A Text-Book of the History of Painting Part 8

Technically he adopted the oil medium brought to Venice by Antonello da Messina, introducing sc.u.mbling and glazing to obtain brilliancy and depth of color. Of light-and-shade he was a master, and in atmosphere excellent. He, in common with all the Venetians, is sometimes said to be lacking in drawing, but that is the result of a misunderstanding.

The Venetians never cared to accent line, choosing rather to model in ma.s.ses of light and shadow and color. Giorgione was a superior man with the brush, but not quite up to his contemporary t.i.tian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.--t.i.tIAN. VENUS EQUIPPING CUPID. BORGHESE PAL., ROME.]

That is not surprising, for t.i.tian (1477-1576) was the painter easily first in the whole range of Italian art. He was the first man in the history of painting to handle a brush with freedom, vigor, and gusto.

And t.i.tian's brush-work was probably the least part of his genius.

Calm in mood, dignified, and often majestic in conception, learned beyond all others in his craft, he mingled thought, feeling, color, brush-work into one grand and glowing whole. He emphasized nothing, yet elevated everything. In pure intellectual thought he was not so strong as Raphael. He never sought to make painting a vehicle for theological, literary, or cla.s.sical ideas. His tale was largely of humanity under a religious or cla.s.sical name, but a n.o.ble, majestic humanity. In his art dignified senators, stern doges, and solemn ecclesiastics mingle with open-eyed madonnas, winning Ariadnes, and youthful Bacchuses. Men and women they are truly, but the very n.o.blest of the Italian race, the mountain race of the Cadore country--proud, active, glowing with life; the sea race of Venice--worldly wise, full of character, luxurious in power.

In himself he was an epitome of all the excellences of painting. He was everything, the sum of Venetian skill, the crowning genius of Renaissance art. He had force, power, invention, imagination, point of view; he had the infinite knowledge of nature and the infinite mastery of art. In addition, Fortune smiled upon him as upon a favorite child.

Trained in mind and hand he lived for ninety-nine years and worked unceasingly up to a few months of his death. His genius was great and his accomplishment equally so. He was celebrated and independent at thirty-five, though before that he showed something of the influence of Giorgione. After the death of Giorgione and his master, Bellini, t.i.tian was the leader in Venice to the end of his long life, and though having few scholars of importance his influence was spread through all North Italian painting.

Taking him for all in all, perhaps it is not too much to say that he was the greatest painter known to history. If it were possible to describe that greatness in one word, that word would be "universality." He saw and painted that which was universal in its truth. The local and particular, the small and the accidental, were pa.s.sed over for those great truths which belong to all the world of life. In this respect he was a veritable Shakespeare, with all the calmness and repose of one who overlooked the world from a lofty height.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 49.--TINTORETTO. MERCURY AND GRACES. DUCAL PAL., VENICE.]

The restfulness and easy strength of t.i.tian were not characteristics of his follower Tintoretto (1518-1592). He was violent, headlong, impulsive, more impetuous than Michael Angelo, and in some respects a strong reminder of him. He had not Michael Angelo's austerity, and there was more clash and tumult and fire about him, but he had a command of line like the Florentine, and a way of hurling things, as seen in the Fall of the d.a.m.ned, that reminds one of the Last Judgment of the Sistine. It was his aim to combine the line of Michael Angelo and the color of t.i.tian; but without reaching up to either of his models he produced a powerful amalgam of his own.

He was one of the very great artists of the world, and the most rapid workman in the whole Renaissance period. There are to-day, after centuries of decay, fire, theft, and repainting, yards upon yards of Tintoretto's canvases rotting upon the walls of the Venetian churches.

He produced an enormous amount of work, and, what is to be regretted, much of it was contract work or experimental sketching. This has given his art a rather bad name, but judged by his best works in the Ducal Palace and the Academy at Venice, he will not be found lacking. Even in his masterpiece (The Miracle of the Slave) he is "Il Furioso," as they used to call him; but his thunderbolt style is held in check by wonderful grace, strength of modelling, superb contrasts of light with shade, and a coloring of flesh and robes not unworthy of the very greatest. He was a man who worked in the white heat of pa.s.sion, with much imagination and invention. As a technician he sought difficulties rather than avoided them. There is some antagonism between form and color, but Tintoretto tried to reconcile them. The result was sometimes clas.h.i.+ng, but no one could have done better with them than he did. He was a fine draughtsman, a good colorist, and a master of light. As a brushman he was a superior man, but not equal to t.i.tian.

Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), the fourth great Venetian, did not follow the line direction set by Tintoretto, but carried out the original color-leaning of the school. He came a little later than Tintoretto, and his art was a reflection of the advancing Renaissance, wherein simplicity was destined to lose itself in complexity, grandeur, and display. Paolo came on the very crest of the Renaissance wave, when art, risen to its greatest height, was gleaming in that transparent splendor that precedes the fall.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 50.--P. VERONESE. VENICE ENTHRONED. DUCAL PAL., VENICE.]

The great bulk of his work had a large decorative motive behind it.

Almost all of the late Venetian work was of that character. Hence it was brilliant in color, elaborate in subject, and grand in scale.

Splendid robes, hangings, furniture, architecture, jewels, armor, appeared everywhere, and not in flat, l.u.s.treless hues, but with that brilliancy which they possess in nature. Drapery gave way to clothing, and texture-painting was introduced even in the largest canvases.

Scenes from Scripture and legend turned into grand pageants of Venetian glory, and the facial expression of the characters rather pa.s.sed out in favor of telling ma.s.ses of color to be seen at a distance upon wall or ceiling. It was pomp and glory carried to the highest pitch, but with all seriousness of mood and truthfulness in art. It was beyond t.i.tian in variety, richness, ornament, facility; but it was perhaps below t.i.tian in sentiment, sobriety, and depth of insight. t.i.tian, with all his sensuous beauty, did appeal to the higher intelligence, while Paolo and his companions appealed more positively to the eye by luxurious color-setting and magnificence of invention. The decadence came after Paolo, but not with him. His art was the most gorgeous of the Venetian school, and by many is ranked the highest of all, but perhaps it is better to say it was the height.

Those who came after brought about the decline by striving to imitate his splendor, and thereby falling into extravagance.

These are the four great Venetians--the men of first rank. Beside them and around them were many other painters, placed in the second rank, who in any other time or city would have held first place. Palma il Vecchio (1480?-1528) was so excellent in many ways that it seems unjust to speak of him as a secondary painter. He was not, however, a great original mind, though in many respects a perfect painter. He was influenced by Bellini at first, and then by Giorgione. In subject there was nothing dramatic about him, and he carries chiefly by his portrayal of quiet, dignified, and beautiful Venetians under the names of saints and holy families. The St. Barbara is an example of this, and one of the most majestic figures in all painting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51.--LOTTO. THREE AGES. PITTI.]

Palma's friend and fellow-worker, Lorenzo Lotto (1480?-1556?) came from the school of the Bellini, and at different times was under the influence of several Venetian painters--Palma, Giorgione, t.i.tian--without obliterating a sensitive individuality of his own. He was a somewhat mannered but very charming painter, and in portraits can hardly be cla.s.sed below t.i.tian. Rocco Marconi (fl. 1505-1520) was another Bellini-educated painter, showing the influence of Palma and even of Paris Bordone. In color and landscape he was excellent.

Pordenone (1483-1540) rather followed after Giorgione, and unsuccessfully competed with t.i.tian. He was inclined to exaggeration in dramatic composition, but was a painter of undeniable power.

Cariani (1480-1541) was another Giorgione follower. Bonifazio Pitati probably came from a Veronese family. He showed the influence of Palma, and was rather deficient in drawing, though exceedingly brilliant and rich in coloring. This latter may be said for Paris Bordone (1495-1570), a painter of t.i.tian's school, gorgeous in color, but often lacking in truth of form. His portraits are very fine.

Another painter family, the Ba.s.sani--there were six of them, of whom Jacopo Ba.s.sano (1510-1592) and his son Frances...o...b...s.sano (1550-1591), were the most noted--formed themselves after Venetian masters, and were rather remarkable for violent contrasts of light and dark, _genre_ treatment of sacred subjects, and still-life and animal painting.

PAINTING IN VENETIAN TERRITORIES: Venetian painting was not confined to Venice, but extended through all the Venetian territories in Renaissance times, and those who lived away from the city were, in their art, decidedly Venetian, though possessing local characteristics.

At Brescia Savoldo (1480?-1548), a rather superficial painter, fond of weird lights and sheeny draperies, and Romanino (1485?-1566), a follower of Giorgione, good in composition but unequal and careless in execution, were the earliest of the High Renaissance men. Moretto (1498?-1555) was the strongest and most original, a man of individuality and power, remarkable technically for his delicacy and unity of color under a veil of "silvery tone." In composition he was dignified and n.o.ble, and in brush-work simple and direct. One of the great painters of the time, he seemed to stand more apart from Venetian influence than any other on Venetian territory. He left one remarkable pupil, Moroni (fl. 1549-1578) whose portraits are to-day the gems of several galleries, and greatly admired for their modern spirit and treatment.

