
-conscripts for assisting in the frescoes of the Capella; but finding
-their pigmy capacities unequal to his colossal style, he not only, in
-lofty silence, destroyed what they had begun, but barring all access to
-the Chapel and himself, forced them to return, vainly grumbling, to
-Florence.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[62] 1433--1527. They underwent three banishments in less than a
-century.
-
-[63] 1472--1492. Most splendid period of Florence this.
-
-[64] Nardi Storia, lib. 1. Bernardo Rucellai de Bello Italico, Lond.
-1733, 4to. p. 52. Pauli Jovii Histor. sui temporis, lib. 1. Memoires de
-Philippe de Comines, l. vii. c. 9.
-
-[65] Vasari, Vita di B. Bandinelli, Ed. del Bottari, t. ii. p. 576; e
-Vita del Torrigiano, t. ii. p. 75.
-
-[66] Nardi, Storia di Firenze, lib. ii. Vasari, Vita di Fra Bartolomeo;
-but chiefly the Life of Savonarola, by Burlamachi, inserted in Balusii
-Miscell. ed. Mansi, t. i. p. 558, &c.
-
-[67] Giovanni dalle Carniole, a celebrated engraver on stone, was an
-adherent of Savonarola; there is a portrait of that reformer by him, on
-a cornelian of uncommon size, in the Museo Flor. with this inscription,
-
-    Hieronymus Ferrariensis Ord. Praed.
-    Propheta Vir et Martyr.
-
-It is known from impressions in paste and bronze. In politics, at least,
-Michael Angelo was a votary of Fra Girolamo, although the nursling of
-the Medici.
-
-[68] Vasari, Vita di B.B. t. ii. p. 557.
-
-[69] Varchi, Storia Fiorent. p. 36.
-
-[70] "The two masters of Michael Angelo," says Fiorillo, "descend in
-equidistant degrees from the School of Cimabue and Giotto: the following
-scale shows the technic pedigree of M. Angelo at one glance:
-
-                     _Cimabue._
-                     _Giotto._
-                     _Taddeo Gaddi._
-    Angelo Gaddi.                     Jacopo Casentino.
-    Ant. Veneziano.                   Spinello.
-    Paolo Uccello.                    Lorenzo Bicci.
-    Aless. Baldovinetti.              Donatello.
-    Dom. del Ghirlandaio.             Bertoldo.
-                    M.A. Buonarroti."
-
-What pity that this laboured scale, which has all the air of an
-astrologic conceit of Vasari, and gives to chance the sanction of
-predestination, could not be extended to Architecture! As the notion of
-a writer who dates the subversion of Art from the epoch and style of M.
-Angelo, it must appear ludicrous even to the most declared votary of
-that great name on this side of idolatry.
-
-[71] The mask of an antique Satyr, and the basso-relievo of the
-Centaurs, undertaken at the suggestion of Poliziano.
-
-[72] One has been preserved, and as a document of the relation in which
-_power_ at that time stood with _art_, may interest the reader.
-
-"Julius P.P. II. Dilectis Filiis Prioribus Libertatis, et Vexillifero
-Justitiae Populi Florentini."
-
-"Dilecti filii, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Michael Angelus
-sculptor, qui a nobis leviter et inconsulte discessit, redire, ut
-accepimus, ad nos timet, cui nos non succensemus: Novimus hujusmodi
-hominum ingenia. Ut tamen omnem suspicionem deponat, devotionem vestram
-hortamur, velit ei nomine nostro promittere, quod si ad nos redierit,
-illaesus inviolatusque erit, et in ea gratia apostolica nos habiturus,
-qua habebatur ante discessum. Datum Romae, 8 Julii, 1506, Pontificatus
-nostri Anno iii."
-
-[73] There went a tale that Michael Angelo proposed to demolish the
-palace of the Medicis, like that of the Bentivogli at Bologna, and to
-call the site "Piazza de' Muli," the place of Bastards, in allusion to
-the illegitimacy of Clemente VII. Alessandro, and others of that family.
-"A feature," says Fiorillo, "if true, as characteristic of his natural
-ferocity as disgraceful to his heart, after the benefits heaped on him
-from his infancy by that family. Varchi, however, defends him against
-this charge."[76] Whether this tale confutes itself or not, may be left
-to the reader; but on an estimate of his private and public conduct, as
-man and artist during the long course of his life, it must be owned,
-that this is the period which offers the most specious opportunity to a
-sceptic in morals, of fixing some doubts on the integrity of his
-principles. His earliest actions prove that he drew a severe line
-between the duty which he owed to his country, and gratitude imposed by
-private obligations. He left the family of Pier de' Medici on finding
-his principles incompatible with the laws of a free state; and on the
-expulsion of the petty tyrants, without lending a hand to the
-devastation of their property, felt it his duty to act as a free man on
-the re-establishment of liberty, and to obey the laws of a state whose
-right to legislate for itself had been acknowledged by all Italy. It
-will not be said, that it is palliating duplicity to assert, that as a
-private individual he had a right to accept the behests of Leo X. and
-Clemente VII. for decorating a sacred edifice; but when he became a
-leader of the revolution, the trustee of his country's safety, the main
-defender of the city, did he not more than degrade himself, by
-forgetting the patriot in the artist, and "secretly" sacrificing time to
-raise monuments to men whose titles he opposed and whose principles he
-detested? Thus, whilst his conduct may prove the absurdity of the tale,
-that he publicly, and with illiberal sarcasms, advised the demolition of
-palaces belonging to a family whose memory he secretly laboured to
-perpetuate in monuments inspired by the most amorous phantasy; it
-certainly does not screen his character from the imputation of a
-duplicity to which no other period of his life offers a parallel.
-
-[74] "Lavorava," says Vasari, "le statue per le sepolture di S. Lorenzo
-segretamente,"--p. 224, ed. B. And again, "Lavorando egli con
-sollecitudine e con amore grandissimo tali opere, crebbe (che pur troppo
-gli impedi il fine) lo assedio."--p. 229. Impossible as the secrecy of
-his labours for the Chapel of S. Lorenzo may appear, the publicity of
-his situation considered, it must be admitted, to account for the
-confidence placed in him by the City.
-
-[75] Of the Fall of Lucifer and his Host, which was to face the
-altar-piece of the Last Judgement, no sketch that could give an idea of
-the whole has yet been discovered; its place over the grand door of the
-Chapel was reserved for the sacrilegious 'bravura' of the Neapolitan
-Matteo da Lecca, under the pontificate of Gregorio XIII.: his
-composition, if impudence of grouping deserve that name, must be
-supposed to bear infinitely less analogy to the original conception of
-Michael Angelo, than the tumultuary fresco of the Sicilian; who, says
-Vasari, having lived many months with Michael Angelo as a servant and
-colour-grinder, became possessed of some design of his for that subject,
-and painted it in fresco in a chapel of the Trinita del Monte.
-Notwithstanding the incompetence of the adventurer to manage such
-materials, the naked groups showering from Heaven, and the hubbub of
-transformed fiends grappling below in the abyss, struck the beholder
-with terror and surprise;--a mass of Dantesque images, and in Dantesque
-language described by the biographer.--V. di M.A. t. vi. 237.
-
-[76] Stor. Fior. lib. vi. p. 154.
-
-[77] This pompous visit appears to have been made for the purpose of
-inspecting the Cartoon; to remove the obstacles to its completion which
-the unfinished state of the Giulian monument still presented; and to
-convince the artist of the value he set on the exclusive service of his
-genius. But, besides the obligation of fulfilling his contract with the
-House of De Rovere, Vasari seems to think that one principal reason of
-Michael Angelo's tardiness to comply with the wishes of the Pope, was
-the Pontiff's age, (vedendolo tanto vecchio,) _i. e._ apprehension, if
-he lived long enough to prevent the termination of the monument, of his
-dying too soon for the completion of the fresco, and thus leaving him
-exposed to the revenge of the Duke of Urbino: a conjecture not
-countenanced by the Pontiff's age, who, at his accession, was only
-eight years older than the artist.
-
-[78] Bastiano, says Vasari, was a favourite of Michael Angelo, but a
-disagreement took place between them about the best method of painting
-the Last Judgement. Fra Bastiano had persuaded the Pontiff to give the
-preference to oil, but Michael Angelo resolved to execute it only in
-fresco. On seeing the Frate's preparation adopted, without agreeing to
-it or opposing it, he remained inactive for several months; till, on
-being pressed, he finally declared, that he would either do it in fresco
-or not at all; that oil paint was a woman's art, and the refuge of
-idlers at their ease like Fra Bastiano. In consequence of which, the
-Frate's incrustation being dashed to the ground, and the wall duly
-prepared for fresco, he set about the work, but never forgot the insult
-he fancied to have received from the friar during life.--Vasari, Vita di
-F.S.
-
-[79] Michael Angelo had finished more than three-fourths of the work,
-when the Pontiff visited the Chapel, and on inspection, turning to
-Messer Biagio, of Cesena, then master of ceremonies, in his train, asked
-him what he thought of the work? The scrupulous prelate replied, that so
-daring an aggregate of shameless nudities in a sacred place was obscene
-profanation, and an exhibition fitter for a tavern or a brothel than a
-papal chapel. Michael Angelo, indignant, and eager to revenge the
-affront, only waited for his departure, and then, from memory, drew him
-in the character of Dante's Minos, with a snake encircling his body and
-gnawing his middle, in the midst of a hillock of fiends. In vain did
-Messer Biagio supplicate the Pontiff and Michael Angelo to take him out;
-he remained, and is there still. So far Vasari; but tradition adds, that
-on Biagio's application, the Pope asked in what part of the picture he
-was placed, and being answered, in Hell, replied, had you been lodged in
-Purgatory, you might perhaps have been dismissed, "sed ex Inferno nulla
-est redemptio." Condivi notices the story not at all.
-
-In the Diary of Paris de' Grassi, Messer Biagio is said to have been
-appointed master of ceremonies by Leo X. 1518, in the room of Nicola da
-Viterbo, and, if we believe Ducange, (Table des Auteurs dans le
-Supplement du Glossaire,) he has written a diary himself.--See Fiorillo,
-i. p. 389.
-
-[80] Blaise de Vigenere, the translator of Philostratus and Callistratus,
-tells us, in his observations on the latter, page 855, that "he saw M.
-Angelo, at the age of sixty, strike off more marble from a block in one
-quarter of an hour, than four stonemasons usually did in three or four
-hours." If this happened in 1550, as will appear from the following
-passage, M. Angelo was then in his seventy-sixth year.--"L'entrepris aussi
-de Michel l'Ange estoit hautaine et fort hardie, sentant bien sa main
-assuree, le quel commanca l'an 1550, que j'estois a Rome, un Crucifiement
-ou il y avoit de dix a douze personnages, non pas moindres que le naturel,
-le tout d'une seule piece de marbre, qui etait un chapiteau de l'une de
-ces huict grandes colomnes du temple de la Paix de Vespasian, dont il s'en
-void encore une toute entiere et debout, mais la mort----"
-
-[81] Vol. vi. p. 272.
-
-[82] Vasari's account of both pictures is sufficiently curious to be
-communicated in his own words. "Alfonso D'Avalo, Marchese del Guasto,
-having obtained from Michael Angelo, by means of Fra Nicolo della Magna,
-a cartoon of Christ appearing to Magdalen in the Garden, made every
-exertion to have it executed in painting by Puntormo, as he had been
-told by Michael Angelo that no one could serve him better. Jacopo
-undertook the work, and succeeded to a degree of excellence, which made
-Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the Florentine guards, bespeak a second
-copy of him, which he placed in his house at Civita di Castello."
-
-"Michael Angelo, to oblige his intimate friend Bartolomeo Bettini, made
-him a Cartoon of Venus naked and Cupid kissing her, to be executed by
-Puntormo in oil, for the centre piece of an apartment, on the sides of
-which Bronzino had begun to paint Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, to be
-followed by the rest of Tuscan love-songsters. The picture of Puntormo
-was miraculous, but instead of being given to Bettini for the price
-stipulated, was, by some favour-hunters, his enemies, nearly extorted
-from Jacopo, and carried off as a present to Duke Alessandro, returning
-the cartoon to Bettini. A transaction which, when he heard it, irritated
-Michael Angelo, who loved his friend, and made him dislike Jacopo for
-it."--Vasari, Vita di Jacopo da, P.V.
-
-[83] They had been fellow-scholars in the garden of Lorenzo de' Medici.
-
-
-
-
-SCHOOL OF SIENA.
-
-
-In the enumeration of Tuscan art, some lovers of subdivision have
-fancied, with more refinement than solidity, to discover in the style of
-Sienese artists a characteristic sufficiently distinct from the
-Florentine, to erect Siena into a school. This characteristic, we are
-told, is a peculiar gaiety in the selection of colour, and an air of
-physiognomic vivacity and serenity of face; both, it seems, the
-inheritance of the Sienese race. They have, accordingly, divided this
-school into three epochs: the first is that of the _ancients_ (gli
-antichi); and its first palpable patriarch, Guido, or Guidone, commonly
-called _Guido da Siena_, and noticed already in the beginning of our
-chapter on the Florentine school. He flourished before the birth of
-Cimabue, in the first half of the thirteenth century, and is followed
-by the names of Ugolino da Siena and Duccio surnamed di Boninsegna,
-the precursors of Simone Memmi, the contemporary of Giotto, who painted
-Laura and survives in the sonnets of her lover. Lippo Memmi and Cecco da
-Martino, his relatives, float in the obscurity which prevailed till the
-appearance of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. Of the first there still
-exists an extensive work in the public palace, or rather a didactic
-poem, which in suitable allegories and in varied views, exhibits the
-vices of a bad government, and personifies the qualities necessary to
-form the rulers of a virtuous republic--a work which, with less monotony
-of features, and more judgment in the division of the subjects, would,
-in the opinion of Lanzi, find little to envy in the best-treated
-histories of Pisa's Campo Santo. In partnership with his brother Pietro,
-he painted, in the Hospital of Siena, the Presentation and the Espousal
-of the Madonna--pictures destroyed in 1720. This is that Pietro who, in
-the Campo Santo of Pisa, painted the Hermits of the Desert, and the
-Terrors of Solitude invaded by an Infernal Apparition, with a novelty of
-conception and a richness of fancy, that render his work the most
-interesting of the whole series. That, notwithstanding the plague, which
-had wasted the population of Siena at that period, the art continued to
-flourish, is proved by the numbers who formed themselves into a civil
-body under the immediate patronage of the Republic itself. In some
-families it became an heirloom: such were the Vanni and the Bartoli.
-Andrea di Vanni, or more properly, di Giovanni, not only figured as an
-artist in his native city, but was delegated by the Republic to the Pope
-at Avignon, and appears in the records as "Capitano del Popolo;" and
-among the letters of Santa Caterina da Siena, there are three addressed
-to him.[84] Vasari has mentioned Taddeo di Bartolo, (1351--1410.) whose
-works still exist in the public palace and the adjoining hall. They
-pretend to represent a number of celebrated republicans, and chiefly
-Greeks and Romans, but their physiognomies are all ideal, and their
-dresses the costume of Siena. Something was added to the monotony of
-these family styles under the Pontificate of Pio II. or Enea Silvio,
-(1503,) by Matteo di Giovanni, in disposition, variety, expression,
-drapery; he has accordingly been complimented by some as the Masaccio of
-Siena, but remained unknown to Vasari. The art gained still more under
-the auspices of a second Piccolomini, Pio III. (1503.) He employed
-Pinturicchio, Raffaello, and other strangers, to perpetuate the
-achievements of his predecessor Enea; and they, Raffaello excepted,
-continued with Signorelli and Genga to exercise their talents in
-decorating the Palace of Pandolfo Petrucci, who had usurped supreme
-power in the Republic.
-
-The second period of Sienese art opens with the sixteenth century, and
-the works of Giacomo Pacchiarotto, or Pacchiarotti. They resemble the
-produce of Perugino's school, though distinguished by more vigour of
-composition. But what entitles this epoch to the claim of establishing
-the peculiar style of this school, must be looked for in the works of
-Giannantonio Razzi, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi.
-
-Giannantonio Razzi,[85] commonly called "Il Soddoma," is said by some to
-have been a native of Vergille, in the territory of Siena; by others, of
-Vercelli, in Piedmont. Long residence, however, supplied the want of
-birthright: Siena claims him for her own; and if a charming whole,
-suavity of tint combined with force of chiaroscuro, be the principal
-characteristic of that school, no native has expressed it with equal
-evidence and felicity. This gaiety of tone and manner some have traced
-to the jovial turn of the man himself; as careless as gay, ever in
-pursuit of youth and beauty, though with an indiscretion that brands him
-with the stain tacked to his name, from a character so volatile and
-dissipated, that inequality of execution might be expected which marks
-his happiest effusions. Thus, in the Church of S. Domenico, where he
-represented Sta. Caterina of Siena, on receiving the stigmata,
-fainting in the arms of two sister nuns, we forgive to the energy of
-conception, the pathos of expression, and the sympathy of tone that
-press the principal group on our hearts, that neglect which left the
-figure of the Saviour below mediocrity, and own, with Baldassare
-Peruzzi, that we never saw mental dereliction and fainting beauty
-expressed with deeper sentiment and truth; a verdict which receives
-full sanction from him who relates it, Vasari, less the biographer than
-the merciless censor of the obnoxious Razzi, for whose moral turpitude
-and technic slovenliness his sanctimonious asperity found no other
-excuse than that of madness, which swayed him to neglect or misapply the
-powers of genius. Thus, in speaking of the fresco at Monte Oliveto, in
-which Soddoma had chosen to represent a bevy of harlots let loose with
-song and dance on St. Benedetto and his flock, to try their sanctity, he
-reprobates the licentiousness that had larded the subject with
-additional obscenity, whilst he concludes by owning that it is one of
-the best pictures in the Convent. How are we to reconcile the neglect
-which, disdaining to consult Nature, or to regulate a picture by cartoon
-or design, relied for the whole on practice and on chance, with the
-praise bestowed on Razzi's composition, the faces that speak, the
-breasts that palpitate, the torsos compared by some to the antique, by
-others to Michael Angelo, but by that indifference which often
-distinguishes the man of genius from the man of talent, him who
-possesses by Nature from him who acquires by art? Capacity and
-attachment unite not always; and to Soddoma, vain, whimsical, volatile,
-art appears to have been no more than the readiest means of procuring
-amusement or pleasure. "My art dances to the sound of your purse," said
-he to the Abbot of Monte Oliveto.
-
-Agostino Chigi, pleased with the art, and still more the whimsies of
-Soddoma, if we believe Vasari, carried him to Rome, and introduced him
-to Giulio II. to co-operate with Pietro Perugino, &c. in the Vatican;
-but his labours being superseded by the novel powers of Raffaelle,
-Agostino, whose attachments were not regulated by the Pontiff's whims,
-employed him in the decorations of his own palace, now the Farnesina;
-where, in a principal apartment leading to the great saloon reserved for
-Raffaelle, he painted the Nuptials of Alexander and Roxana in a style no
-doubt inferior to the Loves of Amor and Psyche, but not of an
-inferiority sufficient to account for the enormous disparity of fame
-that separates both.
-
-Domenico Mecherino,[86] the son of a Sienese peasant, better known by
-the adopted name of Beccafumi, inferior to Razzi in elegance of line
-and suavity of colour, excelled him in energy of conception and style.
-Vasari, who invests Beccafumi with every excellence and virtue, of which
-the defect or opposite vice disgraced Razzi, still owns that he did not
-reach the physiognomic suavity that marks the faces of Soddoma; and
-after leading him from the scanty elements of Pietro Perugino to Rome,
-the Antique, the Chapel of M. Angelo, and the works of Raffaelle, by a
-kind of anticlimax brings him back to Siena to complete his studies by
-adopting the principles of Giannantonio. A modern writer,[87] on the
-contrary, has discovered that the talents of Domenico, overpowered by
-the genius of M. Angelo, turned their current awry, and failed to
-produce the legitimate efforts which might have been expected from a
-steady adherence to the principles of Raffaelle--opinions less founded
-on the character of the artist and the spirit of his works than on the
-partiality and prejudice of the critics. Beccafumi was not of the first
-class, less made to lead than to follow with an air of originality; to
-amalgamate principles not absolutely discordant--thus, in single
-figures, he sometimes more than imitates, he equals M. Angelo, as in
-those noticed by Bottari;--and again, in larger compositions, such as
-those on the pavement of the Cathedral, works by which he is chiefly
-known, we see him on the traces of Raffaelle, and emulating the variety
-and graces of Polydoro: these graces frequently vanished, and
-correctness as often ceased with the increased size of his figures: the
-foreshortenings, in which he delighted, savour more of the "sotto in
-su," introduced by Correggio to Upper Italy, than of the principles of
-M. Angelo; they are generally attended by a magic chiaroscuro, like that
-of the figure of Justice, on which Vasari expatiates, on the ceiling of
-the public hall at Siena, which, from profound darkness gradually rising
-into light, seems to vanish in celestial splendour. He is said by Vasari
-to have preferred fresco and distemper to oil paint, as a purer,
-simpler, and of course more durable medium; and though the predominant
-red of his flesh-tints has more freshness than glow, such is the
-solidity of his impasto and the purity of his method, that his panels
-present us to this day less with the injuries than the improvements of
-time.
-
-The style of Mecherino did not survive him: for Giorgio da Siena, his
-pupil, confined himself to grotesque work, in imitation of Giovanni da
-Udine; Giannella, or Giovanni of Siena, turned to architecture: of Marco
-Pino, commonly called Marco da Siena, his reputed pupil, the style,
-decidedly built on the principles of M. Angelo, renders all notion of
-his having received more than the first rudiments from Beccafumi or any
-other master, nugatory: but the conjecture of Lanzi, that Domenico was
-the master of Danielle Ricciarelli, known to have begun his studies at
-Siena, though unsupported by tradition, acquires an air of probability
-less from the supposed mutual attachments to M. Angelo, than the
-versatility of their talents and similarity of pursuits.
-
-Baldassare Peruzzi,[88] born in the diocese of Volterra, but in the
-Sienese State, and of a citizen of Siena, with considerable talents for
-painting, possessed a decided genius in architecture. His style of
-design is temperate and correct, but quantity is the element of his
-composition, if _indeed_ an aggregate of fortuitous figures deserve that
-name. The Adoration of the Magi, preserved in various coloured copies
-from his original chiaroscuro, embraces every fault of ornamental
-painting without its only charm: it is not exaggeration to say, that the
-principal figures are the least conspicuous, that the leaders are
-sacrificed to their equipage, that the architect every where crosses the
-painter, and that the quadrupeds, however brutally placed or
-impertinently introduced, for conception, chiaroscuro, spirit and style,
-give to the work what merit it can claim. The same principle prevails in
-his fresco of the Presentation at the Pace, and both are so evidently
-opposite to Raffaello's system of composition, that it is not easily
-understood how he could be supposed to have been a pupil or imitator of
-that master in propriety. If he resembles him any where, it is in single
-expressions, as in the Judgement of Paris at the Castello di Belcaro,
-according to Lanzi; and still more in the prophetic countenance of the
-celebrated Sibyl predicting the birth of the Virgin to Augustus, at
-Fonte Giusta, in Siena, whose divine enthusiasm no prophetess of
-Raffaello has excelled, and no Sibyl of Guido or Guercino approached.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[84] Lettere della Beata Vergine, S. Caterina da Siena. Venez. 1562.,
-4to. p. 286, 242. The last was written at the period of Vanni's dignity.
-
-[85] 1481-1554.
-
-[86] 1484-1549?
-
-[87] Fiorillo, i. 335.
-
-[88] 1481-1536.
-
-
-
-
-THE ROMAN SCHOOL.
-
-
-The Roman School comprises, besides the natives of the metropolis, those
-of the whole Ecclesiastic State, Bologna, Ferrara, and some part of
-Romagna excepted.
-
-The origin of this school recedes into the earlier periods of modern
-art, if we consider Oderigi of Gubbio, a painter of miniature,
-contemporary with Cimabue, as one of its founders. His death, which
-preceded that of the Florentine at least one year, the branch of art he
-exercised, missal-painting, and what we know of his situation, make it
-extremely improbable that he owed the elements of design to that master,
-with whom he seems to have had little in common but the honour of
-rearing a pupil, who in the sequel eclipsed his name, and became the
-founder of another school.
-
-Perhaps he made some scholars too at home: in 1321 we find Cecco and
-Puccio of Gubbio, engaged as painters to the Dome of Orvieto; and about
-1324, Guido Palmerucci Eugubino, employed in the Town-hall of Gubbio; a
-few half figures yet remaining of this evanescent work are in a style
-not inferior to that of Giotto, at whose period we are now arrived.
