Renaissance in Italy Volume III Part 21

Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said to have founded a school, was destined to exercise wide and perilous influence over a host of manneristic imitators. Francesco Mazzola, called Il Parmigianino, followed him so closely that his frescoes at Parma are hardly distinguishable from the master's; while Federigo Baroccio at Urbino endeavoured to preserve the sensuous and almost childish sweetness of his style in its integrity.[399] But the real attraction of Correggio was only felt when the new _barocco_ architecture called for a new kind of decoration. Every cupola throughout the length and breadth of Italy began then to be painted with rolling clouds and lolling angels. What the wits of Parma had once stigmatised as a _ragot_ of frogs, now seemed the only possible expression for celestial ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those mult.i.tudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious etiquette. False lights, dubious foreshortenings, shallow colourings, ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour, requiring neither effort of conception nor expenditure of labour on drawing and composition. At the same time, the Caracci made Correggio's style the object of more serious study; and the history of Bolognese painting shows what was to be derived from this master by intelligent and conscientious workmen.

Hitherto, I have had princ.i.p.ally to record the errors of artists copying the external qualities of their great predecessors. It is refres.h.i.+ng to turn from the _epigoni_ of the so-called Roman school to masters in whom the flame of the Renaissance still burned brightly. Andrea del Sarto, the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to Fra Bartolommeo than to any other of the elder masters, was himself a contemporary of Raphael and Correggio. Yet he must be noticed here; because he gave new qualities to the art of Tuscany, and formed a tradition decisive for the subsequent history of Florentine painting. To make a just estimate of his achievement is a task of no small difficulty.

The Italians called him "il pittore senza errori," or the faultless painter. What they meant by this must have been that in all the technical requirements of art, in drawing, composition, handling of fresco and oils, disposition of draperies, and feeling for light and shadow, he was above criticism. As a colourist he went further and produced more beautiful effects than any Florentine before him. His silver-grey harmonies and liquid blendings of hues cool, yet l.u.s.trous, have a charm peculiar to himself alone. We find the like nowhere else in Italy. And yet Andrea del Sarto cannot take rank among the greatest Renaissance painters. What he lacked was precisely the most precious gift--inspiration, depth of emotion, energy of thought. We are apt to feel that even his best pictures were designed with a view to solving an aesthetic problem. Very few have the poetic charm belonging to the "S. John" of the Pitti or the "Madonna"

of the Tribune. Beautiful as are many of his types, like the Magdalen in the large picture of the "Pieta"[400] we can never be sure that he will not break the spell by forms of almost vulgar mediocrity. The story that his wife, a worthless woman, sat for his Madonnas, and the legends of his working for money to meet pressing needs, seem justified by numbers of his paintings, faulty in their faultlessness and want of spirit. Still, after making these deductions, we must allow that Andrea del Sarto not unworthily represents the golden age at Florence. There is no affectation, no false taste, no trickery in his style. His workmans.h.i.+p is always solid; his hand unerring. If Nature denied him the soul of a poet, and the stern will needed for escaping from the sordid circ.u.mstances of his life, she gave him some of the highest qualities a painter can desire--qualities of strength, tranquillity, and thoroughness, that in the decline of the century ceased to exist outside Venice.

Among Del Sarto's followers it will be enough to mention Franciabigio, Vasari's favourite in fresco painting, Rosso de' Rossi, who carried the Florentine manner into France, and Pontormo, the masterly painter of portraits.[401] In the historical pictures of these men, whether sacred or secular, it is clear how much was done for Florentine art by Fra Bartolommeo and Del Sarto independently of Michael Angelo and Lionardo.

Angelo Bronzino, the pupil of Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his portraits. Hard and cold, yet obviously true to life, they form a gallery of great interest for the historian of Duke Cosimo's reign. His frescoes and allegories ill.u.s.trate the defects that have been pointed out in those of Raphael's and Buonarroti's imitators.[402] Want of thought and feeling, combined with the presumptuous treatment of colossal and imaginative subjects, renders these compositions inexpressibly chilling. The psychologist, who may have read a poem from Bronzino's pen, will be inclined to wonder how far this barren art was not connected with personal corruption.[403] Such speculations are, however, apt to be misleading.

Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received a fresh impulse at the same time as Florence. Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma, was born at Vercelli about 1477. He studied in his youth under Lionardo da Vinci, training his own exquisite sense of natural beauty in that scientific school. From Milan, after a certain interval of time, he removed to Rome, where he became a friend and follower of Raphael. These double influences determined a style that never lost its own originality.

