A Text-Book of the History of Painting Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42.--GIULIO ROMANO. APOLLO AND MUSES. PITTI.]

The influence of Raphael's example was largely felt throughout Central Italy, and even at the north, resulting in many imitators and followers, who tried to produce Raphaelesque effects. Their efforts were usually successful in precipitating charm into sweetness and sentiment into sentimentality. Francesco Penni (1488?-1528) seems to have been content to work under Raphael with some ability. Giulio Romano (1492-1546) was the strongest of the pupils, and became the founder and leader of the Roman school, which had considerable influence upon the painters of the Decadence. He adopted the cla.s.sic subject and tried to adopt Raphael's style, but he was not completely successful. Raphael's refinement in Giulio's hands became exaggerated coa.r.s.eness. He was a good draughtsman, but rather hot as a colorist, and a composer of violent, restless, and, at times, contorted groups.

He was a prolific painter, but his work tended toward the baroque style, and had a bad influence on the succeeding schools.

Primaticcio (1504-1570) was one of his followers, and had much to do with the founding of the school of Fontainebleau in France. Giovanni da Udine (1487-1564), a Venetian trained painter, became a follower of Raphael, his only originality showing in decorative designs. Perino del Vaga (1500-1547) was of the same cast of mind. Andrea Sabbatini (1480?-1545) carried Raphael's types and methods to the south of Italy, and some artists at Bologna, and in Umbria, like Innocenza da Imola (1494-1550?), and Timoteo di Viti (1467-1523), adopted the Raphael type and method to the detriment of what native talent they may have possessed, though about Timoteo there is some doubt whether he adopted Raphael's type, or Raphael his type.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: FLORENTINES--Fra Bartolommeo, Descent from the Cross Salvator Mundi St. Mark Pitti, Madonnas and Prophets Uffizi, other pictures Florence Acad., Louvre, Vienna Gal.; Albertinelli, Visitation Uffizi, Christ Magdalene Madonna Louvre, Trinity Madonna Florence Acad., Annunciation Munich Gal.; Fra Paolino, works at San Spirito Sienna, S. Domenico and S. Paolo Pistoia, Madonna Florence Acad.; Bugiardini, Madonna Uffizi, St. Catherine S. M.

Novella Florence, Nativity Berlin, St. Catherine Bologna Gal.; Granacci, altar-pieces Uffizi, Pitti, Acad. Florence, Berlin and Munich Gals.; Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, S. Zen.o.bio pictures Uffizi, also Louvre and Berlin Gal.; Andrea del Sarto, many pictures in Uffizi and Pitti, Louvre, Berlin, Dresden, Madrid, Nat. Gal. Lon., frescos S. Annunziata and the Scalzo Florence; Pontormo, frescos Annunziata Florence, Visitation and Madonna Louvre, portrait Berlin Gal., Supper at Emmaus Florence Acad., other works Uffizi; Franciabigio, frescos courts of the Servi and Scalzo Florence, Bathsheba Dresden Gal., many portraits in Louvre, Pitti, Berlin Gal.; Michael Angelo, frescos Sistine Rome, Holy Family Uffizi; Daniele da Volterra, frescos Hist. of Cross Trinita de'

Monti Rome, Innocents Uffizi; Venusti, frescos Castel San Angelo, S. Spirito Rome, Annunciation St. John Lateran Rome; Sebastiano del Piombo, Lazarus Nat. Gal. Lon., Pieta Viterbo, Fornarina Uffizi (ascribed to Raphael) Fornarina and Christ Bearing Cross Berlin and Dresden Gals., Agatha Pitti, Visitation Louvre, portrait Doria Gal. Rome; Raphael, Marriage of Virgin Brera, Madonna and Vision of Knight Nat.

Gal. Lon., Madonnas St. Michael and St. George Louvre, many Madonnas and portraits in Uffizi, Pitti, Munich, Vienna, St.

