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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76481 ***





                        _ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF
                            THE GREAT ARTISTS._

                             ANDREA MANTEGNA.

                           FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI,
                                  CALLED
                                 FRANCIA.




ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF THE GREAT ARTISTS.


_The following volumes, each illustrated with from 14 to 20 Engravings,
are now ready, price 3s. 6d._:—

_ITALIAN, &c._

    GIOTTO. By HARRY QUILTER, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.
    FRA ANGELICO. By CATHERINE MARY PHILLIMORE.
    FRA BARTOLOMMEO. By LEADER SCOTT.
    MANTEGNA AND FRANCIA. By JULIA CARTWRIGHT.
    LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Dr. J. PAUL RICHTER.
    MICHELANGELO. By CHARLES CLEMENT.
    RAPHAEL. From J. D. PASSAVANT. By N. D’ANVERS.
    TITIAN. By RICHARD FORD HEATH, M.A., Oxford.
    TINTORETTO. By W. ROSCOE OSLER. From researches at Venice.
    VELAZQUEZ. By EDWIN STOWE, B.A., Oxford.
    VERNET AND DELAROCHE. By J. RUNTZ REES.

_TEUTONIC._

    ALBRECHT DÜRER. By RICHARD FORD HEATH, M.A., Oxford.
    HOLBEIN. From Dr. A. WOLTMANN. By JOSEPH CUNDALL.
    THE LITTLE MASTERS OF GERMANY.* By W. B. SCOTT.
    REMBRANDT. From CHARLES VOSMAER. By J. W. MOLLETT, B.A.
    RUBENS. By C. W. KETT, M.A., Oxford.
    VAN DYCK AND HALS. By PERCY R. HEAD, Lincoln College, Oxford.
    FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. By LORD RONALD GOWER, F.S.A.

_ENGLISH._

    HOGARTH. By AUSTIN DOBSON.
    REYNOLDS. By F. S. PULLING, M.A., Oxford.
    GAINSBOROUGH. By G. M. BROCK-ARNOLD, M.A., Oxford.
    TURNER. By W. COSMO MONKHOUSE.
    WILKIE. By J. W. MOLLETT, B.A., Brasenose College, Oxford.
    LANDSEER. By FREDERIC G. STEPHENS.

_The following volumes are in preparation_:—

    CORREGGIO. By M. COMPTON HEATON.
    CORNELIUS AND OVERBECK. By J. BEAVINGTON ATKINSON.

* An _Edition de luxe_, containing 14 extra plates from rare engravings
in the British Museum, and bound in Roxburgh style, may be had, price
10_s._ 6_d._




[Illustration: ANDREA MANTEGNA.

_From the bronze bust, attributed to Sperandio, in Sant’ Andrea, Mantua._]




      “_The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness._”

                                 MANTEGNA
                                    AND
                                  FRANCIA

                            BY JULIA CARTWRIGHT
                 AUTHOR OF “VARALLO AND HER PAINTER,” ETC.

                              [Illustration]

                                 NEW YORK
                           SCRIBNER AND WELFORD
             LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
                                   1881

                         (_All rights reserved._)




PREFACE.


Although no separate biography of Mantegna has been published in England,
his life and works have been the subject of much study in other countries
during recent years. The thanks of the writer are especially due to
Dr. Woltmann, the author of the biography of the painter in Dr. Robert
Dohme’s “Kunst und Künstler,” to M. Armand Baschet, Canonico Willelmo
Braghirolli, and Dr. Karl Brun. It is to be hoped that before long the
last-named of these scholars will give the result of his researches to
the public in a complete work on this remarkable man, who was both one of
the greatest artists and one of the most striking personalities of the
Renaissance.

With regard to Francia, materials for the history of his life are far
less plentiful, and are to be found almost exclusively in the works of
Bolognese writers, of whom Malvasia and Calvi are the fullest and most
trustworthy. In offering this little work as a guide for the use of
those who have not the opportunity of studying the master’s works for
themselves the author has only to add that the pictures mentioned have
been carefully examined, and their descriptions written on the spot.

                                                                  J. M. C.




[Illustration]




CONTENTS.


                                                                      PAGE

                                MANTEGNA.

                                CHAPTER I.

    EARLY YEARS AND WORK AT PADUA. A.D. 1431-1457                        1

                               CHAPTER II.

    WORK AT VERONA AND MANTUA. A.D. 1457-1470                           12

                               CHAPTER III.

    THE CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI. A.D. 1470-1474                              21

                               CHAPTER IV.

    WORK AT MANTUA AND ROME. ENGRAVINGS, A.D. 1474-1490                 29

                                CHAPTER V.

    THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR. DRAWINGS, A.D. 1490-1500              38

                               CHAPTER VI.

    LAST WORKS AND DEATH—HIS INFLUENCE ON ART. A.D. 1500-1506           50

                                 FRANCIA.

                                CHAPTER I.

    EARLY ART IN BOLOGNA. A.D. 1300-1450                                65

                               CHAPTER II.

    EARLY LIFE AND WORKS. A.D. 1450-1500                                75

                               CHAPTER III.

    THE FRIENDSHIP AND INFLUENCE OF RAPHAEL. A.D. 1500-1506             86

                               CHAPTER IV.

    THE FRESCOES OF ST. CECILIA’S CHAPEL. A.D. 1506-1509                94

                                CHAPTER V.

    LAST WORKS AND DEATH. A.D. 1509-1517                               102


    THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF MANTEGNA                                    109

    THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRANCIA                                     114

    CHRONOLOGY                                                         119

    BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                       121

    INDEX                                                              122




[Illustration]




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                                                      PAGE

                                MANTEGNA.

    BUST PORTRAIT OF MANTEGNA                                _Frontispiece_

    MEETING OF LODOVICO GONZAGA AND HIS SON, THE CARDINAL FRANCESCO     26

    THE ENTOMBMENT (_engraving_)                                        35

    JUDITH WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES (_drawing_)                      37

    PART OF THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR                                42

    THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA                                          46

    VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND THE MAGDALEN                     48

    THE CRUCIFIXION                                                     58

                                 FRANCIA.

    PORTRAIT OF FRANCIA                                      _Frontispiece_

    THE VIRGIN ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS                                    80

    MADONNA AND CHILD WITH THE BIRD                                     85

    DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS                                           89

    A PIETÀ                                                             91

    THE MADONNA OF THE ROSE-GARDEN                                     101




[Illustration]




ANDREA MANTEGNA.




CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS AND WORK AT PADUA, A.D. 1431-1457.


Among the different schools of painting which flourished on the mainland
of North Italy during the fifteenth century, that of Padua was the only
one which attained more than a merely local importance. Independent of
Byzantine traditions and strikingly peculiar in its characteristics, it
rivalled for a time and even surpassed the Venetian school in the vigour
and individuality of its art.

A Paduan by birth, Andrea Mantegna became the greatest master of his
day, and left the stamp of his powerful genius not only on the schools
of neighbouring cities, but on the whole artistic world. By his own
achievements, and still more by the greatness of his aims, he stands
foremost among the men of his generation who carried on the work of the
Renaissance and prepared the way for the splendid age that was to follow.

This development was the more remarkable, because until the fifteenth
century we do not hear of a single Paduan artist of note. Giotto had left
the frescoes of the Arena Chapel within the walls of the “learned city,”
and Umbrian influences had later reached her students through Gentile
da Fabriano, but these seeds were slow in bearing fruit. The men who
painted in the famous basilica of Sant’ Antonio were mostly foreigners.
Jacopo d’Avanzo and Altichieri of Verona, Giusto of Florence, belonged to
other Italian cities, and although a Paduan guild existed and increased
steadily in numbers the results were poor, and the few works which
its members produced were feeble imitations of Giottesque or Umbrian
originals.

The first to raise Paduan art out of obscurity was Francesco Squarcione,
who, although “not the best of artists himself,” undoubtedly gave a new
direction to painting in his native city, and in a measure earned the
title of founder of the school, which has been liberally bestowed upon
him. Born in 1394, and by profession a tailor and embroiderer, Squarcione
early devoted himself to art, and having inherited some fortune from
his father, spent his youth in travelling both in Italy and Greece.[1]
During his travels he collected a considerable number of pictures, and
made drawings and took casts of ancient marbles, which on his return to
Padua he exhibited for the teaching of young artists. By these means he
soon obtained great reputation as a master, and as many as a hundred and
thirty-seven pupils, he himself tells us, were trained in his school.

A man of excellent judgment in art, but of slender powers of execution,
who knew how to attract talented pupils to his studio, and who
employed them in the production of works which bore his name, is the
universal verdict passed upon Squarcione by early writers. The truth
of this testimony is tolerably well proved by the curious difference
of style visible in the only two authentic works of his that remain,
an altar-piece in the gallery of Padua, and a Madonna painted for the
Lazzara family. The former is a coarse and unpleasant work, with the
hardness of line and heavy colouring that mark Zoppo and the inferior
Squarcionesques, while the latter in the dignity of its pose and careful
modelling bears evident traces of Mantegna’s hand. Squarcione no doubt
possessed a quick eye for discerning talent, and it is his lasting claim
on the gratitude of posterity that he at once saw and appreciated the
rising genius of the young Mantegna.

       *       *       *       *       *

Andrea Mantegna, the greatest of Lombard masters, was born in the
neighbourhood of Padua in the year 1431. His father, Biagio, is supposed
to have been a small farmer, and Vasari tells us that in his childhood
Andrea herded cattle until Squarcione, struck by the boy’s talent for
drawing, adopted him as his own son.

In November, 1441, Mantegna’s name is entered on the registers of the
Paduan guild as Squarcione’s foster-child, and seven years later he
painted an altar-piece for the ancient church of Santa Sofia. Of this
youthful work contemporaries speak with high praise as bearing marks
of a practised hand, but it had already disappeared in the seventeenth
century, and the earliest painting of Mantegna that now exists is the
fresco above the portal of Sant’ Antonio. In this lunette, which bears
the date of 1452, the two saints Anthony and Bernardino are represented
supporting the sacred monogram; but the figures are too much damaged
to be a fair test of the young artist’s style, and the work is chiefly
interesting as a proof of the high reputation in which he was already
held by his fellow-citizens.

It is to the frescoes of St. Cristoforo’s chapel in the church of the
Eremitani friars that we must turn in order to form a correct idea
of Mantegna’s powers during this time. Here we see him carrying the
principles which he had learnt in Squarcione’s workshop to their furthest
limits, and with the boldness of genius venturing on new and untried
paths. Here too we find him painting side by side with the best of
Squarcione’s other pupils, and we have an opportunity of comparing his
work with that of artists who had been formed on the same models.

This chapel, which stands to the right of the high altar, at the east
end of the great Eremitani Church, belonged to the Ovetari family, whose
last representative, dying in 1443, had left a sum of seven hundred gold
ducats to be spent in decorating its walls with frescoes illustrating
the history of St. James and St. Christopher. Squarcione received the
commission from the dead man’s heir, and between the years 1448 and 1458,
the walls, apse, and ceiling were covered with frescoes by his different
pupils.

Thus, only a few steps from the garden which encloses Giotto’s Chapel,
another great series was painted, to become for the schools of North
Italy what the Brancacci Chapel had been for Florence.

Less fortunate than the celebrated frescoes of the Carmine, these
paintings have suffered much from the damp of the walls, and a great
part of the subjects in the apse, as well as several figures in the
martyrdom and burial of St. Christopher, are completely destroyed. Other
portions are still in good preservation, and afford excellent examples
of the peculiarities of the Paduan school and the studies which laid the
foundation of Mantegna’s subsequent greatness.

The leading feature which marks the work of all Squarcione’s scholars,
and was to attain its highest artistic development in Mantegna’s later
conceptions, is the sculptural treatment of form, which was a direct
result of an exclusive study of ancient statues. Painting in their hands
becomes more plastic than pictorial, the forms are sharply defined,
the drapery falls in the small folds of ancient bas-relief, while the
severity of the whole is relieved by rich decorations in the shape of
festoons of fruit and foliage, which, when unskilfully managed, give a
heavy and over-loaded effect. This plastic tendency sprang from the
discovery, then first dawning upon the men of the Renaissance, that the
principles of the highest art are to be found in the antique, and was
so far as it went true and laudable in its aim. But in the case of the
Squarcionesques this study of classic statuary was not combined with
sufficient knowledge of nature, and, therefore, frequently degenerated
into a lifeless rigidity and absence of expression, if not into positive
ugliness and coarseness of form.

This stiffness and want of vitality strike us at once in the four
Evangelists on the ceiling of the chapel, wrongly ascribed by Vasari to
Mantegna, and in the upper frescoes of St. Christopher’s life, attributed
to three different artists—Marco Zoppo, Bono of Ferrara, and Ansuino of
Forli. These last-named subjects are not without a considerable degree
of skill in perspective and composition, but are alike marked by the
same rigidity of form and metallic coldness of colouring. The feeblest
of the three is Bono’s representation of St. Christopher bearing the
child through the river, a work which, in awkwardness, incorrect drawing
and truly painful ugliness, seems to exaggerate the worst faults of the
Paduan school.

On the other hand there is a decided advance in the frescoes of Niccolo
Pizzolo, the only one of the Squarcionesques who approached Mantegna’s
style, and whose improved colouring and greater nobleness of type are
best explained by the discovery that he had worked with the Florentines,
Donatello and Filippo Lippi, during their residence in Padua. To him
Vasari ascribes the figure of the Eternal between St. Peter and St.
Paul on the dome of the tribune, and later critics have recognised his
hand in the “Call of St. James and St. John” and “St. James exorcising
Devils” on the upper part of the left wall. But the finest of all his
works here is “The Assumption,” in the apse, a fresco which in joyous
life and freedom of movement so far surpasses the ordinary manner of the
Paduans that one of the best critics, Dr. Woltmann, pronounces it to be
by Mantegna’s hand. Against this we have the testimony of the anonymous
traveller of the sixteenth century, who says decidedly that Andrea
painted the lower part of the right and the whole of the left wall, but
that “The Assumption” and cupola are by Pizzolo. Vasari is silent on this
point, but remarks that Pizzolo’s works in this chapel yielded nothing
in excellence to those of Andrea, and probably the best solution of the
question is to accept both “The Assumption” and the upper frescoes of St.
James’s life as the joint composition of the two artists, or at least to
allow that they were partly designed by Mantegna.

In the midst of Pizzolo’s labours in the Eremitani Chapel his promising
career was cut short by a violent end. He had, it appears, an unlucky
habit of taking part in street brawls and riots, and one evening as
he was returning home from his work he was attacked and slain by some
unknown persons whose enmity he had excited.

Mantegna was now left alone to complete the unfinished work, and whatever
uncertainty rests on his share in the earlier frescoes there is no doubt
that the six remaining subjects are entirely by his hand. In each of
these we see some clearer revelation of unfolding powers. Step by step
some fresh difficulty is overcome, some new knowledge gained, until
by slow degrees the battle is won, and the mastery over human form is
complete.

In the fresco of “St. James baptizing Converts” the statuesque air of
Squarcione’s school is still strongly felt in the principal figures. The
action is stiff, and the faces are mostly wanting in expression. But
the spectators of the ceremony are, on the contrary, full of life and
animation. Nothing can be more natural than the two children who look on
with wondering eyes—the taller of the two holding a water-melon in his
hand, while the smaller one presses close to his side—or the youth under
the colonnade in the act of turning round to speak to a figure whose face
is concealed by a pillar. If from these we turn to the decorative part of
the fresco, the winged angels in the upper corners at once remind us of
the charming groups of children on Donatello’s bronzes in Sant’ Antonio,
and prove how attentively Mantegna must have studied these recently
finished works of the Florentine master. The beneficial influence of
the great sculptor had already appeared in the earlier frescoes of the
Eremitani, and from his example Andrea now learnt how to combine the
study of nature with sculptural treatment, and to adopt a more elevated
type of human form.

The next subject, “St. James before Herod,” reveals a new feature,
afterwards to become prominent in his career, in the accurate knowledge
of Roman costumes and classical architecture which is here displayed. One
of the finest figures is that of a soldier leaning on his lance in the
left-hand corner of the picture, an ancient Roman, in whom we recognise
immediately the painter’s own portrait, from the close resemblance
which his strongly marked features and massive brow bear to the bust on
Andrea’s tomb at Mantua. Both of these frescoes show considerable skill
in perspective, but in the next, “St. James blessing a kneeling Disciple
on his way to Execution,” Mantegna boldly ventures on an experiment
that is altogether new. For no apparent reason, but purely as a trial
of skill, he suddenly alters the point of sight to a low level, and
while the feet of the foremost figures appear to stand on the edge of
the picture the lower extremities of those in the background vanish
altogether. The difficulties thus created are on the whole correctly
solved. Each figure is carefully foreshortened, and the Roman arch under
which the procession passes is drawn in admirable perspective, but
freedom of action is impaired, and the whole suffers from an unpleasant
sense of effort and unnatural constraint. Perspective was in those days
a favourite branch of learning in the University of Padua, and Mantegna,
whose vigorous genius took pleasure in the driest studies, seems to have
derived this strange passion for applying its laws to the human form from
Paolo Uccelli, a Florentine who had lately visited Padua. In his ardour
to accomplish his self-imposed task he failed to see the mistake of
subjecting living figures to the rules of architecture, and of treating
them as existing solely in order to demonstrate a scientific problem.

But at the time the young painter’s exhibition of skill excited the
utmost admiration, and both Daniele Barbaro and Lomazzo praise him as the
first artist who opened men’s eyes to the true principles of perspective.

If we are to believe Vasari, Squarcione, who till now had been as proud
of his pupil’s growing fame as if it were his own, suddenly altered his
tone and openly blamed Mantegna for the stony rigidity of his figures,
declaring that they were mere copies of marble statues, altogether devoid
of life and expression.

The reproach, although not wholly undeserved, was a curious one in
Squarcione’s lips, but the real cause of the breach which took place
between the master and scholar was Andrea’s connection with the rival
workshop of Jacopo Bellini. The Venetian painter, with his two sons,
Gentile and Giovanni, had lately taken up his abode at Padua, and a
strong friendship had sprung up between Mantegna and the members of his
family which before long led to the marriage of the young Paduan with
Jacopo’s daughter Niccolosia. Their union took place while Mantegna
was actually engaged on the Eremitani frescoes—probably about 1454 or
1455, since in 1458 he had already two or three children—and becomes an
important fact in art history as strengthening the ties between these
distinguished artists. The influence each was to exercise on the other
was destined to prove great and lasting. Jacopo Bellini, who had spent
some time in Florence, was probably instrumental in leading Mantegna to
follow Donatello and Uccelli’s models, while from Giovanni, Andrea would
learn the softer colouring and delicate feeling that impart so pure a
charm to those well-known Madonnas which fill the churches of Venice.
Mantegna, on his part, gave back at least as much as he took, and no
one can doubt that Gian Bellini owed to his brother-in-law in a great
measure his knowledge of classical architecture and perspective, as well
as the sculptural cast of drapery, that distinguish his pictures from
those of earlier Venetian masters. In all probability this new influence,
rather than Squarcione’s jealous reproaches, was the cause of the marked
improvement visible in the later frescoes. The principal figures in the
“Execution of St. James” are more life-like; there is less hardness in
the modelling and laying on of shadows, while the background, with its
winding road and rocky terraces crowned with olive-trees, is an exact
copy of a Lombard hill-side. Nothing, indeed, is more striking in these
frescoes than the close attention to natural objects, which shows how
strongly realistic was the bent of our painter’s genius, in spite of his
Squarcionesque training and love of antique statuary. He not only fills
his backgrounds with faithful reproductions of Italian landscape and
streets, with red roofs, arched loggias, or vine-trellised arbours, but
recalls every detail and renders the furrows and wrinkles of old age, the
ragged coat or torn shoe, with an accuracy that is almost painful.

The eagerness with which he sought difficulties and his courage in
grappling with them meet us again in the foreshortened rider who looks
on at the Saint’s martyrdom, and is still more triumphant in the bold
action of the men who drag away the dead body of the giant Christopher,
in itself a masterpiece of perspective which served as a model for Titian
and other Venetians in dealing with similar subjects in future years.

Unfortunately these two last frescoes, “The Martyrdom” and “Burial of
St. Christopher,” are much injured, and some of the chief figures are
completely obliterated. The portions that remain justify the praises of
former critics who pronounced these to be the finest of the whole series.
Here at least Squarcione’s reproach is refuted, the stony look of the
faces has given place to warm flesh-tones and softer modelling, and the
band of archers assembled under the vine-trellis in the scene where the
saint is to meet his doom are remarkable for their energetic action and
expressive faces.

According to Yasari, in this last subject, Mantegna represented
Squarcione himself in the character of a fat archer, as a proof that he
knew how to draw from living models, and the same writer mentions several
other contemporary personages whose portraits are also introduced.
Especially interesting in our eyes is the group, in the right-hand corner
of “The Martyrdom,” of an elderly man standing between two younger
figures, one of whom wears a red cap. The Venetian costume of these three
spectators, and a certain resemblance of one of the youthful heads to
a medal bearing the likeness of Gentile Bellini, go far to confirm the
truth of Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s supposition that here we have portraits
of Mantegna’s father and brothers-in-law, who were all in Padua at the
time, and whom he would very naturally introduce among his other friends.

With these frescoes Andrea’s labours in the church of the Eremitani end,
and the decoration of the chapel, with which Squarcione’s pupils had been
intrusted some ten years before, was finally completed.

If from details of execution we pass to consider the work as a whole, it
must be owned that the general impression left upon the spectator’s mind
is one of coldness and severity. These stern and vigorous figures which
look down upon us from the walls awe us by the power and reality of their
presence; they impress us by the accurate science and years of assiduous
labour which they reveal, but they fail to touch the heart or delight the
eye; they are wanting in that sense of beauty which, is so conspicuous
a feature in Mantegna’s later work. If he had painted nothing else he
would have left behind him the reputation of a master of strong realistic
tendency, who solved difficult problems and attained a remarkable degree
of proficiency in drawing and anatomy, but lacked the qualities necessary
for the highest class of art.

Fortunately for us Mantegna’s activity does not end here. The frescoes
of the Eremitani were only the first stage in a great career, and as
we contemplate them we can always reflect with satisfaction that these
powerful works, in their grimness and austere dignity, in their curious
display of scientific knowledge and minute attention to detail, were the
preliminary studies, by means of which he reached the perfection of after
years, and achieved the ultimate successes that were to make his name
celebrated.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER II.

WORK AT VERONA AND MANTUA, A.D. 1457-1470.


The exact date of the completion of the Eremitani frescoes is uncertain,
but they were probably finished by 1458, perhaps earlier. Mantegna was
still a young man, not more than six or seven-and-twenty, but in actual
power as well as in reputation second to no living painter in North Italy.

We have already noticed the chief influences brought to bear on his early
training. One by one we have watched him discover and assimilate, with
the same clearness of intellect and indefatigable energy, the peculiar
virtue of each successive artist with whom he was brought into contact.
We have seen him add Florentine principles to Squarcione’s teaching,
learn from Donatello how to combine the study of nature with the laws of
sculpture, gain from Uccelli that knowledge of perspective which had for
him so subtle a fascination, and last of all temper this fiery genius
under the gentler spell of Gian Bellini’s more genial art.

Another and a very important element in his development was the constant
intercourse which he maintained with the most learned Paduan scholars,
and the keen pleasure with which he joined in their antiquarian
researches in the neighbourhood. He accompanied Felice Feliciano, a
famous collector of inscriptions, on several excursions in the environs
of Verona and the Lago di Garda for the express purpose of examining
classical remains, and in 1463 this same Feliciano dedicated his work on
ancient epigrams to the painter, whose learning he extols in the highest
terms. One result of these explorations in the classic ground of Sermione
appears in the fragments of Latin inscriptions which are repeatedly
introduced, in the Eremitani frescoes, and on one Roman portico the
name of Vitruvius Cerdo, a Verona architect of ancient days, is still
distinctly legible.

This practice was a common one with many of the artists of Squarcione and
Mantegna’s school, who, in their genuine enthusiasm for classical art,
copied antique monuments and inscriptions with the minutest accuracy, and
afterwards used them as accessory portions of their own compositions.
We have a notable example of this habit in the drawing of a pagan altar
bearing an inscription to the effect that it was found in a vault of
the Baths of Caracalla, then known as the Antonine palace at Rome. The
drawing, evidently by the hand of some Paduan artist, is now preserved at
Christ Church, Oxford.

Besides Feliciano, Andrea numbered among his intimate friends several
eminent scholars then studying at the University of Padua, such as Matteo
Bossi, afterwards Abbot of Fiesole, and the Hungarian bishop Giovanni
Pannonio, who celebrated the artist’s genius in Latin verse as early as
1458, and whose portrait Mantegna painted in the same year.