-
-Giotto, at Rome, gave instructions to Pietro Cavallini in painting and
-mosaic, and with what success we may form some idea from the
-wonder-working Christ in S. Paolo at Rome, the Salutation at S. Marco of
-Florence, and a Crucifixion at Assisi; a crowded composition of
-soldiers, mob, and horses, varied in dress and not ill discriminated by
-expression, with groups of angels hovering over them in sable robes. In
-vastness of conception and spirit it resembles Memmi, and in one of the
-crucified men, foreshortening is not unsuccessfully attempted; the
-colours have still a degree of freshness, especially the blue, which
-here and in other places of the church forms, in the metaphor of Lanzi,
-a ceiling of oriental sapphire.
-
-After the demise of Cavallini, who, notwithstanding a life of
-eighty-five years, appears to have left taste nearly in the state he
-found it; a band of obscure and insignificant artists led the art in a
-style neither Giottesque nor Greek to the verge of the fifteenth
-century--that important period when the Popes, re-established at Rome,
-searched for the best hands to decorate its Vatican and temples. The
-first name that occurs, is that of Ottaviano Martis, whose Madonna in
-Sta. Maria Nuova at Gubbio, bears the date of 1403; she has a choir
-of stripling angels round her in attitudes not ungraceful, but with
-faces as like to each other as if they had all been cast in one mould.
-
-The name of Gentile da Fabriano is of more consequence; it is he whose
-style Michael Angelo compared to his name (Gentile.) About 1417 we find
-him at Orvieto among the painters of its Dome, registered with the title
-of Magister Magistrorum. Under Martin V. he painted with Pisanello in
-the Lateran at Rome: what he did there perished, and so did his works in
-the public palace at Venice, where he resided, was pensioned, and raised
-to the rank of Patrician. "In that city," says Vasari, "he was the
-master and like a parent to Giacopo Bellini, the father of Giovanni and
-Gentile Bellini, founders of the Venetian school and masters of
-Giorgione and Tizian. Of his numerous works the remains are in the Marca
-d'Ancona, the state of Urbino, at Gubbio and Perugia: Florence still
-preserves two of his pictures, one in S. Nicolo with the image and
-histories of that bishop, another in the sacristy of the Trinita, with
-an Epiphany and the date of 1423. His style resembles that of Fra
-Angelico da Fiesole, with the exception of forms less elegant, less
-female grace, and more profusion of gold lace and brocade. _Antonio da
-Fabriano_, with the date 1454, and _Bartholomaeus Magistri Gentilis de
-Urbino_, 1497 and 1508, are inscriptions on pictures at Matelica,
-Pesaro, and Monte Cicardo, that have no other claim to attention than
-the relation their names seem to indicate with Gentile.
-
-Piero della Francesca, or Piero Borghese, an Umbrian, of Borgo S.
-Sepolcro, is a superior name. He must have been born about 1398, as,
-according to Vasari, his works were about 1458; he grew blind at sixty,
-and died eighty-five years old. He was instructed in painting at the age
-of fifteen, after having laid a foundation in mathematics, and
-distinguished himself in both. His beginnings were minute; his master
-has escaped search. The first scene of his talent was the Court of
-Guidobaldo Feltro the old, Duke of Urbino, where the perspective of a
-vase drawn by him, provokes the astonishment of his biographer; but
-besides perspective, Painting owes to him her first notions of the
-effects of light, of muscular precision, and the method of preparing
-clay models for the study of drapery.[89]
-
-He painted much at Rome, and in the Floreria of the Vatican there still
-exists a large fresco reputed his, representing Niccolo V. with some
-cardinals and prelates, whose faces interest by a character of truth. At
-Arezzo, he seems to have improved even upon Giotto and his school, by
-the novelty of his foreshortenings, vigour of tone, and powers which
-attended by equal grace, would have set him on a level with Masaccio.
-
-Nicolo Alunno of Foligno, advanced the art still farther; this is
-evident on comparing a picture of his painted 1480, with another at S.
-Nicolo of Foligno, dated 1492. The tone of his colour, even in
-distemper, has novelty and vigour; his heads have vivacity, though with
-trivial and sometimes caricatured characters: and in gilding he is
-moderate. Vasari, who places him in the time of Pinturicchio, praises
-above all a Pieta in a chapel of the Domo, in which, he says, "there are
-two angels who weep with such expression of grief, that, in my opinion,
-no other painter, however excellent, could have done much more."
-
-Nor was Urbino without painters at this period: Fiorillo names Lorenzo
-da San Severino. At Urbino some pictures still remain of Giovanni
-Sanzio, the father of Raphael, who by the Duchess Giovanna della Rovere
-is called a very ingenious artist: a foreshortened figure of St.
-Sebastian, painted by him for the church of that saint, has been
-imitated by Raphael in an early picture of Our Lady's Wedding, at Citta
-di Castello. He subscribed himself Io. Sanctis Urbi.; viz. Urbinas. Such
-at least is the inscription on his Annunciation at Sinigaglia, a work of
-high finish, but unequal in its parts, and in the best, though less
-genial, approaching the style of Pietro Perugino, with whom he had for
-some time co-operated. But the most distinguished Urbinese artist was
-Bartolommeo Corradini, a Dominican, commonly called Fra Carnevale: at
-the Osservanza there is a picture of his, defective in perspective, with
-draperies frittered into the usual tatters of the time, but with faces
-that breathe and speak, and airs of dignity and ease: he was one of the
-first who introduced portrait into historic composition, a method
-adopted and often practised by Raphael, who at Urbino had studied his
-works.
-
-Perugia laid an early claim to Art, at least as a craft. Mariotti tells
-of one Tullio a Perugine painter about 1219, and in a long file of
-quattrocentists, allots the most conspicuous places to Lorenzo di
-Lorenzo, Bartolommeo Caporali, whose works are dated about 1487, but
-above all to Benedetto Bonfigli. Yet with this abundance of home-bred
-artists, Perugia employed in its public works the hands of strangers,
-and chiefly Tuscans; it was to Florence, States and Princes looked for
-that master-style which could give splendour to a great commission. When
-Sisto IV. planned the decorations of the Sistina, the greater number of
-conscripts for the work were Tuscans, and Pietro Perugino the only
-artist drawn from his subjects among them.
-
-Pietro Vannucci, of Citta della Pieve, as he subscribed some pictures,
-or of Perugia, as he did others, being a citizen of that place, studied,
-if we believe Vasari, under a master of little eminence; but according
-to the more authentic researches of Mariotti,[90] was a pupil, and
-sufficiently advanced himself by the instructions of Bonfigli and Piero
-della Francesca, to finish his style on the works of Giotto and Masaccio
-at Florence, without entering the school of Verrocchio.
-
-Those who have contemplated the works of Pietro will without much
-difficulty discover two styles of composition, form, colour, and
-execution: the first was the result of the instructions he received in
-the Roman, the second, that of the impression made on his mind and hand
-by the Tuscan School: what he painted in oil and of small dimensions,
-generally belongs to the first; what he executed in fresco to the second
-period. There we find the hardness, the haggard forms, the miserly
-scantiness of drapery, the Gothic apposition and anxious finish with
-which he is charged, relieved by azure blues, emerald greens, violet and
-crimson hues, the legacies of missal-painting, and a certain air of
-juvenile and female grace, with suavity of countenance and colour:
-beauties which not only followed him in his second style, but were
-rendered more impressive by rudiments of that breadth which seems to be
-the privilege of fresco, by keeping, mellowness, tone, and approaches to
-composition, as in the altar-piece of the Kindred of the Saviour and the
-fresco in the Hall of the Change, at Perugia.
-
-Whilst the physiognomic monotony which had hitherto dulled the human
-feature, began to give way to expression and character in the works of
-this period, it is not easy to explain why its companion, that Gothic
-symmetry in the arrangement of the whole, should not only have been
-retained but aggravated into a studied parallelism; not that pathetic
-repetition of attitude and gesture which forces the moment of the
-subject more irresistibly on the mind than the most varied contrasts,
-but a nearly rectilinear apposition, whose principal law was to place,
-by a central figure, on each side of the picture, an equal number of
-subordinate ones; a law that extended itself to the most minute detail,
-and bade buildings, flowers, clouds and pebbles, re-echo each other; and
-all this in the face of Giotto, whose Navicella, Death of Maria, and
-other works, gave evidence that his composition had, a century before,
-disdained to move in the trammels which were now suffered to check that
-of Pietro Perugino, and for no inconsiderable time the composition of
-Raphael himself.
-
-Invention was not the element of Pietro. His crucifixions, depositions,
-burials, ascensions, and assumptions, are the brothers and sisters of
-one family. He was blamed for this sterility even in his own time, and
-defended himself by saying that, if he possessed little, he owed
-nothing, and that what had pleased in one place could not displease in
-another. It does not indeed offend to find the scenery of his St. Peter
-receiving the keys in the Sistina, repeated in the Wedding of our Lady
-at Perugia, and to meet the beauties here concentrated which he had
-singly scattered over various places.
-
-Pietro had vigour of constitution and length of life, and if he profited
-by the works of Raphael, whom he outlived, might have done so by those
-of Lionardo and Buonarroti. In few men so many contradictory qualities
-seem to have united: ridiculed for a degree of avarice, which, it was
-said, made him withhold the necessary drapery from his figures, he is
-yet allowed by Vasari to have been greedier to accumulate than sordid in
-the use of wealth, and to have pleased himself by marrying "a beautiful
-damsel, whom he so much delighted in seeing elegantly dressed both
-abroad and at home, that he was often suspected of having dressed her
-himself." By her he had children, but no records enable us to judge of
-him as a parent. That he was a good and kind master, is proved by the
-numerous scholars he reared, and still more by the pride which the most
-eminent and best of them took, by introducing him more than once in his
-works, to perpetuate with his own gratitude the memory of his master.
-With this kindness for his pupils, Pietro connected intolerance of
-rivals and a mordacity of language, which provoked Michael Agnolo to
-call him publicly a dunce (_goffo_) in art. His life was spent in
-receiving commissions from the clergy, in meditating and composing
-subjects of devotion; and yet, if we believe his biographer, he carried
-infidelity to a degree which resisted all arguments for the immortality
-of the soul, and with words dictated by an obstinacy worthy of his
-marble brains,[91] rejected all invitations to better information. Of
-the numerous scholars whom he had reared, the greater part followed his
-manner with servile attachment; hence many of their works have been
-ascribed to him, by those who did not form their judgment at Perugia, or
-at Florence in Sta. Chiara and the Ducal palace: thus he pays forfeit
-for many a holy family of Guerino da Pistoia, Rocco Zoppo, or some other
-of his Tuscan scholars. The best and least enthralled of his pupils
-belong to the Roman school: Bernardino Pinturicchio, less praised by
-Vasari than he deserves, without the correctness of his master, and with
-more Gothic profusion of gold-lace and brocade, possesses magnificence
-of plan, expression of countenance, and propriety of composition.
-Familiar with Raphael, who was his assistant at Siena, he made attempts
-to imitate his grace, and sometimes not without success: at Rome, the
-Vatican and Araceli Temple possess some of his works; at Siena he
-painted, in ten pictures, the history of Pio II. and added one of Pio
-III. his employer, and these, with what he left in the Dome of Spello,
-are the best of his labours.
-
-Of at more independent and grander spirit was Andrea Luigi, of Assisi,
-surnamed L'Ingegno, the Genius. He assisted Pietro in the Change-hall
-at Perugia, and there and in his Prophets and Sibyls at Assisi,
-aggrandized and mellowed the style of his master to a degree, which led
-Sandrart, with others, to ascribe the latter work to Raphael; but
-blindness checked his career in the bloom of life, and left the art to
-Raphael without a rival.
-
-Domenico di Paris Alfani added, likewise, some improvements to the style
-of Pietro. His name was nearly sunk in that of his son or brother
-Orazio, and time and dates alone have re-asserted its right to some
-excellent works long adjudged to the other; and which, were it not for
-an insipid sweetness of tone bordering on that of Baroccio, seem to have
-been inspired by the principles of Raphael.
-
-Of Pietro's many ultramontane pupils, Giovanni Spagnuolo, a Spaniard,
-called Lo Spagna, who settled at Spoleto, is considered by Vasari as the
-most eminent. But all these names united confer less celebrity on
-Pietro, than the felicity of having reared the powers of Raffaello
-Sanzio, if not the founder, the great establisher of the Roman School.
-
-Raffaello Sanzio, born at Urbino on Holy Friday, April 1483, was the son
-of Giovanni Sanzio, named among the contemporaries and occasional
-helpers of Pietro, in whose school, after having imparted the first
-rudiments of Art to his son, conscious of his own inferiority, he had
-the modesty to place him. Here his progress was so rapid that he soon
-rendered himself completely master of Vannucci's style, soon became his
-favourite pupil, soon his co-adjutor, and in a short period more than
-his competitor: for though the pictures which he painted at Civita di
-Castello and Perugia, and are so amorously dwelt on by Lanzi, still
-betray in composition, design, and colour, the principles of the master,
-they exhibit symptoms of that expression, that beauty, those simple
-graces, that refinement and precision of finish, which not only had
-remained unknown to Pietro, but in their purity were never attained by
-any subsequent artist.--Some of these are perceivable already, if
-scantily, in the Procession to Golgotha, preceded by horsemen and
-attended by the Madonna and her female train; and still less perceptibly
-in one of its predelle which exhibits the Saviour held extended by his
-Mother, Magdalen and John: they cannot be mistaken in the predelle
-which represents him among the sleeping disciples praying in the
-garden,--performances of his puerility, and most probably before he left
-the school of Pietro.
-
-After an enumeration of Raffaello's juvenile works at Civita di Castello
-and at Perugia, we are told that he who ascribed Sanzio's art to length
-of study and not to nature, was not acquainted with the powers of his
-mind.[92]
-
-That such was the verdict of Michael Agnolo, is recorded by Condivi; and
-from aught that appears, it does not seem either invidious or
-incompetent. If Art be a complete system of invariable rules, he only is
-a master of Art who substantiates its precepts by equal uniformity of
-execution and taste; and till he arrives at that point, he can only be
-said to have seized more or less of its parts in making approaches to
-the whole, and to be indebted to "study" and not to "nature," if he put
-himself at last in possession of it.
-
-Such was the progress of Raffaello; he arrived by degrees at style in
-design, by degrees at style in composition, by degrees at invention,
-expression, and at what appeared to him colour. His genius emancipated
-him from the shackles of prescription and fashion, rapidly, if we
-compare his progress with the shortness of his life or the progress of
-the rest of his contemporaries, but slowly, if we compare him with
-Michael Angelo, whose system of Art seems to have been born with him,
-whose infancy, virility, age, exhibit one uniform principle. Every
-element of the system displayed in the Capella Sistina and on the tombs
-in S. Lorenzo, may be traced in his essays at the garden of the Medici
-and in the Holy Family painted for Angelo Doni: but what eye will
-discover the future painter of the Heliodorus, or the composer of the
-Cartoons in the bridal arrangements of our Lady's Wedding at Civita di
-Castello, or even in the Cartoons for the sacristy of the Duomo at
-Sienna?
-
-Though the commission of painting in that place a series of the most
-memorable events in the life of Pope Pio II. (a Siennese celebrated by
-the name of Enea Silvio,) had been given to Pinturicchio, who had
-sufficient modesty and taste to avail himself of the superior and
-growing powers of his friend,--it has been asked what enterprise of
-equal magnitude had in that infant state of Art ever been consigned to
-a single hand, without considering that the co-operation of Raffaello
-was adventitious, and less owing to the opinion which he had established
-of himself in the public mind than to the modesty of Pinturicchio. And
-had not Luca Signorelli singly been entrusted with a work at Orvieto,
-whose tremendous and universally interesting subjects beyond comparison
-excelled whatever the embassies, the poetic and papal honours, the
-canonization of a nun, the ceremonies of a council, the death of the
-hero himself, and the transportation of his corpse from Ancona to Rome,
-however varied by character, impressed by the sensibility of the artist,
-or raised above the heraldry of the times, could pretend to achieve
-beyond the precincts of Sienna?
-
-Whether Raffaello furnished the whole of the Cartoons for that work, or
-only part, cannot be ascertained from the contradictory account of
-Vasari,[93] who in the life of Pinturicchio asserts the first, and in
-that of Raffaello, the second. As he, however, did not leave Sienna for
-Florence till 1504, it is probable that he continued to assist his
-friend in completing the whole historic series: the work itself is in
-perfect preservation, and though better informed eyes than those of
-Bottari[94] might not be competent to discriminate the parts which
-exclusively belong to Raffaello, it is certain that in the progress of
-the pictures there is an evident progress toward style.
-
-Aggrandisement of style might reasonably be supposed to have been the
-motive that drew Raffaello to Florence. The David of M. Angiolo was
-placed; he had begun his cartoon, which from its very inaccessibility,
-and the high character of the artist whom it opposed, must have been an
-object of eager curiosity to the public, and of tremulous expectation to
-the student. Florence was, no doubt, at that period divided into two
-technic factions, Vinciists and Bonarotists; it does not, however,
-appear that Raffaello adhered to either of the two leaders; neither the
-learning and energy of Bonaroti, nor the magic chiaroscuro of Lionardo,
-could divert the future painter of the passions from his course; he
-therefore attached himself to the study of Masaccio, as a more direct
-guide to the drama. The implicit application of that master's
-conceptions in the same or similar subjects, when he was in the vigour
-of his powers, if it be the most celebrated proof of this, is a less
-convincing one than the similarity of taste and vein of thought which
-pervades their works, and might, to men of bolder conjecture than I
-pretend to, prove that Masaccio might have been what Raffaello was, had
-time and means conspired.
-
-According to the account of Vasari,[95] Raffaello went three times to
-Florence: the first time when, according to the biographer, roused by
-the fame of Lionardo and M. Angiolo, he left the partnership of
-Pinturicchio, 1504--the date of the recommendatory letter with the
-affixed name of Joanna Feltria, Duchess of Urbino, addressed to the
-Gonfaloniere Pietro Soderini, and said to be still preserved at Florence
-among the papers of the Gaddi family. Supposing the date of the letter
-(1st October, 1504) to be correct, and the writer of it to have been
-acquainted with the person she recommends, its genuineness, as Fiorillo
-observes, is liable to strong suspicion. Its expressions might fit a lad
-of ten or twelve years, but certainly not a young man of one-and-twenty,
-the age of Raffaello, who had painted many pictures, was at that very
-time employed in a great public work, and only three years after was
-called to Rome by Giulio the Second.
-
-Though Raffaello's talents had spread his name, and attracted the
-attention and the wishes of Giulio the Second to employ him in the
-decoration of the Vatican, it may be presumed that the persuasive
-influence of his relative, Bramante Lazzari, decided the Pontiff to
-distinguish him by that immediate and exclusive call to Rome, which
-raised him above all rival competition, and opened the most splendid
-period of his life, most probably 1507. Which was the picture he began
-with, would not have been contested by his biographers, encomiasts, and
-critics, from Vasari to Mengs, had they attended less to hearsay, for
-tradition it cannot be called, than to the evidence of the works
-themselves. To date the dispute on the Sacrament after the School of
-Athens, equally inverts the progressive powers of the artist in
-conception, taste, style, and execution. Everywhere that composition
-betrays a young performer, enviably successful in each individual part,
-but whom experience has not yet enabled to spread an harmonious whole.
-The connection of its upper with the lower scene, less divided than rent
-asunder, depends entirely on a mental effort in the spectator. The
-parallelism of the celestial synod, impresses more with formal monotony
-than awful energy, and the ostentatious abuse of gold impairs its
-dignity. In the lower part of the picture, less sublime than dramatic,
-the artist moves in his own element; its parallelism and its contrasts,
-no longer the result of ceremonious symmetry, but of the inspiring
-principle, warms contemplation to sympathy, and its characteristic
-correctness exhibits in Raffaello's own unassisted, or rather unalloyed
-hand, the style of the School of Athens, the Mass of Bolsena, the
-female part of the Heliodorus, and with a felicity unattained in the
-Parnassus and the Attila,--the more ample outlines and the increased
-volume of forms in the Angels, and the Heliodorus and his accomplices on
-the foreground.
-
-
-    _A description of two Drawings by Raffaello, from an account of
-    the Collection of Drawings and Prints in the Gallery of Duke
-    Albrecht, of Sachsen Teschen, at Vienna_.[96]
-
-I.
-
-Two naked male figures, apparently studies from Nature, on one leaf,
-drawn in red chalk: one with nearly all his back turned to the eye,
-rests the left hand on his hip, and with the right points to something
-before him. Somewhat behind you see the other, sideways, in perfect
-repose, leaning with both hands on a long spear-like staff; the
-background has some rudiments of a sketched head. To the right of the
-spectator, at the side of the first figure, you read, "1515,
-Raffahell di Urbin der so hoch vom Pobst geacht ist gwest, hat diese
-nakte Bild gemacht, und hat sy dem Albrecht Duerer gen Nornberg
-geschikt, in sein hand zu weissen."[97]
-
-That Raffaello in his last years, and when at the height of his
-celebrity, did exchange drawings with Albert Durer, is attested by the
-biographers of both: and that the design here described is one of that
-number, is incontestably proved, not only by the peculiarity of style,
-the elegance and facility of outline, the characteristic contrast of
-solid and muscular parts, but by the identity of the handwriting with
-the manuscripts of Albert still existing at Nuernberg, his native city.
-
-I therefore think it no improbable conjecture to suppose that Raffaello,
-by transmitting this specimen of his hand to Albert, intended to make
-him sensible of the difference between imitating Nature and dryly
-copying a model, and so impress him with the necessity of contrasting
-his outline according to the different texture of the parts in the
-bodies before him.
-
-This interesting leaf is one foot three inches three lines in height,
-and ten inches eight lines in width, Vienna measure; and in perfect
-preservation.
-
-
-II.
-
-This design differs in nothing from the well-known picture of the
-Transfiguration, but the absolute nudity of all the figures.
-
-That Raffaello was accustomed to sketch in naked outlines, may be known
-from most collections that possess something of his hand; but perhaps
-none but this may be able to produce a design, of a numerous and
-complete composition, in which every figure is rendered with anatomical
-correctness and finished chiaroscuro.
-
-Another singularity of this important leaf is, the characteristic
-disparity of execution in the figures; for though all are drawn with the
-pen, and on the first glance seem hatched in one uniform manner, it soon
-appears on close inspection, that they cannot have been produced by the
-same hand.
-
-The figures of the three Disciples on the Mount, especially the
-foreshortened one, are treated with that spirited facility and
-confident decision which always mark the pen of Raffaello. Those of the
-Saviour and the collateral prophets, though drawn with less precision
-and contours here and there, by repeated strokes, corrected, still
-exhibit on the whole the same spirit, facility, and confidence of hand.
-Of the actors below, the figure of John, with hands crossed on his
-breast, and the three next to him have the same Raffaellesque
-characteristics, and so the whole of the females kneeling on the
-foreground; but of the adjoining apostle, with the book in his hand, the
-projected leg and foot are absolutely out of drawing; whilst the
-Demoniac and his father, with all the remaining figures, drawn by mere
-practice, without a symptom of the master spirit, give palpable proofs
-of a different hand.
-
-It appears no improbable conjecture that Raffaello, after settling the
-plan and fully arranging the figures of his picture, drew the nudities
-of this design as the bases of his draperies: for this reason only, the
-principal parts of the forms, and those muscles that would act most
-visibly on the draperies, are designed correctly, and finished with
-decision; whilst the heads, and what was either to be naked in the
-picture or did not act immediately on the drapery, remained in careless
-and superficial lines.
-
-That Raffaello suffered parts of his Transfiguration, and in my opinion
-some of the most important parts, to receive all but the last finish from
-a pupil, if tradition had not told us, there is ocular demonstration in
-the picture itself. The proportions of the Demoniac's father are neglected
-as a whole, in relation of limb to limb, and the figure is sacrificed to
-place. The face of Christ himself, as it was seen in the Louvre, is
-unworthy of Raffaello's hand and conception.[98]
-
-The reason why some of the figures are drawn in the true spirit of the
-artist, and others in a bald and insignificant manner, may be, that
-after slightly sketching the whole, he gave his own finish in the design
-to those parts only which he intended to execute with his own hand in
-the picture; and less solicitous for the rest, left them to the hand of
-some inferior pupil.
-
-The height of this extraordinary design is one foot eight inches four
-lines; its breadth one foot two inches five lines; it is without injury.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Taddeo and Federigo Zuccari, the first declared mannerists of this
-school, sons of Ottaviano Zuccari, a mediocre painter of S. Angiolo in
-Vado, came to Rome successively, formed a school, and filled towns and
-states with an immense farrago of good, tolerable, and bad pictures.