Petersburgh, Madrid Gals., Sistine Madonna Dresden, chief frescos Vatican Rome.

ROMANS: Giulio Romano, frescos Sala di Constantino Vatican Rome (with Francesco Penni after Raphael), Palazzo del Te Mantua, St. Stephen, S. Stefano Genoa, Holy Family Dresden Gal., other works in Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon., Pitti, Uffizi; Primaticcio, works attributed to him doubtful--Scipio Louvre, Lady at Toilet and Venus Musee de Cluny; Giovanni da Udine, decorations, arabesques and grotesques in Vatican Loggia; Perino del Vaga, Hist. of Joshua and David Vatican (with Raphael), frescos Trinita de' Monti and Castel S.

Angelo Rome, Creation of Eve S. Marcello Rome; Sabbatini, Adoration Naples Mus., altar-pieces in Naples and Salerno churches; Innocenza da Imola, works in Bologna, Berlin and Munich Gals.; Timoteo di Viti, Church of the Pace Rome (after Raphael), madonnas and Magdalene Brera, Acad. of St.

Luke Rome, Bologna Gal., S. Domenico Urbino, Gubbio Cathedral.

CHAPTER IX.

ITALIAN PAINTING.

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE, 1500-1600.--CONTINUED.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: The works on Italian art before mentioned and consult also the General Bibliography (p. xv.)

LEONARDO DA VINCI AND THE MILANESE: The third person in the great Florentine trinity of painters was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the other two being Michael Angelo and Raphael. He greatly influenced the school of Milan, and has usually been cla.s.sed with the Milanese, yet he was educated in Florence, in the workshop of Verrocchio, and was so universal in thought and methods that he hardly belongs to any school.

He has been named a realist, an idealist, a magician, a wizard, a dreamer, and finally a scientist, by different writers, yet he was none of these things while being all of them--a full-rounded, universal man, learned in many departments and excelling in whatever he undertook. He had the scientific and experimental way of looking at things. That is perhaps to be regretted, since it resulted in his experimenting with everything and completing little of anything. His different tastes and pursuits pulled him different ways, and his knowledge made him sceptical of his own powers. He pondered and thought how to reach up higher, how to penetrate deeper, how to realize more comprehensively, and in the end he gave up in despair. He could not fulfil his ideal of the head of Christ nor the head of Mona Lisa, and after years of labor he left them unfinished. The problem of human life, the spirit, the world engrossed him, and all his creations seem impregnated with the psychological, the mystical, the unattainable, the hidden.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 43.--LEONARDO DA VINCI. MONA LISA. LOUVRE.]

He was no religionist, though painting the religious subject with feeling; he was not in any sense a cla.s.sicist, nor had he any care for the antique marbles, which he considered a study of nature at second-hand. He was more in love with physical life without being an enthusiast over it. His regard for contours, rhythm of line, blend of light with shade, study of atmosphere, perspective, trees, animals, humanity, show that though he examined nature scientifically, he pictured it aesthetically. In his types there is much sweetness of soul, charm of disposition, dignity of mien, even grandeur and majesty of presence. His people we would like to know better. They are full of life, intelligence, sympathy; they have fascination of manner, winsomeness of mood, grace of bearing. We see this in his best-known work--the Mona Lisa of the Louvre. It has much allurement of personal presence, with a depth and abundance of soul altogether charming.

Technically, Leonardo was not a handler of the brush superior in any way to his Florentine contemporaries. He knew all the methods and mediums of the time, and did much to establish oil-painting among the Florentines, but he was never a painter like t.i.tian, or even Correggio or Andrea del Sarto. A splendid draughtsman, a man of invention, imagination, grace, elegance, and power, he nevertheless carried more by mental penetration and aesthetic sense than by his technical skill.

He was one of the great men of the Renaissance, and deservedly holds a place in the front rank.