This rare degree of culture which made him the friend of scholars, this
genuine delight in classical studies and antique art, was destined to
supply our master with some of his highest inspirations, and ultimately
render him the foremost representative among painters of that enthusiasm
for antiquity which was the ruling passion of Italy in the fifteenth
century.

During the years that Andrea was employed on the Eremitani frescoes we
hear little else of his private life excepting that he married Niccolosia
Bellini, and became estranged from his old master Squarcione, while two
panel pictures, the Brera Altar-piece which he painted in 1454 for Santa
Giustina, and the “St. Euphemia” now at Naples, are the only other works
that are left us of this period. In the former, a vigorous but not very
pleasing work, St. Luke is represented writing at a table between four
single figures of saints, while above we have a Pietà with the Virgin,
St. John, and four other saints. Far more graceful in conception is the
St. Euphemia standing in her garlanded niche with the lily in her hand
and the lion beside her. This admirably drawn figure in attitude and form
closely resembles an antique statue, and will bear comparison, with the
best of the later frescoes.

So far, Andrea’s works had been confined to Padua, but his fame had
spread far beyond his native city, and before he had finished his labours
in the Eremitani, pressing invitations to move to Mantua had reached
him from Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of that principality. This prince, a
generous patron of letters as well as a brave soldier and wise ruler,
was anxious to make his court a centre of art and learning; and, having
failed in his efforts to attract the aged Donatello, spared no pains to
secure the services of the Paduan artist, whose rising genius was already
eclipsing that of all others. As early as 1456 we find Lodovico entering
into communication with Andrea, first by letter and then through the
sculptor Luca Fancelli, a confidential agent of the Marquis. His offers
were liberal; fifteen ducats a month, lodging, firewood, and sufficient
wheat to feed the members of his family, who are reckoned as six in
number; besides, he proposed to assist him on his journey to Mantua by
sending a boat to meet him.

Mantegna lent a willing ear to these proposals, but his hands were full,
and flattering as were Lodovico’s entreaties and assurances of good-will,
he was slow to comply with the request. In his letters he assigns first
one reason, then another, for delaying his departure. First, he asks
for time to execute an order given him by Gregorio Corraro, Abbot of
San Zeno of Verona, and protonotary to the Apostolic See. Then he begs
for six months more to complete the work, then for another respite in
order to do a little piece for the Podestà of Padua. The Marquis bore
all these delays with unalterable patience and courtesy, while he never
for a moment relaxed his efforts to bring the artist to Mantua, and
redoubled his assurance of favour. If Andrea will only come, he says
again and again, and himself prove the truth of the promises made to him,
he will every day of his life find greater cause to rejoice that he has
entered the service of the Gonzagas. When the summer of 1459 came and the
protonotary’s altar-piece was still unfinished, Lodovico suggested as a
last resource that the panels should be brought to Mantua and completed
there. To this proposal the abbot was too wise a man to consent, and he
would not even allow Mantegna to visit Mantua for a day until the picture
had been safely delivered into his hands.

This altar-piece, of which we hear so much in Lodovico’s correspondence
with our master, was the “Madonna and Saints” in San Zeno, of Verona,
taken to Paris in 1797, but now restored (without its predella) to its
place, and one of the finest religious compositions that Andrea ever
painted. All the chief characteristics of Andrea’s Paduan time are
here brought together in a more elevated form, and for the first time
we realise fully how great was the progress he had made since the days
when he began to paint in the Eremitani Chapel. Nothing can exceed the
simple dignity and grace of the youthful virgin, who sits erect under
a portico decorated with a frieze of children bearing festoons of
fruit, through which we see a thick growth of trees, and open space
of blue sky beyond. On the pillars of the portico are medallions in
which Andrea has after his usual habit introduced reliefs of classical
subjects, one of which is a horse-tamer, evidently copied from the
famous “Twins,” of Monte Cavallo, and curious as adopted by a painter
who had not yet visited Rome. The saints who stand in the groups on
either side of the Madonna’s throne are still too much treated as
isolated figures, but each statue-like form has a grandeur of its own,
and the graceful heads of the young St. John and St. Lawrence contrast
finely with those of the aged apostles and fathers of the Church, while
in the boy-angels who play on the steps of the throne, or sing with
wide-parted lips, we have the first of those child-faces whose laughing
eyes look down from many of Mantegna’s pictures and seem to give us a
foretaste of Raphael’s sweetness. Unfortunately, the different parts of
the predella that belonged to this beautiful altar-piece are scattered
in different galleries, the “Gethsemane” and “Ascension” are at Tours,
the “Crucifixion,” in the dramatic action of its varied group by far the
finest of the three, is in the Louvre.

According to Vasari, Mantegna painted several other pictures in Verona,
but the only other traces of his work now remaining in that city are some
equestrian figures and chiaroscuro decorations on the façade of a house
near San Fermo Maggiore, and we have no proof of his ever having resided
there.

The “little piece” which Andrea executed for Giacomo Marcello, Podestà
of Padua, has been identified in the “Christ on the Mount of Olives” of
the Baring collection, a work in which we feel the same union of plastic
tendency of form and strong realism that strikes us in the frescoes. In
the background, a wild and savage landscape, the desolate aspect of which
is heightened by the presence of cranes and birds of prey, we recognise
the city of Padua with the Eremitani Church.

If we compare this picture with the well-known rendering of the same
subject by Giovanni Bellini in the National Gallery, we shall see how
much of the original conception and drawing the Venetian artist borrowed
from his brother-in-law, and at the same time how well he knew how to
modify Andrea’s severer style by his own more delicate grace and feeling
for colour.

These altar-pieces were Mantegna’s last works in his native city. The
patience of the Marquis was at length rewarded, and towards the close of
the year 1459, Andrea moved to Mantua with his family. Soon afterwards
Jacopo Bellini died, his sons moved to Venice, and the Paduan school of
painting, left in the hands of inferior followers of Squarcione, came to
a practical end.

But Paduan art lived on in the work of her greatest son, and the new
influences and surroundings of Mantegna’s adopted city gave fresh impulse
to his creative energy.

That he settled at Mantua before the end of 1459 is proved by a letter
of his written to the Marquis in May, 1478, in which he speaks of having
been almost nineteen years in Lodovico’s service, but it is not till the
spring of 1463 that we hear of him as engaged in painting at Goïto, one
of the summer villas belonging to the Gonzagas. Both this palace and
the neighbouring Castle of Cavriana, where he also painted, have been
destroyed, and a few panel pictures now dispersed throughout Europe are
the only productions that remain of his first ten years’ residence at the
Court of Mantua.

Chief among these is the Uffizi triptych, which originally belonged to
a chapel of the Gonzagas, and may be the very picture to which Andrea
alludes in a letter of 1464 as destined for the little chapel, and which
Vasari tells us contained many small but most beautiful figures.

The “Adoration of the Magi” forms the subject of the central panel, while
the “Ascension” and the “Presentation in the Temple” are represented
on the wings. All three are marked by the miniature-like finish which
reveals the thoroughly practised hand and loving zeal of one who took
delight in carrying his work to the highest possible perfection.

In the seated Virgin, of the strong type of womanhood which Andrea
seems to prefer, with the flight of cherubs encircling her head, and
the patches of rough herbage starting out of the rocks behind her, we
recognise the original of his own unfinished engraving, the “Virgin of
the Grotto.” The red cherub-heads, which remind us of the similar wreath
with which Giovanni Bellini surrounds one of his Madonnas in the Academy
of Venice, are again introduced in “The Ascension.” Here the group of
apostles, who gaze upwards, have more of the slender form used by Pizzolo
in the Eremitani frescoes, and the panel is inferior as a whole to “The
Presentation.”

This is in Mantegna’s best manner, the principal figures full of grace
and dignity, the heads excellent in expression, especially that of the
child sucking his finger as he leans against his mother, while Andrea’s
historic feeling appears in the typical reliefs of “Moses breaking
the Tables” and “Abraham sacrificing Isaac,” which adorn the altar.
Another fine rendering of this subject by Mantegna is now in the Berlin
Gallery, which also possesses two other works belonging to this period, a
half-length “Madonna holding the Child on a Parapet,” and a portrait of
an old ecclesiastic.

Probably this Madonna was the very one of which Vasari speaks as painted
by Mantegna, for his old friend, the famous orator, Matteo Bossi, Abbot
of Fiesole, since the frame decorated with angels and instruments
of the Passion exactly corresponds with his description, and the
strikingly-truthful portrait may well be that of the Abbot himself,
whose friendship for the painter neither time nor distance seems to have
impaired.

A “Death of the Virgin,” with a view of Mantua and its lake seen through
a colonnade, now at Madrid, and chiaroscuro figures known as “Summer” and
“Autumn,” now at Hamilton Palace, may be mentioned as painted about 1470,
when Andrea was engaged in works at the Castle of Mantua.

More interesting in the eyes of most of us are the two small pictures
of the Saints Sebastian and George, two youthful figures intended to
show the contrast of suffering and repose. In the “St. Sebastian” now at
Vienna, Mantegna has deliberately set himself the task of representing
the human form wrung by physical agony, and the divine strength of a
will that can conquer pain by the power of its endurance. His success
was complete, and among the countless representations of martyrdom that
exist, there is scarcely a finer example than this St. Sebastian bound to
the ruined column and pierced with arrows, lifting his eyes heavenwards
in his mortal agony. At his feet lie broken statues and marbles,
shattered fragments of the old world that was crumbling to ruins around,
and which by the delicate grace of their shapes and mouldings help to
associate ideas of beauty with this scene of suffering and death.

The opposite of this picture meets us in the armed “St. George” of the
Venice Academy, who stands under an archway garlanded with flowers,
leaning on his lance in satisfied repose of victory, with the dragon dead
at his feet. His classical head is not unlike the youthful saints of the
Verona altar-piece, while the highly finished character of the execution
approaches the style of the Uffizi triptych, evidently painted about the
same time.

To these we may add the wonderful “Dead Christ” of the Brera, a work
almost terrible in its realism, and exaggerated foreshortening, but
which reveals in a surprising degree Mantegna’s mastery both in drawing
and management of light and shade. This _Cristo in Scurto_ was one of
those daring trials of skill which he loved to attempt, not to please
the eye or gratify the taste of his employers, but simply in order to
overcome some difficulty or solve some problem from which a less powerful
mind would have shrunk.

The satisfaction which he felt in the success of this experiment is
proved by his unwillingness to part with this work, which never left his
studio until his death, when it is mentioned by his son in the list of
paintings that were sold to pay his debts.

In the same style as this “Pietà,” but with more attempt at decorative
effect, is the picture exhibited by Sir William Abdy, in the last winter
exhibition at Burlington House (1880-81). Here the dead Christ lies on
a carved throne of coloured marbles, the back of which is formed by the
broken tables of the law. On either side are two grandly defined forms of
Isaiah and Jerome, as representatives of the old and new dispensations,
between whom Christ stands. The background is more elaborate than
usual. On one side is a wild tract of mountainous country, on the other
a river and fertile valley, along the slopes of which we see rows of
smiling villages, church-towers, and fields enclosed with hedges.
In the foreground skulls and bones are scattered at the feet of the
prophets, and beasts and birds of gay plumage enliven the scene. A stag
and panther and a red parrot are prominent figures, but all these minor
details are subdued to the leading idea in the painter’s mind. Doubts
have been entertained as to the authorship of the picture, but both its
general style and colouring and the presence of that weird grandeur of
imagination peculiar to Mantegna are strong proofs of its genuineness.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER III.

THE CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI, A.D. 1470-1474.


Recent research has brought to light a series of valuable letters between
the Gonzagas and Mantegna, which tell us little indeed about his existing
works, but much that is of the deepest interest concerning his private
life, and especially his relations with Lodovico and his family.

The Marquis had kept his word and proved himself a true friend and
generous patron to the Paduan artist. _Carissmé noster_, _dilecte
noster_, are the terms in which he always addresses him, and the
thoughtful consideration and patience with which he treated Andrea in
what must frequently have been very trying circumstances, are beyond all
praise.

The first letter of the series is a complaint which the painter, writing
from Goïto, addresses to Lodovico, saying that his stipend is irregularly
paid, a wrong which the Marquis promptly redressed. Three years later we
find him in the same liberal spirit advancing one hundred ducats which
Mantegna begged in order to decorate and improve his house in Mantua.

There our painter spent the winter with his wife and three
children—_tutto la mia brigatela_ he calls them in a letter to the
Marquis—and each year, when the summer heats returned, he moved to a
country-house at Buscoldo, where he afterwards received a grant of land
from his patron.

In 1466 he paid a visit to Florence, where he had at least one friend in
the learned Abbot of Fiesole, and a letter from Giovanni Aldobrandini,
an agent of Lodovico, describes the great respect with which he was
received, and the admiration excited by his varied accomplishments.
“Not only in painting but in other ways he showed remarkable knowledge
and most excellent understanding” is Aldobrandini’s testimony, and we
learn from other sources that he took much pleasure in poetry, and even
wrote verses himself. A sonnet of his composition addressed to a lady
whose name is unknown, and written in the fashionable Platonic style of
the day, has been discovered in the Mantuan archives and is given by
Moschini. As a collector of antiquities he had acquired considerable
reputation, and in 1472 we find the young Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga,
then at Bologna, begging his father that Mantegna may be sent to him that
he may have the pleasure of showing him his cameos, bronzes, and other
antiques.

Unfortunately the culture and refined taste which made Mantegna so
agreeable a companion were accompanied by an irritable temper, and a
readiness to take offence, which rendered him the reverse of a pleasant
neighbour. The most trifling contradictions were sufficient to excite
furious outbursts of anger on his part, and his letters to Lodovico are
full of the pettiest grievances. The Marquis, it must be said, treated
him with the utmost forbearance, and spared no pains to inquire into the
grounds of his complaints, however small. On one occasion he implores
Lodovico to punish a tailor who has spoilt a piece of his cloth, on
another he has quarrelled with a gardener and his wife who live in the
same street, and complains that neither he nor his wife can leave the
house without being attacked by insulting words. More serious was the
lawsuit in which he found himself involved with the engraver, Zoan
Andrea, whom he suspected of purloining his plates, and to whom he
administered a sound thrashing. Upon this Zoan Andrea had recourse to
legal measures, in which Mantegna seems to have fared badly, since he was
again compelled to seek the help of his powerful patron.

But of all Andrea’s quarrels, that which excited his greatest wrath
was his breach with his Buscoldo neighbour, Francesco Aliprandi, whom
he publicly accused of stealing five hundred quinces from a tree which
grew in his garden. There is a singular combination of the pathetic and
ludicrous in Mantegna’s description of the beauty of his fruit tree, with
its branches so heavily laden that they touched the ground. Each day he
looked upon it with fresh delight, until one September morning he found
all the quinces gone, and the tree stripped and bare. His anger knew no
bounds, and he did not hesitate to charge his nearest neighbours, the
Aliprandi, who he was convinced bore him secret ill-will with the theft.
Upon this Francesco Aliprandi, who seems to have been a citizen of good
birth, denied the charge indignantly, saying that during the two hundred
years his family had lived in Mantua, they had never been insulted by
so vile an epithet as that of thief, and complaining of Mantegna’s
disagreeable character as the real cause of all this disturbance. “No
one,” Aliprandi continues, “can live near him in peace, and at the
present moment he is engaged in lawsuits with no less than five of his
neighbours.” Even the Marquis was forced to admit this time that Andrea
was in the wrong, and, after carefully investigating the case, arrived at
the conclusion that the quinces had been stolen by some unknown thief.

This ruggedness of disposition and exaggerated susceptibility which,
by attaching excessive importance to the trifling cares of daily life,
proved a constant torment to Mantegna and those around him, remind
us curiously of Michelangelo, whom in more ways than one our master
resembled.

Like the great Florentine in this also, he never stooped to flattery or
servile expressions in addressing his patron. On the contrary, there is
from the first an independent spirit and proud consciousness of his own
merit which never deserts him, and he tells the Marquis repeatedly that
his coming to Mantua was a great favour on his part, and that no other
prince in Italy has so industrious an artist in his service.

The boast may not have sounded well in Mantegna’s lips, but it was a
true one. His activity was indefatigable, and whether he painted in
chapels and palaces, or made studies for tapestry or designs from the
turkey-cocks and hens which strutted in the court poultry-yard, his time
and powers were unreservedly placed at Lodovico’s disposal. What we have
to regret is that so little of all his splendid work is left, although
when we consider the subsequent history of Mantua, it is rather to be
wondered that anything has been saved from the general wreck.

In 1630, little more than a hundred years after Mantegna’s time, the city
was besieged during three months by the Imperialists, and ultimately
taken and sacked for three whole days. In 1797 it was again twice
besieged and bombarded by the French and Austrians, and during the wars
of the present century the ducal palace has been alternately occupied by
French and German soldiers. This once sumptuous pile is now the dreariest
and most desolate of palaces. The little life that still lingers in the
old town clusters round the market-place on the Piazza delle Erbe, and
grass grows on the deserted square which was once the centre of “Mantova
la Gloriosa.”

[Illustration: MEETING OF LODOVICO GONZAGA AND HIS SON, THE CARDINAL
FRANCESCO. BY MANTEGNA.

_In the Camera degli Sposi, at Mantua._]

We pass through endless suites of spacious halls paved with marble and
adorned with decaying frescoes and other remnants of faded splendour,
till we reach the older part of the palace known in the days of the
Gonzagas as the Castello di Corte. From its windows we look down on
the sleepy waters of the vast lagoon, which seems to divide Mantua
from the outer world, and over miles of swampy marshes, through which
“smooth-sliding Mincius” winds its way.

Here the Gonzagas hold their splendid court, here the banqueting-halls
where they feasted, the ball-rooms—the scenes of their revels and
masquerades—the suite of tiny apartments expressly built for the use of
the dwarfs, the courtyards where the dogs were kept, are still shown.
Here Mantegna painted, and here the walls of a room, now used to contain
the archives, were entirely covered with frescoes by himself.

This was the famous Camera degli Sposi, on which Andrea was engaged
between 1470 and 1474, and where he represented Lodovico Gonzaga and his
wife, Barbara of Brandenburg, surrounded by the different members of
their family.

All the frescoes have been much damaged, and those on two of the walls
completely obliterated; but the groups which remain and the decorations
of the ceiling are of the highest interest, and, if we except the
Hampton Court Triumphs, form the most important series that we have from
Mantegna’s hand.

On the east wall above the mantel-piece is the central group. Lodovico
and his wife, clad in rich brocaded robes, are seated in a garden
surrounded by their children, and dwarfs in the act of receiving a
messenger, who hands the Marquis a letter. Neither Lodovico nor any of
his family seem to have been remarkable for personal beauty, and Mantegna
has not made any attempt to embellish them. He paints them exactly as
they were, in the stiff costumes of the day. Barbara wears the same
veiled horn-shaped head-dress as in Andrea’s portrait-engraving in
the British Museum; the children and courtiers are in short jackets
and tight-fitting caps. Nothing is omitted that could complete the
picture, which is like a page torn out of the court life of those times;
a favourite greyhound lies asleep under Lodovico’s chair, and several
dwarfs positively repulsive in their ugliness are introduced. They
formed, we know, an important part of the household, since the Marquis
kept a particular race, bred at Mantua, and reserved a whole wing of his
palace, with staircases, halls, and bedrooms adapted to their stature,
for their exclusive use.

Beyond the fine figure of the courtier on the right, evidently the
painter’s own portrait, we have another compartment where the Marquis
stands at the head of the stairs welcoming his guests, or, as Selvatico
suggests, opening his arms to his son Federico, who had been in disgrace
for refusing to consent to a marriage which Lodovico had arranged for
him. This subject is much damaged, but on the entrance-wall is another
group, the best preserved of the three, in which the Marquis meets his
younger son, the boy-cardinal Francesco, on his return from Rome. The
composition is stiff and the dresses awkward, but nothing can surpass
the life-like character of the heads, whether we fix our eyes on the
baby-faces and demure air of the children who advance to welcome their
brother, or on the vigorous profiles of Lodovico and his courtiers. A
tame lion crouches at the feet of the Marquis, and a view of hills and
classical temples, intended to represent Rome, fills in the background.
On the opposite side of the doorway the servants and pages in attendance
are introduced holding their master’s horse, and several dogs in leash,
all admirably drawn; while above the door itself a charming group of
seven winged boys, in every possible attitude, support a tablet with the
following inscription:—

    Ill Lodovico II. M.M.
    Principi optimo ac
    Fide invictissimo
    Et Ill Barbaræ eius
    Conjugi Mulierum Glor
      Incomparabili
    Suus Andreas Mantinia
    Patavus opus hoc tenue
    Ad eorum Decus absolvit.
      Ann. MCCCCLXXIIII.

The grace and freshness of these boy-angels form a striking contrast to
the stiff figures on the walls, and both here and in the decorations of
the ceiling our painter, released from the obligations of portraiture,
allowed his fancy free play. Medallions of the Cæsars wreathed in laurel,
grisaille scenes from the myths of Hercules and Antæus, Orpheus, Apollo,
and the Tritons, occupy the vaulting of the ceiling; while in the centre
a circular opening is painted to represent a blue sky, across which white
clouds are floating by, as we see in actual reality in the Pantheon of
Rome. Round this open space runs a balustrade, upon which a peacock is
perched and a basket of fruit rests. Two women, a girl with a jewelled
head-dress and a negress, look down from above with laughing faces, while
a band of winged boys play on the edge of the stone-work.

These are the famous figures, _che scortano di sotto in sù_, which Vasari
says excited general admiration when Mantegna first painted them in the
Castle of Mantua.

Instead of treating the ceiling in the usual fashion, as another flat
surface on a level with the spectator’s eye, he endeavoured to represent
the figures he painted there as seen from below, and in reality looking
down over the balustrade. The optical illusion is effected in a
masterly way, and the playful boys, who push their heads through the
open stone-work of the parapet or balance themselves on its edge, are
admirably foreshortened.

Curiously enough, this new principle of ceiling decoration, which
in Corregio’s days was to become universal, and which Mantegna here
attempted for the first time, was employed at almost the same moment by
another painter, Melozzo da Forli, in his fresco of the “Glory of Heaven”
in the tribune of the Church of the SS. Apostoli at Rome. Whether the
two masters had ever been brought into personal contact we do not learn,
but we know that Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, in his rhyming
chronicle, gives Mantegna’s perspective the highest praise, and we may
infer from this that the great Lombard’s influence had penetrated far
enough south to reach the Umbrian artists.

The frescoes of the Camera degli Sposi were finished in 1474, and ten
years later it is recorded that Mantegna painted in another part of the
palace, known as the Scalcheria; but a ruined ceiling, with the same
circular opening and sportive Loves, is all that is left of his work
there.

Traces of his hand are also visible in another hall in some of the groups
of a large, much-injured fresco, where the first Gonzaga is represented
taking the oath as _Capitano del popolo_, and more especially in the
children holding a tablet which once bore a now-effaced inscription.

All else has perished. The lapse of time and the more cruel ravages of
man have swept away whatever other paintings once adorned these walls,
and the precious fragments of the Camera degli Sposi are absolutely the
only works of Mantegna that are still to be seen in this his adopted
city, where he spent well-nigh fifty years of his life.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER IV.

WORK AT MANTUA AND ROME: ENGRAVINGS, A.D. 1474-1490.


The painting of the Camera degli Sposi gave the Marquis an opportunity
for the bestowal of new favours on his chosen artist, “suus Andreas,” as
Mantegna proudly terms himself on the tablet where he has recorded the
completion of the work. Lodovico now granted him a piece of land near the
Church of St. Sebastian, in Mantua, where Andrea built a house with the
help of the architect Giovanni di Padova, and decorated it with frescoes
which were the admiration of his contemporaries, but which perished in
the sack of Mantua.

Unfortunately his love of splendid undertakings led him into
extravagance; he had already incurred heavy debts by purchasing a
property at Buscoldo, and the expenses of his new house involved him in
further difficulties. According to his usual habit he had recourse to
the Marquis, and addressed him on the 13th of May, 1478, in a querulous
letter, complaining that he is growing old, and has several sons and
one daughter of a marriageable age, and yet that while others think he
is basking in the sunshine of his Excellency’s favour he is in reality
poorer than when he first came to Mantua. He ended by asking him to pay
the eight hundred ducats required to satisfy his Buscoldo creditors, and
to give him six hundred more in order to defray the cost of his new house.

Lodovico was at that time in great difficulties himself, for he had
been defeated by his enemies, and even compelled to pawn his jewels.
None the less his reply was frank and generous. He fully recognised
his obligations, and assured him that all his last pledges should be
redeemed, but reminded him that of late fortune had been unfavourable
to his arms, and that it was impossible for him to give what he did not
possess. This letter, written in the same kindly spirit which we have
often before had occasion to notice, was the last which Andrea ever
received from his noble patron. Before another month had elapsed the good
Marquis was dead, and had been succeeded by his son Federico.