At Verona Caroto and Girolamo dai Libri (1474-1555), though living into the sixteenth century were more allied to the art of the fifteenth century. Torbido (1486?-1546?) was a vacillating painter, influenced by Liberale da Verona, Giorgione, Bonifazio Veronese, and later, even by Giulio Romano. Cavazzola (1486-1522) was more original, and a man of talent. There were numbers of other painters scattered all through the Venetian provinces at this time, but they were not of the first, or even the second rank, and hence call for no mention here.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: Giorgione, Fete Rustique Louvre, Sleeping Venus Dresden, altar-piece Castelfranco, Ordeal of Moses Judgment of Solomon Knight of Malta Uffizi; t.i.tian, Sacred and Profane Love Borghese, Tribute Money Dresden, Annunciation S. Rocco, Pesaro Madonna Frari Venice, Entombment Man with Glove Louvre, Bacchus Nat. Gal. Lon., Charles V. Madrid, Danae Naples, many other works in almost every European gallery; Tintoretto, many works in Venetian churches, Salute SS. Giovanni e Paolo S. Maria dell' Orto Scuola and Church of S. Rocco Ducal Palace Venice Acad.

(best work Miracle of Slave); Paolo Veronese, many Pictures in S. Sebastiano Ducal Palace Academy Venice, Pitti, Uffizi, Brera, Capitoline and Borghese Galleries Rome, Turin, Dresden, Vienna, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Palma il Vecchio, Jacob and Rachel Three Sisters Dresden, Barbara S. M.

Formosa Venice, other altar-pieces Venice Acad., Colonna Palace Rome, Brera, Naples Mus., Vienna, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Lotto, Three Ages Pitti, Portraits Brera, Nat. Gal. Lon., altar-pieces SS. Giovanni e Paolo Venice and churches at Bergamo, Treviso, Recanti, also Uffizi, Vienna, Madrid Gals.; Marconi, Descent Venice Acad., altar-pieces S.

Giorgio Maggiore SS. Giovanni e Paolo Venice; Pordenone, S.

Lorenzo Madonna Venice Acad., Salome Doria St. George Quirinale Rome, other works Madrid, Dresden, St. Petersburg, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Bonifazio, St. John, St. Joseph, etc.

Ambrosian Library Milan (attributed to Giorgione), Holy Family Colonna Pal. Rome, Ducal Pal., Pitti, Dresden Gals.; Supper at Emmaus Brera, other works Venice Acad.; Paris Bordone, Fisherman and Doge, Venice Acad., Madonna Casa Tadini Lovere, portraits in Uffizi, Pitti, Louvre, Munich, Vienna, Nat. Gal. Lon., Brignola Pal. Genoa; Jacopo Ba.s.sano, altar-pieces in Ba.s.sano churches, also Ducal Pal. Venice, Nat. Gal. Lon., Uffizi, Naples Mus.; Frances...o...b...s.sano, large pictures Ducal Pal., St. Catherine Pitti, Sabines Turin, Adoration and Christ in Temple Dresden, Adoration and Last Supper Madrid; Savoldo, altar-pieces Brera, S. Niccol Treviso, Uffizi, Turin Gal., S. Giobbe Venice, Nat. Gal.

Lon.; Romanino, altar-pieces S. Frances...o...b..escia, Berlin Gal., S. Giovanni Evangelista Brescia, Duomo Cremona, Padua, and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Moretto, altar-pieces Brera, Staedel Mus., S. M. della Pieta Venice, Vienna, Berlin, Louvre, Pitti, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Moroni, portraits Bergamo Gal., Uffizi, Nat. Gal. Lon., Berlin, Dresden, Madrid; Girolamo dai Libri, Madonna Berlin, Conception S. Paolo Verona, Virgin Verona Gal., S. Giorgio Maggiore Verona, Nat. Gal.

Lon.; Torbido, frescos Duomo, altar-pieces S. Zeno and S.

Eufemia Verona; Cavazzola, altar-pieces, Verona Gal. and Nat. Gal. Lon.

CHAPTER XI.

ITALIAN PAINTING.

THE DECADENCE AND MODERN WORK. 1600-1894.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, also General Bibliography, (page xv.); Calvi, _Notizie della vita e delle opere di Gio.

Frances...o...b..rbiera_; Malvasia, _Felsina Pittrice_; Sir Joshua Reynolds, _Discourses_; Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy--The Catholic Reaction_; Willard, _Modern Italian Art_.