Though Leonardo's accomplishment seems slight because of the little that is left to us, yet he had a great following not only among the Florentines but at Milan, where Vincenza Foppa had started a school in the Early Renaissance time. Leonardo was there for fourteen years, and his artistic personality influenced many painters to adopt his type and methods. Bernardino Luini (1475?-1532?) was the most prominent of the disciples. He cultivated Leonardo's sentiment, style, subjects, and composition in his middle period, but later on developed independence and originality. He came at a period of art when that earnestness of characterization which marked the early men was giving way to gracefulness of recitation, and that was the chief feature of his art. For that matter gracefulness and pathetic sweetness of mood, with purity of line and warmth of color characterized all the Milanese painters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44.--LUINI. DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS WITH HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. UFFIZI.]

The more prominent lights of the school were Salaino (fl. 1495-1518), of whose work nothing authentic exists, Boltraffio (1467-1516), a painter of limitations but of much refinement and purity, and Marco da Oggiono (1470?-1530) a close follower of Leonardo. Solario (1458?-1515?) probably became acquainted early with the Flemish mode of working practised by Antonello da Messina, but he afterward came under Leonardo's spell at Milan. He was a careful, refined painter, possessed of feeling and tenderness, producing pictures with enamelled surfaces and much detail. Gianpietrino (fl. 1520-1540) and Cesare da Sesto (1477-1523?) were also of the Milanese school, the latter afterward falling under the Raphael influence. Gaudenzio Ferrara (1481?-1547?), an exceptionally brilliant colorist and a painter of much distinction, was under Leonardo's influence at one time, and with the teachings of that master he mingled a little of Raphael in the type of face. He was an uneven painter, often excessive in sentiment, but at his best one of the most charming of the northern painters.

SODOMA AND THE SIENNESE: Sienna, alive in the fourteenth century to all that was stirring in art, in the fifteenth century was in complete eclipse, no painters of consequence emanating from there or being established there. In the sixteenth century there was a revival of art because of a northern painter settling there and building up a new school. This painter was Sodoma (1477?-1549). He was one of the best pupils of Leonardo da Vinci, a master of the human figure, handling it with much grace and charm of expression, but not so successful with groups or studied compositions, wherein he was inclined to huddle and over-crowd s.p.a.ce. He was afterward led off by the brilliant success of Raphael, and adopted something of that master's style. His best work was done in fresco, though he did some easel pictures that have darkened very much through time. He was a friend of Raphael, and his portrait appears beside Raphael's in the latter painter's celebrated School of Athens. The pupils and followers of the Siennese School were not men of great strength. Pacchiarotta (1474-1540?), Girolamo della Pacchia (1477-1535), Peruzzi (1481-1536), a half-Lombard half-Umbrian painter of ability, and Beccafumi (1486-1551) were the princ.i.p.al lights. The influence of the school was slight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 45.--SODOMA. ECSTASY OF ST. CATHERINE. SIENNA.]

FERRARA AND BOLOGNESE SCHOOLS: The painters of these schools during the sixteenth century have usually been cla.s.sed among the followers and imitators of Raphael, but not without some injustice. The influence of Raphael was great throughout Central Italy, and the Ferrarese and Bolognese felt it, but not to the extinction of their native thought and methods. Moreover, there was some influence in color coming from the Venetian school, but again not to the entire extinction of Ferrarese individuality. Dosso Dossi (1479?-1541), at Ferrara, a pupil of Lorenzo Costa, was the chief painter of the time, and he showed more of Giorgione in color and light-and-shade than anyone else, yet he never abandoned the yellows, greens, and reds peculiar to Ferrara, and both he and Garofolo were strikingly original in their background landscapes. Garofolo (1481-1559) was a pupil of Panetti and Costa, who made several visits to Rome and there fell in love with Raphael's work, which showed in a fondness for the sweep and flow of line, in the type of face adopted, and in the calmness of his many easel pictures. He was not so dramatic a painter as Dosso, and in addition he had certain mannerisms or earmarks, such as sootiness in his flesh tints and brightness in his yellows and greens, with dulness in his reds. He was always Ferrarese in his landscapes and in the main characteristics of his technic. Mazzolino (1478?-1528?) was another of the school, probably a pupil of Panetti. He was an elaborate painter, fond of architectural backgrounds and glowing colors enlivened with gold in the high lights. Bagnacavallo (1484-1542) was a pupil of Francia at Bologna, but with much of Dosso and Ferrara about him. He, in common with Imola, already mentioned, was indebted to the art of Raphael.