The young Gonzaga had known Mantegna from his boyhood, and proved as kind
and liberal a friend as his father to the wayward artist. He not only
paid his debts, but exempted the estates which he possessed both at Goïto
and at Mantua from the land-tax. All his dealings with Andrea are marked
by the same generous feeling. His letters express much concern on hearing
of an attack of illness which had interrupted the painter’s work; and
on another occasion, when one of Andrea’s sons was ill, he sent his own
doctor from Venice to attend him.

During the six years of this prince’s brief reign Mantegna was chiefly
employed in painting halls at the villas of Marmirolo and Gonzaga, which
have long since shared the common ruin of the summer palaces round Mantua.

His fame was now at its height. “The virtue of Andrea,” wrote the Marquis
Federico, “is known to the whole world;” and in 1483 Lorenzo de’ Medici
stopped at Mantua to visit our painter’s house and renowned collection
of antiquities. Other sovereigns sent him pressing invitations, and all
were desirous of having a work by Mantegna’s hand; but the great man was
capricious, and refused most of these solicitations. Federico himself
had to make his painter’s excuses in an elaborate epistle to the Duchess
of Milan, whose portrait Andrea flatly refused to undertake. There was
no help for it, and the disappointed lady had to rest satisfied with
Federico’s explanation, that since these excellent masters were so full
of fancies we must be content with what they choose to give us.

But when Federico’s early death in 1484 left the rule of his principality
to a mere child, Andrea, filled with anxiety for the future, and still
heavily burdened with debt, began to look around him for another patron.
His thoughts naturally turned to the illustrious patron of the fine arts
who had recently visited his studio, and he appealed to Lorenzo de’
Medici in a pathetic letter, bewailing the losses he had sustained in the
successive deaths of two generous masters, and begging to be employed,
if perchance he should have any talent likely to please so magnificent a
prince. What answer Lorenzo returned to this entreaty we do not learn,
but he probably gave him a commission before long, since we know that it
was for him Andrea painted the beautiful little Virgin of the Uffizi,
which, with the master’s habitual slowness, he did not finish until the
close of his visit to Rome. This little gem remains a precious memorial
of the intercourse between two of the most interesting personalities
of the Renaissance, and few of Andrea’s conceptions are sweeter than
the blue-draped Mother gazing with drooping eyelids on the Child whom
she rocks to sleep in her arms, while the peasants are seen at work in
the field beyond and a band of herdsmen drive their flocks up the steep
hill-side path.

After all, however, the state of affairs at Mantua was more hopeful than
Andrea had imagined in his first grief for the loss of Federico; and
before long the contemplated marriage of the boy Marquis Francesco with
Isabella of Este renewed his connection with the house of Ferrara, whose
members had been among his earliest patrons. He now painted a Madonna
for the Duchess Eleanor, which Francesco himself took to Ferrara, where
his mother-in-law was impatiently awaiting its arrival. Most critics
agree in identifying this picture with the noble Virgin, formerly in the
possession of Sir C. Eastlake and now in the Dresden Gallery, a work in
which the thoughtfulness of the child and tender maternal feeling of Mary
are peculiarly impressive.

Very soon afterwards, in the year 1485, Mantegna began the greatest
work of his whole life, the “Triumphs of Julius Cæsar,” now at Hampton
Court. They were originally destined for the palace of St. Sebastian,
at Mantua, which the young Marquis was then building; and a letter of
the 25th of August, 1485, describes how Prince Ercole of Ferrara saw
Mantegna employed on them in his studio. While engaged on this engrossing
work he was interrupted in the summer of 1488 by an invitation from Pope
Innocent VIII., who begged Francesco that the great Lombard artist might
be allowed to decorate his newly erected chapel in the Vatican. Political
reasons induced the Marquis to consent; he knighted Andrea and sent him
to Rome with the most flattering recommendations.

During two years Mantegna painted in the chapel of the Vatican, and it
is a subject of the deepest regret that a series of frescoes executed
in his best period should have been ruthlessly destroyed by Pius VI.
when he enlarged the Vatican Museum. On the entrance wall the Madonna
sat enthroned, above the altar was the “Baptism,” on the side walls the
“Birth of Christ” and the “Adoration of the Magi;” while Old Testament
subjects and the Virtues were represented in grisaille on the ceiling,
all painted, says Vasari, with the same miniature-like finish.

But Andrea did not find the Pope a liberal patron or Rome a pleasant
residence. He complains bitterly in his letters to Francesco of the
irregular payment which he receives, and the difference which he finds
between the habits of the Vatican and those of the Courts.

Whether he was not treated with the deference to which he was accustomed,
or whether failing health oppressed his spirits, his tone becomes more
and more melancholy. A longing for home had seized him, and he implores
the Marquis to send him a few lines of comfort, since he is now, as
he always has been, the child of the House of Gonzaga, and will serve
no other prince. Anxiety for his unfinished “Triumphs” is added to
the solicitude which he feels for his absent family, and he entreats
Francesco in the same breath to find his son Lodovico employment, and to
take care that his “Triumphs” are not injured by rain coming in at the
windows, since he considers them the best and most perfect of all his
works.

Francesco replied in the most friendly manner, promising to attend to his
requests, and begging Andrea to be careful of his health, and to return
as speedily as possible to complete the “Triumphs,” which he counts the
greatest glory of Mantua and his own house. But the frescoes of the
Belvedere Chapel were no small task, and Andrea had, as he complains,
no assistant to help him in his labours. He found means, however, to
express his dissatisfaction to the Pope one day by adding another Virtue
to the figures which he had designed. The Pope, who frequently visited
him when at work, asked him who the last Virtue might be. “That is
Discretion,” said the painter; upon which the Pope, not to be outdone,
returned promptly, “Put her in good company then, and add Patience.”
Another version of the story, given by Ridolf, is that he added the
figure of Ingratitude as an eighth to the seven deadly sins, saying that
this was the blackest of all crimes. In the following June he writes
more cheerfully, describing a singular visitor he has had in the person
of Zizim, brother of the Sultan Bajazet, then a captive in the Vatican,
and sending his portrait for Francesco’s amusement. Another six months
passed, and the Marquis wrote again, this time in a very urgent strain,
both to the Pope and Mantegna, saying that his marriage with Isabella
of Este was to take place in January, and that Andrea’s presence was
indispensable. The courier who brought the letter found the painter
ill in bed and unable to move; so the wedding festivities had to be
celebrated without him, and his return was delayed until the following
summer, when the Pope at length dismissed him with a complimentary letter
of thanks to the Marquis. Besides the small “Virgin” of the Uffizi,
only one other work of Andrea’s Roman time is known to exist, a “Man of
Sorrows, supported by Angels,” now in the Museum of Copenhagen, and, like
the Brera Pietà, remarkable for the skill and knowledge displayed both in
the drawing and distribution of light and shade.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has often been said that during his visit to Rome, Mantegna first
learnt the new art of engraving, in the practice of which he spent so
large a portion of his time and powers. But if we consider, on the one
hand, the variety both in style and subject of his plates, and on the
other the great undertakings on which he was engaged during his last
years, we shall see that this is impossible.

It is true that no fixed date in his earlier career can be assigned with
certainty, but an attentive study of his engravings will, we think,
result in the conclusion that his first efforts in this new branch of
art belong to his Paduan days, and that he pursued it at intervals all
through his career, but with increased activity during the latter part
of his life. Two plates especially, the unfinished “Scourging” and
the “Descent of Christ into Limbo,” bear a strong resemblance to the
Eremitani frescoes, while others remind us in a similar manner of the
San Zeno altar-piece and the earlier Mantuan paintings. At first his
method was imperfect, but we trace a gradual improvement in the plates,
in proportion as he acquired greater technical knowledge in the new
art and became acquainted with Maso di Finiguerra, and it may be with
Schongauer’s engravings. All are marked by the same firmness of outline,
by the same closely-marked shading drawn in slanting lines from right
to left, and, above all, by the constant endeavour to give the print
something of the charm of chiaroscuro and colour. Since, however, a
whole school of engravers formed themselves on Mantegna’s style, and
Zoan Andrea, Mocetto, Campagnola and others, all adopted his method
and confined themselves almost exclusively to the reproduction of his
works—the task of distinguishing Mantegna’s original plates is by no
means easy. Of late years they have been subjected to a severe criticism,
and many formerly attributed to him are now rejected. But, whether we
accept twenty-four or twenty with M. Duplessis and Bartsch, or limit
the number to thirteen with M. Wallis, we shall equally acknowledge
how wonderfully every aspect of his genius is represented in these
engravings, and how inexhaustible was that wealth of thought and imagery
which, unable to find its full expression in painting, sought another
channel in the sister art.

[Illustration: THE ENTOMBMENT.

_From the engraving by Mantegna._]

Small as is the cycle of genuine prints, they embrace a wide range of
subject; pagan myths, Roman and Christian themes, are all treated in
turn with the same seriousness of purpose and marvellous variety of
invention. Sometimes he reproduces his own pictures—the “Virgin of the
Grotto” from the Uffizi triptych, in later years we have the “Triumphs”
and the “Dancing Muses of the Parnassus.” The Bacchanalia, and still more
the “Battle of the Sea-gods,” remain to show us how deeply the spirit
of classic bas-relief had sunk into his soul. Certain subjects there
are in which he takes especial delight, which he treats with as great
freshness and originality as if he had never before approached them.
Such are the “Hercules and Antæus,” already represented in grisaille on
the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, and the “St. Sebastian,” which
hardly yields in beauty to the sublime painting of the Belvedere. At
other times he reveals some altogether new conception, as in the noble
“Descent from the Cross,” which supplied the motives whence Albrecht
Dürer, Luca Signorelli, Daniele da Volterra, and Rubens in turn took
their inspirations. In dramatic power and intensity of feeling this plate
is only equalled by the well-known “Entombment,” where all the horrors
of death, all the depths of the wildest despair, seem gathered up and
concentrated in that one figure of St. John wringing his hands aloft and
uttering the great and bitter cry which cannot be restrained. The same
strong feeling shows itself under another form in the seated Madonna,
whose whole figure is swayed with the foreboding of coming anguish that
mingles with her love, as she bends forward to press the Child closer to
her face. But although these figures, animated with rage and despair,
with a great hatred or a still greater love, are the subjects on which
Andrea seemed to dwell with preference in his engravings, he returns
at times to the serene repose of ancient statuary, and designs for us
a group of perfect majesty in the three grand figures of “St. Andrew,
St. Longinus, and the Risen Christ,” who stands between them, calm and
strong, with the awe of that death which he had conquered still upon his
brow.

Again, in vivid contrast with reeling satyrs and angry Tritons battling
on the rough sea-waves, we have the quiet portrait heads of Lodovico
Gonzaga and his wife, Barbara,[2] whose homely faces and earnest eyes
look out of the same quaint costumes as on their palace walls at Mantua,
and on whose brocaded robes infinite pains have been bestowed.

This is not the place to enter into further details, or a whole
volume might with profit be devoted to the consideration of Mantegna’s
engravings, but enough has been said to show how important a part of his
works they form, and how extraordinary was the genius of the man who
could, in his leisure moments during the brief intervals which elapsed
between his greater tasks, give to the world so rich a treasure of
profound and varied thought.

[Illustration: JUDITH WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES.

_From the drawing by Mantegna in the Uffizi._]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER V.

THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR: DRAWINGS, 1490-1500.


Mantegna, as we have already mentioned, returned to Mantua in the summer
of 1490, and during the rest of that year and the whole of the following
one he devoted himself without interruption to his “Triumphs,” which he
finally completed in February, 1492.

This famous series consists of nine pieces of fine twilled linen, upon
which Andrea painted in tempera the triumphal procession of Julius Cæsar
on his way to the Capitol, after the Conquest of Gaul. The whole formed
a frieze eighty feet long, and the separate compartments, each nine feet
high, were originally divided by pilasters adorned with warlike ornaments.

In the first piece, the trumpeters marching at the head of the procession
open the pageant with a burst of warlike music, closely followed by
standard-bearers carrying pictures of Cæsar’s victories, smoking censers,
and a large bust of Roma Victrix. In the second, the gods of the captive
cities are borne in chariots, a colossal Jupiter and Juno foremost, then
a fine Cybele, and after these come trophies of armour, battering-rams,
and other warlike implements, lifted high on men’s shoulders. The
costlier part of the spoil follows in the third and fourth compartments,
where strong men bend under the weight of vases filled with gold and
treasures, and white heifers garlanded with flowers ready for sacrifice,
are led by veiled priests and beautiful fair-haired youths in their white
tunics and red girdles. In the fifth picture another band of trumpeters
heralds the next division, and four large elephants, hung with gold
chains and draperies, bear on their backs baskets of flowers and young
children, who fan the flames of lighted candelabra. More trophies follow
in the sixth compartment; the armour of captive princes is borne aloft
on poles, and so great is its weight that one old soldier, exhausted by
the load he bears, sits down to recover breath. In the next picture we
reach the most interesting part of the procession—a train of captives who
advance with slow and sorrowful steps, but not without an air of noble
fortitude on their faces as they meet the jeers of the populace. Men and
women of all ages are among them, proud chiefs, matrons of royal blood,
sweet-faced maidens, a young bride with the myrtle wreath on her fair
brow and a coral necklace round her throat. Close to her we see a mother
bearing her youngest born in her arms and leading a boy by the hand, who
cries to be taken up, while the old grandmother bends down to soothe him
with caresses.

In the eighth picture, immediately following this touching group, come
the jesters and hideous buffoons, who mock the prisoners with their
laughter and ape-like grimaces, and a troop of musicians singing and
dancing to the sound of timbrels. After these we have another company of
_signiferi_, this time bearing the eagles of the victorious legions and
the she-wolf of Rome. Their faces are turned backwards, and their eager,
expectant gaze prepare us for the coming of the conqueror, who appears in
the last picture seated on a richly sculptured biga with sceptre and palm
in his hand, and a laurel crown, which a winged Victory is in the act of
placing on his brow. At his feet children shout for joy, and wave laurel
boughs in his path; the multitude press round his chariot wheels and a
gaily-clad youth, with eager enthusiasm in his upturned gaze, lifts aloft
a banner bearing Cæsar’s well-known motto, _Veni, vidi, vici_, to meet
the victor’s eyes.

This subject now forms the last of the series but Mantegna’s original
scheme included a tenth picture which he afterwards abandoned, probably
because the hall for which the “Triumphs” were intended was not large
enough to contain more than nine.

An engraving, however, remains in which a body of Roman citizens,
followed by the first ranks of the advancing legions, are represented
marching in the conqueror’s progress; and the great procession, after
reaching its culminating point, is thus brought to a tranquil close.
Goethe, who knew the “Triumphs,” not indeed in the original, but from
Andreani’s engravings, and who wrote a masterly criticism on the series,
was the first to feel the need of a final scene to satisfy the eye, and
to point out that this must have been the artist’s original design.

Such, then, are the principal parts of this magnificent work, in which
the love of antiquity, which was the ruling power of Mantegna’s genius,
found its highest expression. It was a sentiment common to many artists
in this age of revived learning, but while other men, like Botticelli or
Piero della Francesca, saw pagan themes through the colouring of their
own medieval fancies, he alone entered thoroughly into the true spirit of
ancient art.

A glance at the “Triumphs” is sufficient to show us how profoundly
Mantegna had studied classical authors and how much freedom he had
acquired in dealing with his subject.

[Illustration: PART OF THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR. BY MANTEGNA.

_At Hampton Court._]

Those ancient Romans are no strangers to him; he has lived among them
and mingled with them as freely as with men of his own day, the folds
of their draperies, their very gait and countenance are all familiar
to him. The same intimate knowledge of Roman times reveals itself in a
hundred details; in the temples and viaducts of the background, in the
mythological reliefs which adorn chariots, shields and breast-plates, in
tablets bearing Latin inscriptions, in the triumphal arch under which
Cæsar passes as he goes on his way. And here we may notice that Andrea,
in one of the reliefs of this arch, has again introduced the “Twins” of
Monte Cavallo, which during his visit to Rome he had doubtless seen with
his own eyes in their time-honoured place on the Quirinal hill.

In the execution of the “Triumphs” we observe the same high degree of
finish, as in all his later work; the drapery hangs in the small folds
of Greek sculpture, but without stiffness or formality; while the light
and transparent colouring is admirably adapted in its softly-shaded
tints to the general character of the subject. Evidently in this it was
Mantegna’s intention to imitate as closely as possible the style of
ancient painting. Unfortunately most of the pictures have suffered from
repainting, and at the present day it needs a very minute examination to
appreciate the delicacy of the fragments that have been left untouched.

Both in the plastic tendency of form and in the principles of perspective
which Mantegna has here successfully applied, we see the result of his
earlier studies, modified and restrained by the experience of the thirty
years which had passed since the days when he painted the Eremitani
frescoes. Nothing can surpass the manner in which the whole of the
splendid pageantry of the “Triumphs” is subdued and governed by the laws
of composition, till every figure moves in perfect rhythm and harmony of
line. We have only to look at the episode of the “Triumphs” by Rubens (in
the National Gallery) to see how the subject, released from the severe
restraint of Mantegna’s art, could degenerate into a Bacchanalian feast
of wild beasts, revellers, and dancing women. But for all its sculptured
tendencies and likenesses to a classic frieze, this great series is no
procession of marble statues, cold and rigid in their antique beauty.
The forms which pass before us in the long array are animated with life
and warmth, their faces glow with the fire of human passion in all its
endless varieties. Tender and youthful, or worn by age and care, exultant
with the joy of victory, or bowed down to earth by a cruel fate, they
are men and women like ourselves, and appeal to us by the instincts of
a common humanity. In the well-known words of Goethe, “The study of the
antique supplies form, nature gives movement and the last touch of life.”

For more than a century the “Triumphs” of Mantegna remained in the hall
of the palace for which they had been intended, and were seen there both
by Vasari and the historian Mario Equicola. On festive occasions they
were sometimes moved to the Castello di Corte, and in Andrea’s lifetime
they were used as stage decorations when the comedies of Plautus and
Terence were performed at the Court of Mantua.

Several separate episodes of the “Triumphs” were engraved by Mantegna
himself, and the complete series became generally known by the
publication of the large wood-cuts by Andrea Andreani at the close of the
sixteenth century.

In 1628, a short time before the sack of Mantua, the pictures themselves
were sold to Charles I., with several other masterpieces of the Gonzaga
collection. After that monarch’s death on the scaffold they were again
sold by the Parliament, but Cromwell bought them for £1,000.[3] Charles
II. placed them in the palace at Hampton Court. There this precious
series still remains, irreparably injured by frequent removal and
repainting, but still in beauty and completeness both of design and
execution one of the most remarkable works of the Italian Renaissance.

The exact date of the completion of the “Triumphs” is fixed by a fresh
grant of land which Francesco bestowed upon Mantegna in February, 1492,
with an express mention of the great work which he had at length brought
to a happy termination. “If the Marquis had loved him before, he loved
him still more now,” says Vasari, and in reality Andrea seemed to have
attained the highest pitch of honour and good fortune. For once his
affairs were prosperous. In 1492 he sold his small property at Padua,
and two years later furnished his own beautiful house in the quarter of
St. Sebastian. At the same time he came to a final settlement with his
Buscoldo creditors and exchanged land with his old enemy Aliprandi. His
son, Lodovico, obtained a good appointment as overseer and agent to the
Marquis at Cavriana, while Francesco, who was the least satisfactory
of the two and frequently caused Andrea anxiety, embraced the artist’s
profession and became his father’s assistant. Lastly, his only daughter,
Taddea, was married, on the 4th of July, 1499, with two hundred and sixty
ducats as her dowry, to Viano Vianesi, whom he styles “uomo prudente” in
his letters.

Besides these children by marriage Andrea had one other son, Gian’ Andrea
by name, born in his old age after the death of his wife Niccolosia, and
whom in his will of 1504 he mentions as being still a child.

His improved circumstances seem to have softened his temper, and the only
complaint we find in his letters to the Marquis at this time is that
the stones which he had prepared for building in his yard are stolen in
broad daylight, one of the thieves whom his son had caught in the act of
carrying away his spoil under his mantle being an officer of Francesco’s
household.

We hear occasionally of his suffering from attacks of illness, but as
a painter his powers were at their best, and many of his finest works
belong to the period between his return from Rome and the close of the
fifteenth century.

Among classical subjects are the two beautiful pictures now in the
Louvre, originally executed for the Marchioness Isabella’s “studio of
the grotto,” a room which Andrea, Perugino, and Costa were all employed
to decorate, and which became a complete museum of both antique and
Renaissance art. Andrea painted several panels for this apartment at
Isabella’s command, some we are told in imitation of bronze-reliefs,
and one in which the prophet Jonah, is represented in the act of being
cast into the sea; but the “Wisdom Victorious over the Vices” and the
“Parnassus,” both in the Louvre, are the only works of the series which
have come down to posterity. Both closely resemble the “Triumphs” in
style of modelling and in delicacy of finish. One is an allegorical
composition, such as Botticelli might have painted, in which Minerva
and Diana, led by Wisdom bearing a torch, are driving out a tribe of
Vices under the forms of centaurs and satyrs, while Justice, Force, and
Temperance hover in the air, about to return to earth.

The form of the avenging goddesses is essentially classic in type, and
the trees of the background show that loving care in each leaf which
entitles Mantegna to a foremost place among the foliage painters of the
age. The other, perhaps the most poetic of all Andrea’s conceptions,
brings before us a pleasant landscape where the Muses dance hand in hand
to the music of Apollo’s lyre, while Mercury leans on the neck of Pegasus
hard by, and Mars and Venus pause from their embraces to listen to the
enchanted sound. Brighter tints than Andrea generally employs enliven
the scene, and in the light fluttering drapery and measured stop of the
dancing nine there is a grace and charm of movement which no contemporary
painter ever surpassed.

These groups of dancing nymphs became a favourite motive with Mantegna,
and form the subject of one of his engravings as well as of a finished
drawing, exceedingly graceful and charming in design, now at Munich.
Classical subjects at this time occupied a great part of his thoughts,
and some of his finest engravings, the “Battle of the Sea-Gods,”
“Hercules and Antæus,” and the “Bacchanalia,” belong to this period.
Closely related to these are the beautiful drawings of the British Museum
to which Mr. Comyns Carr recently called attention, the “Mars, Diana and
Venus,” which in ideal beauty of form yields to none of Andrea’s designs,
and the long frieze-shaped composition of “Calumny,” after the pattern
of Apelles’s last picture, which these artists of the early Renaissance
delighted to recall.

Several other precious drawings by Mantegna belong the Christ Church
collection, Oxford. Chief among them is the original composition for his
celebrated engraving of the “Entombment,” and a fine example of another
of his favourite subjects, “Hercules killing the Lion,” inscribed _Divo
Herculi invicto_. Many more are in the hands of private collectors, and
a whole volume containing twenty-six sheets of mythological subjects was
exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, by Miss Hannah de Rothschild
(now Lady Rosebery).

Among the other drawings of remarkable merit now scattered over Europe,
we will only mention the “Judgment of Solomon” in the Louvre, the
“Sagrifizio,” which forms the chief ornament of the Verona Museum, and
the well-known “Judith” of the Uffizi (see page 37), which once belonged
to Vasari, and bears the date of February, 1491.

It was not in the nature of Mantegna’s art to cast off a hasty sketch,
or to leave to the world faces of rare loveliness drawn in a few pencil
strokes as it were at random on the paper. Whether he was engaged on the
cartoon of an altar-piece, or on a simple pattern of a cup or fountain,
all he achieved was marked by the same patient, untiring labour, the
same minute care, above all by the same feeling for beauty in every
detail. Many of us remember that exquisite design for a chalice which
attracted general attention in one of our last winter exhibitions. It is
true the perspective of the Cup was faulty, but this defect was scarcely
noticed in the beauty of the work, with which every part of the chalice
was covered. Scenes from the life of Christ, cherub heads and elaborate
scroll work adorned the border of the Cup. Apostles and prophets were
figured on its base, while the stem was studded with rows of lovely
babies and angel heads, executed with a grace and delicacy which rendered
the whole a perfect marvel of decorative art. And so it is with his
larger drawings, whether classical or religious in subject. Each hair in
the head of his “Judith” is distinctly drawn, there is the same attention
to form in the folds of her falling drapery, or, to take another
instance—the fair faces of the youth and maiden in the procession of the
_Sagrifizio_. Both are designs in the best spirit of classical art, and
remind us of the finest Greek sculpture.

