ITALIAN PAINTING.
EARLY RENAISSANCE--1400-1500--CONTINUED.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Those on Italian art before mentioned;
also consult the General Bibliography (page xv.)
PADUAN SCHOOL: It was at Padua in the north that the influence of the
classic marbles made itself strongly apparent. Umbria remained true to
the religious sentiment, Florence engaged itself largely with nature
study and technical problems, introducing here and there draperies and
poses that showed knowledge of ancient sculpture, but at Padua much of
the classic in drapery, figures, and architecture seems to have been
taken directly from the rediscovered antique or the modern bronze.
The early men of the school were hardly great enough to call for
mention. During the fourteenth century there was some Giotto influence
felt--that painter having been at Padua working in the Arena Chapel.
Later on there was a slight influence from Gentile da Fabriano and his
fellow-worker Vittore Pisano, of Verona. But these influences seem to
have died out and the real direction of the school in the early
fifteenth century was given by Francesco Squarcione (1394-1474). He
was an enlightened man, a student, a collector and an admirer of
ancient sculpture, and though no great painter himself he taught an
anatomical statuesque art, based on ancient marbles and nature, to
many pupils.
Squarcione's work has perished, but his teaching was reflected in the
work of his great pupil Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). Yet Mantegna
never received the full complement of his knowledge from Squarcione.
He was of an observing nature and probably studied Paolo Uccello and
Fra Filippo, some of whose works were then in Paduan edifices. He
gained color knowledge from the Venetian Bellinis, who lived at Padua
at one time and who were connected with Mantegna by marriage. But the
sculpturesque side of his art came from Squarcione, from a study of
the antique, and from a deeper study of Donatello, whose bronzes to
this day are to be seen within and without the Paduan Duomo of S.
Antonio.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--MANTEGNA. GONZAGA FAMILY GROUP (DETAIL).
MANTUA.]
The sculpturesque is characteristic of Mantegna's work. His people are
hard, rigid at times, immovable human beings, not so much turned to
stone as turned to bronze--the bronze of Donatello. There is little
sense of motion about them. The figure is sharp and harsh, the
drapery, evidently studied from sculpture, is "liney," and the
archæology is often more scientific than artistic. Mantegna was not,
however, entirely devoted to the sculpturesque. He was one of the
severest nature students of the Early Renaissance, knew about nature,
and carried it out in more exacting detail than was perhaps well for
his art. In addition he was a master of light-and-shade, understood
composition, space, color, atmosphere, and was as scientific in
perspective as Piero della Francesca. There is stiffness in his
figures but nevertheless great truth and character. The forms are
noble, even grand, and for invention and imagination they were never,
in his time, carried further or higher. He was little of a
sentimentalist or an emotionalist, not much of a brush man or a
colorist, but as a draughtsman, a creator of noble forms, a man of
power, he stood second to none in the century.
Of Squarcione's other pupils Pizzolo (fl. 1470) was the most
promising, but died early. Marco Zoppo (1440-1498) seems to have
followed the Paduan formula of hardness, dryness, and exacting detail.
He was possibly influenced by Cosimo Tura, and in turn influenced
somewhat the Ferrara-Bolognese school. Mantegna, however, was the
greatest of the school, and his influence was far-reaching. It
affected the school of Venice in matters of drawing, beside
influencing the Lombard and Veronese schools in their beginnings.
SCHOOLS OF VERONA AND VICENZA: Artistically Verona belonged with the
Venetian provinces, because it was largely an echo of Venice except at
the very start. Vittore Pisano (1380-1456), called Pisanello, was the
earliest painter of note, but he was not distinctly Veronese in his
art. He was medallist and painter both, worked with Gentile da
Fabriano in the Ducal Palace at Venice and elsewhere, and his art
seems to have an affinity with that of his companion.
Liberale da Verona (1451-1536?) was at first a miniaturist, but
afterward developed a larger style based on a following of Mantegna's
work, with some Venetian influences showing in the coloring and
backgrounds. Francesco Bonsignori (1455-1519) was of the Verona
school, but established himself later at Mantua and was under the
Mantegna influence. His style at first was rather severe, but he
afterward developed much ability in portraiture, historical work,
animals, and architectural features. Francesco Caroto (1470-1546), a
pupil of Liberale, really belongs to the next century--the High
Renaissance--but his early works show his education in Veronese and
Paduan methods.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--B. VIVARINI. MADONNA AND CHILD. TURIN.]
In the school of Vicenza the only master of much note in this Early
Renaissance time was Bartolommeo Montagna (1450?-1523), a painter in
both oil and fresco of much severity and at times grandeur of style.
In drawing he was influenced by Mantegna, in composition and coloring
he showed a study of Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio.
VENETIAN LIFE AND ART: The conditions of art production in Venice
during the Early Renaissance were quite different from those in
Florence or Umbria. By the disposition of her people Venice was not a
learned or devout city. Religion, though the chief subject, was not
the chief spirit of Venetian art. Christianity was accepted by the
Venetians, but with no fevered enthusiasm. The Church was strong
enough there to defy the Papacy at one time, and yet religion with the
people was perhaps more of a civic function or a duty than a spiritual
worship. It was sincere in its way, and the early painters painted its
subjects with honesty, but the Venetians were much too proud and
worldly minded to take anything very seriously except their own
splendor and their own power.