CORREGGIO AT PARMA: In Correggio (1494?-1534) all the Boccaccio nature of the Renaissance came to the surface. It was indicated in Andrea del Sarto--this nature-wors.h.i.+p--but Correggio was the consummation. He was the Faun of the Renaissance, the painter with whom the beauty of the human as distinguished from the religious and the cla.s.sic showed at its very strongest. Free animal spirits, laughing madonnas, raving nymphs, excited children of the wood, and angels of the sky pa.s.s and repa.s.s through his pictures in an atmosphere of pure sensuousness.

They appeal to us not religiously, not historically, not intellectually, but sensuously and artistically through their rhythmic lines, their palpitating flesh, their beauty of color, and in the light and atmosphere that surround them. He was less of a religionist than Andrea del Sarto. Religion in art was losing ground in his day, and the liberality and worldliness of its teachers appeared clearly enough in the decorations of the Convent of St. Paul at Parma, where Correggio was allowed to paint mythological Dianas and Cupids in the place of saints and madonnas. True enough, he painted the religious subject very often, but with the same spirit of life and joyousness as profane subjects.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 46--CORREGGIO. MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE AND CHRIST. LOUVRE.]

The cla.s.sic subject seemed more appropriate to his spirit, and yet he knew and probably cared less about it than the religious subject. His Dianas and Ledas are only so in name. They have little of the h.e.l.lenic spirit about them, and for the sterner, heroic phases of cla.s.sicism--the lofty, the grand--Correggio never essayed them. The things of this earth and the sweetness thereof seemed ever his aim.

Women and children were beautiful to him in the same way that flowers and trees and skies and sunsets were beautiful. They were revelations of grace, charm, tenderness, light, shade, color. Simply to exist and be glad in the sunlight was sweetness to Correggio. He would have no Sibylesque mystery, no prophetic austerity, no solemnity, no great intellectuality. He was no leader of a tragic chorus. The dramatic, the forceful, the powerful, were foreign to his mood. He was a singer of lyrics and pastorals, a lover of the material beauty about him, and it is because he pa.s.sed by the pietistic, the cla.s.sic, the literary, and showed the beauty of physical life as an art motive that he is called the Faun of the Renaissance. The appellation is not inappropriate.

How or why he came to take this course would be hard to determine. It was reflective of the times; but Correggio, so far as history tells us, had little to do with the movements and people of his age. He was born and lived and died near Parma, and is sometimes cla.s.sed among the Bologna-Ferrara painters, but the reasons for the cla.s.sification are not too strong. His education, masters, and influences are all shadowy and indefinite. He seems, from his drawing and composition, to have known something of Mantegna at Mantua; from his coloring something of Dosso and Garofolo, especially in his straw-yellows; from his early types and faces something of Costa and Francia, and his contours and light-and-shade indicate a knowledge of Leonardo's work. But there is no positive certainty that he saw the work of any of these men.

His drawing was faulty at times, but not obtrusively so; his color and brush-work rich, vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm, penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. In composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. It was his technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. And in this very feature he was one of the first men in Renaissance Italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks through a tapestry of rich colors. That is art for art's sake, and that, as will be seen further on, was the picture motive of the great Venetians.