-From the instructions of Pompeo da Fano and Giacomone da Faenza, but
-chiefly from an obstinate study of Raffaello's works, Taddeo, at no
-protracted period, gathered enough to diffuse over his own, an air,
-though not reality, of style, and to anticipate by contrivance and
-facility the rewards which time owes to invention and genius. Courting
-the senses of the multitude, he became the hero of the day; they saw
-their portraits in his faces, their limbs in his forms, their action in
-his attitudes; his draperies, hair, beards, had a cut of fashion. The
-simplicity of his disposition is often contrasted by half figures
-emerging from his foregrounds; perhaps less from a principle of
-imitating his more remote predecessors, than to invigorate the effect of
-his chiaroscuro, a method not unknown to Parmegiano.
-
-Rome possesses vast works in fresco of Taddeo; among the best of these
-are some Gospel stories at the Consolazione. He seldom painted in oil,
-and less commendably in large than small: some of these are cabinet
-pictures of exquisite finish,--such a one, (formerly in the collection
-of the Duke of Urbino, but more recently at Osimo in the Palace
-Leopardi,) is the Nativity of the Saviour, and in Taddeo's very best
-style. But the work on which his fame chiefly rests, are the paintings
-of the Palazzo Farnese, at Caprarola (engraved in a moderate volume, by
-Prenner, 1748). They represent the Feats of the Farnese Family, in peace
-and war; to which are joined other stories, both sacred and profane;
-but what attracts attention most, is the celebrated "Stanza del Sonno,"
-an apartment dedicated to Sleep, replete with a great variety of
-allegoric imagery, suggested to him by Annibale Caro, in a long, quaint
-letter, printed among his familiar ones, and reproduced among the
-"Lettere Pittoriche," t. iii. l. 99.
-
-Dissimilar in the pursuits of life, Taddeo resembled Raffaello in death;
-he completed thirty-seven years, and obtained a monument close to
-Sanzio, in the "Rotonda."
-
-His brother and pupil Federigo, inferior in design, resembles him in
-taste, though more mannered, more capricious in conceit, more crowded in
-composition. He completed what death had prevented Taddeo from finishing
-in the Sala Regia, that of Farnese, the Trinita de' Monti, and
-elsewhere, with the airs of heir-at-law to his brother's talents. Thus
-he raised an opinion of capacity for greater enterprise, and was invited
-by Francis I. to paint the great Cupola of the metropolitan church at
-Florence, which death alone had saved from Vasari's hands. There
-Federigo painted more than three hundred figures of fifty feet in
-height each, besides that of Lucifer, "so enormous," to use his own
-phrase, "that it makes the other figures appear infants;[99]--figures,"
-he adds, "larger than the world ever witnessed before in Art." So
-little, however, hugeness excepted, is there to admire in this work,
-that at the time of Pier da Cortona, a painting of that master would
-have been substituted for it, had it not been feared that he would not
-live long enough to terminate the whole. After the Cupola, every work of
-consequence at Rome appeared his due, and he was recalled by Gregorio to
-paint the ceiling of the Paolina, and give a successor to Michael
-Angelo. It was at that period, that, on a charge preferred against him
-by some courtiers or domestics of Gregorio, he painted and exhibited the
-picture of Calumny, and his accusers with asses-ears, which raised a
-clamour that obliged him to fly from Rome. During his exile, which
-lasted some years, he visited Flanders, Holland, England; had a call
-even from Venice to paint a subject in the Ducal Palace, was everywhere
-caressed and remunerated, and, the Pope being mitigated, returned to
-reassume his interrupted labours in the Capella; the best work perhaps
-which, without the assistance of his brother, he has produced at Rome,
-though the larger altar-piece of S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and that of the
-Angioli at Gesu, with some others dispersed in other churches, may claim
-their share of merit. He built a house on Monte Pincio, rapidly and with
-the assistance of his scholars furnished with family portraits,
-conversations, and other whims in fresco, and left to prove him a
-trifler in Art, and the leader of decay.
-
-Invited by Philip II. he went to Madrid, but failed to please; his place
-was supplied by Tibaldi, and he sent back with a good pension to Italy.
-Towards the end of his life he made another journey, scouring the
-principal towns of Italy, and leaving his works wherever he could place
-them: of these the Assumption of the Madonna in an oratorio at Rimini on
-which he wrote his name, and her Death at Sta. Maria in Acumine of the
-same place, with figures more than usually studied, deserve notice. His
-Presepio in the Duomo of Foligno, has simplicity and grace; nor less
-have the two stories relative to the Madonna, painted for the Duke of
-Urbino in a chapel at Loretto. The Miracle of the Snow, in the library
-of the Cistercians at Milano, is a multitudinous composition filled with
-portraits as usual, variously coloured and well preserved. The Borromean
-College at Pavia, has a saloon painted in fresco from incidents in the
-life of S. Carlo: the most approved of these is the Saint praying in his
-recess: nor might the other two, that of the consistory in which he
-received the Cardinal's hat, and the Pest of Milano, want commendation
-had they overflowed less in figures. At Torino he painted for the
-Jesuits a St. Paul; began to ornament a gallery for the Duke, Charles
-Emanuel; published his _Idea de' Pittori Scultori ed Architetti_, and
-dedicated it to the Duke. This was followed, at his return to Lombardy,
-by two other treatises; "_La dimora di Parma del Sig. Cav. Federico
-Zuccaro_; and _Il passaggio per Italia, colla dimora di Parma del Sig.
-Cav. Federigo Zuccari_," both printed at Bologna 1608. Next year, on his
-return to Rome, he fell sick at Ancona, and there died. His talents,
-which extended to sculpture and architecture, were inferior to his
-fortune, which preceded that of all his contemporaries, and was in a
-great measure the effect of personal qualities; lordly aspect and
-demeanour, some literary culture, persuasive manners, and a liberality
-that absorbed the wealth which his hand had accumulated.
-
-Emulation seems to have been his chief motive of writing: he longed to
-break a lance with Vasari, whom, from whatever cause, as appears from
-the postils tacked to the _Vite_, he disliked. They have been sometimes,
-especially in the Life of Taddeo, quoted and treated as effusions of
-envy and malignity by the annotator of the Roman edition. To prove his
-superiority over the Tuscan, he chose a style as obscure and inflated as
-that of Giorgio is diffuse and plain; the whole of the treatise printed
-at Torino reels in a round of internal and external design, and contains
-less precept than peripatetic speculation, which rendered the schools of
-that day more loquacious than learned. His language runs over in
-intellective[100] and formative conceits, in substantial substances and
-formal forms; even the titles of his chapters are larded with equal
-fulsomeness of phrase, like that of the XIIth., that "philosophy and to
-philosophize, is metaphoric and similitudinarious design." These are the
-bait of fools--for none but fools can hope to gather meaning from the
-bubbles of sophistry, or stoop to disentangle etymologies which derive
-_disegno_ from "Dei signum," the sign of God!
-
-This treatise was probably the offspring of his presidency in the
-Academy of St. Luke; for office gives insolence. The Academy dates its
-origin from the Pontificate of Gregorio XIII., who granted the brief of
-its foundation[101] to Muziano. It had not, however, its full effect
-till after the return of Zuccari from Spain, who put it in force and was
-unanimously declared "Principe," or President. That was his day of
-triumph; he returned from the inauguration in the church of S. Martino
-at the foot of the Campidoglio, accompanied by a great concourse of
-artists and litterators to his own house, where shortly after he built a
-saloon for the accommodation of the Academy, in whose praise he
-overflowed in prose and poems, more than once quoted in his larger
-treatise; and to seal his extreme affection, bequeathed like Muziano, in
-case his own line should fail, the bulk of his fortune to the
-establishment.
-
-Giuseppe Cesari, sometimes distinguished by the name of Il Cavaliere
-d'Arpino,[102] his native place, was in art what Marino was in
-poetry--brilliancy without substance is the characteristic of both, and
-either proved the ancient observation, that Arts and Republics receive
-the greatest damage from the greatest capacities. The talent of Cesari
-bubbled up from his infancy, made him an object of admiration, procured
-him through F. Danti, the protection of Gregorio XIII., and in a short
-time the reputation of the first master at Rome. Less than the felicity
-with which he is said to have executed some pictures from certain
-designs of M. Agnolo, in the possession of Giacomo Rocca, his exuberance
-alone was sufficient to establish supremacy of name among a race who
-measured genius by quantity, and science by confidence of method. If his
-numbers were rabble, he arranged them with the skill of a general; if
-common-place furnished him with features, arrogance of touch brushed
-them into notice; and the horses which he drew with equal truth and
-fire, supplied the incorrectness or imbecility of the rider. The
-excellence of his colour in fresco, the gaiety which he spread over a
-vast surface, hid from the common eye monotony of manner, poverty of
-character, and want of finish in the detail of parts.
-
-They were observed, reprobated and opposed by M.A. Caravaggio, A.
-Caracci, and the few who saw and thought with them. Quarrels arose, and
-challenges were given: that of Caravaggio, Cesari refused to accept,
-because he had not yet been knighted, and Annibale rejected that of
-Cesari, because, said he, "I know no other weapon than my pencil." They
-both experienced the difference of the difficulties that attend
-legislation and reform of taste, and were left ineffectually to struggle
-with an empiric, who outlived either upwards of thirty years, and then
-left a race worse than himself behind him.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[89] Bramante.
-
-[90] Lett. Perug. V.
-
-[91] "Cervello di porfido."
-
-[92] See Vasari on Michael Angelo's observations on Tizian.
-
-[93] "Fece li Schizzi e i Cartoni di tutte le Istorie."
-
-    _Vita di Pinturicchio._
-
-"Fece alcuni de' disegni e Cartoni di quell' opera."
-
-    _Vita di Raffaello._
-
-
-[94] In the picture on the facciata, Bottari says, "Si vede non solo il
-disegno, ma in molte teste anche il colore di Raffaello."
-
-[95] Essendo con Pinturicchio a Siena--messo da parte quell' opera, e
-ogni utile e commodo suo, se ne venne a Fiorenza. Morta la Madre, parti
-e ando a Urbino, e accomodate le cose sue, ritorno a Perugia. Prima che
-partisse, &c.--Cosi venuto a Firenze, fece il cartone per il quadro di
-Madonna Atalanta Baglioni; dipinse per A. Doni e Dom. Canigiani; studio
-le cose vecchie di Masaccio; acquisto miglioramento dai lavori di
-Lionardo e di Michelagnolo; ebbe stretta domestichezza con Fra
-Bartolomeo di S. Marco; ma in su la maggior frequenza di questa pratica
-fu richiamato a Perugia, dove fini l'opera della gia detta Madonna
-Atalanta Baglioni, &c.--Finito questo lavoro e tornato a Fiorenza, gli
-fu dai Dei cittadini Fiorentini allegata una tavola, &c. ma chiamato da
-Bramante si trasferi a Roma.--Vasari, Vita di Raffaello da Urbino, ed.
-Firenze, 1771. p. 163, 167, 172.
-
-According to this account of Vasari, Raffaelle went three times to
-Florence; the first time, when roused by the fame of Lionardo and
-Michael Angelo, he left Pinturicchio 1504, and continued at Florence
-till he was called away by the death of his mother to Urbino, from
-whence, having settled his affairs, and painted certain things, he went
-to Perugia, and after some public works there, returned again to
-Florence with a commission from A. Baglioni. This is the period fixed by
-Vasari of his acquaintance with Bartolomeo di S. Marco, the progressive
-improvements of his style, and his pictures for A. Doni and D.
-Canigiani, and must have been his longest stay in that capital, though
-interrupted by a new call to Perugia, during which he finished the
-picture of the Burial of Christ, now in the Borghese Palace, for the
-Chapel Baglioni, and then returned for the third time to Florence.
-
-[96] From the "Annalen der bildenden Kuenste fuer die Osterreichischen
-Staaten, Von Hans Rudolph Fueessli." Erster theil. Wien. 1801. Annals of
-the Plastic Arts in Austria.
-
-[97] 1515. Raffahell di Urbin, who was so highly esteemed by the Pope,
-has made these naked figures, and has sent them to Albrecht Durer at
-Nornberg, to show him his hand.
-
-[98] This observation is founded on close inspection of this picture, in
-the room of the "Restoration," in 1802. The face of Christ not only
-appeared no longer that which all thought it to be who had seen it at S.
-Pietro in Montorio, but even inferior to that in the print of Dorigny,
-had assumed an expression nearer allied to meanness than to dignity,
-without sublimity austere, and forbidding. It is probable, however, that
-these changes originated under the sacrilegious hands of the restorers,
-who had before destroyed the better part of the Madonna di Foligno.
-
-[99] "Si smisurata, che fa parere le altre, figure di Bambini," &c. Idea
-de' Pittori, Scultori, e Architetti, inserted among the Lettere
-Pittoriche, t. vi. p. 147.
-
-[100] Disegno interiore ed esteriore; concetti intellettivi e formativi;
-sostanze sostanziali, forme formali.--Titolo del capitolo XII. che la
-filosofia e il filosofare e disegno metaforico similitudinario.--Disegno,
-Segno di Dio.
-
-[101] Baglioni, Vita di Muziano.
-
-[102] 1560-1640.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES.
-
-
-Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their
-splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had
-learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum,
-Stabiae, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of
-legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished
-in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman
-empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts
-made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair
-their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art
-itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom
-of the middle ages.
-
-But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of
-Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the
-contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage
-through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage,
-on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded
-church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[103] avails
-himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as
-if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand
-against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[104] who from them, judged him
-inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.
-
-The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and
-emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli,
-named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the
-Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some
-sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel
-of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo
-a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some
-fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was
-the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta
-the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has
-reached our time.[105]
-
-About 1325, Giotto was invited by King Robert to Naples, for the purpose
-of painting the church of Sta. Chiara; he came and filled it with
-Gospel history, and apocalyptic mysteries, from inventions, said in the
-time of Vasari to have been formerly communicated to him by Dante. These
-works, because they darkened the church, were whitewashed in the
-beginning of the last century, with the exception of a Madonna called
-della Grazia, and some other sainted image, preserved by female piety.
-Giotto conducted other works in Sta. Maria Coronata, and still others,
-which no longer exist in the Castle dell' Uovo. Maestro Simone, a
-Cremonese, according to some, but more probably a native of Naples, was
-the chosen partner of these works, and from so distinguished a choice,
-acquired some celebrity himself: from the resemblance of his style to
-Tesauro and to Giotto, he might have been the pupil of either, and was
-perhaps of both. Certain it is, that after the departure of Giotto, he
-received from Robert and Queen Sancia, many important commissions for
-various churches, and especially that of S. Lorenzo; there he painted
-Robert receiving the crown from his brother Lewis, Bishop of Toulouse,
-but died before he could finish the compartment of the chapel dedicated
-to that prelate after his demise and canonization. Though confessedly
-inferior in invention, character, and suavity of tone, he has nearly
-reached Giotto in some of his works: such as the dead Christ supported
-by his mother, in the church dell' Incoronata, and the Madonna with the
-Infant, on a gold-ground, now in the convent of the church della Croce,
-supposed by some to have been painted in oil.[106]
-
-Simone had a son, Francesco di Simone, who died in 1360. His works are
-not numerous, but what has reached our days in the Capitolo di S.
-Lorenzo, is distinguished by an air of superior dignity and grace. Two
-other pupils of Simone, Gennaro di Cola and Stefanone, a similarity of
-manner associated in several public works, such as the chapel of S.
-Lewis, begun by Simone, and what still exists in S. Giovanni da
-Carbonara of subjects relative to our Lady. They are similar, however,
-without monotony. Gennaro, impressed by the difficulties of his art, and
-bent to overcome each obstacle by labour, appears precise, studied, and
-hard. Stefanone, guided by a spirit which in better days might have been
-called genius, boldly executed what he had conceived with warmth.
-
-The pretended improvements of Colantonio del Fiore, (born 1352, died
-1444,) a pupil of Francesco, neither appear to have been considerable
-enough in themselves, nor sufficiently authenticated, to place him at
-the head of a new epoch in style. Those barbarous relics of the middle
-ages, that meagerness of contour, dryness of colour, and want of
-perspective, which he is said to have abolished, had in a great measure
-vanished before, at the glance of Giotto. The gold grounds continued
-after both;[107] and if in enumerating some of his works his encomiast
-is in doubt whether they may not rather belong to M. Simone, what is it
-but a tacit confession, that the art had made no considerable progress
-during the course of a century?
-
-The life of Colantonio grasped nearly the half of two centuries, and the
-refinements for which he has been extolled must be looked for in those
-of his works, on whose authenticity there is no hesitation, produced on
-the verge of life. Such is the Madonna, &c. in Sta. Maria Nuova, a
-compound of harmonious hues, though painted on a gold ground; and still
-more in S. Lorenzo, Saint Jerome drawing a thorn from the lion's foot,
-the date 1436, a picture full of truth, in high esteem with foreigners,
-and for its better preservation removed by the fathers of the convent
-from the church itself to the sacristy. He had a scholar in Angiolo
-Franco, who has obtained the praise of Marco di Siena, for having
-invigorated the most successful imitation of Giotto by the tone and
-chiaroscuro of his master.
-
-But a name of far greater importance to art is that of Antonio Solario,
-commonly called Lo Zingaro, the reputed son-in-law of Colantonio. His
-story, still more romantic than that which in Quintin Metsis transformed
-a blacksmith to a painter, tells that Solario, bred to the forge, became
-enamoured of a daughter of Colantonio, forsook the anvil, and by
-successful submission to a ten years' trial of painting, and the
-mediation of a queen, obtained the idol of his soul. Let those who told
-the tale vouch for its truth: what is less disputable, and interests
-this history more, are his travels from Naples to Bologna, where for
-several years he studied under Lippo Dalmasio, and from thence over
-Italy, to become acquainted with the principles of other masters; those
-of Vivarini at Venice; of Bicci at Florence; of Galasso at Ferrara; of
-Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano at Rome. These two, it is believed
-that he assisted, and Luca Giordano asserted that some heads in their
-pictures at the Lateran bore the legitimate marks of Solario's pencil.
-In heads he excelled; he inspired them, according to Marco da Siena,
-with the air of life. In perspective, if the times be weighed, his skill
-was considerable; in composition not contemptible. There is variety in
-his scenery; and if his dresses be not drapery, they are at least
-naturally folded. In the design of the extremities he was less happy;
-his attitudes often border on caricature, as his colour on crudeness. On
-his return to Naples, nine years after his departure, applauded by
-Colantonio and the public, he enjoyed the patronage of King Alfonso. His
-greatest work is the Life of S. Benedetto, in the compartments of the
-cloister of S. Severino,--frescoes filled with an incredible variety of
-objects. Other churches possess some altarpieces by him: he left many
-portraits and some very attractive Madonnas; but in the Dead Christ of
-S. Domenico Maggiore, and the S. Vincent of S. Pier Martire, including
-some stories of that Saint's life, he is said to have excelled himself.
-Zingaro reared a school, which with more or less felicity disseminated
-his principles for nearly half a century, and retained his name. Of its
-pupils, Niccola di Vito, long forgot in his works, is barely remembered
-as a buffoon; Simone Papa and Angiotillo di Roccadirame, scarcely
-emerged to mediocrity; Pietro and Ippolito (Polito) del Donzello deserve
-less transient attention. Sons-in-law of Angiolo Franco, and pupils of
-Giuliano da Majano in architecture, they were, according to Vasari,[108]
-employed by him to decorate with paintings the fabric of Poggio Reale,
-which he had constructed for King Alfonso, where, continuing to operate
-under his son and successor Ferdinand, they represented the story of the
-Conspiracy formed in against him, a work celebrated by Jacopo
-Sannazaro.[109] Ippolito, alone or with his brother, filled the
-refectory of Sta. Maria Nuova with a number of subjects for the same
-prince, and then retired to Florence, where, not long after, he died.
-Piero remained at Naples distinguished and followed. Their style is that
-of their master, but with more suavity of colour. The first successful
-imitation of friezes, trophies, and storied basso-relievoes in
-chiaroscuro, may with probability be dated from them. That Pietro
-excelled in portraits, is evident from some animated heads saved among
-the ruins of certain frescoes of his on a wall of the Palace Matalona.
-Both were, however, surpassed in tone, and force of light and shade, and
-mellowness of outline, by Silvestro de Buoni, their pupil, whose
-pictures, scattered over the temples of Naples, have been enumerated by
-Dominici. Silvestro himself yields to Tesauro of questionable name,[110]
-whose works approach much nearer to the succeeding epoch than the united
-labours of his predecessors in vigour of invention, in judgment,
-propriety of attitude, truth of expression, and general harmony of the
-whole, with a relief beyond what seems credible in an artist
-unacquainted with other schools and other works than those of his
-native place. Such was his power of execution, that it challenged the
-wonder of Luca Giordano in the vigour of his career, when he
-contemplated the ceiling of San Giovanni de' Pappacodi, where Tesauro
-had painted the Seven Sacraments. They have been minutely described, and
-the portraits of Alfonso II. and of Ippolita Sforza, whom he is said to
-have represented, for the work itself is no more, in the Sacrament of
-Matrimony, afford some light as to the time in which it was painted.
-Another of his works, equally praised, in the Chapel Tocco of the
-Episcopal church, which represented a series of subjects from the life
-of Saint Asprenas, perished under the hands of one of Solimena's pupils.
-He was the father or uncle of Raimo Epifanio Tesauro, a considerable
-Frescante, who, according to Stanzioni, rekindled the evanescent spark
-of Zingaro's principles. Some few vestiges of his works remain in Sta.
-Maria Nuova and Monte Vergine. His dates reach from 1480 to 1501, and he
-may be considered as the last of this school, for Gio. Antonio d'Amato
-acquired fame by abandoning its style for that of Pietro Perugino.
-
-Such were the masters that marked the first epoch of the Neapolitan
-school; neither inconsiderable in number, nor contemptible in progress,
-for a state nearly always perplexed by war: it derives, however, its
-greatest lustre from having produced within the state the memorable
-artist whose resolution and perseverance made Italy mistress of the
-new-discovered method in oil-painting, and changed the face of art.[111]
-
-Antoniello, a Messinese, of the Antonj family, universally known by the
-name of Antoniello da Messina, educated, according to Vasari, to the art
-at Rome, returned from that place to Sicily, and after some successful
-practice at Palermo and Messina, sailed to Naples, where he saw an
-historical picture painted in oil by John ab Eyk, which had been
-presented or disposed of to king Alfonso, by some Florentine traders.
-Charmed by the method, Antoniello forgot every other concern, passed
-into Flanders, and by close attendance, and some presents of Italian
-designs, captivated the heart of the old painter, who made him
-completely master of the secret, and soon after died. Antoniello then
-left Flanders, and after some months spent at Messina, repaired to
-Venice, where he practised with general admiration of his new method;
-communicated it to Domenico there, and he at Florence to the felon
-Castagna, till by gradual progress it embraced all Italy. What remains
-to be related of Antoniello, is reserved for the history of the Venetian
-school, to which by residence and practice he properly belongs, and
-which alone carried his new discovered method to the height it was
-capable of.
-
-The second epoch of Neapolitan art was auspicious. P. Perugino had
-painted for the Cathedral an Assumption of the Virgin, now lost, a work
-which led to a better taste. Already, Amato, as we observed, had
-abandoned the manner of Zingaro to follow Pietro, though his style had
-still too much of the former to form more than the connecting link
-between the two epochs; when Raffaello and his school came into vogue,
-Naples was the first of exterior towns to profit by them, and they,
-about the middle of the century, were followed by some adherents of
-Michael Angiolo; nor till near 1600, was any attention paid to other
-masters, if we except Tiziano.
-
-The new series begins with Andrea Sabbatini[112] of Salerno. Smitten
-with the style of P. Perugino, Andrea set out for Perugia, to enter his
-school; but hearing some painters at an inn on the road talk of
-Raffaello and the Vatican, he altered his mind and route, and went to
-Rome. Though not long under the guidance of Sanzio, being by the death
-of his father, 1513, obliged to return to Naples, he returned another
-man. He is said to have painted with Raffaello at the Pace and in the
-Vatican. A good copyist, and what is rare, a better imitator, if he did
-not soar with Giulio, he kept pace with the best of that school, and
-excelled some in correctness, and a style equally remote from
-affectation and manner, with depth of chiaroscuro, breadth of drapery,
-and a colour which has defied time. His works in oil and fresco,
-scattered over the metropolis and the kingdom at large, have been
-celebrated as miracles of art, though now either lost or greatly
-impaired.
-
-Of his scholars all persevered not in his manner: thus Cesare Turco, as
-commendable in oil as unsuccessful in fresco, drew nearer to P.
-Perugino. More of Andrea was retained by Francesco Santafede, the father
-and master of Fabrizio,--painters whom few of that school equal in
-colour, and so uniform that their works can only be discriminated by the
-superior tinge and chiaroscuro of the father. But the scholar who most
-resembled Andrea was one Paolillo, whose works, nearly all ascribed to
-his master, till restored to their real author by Dominici, leave little
-doubt of his right to the first honours of that school, had his career
-not been intercepted by a violent death, occasioned by intrigue.