We have said that pagan themes occupied much of Mantegna’s imagination
during the years immediately following the conclusion of the “Triumphs,”
but the three large altar-pieces which also belong to this period
must not be passed over. In the first place we have the “Madonna
della Vittoria,” now in the Louvre, perhaps the noblest of all his
religious pictures. This altar-piece was painted by order of the Marquis
Francesco to commemorate his pretended victory at Fornovo, where he had
encountered the French, but, far from being victorious, had lost the
greater part of his army, and narrowly escaped with his life. A curious
circumstance characteristic of the manners of the times is connected with
this painting.

[Illustration: THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA. BY MANTEGNA.

_In the Louvre, Paris._]

A Jew of Villafranca, Daniele Norsa by name, in the year 1495 bought
a house in Mantua which had a Madonna painted over the door, and
fearing any accidental misfortune to the picture might excite popular
displeasure, prudently obtained leave from the bishop to remove the
sacred image. Even this step was turned to his prejudice, and on
Ascension Day his house was attacked by the mob and narrowly escaped
destruction. The Jew appealed to the Marquis for protection, and
ultimately his case was brought before a tribunal, which condemned him,
by way of reparation for the supposed insult to the Virgin, to place a
new picture painted by Mantegna in one of the Mantuan churches. In the
meantime the battle of Fornovo took place, and Francesco, who in the hour
of danger had vowed to erect a church in Mantua to the Virgin, resolved
to gratify popular feeling and give greater effect to the fulfilment of
his vow by placing the building on the spot where the Madonna’s honour
had been slighted. Accordingly he bought Norsa’s house, and on the
anniversary of the battle, July 6th, 1496, the votive Madonna painted
by Mantegna for the occasion was placed above the high altar of the
newly erected church with great popular rejoicing. Three hundred years
afterwards the French carried off this picture, which was originally
intended to celebrate the victory over their nation, in triumph to Paris,
where it still remains.

Few perhaps of Andrea’s larger works are as generally and deservedly
popular. The mild Virgin, in blue hood and mantle, sitting under her
leafy bower hung with fruit and coral and gay with twittering birds, is
familiar to all visitors to the Louvre. Both mother and child stretch
out their hands in blessing towards the kneeling Marquis, whose life-like
portrait excited the universal admiration of contemporaries. Opposite
him, the venerable form of St. Elizabeth is seen kneeling at the side of
the young St. John, who stands on the carved pedestal of the Virgin’s
throne, and in the background are the patron saints of Mantua, Andrew and
Longinus. More beautiful than either of these are the two warrior saints,
Michael and George, who stand in full armour on either side, holding the
hem of the Virgin’s mantle, and who, with their noble features, manly
forms, and flowing masses of fair locks, are perfect types of Christian
chivalry—in other words, of that union of strength and tenderness which
is held to constitute the heroic character.

The “Virgin” of the National Gallery, long in the possession of
different Milanese families, bears a close resemblance, both in style
and execution, to the “Madonna della Vittoria,” and was probably painted
about the same time. Here the Virgin is seated under a red baldacchino
between St. Mary Magdalen and the Baptist, who stand erect against a
background of dark green orange-trees and silver-clouded sky. The face
of the Magdalen is lighted with the glad enthusiasm of her love, and in
the foliage we notice the same careful finish as in the bowers of the
“Parnassus” and in the leaf-painting of all Mantegna’s works.

To the same period and class of picture belongs the “Glorified Madonna”
which Andrea painted for the monks of Santa Maria in Organo of Verona,
now in the Casa Trivulzi at Milan. Here the Madonna is enthroned on the
clouds, with four life-sized saints; a landscape of tall lemon-trees is
behind her. A troop of singing boy-angels hover in the air, after the
fashion of the Camera degli Sposi frescoes, and one bears a scroll with
the inscription:—

               “A Mantinia p. an. gracie 1497, 15 Augusti.”

[Illustration: VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND THE MAGDALEN. BY
MANTEGNA.

_In the National Gallery, London._]

The small blue-mantled “Madonna” of Bergamo, and a good portrait of a
Gonzaga in the same collection, may have been painted towards the close
of the century, to which period the engravings of the “Triumphs” and
several other subjects are assigned. Finally, among the labours which
occupied the last months of 1499, was the commission to design a monument
of Virgil for the chief square of Mantua. The plan originated with the
Marchioness Isabella, who consulted the learned Latinists, Pontanus and
Vergerius, at Naples, as to the best mode of carrying her scheme into
effect. They suggested Mantegna as the natural person to furnish a design
for the monument, and he entered warmly into a project so well suited to
the spirit of the age. We can hardly imagine a commission more congenial
to a painter so imbued with Latin traditions as Mantegna, and the statue
which he designed was worthy of the occasion, as the drawing recently
discovered in the collection of M. His de la Salle abundantly proves.
Virgil is represented crowned with laurel and holding the Æneid in his
hands, while winged boys on the pedestal at his feet support a tablet
with the words:—

             “P. Vergilii Maronis a æternæ sui memoriæ imago.”

Unfortunately, Andrea never had the satisfaction of seeing this design
executed in bronze or marble. Whether Francesco’s treasures were expended
in wars, or whether Isabella’s intention was only a caprice of the
moment, the scheme was abandoned, and Mantua remained without a monument
of her greatest son.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER VI.

LAST WORKS AND DEATH: HIS INFLUENCE ON ART, 1500-1506.


During more than forty years Andrea had now lived at Mantua in the
service of the Gonzagas. Both at their court and throughout Italy he
was held in the highest honour, and enjoyed a degree of favour and
consideration which, but few artists have known in their lifetime. His
children were, with the one exception of Gian’ Andrea, grown up and
well provided for; he had lands and possessions of his own both in
town and country and what he valued even more—a collection of precious
antiquities. Behind him lay a whole lifetime of great works, and although
now in his seventieth year his powers as yet showed no trace of weakness
or failing. We have seen how rich in works of every branch of art was
this last decade of the fifteenth century; how untiring was his activity,
and how fresh and inexhaustible the treasures of his imagination.
Everything seemed to foretell an old age of honour and prosperity, in
which the great master should still charm men by the creations of his
brain and hand, and yet as his bodily powers grew weaker should enjoy
more of the repose to which he was so well entitled. But this was not
to be, and the last few years of Mantegna’s lifetime are a weary record
of sorrows and misfortune. Again we find him involved in pecuniary
difficulties, brought on by his own extravagance, and very probably
by that of his son, Francesco; in order to meet his liabilities he was
compelled to part with the beautiful house which he had decorated with
his own hand, and to live in lodgings, which he disliked extremely. Yet,
with the strange recklessness that formed part of his character, we find
him entering into new and imprudent engagements. In March, 1504, he made
a will, leaving a sum of money to his son Francesco and the chief part
of his fortune to Lodovico, together with the charge of bringing up
the child Gian’ Andrea, in whose favour he afterwards altered certain
provisions. At the same time he left two hundred ducats for the endowment
of the chapel of San Giovanni, in Alberti’s large church of Sant’ Andrea,
as a burial-place for himself and his family. Special mention is made
of his wife, Niccolosia, who had died some years before; and masses are
ordered to be said for the repose of her soul. In August of the same
year (1504) he obtained possession of this chapel by a contract with
Sigismondo Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua, and the canons of the church. Its
decoration now became his favourite scheme, and it was his intention to
paint the walls in fresco and to erect a family monument there. He bought
a piece of ground outside to prevent the windows from being blocked up
by building, and announced his intention of turning it into a garden,
where he could spend his time in summer, and build a small room, where
he might keep himself warm in winter, “in order,” he adds touchingly,
“that I may take a little rest in my old age.” But all this expenditure
became the cause of fresh difficulties, and added to the burdens under
which Andrea already groaned. Other trials came to sadden his old age.
His son Francesco incurred the displeasure of the Marquis by some grave
misconduct, and neither Andrea’s tears nor the intercession of Isabella
could prevent his banishment from Mantua in 1505. This disgrace was a
heavy blow to Andrea, who owned that his son had offended grievously,
but thought that his fault might have been overlooked in consideration of
his own services. “Messer Andrea,” wrote Isabella to her husband, “has
just now been to see me, so full of tears and so altered in countenance
that he seemed to me more dead than alive.”

But his activity was undiminished, and, heavy as his heart might be,
brain and hand were still the same as ever. We find him returning to a
favourite subject of earlier days in the “St. Sebastian,” originally
ordered by the Bishop of Mantua, but now in possession of the Scarpa
family at La Motta, in Friuli. The life-sized figure, lean in proportions
and suffering in expression, has a grandeur of its own. At the feet of
the saint is a lighted candle, which sends a thin blue smoke upwards, and
makes us wonder at its meaning, until we read the words on the scroll
which hangs to the coral string above—_Nil nisi divinum stabile est,
cætera fumus_.

This, then, was the conclusion to which he had come at the end of that
long life full of works and honour; this the conviction that old age and
gathering troubles were forcing upon the mind of the great painter, who
had seen so clearly and felt so keenly the beauty and the joy of life.

In that same sad year of his son’s banishment he commenced another of
the classic friezes which he loved to paint. This was the splendid
composition known as the “Triumph of Scipio,” now in the National
Gallery, which a wealthy Venetian named Francesco Cornaro ordered and
paid for in part in 1505, but which, to his great indignation, was still
in Andrea’s studio at the time of his death, when it was seized upon by
creditors nearer at hand.

The real subject of this work, executed in chiaroscuro on a background
painted to imitate red marble, is the reception of Cybele among the
deities of Rome. A colossal bust of the Phrygian goddess is borne in
state into the presence of Scipio, who receives the messenger in
consular array; while Claudia Quinta, a Roman lady, kneeling at his feet,
welcomes the image with outstretched arms. Every gradation of movement is
represented here, from the swift tread of the bearers on whose shoulders
the goddess advances, to the motionless forms of the Roman soldiers who
stand grouped around Scipio; and nothing is more striking than the skill
with which the artist brings this rapid action by degrees to a complete
pause. The general character of the piece, its costumes, figures, and
draperies, all recall the “Triumphs.” It is, as it were, a last echo of
the great composition whose harmonies still lingered on in Mantegna’s
ears.

Before the end of the year Andrea, tired of a wandering life, had again
bought a house, this time in the Contrada Unicorno, and settled himself
there for the winter, promising to pay the owner three hundred and forty
ducats in three instalments. It was an unwise venture, as the issue
too soon proved. A plague drove the wealthier Mantuans from the city,
provisions became scarce, and his own health began to give way. Still
he remained in Mantua and painted on manfully, endeavouring to finish a
mythological picture of Comus, which Isabella had ordered. But it was in
vain. He could not work fast enough to satisfy his creditors, and when
pressed to pay the stipulated sum for his house he was compelled to apply
to the Marchioness for help.

Isabella was then at a villa near Cavriana, and Andrea wrote to her in
pathetic terms, telling her of his distress, and offering to her for
sale the one of all his antiques which he most valued, “_la mia cara
Faustina_.” Often in brighter days great masters and connoisseurs had
wished to buy this bust, but he had refused all their offers, and now
since part from it he must, the Marchioness is the only person to whom he
can bear to give it up.

Strange as it seems, Isabella did not answer this letter, and with a
meanness unworthy of her wrote to her servant, Jacopo Calandra, telling
him to bargain with Andrea and obtain the Faustina at the lowest price
possible.

This unkindness cut Mantegna to the heart, and when Calandra communicated
Isabella’s answer to him, he refused angrily to part with the bust for
less than the hundred ducats which had been offered him in former days.
Isabella, however, was determined to have it, and on the 1st of August
Calandra was able to write:—“Your Excellency will be glad to hear that I
have at last obtained possession of Andrea Mantegna’s Faustina. He gave
the bust into my hands with great reluctance, recommending it to my care
with much solicitude, and with such demonstrations of jealous affection
that if he were not to see it again for six days I feel convinced he
would die.” The words were to come true sooner than Isabella or Calandra
had expected. Andrea could bear to part with houses and lands, but the
marble was dear to him as his own flesh and blood, and the parting with
it broke his heart.

He was already ill at the time, and six weeks later he died, on Sunday,
the 13th of September, 1506. To the last the old spirit of loyalty to the
Gonzagas did not leave him, and his son Francesco, writing to inform the
Marquis of the sad event, describes how a few minutes before his death he
asked for his master, and grieved much to think that he should never see
him again.

Francesco was at that time at Perugia, whither he had gone to meet Pope
Julius II., and had little time or thought for the great painter who
had just passed away. Isabella scarcely troubled herself more, and in a
letter full of joyous congratulations to her husband on his entry into
Perugia, merely alludes to Mantegna’s death:—“You know Messer Andrea
died suddenly a few days after your departure.” There were others who
felt more deeply and judged more rightly of the loss which the world
had sustained in Mantegna’s death. Albrecht Durer was at that time in
Venice, on his way to visit the great Lombard artist whose engravings had
filled him with admiration, and from whom he had learnt perhaps more than
from any other master. His purpose was frustrated by the news of Andrea’s
sudden death, and in later years he was often heard to say that he looked
upon this as the saddest event of his whole life. Another graceful
tribute to Mantegna’s memory was paid by a certain Lorenzo di Pavia, a
collector of antiquities and objects of art, who had known Mantegna at
the court of Mantua, and who, on hearing of his unexpected death, wrote
to Isabella in these terms:—“I grieve deeply over the loss of our Messer
Andrea Mantegna, for in truth a most excellent painter, another Apelles,
I may say, is gone from us. But I believe that God will employ him
elsewhere on some great and beautiful work. For my part, I know that I
shall never see again so fine an artist and designer. Farewell.”

The melancholy history of Mantegna’s difficulties did not end with his
death, and his sons had a hard task to satisfy his creditors. One hundred
ducats were still owing to the bishop and canons for the mortuary chapel,
and Cardinal Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua, laid an embargo on the contents
of his studio. Francesco Mantegna had to obtain the permission of the
Marquis to sell the pictures that still remained there, among which he
names the “Triumph of Scipio,” which Cornaro had never received, the “St.
Sebastian,” now at La Motta in Friuli, and the famous _Cristo in scurto_.

By this means his debts were paid, and a settlement of his affairs
concluded. Francesco Gonzaga seems to have behaved kindly, and both
Andrea’s sons continued in his service, Lodovico as agent, while
Francesco succeeded to his father’s place, and painted by turns in the
palaces of Mantua, Gonzaga, and Marmirolo.

The remains of the great master were buried in his own chapel of Sant’
Andrea, where half a century later his grandson placed a bronze bust,
supposed to have been the work of the medallist Sperandio, and which,
after being taken to Paris in 1797, has been restored to its place on
Mantegna’s tomb.

The chapel itself is bare and dingy, its walls are whitewashed, rubbish
heaps are allowed to litter the floor, and the general aspect is of the
most cheerless description. But the gloomy surroundings only serve to
heighten the imposing grandeur of the bust.

The sculptor has caught the spirit which animated the great master, and
has represented Mantegna, after the manner of an old Roman, wearing
a laurel wreath on the thick clusters of hair that shade the deeply
furrowed brows and massive features with which more than one portrait in
his own frescoes has made us familiar. We seem to feel the fiery flashes
of that piercing eye bent upon us, and to realise the iron strength and
unbending force of the genius which no difficulty could dismay, and no
labour exhaust.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sperandio’s bust is almost the only thing in Mantua which still speaks
of Andrea. The perishing frescoes are still to be seen in the deserted
palace, and the walls of the house in which he once lived are standing;
but in this city, where he painted for nearly fifty years, his name
is forgotten, and while every child in the streets will talk to you
of Giulio Romano and the Hall of the Giants, scarcely a creature in
the place has ever heard Mantegna’s name. His Faustina is preserved
among other antiques in the public museum, where visitors can see for
themselves the classic outline of the features which he loved so well;
but the custodian, who unlocks the hall, and has much to say of the many
statues, passes by this one in silence, or wonders why it is we linger
before this bust, unmindful of the tragic story which has invested the
marble with so deep an interest.

[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIXION. BY MANTEGNA.

_In the Louvre, Paris._]

The name of Mantegna, however, is not one that depends on local fame, and
there can be no difference of opinion as to the important place which
he holds in the history of the Renaissance. We have only to consider
how great and widespread was the influence which his works exercised on
contemporary art both in Italy and Germany. If we examine the different
schools of North Italy we shall find that there is scarcely one which did
not receive some new impulse from his powerful genius.

His son Francesco followed in his father’s steps, and worked in the
same lines without ever rising above the level of mediocrity. The few
scholars and assistants he had in Mantua imitated his example, and
whatever remnants of art were still to be found in Padua bore the stamp
of Andrea’s earliest style.

In Venice we recognise his vigour and precision of outline, and
the classical tendency of his types, not only in the works of his
brothers-in-law, the Bellini, but in those also of the rival Murano
painter, Luigi Vivarini. Montagna and Buonconsiglio at Vicenza, Ercole
Grandi and Cosimo Tura at Ferrara, alike formed their style upon his,
while the best Veronese masters were all either his followers or
imitators.

We know that Caroto and Bonsignori assisted him in the execution of his
later works, while his influence is even more apparent in the works of
Liberale, Girolamo dai Libri, and Francesco Morone. The masterpiece of
the last-named artist, the frescoes on the walls and ceiling of the
sacristy of Santa Maria in Organo, at Verona, are indeed exact imitations
of the style of decoration adopted by Mantegna in the Camera degli Sposi.
We trace the same all-prevailing Mantegnesque in the works of Lorenzo
Costa, who spent some years of his life in Mantua, and if we are to
believe Vasari it is to the stimulus of Mantegna’s example that we owe
the inspiration which made a painter of Francia.

The link which binds Mantegna to the Umbrians is as yet uncertain,
but even if Melozzo da Forli in his Roman frescoes derived no help or
suggestion from Andrea, Giovanni Santi’s stanzas remain to show us how
intimate was his acquaintance with the Paduan master’s works.

If from contemporary art we pass to the culminating period of the
Renaissance, we find Raphael taking him as his model in more than one
instance. The likeness of the boy-angels of the Camera degli Sposi to
the famous cherubs of the “Madonna di San Sisto” has been frequently
remarked, and in the bearers of the dead Christ, who walk backwards in
the Borghese “Entombment,” we find a distinct reminiscence of Andrea’s
great engraving.

Again, in the treatment of antique themes, Raphael often approaches
Mantegna, and we have little doubt that both he and Leonardo had closely
studied the works of their illustrious predecessor.

Perhaps the actual connection between Mantegna and Michelangelo is less
capable of demonstration, but the strength and energy of expression
which were so remarkable features in the genius of both men, as well as
a certain resemblance in their characters, form a link which binds them
together.

A very different artist, Correggio, who married a Mantuan wife, owes his
knowledge of the laws of perspective and composition in a large measure
to the study of Mantegna’s works, and, whether or not he visited Mantua
himself, probably derived the first idea of the dome-painting for which
he became famous from the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi.

But this is not all. The engravings of Mantegna spread his influence
beyond the limits of Italy into countries north of the Alps. There was
a robustness, vigour, and grave earnestness of purpose, as well as a
fantastic element in his art, which attracted the Teutonic mind, and it
is perhaps not too much to say that he influenced German art more than
any other Italian painter.

We have already alluded to Albrecht Dürer’s admiration for his works and
anxiety to become personally acquainted with him. A further proof of the
fascination which drew him to Mantegna appears in the highly-finished
copies of the “Bacchanalia” and “Battle of the Sea Gods,” which Dürer
executed with his own hand, and in the St. John of “The Entombment”
which, unable to forget, he introduced in his own “Crucifixion” of 1508.
Professor Colvin has pointed out how much he learnt from the Italian
master in the delineation of passionate movement, and how close is the
affinity between the avenging angels of Dürer’s “Apocalypse” and the
angry Tritons of Mantegna’s engraving.

Nor is Dürer alone among northern painters in his adoption of
Mantegnesque motives. Holbein repeatedly availed himself of those
episodes of the “Triumphs” which he knew from Andrea’s own engravings in
his works at Busle and Lucerne; and a portfolio of Mantegna’s works was
numbered among the treasures of art in Rembrandt’s possession.

More singular is the admiration which Rubens conceived for an artist
with whom he can have had few points in common, yet we find him visiting
Mantua in order to study Andrea’s works, and reproducing a scene from the
“Triumphs” after his own fashion.

We have already seen the great honour in which Andrea was held during
his lifetime. That he was equally esteemed by the succeeding generation
we learn from the verses of Ariosto, who places him next to Leonardo in
his “Orlando.” High as the praise is, we cannot think it excessive, for
Mantegna stands half-way between those men who first brought art to life
again, and those who carried it to the highest degree of perfection, and
he occupies the foremost place among the artists of the mid-Renaissance,
who saw how much was wanting before farther progress could be attained,
and allowed no difficulties to stop them in their endeavour to acquire
knowledge.

With this end in view no research was dull, no toil wearisome. He
embraced the driest studios with the passionate ardour of his nature, and
gave life to the scientific problems which he attempted to solve by the
very force of his great zeal.

At the same time he brought to the task a degree of culture rare
among the men of his class, and both his friendship with scholars and
antiquarians and his own classical studies were productive of the most
important results for Italian painting. He is the chief representative
in art of that revival of learning which was the leading intellectual
impulse of the age; and, by bringing this influence to bear upon
painting, he won a great step in the History of its development. First
among the artists of the Renaissance, he saw with unerring instinct the
path by which art would attain her final triumphs. Early in his career
the conviction had forced itself upon his soul that the most perfect
models of beauty are to be sought in antique art, but that this very
perfection can only be reached by a minute and faithful study of nature.
To reconcile anew these two principles, to combine in his work classic
grace and human action, became the aim of his life, the task which he
most nearly achieved in the “Triumphs”—although even there he is not
always successful.

“We are conscious,” wrote Goethe, “of a sense of conflict, but this
conflict is surely the highest in which ever artist was engaged.” The
perfect union of the two principles was to be effected by artists of the
next generation, and where Mantegna had sown Raphael and Leonardo were to
reap.

It is this sense of conflicting elements, this occasional antagonism
between the ideal form after which he strove and the actual fact present
before his eyes, which has given rise to so much mistaken criticism of
Mantegna’s work. By some critics of the very first rank he is called a
mere realist, while on the other hand the old reproach that he neglected
the study of real life to copy statues has been repeated till it has
grown wearisome.

Although it is easy to trace their origin, both charges are equally
unjust. No man had ever a more thorough knowledge of nature, or was
more keenly alive to the minutest details of everyday life around him.
But something he felt was needed to lift this changeful scene, with its
seething throng of human thought and action, into the atmosphere of
perfect art.

It is just that touch of grace, that power to ennoble and refine which
the Greeks understood so well, that Mantegna felt and sought after in
days of long and arduous toil. If at times a certain rigidity of form, a
carelessness of desire to please, is visible in his work, it is because
in his anxiety to obtain his end he occasionally omitted these minor
matters. But to say that Mantegna was alike destitute of feeling for
beauty and of spiritual perception appears to us simple blindness.

In knowledge and mastery of the human form, in skill and finish of
workmanship, in wealth of imagery and creative thought, few have ever
surpassed him.

In dramatic energy and intensity of expression he stands unrivalled by
any but Michelangelo. Every variety of emotion, every passion that can
swell the breast of man is included within the range of his experience.
He knew where to seek the purest springs of joy, and in darker hours
his strong soul had fathomed the lowest depths of the most unutterable
anguish. The sportive dances of laughing cherubs and nymphs, the
pleasures and pains of such mythical creatures as Tritons and Nereids,
satyrs and sea-monsters, the sublime and rapt devotion of a Magdalen,
the heroism of a Sebastian, were all familiar to him. He enters in the
fullest manner into the exultant joy of the victors returning with their
long array of spoils and captives from the fight, and yet in the midst of
the mighty triumphal procession he pauses to show us the innocent child
stretching out its little arms to its mother.

But more than all he loved to paint the rage of violent passion, the wild
gestures of uncontrollable grief. There are certain figures into which he
seems to have concentrated either the tempest of the most ungovernable
fury or the agony of the bitterest despair. Once seen, these creations of
his brain refuse to loose their hold on our imaginations, and remain to
haunt us with their terrible forms, just as the wailing St. John of “The
Entombment” was ever present to Albrecht Dürer’s mind.

The very greatness of Mantegna’s genius, its immense strength and power,
may in itself be the cause that he is not strictly speaking a popular
artist. His works have never been, perhaps they will never become, the
enthusiastic object of general worship. But within the last few years the
number of his admirers has increased steadily, and his high merit has
received the fullest recognition from some of our most cultured writers.

That this circle will widen year by year, as a larger number of students
are drawn to examine for themselves those works of Mantegna which are
fortunately within the reach of us all, we feel confident. It is scarcely
necessary to add the expression of our conviction that to those who
attentively consider them, no works yield a more genuine and lasting
pleasure, while assuredly there are none that better repay the devotion
of a life-long study.




FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI

CALLED

FRANCIA

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




FRANCIA.




CHAPTER I.

EARLY ART IN BOLOGNA, A.D. 1300-1450.


From the earliest days of the revival of Italian painting the city of
Bologna was distinguished for the cultivation of art, and could boast a
regular succession of native painters. The names of several of these men
have been preserved by old writers, and we hear of a Guido, a Ventura,
and Ursone, who flourished in the thirteenth century. But the honour of
having been the real founder of the school is ascribed by the historian
Malvasia to a miniaturist known by the name of Franco Bolognese, who
lived in the time of Dante and Giotto. Since, however, none of his works
have come down to the present day, we have no opportunity of studying his
style, and all that we know is that he was a pupil of the miniaturist
Oderisio da Gubbio, and is said by Dante to have eclipsed his master in
the same way that Giotto surpassed Cimabue.

[Illustration: FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI.]

When Virgil and Dante meet Oderisio expiating the sin of pride in
purgatory, he tells them mournfully that the pictures which Franco now
paints are fairer than his own, and that the honour once his now belongs
to his scholar. So it has been in Dante’s own city of Florence, where
once Cimabue held undisputed possession of the field, and now the fame is
all Giotto’s. For what after all is the voice of earthly fame? Nothing
but an idle breath of wind that blows first from one quarter, then from
another, ever fitful and inconstant.

But if Franco Bolognese’s only hope of immortality rests on Dante’s
noble lines, the works of his pupils are still to be seen in Bologna,
and afford us some idea of native art in these early times. Chief among
them was Vitale, who painted in the first half of the fourteenth century,
and whose few remaining pictures are marked by a softness and delicacy
of workmanship which reveal the Umbrian origin of the school of Gubbio.
A “Madonna and Angels,” painted by him in the year 1320 for the ancient
church of the Madonna del Monte, and now preserved in the Gallery of
Bologna, has a sweetness and humility of expression which approaches
contemporary Sienese art, and the faces of his virgins are not unworthy
precursors of Francia’s Madonna. The same manner was further developed in
the paintings of his best scholar, Lippo Dalmasii, whose virgins acquired
so wide a reputation as to win for him the surname of “Lippo delle
Madonne.”

This artist, who lived at the close of the fourteenth century, and
painted between 1376 and 1410, was held in universal respect for the
holiness of his life and character. His devout habits are recorded by
Malvasia, who tells us that, before commencing a picture of the Virgin,
he invariably spent the night in prayer and fasting, and received
communion on the morning of the day itself. In his lifetime he was the
most popular artist of Bologna, and his pictures were so much in request
that he could scarcely paint fast enough to supply the demand. “No family
was considered rich in Bologna,” says Malvasia, “which did not possess
one of his Madonnas.”

After Lippo’s death his Madonnas were revered as sacred images, and were
only uncovered on festivals dedicated to the Virgin. Several are still to
be seen in the ancient churches of Bologna, and a lunetto of the “Virgin
between St. Sixtus and St. Benedict” over the portal of San Procolo, is
pointed out as the very picture which excited the admiration of Pope
Clement VIII. On returning from the conquest of Ferrara, he is said to
have paused before Lippo’s “Virgin,” and, saluting it with the utmost
devotion, to have exclaimed that no other images ever touched him as
deeply as those painted by the old Bologna master. In later days, Guido
professed an extraordinary veneration for Lippo’s Madonnas, and often
declared that some supernatural influence must have guided the artist’s
pencil, since no modern painter could ever succeed in designing a figure
of so much purity and holiness.

In spite of these enthusiastic expressions it is impossible to give Lippo
a high place among his contemporaries, and this Fra Angelico of Bologna
is as far below the friar of St. Marco as the school of his native city
is inferior to that of Florence.

One of Lippo’s pictures, originally in the Ercolani Palace at Bologna, is
now in the National Gallery, and may be taken as a fair specimen of his
style. The Virgin, embracing her child, appears in mid-air surrounded by
a circular glory, angels hover above, and a flowery meadow lies below.
There is a good deal of religious feeling and maternal tenderness in the
Madonna’s face, and some attempt at rendering natural movement, without
either beauty of type or skill of workmanship.

Side by side with the mystic traditions of the Madonna painter we trace a
more vigorous vein in the early school of Bologna, and see decided proofs
of the Giottesque influences which had already reached its artists.
This Florentine tendency is prominent in the works of both Simone dai
Crocifissi and Jacopo degli Avanzi, the only two other Bolognese
painters of this period who deserve mention.

According to Malvasia, Simone executed nothing but crucifixes, and
although other paintings at Bologna are attributed to him, this was no
doubt the chief branch of art in which he was engaged. The best of his
crucifixes are those in San Giacomo Maggiore, and in the fourth of the
seven churches belonging to the ancient pile of San Stefano, in both of
which he to a great extent follows Giotto’s example, but retains much of
the bad taste of Byzantine art in the emaciation of the figure and the
grimace of the attendant saints.

Much of the same ugliness of type, accompanied by greater truth and
character, is visible in the curious “Crucifixion” on gold ground,
ascribed to Jacopo degli Avanzi, in the Colonna Gallery at Rome, and in
the other altar-pieces which bear his name at Bologna. The personality of
this artist has been a cause of endless controversy, but at least it has
been shown that Vasari is clearly wrong in confusing him with d’Avanzo
of Verona, who assisted Altichieri in painting the chapel of St. George
at Padua. Whether Avanzi of Bologna is identical with the Jacobus Pauli
who painted the “Coronation of the Virgin” in San Giacomo Maggiore, is
a matter of small importance; but what we know for certain is, that a
Bolognese painter by name Jacopo, whom Vasari probably rightly calls
Avanzo, was the best of all the different artists who painted in that
most interesting of all Bologna churches, the Madonna della Mezzaratta.
This small chapel, called by Lanzi the Campo-Santo of Bologna, was built
in the twelfth century outside the Porta San Mammolo, and decorated with
frescoes in the fourteenth by a succession of native painters. Vasari
alludes to it more than once in his “Lives” as the _Casa di Mezzo_,
and speaks of the series painted there by Jacopo d’Avanzo, Cristofano,
Simone, and at a later period by Galassi of Ferrara.

The frescoes of the Mezzaratta were no doubt the most important works of
art achieved by early Bolognese painters, and—although their execution
is too rude, and their present condition too imperfect to allow of
comparison with the productions of Giotto and his scholars at Padua and
Assisi—the scanty fragments that remain are still of the deepest interest
to the student.

The most celebrated artists of later ages who had the advantage of seeing
these frescoes in a comparatively good state of preservation are said
to have held them in the highest esteem. Michelangelo himself visited
the chapel and praised its paintings in the warmest terms, while the
Carracci exerted themselves strenuously to save them from destruction.
Unfortunately, later generations have been less mindful of their
condition. The roof of the church was taken off some years ago and the
upper part used as a granary, while most of the frescoes were whitewashed
and many entirely obliterated.

At the present moment the chapel of Mezzaratta is attached to a villa,
which was for many years the property of the Italian Minister, Cavaliere
Minghetti. This accomplished statesman took every possible means to
save these relics of early art from further destruction, and by his
care several frescoes were recovered from the coat of whitewash which
concealed them.

The site of the chapel itself is so picturesque, and the views from
the hill of Mezzaratta are so full of beauty, that no traveller should
leave Bologna without making a pilgrimage to this shrine. A steep ascent
along a path lined with acacias leads from the gate of San Mammolo to
the garden of Villa Minghetti, and on a summer’s day, when nightingales
are singing in the acacia thicket and the air is sweet with myrtle
and orange-blossom, there is not a pleasanter spot in all Bologna.
Below, the domes and spires of the ancient city rise above its arcaded
streets, and the eye is at once arrested by the quaint forms of the
twin leaning towers, Garisenda and Asinelli, which were already old in
Dante’s lifetime. All around the plains stretch their vast expanse,
softly shadowed by passing clouds, far away towards Ferrara and Modena,
excepting where some rocky spur descends from the Apennines, and looking
up an opening valley we catch a glimpse of a jagged peak crowned with
snow. Mezzaratta itself has an additional claim on our interest from
having been the favourite resort of the Franciscan monk, Bernardino da
Siena, whose religious revival at Bologna was one of the most important
events in the early part of the fourteenth century, and who frequently
preached in this humble sanctuary, which could scarcely hold the crowds
that flocked to hear him.

Bernardino’s preaching and his affection for the spot may have been one
cause of the celebrity which the church of Mezzaratta acquired in those
days, but the oldest painting on the walls takes us back a whole century
before his time. It is a large “Nativity” painted over the door by
Vitale and signed with his name. The composition chiefly adheres to the
Byzantine type, with a few variations, as in the action of Joseph, who is
represented pouring water into the bowl for the washing of the Child. Its
execution is feeble, as is the case with most early Bolognese paintings,
but in the graceful type of the Virgin’s head and in the kneeling angels
we recognise Vitale’s striving after a more ideal form.

On the southern wall an artist named Cristofano, whose style as far as it
is possible to judge more resembles that of the Ferrara school, painted
scenes from the book of Genesis. Below these we have a series of subjects
from the history of Joseph, Moses, and the Life of Christ, all painted
by the same hand, and bearing in one corner the name of Jacobus, and the
date 1404.

Of these the two most striking are the “Miracle of the Pool of Bethesda”
and the “Healing of the Paralytic.” In the former, a sick man stands
in the middle of the pool lifting his hands in prayer, and the cripple
who sits up in bed by the side of the healing waters looks towards
Christ with an air of helpless entreaty. In the latter, the roof of the
house in which the Saviour is teaching his disciples is uncovered, and
the sick of the palsy is being let down by cords. To the right he is
seen, walking away healed, bearing a mattress on his shoulders. In both
of these scenes—indeed all through the series—the head of Christ is
strikingly noble and dignified, while not even the artist’s ignorance
of the simplest elements of drawing and colouring can detract from the
originality and life of the representations. Each head is individual in
expression and character, and the whole composition is marked by the
pleasing naïveté of very early art, and an evident anxiety to shake off
the fetters of conventional types.

Simone is said by Vasari to have painted the later scenes of the Passion
below Jacopo’s frescoes, and may have been the artist of the “Last
Supper,” which is still visible, but most of his work has perished,
and whatever else has escaped destruction belongs to the middle of the
fifteenth century, and owes its existence to Galasso Galassi, or other
Ferrarese painters.

The most remarkable point in the frescoes of Mezzaratta, and the real
cause of their value, is that, in spite of all the injury they have
sustained, they are decidedly superior in merit to the contemporary
panel-pictures in the Gallery and churches of Bologna, and thus enable
us to form a better judgment of early Bolognese art. Here we see it
inferior, it is true, in every respect to the schools then flourishing at
Florence and Siena, but still possessing a force and individual character
which inspires interest and promises well for the future.

During the greater part of the fourteenth century no native painter of
any genius arose, and the pictures of this date in the Bologna Gallery
are principally by unknown followers of Lippo Dalmasii. The only names
preserved there are those of Pietro Lianori and Michele di Matteo
Lambertini, who painted between 1450 and 1470, and in whose work we trace
some likeness to the contemporary Siena school, as well as a marked
difference from Avanzi’s manner. The same may be said of the picture of
“St. Ursula and her Companions,” a weak but not unpleasing work, painted
by Santa Caterina Vigri, a Bolognese nun, chiefly remarkable as the only
woman-artist who over attained the honours of canonization.

Towards the middle of the fifteenth century a new element was introduced
into Bolognese art by the Ferrarese masters, whom the patronage of the
Bentivoglio family attracted from the neighbouring city. The court of
the Este princes was already one of the most brilliant in Italy, and had
become a favourite centre for artists, who were employed to decorate the
different palaces of the ducal house in the same way that Mantegna was
engaged on the castles of the Gonzagas at Mantua.

Piero della Francesca had himself painted in Duke Borso’s Schifanoia
(Sans-Souci) palace, and both his presence and the all-pervading
influence of Mantegna, who had known several of the best Ferrarese
artists, had contributed in a large measure to mould the school of
native artists. These different elements were now imported to Bologna by
the Ferrara painters who migrated there. One of the first was Galasso
Galassi, who painted the later scenes from the Passion in the church of
Mezzaratta about the year 1450, and who may have been the painter of
the graceful “Sposalizio,” which is one of the best-preserved frescoes
still to be seen there. About the same time an artist of greater merit,
Francesco Cossa, was commanded by Giovanni Bentivoglio to restore an
ancient picture of Lippo known as the “Madonna del Baraccano,” and Ercole
Grandi was employed on the frescoes of the Garganelli chapel in the
church of San Pietro.

With these Ferrara masters came a Paduan artist, also one of the painters
of the Schifanoia, who had been trained in the school of Squarcione
and had worked with Mantegna in the Eremitani. This was Marco Zoppo,
who moved to Bologna in 1471, and remained there twenty years, during
which period he painted many of his principal works, and probably became
acquainted with the goldsmith, Francia, whose first master he is said, by
some, to have been.[4]

But the most important of all the painters who came to Bologna from
Ferrara was Lorenzo Costa, whose friendship with Francia was productive
of rich results, and with whom he lived for many years in a constant
interchange of artistic ideas. Born at Ferrara in 1460, Costa came as
a young man to Bologna and entered the service of Giovanni Bentivoglio
II., who employed him to decorate his palace with scenes from the Iliad.
During the next twenty years Costa was actively engaged in Bologna. In
1488 he finished an altar-piece for the chapel of the Bentivogli in
the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, and a few years later painted the
allegorical compositions representing “The Triumph of Life and Death,”
and various other works in the great Basilica of San Petronio.

In many of those we already see signs of new and higher qualities which
were the direct fruit of Francia’s influence, although in technical
acquirements the Bologna master was at that time still inferior to Costa.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have so far traced the rise of early Bolognese art throughout the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and watched the gradual development
of a school of painters who remained far behind their contemporaries in
Florence and Siena, and at the best never rose above mediocrity. But in
Francia, Bologna was for the first time to have an artist of the highest
order, and who would take his place among the best Florentines of the
day, rivalling even Perugino’s genius, and winning the praise of Raphael;
an artist not indeed of great inventive faculty or wide range of powers,
but who, in pure and tender feeling, in elevation of aim and thought, in
the expression of the deepest religious emotion, was to find few equals
in the history of art.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE AND WORKS, A.D. 1450-1500.


Francesco di Marco Raibolini, commonly called Il Francia, was born at
Bologna in the year 1450. His father was a carpenter, but although
belonging to the artisan class his family was highly respected and
owned lands in the neighbourhood. After the practice of many Florentine
painters, Francia began life in the goldsmith’s shop, but unlike
Botticelli and Pollaiuolo, did not turn his attention to art until he had
reached middle age and had acquired considerable reputation in his own
trade.

Several writers have asserted that he took his surname from the goldsmith
under whom he served his apprenticeship, but it seems more probable
that Francia was merely the popular abbreviation of Francesco, and the
supposition is confirmed by documents recently found in the archives of
Bologna.

His talents soon attracted attention and before long he became skilled in
cutting dies, designing medals, working in _niello_ and every department
of the goldsmith’s art. At the same time the charms of his person and
character won general favour and greatly contributed to the success of
his career. Contemporary writers describe him as strikingly handsome in
appearance, and gifted with a sweetness of disposition and rare eloquence
which could not fail to captivate his hearers. The wit and liveliness
of his conversation had the power to drive away the saddest moods and
brighten the darkest hours. In this manner he became a general favourite,
and he numbered members of the noblest families of Bologna among his
intimate friends.

At the time Francia grew up the power of the Bentivogli family was
supreme in Bologna. This proud house claimed descent from King Enzio,
the unfortunate son of the Emperor Frederico II., whose long captivity,
vain attempts at escape, and loves with the fair Lucia di Viadogolo have
thrown a romantic charm over the grim walls of the Palazzo del Podestà.
Nothing less than the attainment of sovereign power could content the
Bentivogli in the fifteenth century, and after a long struggle with the
Popes, who claimed the supremacy of Bologna, they finally succeeded
in accomplishing their object. The reigning prince was now Giovanni
Bentivoglio II., who had assumed the reins of government in 1463, and
was undisputed master of the city. Although his tyranny became hateful
to the people, and ultimately proved the cause of his ruin, he was a
liberal and munificent patron of Francia, and rivalled the princes
of the house of Este by the encouragement which he gave to the fine
arts. He soon discovered the rising genius of the young goldsmith, and
appointed him Master of the Mint, an office which, in spite of many
vicissitudes in public affairs, Francia retained to the end of his life.
Other distinctions fell to his share. In 1483, and again in the year
1489, he was elected steward of the goldsmiths’ guild, a further proof
of the esteem and honour with which his countrymen regarded him. By this
time he was already married, since his sons Giacomo and Giulio were
born, the former before, and the latter in, 1487; but we hear no further
particulars and know nothing of his wife excepting that her name was
Caterina.

Besides coining money and designing medals for Giovanni Bentivoglio,
Francia showed his fine taste and artistic powers in many works both in
gold and silver enamels, and especially in _niello_, “often introducing
as many as twenty figures of excellent proportion and graceful design
into a space scarcely two fingers high.” Most of these precious works of
art perished in the destruction of the Bentivogli’s palace at the time
of their expulsion, and the famous silver _pax_, which Francia executed
at immense cost for the wedding of Giovanni Sforza and Lucrezia Borgia,
has disappeared, but two smaller ones are still preserved in the Gallery
of Bologna, and are interesting specimens of their kind. One bearing a
representation of the Resurrection, surrounded by a wreath of delicate
foliage, was executed on the occasion of the marriage of Bartolommeo
Felicini and Dorotea Ringhieri, as we learn by the arms of these families
which are engraved upon the work. The other is engraved with the Sforza
and Bentivogli arms and the letters M. Z., _Messer Zoane_, and was
probably a wedding gift from Giovanni Bentivoglio to his bride Ginevra
Sforza. The Crucifixion is worked in niello on this pax, and both in
the sorrowing angels hovering round the cross and in the saints below
we recognise the type of head which Francia’s Madonnas have rendered
familiar, while the landscape in the background shows the pictorial bent
of the goldsmith’s mind.

Andrea Mantegna’s visit to Bologna in 1472 is said to have first inspired
Francia with the wish to become a painter, but Vasari tells us in the
same breath that our master’s first painting was not executed until 1490,
when he was forty years old.

The actual honour of having first given Francia instruction in oil
painting has been assigned to different artists, principally to Marco
Zoppo and Lorenzo Costa, both of whom, we have seen, were living at
Bologna about 1480. Little affinity exists between the Squarcionesque
master’s style and that of Francia, but it is very possible that he may
have been acquainted with the goldsmith and have given him his first
lessons. Francia’s connection with Lorenzo Costa was of a much closer
kind, and Ferrarese models had a large share in his future development.
But his first essays in painting are so purely original in character and
so free from foreign influences that we need not seek for any cause to
explain the reason of their existence, or ask what master had a share in
their production. He probably acquired the rudiments of tempera and oil
painting from either Zoppo or another of the humbler men who frequented
his workshop, and immediately tried his hand on small panels before
venturing on the larger pictures in which his adoption of Costa’s method
is apparent. These early works are very rare, but one excellent instance
is to be seen in the “St. Stephen” of the Borghese Gallery, Rome. This
interesting little piece was evidently one of his first efforts executed
at a time when he was unskilled in the rules of composition and technical
knowledge. The hand of the worker in metal is plainly seen in the sharp
outline and polished surface of the panel, in the cold, hard brightness
of the deacon’s red dalmatic which St. Stephen wears, and in the
elaborate ornament of its embroideries. There is no attempt at rendering
physical agony in the form of the kneeling martyr quietly raising his
clasped hands as the stones fall heavily to the ground beside him. Even
St. Stephen’s countenance is marked by a certain absence of expression,
and is without the rapt devotion of Perugino’s faces, or the yearning
gentleness of Francia’s own Madonnas. Yet there is a calm devoutness in
the martyr’s bowed head, which seems to reflect the earnestness of the
prayer which the parted lips have just breathed, and which in its very
simplicity is full of touching beauty. Already we feel the presence of
that strong religious sentiment which had first animated the creations of
earlier masters, and of which Francia was to be almost the last exponent
in the art of Italy.

Another work belonging to this early period is the portrait of
Bartolommeo Bianchini, formerly in the Northwick collection, under the
name of Raphael. This personage was a Bolognese senator of considerable
culture, whose poetry earned some reputation in his days, and who wrote
flattering verses in praise of Francia’s genius. We have a further proof
of the friendship that existed between them in the small “Holy Family” at
Berlin, inscribed with the words, _Bartholomei sum(ptu) Bianchini maxima
matrom hic vivit manibus Francia picta tuis_. “Here—painted by thy hands,
O Francia, at the cost of Bartolommeo Bianchini—lives the greatest of
mothers.”

The Madonna holds the child erect on a parapet, while St. Joseph stands
behind, much in the same style of composition as countless Holy Families,
by Giovanni Bellini, a painter with whom Francia had more than one
feature in common. Here again we notice the same sharpness of outline,
high polish, and want of shadow that recall the goldsmith’s art, but the
general method of laying on colour and the red glow of the flesh-tints
which marks all Ferrarese work, point unmistakably to the influence of
Lorenzo Costa’s example. During the next twenty years these two men
worked side by side in Bologna, and profited by a mutual exchange of
ideas which has few counterparts in art history. While Costa gave Francia
the benefit of his wider experience and greater knowledge, he received
more than he could impart from the nobler aims and more refined feeling
of the Bologna artist. Before long the pupil was to surpass the master,
but we never hear of the intimacy between the two being marred by any
jealousy or ill-feeling, and the unbroken harmony in which they lived
reflects credit on both.

A great advance on the early works to which we have alluded is visible in
the large altar-piece of the “Madonna and Saints” which Francia painted
in 1490. The commission was given him by a wealthy Bolognese citizen,
Bartolommeo Felicini, who destined the picture for a chapel in the church
of the Misericordia, a confraternity of nobles for the assistance of
hospitals and other works of mercy. In this work, which Vasari calls his
first, Francia represented the Virgin seated on a marble throne with
six saints in the foreground, and a child-angel in a light blue robe
playing the violin at her feet. The architectural background and general
style of colouring are plainly the results of Costa’s teaching, but side
by side with these Ferrarese features we find another influence which
is altogether new. This is the Umbrian tendency, which appears here in
so marked a manner as to make us ask what was the link which brought
Perugino into connection with the great master of Bologna. Unfortunately
no historical evidence exists to satisfy our curiosity, and there is no
authority for the probable supposition that Francia visited Florence,
and thus became acquainted with the Umbrian painter. But there is every
reason to believe that works by Perugino had by this time found their
way to Bologna, and among them probably the beautiful altar-piece which
he painted for the church of San Giovanni in Monte, and which now hangs
in the Pinacoteca, almost side by side with Francia’s Madonna of the
Misericordia. It is worthy of mention that the same Umbrian character
appears in a small Madonna[5] at Berlin, the sole remaining work of
Antonio Crevalcore, a Bolognese artist chiefly known as a fruit and
flower painter, between 1480 and 1500, and whose name is preserved in
an epitaph by Francia’s friend, Girolamo Casio. Evidently Perugino’s
influence had in some form or other reached Bologna, and had touched a
responsive chord in Francia’s breast. For nowhere is this Peruginesque
vein more strongly present than in the fine head of the St. Sebastian, in
the Misericordia altar-piece, who is lifting his eyes to heaven with an
intensity of expression to which Perugino himself has rarely attained.
Henceforth this feature is constantly recurring in all Francia’s panels,
animating his less ideal types, his fresher and more vigorous conceptions
with a tender devotional feeling, and appealing to us in the peculiar
half-timid, half-reproachful gaze of those Madonnas which we know so well.

[Illustration: THE VIRGIN ENTHRONED, WITH SAINTS. BY FRANCIA.

_In the Pinacoteca, Bologna._]

       *       *       *       *       *

The revelation of Francia’s powers as a painter was the cause of much
enthusiasm among his fellow-countrymen, who were never slow to applaud
the efforts of native artists, and Giovanni Bentivoglio immediately
commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for his family chapel in San
Giacomo Maggiore. All the religious communities of Bologna now pressed
Francia to decorate their altars, and Vasari says that by the end of
a few years there was scarcely a church in the city that could not
boast the possession of one of his paintings. The “Annunciation” of
the Brera, the “Madonna and Angels,” at Munich, the Pietà, still at
Bologna, in the Pinacoteca, followed each other in close succession.
For his goldsmith friend, Jacopo Gambaro, who is recorded to have stood
godfather with him to the child of a mutual friend, he painted the small
“Holy Family,” at Dudley House, and for the church of San Giobbe, in
Bologna, the “Crucifixion” of the Louvre. In this singular composition
the patriarch Job is represented wearing a crown and lying at the foot
of the cross, pointing upwards to a scroll on which we read the words:
_Maiora sustinuit ipse_. This fine and original conception is marred by
a hardness of drawing and colouring, which is a sufficient proof that it
was executed at an early period; its surface has suffered considerable
injuries which increase this unpleasant effect.