With what delicacy and _navete_, almost like a second Luini, but with more of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic themes, may be seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto.[404] They were executed before his Roman visit, and show the facility of a most graceful improvisatore. One painting representing the "Temptation of Monks by Dancing Women" carries the melody of fluent lines and the seduction of fair girlish faces into a region of pure poetry. These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in the Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of Borne, and fired by Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness. The delicious freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually beautiful but ill-a.s.sorted motives. Like Luini, Sodoma was never successful in pictures requiring combination and arrangement. He lacked some sense of symmetry and sought to achieve ma.s.siveness by crowding figures in a given s.p.a.ce. When we compare his group of "S. Catherine Fainting under the Stigmata" with the medley of agitated forms that make up his picture of the same saint at Tuldo's execution, we see plainly that he ought to have confined himself to the expression of very simple themes.[405] The former is incomparable for its sweetness; the latter is indistinct and wearying, in spite of many details that adorn it. Gifted with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of the human body, Sodoma excelled himself when he was contented with a single figure. His "S.

Sebastian," notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still the very best that has been painted.[406] Suffering, refined and spiritual, without contortion or spasm, could not be presented with more pathos in a form of more surpa.s.sing loveliness. This is a truly demonic picture in the fascination it exercises and the memory it leaves upon the mind. Part of its una.n.a.lysable charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of martyrdom. Only the Renaissance could have produced a hybrid so successful, because so deeply felt.

Sodoma's influence at Siena, where he lived a picturesque life, delighting in his horses and surrounding himself with strange four-footed pets of all sorts, soon produced a school of worthy masters. Girolamo del Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi, and Balda.s.sare Peruzzi, though they owed much to the stimulus of his example, followed him in no servile spirit. Indeed, it may be said that Pacchia's paintings in the Oratory of S. Bernardino, though they lacked his siren beauty, are more powerfully composed; while Peruzzi's fresco of "Augustus and the Sibyl," in the church of Fontegiusta, has a monumental dignity unknown to Sodoma. Beccafumi is apt to leave the spectator of his paintings cold. From inventive powers so rich and technical excellence so thorough, we demand more than he can give, and are therefore disappointed. His most interesting picture at Siena is the "Stigmatisation of S. Catherine," famous for its mastery of graduated whites. Much of the paved work of the Duomo is attributed to his design. Both Beccafumi and Peruzzi felt the cold and manneristic Roman style of rhetoric injuriously.

To mention the remaining schools of Italy in detail would be superfluous.

True art still flourished at Ferrara, where Garofalo endeavoured to carry on the Roman manner of Raphael without the necessary strength or ideality, but also without the soulless insincerity of the mannerists. His best quality was colouring, gemlike and rich; but this found little scope for exercise in the dry and laboured style he affected. Dosso Dossi fared better, perhaps through having never experienced the seductions of Rome.

His glowing colour and quaint fancy give the attraction of romance to many of his pictures. The "Circe," for example, of the Borghese Palace, is worthy to rank with the best Renaissance work. It is perfectly original, not even suggesting the influence of Venice by its deep and l.u.s.trous hues.

No painting is more fit to ill.u.s.trate the "Orlando Innamorato." Just so, we feel in looking at it, did Dragontina show herself to Boiardo's fancy.

Ariosto's Alcina belongs to a different family of magnificent witches.

Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painters, influenced almost equally by the Venetians, the Milanese, and the Roman mannerists. The Campi family covered those grave Lombard vaults with stucco, fresco, and gilding in a style only just removed from the _barocco_.[407] Brescia and Bergamo remained within the influence of Venice, producing work of nearly first-rate quality in Moretto, Romanino, and Lorenzo Lotto. Moroni, the pupil of Moretto, was destined to become one of the most powerful character painters of the modern world, and to enrich the studies of historians and artists with a series of portraits impressive by their fidelity to the spirit of the sixteenth century at its conclusion. Venice herself at this period was still producing masterpieces of the genuine Renaissance. But the decline into mannerism, caused by circ.u.mstances similar to those of Rome, was not far distant.

It may seem strange to those who have visited the picture galleries of Italy, and have noticed how very large a number of the painters flourished after 1550, that I should have persistently spoken of the last half of the sixteenth century as a period of decadence. This it was, however, in a deep and true sense of the word. The force of the Renaissance was exhausted, and a time of relaxation had to be pa.s.sed through, before the reaction known as the Counter-Reformation could make itself felt in art.

Then, and not till then, a new spiritual impulse produced a new style.

This secondary growth of painting began to flourish at Bologna in accordance with fresh laws of taste. Religious sentiments of a different order had to be expressed; society had undergone a change, and the arts were governed by a genuine, if far inferior, inspiration. Meanwhile, the Renaissance, so far as Italy is concerned, was ended.