-Polidoro Caldara, of Caravaggio, escaped to Naples in 1527, from the
-sack of Rome, but not, as Vasari with less information than credulity
-relates, to starve. Received in the house of Andrea, formerly his fellow
-scholar, he soon acquired acquaintance, commissions, and even formed
-pupils before his departure for Sicily. He had been celebrated for his
-chiaroscuros at Rome: at Naples and Messina he attempted colour. The
-shadowy and pallid specimens he has left, leave a doubt whether he would
-ever have arrived at a degree of strength or brilliancy worthy of
-invention and style, though he has been praised with enthusiasm by
-Vasari for the colour of the Christ led to Calvary, a numerous
-composition, and the last before his assassination at Messina.
-
-Gian Bernardo Lama left the school of Amato to attach himself to
-Polidoro, whom he more than once imitated with sufficient success to
-incur the suspicion of having been assisted by the master: he had,
-however, more sweetness than energy, and, in the sequel, was noted for
-his opposition to the vigorous inroads of the Tuscan style and the
-prevalence of Marco di Pino.
-
-Francesco Rubiales, a Spaniard, from his felicity of imitation called
-Polidorino, is likewise named in Naples among the scholars of Caldara,
-whom he assisted in painting for the Orsini, and singly conducted
-several works at Monte Oliveto, and elsewhere, the greater part of which
-are no more.
-
-There are who class with the scholars of Polidoro, Marco Cardisco,
-called Marco Calabrese.[113] Him Vasari prefers to all the natives of
-that epoch, and admires as a plant sprung from a soil not its own: he
-knew not, perhaps, that, of Magna Grecia, modern Calabria was the spot
-most favoured by the arts. Possessed of a dextrous hand and florid
-colour, Cardisco spread his labours over Napoli and the State: of what
-remains, the most praised is the Dispute of Saint Augustine at Aversa.
-Gio. Batista Crescione and Lionardo Castellani are slightly mentioned by
-Vasari as his scholars.
-
-Gio. Francesco Penni, called "Il Fattore," came to Naples some time
-after Polidoro; and, during the short time which he lived, for he died
-in 1528, contributed to the advancement of the art by leaving his great
-copy of Raffaello's Transfiguration and his pupil Lionardo Grazia, of
-Pistoia, behind him, a name more celebrated for colour, and far less for
-design, than might have been expected from a nurseling of the Roman
-School. He is said to have been one of the masters of Francesco Curia,
-who went to Rome to study the style of Raffaello, but returned with the
-manner of Zucchero. His composition is, however, praised for decorum and
-suavity, his angels and female countenances for beauty, and his colour
-for a tone of nature:--their full display distinguished that
-Circumcision at the Church della Pieta, which Ribera, Giordano, and
-Solimene placed among the masterpieces of Naples. Curia left a close
-imitator in Ippolito Borghese, of whom little is seen at home, where he
-seldom resided, but the Assumption of Maria at the Monte della
-Pieta,--an extensive work, marked by equal vigour of execution.
-
-Perino del Vaga, at Rome, instructed, and was assisted by, two
-Neapolitans, Giovanni Corso and Gianfilippo Criscuolo. The best that
-remains of Corso at Naples, is a Christ bearing his Cross, in S.
-Lorenzo. Long a pupil of Sabbatini, Criscuolo, during the little time of
-his stay at Rome, studied the works of Raffaello with a perseverance
-which acquired him the name of the Studious Neapolitan; but without
-native vigour, timid, correct, and dry, he remained fitter to teach than
-to lead. Such were the principal followers of the Roman School at
-Naples; for neither Francesco Imparato, who abandoned the dry precepts
-of Criscuolo for the genial example of Tiziano, nor his son Girolamo,
-who long after followed the same principles with more pretence and less
-success, can properly be classed among the pupils of Rome. About
-1544[114] a Tuscan introduced at Naples, what is as commonly as
-impertinently called, the style of Michael Angiolo: a cold enumeration
-of sesquipedalian muscles, groups uninspired by thought, feeble in
-effect, and crude or faint in colour, methodized by manner and
-despatched by practice. Thus Giorgio Vasari filled the Refectory of
-Monte Oliveto, during one year of residence, with an enormous work,
-which he considered as the electric stroke that was to animate that
-indolent taste, till then vainly solicited by Raffaello and his school.
-Whether he disgusted the national pride by such insolent civility, or
-provoked the indignation of those who, in Andrea Sabbatini, venerated a
-superior name, it appears that, so far from creating a school, he was
-discountenanced by the public, and incurred the perpetual censure of
-every Neapolitan writer on art. He ought to have known, that he who
-challenges a nation, courts an eternal feud.
-
-Another, less pompous, but more effectual follower of Michael Angiolo,
-was Marco da Pino, or Marco da Siena: the date[115] of his arrival at
-Naples ought probably to be placed after 1560. He was well received,
-presented with the freedom of the city, and deserved the courtesy by the
-amenity of his manners and sincerity of character. With the reputation
-of the first artist, Marco was employed in the most conspicuous churches
-of the city and the state. Though he sometimes repeated his inventions,
-he approached Michael Angiolo nearer than any other Tuscan, because he
-affected less to do it. His forms are appealed to by Lomazzo as
-instances of just proportion, and, in keeping and aerial perspective, he
-is ranked with Lionardo and Robusti. As his design is less charged, so
-is his colour more vigorous and glowing than the usual tinge of the
-Tuscan School: sometimes, however, he is unequal, trusts to practice,
-and deviates into manner. He was an able architect, and of the good
-writers on that art.
-
-Of many pupils reared in his school, none was comparable to Gio. Angiolo
-Criscuolo, brother of G. Filippo. Though bred a notary, he had practised
-miniature from his youth; emulation with his brother prompted him to
-attempt larger proportions; and, under the tuition of Marco, he became a
-good imitator of his style.[116]
-
-To dwell circumstantially on the crowd of artists that fill the
-biographic pages of this period, humiliating as mere nomenclature may
-appear, is below the dignity of an art, which, like poetry, admits not
-of mediocrity. Reputation during life, the partiality of friends and
-countrymen, some single work which escaped to excellence from the
-insignificant productions of a long career, are but equivocal claims on
-the homage of posterity: and more legitimate ones in oil or fresco, have
-neither Silvestro Bruno, Simone del Papa, the younger Amato, Mazzolini,
-Cola dell' Amatrice, Pompeo dell' Aquila, Giuseppe Valeriani, Marco
-Mazzaroppi, Gio. Pietro Russo, Pietro Negrone of Calabria, nor the
-Sicilian Gio. Borghese. Pirro Ligorio, the favourite architect of Pio
-IV. in Rome, and the engineer of Alphonso II. at Ferrara, owes the
-preservation of his name more to his Augean collections of antiquarian
-lumber and the intrigues by which he perplexed the last years of M.
-Angiolo, than to the flimsy exertions of his pencil.
-
-Matteo da Lecce, of obscure education, displayed in Rome a perverse
-attachment to the manner of M. Angiolo by the usual conglobation of
-muscles and extravagance of action. He worked chiefly in fresco, and
-with a relief, which, in the phrase of Baglioni, makes some of his
-figures burst from the wall. Though many Florentines were then at Rome,
-he alone appeared capable of completing the plan of Buonarroti, in the
-Sistina, by facing the Last Judgement with the Fall of the Rebel Angels.
-Matteo girt himself boldly for the work, and left it a lamentable proof
-of the ridicule that must attend the presumption of a mere craftsman to
-ally himself with a man of genius. He worked likewise in Malta and in
-Spain, and, passing from thence to the Indies, became a thriving trader,
-till duped by the rage of digging for treasures, he dissipated his
-wealth, and died of penury and grief.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-After the middle of the sixteenth century, the flame-like rapidity of
-Tintoretto's style at Venice, and soon after, the powerful contrast of
-Caravaggio's method at Rome, and the eclectic system of the Carracci, at
-Bologna, spread general emulation over Italy, and divided Naples into
-three parties, of nearly equal strength, led by Corenzio, Ribera, and
-Caracciolo, differing from each other, but ready to unite against all
-foreign competition. During their flourish, Guido, Domenichino,
-Lanfranco, Artemisia Gentileschi were at Naples, and formed some
-pupils;--a period as enviable in the number of excellent artists and the
-progressive powers of execution, as disgraceful for the dark manoeuvres
-and the vile intrigues that fill it--intrigues and manoeuvres too closely
-interwoven with the history of Neapolitan art, and, unfortunately, too
-well attested, merely to be dismissed with silence and contempt.
-
-Belisario Corenzio,[117] an Achaean Greek, after passing five years in
-the school of Tintoretto, fixed his abode at Naples about 1590. A native
-stream of ideas and unparalleled celerity of hand placed him, perhaps,
-on a level with his master in the dispatch of a prodigious number, even
-of most extensive works; but his rage was too ungovernable often to
-admit of more distinguished comparisons with Robusti; though few
-excelled him in design, and his works abound in conceptions, attitudes,
-and airs of heads confessedly inimitable to the Venetians themselves.
-The work in which he has best succeeded as an imitator of Tintoretto, is
-the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd by the Saviour, in the Refectory of
-the Benedictines, a huge performance, but, under his hands, a task of
-forty days. Though generally too much of a mannerist to sacrifice the
-readiest to the best, he still preserves a character of his own, an air
-of originality, in glories especially, which he embosomed in darkness
-and clouds pregnant with showers. With a decided turn for works of large
-dimension in fresco, which seldom allowed him to submit to the finish of
-oil colour, he contrived to please by various compositions of sacred
-history, in small proportions, and is even said to have enlivened the
-perspectives of the Frenchman Desiderio with diminutive figures
-admirably toned and adapted to the scenery.
-
-The native country of Giuseppe Ribera[118] was a subject of dispute
-between the Spaniards and Neapolitans, till the production of an
-extract from the baptismal register of Xativa (Antologia di Roma, 1795)
-decided the claim in favour of Spain, and proved him a native of that
-place, now "San Felipe," in the district of Valencia. If the date of his
-birth, January 12, 1588, be correct, he must have come to Italy and
-entered the school of Caravaggio at a very early period. From him Ribera
-went to Rome, Modena, Parma, saw Raffaello, Annibale, Correggio, and in
-imitation of their works attempted to form a more luminous and gayer
-style, in which he had little success, dismissed it soon after his
-return to Naples, and once more embraced the method of Caravaggio, as
-more eminently calculated by its force, truth, and effect to fix the eye
-of the multitude, the object of his ambition; he soon became painter to
-the court, and by degrees the arbiter of its taste.
-
-The studies he had pursued enabled him to go beyond Caravaggio in
-invention, mellowness, and design: the grand Deposition from the Cross
-at the Certosa proves the success of his emulation, a work, by the
-verdict of Giordano, alone sufficient to form a painter: the Martyrdom
-of S. Gennaro in the royal chapel, and the S. Jerome of the Trinita,
-excel his usual style, and possess Titianesque beauties. S. Jerome was
-among his darling subjects; S. Jerome he painted, he etched in numerous
-repetition, in whole-length and in half figures. He delighted in the
-representation of hermits, anchorets, apostles, prophets, perhaps less
-to impress the mind with gravity of character and the venerable looks of
-age, than to strike the eye with the imitation of incidental deformities
-attendant on decrepitude, and the picturesque display of bone, veins,
-and tendons athwart emaciated muscle. A shrivelled arm, a dropsied leg,
-were to Ribera what a breast-plate and a gaberdine were to Rembrandt. As
-in objects of imitation he courted meagreness or excrescence, so in the
-choice of historic subjects he preferred to the terrors of ebullient
-passions, features of horror or loathsomeness, the spasms of Ixion, St.
-Bartholomew under the butcher's knife. Nor are the few ideas of gaiety
-by which he endeavoured to soothe his exasperated fancy, less
-disgusting: Bacchus and his attendants are grinning Lazaroni or bloated
-wine-sacks; brutality under his hand distorts the feature of mirth.
-
-Giambatista Caracciolo,[119] first attached to Franc. Imparato, then to
-Caravaggio, grew to manhood before he had produced any work of
-consequence: roused afterward by the fame and the impression made on his
-mind by some picture of Annibale, he went to Rome, and by a pertinacious
-study of the Farnese Gallery became one of the best imitators of that
-style. This was the basis of his fame on his return to Naples, and by
-this, whenever provoked to competition, he maintained it: such are the
-Madonna of S. Anna de' Lombardi; S. Carlo, in the church of S. Agnello;
-and the Christ under the Cross, at the Incurabili. The rest of his
-performances, by their strength of chiaroscuro, betray the school of
-Caravaggio. From so considerate and finished an artist, haste and
-flimsiness were not to be feared, and yet there exist productions of his
-so feeble that his biographer[120] is reduced to account for them from
-the artist's wish of retaliating by paltry work for paltrier prices; or
-from suffering them to be finished by Mercurio d'Aversa, no very
-estimable pupil.
-
-Such were the three leaders of that cabal which for some years
-persecuted every stranger of eminence in the art who freely came, or was
-invited to come, to Naples. Reputation, fiction, violence, had raised
-Belisario to the tyranny of fresco; the most lucrative commissions he
-considered as due to himself, the rest he distributed among his
-dependants, the greater number of whom possessed little merit. Massimo
-Santafede, though independent of him, remained neuter, afraid to
-interfere with a man who, to obtain his purpose, would stop at neither
-fraud nor crime; a proof of which he is said to have given, in
-administering poison to the gentlest and best of his pupils, Luigi
-Roderigo, whose growing powers he envied.
-
-To maintain his primacy in fresco, the exclusion of every stranger who
-excelled in that branch became, of course, his principal object.
-Annibale Caracci arrived at Naples in 1609, to paint the churches "dello
-Spirito Santo" and "di Gesu Nuovo," and produced a small picture as a
-specimen of his style. The Greek and his associates, called upon to give
-their opinion of it, unanimously condemned it as cold, and its master
-far too tame to manage an extensive work. Thus baffled, Annibale
-returned to Rome during the most oppressive heats of summer, and soon
-after died. But the work most contested with strangers was the royal
-chapel of S. Gennaro, which the deputies had reserved for Giuseppe
-d'Arpino, then painting the choir of the Certosa. Belisario, leaguing
-himself with Spagnoletto, not less fierce and arrogant, and with
-Caracciolo, who both aspired to that commission, attacked Cesari with a
-fury which forced him, before he could terminate his choir, to fly for
-safety, first to Monte Cassino, and then back to Rome. The commission
-was now given to Guido; but not long after, two men unknown cudgelled
-his servant and dismissed him with a message to his master immediately
-to depart or to prepare for death. Guido fled; but Gessi his pupil, not
-intimidated, having demanded and obtained the grand commission, repaired
-to Naples with two assistants, G. Batista Ruggieri and Lorenzo Menini;
-both were decoyed on board a galley, that immediately slipped its cable
-and transported them to some place which no researches could discover,
-and Gessi was obliged to return with his disappointment to Rome.
-
-Dispirited by the violence of these manoeuvres, the deputies began to
-give way to the cabal of the monopolists, allotting the frescoes to
-Correnzio and Caracciolo, and flattering Spagnoletto with the hope of
-being intrusted with the altar-pieces; when all at once, repenting of
-their agreement, they ordered the two fresco painters to throw up their
-work, and transferred the whole of the chapel to Domenichino, at the
-splendid price of a hundred ducats for every entire, fifty for each half
-figure, and twenty-five for every head.[121] They likewise took measures
-for his personal safety, by obtaining the Viceroy's protection, but in
-vain. The faction, not content with crying him down as a cold insipid
-painter and discrediting him with those who see with their ears and fill
-every place, alarmed him with anonymous letters, threw down what he had
-painted, mixed ashes with his materials to crack the ground he had
-prepared, and, by a stroke of the most refined malice, persuaded the
-Viceroy to give him a commission of some pictures for the Court of
-Spain. These, when little more than dead-coloured, they carried from
-his study to court, where Ribera superciliously ordered what alterations
-he thought proper, and then, without allowing him leisure to terminate
-the whole, dispatched them to Spain. The insolence of the rival, the
-complaints of the deputies on the successive interruptions of their
-work, and hence the suspicion of mischief, induced Domenichino at last
-secretly to depart for Rome, in hopes of being able from thence to bring
-his affairs into a better train,--and not without success; the rumours
-of his flight subsided, new measures for his safety were taken, he
-returned to Naples, and, without more interruption, completed the
-greater part of the frescoes, and considerably advanced the
-altar-pieces.
-
-Here death surprised him, accelerated, as some have suspected, by
-poison, certainly by repeated causes of disgust from his relations,
-competitors, and, above all, the arrival of his old adversary Lanfranco.
-He succeeded to Domenichino in the remaining fresco, Spagnoletto in one
-of the oil pictures, and Stanzioni in another. Caracciolo was dead;
-Belisario, excluded by age from sharing in the spoil, soon after was
-destroyed by a ruinous fall from a scaffold. Nor had Ribera, if the
-prevailing fame be true,[122] a desirable end; dishonoured in his
-daughter, gnawed by remorse for the vile persecutions in which he had
-shared, odious to himself, and sick of light, he escaped to sea, and
-none tells where he perished.
-
-Opposed at its onset by these three, the School of Bologna triumphed
-after their demise, and Naples was divided into its imitators; for the
-mannered style of Cesari, which approached that of Belisario, terminated
-with Luigi Roderigo, and his relative Gian Bernardino.
-
-At the head of those who adopted Caracciesque principles with success,
-may be placed Massimo Stanzioni[123] a scholar of Caracciolo, and, as he
-himself asserts, of Lanfranco in fresco, in portrait of Santafede. At
-Rome he strove to embody the forms of Annibale with the tints of Guido.
-Thus equipped, he braved the foremost talents at Naples, and opposed at
-the Certosa a Dead Christ among the Maries to Spagnoletto, who, to
-escape comparisons, persuaded the friars to have the picture of his
-rival washed to recover its somewhat darkened tone, and with a corrosive
-liquor so defaced it, that Stanzioni, declaring so black a fraud ought
-to remain an object of public indignation, refused to retouch it; he
-left, however, other specimens of his powers at that repository of rival
-talents, and above all the masterpiece of S. Bruno. The ceilings of Gesu
-Nuovo and of S. Paolo give him a distinguished rank among fresco
-painters. His gallery pictures, though not rare at Naples, are seldom
-met with elsewhere. Whilst single, he sought and aimed at excellence,
-and courted the art for its own sake; after his marriage, with a woman
-of fashion, gain became necessary to maintain her in a state of
-splendour, and he sunk by degrees to mediocrity.
-
-The School of Massimo is celebrated for the number and excellence of its
-pupils, but the two who promised most, Muzio Rossi and Antonio de
-Bellis, perished in the bloom of life. The first, who had entered the
-School of Guido at Bologna, was at the age of eighteen thought worthy
-to face at the Certosa men of the first ability, and shrinks from no
-comparison, but scarcely survived his work. The second, whose style is
-nearly balanced between Guido and Guercino, began at the church of S.
-Carlo various pictures from the life of that Saint, which he lived not
-to finish.
-
-Francesco di Rosa, called Pacicco, another pupil of that school, gave
-himself up to the imitation of Guido, by Massimo's own advice. Pacicco
-is one of the few artists mentioned by Paolo de Matteio in a MS. which
-admits no name of mediocrity. His forms, his colour, the elegance of his
-extremities, the grace and dignity of his characters, are equally
-commended. He had models of beauty in three nieces, one of whom, Aniella
-di Rosa, in charms, talents, and manner of death has been compared to
-Elizabeth Sirani: poison, administered by the malignity of strangers,
-swept the Bolognese--a dagger and a husband's jealousy, the Neapolitan:
-he was Agostin Beltrano, her fellow pupil, and frequent partner of her
-works.
-
-The remaining scholars of this school, Paul Domenico Finoglia, Giacinto
-de' Popoli, and Giuseppe Marullo, all three of Orta,--Andrea
-Malinconico, and Bernardo Cavallino, were, if we except the last, with
-more or less felicity, imitators of their master. Cavallino, more
-original, is said to have provoked the jealousy of Massimo, who advised
-him to paint in small: this ought to be admitted with hesitation, for it
-is difficult to believe, that he who feels himself made for the grand,
-could be persuaded to waste his life on trifles.
-
-Another convert to the Caracci School, was Andrea Vaccaro,[124] the
-friend and competitor of Massimo, a man made for imitation, says Lanzi,
-and says too much; for, if he had no equal in that of Caravaggio, he
-was, when imitating Guido, inferior to Massimo: nor did he, till after
-the demise of Stanzioni, acquire that supremacy at Naples which remained
-undisputed till the arrival of Giordano, young, vigorous, and fraught
-with the novel style of Pietro Beretini. Both concurred for the great
-altar-piece of Sta. Maria del Pianto, both presented their sketches, and
-Vaccaro obtained preference by the verdict of Pietro da Cortona himself,
-who declared him equally superior in experience and correctness of style
-to his own scholar; but, when contending with Giordano in fresco, to
-which he had not been trained by early practice, Vaccaro lost the
-honours he had gained. The best of his school was Giacomo Farelli, whom
-Luca found no contemptible antagonist: had he been content to follow the
-style of his master, without aspiring at that of Domenichino, for which
-he was unfit, he might have deserved the historian's notice for more
-than one picture.
-
-On the School of Domenichino, the Sicilians, Pietro, Giacomo, and Teresa
-del Po, cannot confer much honour. The father had more theory than
-practice, the son less evidence than ostentation, the daughter shone in
-miniature. Nearer to the master, both in style and temper, was Francesco
-di Maria: correct, slow, irresolute, author of few but eminent works,
-especially the subjects relative to S. Lawrence, at the Conventuals of
-Naples. He excelled in portraits, one of which, exhibited at Rome with
-one of Vandyk and another by Rubens, was, by Poussin, Cortona, and
-Sacchi, preferred to both. He often has been mistaken for his master,
-and commands high prices: the want of grace alone betrays him--of grace
-Nature had not been liberal to Francesco. Hence he became the proverb
-of Giordano, "that sickening over bone and muscle, he rendered beauty
-tame." He, in retort, held up Giordano's style as heresy in art, a
-flowery medley of incoherent charms.
-
-Though the reputed master, Lanfranco was not the model of Massimo; his
-principal imitator was Giambatista Benaschi, or Bernaschi, numbered with
-Roman artists by Orlandi, but who fixed his residence at Naples, and
-opened a numerous school; a decided machinist, but with a grasp of fancy
-which never suffered him to repeat a figure in the same attitude. His
-points of sight from below upward, are correct, and his foreshortenings
-dextrously contrived. None ever approached a master nearer, and forsook
-him with less success.
-
-Guercino never saw Naples, but Mattia Preti,[125] commonly called
-Calabrese, smit with his novel style, went to study it at Cento; not
-indeed exclusively, for no Italian school escaped the attention of
-Preti. Unpractised in colour to his twenty-sixth year, he attended
-solely to design, less to form beauty or trace characters of delicacy,
-than to express robust and energetic ones: in such he often succeeded,
-but sometimes sunk to heaviness. His colour resembled his line, not soft
-and airy, but dense, cut into masses of chiaroscuro, and with a general
-tone of ashy hues, tints of sorrow, contrition, anguish, the favourite
-topics of his pencil. The frescoes of Calabrese at Modena, Naples,
-Malta, have a stamp of grandeur. At Rome, in S. Andrea della Valle, he
-appears to less advantage, too enormous for the place, and too ponderous
-at the side of Domenichino. Italy is filled with his oil pictures, for
-his life was long, his hand rapid, and every place he visited, a scene
-of exercise: what he painted for galleries consisted commonly of half
-figures, like those of Guercino. He long, and nearly alone, contested
-the field with Giordano, to whose captivating airiness his weight was at
-last forced to yield. He retired and died in Malta, a Knight of its
-order, without leaving a pupil who rose above mediocrity.
-
-After this survey of the Bolognese School at Naples, the native one of
-Ribera claims attention. None ever swore more implicitly to a master's
-dictates: the energy of his style absorbed their eye, the atrocity of
-his character too often debauched their hearts. Inferiority alone
-discriminates the works of Giovanni Do and Bartolommeo Passante from
-those of Spagnoletto; though, in the advance of life, the first
-attempted to tinge with less vulgarity, and the second now and then
-affected a more select outline. Francesco Fracanzani had a certain
-grandeur of execution and bloom of colour: his "Transito," or Death of
-St. Joseph, at the Pellegrini, is among the first pictures of the city.
-But, by the pressure of poverty, he first became a dauber, then a
-criminal, and received sentence of death, which respect for his
-profession, from the public ignominy of the halter, mitigated to secret
-execution by poison.