A great step in advance is marked by the Bentivoglio altar-piece
completed in 1499, and still occupying its original place in a chapel
of San Giacomo Maggiore. Here the metallic harshness of the tints has
given place to more harmonious tones and softer shadows, and the rich,
glowing colours show that the artist had by this time acquired complete
mastery of the means at his disposal. The saints are more vigorous and
manly in type, and the heads are distinguished by more actual beauty than
in any other of Francia’s pictures. St. Sebastian is again a prominent
figure, and was used as a model a century later by the Carracci, who
declared it to be one of the finest studies of human form in Renaissance
painting. The two angels crowned with roses and standing on the steps
of the Virgin’s throne are said to be portraits of children of the
Bentivogli family. Others hover about the Virgin, and one, the loveliest
of all, leans his head thoughtfully against a pillar and stretches out
his little arms in wistful yearning to the child-Christ. In the same year
Francia painted another Enthroned Madonna,[6] very similar to this one
in style and grouping, by desire of a lady of the Manzuoli family, for
the church of the Misericordia. Here the attendant saints are St. George
and the Baptist, who point upwards to the child, whilst St. Stephen gazes
mournfully at the stones of his martyrdom, which, rest on a book that
he holds before him, and another of Francia’s sweet child-angels clasps
a tall white lily between its folded hands, “with so much grace that it
seems to belong to Paradise.” [_Vasari._]

For the same church of the Misericordia, Giovanni Bentivoglio’s son,
Archdeacon of Bologna and papal protonotary, ordered the “Nativity,”
now removed to the Gallery,[7] where most of Francia’s masterpieces
are collected. In this picture the “Nativity” is treated not as an
historical event but as a Christian mystery, that is to say, the Virgin
and attendant saints are represented in the act of adoring the new-born
child, and celebrating his advent on earth. This class of composition,
always a favourite with religious painters, and much used both by
Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi, was especially adapted to Francia’s
genius. He never possessed the faculty of describing a scene in a vivid
and dramatic manner, or of rendering in quick succession all the varied
emotions of the human breast, but no one has excelled him in these groups
of rapt saints, without a thought beyond the object of their silent
adoration. And so we find him constantly moulding his subjects into
this form. The Annunciation, Pietà, Assumption, and Coronation of the
Virgin by turns took this shape in his hands. He conceived “these supreme
events as mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and
in relation to which the great souls of all periods became as it were
contemporaries.” [_George Eliot._]

In this instance Francia has introduced several portraits among the
worshippers. His masterly profile of Bartolommeo felicini in the first
Misericordia altar-piece had already proved his skill as a portrait
painter, and he now represented Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, who had
lately returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in the mantle of
a knight of the Red Cross kneeling under a ruined arch to adore the
infant Christ. The youthful shepherd who stands opposite, wearing a
laurel wreath on his flowing locks, is a portrait of Francia’s intimate
friend, the poet jeweller, Girolamo di Casio, on whom the laurel crown
was bestowed by Clement VIII. This accomplished man had the greatest
admiration for Francia, whose epitaph he lived to compose, and whom he
addressed during his lifetime in a sonnet beginning:—

    “Felice Italia che in se chiude,
    Si sublime ingegno e si bella effigie
    Che fanno al cielo e a natura guerra.”

    “Happy Italy, which contains a genius so lofty and forms so
    fair that they challenge heaven and nature.”

Lastly, in the regular features of the St. Francis in the background, we
have Francia’s own likeness (which he has here introduced in the form
of his patron saint), whose expressive face and refined air correspond
exactly with contemporary descriptions. Two angels kneel in lowly
adoration on either side of the child, who lifts his head and raises
his tiny hand in benediction, while a bullfinch perched on a twig at
his feet looks reverently towards him and almost seems to join in the
act of worship. As a rule Francia’s landscapes are simple in character,
generally consisting of a rocky foreground and broad valley opening
beyond, such as we often see in the Apennines near Bologna; sometimes
in his later works they are more distinctly Umbrian, but the background
of this “Nativity” is remarkable for an unusual degree of beauty and
variety. The rocky steep with its solitary pine-tree is still on our
right, but in the centre of the picture, above the heads of the kneeling
saints, a lovely expanse of park-like scenery unfolds itself before us.
There we see a broad sunny river winding its way between grassy glades
and forest avenues, cattle are feeding, and human life is stirring
on its banks, a church tower and cottage roofs peep out from among
the trees, and far away in the distance a line of blue hills rises in
soft undulating lines. The whole of this pastoral scene is charmingly
conceived and painted, and forms a poetic background to one of Francia’s
most graceful compositions. It was for this picture that Costa painted
his predella of the “Adoration of the Magi,” now in the Brera, one of the
many tokens of the friendship which continued to exist between the two
artists.

[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD WITH A BIRD. BY FRANCIA.

_In the Dresden Gallery._]

Besides these works for the Misericordia, Francia executed several
altar-pieces for other churches in Bologna—about 1500. The “Madonna and
Saints,” now at St. Petersburg, was originally painted for San Lorenzo,
and a similar subject resembling the Bentivoglio altar-piece is still
to be seen in San Martino of Bologna. With these larger subjects we may
mention the charming group of boy-angels playing on musical instruments
round an old picture of the Madonna in San Vitale, although their
Raphaelesque grace would seem to indicate a later date of production. The
Franciscan church of the Annunziata, outside the gate of San Mammolo,
also possessed two pictures, a “Madonna” and “Annunciation,” which have
been removed to the Gallery since that sanctuary has been used as a
barrack by the Italian Government. Both have been much damaged, but the
“Annunciation,” in spite of its bad state of preservation and unpleasant
rawness of colour, is singularly interesting. All three persons of the
Trinity assist at the celebration of the great mystery: the Father looks
down from heaven, the dove is seen descending to rest on the brows of
her who was blessed among women, and a vision of the Child appears
above in glory. The Angel of the Annunciation hovers in mid-air, and
on earth the lowly Virgin kneels with clasped hands and bent head, her
whole soul going forth in unutterable love and yearning as she listens
to his message. On either side, a little below this central figure,
stands a noble group of saints reverently pondering over the mystery
before our eyes; and foremost among them we recognise Bernardino, the
favourite saint of Bologna, whose memory was still fresh in the hearts
of the people, holding an open book, on the pages of which, the sacred
monogram and his motto, _In Nomine Gesu_, are inscribed. The birds
sing in the branches beside him, and a lizard crawls along the ground
bearing a scroll, on which are the arms of the Franciscans, a skull and
cross-bones, the date MCCCCC., and _Francia Aurifex pinxit_, a form of
signature which the goldsmith painter retained to the end of his life.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER III.

THE FRIENDSHIP AND INFLUENCE OF RAPHAEL, 1500-1506.


Ten or twelve years had now elapsed since Francia had devoted himself to
painting, and in this comparatively short space of time he had produced
many important works and obtained a wide reputation. More than this,
his pictures during this period bear signs of a steady progress both in
technical skill and power of expression; the old hardness and want of
harmony had in a great measure disappeared, and his colouring had gained
that force and richness which give him so high a place among oil-painters.

But in the first years of the sixteenth century we see him develop a
new style, and paint in a manner altogether freer and grander than ever
before. This marked improvement is especially visible in the composition
of his pictures which, instead of depending on the expression of single
heads, now acquire a grace of line and completeness that bring them near
to the best Florentine works of the period.

The cause of this advance can only be ascribed to one influence—the
friendship which Francia had formed with Raphael. It is evident from
many of our master’s works at this time that he had studied Raphael’s
pictures; but beyond this, both the presence of this new element and
certain expressions which Raphael uses in his letter of September, 1508,
seem to imply the existence of a personal acquaintance between the two
masters.

He had formed, we know, the highest opinion of Francia’s merit, and gives
expression in emphatic terms to his conviction that no Madonnas are so
beautiful or so well calculated to inspire devotion as the creations of
the Bolognese master. And on receiving Francia’s portrait he declares it
to be so life-like that as he stands before it he feels himself in his
friend’s presence and seems to hear his voice.

Everything points to more than a mere intercourse by letter, and there
can be no reason to doubt the generally assumed fact that Raphael paid
a visit to Bologna on his way from Florence to Urbino in 1506. But long
before this they had a mutual object of interest in Timoteo Viti, a young
painter of Urbino, who became one of Francia’s favourite pupils and was
the first link between him and Raphael.

In July, 1490, Timoteo came to Bologna to perfect himself in the
goldsmith’s art in Francia’s workshop. The date is recorded in a register
kept by Francia, where we read the following entry:—

“Timoteo Viti da Urbino was taken into our shop. He will receive no
salary during the first year, and sixty-six florins for three months in
the second.”

In 1491 another entry records the settlement of accounts with Timoteo,
and mentions that as he is desirous to become a painter he will now pass
into the hall where the other artists work.

Four years later we find one more entry, which is as follows:—

“On the 4th day of April, 1495, my beloved Timoteo left us. God grant
that all blessing and good fortune may be with him.”

Timoteo returned to Urbino, where he became Raphael’s assistant, and
carried with him the fame of the master who remembered him so kindly.
Soon Francia received commissions from the Duke of Urbino, for whom he
painted a Lucrezia in the act of plunging the dagger into her breast, and
a marvellous set of horse trappings decorated with gaily-coloured birds
and foliage.

From Timoteo’s lips Raphael also heard of Francia’s paintings, and
was perhaps first introduced by him to those Madonnas which inspired
so unfeigned an admiration in his breast. Afterwards we hear of an
exchange of pictures which passed between the two great masters, and at
Francia’s recommendation Giovanni Bentivoglio employed Raphael to paint
a “Nativity,” which has unfortunately perished. The Bolognese master
was of too generous and loyal a nature to entertain the least feeling
of envy towards the young painter, who had already surpassed all his
contemporaries, and showed his warm appreciation of Raphael’s genius
in the following sonnet, which he addressed to him in an outburst of
enthusiasm:—

        “Non son Zeusi nè Apelle, e non son tale,
            Che di tanti tal nome a me convegna;
            Nè mio talento, nè vertudo è degna
             Haver da un Raffael lodo immortale.

         Tu sol, cui fece il ciel dono fatale,
            Che ogn’ altro excede, e sora ogn’ altro regna,
            L’excellente artificio à noi insegna
            Con cui sei reso ad ogn’ antico uguale.

        Fortunato garxon, che nei primi anni
            Tant’ oltre passi; e che sarà poi quando
            In più provecta etade opre migliori?

        Vinta sarà natura; e, da’ tuoi inganni
            Resa eloquente, dirà, te lodando,
            Che tu solo il pictor sei de’ pictori.”

    “I am not Zeuxis nor Apelles, neither do I deserve that fame
    so great shall be mine, nor is my talent worthy to receive
    immortal praise from a Raffael.

    “Thou alone, on whom heaven has bestowed the fatal gift that
    thou shouldest excel all others and reign over all, teachest
    us the admirable art by which thou art become equal to the
    ancients.

    “Fortunate boy, who in thy earliest years hast already advanced
    so far, what wilt thou not be when in maturer age thou shalt
    achieve yet greater things? Then nature shall own herself
    conquered, and rendered eloquent by thy charms, shall exclaim
    in thy praise, that thou alone art the painter of painters.”

[Illustration: DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS. BY FRANCIA.

_In the Accademia, Parma._]

The original manuscript of this sonnet was first published by the
historian Malvasia, who discovered it among the papers of a member of
the Lambertini family, and gave the accompanying inscription, which
proves Francia to have been its author. _All’excellente pictore Raffaello
Sanxio, Zeusi del nostro secolo. Di me Francesco Raibolini decto il
Francia._ Even without these convincing proofs of Raphael’s friendship
with Francia, it would have been difficult not to assume the existence
of some similar connection from the strong marks of the great painter’s
influence that meet us in Francia’s later works.

In the “Deposition,” painted soon after 1500 for the Benedictines of
Parma, his style is already powerfully affected by this contact with
Raphael, which can alone account for a vigorous action and dramatic
character here displayed. A deep emotion is visible on the faces of the
St. John, who supports the head, the Magdalen, who embraces the feet, and
the Virgin, who gazes at the dead face of her son with the grief-stricken
look which the “Pietà” of the National Gallery has stamped upon our
minds. Salome, who stands behind, flings aloft her arms in an energy of
despair unlike anything else that Francia ever conceived, while in the
background the cross lifts its gaunt form against the glowing tints of an
evening sky and a soft distance of cypress-grown rocks and far-away hills.

Not many years afterwards Francia was asked by a noble of Lucca to
supply an altar-piece for the church of San Frediano in that city, and
after painting a “Madonna and Saints” as the principal subject, took the
Pietà as the motive of the lunette below. This time he returned partly
to his former conception, and represented the Dead Christ laid in his
mother’s arms in the same attitude as in the larger Deposition at Parma,
but with two angels instead of attendant saints at the head and feet.

In later years the altar-piece passed into the Duke of Lucca’s hands, and
coming to England in 1840 with the rest of the collection, became one of
the chief ornaments of the National Gallery.

It is difficult to approach this Pietà in a critical spirit. We have
known it all our lives, every form, almost every line of the well-known
group is familiar. To many of us it is associated with memories of days
long ago when it formed a part of our earliest religious ideas; and when
much of the faith of childhood has undergone change, it still recalls all
that was purest and best in those first impressions.

[Illustration: THE VIRGIN AND TWO ANGELS WEEPING OVER THE DEAD BODY OF
CHRIST. A PIETÀ. BY FRANCIA.

_In the National Gallery._]

What is it, we ask, which touches us in this “Pietà,” that has appealed
to thousands in a way which no other picture has ever done? Surely,
not only the grace of its composition, the tender brightness of its
colouring, but more than all of these the deep human pathos which we
find there blended with a real and living hope. It is the contrast
between the mother mourning over her dead son with a grief that cannot
be comforted and the angels who fold their hands in lowly adoration,
and by their presence transform the saddest of all scenes into a divine
mystery full of hope and love. Mary, in the bitterness of her sorrow, is
unconscious of these heavenly attendants, her eyes, fixed on the dead
face of her son, are closed to that vision of angels, but we see them and
realise what Francia meant us to feel, all the promise of that horizon
which was opening beyond, all the great future that was to grow out of
the suffering and death which she mourned.

    “The wave
    Of love which set so deep and strong
    By Christ’s yet open grave.”
                        [_Matthew Arnold._]

Unlike Mantegna and Gian Bellini, Francia has not attempted to give any
impression of the physical agony which has passed over the corpse, but
has concentrated all his force in the endeavour to give the deep repose
and peace of death without sacrificing anything of majesty of form.
There are other points in the drawing which might be criticised, and
a degree of stiffness in the position of the right arm has been often
observed, but no minor defects can prevent Francia’s Pietà from being,
in refinement of conception and tenderness of feeling, the highest ideal
representation of the subject in the whole range of art.

The other portion of this altar-piece, a Virgin enthroned with the
Child, St. Anna at her side between two arches, and the Saints Sebastian,
Paul, Lawrence and Romualdo below, hangs next to Perugino’s Certosa
altar-piece in the National Gallery. An excellent opportunity is thus
afforded of comparing the styles of the two painters, and Francia’s work
does not show to disadvantage even by the side of Perugino’s masterpiece.
In depth and richness of colour he is at least his equal, and although
his types are less ideal they are fresher and more natural, and there is
less affectation in the attitude of his figures.

For the same church of San Frediano at Lucca, Francia painted another
large altar-piece the “Coronation of the Virgin,” which is still to be
seen there. Here again he gives the subject a mystical character and
introduces the patriarchal ancestors of Mary and the chief advocates of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception among the figures who stand below
in devout contemplation. Each bears a scroll in his hand: David points to
a verse of Psalm xxvii, “_In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide
me_;” Solomon, a noble, kingly profile, gazes earnestly upwards, showing
us a text from his song, “_Thou art all fair, my love_;” while Anselm and
Augustine bear scrolls on which we read passages from their own writings
relating to the Virgin, and Antony of Padua kneels at the empty tomb
where lilies and roses have blossomed. This altar-piece, although less
known than Francia’s other masterpieces, yields to none of his works
in grandeur and finish. The kneeling Madonna who, robed in purple and
gold, receives her crown from the hands of the Eternal, retains the same
expression of sweet humility touched with sadness which marks all his
Virgins, and the scenes from the History of the Augustinian order on the
predella are painted with exquisite taste and delicacy.

Another large Coronation, commonly called the altar-piece of All the
Saints from the multitude of figures grouped below, is still in the Duomo
of Ferrara; while Cesena retains the “Presentation” mentioned by Vasari,
although the beauty of colouring to which he alludes has lost much of its
freshness.

A “Nativity,” painted for his intimate friend Paolo Zambeccaro at
Bologna, is now in the Picture Gallery of Forli, but the frescoes with
which he adorned Zambeccaro’s villa have all perished. The same fate has
been shared by the other frescoes which he painted in different palaces
of Bologna, and what is most of all to be regretted, the “Judith” and
“Dispute of Philosophers” which he executed for Giovanni Bentivoglio were
destroyed in the sack of the tyrant’s palace by the mob, on his expulsion
in 1507. Vasari, speaking from the testimony of eyewitnesses, declares
the Judith to have been the finest work which Francia ever painted, and
describes minutely the splendour of the surroundings introduced, the
horses, banners, and armed guards brought on the scene as belonging to
the camp of Holofernes. The fame of this fresco had also reached the ears
of Raphael, who begged for a sketch of the work, but unfortunately not
even a drawing remains to give us an idea of the manner in which Francia
treated a theme so unlike his usual objects.

A “Lucrezia” by his hand, perhaps the very panel which he painted for
Guido Baldo, Duke of Urbino, is now in England,[8] but has nothing
classical in character. The Roman matron raising her eyes to heaven as
she plunges the dagger into her breast is in feature and expression the
exact counterpart of Francia’s saints, and but for the uplifted hand
might be a St. Catharine or St. Agnes with perfect propriety. On the
other hand drawings in the style of ancient bas-reliefs by Francia, which
in type and character admit no doubt as to their genuineness, meet us
occasionally both in foreign galleries and London exhibitions, and show
a much truer appreciation of classical art. Such are the “Judgment of
Paris” in the Albertina collection, Vienna, and that beautiful group
of Greek youths before an altar exhibited by Mr. J. O. Robinson in
the Grosvenor Gallery of 1879, in which, the grace of antique art is
delicately blended with the yearning expression of Christian devotion.
These and others that resemble them were designs for engravings probably
intended for the use of Marc Antonio Raimondi, who served his first
apprenticeship in Francia’s workshop, and engraved several of his
master’s pictures before he left for Venice in 1509.

More than one of this celebrated artist’s engravings bear marks of this
early training in the school of Francia, an influence soon to be effaced
by the very different associations and examples of the Roman world, in
the midst of which his later years were spent.




[Illustration]




CHAPTER IV.

THE FRESCOES OF ST. CECILIA’S CHAPEL, 1506-1509.


The only series of frescoes painted by Francia in Bologna of which some
traces still remain, are those in the Oratory of St. Cecilia, attached
to the church of San Giacomo Maggiore. This chapel, founded by Giovanni
Bentivoglio and erected by the architect Gasparo Nadi in 1481, was
decorated entirely by the hands of Francia and his scholars in the early
part of the sixteenth century. Costa’s fresco, which alone bears a date,
was executed in 1506, and the whole series was probably completed before
the exile of the Bentivogli in 1507.

Unfortunately this chapel, which is for the Bolognese school what the
chapels of the Carmine and Eremitani are for Florentine and Paduan art,
has been frequently turned to other uses, and during its occupation
by French soldiers the frescoes suffered great injury. All are much
damaged, and some mutilated in such a manner that the principal figures
are scarcely visible. But even in their present melancholy condition
Francia’s frescoes are full of interest, and it is easy to see how
superior they are in merit to any other works of the school. Of the
four remaining artists employed in the chapel—Lorenzo Costa, Giovanni
Chiodarolo, Amico Aspertini, and Giacomo Raibolini (or Tamaroccio)—the
Ferrarese master is the only one who approaches him in the excellence of
his style, and even Costa’s heads cannot compare with those of Francia
for beauty and expression. The subjects of the ten frescoes are all taken
from the history of St. Cecilia.

On the right of the altar:—

  1. Marriage of Cecilia and Valerian. _Francia._

  2. Valerian instructed in the Christian faith by Pope Urban. _Costa._

  3. Baptism of Valerian. _Cesare Tamaroccio._[9]

  4. Valerian and Cecilia crowned with roses by an Angel. _Chiodarolo._

  5. Martyrdom of Valerian and his brother Tiburtius. _Aspertini._

On the left of the altar:—

  6. The Burial of the Brothers. _Aspertini._

  7. Cecilia before the Prefect. _Aspertini._

  8. Cecilia condemned to the boiling bath. _Cesare Tamaroccio._[9]

  9. Cecilia distributing her riches to the poor. _Costa._

  10. Burial of Cecilia. _Francia._

The two frescoes by Francia are placed nearest to the altar, exactly
opposite each other, and are on the whole the best-preserved of the
series. Here Raphael’s influence is more apparent than in any of
Francia’s works, and it is highly probable that he visited Bologna while
the chapel was being painted. The fresco of the Marriage at once recalls
Raphael’s “Sposalizio” in the grouping of the figures, and is remarkable
for its grace of composition. The officiating priest stands between the
bride and bride-groom under the portal of a chapel which opens on to a
wooded valley. The bride shrinks timidly back and turns her face away as
one of her maidens holds her hand on which Valerian places the ring. On
either side are groups of youths and maidens who, by their intent gaze
and animated gesture, show their interest in the marriage that is being
celebrated. The action is simple, the heads noble and refined; those of
the maidens are especially remarkable for their beauty, while the grace
of line that marks the grouping is happily continued in the landscape
beyond, which harmonizes well with the scene before us. Evidently the
subject was exactly suited to Francia’s genius, and he has succeeded
admirably.

The same praise can scarcely be given as fully to the “Burial of St.
Cecilia,” wonderful as is the power of its simple pathos. There is a want
of dramatic action in the spectators, and at the same time a formality
in the arrangement of the groups on either side of the picture, which
gives the whole an air of stiffness and renders it inferior in point of
composition to the Marriage. But these defects are atoned for by the
beauty of the central portion, where four young men hold the lifeless
form of the martyred saint suspended in a winding-sheet above the
opening of the vault. A wreath of white roses crowns her gentle brows,
and the bystanders press forward to take a last look at the sleeping
face that is still so fair in death. As in the Christ of the Pietà all
trace of suffering has passed away, the hands are folded with exquisite
tenderness, and the sweet maiden seems to lie there wrapt once more in
the deep unconscious sleep of childhood. For a moment we wonder if this
happy slumber can be death, but—if we look a little further, beyond the
pale light just breaking into the valley, above the tall cliffs and the
topmost branches of the waving palm-trees—we shall see the dim form of an
angel who wings his flight upwards, bearing the soul of the martyr back
to God.

The frescoes of St. Cecilia were the last works which Francia painted for
his patron Giovanni Bentivoglio. In 1507, perhaps even before the chapel
was completed, the Bentivogli were driven out of Bologna by a popular
rising and forced to flee for their lives. Not only did Francia lose
their patronage and friendship, but he had the grief of seeing some of
his best works destroyed by an infuriated mob in the sack of their palace
in the Strada Donato.

The universal respect in which he was held by his countrymen saved him
from sharing in the ruin of his patrons, and he retained his office
at the head of the Mint under Pope Julius II. In this capacity he was
required to coin the money which the Pope threw to the populace on his
triumphal entry and which bore the inscription:—“Bononia per Julium a
tyranno liberata.” But although he was forced to lend his talents, as
Michelangelo did on another occasion, to the service of the victor, he
could not conceal the bitterness of his grief, and for a whole year after
the flight of the Bentivogli still lamented the loss he had suffered.