It is one of the sad features of this subject, that each section has to end in lamentation. Servitude in the sphere of politics; literary feebleness in scholars.h.i.+p; decadence in art:--to shun these conclusions is impossible. He who has undertaken to describe the parabola of a projectile, cannot be satisfied with tracing its gradual rise and determining its culmination. He must follow its spent force, and watch it slowly sink with ever dwindling impetus to earth. Intellectual movements, when we isolate them in a special country, observing the causes that set them in motion and calculating their r.e.t.a.r.ding influences, may, not unreasonably, be compared to the parabola of a projectile. To shrink from studying the decline of mental vigour in Italy upon the close of the Renaissance, would be therefore weak; though the task of tracing the impulse communicated by her previous energy to other nations, and their stirring under a like movement, might be more agreeable.

FOOTNOTES:

[389] Frescoes in the Brera and at Lugano.

[390] S. Maurizio, on the Screen, inner church. Lugano in the Angeli.

[391] In the Brera. See also the Madonna, with Infant Christ, S. John, and a Lamb, at Lugano.

[392] Side chapel of S. Maurizio at Milan. These frescoes are, in my opinion, Luini's very best. The whole church is a wonderful monument of Lombard art.

[393] "Crucifixion" at Lugano.

[394] See, for example, the oil-paintings in the cathedral of Como, so fascinating in their details, so lame in composition.

[395] In the Brera.

[396] Frescoes at Saronno and in the Sacro Monte at Varallo.

[397] The whole lake-district of Italy, where the valleys of Monte Rosa and the Simplon descend upon the plain of Lombardy, is rich in works of this school. At Luino and Lugano, on the island of San Giulio, and in the hill-set chapels of the Val Sesia, may be found traces of frescoes of incomparable beauty. One of these sites deserves special mention. Just at the point where the pathway of the Colma leaves the chestnut groves and meadows to join the road leading to Varallo, there stands a little chapel, with an open loggia of round Renaissance arches, designed and painted, according to tradition, by Ferrari, and without doubt representative of his manner. The harmony between its colours, so mellow in their ruin, its graceful arcades and quiet roofing, and the glowing tones of those granite mountains, with their wealth of vineyards, and their forests of immemorial chestnut trees, is perfect beyond words.

[398] This, the last of the Stanze, was only in part designed by Raphael.

In spite of what I have said above, the "Battle of Constantine," planned by Raphael, and executed by Giulio, is a grand example of a pupil's power to carry out his master's scheme.

[399] Baroccio had great authority at Florence in the seventeenth century, when the cult of Correggio had overspread all Italy.

[400] Pitti Palace.

[401] Franciabigio's and Rosso's frescoes stand beside Del Sarto's in the atrium of the Annunziata at Florence. Pontormo's portraits of Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici in the Uffizzi, though painted from busts and medallions, have a real historical value.

[402] The "Christ in Limbo" in S. Lorenzo at Florence, and the detestable picture of "Time, Beauty, Love, and Folly," in our National Gallery.

[403] _Opere Burlesche_, vol. iii. pp. 39-46.

[404] Near Siena. These pictures are a series of twenty-four subjects from the life of S. Benedict.

[405] In the church of S. Domenico, Siena.

[406] In the Uffizzi. See also Sodoma's "Sacrifice of Isaac" in the cathedral of Pisa, and the "Christ Bound to the Pillar" in the Academy at Siena.

[407] The church of S. Sigismondo, outside Cremona, is very interesting for the unity of style in its architecture and decoration.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

_The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello_

Having tried to characterise Niccola Pisano's relation to early Italian art in the second chapter of this volume, I adverted to the recent doubts which have been thrown by very competent authorities upon Vasari's legend of this master. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, while discussing the question of his birthplace and his early training, observe, what is no doubt true, that there are no traces of good sculpture in Pisa antecedent to the Baptistery pulpit of 1260, and remark that for such a phenomenon as the sudden appearance of this masterpiece it is needful to seek some antecedents elsewhere.[408] This leads them to ask whether Niccola did not owe his origin and education to some other part of Italy. Finding at Ravello, near Amain, a pulpit sculptured in 1272 by Niccola di Bartolommeo da Foggia, they suggest that a school of stone-carvers may have flourished at Foggia, and that Niccola Pisano, in spite of his signing himself _Pisa.n.u.s_ on the Baptistery pulpit, may have been an Apulian trained in that school. The arguments adduced in favour of that hypothesis are that Niccola's father, though commonly believed to have been Ser Pietro da Siena, was perhaps called Pietro di Apulia,[409] and that meritorious artists certainly existed at Foggia and Trani. Yet the resemblance of style between the pulpits at Ravello [1272] and Pisa [1260], if that indeed exists (whereof hereafter more must be said), might be used to prove that Niccola da Foggia learned his art from Niccola Pisano, instead of the contrary; nor again, supposing the Apulian school to have flourished before 1260, is it inconsistent with the tradition of Niccola's life that he should have learned the sculptor's craft while working in his youth at Naples. For the rest, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle dismiss the story of Pisano's studying the antique bas-reliefs at Pisa with contempt;[410] but they omit to notice the actual transcripts from those marbles introduced into his first pulpit. Again, they a.s.sume that the lunette at Lucca was one of his latest works, giving precedence to the pulpits of Pisa and Siena and the fountain of Perugia. A comparison of style no doubt renders this view plausible; for the lunette at Lucca is superior to any other of Pisano's works as a composition.