-
-Aniello Falcone[126] and Salvator Rosa, who is to be mentioned more at
-large elsewhere, are the greatest boast of this school, though Rosa
-frequented it for a short time only, and chiefly profited by the
-instruction of Falcone. The strength of Falcone lay in battles, which he
-painted in all dimensions, from the Sacred books, history, or poems.
-Countenance, arms, dresses were in unison with the national character
-of the combatants. His expression was vivid, the figures and movements
-of his horses select and natural, and his tactics correct, though he had
-neither served in, nor seen a battle. He drew with precision, everywhere
-consulted the life, and laid his colour on with equal strength and
-finish. That he instructed Borgognone is not probable. Baldinucci, who
-published the Memoirs of that Jesuit, is silent on that head; but they
-knew and esteemed each other. He had a numerous set of scholars, and
-with them, and the assistance of some other painters, contrived to
-revenge the murder of some relative and of a pupil assassinated by the
-presidial Spaniards: for, at the revolutionary hubbub of Maso Aniello,
-he and his gang formed themselves into a troop, which they called "the
-Company of Death," and, protected by Ribera, who palliated their
-proceedings at court, spread horrid massacre, till, scared by the return
-of order, this band of homicides dispersed, and sought their safety in
-flight. Falcone himself retired for some years to France, which has many
-of his works; the rest escaped to Rome, or sought the usual asylums of
-revenge and murder.
-
-A numerous set of various but inferior artists, in power and pursuit,
-fills the remaining period of this epoch and the Neapolitan catalogues
-of art: the best of these issued from the desperate School of Falcone,
-to whose method they adhered in all their diverging branches. Of these
-Domenico Gargiuoli, nicknamed Micco Spadaro, a character as fierce as
-pliant, leads the van--no contemptible figurist in large, but of endless
-combination in groups of small proportion. The perspectives of Viviano
-Codagora, his sworn brother, receive an exclusive lustre from his
-figures. The battles of their fellow scholar, Carlo Coppola, might
-sometimes be mistaken for those of Falcone, had he given less fulness to
-his horses. Paolo Porpora left battles to paint quadrupeds, but chiefly
-and best, fish and sea-shells: in fruit and flowers he was far surpassed
-by Abraham Brueghel, who at that time had settled at Naples. Giuseppe
-Recco and Andrea Belvedere, from the same school, excelled in game and
-birds; and the last still more in flowers and fruit, so as to contest
-superiority in that branch with Giordano, asserting that no figurist
-could reach the polish, or give the finish required in minute objects.
-Luca maintained, that the more implies the less, and, composing a
-picture of game, fruit, and flowers, gave it such an air of illusion,
-that Andrea, shrinking from his presence crestfallen, retired among the
-literati of the day, of whom he was not the least.
-
-After the middle of the seventeenth century, the revolutionary style of
-Luca Giordano[127] reversed every preceding principle, and, by the
-suavity of its ornamental magic, enchanted the public taste. A vast,
-resolute, creative, talent attended him from infancy: in his eighth year
-he is said to have painted, and not for the first time in fresco, two
-infant angels, for the church of Sta. Maria La Nuova.[128] Struck with
-wonder, the Vice Re Duke Medina de Las Torres placed him with Ribera,
-whose principles he studied for some time, but, aspiring to a more ample
-theatre of art, escaped to Rome, followed by his father, Antonio, a weak
-artist, but an unceasing monitor, and the more relentless because he
-placed all his hopes on the rapid success of his son. To insure it, he
-did not, if we believe one writer, suffer Luca to intermit his labours
-by regular meals, but fed him whilst at work, as birds their callow
-young, perpetually chirping into his ear, Luca, dispatch![129]--Luca,
-dispatch! repeated his fellow-students, till the joke became nickname,
-by which he is oftener distinguished than by his own.
-
-So brutal a method would have excited in a mind less vigorous nothing
-but weariness and despondency, but to the combining spirit of Luca gave
-with portentous velocity of hand the rudiments of that varied power,
-which, to a degree of deception, taught him to imitate the predominant
-air of every master's style in line and colour, which he was set or
-chose to copy,[130] and he had in nearly endless repetition, copied the
-best of what Rome possessed of its own, the Lombard, Venetian, and
-foreign schools, when he entered that of Pietro da Cortona, whose
-wide-extended and ostentatious plans met most congenially his own.
-
-No single master's manner did he, however, exclusively adopt. His first
-works exhibit the pupil of Ribera, with evident aims at the energy of
-that style; his subsequent and best manner is marked by the beauties and
-the faults of Pietro da Cortona, the same contrast of composition, the
-same masses of light, with equal monotony of expression, which in female
-features was often supplied by his wife; a predilection for the
-ornamental splendour of Paolo Veronese distinguishes with less advantage
-a third class of his works--in this, stuffs are mixed with draperies,
-the tints are less vigorous, the chiaroscuro less decided, the execution
-heavier. It has been observed, that his works, when compared with the
-finished masterpieces of the classic schools, are little better than
-embryos, that he carried nothing to perfection, and that the delusive
-power alone, by which he united a number of jarring parts in one
-pleasing whole, can save him from sinking to the mediocrity which
-overwhelmed his imitators. But it ought likewise to be considered, what
-was the object of his exertions, and the end which he pursued;--they
-were, by conquering the eye, to become the favourite of the public, and
-he was made for both. Others see by degrees, arrange, reject,
-select;--into the fancy of Giordano, the subject with its parts showered
-at once; the picture stood complete before him. In colour, little
-solicitous about the dictates of art, or the real hues of Nature, he
-created an ideal and arbitrary tone, which represented the air of things
-without diving into their substance, and, content with absolute dominion
-over the eye, left it to others to inform the mind. If his method was
-compendiary; none ever knew better how to improve an accident to a
-beauty, and give to the random strokes of haste the look of deliberate
-practice. That he knew the laws of design, we know, but debauched by
-facility and the rage of gain, neglected the toil of correctness: hence
-likewise the superficial manner in which he often laid on his colours,
-diluted, unembodied, and unable to retain the fugitive imagery of his
-pencil.
-
-Naples is full of Giordano--few, if any in so vast a metropolis, are the
-churches that want his hand. In that of the P.P. Girolamini, the
-Expulsion of the Venders is one of his most admired works; but the best
-of his frescoes, in which he seems to have concentrated his powers, are
-those in the treasury of the Certosa. The cupola of S. Brigida, rapidly
-painted in competition with Francesco di Maria, exhibits the first
-specimens of that flattering tone which baffled the learning of his
-rival, intoxicated the vulgar, and corrupted the growing taste. The
-admired picture of St. Xavier, of copious composition and the most
-seductive colour, was the work of one day and a half. Among the public
-and private paintings at Florence, the chapel Corsini and the gallery
-Riccardi are by the hand of Luca; nor was he unemployed by the
-Sovereign; and Cosmo III., in whose presence he invented and coloured a
-large composition with momentary velocity, declared him a painter
-formed for princes. He obtained the same praise from Charles II. of
-Spain, whom he served for thirteen years, but from the multitude of his
-works might be supposed to have served during a long life. There he
-continued the series of pictures begun by Cambiasi, in the church of the
-Escurial, on the most extensive plan, but inferior in style and
-execution to the frescoes of Buon-Ritiro. Of his oil pictures, that of
-the Nativity, for the Queen Mother, has shared unlimited praise, as
-combining with superior felicity of execution, a research and a depth of
-study seldom found in his other works.
-
-Grown old, he returned to Naples, loaded with riches and honours, and
-soon after died, regretted as the first painter of his time.
-
-Though Giordano did not propose his process as a model of imitation to
-his scholars, it may easily be guessed that his success made a deeper
-impression on them than his precepts, and that without previously
-submitting to the labours of his education, they attempted to snatch
-with the charms the profits of his manner. Hence a swarm of bold
-craftsmen and mannerists was let loose upon the public, who with gay
-mediocrity overwhelmed what yet was left of principles in art. Of these,
-his favourites were Aniello Rossi, and Matteo Pacelli, who accompanied
-him to Spain, returned well pensioned, and continued to live in obscure
-ease. Niccolo Rossi, Giuseppe Simonelli, Andrea Miglionico and Ramondo
-de Dominici, came nearer their master; and the Spaniard Franceschitto,
-as he had raised the hopes, might have excited the jealousy of Luca, had
-he not been intercepted by death. He left a specimen of his powers in
-the picture of S. Pasquale, at Sta. Maria del Monte.
-
-But the best of his pupils, and heir of his dispatch, was Paolo de'
-Matteis, a name that ranks with the foremost of that day, not unknown to
-France or Rome; his chief abode was, however, Naples, where his frescoes
-are spread over churches, galleries, halls and ceilings; if unequal to
-those of his master in merit, nearly always produced with equal speed.
-It was his unexampled vaunt to have painted the enormous Cupola del Gesu
-Nuovo in sixty-six days, a boast which Solimene checked with the cool
-reply, that the work told its own tale without assistance: and yet it
-possesses beauties, especially in the parts that imitate Lanfranco,
-which excite wonder, considering the fury of execution. Nor, if he chose
-to work with previous study and with diligence, as in the church of the
-'Pii Operai,' in the gallery Matatona, and in many private pictures, was
-he destitute of composition, grace of outline, or beauty of countenance,
-though little varied. His colour at the onset was Giordanesque; in the
-sequel he increased the force of his chiaroscuro, though not without
-delicate gradation of tints: particularly in Madonnas and Infants, which
-give an idea of Albano's suavity, and the Roman style. A school more
-numerous than distinguished by talent, contributes little to his
-celebrity.
-
-Francesco Solimene,[131] called "L'Abate Ciccio," born at Nocera de'
-Pagani, took the elements of art from his father Angelo, formerly a
-pupil of Massimo, and went to Naples. He successively frequented the
-schools of Francesco di Maria and of Giac. del Po, and left both to
-follow his own inclination, which at first exclusively led him to
-imitate the style of Pietro da Cortona, and even to adopt his figures.
-He next formed a manner which, of all others, approached next to Preti;
-the design, indeed, is less exact, the colour less true, but the faces
-handsomer, now in imitation of Guido, then nearer to Maratta, and often
-picked from life: hence the byname of "the Gentler Calabrese."[132] To
-Preti he joined Lanfranco, whom he surnamed the "Master," and from him
-borrowed and exaggerated that serpentine sweep of composition: his
-chiaroscuro, balanced between both, lost some of its vigour and became
-softer with the advance of life. He drew and revised his forms from
-Nature with much accuracy before he painted, but often sacrificed his
-outline to the fire of execution in the process. The facility and
-elegance which distinguish him in poetry, mark his invention in
-painting, to no branch of which he could be called a stranger, and might
-have excelled singly in each. His works are scattered over Europe, for
-he lived to the age of ninety, and yielded in velocity of hand to
-Giordano only, his competitor and friend, at whose demise he succeeded
-to the Primacy of taste.
-
-Of the public works that most distinguish Solimene, are the stories of
-the sacristy in S. Paolo Maggiore de' P.P. Teatini, nor less the
-pictures substituted for those of Giacomo del Po on the arches of the
-Chapels in the Church de' S.S. Apostoli. Specimens of his high finish
-may be seen in the Chapel of S. Filippo in the Church dell' Oratorio; he
-painted the principal altar-piece of the Nuns di "S. Gaudioso," and the
-four large histories in the choir of the church at Monte Cassino. Of
-private works, the gallery of Sanfelice is the most conspicuous at
-Naples; at Rome, some stories in the Albani and Colonna palaces; and at
-Macerata, in the Buonacorsi collection, among several mythologic
-subjects, the Death of Dido, a picture of large dimensions and striking
-effect. In the refectory of the Conventuals of Assisi, the Last Supper
-of our Lord, a polished performance, is by his hand.
-
-Of that most numerous band of pupils whom he let loose upon the public,
-the most celebrated was, no doubt, Sebastiano Conca, a native of Gaeta,
-generally classed with the Roman school, for Rome became his residence
-and the theatre of his talent. After having served a pupilage of sixteen
-years under Solimene, and persevered in the practice of that style for
-several years at Rome, he ominously proved the futility of attempting at
-an advanced period to escape from the tyranny of early habits. At forty
-he dared to leave his brushes, became once more a student, and spent
-five years in drawing after the antique and the masters of design: but
-his hand and eye, debauched by manner, refused to obey his mind, till,
-wearied by hopeless fatigue, he followed the advice of the sculptor Le
-Gros, and returned to his former practice, though not without
-considerable improvements, and nearer to Pietro da Cortona than to his
-master. Conca had fertile brains, a rapid pencil, and a colour which at
-first sight fascinated every eye by its splendour, contrast, and the
-delicacy of its flesh-tints. His dispatch in fresco and in oil was equal
-to his employment, and there is scarcely a collection of any consequence
-without its Conca. He was courted by sovereigns and princes, and Pope
-Clement XI. ennobled him at a full assembly of the academicians of St.
-Luke. He was assisted in his labours by his brother Giovanni, a man of
-similar taste, but less power, and an excellent copyist. The maxims of
-Conca are considered[133] as having completed the ruin of art; but every
-school had its own canker, and his influence did not extend to all.
-Without deviating into a catalogue of mediocrity, it may be sufficient
-to name three of his principal scholars, Gaetano Lapis of Cagli,
-Salvator Monosilio, a Messinese, and Gaspero Serenari, a Palermitan.
-Lapis had too much originality of conception and too much solidity of
-taste to adopt the flowery style of his master. The public works he left
-at home, and the Birth of Venus in a ceiling of the Borghese Palace, as
-correct as graceful, deserved and would have attained more celebrity,
-had not self-contempt and diffidence intercepted the fortune which his
-talent might have commanded. The two Sicilians, complete machinists,
-shared with the imitation the success of their master.
-
-Next to Conca, the most successful pupil of Solimene was Francesco de
-Mura, surnamed Franceschiello, born at Naples and greatly employed in
-its churches and private galleries: the works, however, to which he owes
-most of his celebrity, were the frescoes painted in various apartments
-of the royal palace at Torino, in competition with Claudio Beaumont, who
-was then at the height of his vigour. Mura ornamented the ceiling of
-some rooms, chiefly filled with Flemish pictures, with subjects widely
-different, Olympic games, and actions of Achilles.
-
-Corrado Giaquinto of Molfetta, may conclude what yet deserves to be
-recorded of this school. He too left Naples, came to Rome, and attached
-himself to Conca, whose maxims he made nearly all his own; as resolute,
-as easy, but less correct. Rome, Macerata, and other parts of the Roman
-state, are acquainted with his works. He painted in Piemont, was
-employed by Charles III. in Spain, appointed Director of the Academy of
-S. Fernando, pleased and continued to please the greater part of the
-public, even after the arrival of A.R. Mengs.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[103] Dominici.
-
-[104] "Le opere superstiti ne deon decidere; e secondo queste Marco da
-Siena, ch'e il padre della Storia pittorica Napolitana, giudico _che in
-grandezza di fare_ Cimabue prevalepe."--Lanzi, ii. I. 580.
-
-[105] Tommaso had a brother Pietro de' Stefani, who professed painting,
-but practised sculpture: of his works the monuments of Pope Innocenzio
-IV., who died at Naples 1254, of Charles the First and Second, are the
-most eminent. The two sitting statues of these two kings are still seen
-over the small gates of the Episcopal palace.
-
-[106] Signorelli Vicende della Coltura delle due Sicilie,--t. iii. 116.
-
-[107] The Vatican alone is sufficient to prove that gold-grounds were
-still recurred to in the best years of the sixteenth century.
-
-[108] In the life of Giuliano da Majano. They are the first painters of
-the Neapolitan schools mentioned by him, though with an ambiguity which
-might induce us to believe that he meant to give them for Tuscany.
-
-[109] In the forty-first sonnet, addressed to King Federigo: "Vedi
-invitto Signor come risplende," &c.
-
-[110] Some call him Giacomo, some Andria, most, and with greater
-probability, Bernardo.
-
-[111] See the remarks relative to Antoniello, in the history of Venetian
-art; but it is in place here to observe on the assertions of the
-Neapolitan writers, that, if the tradition of a Greek picture in oil at
-the Duomo of Messina be not fabulous, Antoniello could not have remained
-ignorant of it. If Colantonio was in possession of oil painting, how is
-the astonishment to be accounted for, which the method of John ab Eyk
-excited at Naples? How came the name of an obscure Fleming to fill in a
-short period all Europe, every prince to solicit his pencil, every
-painter to submit to his dictates or those of his scholars? Who, on the
-contrary, who out of Naples or its state, knew then Colantonio? who
-courted Solario? a man so apt, the son-in-law and scholar of the former,
-and before of Lippo Dalmasio--how forgot he to learn, or why did he
-neglect a method they are said to have practised so well, for the vulgar
-one of distemper? Either they knew nothing of the mystery at all, or in
-a degree too insignificant to affect the authority of Vasari, and the
-claims of John ab Eyk and Antoniello.
-
-[112] A. Sabbatini from 1480 to 1545.
-
-[113] 1508 to 1542.
-
-[114] Vasari.
-
-[115] Said to be in 1587.
-
-[116] These two laid the foundation of a History of Neapolitan Art. The
-transient manner in which Vasari had mentioned Marco in the new edition
-of his Lives, his silence on many Sienese, and omission of most
-Neapolitan painters, were probably the causes that provoked the literary
-opposition of Marco. His pupil, the Notary, furnished him with
-materials, from the archives and domestic tradition, for the Discourse
-which he composed in 1569, the year after the edition of Vasari; though
-it remained in MS. till 1742, when, jointly with the Memoirs of
-Criscuolo, in the Neapolitan dialect, &c., the greater part of it was,
-published by Dominici.
-
-[117] B. Corenzio, 1558 to 1643.
-
-[118] In an inscription on one of his pictures, mentioned by
-Palomino, he styles himself "Jusepe de Ribera Espanol de la Ciutad de
-Xativa, e reyno de Valencia, Academico Romano, ano 1630;" but the
-Neapolitans, who maintained that he was born of Spanish parents in the
-neighbourhood of Lecce, ascribe this and similar subscriptions on his
-works rather to his ambition of ingratiating himself with the
-government, which was Spanish, than to a genuine desire of acquainting
-posterity with his native country.
-
-Lo Spagnoletto 1588, vivo in 1649.
-
-[119] Caracciolo di Batistiello, died 1641.
-
-[120] Dominici.
-
-[121] As it is evident that the deputies broke a formal contract with
-Correnzio and Batistiello, it is not easily discovered on what principle
-Lanzi has praised their conduct.
-
-[122] It is contradicted only by the unsupported assertion of Bermudez,
-who tells that Ribera died rich and honoured 1656 at Naples.
-
-[123] M. Stanzioni, 1585 to 1656.
-
-[124] Vaccaro, 1598 to 1671.
-
-[125] M. Preti, 1613 to 1699.
-
-[126] A. Falcone, 1600 to 1665.
-
-[127] Born 1632, died 1705.
-
-[128] The assent of Carlo Celano (Giornata IV.) seems to authenticate
-this tradition.
-
-[129] Luca, fa Presto!
-
-[130] He used to tell, that then he had drawn twelve times the Stanze
-and the Loggia of Rafaello, and nearly twenty the Battle of Constantine,
-without mentioning his copies from the Sistina, Polidoro, A. Caracci,
-&c.; hence, some one has called him by a bold but pertinent allusion
-"The Thunderbolt of Art," as others its Proteus, from the singular
-talent of mimicking the manner and touch of every master. Many are the
-pictures painted by him, which passed for works of Albert Durer,
-Bassano, Tiziano, and Rubens, not only with connoisseurs, a task less
-difficult, but with his rivals, whose eyes malignity as well as
-discernment might have sharpened: these deceptions fetched at sales
-doubly and trebly the price of an ordinary Giordano. Specimens are still
-to be found in the churches of Naples; for instance, the two
-altar-pieces in that of S. Teresa, which have all the air of Guido,
-especially that which represents the Nativity of the Saviour.
-
-[131] Born 1657; died 1748.
-
-[132] Il Calabrese ringentilito.
-
-[133] Mengs.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF VENICE.
-
-
-The conquests, commerce and possessions of Venice in the Levant, and
-thence its uninterrupted intercourse with the Greeks, give probability
-to the conjecture, that Venetian art drew its origin from the same
-source, and that the first institution of a company, or, as it is there
-called, a School (Schola) of Painters, may be dated up to the Greek
-artists who took refuge at Venice from the fury of the Iconoclasts at
-Constantinople. The choice of its Patron, which was not St. Luke, but
-Sta. Sophia, the patroness of the first temple at that time, and
-prototype of St. Mark's, distinguishes it from the rest of the Italian
-Schools. _Anchona_, the vulgar name of a picture in the technic
-language, the statutes,[134] and documents of those times, is evidently
-a depravation of the Greek _Eikon_. The school itself is of considerable
-antiquity; its archives contain regulations and laws made in 1290, which
-refer to anterior ones; and though not yet separated from the mass of
-artisans, its members began to enjoy privileges of their own.
-
-In various cities of the Venetian State we meet with vestiges of art
-anterior in date[135] to the relics of painting and mosaic in the
-metropolis, which prove that it survived the general wreck of society
-here, as in other parts of Italy. Of the oldest Venetian monuments,
-Zanetti has given a detailed account, with shrewd critical conjectures
-on their chronology; though all attempts to discriminate the nearly
-imperceptible progress of art in a mass of works equally marked by dull
-servility, must prove little better than nugatory; for it does not
-appear that Theophilus of Byzantium, who publicly taught the art at
-Venice about 1200, or his Scholar Gelasio[136], had availed themselves
-of the improvements made in form, twenty years before, by Joachim the
-Abbot, in a picture of Christ. Nor can the notice of Vasari, who informs
-us that Andrea Tafi repaired to Venice to profit by the instructions of
-Apollonios in mosaic, prove more than that, from the rivalship of Greek
-mechanics, that branch of art was handled with greater dexterity there
-than at Florence, to which place he was, on his return, accompanied by
-Apollonios. The same torpor of mind continued to characterise the
-succeeding artists till the first years of the fourteenth century, and
-the appearance of Giotto, who, on his return from Avignon 1316, by his
-labours at Padua, Verona, and elsewhere in the state, threw the first
-effectual seeds of art, and gave the first impulse to Venetian energy
-and emulation[137] by superior example.
-
-He was succeeded by Giusto, surnamed of Padova, from residence and city
-rights, but else a Florentine and of the Menabuoi. To Padovano, Vasari
-ascribes the vast work of the church of St. John the Baptist; incidents
-of whose life were expressed on the altar-piece. The walls Giusto spread
-with gospel history and mysteries of the Apocalypse, and on the Cupola a
-glory filled with a consistory of saints in various attire: simple
-ideas, but executed with incredible felicity and diligence. The names
-'Joannes & Antonius de Padova,' formerly placed over one of the doors,
-as an ancient MS. pretends, related probably to some companions of
-Giusto, fellow pupils of Giotto, and show the unmixed prevalence of his
-style, to which Florence itself had not adhered with more scrupulous
-submission, beyond the middle of the century, and the less bigoted
-imitation of Guarsiento, a Padovan of great name at that period, and the
-leader of Ridolfi's history. He received commissions of importance from
-the Venetian senate, and the remains of his labours in fresco and on
-panel at Bassano and at the Eremitani of Padova, confirm the judgment of
-Zanetti, that he had invention, spirit, and taste, and without those
-remnants of Greek barbarity which that critic pretends to discover in
-his style.
-
-Of a style still less dependant on the principles of Giotto, are the
-relicks of those artists whom Lanzi is willing to consider as the
-precursors of the legitimate Venetian schools, and whose origin he dates
-in the professors of miniature and missal-painting, many contemporary,
-many anterior to Giotto. The most conspicuous is Niccolo Semitecolo,
-undoubtedly a Venetian, if the inscription on a picture on panel in the
-Capitular Library at Padova be genuine, viz., _Nicoleto Semitecolo da
-Venezia_, 1367. It represents a Pieta, with some stories of S.
-Sebastian, in no contemptible style: the nudities are well painted, the
-proportions, though somewhat too long, are not inelegant, and what adds
-most to its value as a monument of national style, it bears no
-resemblance to that of Giotto, which, though it be inferior in design,
-it equals in colour. Indeed the silence of Baldinucci, who annexes no
-Venetian branch to his Tuscan pedigree of Art, gives probability to the
-presumption, that a native school existed in the Adriatic long before
-Cimabue.
-
-A fuller display of this native style, and its gradual approaches to the
-epoch of Giorgione and Tizian, were reserved for the fifteenth century:
-an island prepared what was to receive its finish at Venice. Andrea da
-Murano, who flourished about 1400, though still dry, formal, and vulgar,
-designs with considerable correctness, even the extremities, and what is
-more, makes his figures stand and act. There is still of him at Murano
-in S. Pier Martire, a picture, on the usual gold ground of the times,
-representing, among others, a Saint Sebastian, with a Torso, whose
-beauty made Zanetti suspect that it had been copied from some antique
-statue. It was he who formed to art the family of the Vivarini, his
-fellow-citizens, who in uninterrupted succession maintained the school
-of Murano for nearly a century, and filled Venice with their
-performances.