Correggio's immediate pupils and followers, like those of Raphael and Andrea del Sarto, did him small honor. As was usually the case in Renaissance art-history they caught at the method and lost the spirit of the master. His son, Pomponio Allegri (1521-1593?), was a painter of some mark without being in the front rank. Michelangelo Anselmi (1491-1554?), though not a pupil, was an indifferent imitator of Correggio. Parmigianino (1504-1540), a mannered painter of some brilliancy, and of excellence in portraits, was perhaps the best of the immediate followers. It was not until after Correggio's death, and with the painters of the Decadence, that his work was seriously taken up and followed.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: MILANESE--Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper S.

M. delle Grazie Milan (in ruins), Mona Lisa, Madonna with St. Anne (badly damaged) Louvre, Adoration (unfinished) Uffizi, Angel at left in Verrocchio's Baptism Florence Acad.; Luini, frescos Monastero Maggiore, 71 fragments in Brera Milan, Church of the Pilgrims Sarrona, S. M. degli Angeli Lugano, altar-pieces Duomo Como, Ambrosian Library Milan, Brera, Uffizi, Louvre, Madrid, St. Petersburgh, and other galleries; Beltraffio, Madonna Louvre, Barbara Berlin Gal., Madonna Nat. Gal. Lon., fresco Convent of S. Onofrio Rome (ascribed to Da Vinci); Marco da Oggiono, Archangels and other works Brera, Holy Family Madonna Louvre; Solario, Ecce h.o.m.o Repose Poldi-Pezzoli Gal. Milan, Holy Family Brera, Madonna Portrait Louvre, Portraits Nat. Gal. Lon., a.s.sumption Certosa of Pavia; Giampietrino, Magdalene Brera, Madonna S. Sepolcro Milan, Magdalene and Catherine Berlin Gal.; Cesare da Sesto, Madonna Brera, Magi Naples Mus.; Gaudenzio Ferrara, frescos Church of Pilgrims Saronna, other pictures in Brera, Turin Gal., S. Gaudenzio Novara, S. Celso Milan.

SIENNESE--Sodoma, frescos Convent of St. Anne near Pienza, Benedictine Convent of Mont' Oliveto Maggiore, Alexander and Roxana Villa Farnesina Rome, S. Bernardino Palazzo Pubblico, S. Domenico Sienna, pictures Uffizi, Brera, Munich, Vienna Gals.; Pacchiarotto, Ascension Visitation Sienna Gal.; Girolamo del Pacchia, frescos (3) S. Bernardino, altar-pieces S. Spirito and Sienna Acad., Munich and Nat.

Gal. Lon.; Peruzzi, fresco Fontegiuste Sienna, S. Onofrio, S. M. della Pace Rome; Beccafumi, St. Catherine Saints Sienna Acad., frescos S. Bernardino Hospital and S. Martino Sienna, Palazzo Doria Rome, Pitti, Berlin, Munich Gals.

FERRARESE AND BOLOGNESE--Dosso Dossi, many works Ferrara Modena Gals., Duomo S. Pietro Modena, Brera, Borghese, Doria, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Gals.; Garofolo, many works Ferrara churches and Gal., Borghese, Campigdoglio, Louvre, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Mazzolino, Ferrara, Berlin, Dresden, Louvre, Doria, Borghese, Pitti, Uffizi, and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Bagnacavallo, Misericordia and Gal. Bologna, Louvre, Berlin, Dresden Gals.

PARMESE--Correggio, frescos Convent of S. Paolo, S. Giovanni Evangelista, Duomo Parma, altar-pieces Dresden (4), Parma Gals., Louvre, mythological pictures Antiope Louvre, Danae Borghese, Leda Jupiter and Io Berlin, Venus Mercury and Cupid Nat. Gal. Lon., Ganymede Vienna Gal.; Pomponio Allegri, frescos Capella del Popolo Parma; Anselmi, frescos S. Giovanni Evangelista, altar-pieces Madonna della Steccata, Duomo, Gal. Parma, Louvre; Parmigianino, frescos Moses Steccata, S. Giovanni Parma, altar-pieces Santa Margherita, Bologna Gal., Madonna Pitti, portraits Uffizi, Vienna, Naples Mus., other works Dresden, Vienna, and Nat.