It was then that Raphael addressed his well-known letter to Francia,
begging him to take heart, and assuring him of his sympathy. The two
painters had, it appears, agreed to exchange portraits, and in this
letter Raphael thanks Francia for having sent him his likeness painted
by his own hand. We give a translation of this interesting document,
which was first discovered with Francia’s sonnet in the papers of the
Lambertini family, and brought to light by Malvasia:—

    “My dear Messor Francesco,—

    “I have this moment received your portrait, which Bazotto
    brought me safely, without injury of any kind, and for which I
    thank you exceedingly. It is very beautiful, and so life-like
    that at times it deceives me. I seem to be with you and to
    hear your voice. I pray you, pardon my delays, which arise
    from the tasks in which I am incessantly engaged, and which
    have been the cause why I have not yet painted the portrait
    with my own hand, according to our agreement. Nor would I
    allow it to be painted by one of my pupils and retouched by
    myself, since this would not have been seemly, although I have
    no hope of ever equalling your work. Have compassion on me, I
    say, since you know by experience what it is to be deprived of
    liberty and bound to patrons. I am sending you by this same
    messenger, who returns in six days, another drawing, that of
    ‘The Nativity,’ somewhat different from the original, which you
    were good enough to praise so highly, with the same kindness
    with which you speak of my other works in a manner that causes
    me to blush. I hope that you will accept this trifle, more
    as a token of love and obedience than for any other reason,
    and if in exchange I may receive a drawing of your ‘History
    of Judith’ I will place it among my dearest and most precious
    treasures. Monsignore il Datario awaits his ‘Madonella’ with
    much impatience, and Cardinal Riario his large one, all of
    which you will hear more particularly from the said Bazotto.
    I, for my part, shall behold them with the same delight and
    satisfaction with which I see and praise all your other works,
    never having seen any images that are fairer or more devout and
    well painted. In the meantime take courage, summon up all your
    habitual wisdom, and be sure that I feel your afflictions as
    keenly as if they were my own. Continue to love me as I love
    you, with my whole heart.

                  “Ever your most obliged and devoted,

                                                   “RAFAELLE SANZIO.

    “Roma, the fifth day of September, 1508.”

Few documents in art history are more interesting than this letter, which
breathes all the sunny gladness of Raphael’s nature, and proves how
sincerely he admired Francia as an artist and felt for him as a friend.

It is uncertain whether the portrait which he praises so warmly still
exists, but at the end of last century a half-length figure of Francia
holding a diamond ring, by his own hand, was in the Boschi collection at
Bologna, and a few years ago a similar work belonged to a private gallery
at Turin.[10]

As a portrait-painter Francia ranks high, and all the works of this class
by him which remain are marked by the same exquisite finish and life-like
fidelity. The Tribune of the Uffizi has a fine specimen in the head of
Evangelista Scappi, whose pleasant open face and bushy locks modern
copyists have rendered familiar. The Umbrian character of the landscape
and general style of the work resemble Perugino’s heads, while other of
Francia’s portraits are painted more in his Raphaelesque manner.

Such is the noble portrait of the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna long
ascribed to Raphael, but rightfully restored to Francia by Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, and probably the likeness of some Bolognese noble, since it
originally belonged to an old family of that city.

The poet Girolamo di Casio also alludes in one of his sonnets to two
female portraits by Francia remarkable for their beauty, but these have
perished, it is to be feared, since no portraits of women by his hand are
known to exist.

The expulsion of the Bentivogli, although a severe shock to Francia, does
not appear to have diminished his powers of activity, and many of his
best works belong to the years immediately following this event, which he
deplored so deeply. In 1509 he painted the “Baptism of Christ,” now at
Dresden, which still retains its rich glow of colour in spite of injuries
received from the splinters of a shell during the bombardment of that
city in 1760. Christ is represented standing on the waters of Jordan
while the Baptist bends forward from one of the banks, and two angels
with wistful faces wait on the other. A good replica of the subject, with
the same hilly landscape but some variations, is at Hampton Court, and
originally belonged to the Mantuan collection purchased by Charles I. The
Dresden Gallery possesses two other fine works of Francia, an “Adoration
of the Magi,” with a lake and mountain background, which bears strong
marks of Raphael’s influence, and a “Madonna” from the Quandt collection.
This last is one of the half-length figures of the Virgin with the child,
and one or more attendant saints, which became so popular a subject in
Francia’s school, and of which so many repetitions are to be seen. The
example in the National Gallery, acquired from the Beaucousin collection,
has unfortunately lost much of its original clearness, owing to the wash
of burnt sienna which has been laid on the surface.

Another finely conceived work, which has been ruined by repainting, is
the “Madonna and Saints” of the Belvedere at Vienna, while the same fate
has attended the Berlin altar-piece, originally painted for the Friars of
the Osservanza at Modena.

[Illustration: THE MADONNA OF THE ROSE-GARDEN. BY FRANCIA.

_In the Pinakothek, Munich._]

Two other panels, which, in type and execution, bear a marked resemblance
to the frescoes of St. Cecilia’s chapel, and were evidently painted
soon afterwards, are in a better state of preservation. The first, an
“Annunciation,” with St. Jerome and the Baptist, in the Bologna Gallery,
is a picture of the same class as the earlier Annunziata altar-piece,
and is distinguished by the refinement and gentleness of the Virgin’s
face. The other is the beautiful “Madonna of the Rose Garden,” originally
painted for the Gonzagas, into whose service Francia’s old friend,
Lorenzo Costa, had passed after the exile of the Bentivogli. It remained
in the Mantua collection till 1786, and after experiencing many changes
of hands, became the property of the Empress Josephine, until in 1815
it passed from Malmaison into the Pinakothek of Munich. The child lies
on a bed of flowery grass, stretching out its little arms with a smile
of delight to its mother, who is in the act of sinking upon her knees
in a rapture of loving adoration. A trellis of tall roses, which might
have been painted by a Botticelli or Filippino, fences the garden round,
and, in the pleasant meadows beyond, horses are feeding on the banks of
a winding stream, and church-towers rise in the distance. Nowhere is the
transparent delicacy of Francia’s colouring more pleasing than in the
silver-grey tones of the Virgin’s robe, while her countenance wears the
same gentle air of tender melancholy which haunts his conceptions in the
same way as the smile on Leonardo’s faces, and the deeper sadness of
Botticelli’s Madonnas.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




CHAPTER V.

LAST WORKS AND DEATH, A.D. 1509-1517.


We have few details of the last years of Francia’s life, but the dates
that mark some of his pictures show us that his powers were not impaired,
nor his activity diminished with advancing age.

It would be interesting to know how he was affected by the return of
his friends, the Bentivogli, who in 1511 entered Bologna again, on the
retreat of the Papal troops before the French army under Gaston de Foix.
The fickle Bolognese were as glad to be rid of the Pope as they had ever
been to expel their former tyrant, and destroyed the statue which Julius
II. had erected of himself on the principal square. But the Bentivogli
only enjoyed their return to power during a very brief space. In a few
months the conquering advance of the French army was checked by the death
of Gaston de Foix in the battle of Ravenna; the Pope’s troops again
entered Bologna, the Bentivogli fled once more, and the city was heavily
fined and deprived of many of its former privileges.

All we hear of Francia in these stormy times is that in 1511 he was
elected one of the sixteen Gonfalioneri of the people, which proves
that he still retained the popular favour, and that his changeable
fellow-countrymen had not wavered in their affection and regard for
him. In 1512 he was once more elected master of the Goldsmiths’ Guild,
and in 1514 he attained the dignity of Master of the four arts. “He
was reverenced as a god in Bologna,” says Vasari, “and not even his
friendship for Raphael, and his desire to see the larger works of the
great painter, could tear him away from his native city.”

The fame of his works had spread over all Italy and had attracted a large
number of scholars, as many, it is said, as two hundred. Several of the
best of these passed into the school of Raphael, as Timoteo Viti had
already done, and adopted a style which has little in common with that
of Francia. Such were Innocenza da Imola and Bartolommeo Ramenghi, of
Bagnacavallo, whose influence became prominent in the Bolognese school
after Francia’s death, and who have left many of their works in the
churches and Gallery of Bologna.

Others followed more closely in Francia’s steps, and contented themselves
for the most part with weak and conventional repetitions of those Saints
and Madonnas which his genius had rendered popular. Chief among these was
Francia’s own son, Giacomo Raibolini, an active and careful artist who
never aspired to originality, and whose conceptions are generally wanting
in life and freedom. Three of his best panels are in the Berlin Museum,
and we often find them in other collections under his father’s name.

There is a fine portrait of him in the Pitti Palace, Florence, and as an
engraver he rose to the first rank, some of his prints being equal in
delicacy and finish to those of Marc Antonio himself.

Francia’s second son, Giulio by name, also became a painter, and was
associated with Giacomo in the execution of several panels, which are
distinguished by the signature J. J. Francia. Giacomo died in 1557;
Giulio at some time after 1543.

Another of Francia’s assistants whom he employed, as he did Giacomo, in
the frescoes of Cecilia, was Amico Aspertini, a wayward and eccentric
artist, who travelled in many parts of Italy, and received the surname
“dai due pennelle,” from his habit of working with both hands, holding
one brush for dark, and the other for pale tints. His numerous paintings
in Bologna have mostly perished, and the best works by him which remain
are the frescoes of the Volto Santo in San Frediano at Lucca, painted by
him about the same time that Francia executed his two altar-pieces for
that church.

Besides these, Francia’s influence left its mark on several of the
Ferrarese, especially on Costa’s pupil, Ercole Grandi II., and on the
Ravenna artists, one of whom, Girolamo Marchesi da Cotignola, painted
several works at Bologna, and was summoned to take the portrait of Gaston
de Foix as he lay dead on the battle-field.

Thus the latter part of Francia’s life was partly spent in directing the
efforts of this large number of scholars, all engaged in the production
of the numerous works in his style, and often bearing his name, which are
scattered throughout Europe. A few genuine panels of his last years are
still, however, to be seen. A Madonna dated 1511 is in Casa Pertusati
at Milan, and a small God the Father in the Ercolani collection at
Bologna bears Francia’s signature and the date 1514. Two larger and
more important works belong to the following year, 1515. One of these
is the “Madonna and Saints” in the Gallery of Parma, formerly in the
possession of the Sanvitale family, and resembling his earlier creations
in most points; it is remarkable for the fine profile of St. Justina,
who kneels on the pedestal of the Virgin’s throne, looking upward with
ardent devotion. The other is the Pietà of the Turin Gallery, a work
which has lost the richness of its colouring from subsequent restoration,
but still retains much of its former excellence. The leading features
are the same as those of the larger Parma “Deposition.” The dead Christ
lies in the Virgin’s arms supported by the Magdalen and St. John. Behind
them Nicodemus raises his hands with a sorrowing gesture, and a monk
stands with a lily in his hand, while tall palm-trees in the background
spread their fan-like branches against the western skies. There is the
same majesty of repose in the dead Christ, the same expression of piteous
sorrow on the Virgin’s face, which we expect in a Pietà by Francia. It
was the old conception of earlier days, which had lost none of its force
in declining years, but was still present as vividly as ever to his mind.

The following year is rendered memorable by a last communication which
took place between Raphael and Francia. The great painter had finished
his famous altar-piece of St. Cecilia for the chapel, which a noble
Bolognese lady, the Beata Elena Duglioli, had erected in the church of
San Giovanni del Monte, and wrote to Francia, begging him as a friend
whom he trusted implicitly, to repair any accident the picture might have
suffered on the journey, and to make any correction which might appear to
him advisable. The picture reached Bologna safely early in the year 1516.
Francia, in accordance with his friend’s directions, placed it above the
altar in the chapel for which it was destined. The Bolognese hailed the
appearance of Raphael’s masterpiece with enthusiastic acclamations, and
we may well believe that Francia shared in their delight with the same
generous appreciation which he had always shown for his friend’s genius.
On the strength of these simple facts, the voice of slander founded the
ridiculous story, which Vasari repeats, of Francia having died from
the transport of jealous rage with which he was filled at the sight of
Raphael’s masterpiece. The absurdity of the fabrication is evident when
we remember the pictures which had been exchanged and the letters which
had passed between the two masters, and is contrary to all we know of
Francia’s character and natural disposition. Vasari himself seems to
have felt some misgivings as to the truth of the story, for he proceeds
to qualify his statement with the words “_come alcuni credono_” (as some
believe), and adds that others say Francia died of poison.

Malvasia, in his zeal to vindicate the memory of Francia, endeavours to
prove that the Bolognese master lived till 1522, but the real date of his
death has been finally proved by the discovery of three separate notices
in contemporary chronicles, which all record the fact that Francesco
Francia, that most excellent goldsmith and painter, died on the 5th of
January, 1517 (new style 1518). The illness which ended his life, and the
grave where he lies, are both unknown, but it seems probable that he was
buried in the cloister of the large church of San Francesco, a favourite
place of sepulchre in his days, and which contains the tomb of his son
Giacomo.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the next thirty years his pupils continued to paint in Bologna,
and maintained in some measure the honour of his name, but before the
end of the century a new school, utterly different in aim and style,
sprang up, and—in the sudden blaze of fame which encircled the names
of the Carracci, Domenichino, and Guido—the works of the older masters
were forgotten. Travellers who visited Bologna in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were attracted solely by the creations of the
Eclectic school, and returned home without being even aware of Francia’s
existence. M. Rio points out a striking proof of the neglect into which
his works had fallen, in the curious fact that among all the pictures
which the French invaders carried back to Paris not a single piece was by
Francia.

With the revival of a better taste the great master of the old school of
Bologna soon received just recognition, and his purity and gentleness
will always appeal to a large class of sympathetic natures who are
attracted by the charm of an art which is apparent to all.

If we consider the place which he holds in contemporary art we shall see
how little he had in common with the spirit of his age, and how much of
his aspirations and sympathies belonged to the old world of the earlier
religious painters. Living as he did in the days of Raphael, at a moment
when the Renaissance was fast hastening to its culminating point, Francia
took no share in the great movement that was swaying forward at every
point, but stood apart in a sphere of his own. In an age when revived
Paganism had penetrated into every part of society, and the love of the
antique was the ruling impulse of intellectual thought, he scarcely shows
a trace of this influence, and derives his inspiration exclusively from
Christian sources. He paints Lucrezia dying with the ecstatic smile of a
martyred saint on her lips, and designs classical figures only to give
them the yearning expression of religious emotion.

But in this realm of mystic art it must be owned that he takes the
highest place. That fine saying of Raphael, when he declared that no
other Madonnas were as beautiful or as religious as those which Francia
painted, was no empty compliment. Since those days many have felt
the truth of his words, and have confirmed his judgment. For to the
earnestness and purity of Fra Angelico’s conceptions Francia brought a
mastery of resources which had been lacking to those older painters. His
creations are animated with a warmer humanity and a more vigorous life,
they have all the charm of glowing colours and strongly contrasted light
and shadow, while secular influences are allowed a larger part in the
rich ornament and noble architecture which surround them.

Thus Francia shares with Perugino the praise of having combined the
technical perfection of a later age with the Christian motives which
had so largely influenced the first efforts of Italian art. But, unlike
Perugino, the religious feeling which formed the secret of Francia’s
inspiration remained fresh and strong within his breast to the end of his
life, and was with him still a real and living power, when it had sunk
into conventionalism and affectation in the later works of the Umbrian
master, and was rapidly yielding to the growing influences of a worldly
age in the creations of Raphael.

Slowly but surely men’s thoughts and their ideals of life had undergone
a complete change, and the art of Italy was entering on a new phase in
which there was no longer room for the rapture of Fra Angelico’s faces,
or the sweet gentleness of the Madonnas who haunted Francia’s dreams.

    “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
    And God fulfils himself in many ways.”

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF MANTEGNA.


BERGAMO.

  _Lochis-Carrara Gallery._

      Madonna and Child.

      Portrait of man in red dress (Francesco Gonzaga?).

BERLIN.

  _Museum._

      Portrait of an Ecclesiastic. (Matteo Bossi, Abbot of Fiesole.)

      Madonna and Child. (_Painted about 1464._)

      Presentation in the Temple. (_Painted about 1464._)

COPENHAGEN.

  _Museum._

      Man of Sorrow supported by Angels. (ANDREAS MANTINEA. _Painted
      about 1489._)

DRESDEN.

  _Gallery._

      Holy Family (_formerly in the possession of Sir Charles
      Eastlake_).

FLORENCE.

  _Uffizi._

      Madonna and Child, in a rocky landscape. (_Painted in 1488-90._)

      Adoration of the Magi; Presentation; and Ascension. (_A
    triptych, painted about 1464._)

FRANKFORT.

  _Städel._

      St. Mark (_doubtful_.)

GLASGOW.

  _Hamilton Collection._

      Woman carrying a basin. (_Painted about 1470._)

      Woman drinking. (_Painted about 1470._)

HAMPTON COURT.

      The Triumphs of Julius Cæsar, 1492. (_Nine cartoons._)

LA MOTTA.

  _Scarpa Collection._

      St. Sebastian.

LONDON.

  _National Gallery._

      The Virgin and Child enthroned; St. John the Baptist and the
      Magdalen. _With the annexed signature (C.P.F. = Civis Patavinus
      fecit.)_

               [Illustration: Andreas Mantinia C.P.F.]

      The Triumph of Scipio (_in monochrome: painted in 1505_).

MADRID.

  _Museum._

      Death of the Virgin (_formerly in the collection of Charles I.;
      painted about 1470_).

MANTUA.

  _Castello_ [_frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, 1470-74_].

      Lodovico Gonzaga and Barbara of Brandenburg surrounded by their
      family and Court (_on the walls_).

      Lodovico meeting his son, Cardinal Francesco, on his return
      from Rome (_on the walls_).

      Scenes from the fables of Hercules, Orpheus, Apollo, &c.;
      Medallions of Cæsars, Cupids, and other figures (_in
      monochrome, on the ceiling_).

MILAN.

  _Brera._

      St. Luke and other saints (_altar-piece in twelve parts:
      painted for Santa Giustina, Padua, in 1454_).

      The dead Christ bewailed by the Maries.

_Casa Trivulzi._

      Virgin and Child in glory, with SS. John the Baptist, Romualdo,
      and Jerome, a bishop and three angels. A MANTINIA P. AN.
      GRACIE, 1497, 15 AUGUSTI.

MUNICH.

  _Pinakothek._

      Madonna enthroned with Saints.

NAPLES.

  _Museum._

      St. Euphemia, OPUS ANDREÆ MANTEGNÆ, MCCCCLIII.

PADUA.

  _Church of the Eremitani._

      St. James baptizing Hermogenes.

      St. James before Herod.

      St. James blessing a convert on his way to execution.

      Martyrdom of St. James.

      Martyrdom of St. Christopher.

      Burial of St. Christopher. _Six frescoes_, 1453-1459.

  _Basilica of Sant’ Antonio._

      St. Bernardino and St. Anthony, 1452 (_fresco in a lunette over
      the portal_).

PARIS.

  _Louvre._

      The Crucifixion (_part of the predella of the altar-piece of
      San Zeno in Verona_).

      Madonna della Vittoria (_painted in 1495-96 for Santa Maria
      della Vittoria, Mantua_).

      Parnassus.

      Wisdom victorious over the Vices (_from Isabella Gonzaga’s
      “Grotto”_).

PARMA.

  _Pinacoteca._

      Copies in oil of the frescoes in the church of the Eremitani at
      Padua (_doubtful_).

TOURS.

  _Museum._

      Christ on the Mount of Olives (_part of the predella of the
      altar-piece of San Zeno in Verona_).

      The Ascension (_part of the predella of the altar-piece of San
      Zeno in Verona_).

TURIN.

  _Gallery._

      Madonna and five saints.

VENICE.

  _Academy._

      St. George. (_Painted about 1464_).

VERONA.

  _San Zeno._

      Madonna and eight Saints. (_Painted about 1459; altar-piece:
      the predella, a copy of which is in San Zeno, is part in the
      Louvre and part in the Tours Museum._)

VIENNA.

  _Belvedere._

      St. Sebastian. (_Painted about 1464._)

      Studies for the Triumphs of Julius Cæsar (_doubtful_).




PAINTINGS BY MANTEGNA IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS IN ENGLAND EXHIBITED AT
VARIOUS TIMES.[11]


AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION (1816-1852).

  Date.            Subject.                        Owner.

  1835. Triumph of Scipio                   George Vivian, Esq.
  1861. The Children of Medea rescued by
          the Nurse                         J. C. Robinson, Esq.

AT THE MANCHESTER ART TREASURES EXHIBITION, 1857.

  Cat. No.         Subject.                        Owner.

    91. Pietà, with the Crucifixion in
          the Distance                      Liverpool Royal Institution.
    96. Judith                              Earl of Pembroke.
    97. Christ bearing the Cross            Christ Church, Oxford.
    98. Christ on the Mount of Olives       Thomas Baring, Esq.
   102. The Triumph of Scipio               George Vivian, Esq.

AT THE LEEDS ART TREASURES EXHIBITION, 1868.

  Cat. No.         Subject.                        Owner.

    54. Saint                               Colonel Markham.
    55. A Triumphal Procession              H. D. Owen, Esq.
    57. Judith with the Head of Holofernes  Colonel Markham.
    59. Virgin and Child, surrounded by
          scenes in the Life of the Virgin  J. W. Faulkner, Esq.

AT THE “EXHIBITION OF THE WORKS OF THE OLD MASTERS.”

  Date.            Subject.                        Owner.

  1870. Virgin and Child and St. John with
          SS. Joachim and Anna              Lady Eastlake.
        Christ on the Mount of Olives       Thomas Baring, Esq., M.P.
        Angel at the Tomb                   Lady Taunton
  1871. The Triumph of Scipio               George Vivian, Esq.
        The Wise Men’s Offerings            Louisa, Lady Ashburton.
        Subjects (four) from the Life of
          Christ                            Earl of Dudley.
  1872. Two Figures; a Study                Duke of Buccleuch.
  1875. The Flight into Egypt               W. Graham, Esq.
  1876. Judith with the Head of Holofernes  Colonel Markham.
        Dido                                      ”
  1878. A Triumphal Procession              Hugh Owen, Esq.
  1880. The Virgin and Child                Charles Butler, Esq.
  1881. A Pietà                             Sir William N. Abdy, Bart.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRANCIA.


BERLIN.

  _Museum._

      Madonna and Child, with SS. Geminiano, Bernard, Dorothea,
      Catharine, Jerome, and Louis of France. FRANCIA AURIFABER
      BONON̅, 1502 (_painted for Santa Cecilia, Modena_).

      Holy Family (_early work_) BARTHOLEMEI SUM(PTU) BIANCHINI
      MAXIMA MATROM HIC VIVIT MANIBUS FRANCIA PICTA TUIS.

BOLOGNA.

  _Pinacoteca._

      78. Madonna and Child, with SS. John the Baptist, Monica,
      Augustin, Francis, Proculus and Sebastian and an Angel (_with
      portrait of Bartolommeo Felicini, for whom it was painted_,
      OPUS FRANCIÆ AURIFICIS, MCCCCLXXXX (IV?).)

      80. Madonna and Child, with SS. John the Baptist, Augustin,
      Jerome, and Stephen, and an angel (_painted for the Manzuoli_).

      81. The Infant Christ adored by the Virgin, SS. Joseph,
      Augustin, and Francis, the donor and two angels. (_Painted for
      Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio in 1499._)

      82. Birth; Infancy; Death of Christ. (_A predella._)

      83. Pietà.

          [_These five were formerly in Santa Maria della
          Misericordia, Bologna._]

      371. Annunciation, with SS. George, Bernardino of Siena,
      Francis of Assisi, and John the Evangelist. FRANCIA AURIFEX
      PINXIT, MCCCCC.

      372. Madonna and Child, with SS. John the Baptist, Paul, and
      Francis of Assisi.

      373. Crucifixion, with the Madonna, the Magdalen, St. Jerome,
      and St. John the Evangelist. OPUS FRANCIÆ AURIF.

          [_These three were formerly in the SS. Annunziata,
          Bologna._]

      79. Annunciation, with SS. John the Baptist and Jerome.

          [_Formerly in the Oratorio of San Girolamo di Miramonte
          Bologna._]

  _San Giacomo Maggiore._

      Madonna, with Saints and Angels. JOHANNI BENTIVOGLIO II.
      FRANCIA AURIFEX PINXIT. (_in 1499_). [_In the Bentivoglio
      Chapel._]

      Marriage; and Burial of St. Cecilia, _fresco 1509_. [_In the
      Oratory of Santa Cecilia._]

  _San Martino Maggiore._

      Madonna and Child, with SS. Roch, Sebastian, Bernardino, and
      Anthony of Padua. FRANCIA AURIFEX P.

  _SS. Vitale ed Agricola._

      Angels playing musical instruments (_round an older picture of
      the Madonna_).

  _Casa Ercolani._

      God the Father, 1514.

CESENA.

  _Pinacoteca._

      Presentation. FRANCIA AURIFEX.

DRESDEN.

  _Gallery._

      Adoration of the Kings (_a predella_).

      Madonna and Child, with the bird, and St. John the Baptist.

      Baptism of Christ. FRANCIA AURIFEX BON. F. M. V. VIIII. (1509).

FERRARA.