-
-Of Luigi, the reputed founder of the family, no authentic notices
-remain. The only picture ascribed to him, in S. Giovanni and Paolo, has,
-with the inscription of his name and the date 1414, been retouched.[138]
-Nor does much more evidence attend the names of Giovanni and Antonio de'
-Vivarini, the first of which belonged probably to a German, the partner
-of Antonio,[139] who is not heard of after 1447, whilst Antonio, singly
-or in society with his brother Bartolommeo Vivarini, left works
-inscribed with his name as far as 1451.
-
-Bartolommeo, probably considerably younger than Antonio, was trained to
-art in the principles before mentioned, till he made himself master of
-the new-discovered method of oil-painting, and towards the time of the
-two Bellini became an artist of considerable note. His first picture in
-oil bears the date of 1473; his last, at S. Giovanni in Bragora, on the
-authority of Boschini, that of 1498; it represents Christ risen from the
-grave, and is a picture comparable to the best productions of its time.
-He sometimes added A Linnel Vivarino to his name and date, allusive to
-his surname.
-
-With him flourished Luigi, the last of the Vivarini, but the first in
-art. His relics still exist at Venice, Belluno, Trevigi, with their
-dates; the principal of these is in the school of St. Girolamo at
-Venice, where, in competition with Giovanni Bellini, whom he equals, and
-with Vittore Carpaccia, whom he surpasses, he represented the Saint
-caressing a Lion, and some monks who fly in terror at the sight.
-Composition, expression, colour, for felicity, energy, and mellowness,
-if not above every work of the times, surpass all else produced by the
-family of the Vivarini.
-
-At the beginning of the century, Gentile da Fabriano, styled Magister
-Magistrorum, and mentioned in the Roman School, painted, in the public
-palace at Venice, a naval battle, now vanished, but then so highly
-valued that it procured him an annual provision, and the privilege of
-the Patrician dress. He raised disciples in the state: Jacopo Nerito, of
-Padova, subscribes himself a disciple of Gentile, in a picture at S.
-Michele of that place, and from the style of another in S. Bernardino,
-at Bassano, Lanzi surmises that Nasocchio di Bassano was his pupil or
-imitator. But what gives him most importance, is the origin of the great
-Venetian School under his auspices, and that Jacopo Bellini, the father
-of Gentile and Giovanni, owned him for his master. Jacopo is indeed more
-known by the dignity of his son's than his own works, at present either
-destroyed, in ruins, or unknown. What he painted in the church of St.
-Giovanni at Venice, and, about 1456, at the Santo of Padova, the chapel
-of the family Gattamelata, are works that exist in history only. One
-single picture, subscribed by his name, Lanzi mentions to have seen in a
-private collection, resembling the style of Squarcione, whom he seems to
-have followed in his maturer years.
-
-A name then still more conspicuous, though now nearly obliterated, is
-that of Jacopo, or as he is styled Jacobello, or as he wrote himself,
-Jacometto del Fiore, whose father Francesco del Fiore, a leader of art
-in his day, was honoured with a monument and an epitaph in Latin verse
-at S. Giovanni and Paolo: of him it is doubtful whether any traces
-remain, but of the son, who greatly surpassed him, several performances
-still exist, from 1401 to 1436. Vasari has wantonly taxed him with
-having suspended all his figures, in the Greek manner, on the points of
-their feet: the truth is, that he was equalled by few of his
-contemporaries, for few like him dared to represent figures as large as
-life, and fewer understood to give them beauty, dignity, and that air of
-agility and ease, which his forms possess; nor would the lions in his
-picture of Justice at the Magistrato del Proprio, have shared the first
-praise, had not the principal figures, in subservience to the time, been
-loaded with tinsel ornament and golden glitter.
-
-Two scholars of his are mentioned: Donato, superior to him in style, and
-Carlo Crivelli, of obscure fame, but deserving attention for the colour,
-union, grace, and expression, of the small histories in which he
-delighted.
-
-The ardour of the capital for the art was emulated by every town of the
-state; all had their painters, but all did not submit to the principles
-of Venice and Murano. At Verona the obscure names of Aldighieri and
-Stefano Dazevio, were succeeded[140] by the vaunted one of Vittore
-Pisanello, of S. Vito: though accounts grossly vary on the date in which
-he flourished, and the school from which he sprang, that his education
-was Florentine is not improbable, but whoever his master, fame has
-ranked him with Masaccio as an improver of style. His works at Rome and
-Venice, in decay at the time of Vasari, are now no more; and fragments
-only remain of what he did at Verona. S. Eustachio caressing a Dog, and
-S. Giorgio sheathing his Sword and mounting his horse, figures extolled
-to the skies by Vasari, are, with the places which they occupied,
-destroyed: works which seem to have contained elements of truth and
-dignity in expression with novelty of invention, and of contrast, style,
-and foreshortening in design: a loss so much the more to be lamented, as
-the remains of his less considerable works at S. Firmo and Perugia, far
-from sanctioning the opinion which tradition has taught us to entertain
-of Pisano, are finished indeed with the minuteness of miniature, but are
-crude in colour, and drawn in lank and emaciated proportions. It appears
-from his works, that he understood the formation, had studied the
-expression, and attempted the most picturesque attitudes of animals. His
-name is well known to antiquaries, and to the curious in coins, as a
-medallist, and he has been celebrated as such by many eminent pens of
-his own and the subsequent century.[141]
-
-From the crowd[142] of obscure contemporary artists, which the
-neighbouring Vicenza produced, the name of Marcello, or as Ridolfi calls
-him Gio. Battista Figolino, deserves to be distinguished: a man of
-original manner, whose companion, in variety of character, intelligence
-of keeping, landscape, perspective, ornament, and exquisite finish, will
-not easily be discovered at Venice, or elsewhere in the State, at that
-period; and were it certain that he was anterior to the two Bellini,
-sufficiently eminent to claim the honours of an epoch in the history of
-Art: in proof of which Vicenza may still produce his Epiphany in the
-church of St. Bartolommeo.
-
-But the man who had the most extensive influence on Art, if not as the
-first artist, as the first and most frequented teacher, was Francesco
-Squarcione,[143] of Padova; in whose numerous school perhaps originated
-that eclectic principle which characterised part of the Adriatic and all
-the Lombard schools. Opulent and curious, he not only designed what
-ancient art offered in Italy, but passed over to Greece, visited many an
-isle of the Archipelago in quest of monuments, and on his return to
-Padova formed, from what he had collected, by copy or by purchase, of
-statues, basso-relievos, torsos, fragments, and cinerary urns, the most
-ample museum of the time, and a school in which he counted upwards of
-150 students, and among them Andrea Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, Girolamo
-Schiavone, Jacopo Bellini.
-
-Of Squarcione, more useful by precept than by example, little remains,
-and of that little, perhaps, not all his own. From the variety of
-manner observable in what is attributed to him, it may be suspected that
-he too often divided his commissions among his scholars; such as some
-stories of St. Francis, in a cloister of his church, and the miniatures
-of the Antifonario in the temple della Misericordia, attributed by the
-vulgar to Mantegna. Only one indisputably genuine, though retouched work
-of his, is mentioned by Lanzi; which, in various compartments,
-represents different saints, subscribed 'Francesco Squarcione,' and
-conspicuous for felicity of colour, expression, and perspective.
-
-These outlines of the infancy of Venetian art show it little different
-from that of the other schools hitherto described; slowly emerging from
-barbarity, and still too much busied with the elements to think of
-elegance and ornament. Even then, indeed, canvass instead of panels was
-used by the Venetian painters; but their general vehicle was, a tempera,
-prepared water-colour: a method approaching the breadth of fresco, and
-friendly to the preservation of tints, which even now retain their
-virgin purity; but unfriendly to union and mellowness. It was reserved
-for the real epoch of oil-painting to develope the Venetian character,
-display its varieties, and to establish its peculiar prerogative.
-
-Tiziano, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, was born at Piave, the principal of
-Cadore on the Alpine verge of Friuli, 1477.[144] His education is said
-to have been learned, and Giov. Battista Egnazio is named as his master
-in Latin and Greek;[145] but his proficiency may be doubted, for if it
-be true that his irresistible bent to the art obliged the father to send
-him in his tenth year to the school of Giov. Bellini at Venice, he could
-be little more than an infant when he learnt the rudiments under
-Sebastiano Zuccati.[146]
-
-At such an age, and under these masters, he acquired a power of copying
-the visible detail of the objects before him with that correctness of
-eye and fidelity of touch which distinguishes his imitation at every
-period of his art. Thus when, more adult, in emulation of Albert Durer,
-he painted at Ferrara[147] Christ to whom a Pharisee shows the tribute
-money, he out-stript in subtlety of touch even that hero of minuteness:
-the hair of the heads and hands may be counted, the pores of the skin
-discriminated, and the surrounding objects seen reflected in the pupils
-of the eyes; yet the effect of the whole is not impaired by this extreme
-finish: it increases it at a distance, which effaces the fac-similisms
-of Albert, and assists the beauties of imitation with which that work
-abounds to a degree seldom attained, and never excelled by the master
-himself, who has left it indeed as a single monument, for it has no
-companion, to attest his power of combining the extremes of finish and
-effect.
-
-
-GIACOMO ROBUSTI, SURNAMED IL TINTORETTO.
-
-1512-1594.
-
-"It might almost be said that vice is the virtue of the Venetian school,
-because it rests its prerogative on despatch in execution, and
-therefore is proud of Tintoretto, who had no other merit."[148] Such, in
-speaking of the great genius before us, is the equally rash, ignorant,
-unphilosophic verdict of a man exclusively dubbed "The Philosophic
-Painter."
-
-G. Robusti of Venice was the son of a dyer, who left him that byname as
-an heir-loom.[149] He entered the school of Tiziano when yet a boy; but
-he, soon discovering in the daring spirit of his nursling the symptoms
-of a genius which threatened future rivalship to his own powers, with
-that suspicious meanness which marks his character as an artist, after a
-short interval, ordered his head pupil, Girolamo Dante, to dismiss the
-boy; but as envy generally defeats its own designs, the uncourteous
-dismissal, instead of dispiriting, roused the energies of the heroic
-stripling, who, after some meditation on his future course, and
-comparing his master's superiority in _colour_ with his defects in
-_form_, resolved to surpass him by an union of both: the method best
-suited to accomplish this he fancied to find in an intense study of
-Michael Angelo's style, and boldly announced his plan by writing on the
-door of his study, THE DESIGN OF M. ANGELO, AND THE COLOUR OF TIZIAN.
-
-But neither form nor colour alone could satisfy his eye; the
-uninterrupted habit of nocturnal study discovered to him what Venice had
-not yet seen, not even in Giorgione, if we may form an opinion from what
-remains of him--the powers of that ideal chiaroscuro which gave motion
-to action, raised the charms of light, and balanced or invigorated
-effect by dark and lucid masses opposed to each other.
-
-The first essays of this complicated system, in single figures, are
-probably the frescoes of the palace Gussoni;[150] and in numerous
-composition, the Last Judgement, and its counterpart, the Adoration of
-the Golden Calf, in the church of Sta. Maria dell' Orfo.
-
-It is evident that the spirit of Michael Angelo domineered over the
-fancy of Tintoretto in the arrangement of the Last Judgement, though not
-over its design; but grant some indulgence to that, and the storm in
-which the whole fluctuates, the awful division of light and darkness
-into enormous masses, the living motion of the agents, notwithstanding
-their frequent aberrations from their centre of gravity,[151] and the
-harmony that rules the whirlwind of that tremendous moment, must for
-ever place it among the most astonishing productions of art. Its
-sublimity as a whole triumphs even over the hypercriticisms of Vasari,
-who thus describes it:--"Tintoretto has painted the Last Judgement with
-an extravagant invention, which, indeed, has something awful and
-terrible, inasmuch as he has united in groups a multitudinous assemblage
-of figures of each sex and every age, interspersed with distant views of
-the blessed and condemned souls. You see likewise the boat of Charon,
-but in a manner as novel and uncommon as highly interesting. Had this
-fantastic conception been executed with a correct and regular design,
-had the painter estimated its individual parts with the attention which
-he bestowed on the whole, so expressive of the confusion and the tumult
-of that day, it would be the most admirable of pictures. Hence he who
-casts his eye only on the whole, remains astonished, whilst to him who
-examines the parts it appears to have been painted in jest."
-
-In the Adoration of the Golden Calf, the counterpart in size of the Last
-Judgement, Tintoretto has given full reins to his invention; and here,
-as in the former, though their scanty width does not very amicably
-correspond with their height, which is fifty feet, he has filled the
-whole so dexterously that the dimension appears to be the result of the
-composition. Here too, as in the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, some
-short-sighted sophist may pretend to discover two separate subjects and
-a double action; for Moses receives the tables of the decalogue in the
-upper part, whilst the idolatrous ceremony occupies the lower; but the
-unity of the subject may be proved by the same argument which defended
-and justified the choice of Sanzio. Both actions are not only the
-offspring of the same moment, but so essentially relate to each other
-that, by omitting either, neither could with sufficient evidence have
-told the story. Who can pretend to assert, that the artist who has found
-the secret of representing together two inseparable moments of an event
-divided only by place, has impaired the unity of the subject?
-
-Nowhere, however, does the genius of Tintoretto flash more irresistibly
-than in the Schools of S. Marco and S. Rocco, where the greater part of
-the former and almost the whole of the latter are his work, and exhibit
-in numerous specimens, and on the largest scale, every excellence and
-every fault that exalts or debases his pencil: equal sublimity and
-extravagance of conception; purity of style and ruthless manner;
-bravura of hand with mental dereliction; celestial or palpitating hues
-tacked to clayey, raw, or frigid masses; a despotism of chiaroscuro
-which sometimes exalts, sometimes eclipses, often absorbs subject and
-actors. Such is the catalogue of beauties and defects which characterize
-the Slave delivered by St. Marc; the Body of the Saint landed; the
-Visitation of the Virgin; the Massacre of the Innocents; Christ tempted
-in the Desert; the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd; the Resurrection of
-the Saviour; and though last, first, that prodigy which in itself sums
-up the whole of Tintoretto, and by its anomaly equals or surpasses the
-most legitimate offsprings of art, the Crucifixion.[152]
-
-It is singular that the most finished and best preserved work of
-Tintoretto should be one which he had least time allowed him to
-terminate--the Apotheosis of S. Rocco in the principal ceiling-piece of
-the Schola, conceived, executed, and presented, instead of the sketch
-which he had been commissioned with the rest of the concurrent artists
-to produce for the examination of the fraternity: a work which equally
-strikes by loftiness of conception, a style of design as correct as
-bold, and a suavity of colour which entrances the eye. Though
-constructed on the principles of that _sotto in su_, then ruling the
-platfonds and cupolas of upper Italy, unknown to or rejected by M.
-Angelo, its figures recede more gradually, yet with more evidence, than
-the groups of Correggio, whose ostentatious foreshortenings generally
-sacrifice the actor to his posture.
-
-That Tintoretto acquired, during his stay with or after his dismissal
-from the study of Tiziano's principles, the power of representing the
-surface and the texture of bodily substance with a truth bordering on
-illusion, is proved with more irresistible because more copious
-evidence, in the picture of the Angelic Salutation; though it cannot be
-denied that the admiration due to the magic touch of the paraphernalia
-is extorted at the expense of the essential parts: Gabriel and Maria are
-little more than foils of her husband's tools; for their display, the
-artist's caprice has turned the solemn approach of the awful messenger
-into boisterous irruption, the silent recess of the mysterious mother
-into a public dismantled shed, and herself into a vulgar female. Nowhere
-would the superiority of refined over vulgar art, of taste and judgment
-over unbridled fancy, have appeared more irresistibly than in the
-sopraporta by Tiziano on the same subject and in the same place, had
-that exquisite master been inspired more by the sanctity of the subject
-than the lures of courtly or the ostentatious bigotry of monastic
-devotion. If Maria was to be rescued from the brutal hand that had
-travestied her to the mate of a common labourer, it was not to be
-transformed to a young abbess, elegantly devout, submitting to
-canonization, amongst her delicate lambs; if the angel was not to rush
-through a shattered casement on a timid female with a whirlwind's blast,
-the waving grace and calm dignity of his gesture and attitude, ought to
-have been above the assistance of theatrical ornament; nor should
-Palladio have been consulted to construct classic avenues for the humble
-abode of pious meditation. It must however be owned that we become
-reconciled to this mass of factitious embellishments by a tone which
-seems to have been inspired by Piety itself; the message whispers in a
-celestial atmosphere,
-
-    THeie amphechut' omphe----
-
-and so forcibly appears its magic effect to have influenced Tintoretto
-himself, ever ready to rush from one extreme to another, that he
-imitated it in the Annunciata of the Arimani Palace:[153] not without
-success, but far below the mannerless unambitious purity of tone that
-pervades the effusion of his master, and of which he himself gave a
-blazing proof in the Resurrection of the Saviour,--a work in which
-sublimity of conception, beauty and dignity of form, velocity and
-propriety of motion, irresistible flash, mellowness and freshness of
-colour, tones inspired by the subject, and magic chiaroscuro, less for
-"mastery strive," than relieve each other and entrance the absorbed eye.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[134] Thus in an order of the Justiziarii we read: "MCCCXXII. Indicion
-Sexta die primo de Octub. Ordenado e fermado fo per Misier Piero Veniero
-& per Miser Marco da Mugla Justixieri Vieri, lo terzo compagno vacante.
-Ordenado fo che da mo in avanti alguna persona si venedega come
-forestiera non osa vender in Venexia alcuna _Anchona_ impenta, salvo li
-empentori, sotto pena, &c. Salvo da la sensa, che alora sia licito a
-zaschun de vinder _anchone_ infin chel durera la festa," &c. And a
-picture in the church of S. Donato at Murano, has the following
-inscription: "Corendo MCCCX. indicion viii. in tempo de lo nobele homo
-Miser Donato Memo honorando Podesta facta fo questa _Anchona_ de Miser
-S. Donato."
-
-[135] In the church at Cassello di Sesto, which has an abbey founded in
-762, there are pictures of the ninth century.
-
-[136] Gelasio di Nicolo della Masuada di S. Giorgio, was of Ferrara, and
-flourished about 1242. Vid. Historia almi Ferrariensis Gymnasii,
-Ferraria, 1735.
-
-[137] At that time he painted in the palace of Cari della Scala at
-Verona, and at Padoua a chapel in the church 'del Sarto;' he repeated
-his visit in the latter years of his life to both places. Of what he did
-at Verona no traces remain, but at Padoua the compartments of Gospel
-histories round the Oratorio of the Nunziata all' Arena, by the
-freshness of the fresco and that blended grace and grandeur peculiar to
-Giotto, still surprise.
-
-[138] Fiorillo has confounded this questionable name with the real one
-of Luigi, who painted about 1490.--See Fiorillo Geschichte, ii. p. 11.
-
-[139] In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a St. Stephen and Sebastian, with the
-inscription:
-
-           1445.
-    Johannes de Alemania
-    et Antonius de Muriano.
-             P.
-
-from which, another picture at Padova, inscribed "Antonio de Muran e
-Zohan Alamanus pinxit," and some traces of foreign style where his name
-occurs, Lanzi suspects that the inscription in S. Pantaleone, "Zuane, e
-Antonio da Muran, pense 1444," on which the existence of Giovanni is
-founded, means no other than the German partner of Antonio.
-
-[140] In no instance seems Vasari to have given a more decisive proof of
-his attachment to the Florentine school, than by building the fame of
-Pisano on having been the pupil of Andrea del Castagno, and having been
-allowed to terminate the works which he had left unfinished behind him
-about 1480; an anachronism the more absurd as the Commendator del Pozzo
-was possessed of a picture by Pisano, inscribed 'Opera di Vittor
-Pisanello de San V. Veronese, MCCCCVI.' a period at which probably
-Castagno was not born. The truth is, that Vasari, whose rage for
-dispatch and credulity kept pace with each other, composed the first
-part of Pisano's life nearly without materials, and the second from
-hearsay.
-
-[141] What Vasari says of the dog of S. Eustachio and the horse of St.
-Giorgio, though on the authority of Fra Marco de' Medici, warrants the
-assertion; and still more the foreshortened horse on the reverse of a
-medal struck in 1419, in honour and with the head of John Palaeologus.
-The horse, like that of M. Antoninus, has an attitude of parallel
-motion. The medal has been published by Ducange in the appendix to his
-Latin Glossary, by Padre Banduri, Gori and Maffei.
-
-[142] See their lists in _Descrizione delle Architetture, Pitture e
-Sculture di Vicenza con alcune osservazioni, &c._ Vicenza, 1779, 8vo. p.
-I. II.
-
-[143] Ridolfi, i. 68. Vasari, who treats his art with contempt, calls
-him Jacopo; and Orlandi, afraid of choosing between them, used both, and
-made two different artists.
-
-[144] Vasari dates his birth 1480.
-
-[145] Liruti, Notizie de' Letterati del Friuli, t. ii. p. 285.
-
-[146] Sebastiano Zuccati of Trevigo, flourished about 1490. He had two
-sons, Valerio and Francesco, celebrated for mosaic about and beyond the
-middle of the sixteenth century. Flaminio Zuccati, the son of Valerio,
-who inherited his father's talent and fame, flourished about 1585. See
-Zanetti.
-
-[147] See Ridolfi. The original went to Dresden; but Italy abounds in
-copies of it. Lanzi mentions one which he saw at S. Saverio in Rimini,
-with Tiziano's name written on the fillet of the Pharisee, a performance
-of great beauty, and by many considered less a copy than a duplicate.
-The most celebrated copy, that of Flaminio Torre, is preserved at
-Dresden with the original.
-
-[148] "Si puo quasi dire, che il vizio sia la virtu della Scuola
-Veneziana, poiche fa pompa della sollecitudine nel dipingere; e percio
-fa stima di Tintoretto, che non avea altro merito." Mengs, Opere, t. i.
-p. 175. ed. Parm.
-
-[149] It has supplanted, was probably perpetuated in allusion to his
-rapidity of execution, and remains familiar to ears that never heard of
-Robusti.
-
-[150] See Varie Pitture a fresco de' principali Maestri Veneziani, &c.
-Venez. fol. 1760. Tab. 8, 9, p. viii. No one who has seen the original
-figures of the Aurora and Creposcolo in S. Lorenzo, can mistake their
-imitation, or rather transcripts, in these.
-
-[151] The frequent want of equilibration found in Tintoretto's figures,
-even where no violence of action can palliate or account for it, has not
-without probability been ascribed to his method of studying foreshortening
-from models loosely suspended and playing in the air; to which he at last
-became so used that he sometimes employed it even for figures resting on
-firm ground, and fondly sacrificed solidity and firmness to the affected
-graces of undulation.
-
-[152] It would be mere waste of time to recapitulate what has been said
-on the efficient beauties of this astonishing work in the lectures on
-colour and chiaroscuro, and in the article of Tintoretto, in the last
-edition of Pilkington's Dictionary. It has been engraved on a large
-scale by Agostino Carracci, if that can be called engraving which
-contents itself with the mere enumeration of the parts, totally
-neglecting the medium of that tremendous twilight which hovers over the
-whole and transposes us to Golgotha. If what Ridolfi says be true, that
-Tintoretto embraced the engraver when he presented the drawing to him,
-he must have had still more deplorable moments of dereliction as a man
-than as an Artist, or the drawing of Agostino, must have differed
-totally from the print.
-
-[153] It is engraved by Pietro Monaco, as that of Tiziano, by Le Fevre,
-but in a manner which makes us lament the lot of those who have no means
-to see the original.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF MANTOUA.
-
-
-Mantoua,[154] the birth-place of Virgil, a name dear to poetry, by the
-adoption of Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Pippi claims a distinguished
-place in the history of Art, for restoring and disseminating style among
-the schools of Lombardy.
-
-Mantoua, desolated by Attila, conquered by Alboin, wrested from the
-Longobards by the Exarch of Ravenna, was taken and fortified by Charles
-the Great: from Bonifazio of Canossa it descended to Mathilda; after her
-demise, 1115, became a republic tyrannized by Bonacorsi, till the people
-conferred the supremacy on Lodovico Gonzaga, under whose successors it
-rose from a marquisate, 1433, to a dukedom, 1531, and finished as an
-appendage to the spoils of Austria.