Gal. Lon.

CHAPTER X.

ITALIAN PAINTING.

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE. 1500-1600. (_Continued._)

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: The works on Italian art before mentioned and also consult General Bibliography, (page xv.).

THE VENETIAN SCHOOL: It was at Venice and with the Venetian painters of the sixteenth century that a new art-motive was finally and fully adopted. This art-motive was not religion. For though the religious subject was still largely used, the religious or pietistic belief was not with the Venetians any more than with Correggio. It was not a cla.s.sic, antique, realistic, or naturalistic motive. The Venetians were interested in all phases of nature, and they were students of nature, but not students of truth for truth's sake.

What they sought, primarily, was the light and shade on a nude shoulder, the delicate contours of a form, the flow and fall of silk or brocade, the richness of a robe, a scheme of color or of light, the character of a face, the majesty of a figure. They were seeking effects of line, light, color--mere sensuous and pictorial effects, in which religion and cla.s.sicism played secondary parts. They believed in art for art's sake; that painting was a creation, not an ill.u.s.tration; that it should exist by its pictorial beauties, not by its subject or story. No matter what their subjects, they invariably painted them so as to show the beauties they prized the highest. The Venetian conception was less austere, grand, intellectual, than pictorial, sensuous, concerning the beautiful as it appealed to the eye. And this was not a slight or unworthy conception. True it dealt with the fulness of material life, but regarded as it was by the Venetians--a thing full-rounded, complete, harmonious, splendid--it became a great ideal of existence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.--GIORGIONE(?). ORDEAL OF MOSES. UFFIZI.]

In technical expression color was the note of all the school, with hardly an exception. This in itself would seem to imply a lightness of spirit, for color is somehow a.s.sociated in the popular mind with decorative gayety; but nothing could be further removed from the Venetian school than triviality. Color was taken up with the greatest seriousness, and handled in such ma.s.ses and with such dignified power that while it pleased it also awed the spectator. Without having quite the severity of line, some of the Venetian chromatic schemes rise in sublimity almost to the Sistine modellings of Michael Angelo. We do not feel this so much in Giovanni Bellini, fine in color as he was. He came too early for the full splendor, but he left many pupils who completed what he had inaugurated.

THE GREAT VENETIANS: The most positive in influence upon his contemporaries of all the great Venetians was Giorgione (1477?-1511).

He died young, and what few pictures by him are left to us have been so torn to pieces by historical criticism that at times one begins to doubt if there ever was such a painter. His different styles have been confused, and his pictures in consequence thereof attributed to followers instead of to the master. Painters change their styles, but seldom their original bent of mind. With Giorgione there was a lyric feeling as shown in music. The voluptuous swell of line, the melting tone of color, the sharp dash of light, the undercurrent of atmosphere, all mingled for him into radiant melody. He sought pure pictorial beauty and found it in everything of nature. He had little grasp of the purely intellectual, and the religious was something he dealt with in no strong devotional way. The fete, the concert, the fable, the legend, with a landscape setting, made a stronger appeal to him. More of a recorder than a thinker he was not the less a leader showing the way into that new Arcadian grove of pleasure whose inhabitants thought not of creeds and faiths and histories and literatures, but were content to lead the life that was sweet in its glow and warmth of color, its light, its shadows, its bending trees, and arching skies. A strong full-blooded race, sober-minded, dignified, rationally happy with their lot, Giorgione portrayed them with an art infinite in variety and consummate in skill. Their least features under his brush seemed to glow like jewels. The sheen of armor and rich robe, a bare forearm, a nude back, or loosened hair--mere morsels of color and light--all took on a new beauty. Even landscape with him became more significant. His master, Bellini, had been realistic enough in the details of trees and hills, but Giorgione grasped the meaning of landscape as an entirety, and rendered it with poetic breadth.