  _Cathedral._

      Coronation of the Virgin, with SS. George, Stephen,
      Bartholomew, John the Baptist, Peter, Augustin and Paul,
      Catherine, and another female Saint. (_The altar-piece “of all
      the Saints.”_)

FLORENCE.

  _Uffizi._

      Portrait of Evangelista Scappi. SO. VANGELISTA SCARPI.

FORLI.

  _Pinacoteca._

      Adoration of the Child (_from the Palazzo Zambeccari, Bologna_).

FRANKFORT.

  _Städel._

      Portrait of a young man.

HAMPTON COURT.

      Baptism of Christ. FRANCIA AURIFEX BON. (_replica of the
      Dresden Gallery picture_).

LONDON.

  _National Gallery._

      The Virgin with the Infant Christ and St. Anne, enthroned,
      surrounded by SS. John the Baptist, Sebastian, Paul, Lawrence
      and Romualdo (_with the annexed signature_).

          [Illustration: FRANCIA · AVRIFEX · BONONIE̅S̅IS · P.]

      The Virgin and two angels weeping over the dead body of Christ
      (_lunette of the above_).

          [_These two pictures, formerly an altar-piece, were
          originally in the Buonvisi Chapel in San Frediano, at
          Lucca._]

      The Virgin and Child with two Saints.

  _Dudley House._

      Virgin and Child with St. Joseph. JACOBUS CAMBARUS BONON. PER
      FRANCIAM AURIFABRUM HOC OPUS FIERI CURAVIT, 1495.

      Virgin and Child.

LUCCA.

  _San Frediano._

      The Virgin in glory blessed by Christ, with SS. Anselm,
      Augustin, Anthony, and David and Solomon.

      Scenes from the History of the Augustine order (_predella_).

  _Galleria Mansi da San Pellegrino._

      Madonna and Child.

MADRID.

  _Duke of Fernan Nunez._

      St. Sebastian.

MILAN.

  _Brera._

      Annunciation.

  _Casa Pertusati._

      Madonna and Saints. 1511.

MUNICH.

  _Pinakothek._

      Madonna of the Rose-garden. FRANCIA AURIFEX BONO. (_A copy is
      in the Berlin Museum, and another in the Pinacoteca, Bologna._)

      Madonna and Child (who holds a bird), with two angels.

PARIS.

  _Louvre._

      The Nativity.

      Christ on the Cross, with Job, the Virgin, and St. John.
      FRANCIA AURIFABER (_formerly in San Giobbe, Bologna_).

PARMA.

  _Accademia._

      Deposition. FRANCIA AURIFEX BONON. F.

      Madonna and Child, St. John the Baptist, and SS. Joseph,
      Benedict, Scolastica, and Placida. FRANCIA AURIFEX BONONIENSIS,
      F. MDXV.

      Madonna with the little St. John.

ROME.

  _Palazzo Borghese._

      St. Stephen. VINCENTII DESIDERII VOTUM FRA̅CIÆ EXPRESSUM MANU
      (_early work_).

      Madonna and Child.

ST. PETERSBURG.

  _Hermitage._

      Madonna and Child (_in the background the “Resurrection” and
      “Transfiguration”_). F. FRANCIA.

      Madonna and Child, with St. Jerome, St. Lawrence, and two
      angels. D.S. LUDOVICUS DE CALCINA. DECRETORU̅ DOCTOR CANONICUS.
      S.P BON REDIFICATOR AUCTORQ. DOMUS ET RESTAURATOR HUIUS ECLESIÆ
      FECIT FIERI. P. ME FRANCIAM AURIFICE̅ BONON. ANO. MCCCCC.

TURIN.

  _Museum._

      Pietà, with the Virgin, the Magdalen, the Evangelist, and a
      Saint. F. FRANCIA AURIFEX BONONIENSIS F. MDXV.

VIENNA.

  _Belvedere._

      Madonna and Child, with SS. John the Baptist, Francis, and
      Catherine (_repainted_).

  _Academy._

      Madonna and Child, with Saints (_repainted, and doubtful_).

  _Liechtenstein Gallery._

      Portrait of a Bolognese nobleman (_formerly ascribed to
      Raphael_).




PAINTINGS BY FRANCIA IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS IN ENGLAND EXHIBITED AT
VARIOUS TIMES.


AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION (1816-1852).

  Date.            Subject.                        Owner.

  1843. Madonna and Child, with St.
          Jerome and St. Francis            Hon. T. Frankland Lewis.
  1852. Baptism of our Saviour              Right Hon. H. Labouchere, M.P.
  1853. A Man’s Head                        John Freeborn, Esq.
  1861. Virgin and Child with Angels        W. F. Maitland, Esq.
  1863. Portrait of a Young Man             J. C. Robinson, Esq.

AT THE MANCHESTER ART TREASURES EXHIBITION, 1857.

  Cat. No.         Subject.                        Owner.

    81. The Baptism of Christ               Right Hon. H. Labouchere.
   108. The Madonna and Child, with St.
          Joseph                            Lord Ward.
   124. Madonna and Child                   Daniel Lee, Esq.
   127. Virgin and Child                    Lord Northwick.
   132. The Baptism                         The Queen (Hampton Court).
   146. St. Roch                            Sir W. R. Farquhar, Bart.

AT THE LEEDS ART TREASURES EXHIBITION, 1868.

  Cat. No.         Subject.                        Owner.

    60. Virgin and Child. Triptych          J. W. Faulkner, Esq.
    80. Head of a Saint                     Alexander Barker, Esq.
    83. Virgin and Child, with Saints
          Sixtus and Laurence               Wolsey Moreau, Esq.
    86. Saint                               Alexander Barker, Esq.
   248. Holy Family                         The Right Hon. the Speaker.

AT THE “EXHIBITION OF THE WORKS OF THE OLD MASTERS.”

  Date.            Subject.                        Owner.

  1871. The Virgin and Child                Earl of Dudley.
  1873. The Virgin and Child                J. F. Jesse, Esq.
  1876. The Virgin and Child—rocky
          landscape in distance             Thomas Sheffield, Esq.
  1879. St. Francis                         William Graham, Esq.
  1881. Portrait of the Painter             Sir William N. Abdy, Bart.
        Portrait of Giovanni Bentivoglio,
          of Bologna                                ”      ”




CHRONOLOGY


OF MANTEGNA.

  1431. Born in the neighbourhood of Padua.                    (_Page_ 3.)

  1441. Entered on the register of Paduan painters as the
          adopted son of his master Squarcione.                  (_P._ 3.)

  1448. Painted the altar-piece for Santa Sofia of Padua.        (_P._ 3.)

  1452. Painted the fresco over the portal of Sant’ Antonio.     (_P._ 3.)

  1452-58. Painted the frescoes of the Eremitani Church, and
          married Niccolosia Bellini.                        (_Pp._ 3-11.)

  1454. Painted the altar-piece for Santa Giustina, Padua.      (_P._ 14.)

  1456. Entered into correspondence with Lodovico Gonzaga.      (_P._ 14.)

  1457-59. Painted the altar-piece of San Zeno at Verona.       (_P._ 15.)

  1459. Settled at Mantua with his family.                      (_P._ 17.)

  1466. Visited Florence.                                       (_P._ 22.)

  1472. Visited Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Bologna.          (_P._ 22.)

    ”   Received a grant of land at Buscoldo.                   (_P._ 22.)

  1470-1474. Painted the frescoes of the Camera degli
          Sposi.                                            (_Pp._ 25-28.)

  1473. Received a grant of land in Mantua upon which he
          built his house.                                      (_P._ 29.)

  1481. Painted at Marmirolo.                                   (_P._ 30.)

  1483. Received a visit from Lorenzo de’ Medici.               (_P._ 30.)

  1485. Painted a Madonna for the Duchess of Ferrara.           (_P._ 32.)

  1485-1488. Painted the first pieces of the “Triumphs.”        (_P._ 32.)

  1488-1490. Painted the frescoes of the Belvedere Chapel
          of the Vatican for Innocent VIII.                     (_P._ 32.)

    ”   Painted the Madonna and Child of the Uffizi for
          Lorenzo de’ Medici.                                   (_P._ 34.)

  1490. Left Rome and returned to Mantua, Sept. 6.              (_P._ 34.)

  1490-92. Worked at the “Triumphs of Julius Cæsar” and
          completed the series.                                 (_P._ 39.)

  1492. Received a fresh grant of land from Francesco Gonzaga,
          Feb. 4.                                               (_P._ 43.)

  1494. Furnished his house in the parish of S. Sebastian.      (_P._ 43.)

  1495-96. Painted the Madonna della Vittoria.                  (_P._ 47.)

  1496-97. Painted an altar-piece for Santa Maria in Organo
          at Verona, now in Casa Trivulzi, Milan.               (_P._ 48.)

  1499. Designed a monument to Virgil.                          (_P._ 49.)

  1499. Marriage of his daughter Taddea to Viano Vianesi.       (_P._ 43.)

  1504. Made his first will, March 1.                           (_P._ 51.)

    ”   Entered into a contract with the Canons of Sant’
          Andrea by which he obtained possession of a chapel
          in that church, Aug. 11.                              (_P._ 51.)

    ”   Sold his house in Mantua.                               (_P._ 51.)

  1505. Disgrace and banishment of his son Francesco.           (_P._ 51.)

    ”   Painted the St. Sebastian of the Scarpa gallery,
          and the Triumph of Scipio for Francesco Cornaro.      (_P._ 52.)

    ”   Bought a house in the Contrada Unicorno.                (_P._ 53.)

  1506. Altered his will in favour of Gian’ Andrea, his
          illegitimate son, Jan. 24.                            (_P._ 51.)

    ”   Painted the Masque of Comus for Isabella Gonzaga.       (_P._ 53.)

    ”   Sold his bust of Faustina to Isabella’s agent, Aug. 1.  (_P._ 54.)

    ”   Died at Mantua, Sept. 13.                               (_P._ 54.)


OF FRANCIA.

  1450. Born at Bologna.                                        (_P._ 75.)

  1482. Entered the Goldsmiths’ Guild.                          (_P._ 76.)

  1483. Elected steward of the Guild.                           (_P._ 70.)

  1485. Birth of his son Giacomo.                               (_P._ 76.)

  1487. Birth of his son Giulio.                                (_P._ 76.)

  1489. Elected steward of the Goldsmiths’ Guild a second time. (_P._ 76.)

  1490. Painted his first altar-piece for Bartolommeo Felicini. (_P._ 79.)

  1495. Painted a Madonna and Child for Jacopo Gambaro.         (_P._ 81.)

  1499. Painted altar-pieces for the Bentivoglio Chapel and
          Church of the Misericordia.                           (_P._ 81.)

  1500. Painted altar-pieces for the Church of the
          Annunziata, and for San Lorenzo.                 (_Pp._ 84, 85.)

  1502. Painted Madonna and Saints for the Friars dell’
          Osservanza at Modena.                                (_P._ 100.)

  1505-1506. Painted frescoes of the Chapel of St. Cecilia.     (_P._ 94.)

  1507. Expulsion of the Bentivogli.                            (_P._ 97.)

  1508. Coined money for Pope Julius II.                        (_P._ 97.)

    ”   Sent his portrait to Raphael in Rome, Sept.             (_P._ 97.)

  1509. Painted the Baptism of Christ (now in the Dresden
          Gallery).                                             (_P._ 99.)

  1511. Elected one of the six Gonfalonieri of the People.     (_P._ 102.)

  1512. Elected steward of the Guild.                          (_P._ 103.)

  1514. Elected steward of the four Guilds.                    (_P._ 103.)

  1515. Painted Sanvitale altar-piece at Parma, and Pietà
          at Turin.                                            (_P._ 104.)

  1516. Raphael sent his St. Cecilia to Bologna.               (_P._ 105.)

  1517. (New style, 1518). Died, Jan. 5.                       (_P._ 106.)




FOOTNOTES


[1] Crowe and Cavalcaselle doubt that he went to Greece.

[2] We have Professor Colvin’s authority for assigning this print to
Mantegna, as well as the strong inference drawn from the likeness of the
engravings to the frescoes of the Castello di Corte. (Portfolio, vol. 8.)

[3] The Raphael Cartoons only realised £300.

[4] Crowe and Cavalcaselle doubt that Francia studied under Zoppo.

[5] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle. “A History of Painting in North Italy,”
Vol. I., p. 294. Crevalcore’s name, however, does not occur in the Berlin
official catalogue.

[6] No. 80, in the Pinacoteoa, Bologna.

[7] No. 81.

[8] At Tew Park, Oxfordshire.

[9] These two frescoes are usually ascribed to Giacomo Raibolini;
but Frizzoni and Milanese after him attribute them to Tamaroccio, who
assisted his master Francia in the chapel.

[10] The picture exhibited by Sir William Abdy at Burlington House last
winter (1881) as the painter’s own likeness has too little in common with
Francia’s style to be accepted as genuine with any certainty, although a
print of it, bearing the date 1763 and the name of the goldsmith painter,
is said to exist.

[11] In the lists of Mantegna’s and Francia’s works exhibited at the
British Institution, Manchester, Leeds, and the “Old Masters” at
Burlington House, the official catalogues have been strictly adhered
to; it must not be supposed that _every_ picture classed as the work
of Mantegna or of Francia is recognised as genuine by the critics; for
example, the Royal Academy merely catalogues the works “under the names
given to them by the contributors,” and “can accept no responsibility as
to their authenticity.”




BIBLIOGRAPHY.


CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE. A history of painting in North Italy. London,
1871.

MILANESI, GAETANO. Le opere di Giorgio Vasari; con nuove annotazioni e
Commenti di Milanesi. Firenze, 1879.


MANTEGNA.

GOETHE, J. W. VON. Triumphzug von Mantegna. Werke, XXXIX.

ARCO, CARLO D’. Delle Arti e degli Artifici di Mantova, notizie raccolte
ed illustrate con disegni e con documenti. Mantova, 1859.

BASCHET, ARMAND. Documents sur Mantegna. In the “Gazette des Beaux Arts.”
Paris, 1866.

BRAGHIROLLI, WILLELMO. Alcuni documenti inedite relative ad Andrea
Mantegna: in the “Giornale d’Erudizione Artistica.” Perugia, 1872.

BRUN, KARL. Neue Documente über Andrea Mantegna: in the “Zeitschrift für
Bildende Kunst,” vol. xi. Leipzig, 1875-6.

WOLTMANN, DR. ALFRED. Biography of ANDREA MANTEGNA in the “Kunst und
Künstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit.” Edited by DR. ROBERT DOHME.
Leipzig, 1876.


FRANCIA.

CALVI, JACOPO ALESSANDRO. Memorie della vita ed opere di Francesco
Raibolini. Bologna, 1812.

MALVASIA, CARLO CESARE. Felsina Pittrice. Vite de Pittori Bolognesi.
Bologna, 1841.

GIORDANI, GAETANO. Catalogo dei Quadri della Pinacoteca. Bologna, 1841.

AMORINI, ANTONIO BOLOGNINI, Marchese, Vite dei Pittori ed Artefici
Bolognesi. Bologna, 1841-43.

FRIZZONI, GUSTAVO. Gli Affreschi di Santa Cecilia in Bologna. Bologna,
1876.




INDEX.


TO MANTEGNA.

  Aldobrandini, 22

  Aliprandi, quarrel with, 23
    exchanged land with, 43

  Altichieri of Verona, 2

  Andrea, Zoan, 23, 35

  Ansuino of Forli, 5

  Ariosto, 59

  Avanzo, Jacopo d’, 2


  Barbaro, Daniele, 8

  Bellini, the, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17

  Bono of Ferrara, 5

  Bossi, Matteo, 13, 18

  Bust of Mantegna, 7


  Calandra, 54

  Camera degli Sposi, 25-28

  Campagnola, 35

  Caracalla, Baths of, 13

  Cerdo, Vitruvius, 13

  Donatello, 9, 12, 14

  Drawings—
    _Calumny of Apelles_, 45
    _Chalice, Design for_, 46
    _Entombment_, 45
    _Hercules killing the Lion_, 45
    _Judgment of Solomon_, 45
    _Judith_, 45, 46
    _Mars, Diana and Venus_, 45
    _Sagrifizio_, 45, 46

  Dürer, 36, 55

  Dwarfs at Mantua, 26


  Engravings—
    _Battle of the Sea-Gods_, 35, 45, 59
    _Dancing Muses of the Parnassus_, 35
    _Descent from the Cross_, 36
    _Entombment_, 36, 59, 62
    _Hercules and Antæus_, 36, 45
    _Portraits of Lodovico and Barbara Gonzaga_, 36
    _St. Andrew, St. Longinus and the Risen Christ_, 36
    _St. Sebastian_, 36
    _Scourging of Christ_, 4
    _Triumphs_, 35, 40
    _Virgin of the Grotto_, 18, 35

  Eremitani Frescoes, 4-11

  Este, Isabella d’, 31, 34


  Fancelli, 14

  Faustina, Mantegna’s, 53, 54, 56

  Feliciano, 13

  Finiguerra, 35


  Gian’ Andrea, 43, 50, 51

  Giotto, 1

  Giusto of Florence, 2

  Gonzaga, Federico, 30, 31

  Gonzaga, Francesco, 22

  Gonzaga, Francesco II., 32, 33, 43

  Gonzaga, Lodovico, 14, 15, 17, 21, 25, 26, 29, 30

  Gonzaga, Sigismondo, 51


  Influence of Mantegna on—
    Bellini, the, 57
    Bonsignori, 57
    Buonconsiglio, 57
    Caroto, 57
    Correggio, 58
    Costa, 57
    Dürer, 59
    Forli, Melozzo da, 58
    Francia, 58
    Holbein, 59
    Libri, Girolamo dai, 57
    Grandi, Ercole, 57
    Leonardo, 58, 60
    Liberale, 57
    Michelangelo, 58, 61
    Montagna, 57
    Morone, 57
    Raphael, 58, 60
    Rubens, 59
    Tura, Cosimo, 57
    Vivarini, Luigi, 57

  Innocent VIII., 32, 33


  Julius II., 54


  Lomazzo, 8

  Lorenzo di Pavia, 55


  Mantegna, Andrea (_See_ Chronology p. 119)

  Mantegna, Francesco, 51, 57

  Mantegna, Lodovico, 32, 43, 51

  Mantegna, Niccolosia, 43, 51

  Mantegna, Taddea, 43

  Mantua, sack of, 24

  Medici, Lorenzo de’, visits Mantegna, 30

  Melozzo da Forli, 28

  Mocetto, 35


  Niccolosia, 43, 51

  Norsa, 47


  Paintings—
    _Adoration of the Magi_, of the Uffizi, 18
      of the Vatican, 32
    _Autumn_, 19
    _Baptism of Christ_, 32
    _Birth of Christ_, 32
    _Burial of St. Christopher_, 10
    _Christ on the Mount of Olives_, 16
    _Cristo in Scurto_, 55
    _Comus_, 53
    _Dead Christ_, 19
    _Death of the Virgin_, 19
    _Descent of Christ into Limbo_, 34
    _Execution of St. James_, 9
    _Glorified Madonna_, of Milan, 48
    _History of St. James and St. Christopher_, 4-11
    _Lodovico Gonzaga and his son, Francesco_, 26
    _Lodovico Gonzaga and his wife_, 25
    _Madonna_, of Bergamo, 49
      _holding the child on a parapet_, 18
    _Madonna_, of the Dresden Gallery, 32
      of San Zeno, 15, 16
    _Madonna della Vittoria_, 46, 47, 48
    _Man of Sorrows_, 34
    _Martyrdom of St. Christopher_, 10
    _Parnassus_, 44, 48
    _Pietà_, 20
    _Portrait of an Ecclesiastic_, 18
    _Rubens’s copy of the Triumphs_, 41
    _SS. Anthony and Bernardino_, 3
    _St. Euphemia_, 14
    _St. George_, 19
    _St. James baptizing Converts_, 6
      _before Herod_, 7
      _blessing a kneeling disciple_, 7
    _St. Luke_, 14
    _St. Sebastian_, 19
      of La Motta, 52, 55
    _Summer_, 19
    _Triumphs of Julius Cæsar_, 32, 33, 38, 43, 46, 60
    _Triumph of Scipio_, 52, 55
    _Virgin_, of the National Gallery, 48
      of the Uffizi, 31, 34
    _Wisdom Victorious over the Vices_, 44

  Pannonio, 13

  Pizzolo, Niccolo, 5, 6, 18


  Santa Sofia, altar-piece for, 3

  Santi, Giovanni, 28

  Sperandio’s Bust of Mantegna, 56

  Squarcione, 2, 8, 14


  Uccelli, 8, 9, 12


  Vianesi, 43

  Virgil, Monument to, 49


  Zizim, 33

  Zoppo, Marco, 5


TO FRANCIA.

  Angelico, Fra, 107, 108

  Aspertini, 94, 95, 104

  Avanzi, Jacopo degli, 67, 68

  Avanzo, Jacopo d’, 68


  Bagnacavallo, 103

  Bentivoglio, Antonio Galeazzo Giovanni II., 73, 76, 81

  Bentivogli driven from Bologna, 97

  Bentivogli return to Bologna, 102

  Bernardino da Siena, 70


  Carracci, the, 69, 82, 106

  Casio, 80, 83

  Caterina, 76

  Chiodarolo, 94, 95

  Clement VIII., 67

  Cossa, Francesco, 73

  Costa, 73, 77, 78, 79, 94, 95

  Credi, Lorenzo di, 83

  Crevalcore, 80

  Cristofano, 70


  Dalmasii, Lippo, 66

  Domenichino, 106

  Drawings—
    _Greek Youths_, 93
    _Judgment of Paris_, 93


  Franco Bolognese, 65

  Felicini, 80, 83

  Francia (_See_ Chronology p. 120)


  Galassi, 68, 71, 72

  Gambaro, 81

  Gaston de Foix, 102

  Grandi, Ercole, 73
    Ercole II, 104

  Gubbio, Oderisio da, 65

  Guido of Bologna, 66

  Guido Reni, 106


  Imola, Innocenza da, 103


  Julius II, 97


  Lambertini, 72

  Landscape, 84

  Lianori, 72


  Mantegna, 72, 77

  Marchesi, 104

  Mezzaratta, Frescoes of the, 68, 69

  Michelangelo, 69


  Nadi, 94

  Niello work, 77


  Paintings—
    _Adoration of the Magi_, of the Brera, 84
      at Dresden, 100
    _Annunciation_, of the Annunziata, 85
      Bologna Gallery, 100
      of the Brera, 81
    _Baptism of Christ_, Dresden, 99
      Hampton Court, 100
    _Burial of St. Cecilia_, 95, 96
    _Coronation of the Virgin_, at Lucca, 91
      at Ferrara, 92
    _Crucifixion_, of the Louvre, 81
    _Deposition_, Parma, 89, 104
    _Dispute of Philosophers_, 92
    _God the Father_, 104
    _Holy Family_, of Berlin, 79
      of Dudley House, 81
    _Judith_, 92
    _Lucrezia_, 88, 98
    _Madonna_, of the Annunziata, 85
      Bentivoglio, 82
      Manzuoli, 82
      Parma Gallery, 100
      Dresden, 100
      National Gallery, 100
      Vienna, 100
      Berlin, 100
      St. Petersburg, 84
      San Martino, 84
      Munich, 81
      of 1490, 79
      of 1511, 104
    _Madonna of the Rose Garden_, 100
    _Marriage of Cecilia and Valerian_, 95
    _Nativity_, of Bologna, 82
      of Forli, 92
    _Pietà_, at Bologna, 81
      of the National Gallery, 89, 90
      Turin Gallery, 104
    _Portrait of Bartolommeo Bianchini_, 79
      _Evangelista Scappi_, 99
      _a Bolognese Noble_, 99
    _Presentation_, of Cesena, 92
    _St. Stephen_, 78
    _Virgin enthroned with Saints_, of National Gallery, 91

  Paxes, by Francia, 77

  Perugino, 80, 83

  Pietro della Francesca, 72


  Raibolini, Francesco (_See_ Chronology p. 120)

  Raibolini, Giacomo, 94, 95, 76, 103
    Giulio, 76, 103

  Raimondi, 93

  Raphael, Francia’s friendship for, 86

  Raphael visits Bologna, 87
    and Francia exchange pictures, 88
    Sonnet to, 88
    influence of, 95
    letter of, 97
    sends his altar-piece to Francia, 105


  St. Cecilia, Frescoes in Oratory of, 94, 95

  Simone dai Crocifissi, 67, 68, 71


  Tamaroccio, 94, 95


  Ursone, 65


  Ventura, 65

  Vigri, Santa Caterina, 72

  Vitale, 66, 70

  Viti, Timoteo, 87


  Zoppo, Marco, 73, 77, 78



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