-
-Revolutions so uninterrupted, aggravated by accidental devastations of
-floods and fire, may account for the want of earlier monuments of art in
-Mantoua and its districts, than the remains from the epoch of
-Mathilda.[155] A want perhaps more to be regretted by the antiquary
-than the historian of art, whose real epoch begins with the patronage of
-Lodovico Gonzaga and the appearance of Andrea Mantegna.[156]
-
-This native of Padova[157] was the adopted son and pupil of Squarcione,
-in whose school he acquired that taste for the antique which marks his
-works at every period of his practice; if sometimes mitigated, never
-supplanted by the blandishments of colour and the precepts of Giovanni
-Bellino, whose daughter he had married.
-
-Perhaps no question has been discussed with greater anxiety, and
-dismissed from investigation with less success, than that of
-Correggio's origin, circumstances, methods of study, and death.
-
-The date of his birth is uncertain, some place it in 1475, others in
-1490; were we to follow a MS. gloss in the Library at Gottingen,
-mentioned by Fiorillo, which says he died at the age of forty in 1512,
-he must have been born in 1472; but the true date is, no doubt, that of
-the inscription set him at Correggio, viz. that he died in 1534, aged
-forty. The honour of his birth-place is allowed to Correggio, though not
-without dispute.[158] His father's name was Pellegrino Allegri,
-according to Orlandi, countenanced by Mengs. He was instructed in the
-elements of literature, philosophy, and mathematics; however doubtful
-this, there can be no doubt entertained on the very early period in
-which he must have applied to Painting. The brevity of his life, and the
-surprising number of his works, evince that he could not devote much
-time to literature, and, of mathematics, probably contented himself with
-what related to perspective and architecture. On the authority of
-Vedriani and of Scannelli, Mengs and his follower Ratti make Correggio
-in Modena the pupil of Franc. Bianchi Ferrari, and in Mantoua of Andr.
-Mantegna, without vouchers of sufficient authenticity for either: the
-passage quoted by Vedriani from the chronicle of Lancillotto, an
-historian contemporary with Correggio, is an interpolation; and
-Mantegna, who died in 1505, could not have been the master of a boy who
-at that time was scarcely in his twelfth year.
-
-Some supposed pictures of Correggio at Mantoua, in the manner of
-Mantegna, may have given rise to this opinion. An imitation of that
-style is visible in some whose originality has never been disputed: such
-as in the St. Cecilia of the Palace Borghese, and a piece in his first
-manner of the Gallery at Dresden.
-
-Father Maurizio Zapata, a friar of Casino, in a MS. quoted by
-Tiraboschi, affirms that the two uncles of Parmegianino, Michele and
-Pier Stario Mazzuoli, were the masters of Correggio,--a supposition
-without foundation; it is more probable, though not certain, that he
-gained the first elements from Lorenzo Allegri his uncle, and not, as
-the vulgar opinion states, his grandfather.
-
-Equal doubts prevail on his skill and power of execution in architecture
-and plastic: the common opinion is, that for this he was beholden to
-Antonio Begarelli. Scannelli, Resta, and Vedriani, pretend that
-Correggio, terrified by the enormous mass and variety of figures to be
-seen foreshortened from below in the cupola of the Domo at Parma, had
-the whole modelled by Begarelli, and thus escaped from the difficulty,
-correct, and with applause. They likewise tell in Parma, that by
-occasion of some solemn funeral, many of those models were found on the
-cornices of the cupola, and considered as the works of Begarelli: hence
-they pretend that Correggio was his regular pupil, and as such finished
-those three statues which a tradition as vague as silly has placed to
-his account in Begarelli's celebrated composition of the Deposition from
-the Cross in the church of St. Margareta.
-
-That either Correggio himself or Begarelli made models for the cupola
-admits no doubt, the necessity of such a process is evident from the
-nature and the perfection of the work; but there is surely none to
-conclude from it to that of a formal apprenticeship in sculpture. He who
-had arrived at the power of painting the cupola at Parma, may without
-rashness be supposed to have possessed that of making for his own use
-small models of clay, without the instructions of a master, especially
-in an age when painting, sculpture, and architecture frequently met in
-the same artist; and, as we have elsewhere[159] observed, when sketching
-in clay was a practice familiar to those of Lombardy.
-
-Correggio's pretended journey to Rome is another point in dispute: two
-writers of his century, Ortensio Landi and Vasari, reject it. The first
-says[160] Correggio died young without having been able to visit Rome;
-the second affirms that Antonio had a genius which wanted nothing but
-acquaintance with Rome to perform miracles. Padre Resta, a great
-collector of Correggio's works, was the first who opposed their
-authority.[161] He pretends, in some writing of his own, to have adduced
-twelve proofs of Correggio's having twice visited Rome, viz. in 1520 and
-1530. But the allegations of a crafty monk, a dealer in drawings and
-pictures, cannot weigh against authorities like those of Vasari and
-Landi. His conjectures rest partly on some supposed drawings of
-Correggio's in his possession, from the Loggie of the Vatican, and
-partly on an imaginary journey, in which, he tells us, Correggio
-traversed Italy incognito, and made everywhere copies, which all had the
-good luck to fall into his own reverend hands. These lures, held out to
-ensnare the ignorant and wealthy, he palliated by a pretended plan of
-raising a monument to the memory of the immortal artist at Correggio,
-the expenses of which were to be defrayed by the produce of his stock in
-hand. He had even face enough to solicit from that town an attestation
-that their citizen had travelled as a journeyman painter.
-
-Mengs, and of course Batti, embrace the same opinion. Mengs draws his
-conclusion from the difference between Correggio's first and second
-style, which he considers less as the imperceptible progress of art than
-as the immediate effect of the works of Raphael and Michel Agnolo. Mengs
-was probably seduced to believe in this visionary journey on the
-authority of Winkelmann, who pretended to have discovered, in the museum
-of Cardinal Albani, some designs after the antique by Mantegna,
-Correggio's reputed master. Bracci, in opposition, assert that Allegri
-was beholden to none but himself for his acquirements, and appeals to a
-letter of Annibale Carracci, who says that Correggio found in himself
-those materials for which the rest were obliged to extraneous help. The
-words of Carracci, however, with all due homage to the genius of
-Correggio and the originality of his style, appear to refer rather to
-invention and the poetic, than to the executive part of his works.
-
-If there be any solidity in the observation of Mengs on Correggio's
-first manner, as a mixture of Pietro Perugino's and Lionardo's style,
-and of course not very different from Raphael's, how comes it that in
-the works of his second and best manner all resemblance to either, and
-consequently to Raphael, disappears? The simplicity of Raphael's forms
-is little beholden to that contrast and those foreshortenings which are
-the element of Correggio's style. Raphael sacrificed all to the subject
-and expression; Correggio, in an artificial medium, sacrifices all to
-the air of things and harmony. Raphael speaks to our heart; Correggio
-insinuates himself into our affections by charming our senses. The
-essence of Raphael's beauty is dignity of mind; petulant _naivete_ that
-of Correggio's. Raphael's grace is founded on propriety; Correggio's on
-convenience and the harmony of the whole. The light of Raphael is simple
-daylight; that of Correggio artificial splendour. In short, the history
-of artists scarcely furnishes characteristics more opposite than what
-discriminate these two. And though it may appear a paradox to
-superficial observation, were it necessary to find an object of
-imitation for Allegri's second and best style, the artificial medium,
-the breadth of manner and mellowness of transition, with the enormous
-forms and foreshortenings of Michel Angelo, though adopted by so
-different a mind, from as different motives, for an end still more
-different, will be found to be much more congenial with his principles
-of seeing and executing, than the style of any preceding or coetaneous
-period.
-
-The authenticity of Correggio's celebrated "Anch' io son Pittore," is
-less affected by the improbability of his journey to Rome, than by its
-own legendary weakness: though not at Modena or Parma, for there were no
-pictures of Raphael in either place during Antonio's life, he might have
-seen the St. Cecilia at Bologna; and if the story be true, perhaps no
-large picture of that master that we are acquainted with could furnish
-him with equal matter of exultation. He was less made to sympathize with
-the celestial trance of the heroine, the intense meditation of the
-Apostles, and the sainted grace of the Magdalen, than to be disgusted by
-a parallelism of the whole which borders on primitive apposition, by the
-total neglect of what is called picturesque, the absence of chiaroscuro,
-the unharmonious colour, and dry severity of execution.
-
-The next point is to fix the dates of Correggio's works; the certain,
-the probable, the conjectural.
-
-The theatre of Correggio's first essays in art is supposed to have been
-his native place and the palace of its princes; but that palace perished
-with whatever it might contain. From a document in the parochial archive
-of Correggio, of 1514, it appears that in the same year he painted an
-altar-piece for one hundred zechini, a considerable price for a young
-man of twenty. This picture was in the church of the Minorites, where it
-remained till 1638, when a copy was unawares put into the place of the
-original. The citizens alarmed, in vain made representations to Annibale
-Molza, their governor; it even appears from a letter of his to the Court
-of Modena, in whose name he governed, that, many years before, two other
-pieces of Antonio had been removed from the same chapel by order of Don
-Siro, the last prince of the House of Correggio; those represented a St.
-John and a St. Bartholomew; the subject of the altar-piece was the
-Madonna with the child, Joseph and St. Francis.
-
-The fraternity of the Hospital della Misericordia possessed likewise an
-altar-piece of Antonio. The centre piece represented the Deity of the
-Father; the two wings, St. John and Bartholomew. According to a contract
-which still remains in the archives, it was estimated by a painter of
-Novellara, Jacopo Borboni, at three hundred ducats, bought for Don Siro
-in 1613, and a copy put in its place. The originals of all these
-pictures are lost.
-
-The picture with the Madonna and child on a throne, St. John the
-Baptist, the Sts. Catharina, Francis, and Antony, inscribed "Antonius de
-Allegris P." now in the gallery of Dresden, was, as Tiraboschi correctly
-supposes, an altar-piece in the church of St. Nicolas of the Minorites,
-at Carpi: a copy of it by Aretusi, is at Mantoua. To this period, and
-perhaps even an earlier one, belongs the St. Cecilia of the Borghese
-palace. The general style of this picture is dry and hard, and the
-draperies in Mantegna's taste; but the light which proceeds from a glory
-of angels, and imperceptibly expands itself over the whole, is a
-characteristic too decisive to leave any doubt of its originality.
-
-In the gallery of Count Bruehl was the Wedding (sposalizio) of St.
-Catharine, with the following inscription on the back:--"Laus Deo: per
-Donna Metilde d'Este Antonio Lieto da Correggio fece il presente quadro
-per sua divozione, anno 1517." This inscription appears, however,
-suspicious, as at that time there was no princess of that name at the
-court of Ferrara. At the purchase of the principal pictures in the
-Modenese gallery by Augustus III. this was presented by the Duke to
-Count Bruehl; from him it went to the Imperial Gallery at Petersburg. A
-similar one was in the collection of Capo di Monte at Naples, and Mengs
-considers both as originals. Copies of merit by Gabbiani and Volterrano
-are in England and Toscana. It is singular that an artist, than whom
-none had more scholars and copyists, and whose short life was occupied
-by the most important works, should be supposed to have painted so many
-duplicates, and that a set of men, as impudent as ignorant, should meet
-with dupes as credulous as wealthy, eager to purchase their trash at
-enormous prices, in the face of the few legitimate originals.
-
-In 1519, Antonio went to Parma, and soon after his arrival is said to have
-painted a room in the Nunnery of St. Paul. The authenticity of this work,
-placed within the clausure of the convent and consequently inaccessible,
-has been recently disputed, and the author of a certain dialogue even
-attempts to prove the whole a fable. To ascertain the fact, a special
-licence to visit the place was obtained for some painters and architects
-of note, and on their declaring the paintings one of Correggio's best
-works, Don Ferdinando de Bourbon, with some of the courtiers and Padre
-Iveneo Affo, followed to inspect it. What he tells us of monastic
-constitution in those times accounts for the admission of so profane an
-ornament in such a place; for in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
-clausure was yet unknown to nunneries; abbesses were elected for life,
-their power over the revenue of the convent was uncontrolled, their style
-of life magnificent, and their political influence not inconsiderable.
-Such was the situation of nunneries when Donna Giovanna da Piacenza,
-descended from an eminent family at Parma, the new-elected abbess of St.
-Paul's, ordered two saloons of her elegant apartments to be decorated with
-paintings; one by Correggio, and another, as it is conjectured, either by
-Alessandro Araldi of Parma, or Cristoforo Casella, called Temperello.
-Padre Affo proves that Correggio must have painted his apartment before
-1520, immediately after his arrival at Parma, and four or five years
-before the introduction of the clausure. Of a work so singular and
-questionable, it will not appear superfluous to repeat some of the most
-striking outlines from his account:--"The chimney-piece represents Diana
-returned from the chase, to whom an infant Amor offers the head of a
-new-slain stag; the ceiling is vaulted, raised in arches over sixteen
-lunettes; four on each side of the walls; the paintings are raised about
-an ell from the floor, and form a series of mythologic and allegoric
-figures, which breathe the simplicity, the suavity, and the decorum of
-Art's golden age. Of these the three Graces naked, in three different
-attitudes, offer a charming study of female beauty, and a striking
-contrast with the Parcae placed opposite; the most singular subject is a
-naked female figure, suspended by a cord from the sky, with her hands tied
-over her head--her body extended by two golden anvils fastened with chains
-to her feet, floating in the attitude of which the Homeric Jupiter reminds
-his Juno.[162] The high-arched roof embowers the whole with luxuriant
-verdure and fruit, and is divided into sixteen large ovals, overhung with
-festoons of tendrils, vine-leaves, and grapes, between which appear groups
-of infant Amorini, above the size of children, gamboling in various
-picturesque though not immodest attitudes."
-
-Neither the pretended inaccessibility of place, nor the veil thrown by
-monastic austerity over the profaneness of the subject, can sufficiently
-account for the silence of tradition, and the obscurity in which this
-work was suffered to linger for nearly three centuries. Supposing it, on
-the authorities adduced, to be the legitimate produce of Correggio, and
-considering its affinity to the ornamental parts of the Loggie in the
-Vatican, it affords a stronger argument of Allegri's having seen Rome,
-studied the antique, and imitated Raphael, than any of those that have
-been adduced by Mengs, who (with his commentator D'Azara,) appears to
-have been totally uninformed of it, notwithstanding his familiarity at
-Parma with every work of Correggio, his perseverance of inquiry and
-eager pursuit of whatever related to his idol, the influence he enjoyed
-at Court, and unlimited access to every place that might be supposed to
-contain or hide some work of art.
-
-Soon after his arrival at Parma, Antonio probably received the
-commission of the celebrated cupola of S. Giovanni, which he completed
-in 1524, as appears from an acquittance for the last payment subscribed
-'Antonio Lieto,' still existing at Parma.
-
-In the cupola he represented the Ascension of the Saviour, with the
-Apostles, the Madonna, &c. and the Coronation of the Virgin on the
-tribune of the principal altar, whose enlargement in 1584 occasioned,
-with the destruction of the choir, that of the painting: a few fragments
-escaped; an exact copy had, however, been provided before, by Annibale
-Carracci, from which it was repainted on the same place by Aretusi. The
-same church preserved two pictures in oil of Correggio, the martyrdom of
-St. Placidus and Flavia, and Christ taken from the cross on the lap of
-his mother; both are now (1802) in the collection of the Louvre.
-
-The success of the cupola of S. Giovanni encouraged the inspectors of
-the Domo to commit the decoration of theirs to the same master. Of their
-contract with him, the original still remains in the archive of their
-chapter; it was concluded in 1522, and amounted to about one thousand
-zecchini, no inconsiderable sum for those times, and alone sufficient to
-do away the silly tradition of the artist's mendicity. The decorations
-of the chapel, next to the cupola, were distributed among three of the
-best Parmesan painters at that time, Parmegianino, Franc. Maria Rondani,
-and Michael Angelo Anselmi. From all the papers hitherto found, it
-appears, however, that Correggio did not actually begin to paint the
-cupola before 1526: it represents the Ascension of the Virgin, and
-without recurring to an individual verdict, has received the sanction of
-ages, as the most sublime in its kind, of all that were produced before
-and after it; a work without a rival, though now dimmed with smoke, and
-in decay by time. These were the two first cupolas painted entire, all
-former ones being painted in compartments. Nothing occurs to make us
-surmise that Correggio had partners of his labour in these two works;
-for Lattanzio Gambara of Brescia, mentioned by Rossi as his assistant in
-the Domo, was born eight years after Correggio's death.
-
-During the progress of these two great works, Correggio produced others
-of inferior size but equal excellence; the principal of which are the
-two votive pictures of St. Jerome, and La Notte. That of St. Jerome
-represents the Saint offering his Translation to the Infant Christ, who
-is seated in his Mother's lap, with St. Magdalen reclining on and
-kissing his feet, and flanked by Angels. The commission for this picture
-is said to have been given in 1523, by Donna Briseide Colla, the widow
-of Orazio or Ottaviano Bergonzi of Parma, who in 1528 gave it as a
-votive offering to the church of S. Antonio del Fuoco. The price agreed
-on, was 400 lire; 40,000 ducats were offered for it afterwards by the
-King of Portugal; and the then Abbot of the convent was on the point of
-concluding the bargain, when the citizens of Parma, to prevent the loss,
-applied to the Infante Don Philippo. He ordered it in 1749 to be
-transposed from S. Antonio to the Domo; there it remained till 1756,
-when, on the application of a French painter, expelled by the Canons for
-his attempt to trace it, the Prince had it transferred under an escort
-of twenty-four grenadiers to Colorno; and from thence to the newly
-instituted academy, where it remained till 1797, and now, (1802,) with
-other transported works of Art, glitters among the spoils of the Louvre.
-
-The second picture known by the name of "La Notte," represents the
-birthnight of the Saviour, and was the commission of Alberto Pratonieri,
-as appears from a writing dated in 1522, though it was not finished till
-1527 according to Mengs, or 1530 as Fiorillo surmised, when it was
-dedicated in the Chapel Pratonieri of S. Prospero at Reggio: from
-whence, 1640, it was carried to the gallery of Modena, by order, of Duke
-Francesco I. and from thence at length to that of Dresden.
-
-A chapel in the church del S. Sepolcro at Parma, possessed formerly the
-altar-piece known by the name of "La Madonna della Scodella," because
-the Virgin, represented on her flight to Egypt, holds a wooden bowl in
-her hand: a figure, whom Mengs fancies the Genius of the Fountain, pours
-water into it; and in the back ground an angel, whose action and
-expression he considers as too graceful for the business, ties up the
-ass. This picture, he tells us, was, thirteen years before the date in
-which he wrote, nearly swept out of the panel by the barbarous wash of a
-Spanish journeyman painter who had obtained permission to copy it. It is
-now in the Louvre, and how much of its present florid colour is
-legitimate, must be left to the decision of the committee "de la
-Restoration."
-
-If the most sublime degree of expression be entitled to the right of
-originality, Mengs must be followed in his decision on the Ecce Homo,
-formerly in the Palace Colonna, without much anxiety whether it be the
-same that belonged to the family of Prati at Parma, or that which
-Agostino Carracci engraved.
-
-The Madonna seated beneath a palm-tree, bending in somnolently pensive
-contemplation over the Infant on her lap, watched by an Angel above her,
-and attended by a Leveret, known by the name of "La Zingarella" or the
-Egyptian, from the sash round her head, formerly in the gallery of
-Parma, and now at Naples in that of Capo di Monte, has suffered so
-much from a modern hand, that little of the master remains but the
-conception. Nearly a duplicate of it was presented by Cardinal
-Alessandro Albani to king Augustus of Poland; but Mengs hesitates to
-pronounce it an original.
-
-In the period of these, about 1530, we may probably place the two
-celebrated pictures of Leda and Danae, than which no modern works of art
-have suffered more from accident and wanton or bigoted barbarity, or
-been tossed about by more contradictory tradition.
-
-If the subject that takes its name from Leda be, as Mengs says, rather
-an allegory than a fable, it alludes to what would aggravate even the
-story of that mistress of Jupiter. The central figure represents a
-female seated on the verge of a rivulet with a swan between her thighs,
-who attempts to insinuate his bill into her lips; but at her side, and
-deeper in the water, is a tender girl, who with an air of innocence
-playfully struggles to defend herself from the attacks of another
-swimming swan; farther on, a girl more grown up to woman, gazes, whilst
-a female servant dresses her, with an air of satiate pleasure after a
-swan on the wing, that seems just to have left her; at some distance
-appears half a figure of an aged woman, draped, and with looks of
-regret. On the other side of the principal group, the graceful form of a
-full-grown Amor strikes the lyre, and two Amorini contrive to wind some
-horn instruments. The scene of all this is a charming grove on the brink
-of a pellucid lake.
-
-The second picture represents the daughter of Acrisius, but with poetic
-spirit. The virgin gracefully reclines on her bed; a full-grown Cupid,
-perhaps a Hymen, lifts with one hand the border of the sheet on her lap
-that receives the celestial shower, whilst his other presents the mystic
-drops to her enchanted glance: two Amorini at the foot of the bed try
-on a touchstone, that, one of the golden drops, this, the point of an
-arrow, and he, says Mengs, has a vigour of character much superior to
-the other, plainly to express, that Love proceeds from the arrow, and
-its ruin from gold; he likewise finds that the head and head-dress of
-Danae are imitated from those of the Medicean Venus.
-
-Vasari, and after him Mengs with others, tell that in 1530, Federigo
-Gonzaga, then created Duke of Mantoua, intended to present Charles the
-Fifth at the ceremonial of his coronation with two pictures worthy of
-him, and in the choice of artists gave the preference to Correggio. From
-this, a correct inference is drawn against that pretended obscurity in
-which Correggio is said to have lingered; for at that time Giulio Romano
-lived at the Court of Mantoua, and Tizian was in the service of the
-Emperor. Vasari is silent on the date of the pictures, but he affirms
-that, at their sight, Giulio Romano declared he had never seen a style
-of colour approaching theirs. So far all seems correct; but that they
-were actually presented to Charles, sent to Prague, and after the
-sacking of that city by Gustavus Adolphus, carried to Stockholm, is
-unproved or erroneous. If it is not likely that the Emperor, instead of
-sending them to Madrid, the darling depository of his other works of
-art, should have sent them into a kind of exile to Prague, it is an
-error to pretend they were removed from thence by Gustavus Adolphus, who
-was slain at Lutzen sixteen years before the Swedes sacked that city,
-1648. The truth is, that these pictures were not given to the Emperor,
-but placed in his own gallery by the Duke, where they remained till
-1630, when the Imperial General Colalto stormed Mantoua, sacked it,
-deprived it of its cabinet of treasures, of the celebrated vase since
-possessed by the House of Brunswick, and transmitted its beautiful
-collection of pictures to Prague, from whence by the event of war we
-have mentioned, they became the property of Queen Christina, at whose
-abdication, when the whole was packing up for Rome, the two pictures in
-question were discovered in the royal stables, where they had served as
-window-blinds, mutilated and despised. Whether so unaccountable a
-neglect be imputable to the Queen's want of taste, as Tessin asserts, or
-to accident, or, what is most unlikely, to her modesty, cannot now be
-decided. They were repaired, and at her demise left to Cardinal
-Azzolini, of whose heirs they were purchased by Don Livio Odescalchi,
-and by him left to the Duke of Bracciano, were sold to the Regent of
-France, whose son, from a whim of bigotry, had the picture of the Leda
-cut to pieces in his own presence, in which state Charles Coypel
-requested and obtained it for his private study. At his death it was
-vamped up, repieced, disposed of by auction, and, at a high price, sold
-to the King of Prussia. What became of the Danae is matter of
-dispute.[163]
-
-The picture of Io embraced by Jupiter, inbosomed in clouds, by a silent
-water in which a stag quenches his thirst, was their companion: a work
-to which the most lavish fame has done no justice, and beyond which no
-fancy ever soared. The Io shared a still more barbarous fate. Not
-content with mangling her like the Leda, the bigot prince burnt her
-head; and, were it not for the beautiful duplicate which fortune
-preserved in the Gallery of Vienna,[164] we should be reduced to guess
-at Correggio in the fragments at Sans Souci, and the prints of Surregue
-and Bartolozzi. The Imperial Gallery possesses, likewise, the Rape of
-Ganymede, by Correggio, of the same size with the Io; a Mountain Scene;
-a full-grown Cupid, seen from behind, with his head turned to the
-spectator, shaping a bow, accompanied by a laughing and a weeping
-infant, in struggling attitudes, which was likewise sold by the heirs of
-Don Livio Odescalchi, has equally exercised opinion. Vasari, Tassoni, Du
-Bois, de St. Gelais, &c. ascribe it to Parmegiano; Mengs and Fiorillo,
-who judge from the duplicate at Vienna, with greater probability give it
-to Correggio. The contrast of the attitudes is produced more by naivete
-than affectation, the lines have more simplicity than the style of
-Mazzuola admitted of, and the colour more breadth. The conception of the
-whole, whether the infants be the symbols of successful and unsuccessful
-love, or denote the dangers of love, or be simply children, though not
-beyond the fancy of Parmegiano, has more the air of a Correggiesque
-conceit. Numberless copies were made after it, some by Parmegiano
-himself, whose handling may be recognized in the picture at Paris.
