In the enumeration of Tuscan art, some lovers of subdivision have
fancied, with more refinement than solidity, to discover in the style of
Sienese artists a characteristic sufficiently distinct from the
Florentine, to erect Siena into a school. This characteristic, we are
told, is a peculiar gaiety in the selection of colour, and an air of
physiognomic vivacity and serenity of face; both, it seems, the
inheritance of the Sienese race. They have, accordingly, divided this
school into three epochs: the first is that of the _ancients_ (gli
antichi); and its first palpable patriarch, Guido, or Guidone, commonly
called _Guido da Siena_, and noticed already in the beginning of our
chapter on the Florentine school. He flourished before the birth of
Cimabue, in the first half of the thirteenth century, and is followed
by the names of Ugolino da Siena and Duccio surnamed di Boninsegna,
the precursors of Simone Memmi, the contemporary of Giotto, who painted
Laura and survives in the sonnets of her lover. Lippo Memmi and Cecco da
Martino, his relatives, float in the obscurity which prevailed till the
appearance of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. Of the first there still
exists an extensive work in the public palace, or rather a didactic
poem, which in suitable allegories and in varied views, exhibits the
vices of a bad government, and personifies the qualities necessary to
form the rulers of a virtuous republic--a work which, with less monotony
of features, and more judgment in the division of the subjects, would,
in the opinion of Lanzi, find little to envy in the best-treated
histories of Pisa's Campo Santo. In partnership with his brother Pietro,
he painted, in the Hospital of Siena, the Presentation and the Espousal
of the Madonna--pictures destroyed in 1720. This is that Pietro who, in
the Campo Santo of Pisa, painted the Hermits of the Desert, and the
Terrors of Solitude invaded by an Infernal Apparition, with a novelty of
conception and a richness of fancy, that render his work the most
interesting of the whole series. That, notwithstanding the plague, which
had wasted the population of Siena at that period, the art continued to
flourish, is proved by the numbers who formed themselves into a civil
body under the immediate patronage of the Republic itself. In some
families it became an heirloom: such were the Vanni and the Bartoli.
Andrea di Vanni, or more properly, di Giovanni, not only figured as an
artist in his native city, but was delegated by the Republic to the Pope
at Avignon, and appears in the records as "Capitano del Popolo;" and
among the letters of Santa Caterina da Siena, there are three addressed
to him.[84] Vasari has mentioned Taddeo di Bartolo, (1351--1410.) whose
works still exist in the public palace and the adjoining hall. They
pretend to represent a number of celebrated republicans, and chiefly
Greeks and Romans, but their physiognomies are all ideal, and their
dresses the costume of Siena. Something was added to the monotony of
these family styles under the Pontificate of Pio II. or Enea Silvio,
(1503,) by Matteo di Giovanni, in disposition, variety, expression,
drapery; he has accordingly been complimented by some as the Masaccio of
Siena, but remained unknown to Vasari. The art gained still more under
the auspices of a second Piccolomini, Pio III. (1503.) He employed
Pinturicchio, Raffaello, and other strangers, to perpetuate the
achievements of his predecessor Enea; and they, Raffaello excepted,
continued with Signorelli and Genga to exercise their talents in
decorating the Palace of Pandolfo Petrucci, who had usurped supreme
power in the Republic.
The second period of Sienese art opens with the sixteenth century, and
the works of Giacomo Pacchiarotto, or Pacchiarotti. They resemble the
produce of Perugino's school, though distinguished by more vigour of
composition. But what entitles this epoch to the claim of establishing
the peculiar style of this school, must be looked for in the works of
Giannantonio Razzi, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi.
Giannantonio Razzi,[85] commonly called "Il Soddoma," is said by some to
have been a native of Vergille, in the territory of Siena; by others, of
Vercelli, in Piedmont. Long residence, however, supplied the want of
birthright: Siena claims him for her own; and if a charming whole,
suavity of tint combined with force of chiaroscuro, be the principal
characteristic of that school, no native has expressed it with equal
evidence and felicity. This gaiety of tone and manner some have traced
to the jovial turn of the man himself; as careless as gay, ever in
pursuit of youth and beauty, though with an indiscretion that brands him
with the stain tacked to his name, from a character so volatile and
dissipated, that inequality of execution might be expected which marks
his happiest effusions. Thus, in the Church of S. Domenico, where he
represented Sta. Caterina of Siena, on receiving the stigmata,
fainting in the arms of two sister nuns, we forgive to the energy of
conception, the pathos of expression, and the sympathy of tone that
press the principal group on our hearts, that neglect which left the
figure of the Saviour below mediocrity, and own, with Baldassare
Peruzzi, that we never saw mental dereliction and fainting beauty
expressed with deeper sentiment and truth; a verdict which receives
full sanction from him who relates it, Vasari, less the biographer than
the merciless censor of the obnoxious Razzi, for whose moral turpitude
and technic slovenliness his sanctimonious asperity found no other
excuse than that of madness, which swayed him to neglect or misapply the
powers of genius. Thus, in speaking of the fresco at Monte Oliveto, in
which Soddoma had chosen to represent a bevy of harlots let loose with
song and dance on St. Benedetto and his flock, to try their sanctity, he
reprobates the licentiousness that had larded the subject with
additional obscenity, whilst he concludes by owning that it is one of
the best pictures in the Convent. How are we to reconcile the neglect
which, disdaining to consult Nature, or to regulate a picture by cartoon
or design, relied for the whole on practice and on chance, with the
praise bestowed on Razzi's composition, the faces that speak, the
breasts that palpitate, the torsos compared by some to the antique, by
others to Michael Angelo, but by that indifference which often
distinguishes the man of genius from the man of talent, him who
possesses by Nature from him who acquires by art? Capacity and
attachment unite not always; and to Soddoma, vain, whimsical, volatile,
art appears to have been no more than the readiest means of procuring
amusement or pleasure. "My art dances to the sound of your purse," said
he to the Abbot of Monte Oliveto.