THE DECLINE: An art movement in history seems like a wave that rises to a height, then breaks, falls, and parts of it are caught up from beneath to help form the strength of a new advance. In Italy Christianity was the propelling force of the wave. In the Early Renaissance, the antique, and the study of nature came in as additions. At Venice in the High Renaissance the art-for-art's-sake motive made the crest of light and color. The highest point was reached then, and there was nothing that could follow but the breaking and the scattering of the wave. This took place in Central Italy after 1540, in Venice after 1590.

Art had typified in form, thought, and expression everything of which the Italian race was capable. It had perfected all the graces and elegancies of line and color, and adorned them with a superlative splendor. There was nothing more to do. The idea was completed, the motive power had served its purpose, and that store of race-impulse which seems necessary to the making of every great art was exhausted.

For the men that came after Michael Angelo and Tintoretto there was nothing. All that they could do was to repeat what others had said, or to recombine the old thoughts and forms. This led inevitably to imitation, over-refinement of style, and conscious study of beauty, resulting in mannerism and affectation. Such qualities marked the art of those painters who came in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth. They were unfortunate men in the time of their birth. No painter could have been great in the seventeenth century of Italy. Art lay p.r.o.ne upon its face under Jesuit rule, and the late men were left upon the barren sands by the receding wave of the Renaissance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52.--BRONZINO. CHRIST IN LIMBO. UFFIZI.]

ART MOTIVES AND SUBJECTS: As before, the chief subject of the art of the Decadence was religion, with many heads and busts of the Madonna, though nature and the cla.s.sic still played their parts. After the Reformation at the North the Church in Italy started the Counter-Reformation. One of the chief means employed by this Catholic reaction was the embellishment of church wors.h.i.+p, and painting on a large scale, on panel rather than in fresco, was demanded for decorative purposes. But the religious motive had pa.s.sed out, though its subject was retained, and the pictorial motive had reached its climax at Venice. The faith of the one and the taste and skill of the other were not attainable by the late men, and, while consciously striving to achieve them, they fell into exaggerated sentiment and technical weakness. It seems perfectly apparent in their works that they had nothing of their own to say, and that they were trying to say over again what Michael Angelo, Correggio, and t.i.tian had said before them much better. There were earnest men and good painters among them, but they could produce only the empty form of art. The spirit had fled.

THE MANNERISTS: Immediately after the High Renaissance leaders of Florence and Rome came the imitators and exaggerators of their styles.

They produced large, crowded compositions, with a hasty facility of the brush and striking effects of light. Seeking the grand they overshot the temperate. Their elegance was affected, their sentiment forced, their brilliancy superficial glitter. When they thought to be ideal they lost themselves in incomprehensible allegories; when they thought to be real they grew prosaic in detail. These men are known in art history as the Mannerists, and the men whose works they imitated were chiefly Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Correggio. There were many of them, and some of them have already been spoken of as the followers of Michael Angelo.

Agnolo Bronzino (1502?-1572) was a pupil of Pontormo, and an imitator of Michael Angelo, painting in rather heavy colors with a thin brush.

His characters were large, but never quite free from weakness, except in portraiture, where he appeared at his best. Vasari (1511-1574)--the same Vasari who wrote the lives of the painters--had versatility and facility, but his superficial imitations of Michael Angelo were too grandiose in conception and too palpably false in modelling. Salviati (1510-1563) was a friend of Vasari, a painter of about the same cast of mind and hand as Vasari, and Federigo Zucchero (1543-1609) belongs with him in producing things muscularly big but intellectually small.

Baroccio (1528-1612), though cla.s.sed among the Mannerists as an imitator of Correggio and Raphael, was really one of the strong men of the late times. There was affectation and sentimentality about his work, a prettiness of face, rosy flesh tints, and a general lightness of color, but he was a superior brushman, a good colorist, and, at times, a man of earnestness and power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53.--BAROCCIO. ANNUNCIATION.]

THE ECLECTICS: After the Mannerists came the Eclectics of Bologna, led by the Caracci, who, about 1585, sought to "revive" art. They started out to correct the faults of the Mannerists, and yet their own art was based more on the art of their great predecessors than on nature. They thought to make a union of Renaissance excellences by combining Michael Angelo's line, t.i.tian's color, Correggio's light-and-shade and Raphael's symmetry and grace. The attempt was praiseworthy for the time, but hardly successful. They caught the lines and lights and colors of the great men, but they overlooked the fact that the excellence of the imitated lay largely in their inimitable individualities, which could not be combined. The Eclectic work was done with intelligence, but their system was against them and their baroque age was against them. Midway in their career the Caracci themselves modified their eclecticism and placed more reliance upon nature. But their pupils paid little heed to the modification.