The full discussion of these points is rendered impossible by the want of contemporary information, and each student must, therefore, remain contented with his own hypothesis. Yet something can be said with regard to the Ravello pulpit that plays so important a part in the argument of the learned historians of Italian painting. Unless a strong similarity between it and Pisano's pulpits can be proved, their hypothesis carries with it no persuasion.

The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello is formed like an ambo of the antique type. That is to say, it is a long parallelogram with flat sides, raised upon pillars, and approached by a flight of steps. These steps are enclosed within richly-ornamented walls, and stand distinct from the pulpit; a short bridge connects the two. The six pillars supporting the ambo itself are slender twisted columns with cla.s.sic capitals. Three rest on lions, three on lionesses, admirably carved in different att.i.tudes. A small projection on the north side of the pulpit sustains an eagle standing on a pillar, and spreading out his wings to bear an open book. On the arch over the entrance to the staircase projects the head of Sigelgaita, wife of Niccola Rufolo, the donor of the pulpit to the church, sculptured in the style of the Roman decadence, between two profile medallions in low relief.[411] The material of the whole is fair white marble, enriched with mosaics, and wrought into beautiful scroll-work of acanthus leaves and other Romanesque adornments. An inscription, "_Ego Magister Nicolaus de Bartholomeo de Fogia Marmorarius hoc opus feci_;" and another, "_Lapsis millenis bis centum bisque trigenis XPI. bissenis annis ab origine plenis_," indicate the artist's name and the date of the work.

It is difficult to understand how anyone could trace such a resemblance between this rectangular ambo and the hexagonal structure in the Pisan Baptistery as would justify them in a.s.serting both to be the products of the same school. The pulpit of Niccola da Foggia does not materially differ from other ambones in Italy--from several, for instance, in Amalfi and Ravello; while the distinctive features of Niccola Pisano's work--the combination of cla.s.sically studied bas-reliefs with Gothic principles of construction, the feeling for artistic unity in the composition of groups, the mastery over plastic form, and the detached allegorical figures--are noticeable only by their total absence from it. What is left by way of similarity is a sculpturesque refinement in Sigelgaita's portrait, not unworthy of Pisano's own chisel. This, however, is but a slender point whereon to base so large a pyramid of pure conjecture. Surely we must look elsewhere than at Ravello or at Foggia for the origin of Niccola Pisano.

Why then should we reject tradition in this instance? Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle reply; because the sculpture of no Tuscan city before his period is good enough to have led up to him. Yet this may be contested; and at all events it will not be easy to prove from the Ravello head of Sigelgaita that a more advanced school existed in the south. The fact is that the art of the stone-carvers or _marmorarii_ had never entirely died out since the days of Roman greatness; nor was Niccola without respectable predecessors in the very town of Lucca, where he produced the first masterpiece of modern sculpture. The circular font of S. Frediano, for example, carved with figures in high relief by a certain Robertus of the twelfth century, combines the Romanesque mannerism with the _navete_ of mediaeval fancy. I might point in particular to two knights seated on one horse in what I take to be the company of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, as an instance of a successful attempt to escape from the formalism of a decayed style. At the same time the general effect of the embossed work of this font is fine; nor do we fail to perceive that the artist retained some portion of the cla.s.sic feeling for grandiose and monumental composition. Far less noteworthy, yet still not utterly despicable, is the bas-relief of Biduinus over the side-door of S. Salvatore at Lucca.

What Niccola added of indefeasibly his own to the style of these continuators of a dead tradition, was feeling for the beauty of cla.s.sical work in a good age, and through that feeling a more perfect sympathy with nature. It is just at this point that the old tale about the sarcophagus of the Countess Beatrice conveys not only the letter but the spirit of the fact. Niccola's genius, no less vivid and life-giving than that of Giotto, infused into the hard and formal manner of his immediate predecessors true nature and true art. Between the bas-relief of S. Salvatore and the bas-relief over the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, there is indeed a broad gulf, yet such as might have been pa.s.sed at one bound by a master into whose soul the beauty of a fragment of Greek art had sunk, and who had received at his birth the gift of a creative genius.

FOOTNOTES:

[408] _History of Painting in Italy_, vol. i. chap. iv.

[409] _Loc. cit_. p. 127, note.

[410] _Loc. cit._ p. 127.