Agostino Chigi, pleased with the art, and still more the whimsies of
Soddoma, if we believe Vasari, carried him to Rome, and introduced him
to Giulio II. to co-operate with Pietro Perugino, &c. in the Vatican;
but his labours being superseded by the novel powers of Raffaelle,
Agostino, whose attachments were not regulated by the Pontiff's whims,
employed him in the decorations of his own palace, now the Farnesina;
where, in a principal apartment leading to the great saloon reserved for
Raffaelle, he painted the Nuptials of Alexander and Roxana in a style no
doubt inferior to the Loves of Amor and Psyche, but not of an
inferiority sufficient to account for the enormous disparity of fame
that separates both.
Domenico Mecherino,[86] the son of a Sienese peasant, better known by
the adopted name of Beccafumi, inferior to Razzi in elegance of line
and suavity of colour, excelled him in energy of conception and style.
Vasari, who invests Beccafumi with every excellence and virtue, of which
the defect or opposite vice disgraced Razzi, still owns that he did not
reach the physiognomic suavity that marks the faces of Soddoma; and
after leading him from the scanty elements of Pietro Perugino to Rome,
the Antique, the Chapel of M. Angelo, and the works of Raffaelle, by a
kind of anticlimax brings him back to Siena to complete his studies by
adopting the principles of Giannantonio. A modern writer,[87] on the
contrary, has discovered that the talents of Domenico, overpowered by
the genius of M. Angelo, turned their current awry, and failed to
produce the legitimate efforts which might have been expected from a
steady adherence to the principles of Raffaelle--opinions less founded
on the character of the artist and the spirit of his works than on the
partiality and prejudice of the critics. Beccafumi was not of the first
class, less made to lead than to follow with an air of originality; to
amalgamate principles not absolutely discordant--thus, in single
figures, he sometimes more than imitates, he equals M. Angelo, as in
those noticed by Bottari;--and again, in larger compositions, such as
those on the pavement of the Cathedral, works by which he is chiefly
known, we see him on the traces of Raffaelle, and emulating the variety
and graces of Polydoro: these graces frequently vanished, and
correctness as often ceased with the increased size of his figures: the
foreshortenings, in which he delighted, savour more of the "sotto in
su," introduced by Correggio to Upper Italy, than of the principles of
M. Angelo; they are generally attended by a magic chiaroscuro, like that
of the figure of Justice, on which Vasari expatiates, on the ceiling of
the public hall at Siena, which, from profound darkness gradually rising
into light, seems to vanish in celestial splendour. He is said by Vasari
to have preferred fresco and distemper to oil paint, as a purer,
simpler, and of course more durable medium; and though the predominant
red of his flesh-tints has more freshness than glow, such is the
solidity of his impasto and the purity of his method, that his panels
present us to this day less with the injuries than the improvements of
time.
The style of Mecherino did not survive him: for Giorgio da Siena, his
pupil, confined himself to grotesque work, in imitation of Giovanni da
Udine; Giannella, or Giovanni of Siena, turned to architecture: of Marco
Pino, commonly called Marco da Siena, his reputed pupil, the style,
decidedly built on the principles of M. Angelo, renders all notion of
his having received more than the first rudiments from Beccafumi or any
other master, nugatory: but the conjecture of Lanzi, that Domenico was
the master of Danielle Ricciarelli, known to have begun his studies at
Siena, though unsupported by tradition, acquires an air of probability
less from the supposed mutual attachments to M. Angelo, than the
versatility of their talents and similarity of pursuits.
Baldassare Peruzzi,[88] born in the diocese of Volterra, but in the
Sienese State, and of a citizen of Siena, with considerable talents for
painting, possessed a decided genius in architecture. His style of
design is temperate and correct, but quantity is the element of his
composition, if _indeed_ an aggregate of fortuitous figures deserve that
name. The Adoration of the Magi, preserved in various coloured copies
from his original chiaroscuro, embraces every fault of ornamental
painting without its only charm: it is not exaggeration to say, that the
principal figures are the least conspicuous, that the leaders are
sacrificed to their equipage, that the architect every where crosses the
painter, and that the quadrupeds, however brutally placed or
impertinently introduced, for conception, chiaroscuro, spirit and style,
give to the work what merit it can claim. The same principle prevails in
his fresco of the Presentation at the Pace, and both are so evidently
opposite to Raffaello's system of composition, that it is not easily
understood how he could be supposed to have been a pupil or imitator of
that master in propriety. If he resembles him any where, it is in single
expressions, as in the Judgement of Paris at the Castello di Belcaro,
according to Lanzi; and still more in the prophetic countenance of the
celebrated Sibyl predicting the birth of the Virgin to Augustus, at
Fonte Giusta, in Siena, whose divine enthusiasm no prophetess of
Raffaello has excelled, and no Sibyl of Guido or Guercino approached.