There were five of the Caracci, but three of them--Ludovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602), and Annibale (1560-1609)--led the school, and of these Annibale was the most distinguished. They had many pupils, and their influence was widely spread over Italy. In Sir Joshua Reynolds's day they were ranked with Raphael, but at the present time criticism places them where they belong--painters of the Decadence with little originality or spontaneity in their art, though much technical skill. Domenichino (1581-1641) was the strongest of the pupils. His St. Jerome was rated by Poussin as one of the three great paintings of the world, but it never deserved such rank. It is powerfully composed, but poor in coloring and handling. The painter had great repute in his time, and was one of the best of the seventeenth century men. Guido Reni (1575-1642) was a painter of many gifts and accomplishments, combined with many weaknesses. His works are well composed and painted, but excessive in sentiment and overdone in pathos. Albani (1578-1660) ran to elegance and a porcelain-like prettiness. Guercino (1591-1666) was originally of the Eclectic School at Bologna, but later took up with the methods of the Naturalists at Naples. He was a painter of far more than the average ability.

Sa.s.soferrato (1605-1685) and Carlo Dolci (1616-1686) were so super-saturated with sentimentality that often their skill as painters is overlooked or forgotten. In spirit they were about the weakest of the century. There were other eclectic schools started throughout Italy--at Milan, Cremona, Ferrara--but they produced little worth recording. At Rome certain painters like Cristofano Allori (1577-1621), an exceptionally strong man for the time, Berrettini (1596-1669), and Maratta (1625-1713), manufactured a facile kind of painting from what was attractive in the various schools, but it was never other than meretricious work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 54.--ANNIBALE CARACCI. ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST.

LOUVRE.]

THE NATURALISTS: Contemporary with the Eclectics sprang up the Neapolitan school of the Naturalists, led by Caravaggio (1569-1609) and his pupils. These schools opposed each other, and yet influenced each other. Especially was this true with the later men, who took what was best in both schools. The Naturalists were, perhaps, more firmly based upon nature than the Bolognese Eclectics. Their aim was to take nature as they found it, and yet, in conformity with the extravagance of the age, they depicted extravagant nature. Caravaggio thought to represent sacred scenes more truthfully by taking his models from the harsh street life about him and giving types of saints and apostles from Neapolitan brawlers and bandits. It was a brutal, coa.r.s.e representation, rather fierce in mood and impetuous in action, yet not without a good deal of tragic power. His subjects were rather dismal or morose, but there was knowledge in the drawing of them, some good color and brush-work and a peculiar darkness of shadow ma.s.ses (originally gained from Giorgione), that stood as an ear-mark of his whole school. From the continuous use of black shadows the school got the name of the "Darklings," by which they are still known. Giordano (1632-1705), a painter of prodigious facility and invention, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), best known as one of the early painters of landscape, and Ribera, a Spanish painter, were the princ.i.p.al pupils.

THE LATE VENETIANS: The Decadence at Venice, like the Renaissance, came later than at Florence, but after the death of Tintoretto mannerisms and the imitation of the great men did away with originality. There was still much color left, and fine ceiling decorations were done, but the n.o.bility and calm splendor of t.i.tian's days had pa.s.sed. Palma il Giovine (1544-1628) with a hasty brush produced imitations of Tintoretto with some grace and force, and in remarkable quant.i.ty. He and Tintoretto were the most rapid and productive painters of the century; but Palma's was not good in spirit, though quite das.h.i.+ng in technic. Padovanino (1590-1650) was more of a t.i.tian follower, but, like all the other painters of the time, he was proficient with the brush and lacking in the stronger mental elements. The last great Italian painter was Tiepolo (1696-1770), and he was really great beyond his age. With an art founded on Paolo Veronese, he produced decorative ceilings and panels of high quality, with wonderful invention, a limpid brush, and a light flaky color peculiarly appropriate to the walls of churches and palaces. He was, especially in easel pictures, a brilliant, vivacious brushman, full of dash and spirit, tempered by a large knowledge of what was true and pictorial. Some of his best pictures are still in Venice, and modern painters are unstinted in their praise of them. He left a son, Domenico Tiepolo (1726-1795), who followed his methods. In the late days of Venetian painting, Ca.n.a.letto (1697-1768) and Guardi (1712-1793) achieved reputation by painting Venetian ca.n.a.ls and architecture with much color effect.