-
-We are now arrived at those works of Correggio's which cannot be fixed
-to a certain period. Such are probably, in the Gallery of Dresden, those
-known under the names of S. Giorgio and S. Sebastiano, of both of which
-Mengs gives a circumstantial account. He is, however, mistaken when he
-imagines the last to have been voted by the City of Modena after a
-plague: the commission of it was given by the fraternity of St.
-Sebastian.
-
-The half-length portrait, formerly known at Modena as that of
-Correggio's Physician, belongs to the same doubtful period. Mengs,
-though he praises the colour and the impasto of it, is inclined to think
-it painted about the time of his first Cupola, when he had not yet
-sufficiently studied detail of forms and variety of tints. The style
-resembles that of Giorgione, but is less vivid, though of equal pasto,
-and somewhat more limpid.
-
-The last, though not least celebrated piece of Antonio in this Gallery,
-is the small Meditating Magdalena: of the pictures mentioned, it is the
-only one painted on copper, the rest are on panel. It is little more
-than a palm in height, and not quite a palm and a half long. It was,
-with other small pictures, stolen out of the Gallery in 1788, but soon
-recovered. The purchase price, according to Mengs, when the Gallery was
-disposed of, was 27,000 Roman crowns. It has been copied by Albani, and,
-if we believe Richardson, by Tizian.
-
-Besides the spoils of Parma, there is now (1802) in the Gallery of the
-Louvre, from the former collection of Versailles, a picture representing
-in half-length figures of natural size the Wedding of St. Catherine,
-with a St. Sebastian, and their Martyrdom in the distance. It does not
-appear that Mengs ever saw more than some good copy of it, or the prints
-engraved from it, else his praise would have probably been nearer to
-astonishment than admiration; and though none would dare to repeat what
-he ventures to say of the Magdalen's head in the St. Jerome, it might
-safely be asserted, that perhaps no other picture can boast to have
-united in the same degree the tints of Tizian, the glow and impasto of
-Giorgione, and the breadth of Guido, with that bloom of hue and suavity
-of manner peculiar to Correggio.
-
-This divine performance was presented by Cardinal Barberino to Cardinal
-Mazarin, with two others painted in water colours on canvass,
-representing in allegoric figures the heroism of Virtue and the
-debasement of Vice. The first, in physiognomy and attitudes, abounds in
-what is commonly called the grace of Correggio; the second in
-picturesque energy and expression: they are likewise placed among the
-collections of the Louvre. An unfinished repetition of the first in the
-House Doria Panfili at Rome, is adduced by Mengs as a proof of
-Correggio's intelligence in sketching, and the superiority of his
-principle in the progress of a work.
-
-Of two pictures in the Cabinet at Madrid, the principal is that of
-Christ praying in the Garden, with an Angel on high pointing to a Cross
-and a Crown of Thorns on the ground, scarcely discernible. The open but
-drooping arms of the Saviour express his entire resignation to the will
-of his Father. The most poetic singularity of this picture is its
-chiaroscuro: Christ receives his light from Heaven, the Angel from
-Christ: at a distance on lower ground, and nearly evanescent, are the
-three Disciples _in graceful and picturesque attitudes_, and farther
-off, the approaching host of captors. At first sight, the whole seems to
-be divided into two masses only of light and darkness, but on
-inspection, the ambient medium and the more and less of distinctness in
-the objects as they approach the light or recede from it, is divinely
-expressed. There is a tale, which even Lomazzo and Scanelli repeat, that
-Correggio parted with this picture to his apothecary for four scudi,
-which he owed him; that afterwards it was sold for five hundred crowns
-to Pirrho Count Visconti, who resold it for seven hundred and fifty gold
-doubloons, to the Marchese Camarena, Governor of Milan, by whom it was
-bought in commission for Philip the Fourth. Every day discovers some
-copy, or, if you choose to believe those who wish to dispose of them,
-some duplicate or triplicate of this picture. Padre Resta possessed not
-one, but four, all of which he insisted on being believed in as
-originals: one on copper, another on wood, which Lelio Orsi was said to
-have copied on canvass; a third, likewise on panel but somewhat
-worm-eaten, disposed of to Monsignor Marchetti, and a fourth again on
-copper. Some of these are probably in England.
-
-The companion of this picture is the Madonna dressing the Infant, with
-Joseph planing a board in the back-ground; a performance though inferior
-in style to the former, not less original from the pentimenti still
-discoverable in the two principal figures.
-
-The Duke of Alba possesses of Correggio, in figures somewhat less than
-Nature, Mercury teaching Cupid to read in the presence of Venus. Venus
-has the singular attribute of wings, and of a bow in her left hand; and
-Mengs persuades himself to discover in her forms a reminiscence of an
-imitation of the Apollino, formerly in the Villa Medici at Rome. The
-characteristic excellence of the execution, and an evident pentimento in
-the arm of the Mercury, leave no doubt of its having a better claim to
-originality than the duplicates in France and Germany. It formerly made
-part of the collection of Charles the First, and Sandrart saw it in the
-Palace of Whitehall, from whence it was purchased by an ancestor of the
-Duke of Alba.
-
-Not to waste time on conjectural works, we finish this list with a
-picture formerly in the house Barberini, now supposed to be in England:
-it is painted on panel, and represents from the narrative of S. Marc,
-the young man who followed our Saviour at the moment of his captivity,
-but fled on being laid hold of, and left his garment in the hands of the
-captors. Mengs describes a duplicate of this picture, painted on
-canvass, at his time in the hands of an Englishman at Rome, and though,
-in his opinion, only the study for the other, in the principal parts,
-especially the figure of the youth, highly finished: his expression,
-form and attitude, remind the critic so strongly of the same in the
-eldest son of the Laocoon, that he is persuaded they are an imitation,
-though in a style more consonant with Correggio's manner.
-
-The cause and circumstances of his death we are not acquainted with,
-since the idle tale has been discarded which Vasari tells, of his
-perishing in consequence of having carried home a load of sixty scudi in
-copper, which he had received in payment at Parma. He who considers what
-strength would be required to carry sixty crowns in quattrini, will find
-its confutation in the tale itself; let it be added that the extreme
-heat which is said to have aggravated the fatigue, and accelerated his
-death, is, even in Italy, not coincident with the season in which he
-must have taken the journey,[165] as he died on the fifth of March. The
-magnificence and number of his commissions; the deference paid to his
-powers in the face of rival artists, by the very patrons of those men,
-or societies, that might have saved expense by admitting concurrence;
-the handsome, though not quite metropolitan prices, which he received,
-and what Mengs has observed, the expensive goodness of his colours, of
-his panels, and canvasses--make it not only extremely improbable that he
-should have lived in the depressed circumstances, to which vulgar
-tradition has sunk him; but add an air of truth to the opinion of those
-who thought him, if not opulent, yet nearer allied to affluence than
-want.
-
-Correggio was a monument without a tomb; but it appears strange that a
-century and a half should have elapsed before the thought of erecting
-him one occurred to the Senate and citizens of his native place, and
-then was suffered to evaporate in ineffectual projects. The boastful
-intentions of Padre Resta proved equally nugatory: the tombstone set and
-inscribed by Girolamo Conti still remains a solitary offering to his
-genius:
-
-                        D. O. M.
-                Antonio. Allegri. Civi.
-                 Vulgo. Il Correggio.
-          Arte. Picturae. Habitu. Probitatis.
-                        Eximio.
-                  Monum. Hoc. Posuit.
-                Hier. Conti. Concivis.
-            Siccine. Separas. Amara. Mors.
-        Obiit. Anno. AEtatis. XL. Sal. MDXXXIV.
-
-On such a face as Correggio's, physiognomy might have established
-principles or drawn some inferences from it, had not a perverse destiny
-left us as ignorant of it, as of his complexion, stature, character, and
-habits. Vasari's exertions to obtain a portrait of him were not only
-unsuccessful, but hopeless; and the profile which is shown in the dome
-of Parma as his, becomes inadmissible from the very name of the artist
-to whom it is ascribed.[166] The head which found its way into the third
-and every following edition of Vasari, has certainly nothing repugnant
-with the notions we may form of his character, but age. Meditation,
-simplicity, serenity, compose it. It is said to have been copied from a
-picture not quite finished, which appears to have the touch of
-Correggio, and came from Sicily to Naples. He is represented
-contemplating a design, the original of which, report has placed at
-Vienna with Prince Esterhazy. The portrait which is at Turin, in the
-"Vigna della Regina," engraved by Valperga, with the epigraph, in part
-hid by the frame, but read by Lanzi "Antonius Corrigius f." (_i. e._
-fecit) though by some believed genuine, appears spurious from this very
-circumstance, the large character of the letters and the space they
-occupy; a manner of writing often used to indicate the person painted,
-never the painter. Another portrait, which from Genoua is said to have
-been carried to England, with the indorsed inscription "Dosso Dossi
-dipinse questo ritratto di Antonio da Correggio," fronts the Memorie of
-Ratti. Without examining the authenticity of this inscription, it is
-sufficient to observe, that Antonio da Correggio is likewise the name of
-Antonio Bernieri, a celebrated miniature painter, and fellow citizen of
-Allegri, whose date coincides with that of Dosso, and whom there will be
-occasion to mention again.
-
-Of Correggio's numerous pretending imitators, Lodovico Carracci appears
-to be the only one who penetrated his principle. The axiom, that the
-less the traces appear of the means by which a work has been produced,
-the more it resembles the operations of Nature, is not an axiom likely
-to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour,
-the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation,
-which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the
-contemplation of some preceding style, analogous to his own feelings and
-its comparison with Nature; and where could that be met with in a degree
-equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of Correggio's
-effusions? They inspired his frescoes in the cloisters of S. Michele in
-Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the hermitage,
-and of the ponderous demon that mocks their toil; the warlike splendour
-in the Homage of Totila; the Nocturnal Conflagration of Monte Casino;
-the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidious charms of the
-sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of
-Correggio.
-
-His triumph in oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching in a chapel
-of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil,
-and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in
-tones austere, pronounced, and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ
-in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the
-open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrors on the
-astonished sense.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[154] Mantoua preserved a certain attachment to Virgil in the darkest
-ages; for besides numerous coins stamped with his image, his statue,
-honoured by annual festivals, remained in the forum, till the brutal
-fanaticism of Carlo Malatesta condemned it to the river. Vide _Ant.
-Possevini Junioris Gonzaga_, lib. v. p. 486. Paul of Florence and Peter
-Paul Vergerius wrote against Malatesta: the latter under the following
-title, 'De Diruta Statua Virgilii P.P.V. eloquentissimi Oratoris
-epistola ex tugurio Blondi sub Apolline.' No date.
-
-[155] Some codices decorated with miniatures and the portrait of that
-Countess: the most conspicuous of which is that by Donizone, a
-Benedictine at Canossa, in the diocese of Reggio, but a German by
-extraction, who lived at the court of Mathilda, and in two books of
-barbarous verse composed her life and history. It is preserved in the
-Vatican Library, No. 4922, and was first published by Sebastian
-Tagnagolio, at Ingolstadt, 1612. 4to.
-
-The original portrait of Mathilda, by an unknown hand, drawn from her
-monument at Polirone, has been published by _J. Bat. Visi in Notizie
-Storiche della citta di Mantoua e dello stato_, t. ii. p. 122. She is
-represented on a horse with a pomegranate in her hand.
-
-[156] In the Convent "alle Grazie," tradition dates the remains of
-several old pictures from the time of Mantegna. That miniature or rather
-missal painting had attained a high degree of excellence at that period,
-is proved by a large folio Bible, in the Estensian Library, decorated
-with admirable copies of insects, plants, and animals. The contract made
-between Duca Borso, 1455, and the two artists who painted it, Taddeo de
-Crivelli and Zuanne de Russi da Mantova, has been preserved by
-Bettshelli, Lett. Mant. Mantova, 1774. 4to.
-
-[157] Vasari, whom rage of dispatch and eager credulity seldom suffered
-to wait for authentic information, not content, in spite of his epitaph,
-to tell us that he was born of low parents in some district of Mantoua,
-confounds the date of his death with that of the inscription itself.
-
-[158] See Nic. Vleughels, in his notes to Dolci.
-
-[159] Garofalo.
-
-[160] Cataloghi, p. 498.
-
-[161] Indice del Pam. de' Pittori, p. 21.
-
-[162] ----"peri chersi de desmon iela
-     CHryseon, arrekton."--Ilias, xv. 19.
-
-[163] Du Change. Copy of the Leda in the Colonna.
-
-[164] In the palace Godolphin.
-
-[165] In the obituary of the Franciscans at Correggio we read, "A di 5
-Marzo 1534 mori Maestro Antonio Allegri Dipintore e fu sepolto a 6 detto
-in S. Francesco sotto il Portico."
-
-[166] Lattanzio Gambara.
-
-
-
-
-THE SCHOOL OF BOLOGNA.
-
-
-Three epochs divide the history of painting in Bologna and the
-neighbouring districts. The first is from its restoration to the time of
-Francesco Raibolini, or Francia; the second reaches from him to the
-Carracci, when it attained its height, and gradually decayed in the
-variety of deviations which mark the third.
-
-Bologna, at an early period of the fifth century, appears to have been
-considered as a nursery of sciences and arts; the foundation of its
-University is dated up to Petronius, its bishop at that period;
-afterwards, under the successive invasions of barbarians, when the
-alternate prey of clerical and secular rapacity, as a powerful republic,
-or oppressed by civic usurpation, and at last reduced to a Papal
-province, Bologna never lost its predilection for sciences and arts.
-
-Of the progress made in painting anterior to the time of Cimabue, some
-monumental relics still remain, though by far the greater part were
-ignorantly destroyed at the beginning of the last century. Some that
-escaped the whitewasher's hand are ascribed to an artist who marked his
-work with the letters _P.F._ Of these, one which represents a Maria, is
-preserved in the Church della Baroncella, and was done about 1120. Two
-others are in the Basilica of S. Stephano.
-
-Baldi, a collector of antique pictures, in a MS. quoted by Malvasia,
-mentions some of _Guido da Bologna_, painted in 1178 and 1180, and
-others executed by _Ventura da Bononia_ in 1197. Of this last something
-still remains, especially one picture with the date 1217, and the
-inscription _Ventura pinsit_: and the name of _Urso_, or _Ursone_, a
-contemporary of _Guido da Siena_, is found on a picture inscribed _Urso
-f. 1226_; and some others ascribed to him have dates of 1242 and 1244.
-In those times painting, sculpture, architecture, chasing, were
-frequently exercised by one man. A certain _Manno_, contemporary with
-Cimabue, is mentioned as the painter of a Madonna by Baldi, and as the
-sculptor of Pope Bonifazio VIII. by Ghirardacci who calls him likewise a
-goldsmith. His dates are from 1260 to 1301. Some remains or rather ruins
-of these masters are still visible in the palace Malvezzi.
-
-The age of Giotto and Dante gives Art an air of greater certainty.
-Tradition and monument go hand in hand. Franco of Bologna, with his
-supposed master Oderigi of Gubbio, are celebrated in the poet's poem of
-the Purgatory. Franco was called to Rome by Bonifazio VIII. to decorate
-the books and missals of the Vatican library with miniature; and on his
-return to Bologna founded a school which numbered among its scholars
-_Vitale_, _Lorenzo_, _Simone_, and _Jacopo d'Avanzi_, whose works,
-especially what remains of the two last, make it probable that Vasari is
-correct when he asserts that Franco excelled in large as well as in
-miniature painting. Michael Agnolo and the Carracci are said to have
-been struck with the fire of conception and the tone of colour in the
-pictures still preserved of Simone and Jacopo d'Avanzi, at the Madonna
-di Mezzaratta, and to have advised a careful restoration of the
-decaying parts. Simone, who loved to paint the crucifix, from the number
-which he executed obtained the surname of "de' Crocefissi;" and Jacopo,
-smitten with the love of Maria, was marked by the title "dalle Madonne."
-He excelled, however, in subjects of a martial kind, if the conflict in
-the Chapel of S. Jacopo del Santo at Padova, and the Capture of
-Jugurtha, with the Triumph of Marius, in a saloon at Verona, be his
-performances: works which excited the wonder of Mantegna. As he
-sometimes subscribed "Jacobus Pauli," it has been surmised that he was
-of Venetian extraction, and perhaps the son and assistant of that Paolo
-who painted the Ancona of S. Marc.
-
-Of the artists who at that period painted in Mezzaratta, Cristoforo,
-whether of Ferrara, Modena, or Bologna, for he is claimed by all, seems
-to have shared the highest repute. He had the commission of the
-principal altar, where he painted on panel the Madonna with the Infant
-between her knees, and some figures kneeling before her; it still
-exists, marked with his name Christofano, 1380. A most copious work of
-his, divided into ten compartments of saints, rudely designed, languid
-in colour, but of original style, is preserved among the fragments of
-the house Malvezzi.
-
-Lippo di Dalmatio,--who was supposed to have been a Carmelite, till
-Bianconi, in Piacenza's edition of Baldinucci, produced proofs of his
-wife and family,--came from the school of Vitale, and from his
-predilection for the Mother of Christ acquired, like Jacopo d'Avanzi,
-the byname of "Lippo dalle Madonne." There goes a tale that he gave
-instruction to Saint Catherine Vigri, of whom certain miniatures and an
-Infant Christ on panel still remain. A better union of tints, and some
-easier arrangement in the folds of his draperies, though with a
-profusion of gold lace, is all that discriminates him from the crudeness
-and exility of the ancient style. Such, however, was his felicity in the
-character of Madonnas, that they captivated Guido Reni,[167] who used to
-repeat that Lippo, in expressing at once the majesty, the sanctity, and
-the mildness of the divine mother, must have been assisted by a
-celestial power. Some of these Madonnas are said to be in oil colours,
-with dates of 1376, 1405, and 1407. Guido is likewise the guarantee of
-certain frescoes representing facts of Elia, painted with great spirit
-by the same master.
-
-After 1409, the last date of Lippo's pictures, the School of Bologna
-somewhat declined, nor could it be otherwise: no vigorous school ever
-sprang from the timid precepts of a portrait painter, and Dalmatio
-possessed more of that than of historic power: this, rather than the
-supposed imitation of certain images imported from Constantinople, was
-the cause of that insignificance which consigned, with few exceptions,
-his school and successors to oblivion. Of Pietro Lianori, Michele di
-Matteo, Bombologno, Severo and Ercole Bologna, Catherina di Vigri,
-Giacopo Ripanda, Marco Zoppo, time has left little but the names, and of
-that little, enough not to regret the loss of what vanished. Let us not,
-however, be too fastidious to repeat what tradition has persevered to
-report of some; if Bombologno may be left to the votaries of the
-crucifix, and Catherina to the rubric that saints her, Michele
-Lambertini claims the attention of artists for a mellowness of tints
-which Albano judged superior to the tints of Francia; Giacopo Ripanda
-for the dangers which he braved in designing the groups of the Trajan
-pillar;[168] and Marco Zoppo as no despicable competitor of Andrea
-Mantegna, and the reputed master of Francesco Francia.
-
-Francesco Raibolini, surnamed Francia, born in 1450, may be considered
-as the head of the Bolognese school, because his works appear to have
-been framed on that collective principle which became its leading
-feature in the sequel, and was probably the result of the long theory
-that preceded his practice, assisted by that readiness in design which
-distinguished him as a goldsmith, chaser,[169] and die-cutter,
-professions to which he had been trained up from his infancy, and which
-he raised to celebrity before he attained complete manhood.
-
-Francia was fortunate in contemporaries; the School of Squarcione had
-furnished him with style and form; the genius of Lionardo da Vinci, with
-effect and chiaroscuro; Pietro Vanucchi with arrangement if not
-composition, and though not beauty, with amenity of aspect; and Bellino
-with tone, breadth of drapery and colour. Ardour of mind, energy of
-application and dexterity, supplied the want of early practice, and we
-find him in the palace of Giov. Bentivoglio on a par with the most
-expert Frescanti conscribed from Ferrara and Modena, and soon after
-intrusted with the commission of painting the altar-piece of his chapel
-at S. Jacopo, a work of great subtlety of execution; though modestly
-inscribed "Opus Francia Aurificis," and a pledge of that superior
-style at which he aimed and in the sequel attained.
-
-If from what has been premised of Bolognese artists anterior to Cimabue,
-it is evident that the germs of art belong to their own soil, their
-claim to originality in the progress of style has been and still is
-matter of dispute between the champions of the Tuscan school and those
-of their own. The Florentines insist on having taught the Bolognese,
-what the Bolognese deny to have learnt from the Florentines.[170] As in
-a dispute of this kind, candour is often sacrificed to the fervour of
-patriotic vanity, and the obstinacy of local attachment, the real state
-of the question is better learnt from those monuments of the fourteenth
-century, which still remain scattered over Romagna or collected and more
-classically arranged in Bologna itself. Among all these some specimens
-will be found evidently Greek, others as evidently Giottesque; some in a
-Venetian style, and not a few in a manner peculiar to Bologna only.
-These have a body of colour, a taste in perspective, a mode of design
-in figures, and a choice of forms and hues in draperies, which no other
-school practised. From all which it appears, that if Giotto during his
-stay at Bologna raised pupils, and formed imitators, his own school had
-no influence on, nor dislodged, that aboriginal one which continued to
-disseminate and to improve the principles imbibed from the antique
-mosaics and the painters of miniature.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[167] Malvasia.
-
-[168] "Floret item nunc Romae Jacobus Bononiensis, qui Trajani Columnae
-picturas omnes ordine delineavit, magna omnium admiratione, magnoque
-periculo circum machinis scandendo."--V. Raphaelis Volaterrani
-Anthropologia, p. 774. A. ed. 1603. fol.
-
-[169] "Unum apud modernos reperio, de quo apud antiquos nulla extat
-memoria, de incisoribus seu sculptoribus in argento; quae sculptura
-Niellum appellatur. Virum cognosco in hoc celeberrimum et summum, nomine
-Franciscum Bononiensem, aliter Franza, qui adeo in tam parvo orbiculo
-seu argenti lamina, tot homines, tot animalia, tot montes, arbores,
-castra ac tot diversa ratione situque posita figurat seu incidit, quod
-dictu ac visu mirabile apparet."--Camillo Leonardi, Speculo Lapidum,
-lib. iii. c. 2.
-
-The assertion that Niello was unknown to the ancients, it is unnecessary
-to refute here. Francia was master of the mint during the usurpation of
-the Bentivogli, after their expulsion by Giulio the Second, and
-continued to superintend its issue to the Pontificate of Leo. His coins
-and medals are said by Vasari to equal those of the Milanese Caradosso;
-and it is probably for their excellence that he was looked up to as a
-god (un Dio) at Bologna.
-
-[170] Dyo----eneikeon----
-     ----o men eucheto, pant' apodounai,
-     Demo piphayskon{~GREEK ANO TELEIA~} o d' anaineto, meden elesthai.
-
-Ilias. Lib. xviii. l. 498.
-
-
-    THE END.
-
-    LONDON:
-    PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
-    Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
-
-Obvious typos have been silently corrected.
-
-Italicised words and phrases are marked _like this_.
-
-Idiosyncratic spellings have been left unchanged. This includes
-inconsistent spellings of proper names, hyphenated words, oe ligatures
-and capitalisation.
-
-For example: Julio Pipi on p. 118 and Giulio Pippi on p. 361.
-
-Similarly, the spellings "domo" and "duomo" both appear, and have been
-left unchanged.
-
-
-There are numerous Greek quotations, in which accents and smooth
-breathings are used only occasionally, and rough breathings are nearly
-always marked. Missing accents and breathings have NOT been added.
-
-
-The following items are worth special note:
-
-1) The phrase "terribil via" on p. 19 should possibly be "terribilis
-via" or "terribile via", but has been left unchanged.
-
-2) On p. 28 "Goliah" has been amended to "Goliath", but the spelling
-"Goliah" also appears in vol. 2 and may have been an accepted spelling.
-
-3) In footnote 96 on p. 264, "Osteireichischen" has been amended to
-"Osterreichischen".
-
-4) On p. 265, "seini" has been amended to "sein".
-
-5) "Matatona" on p. 328 should possibly be "Matalona", as on p. 288, but
-has been left unchanged.
-
-6) On p. 330, "Buoancorsi" has been amended to "Buonacorsi".
-
-7) The phrase "sotto in su" (page 357) has been amended to match "sotto
-in su", which appears twice elsewhere.
-
-8) The spelling "pinsit" instead of "pinxit" on p. 400 has been retained
-as it may record an error in the original inscription.
-
-
-
-
-
-
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