Again, the Venetians were not humanists or students of the revived
classic. They housed manuscripts, harbored exiled humanists, received
the influx of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople, and
later the celebrated Aldine press was established in Venice; but, for
all that, classic learning was not the fancy of the Venetians. They
made no quarrel over the relative merits of Plato and Aristotle, dug
up no classic marbles, had no revival of learning in a Florentine
sense. They were merchant princes, winning wealth by commerce and
expending it lavishly in beautifying their island home. Not to attain
great learning, but to revel in great splendor, seems to have been
their aim. Life in the sovereign city of the sea was a worthy
existence in itself. And her geographical and political position aided
her prosperity. Unlike Florence she was not torn by contending princes
within and foreign foes without--at least not to her harm. She had
her wars, but they were generally on distant seas. Popery, Paganism,
Despotism, all the convulsions of Renaissance life threatened but
harmed her not. Free and independent, her kingdom was the sea, and her
livelihood commerce, not agriculture.
The worldly spirit of the Venetian people brought about a worldly and
luxurious art. Nothing in the disposition or education of the
Venetians called for the severe or the intellectual. The demand was
for rich decoration that would please the senses without stimulating
the intellect or firing the imagination to any great extent. Line and
form were not so well suited to them as color--the most sensuous of
all mediums. Color prevailed through Venetian art from the very
beginning, and was its distinctive characteristic.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--GIOVANNI BELLINI. MADONNA OF SS. GEORGE AND
PAUL. VENICE ACAD.]
Where this love of color came from is matter of speculation. Some say
out of Venetian skies and waters, and, doubtless, these had something
to do with the Venetian color-sense; but Venice in its color was also
an example of the effect of commerce on art. She was a trader with the
East from her infancy--not Constantinople and the Byzantine East
alone, but back of these the old Mohammedan East, which for a thousand
years has cast its art in colors rather than in forms. It was Eastern
ornament in mosaics, stuffs, porcelains, variegated marbles, brought
by ship to Venice and located in S. Marco, in Murano, and in Torcello,
that first gave the color-impulse to the Venetians. If Florence was
the heir of Rome and its austere classicism, Venice was the heir of
Constantinople and its color-charm. The two great color spots in Italy
at this day are Venice and Ravenna, commercial footholds of the
Byzantines in Mediæval and Renaissance days. It may be concluded
without error that Venice derived her color-sense and much of her
luxurious and material view of life from the East.
THE EARLY VENETIAN PAINTERS: Painting began at Venice with the
fabrication of mosaics and ornamental altar-pieces of rich gold
stucco-work. The "Greek manner"--that is, the Byzantine--was practised
early in the fifteenth century by Jacobello del Fiore and Semitecolo,
but it did not last long. Instead of lingering for a hundred years, as
at Florence, it died a natural death in the first half of the
fifteenth century. Gentile da Fabriano, who was at Venice about 1420,
painting in the Ducal Palace with Pisano as his assistant, may have
brought this about. He taught there in Venice, was the master of
Jacopo Bellini, and if not the teacher then the influencer of the
Vivarinis of Murano. There were two of the Vivarinis in the early
times, so far as can be made out, Antonio Vivarini (?-1470) and
Bartolommeo Vivarini (fl. 1450-1499), who worked with Johannes
Alemannus, a painter of supposed German birth and training. They all
signed themselves from Murano (an outlying Venetian island), where
they were producing church altars and ornaments with some Paduan
influence showing in their work. They made up the Muranese school,
though this school was not strongly marked apart either in
characteristics or subjects from the Venetian school, of which it was,
in fact, a part.
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--CARPACCIO. PRESENTATION (DETAIL). VENICE
ACAD.]
Bartolommeo was the best of the group, and contended long time in
rivalry with the Bellinis at Venice, but toward 1470 he fell away and
died comparatively forgotten. Luigi Vivarini (fl. 1461-1503) was the
latest of this family, and with his death the history of the Muranese
merges into the Venetian school proper, except as it continues to
appear in some pupils and followers. Of these latter Carlo Crivelli
(1430?1493?) was the only one of much mark. He apparently gathered
his art from many sources--ornament and color from the Vivarini, a
lean and withered type from the early Paduans under Squarcione,
architecture from Mantegna, and a rather repulsive sentiment from the
same school. His faces were contorted and sulky, his hands and feet
stringy, his drawing rather bad; but he had a transparent color,
beautiful ornamentation and not a little tragic power.
Venetian art practically dates from the Bellinis. They did not begin
where the Vivarini left off. The two families of painters seem to have
started about the same time, worked along together from like
inspirations, and in somewhat of a similar manner as regards the early
men. Jacopo Bellini (1400?-1464?) was the pupil of Gentile da
Fabriano, and a painter of considerable rank. His son, Gentile Bellini
(1426?-1507), was likewise a painter of ability, and an extremely
interesting one on account of his Venetian subjects painted with much
open-air effect and knowledge of light and atmosphere. The younger
son, Giovanni Bellini (1428?-1516), was the greatest of the family and
the true founder of the Venetian school.
About the middle of the fifteenth century the Bellini family lived at
Padua and came in contact with the classic-realistic art of Mantegna.
In fact, Mantegna married Giovanni Bellini's sister, and there was a
mingling of family as well as of art. There was an influence upon
Mantegna of Venetian color, and upon the Bellinis of Paduan line. The
latter showed in Giovanni Bellini's early work, which was rather hard,
angular in drapery, and anatomical in the joints, hands, and feet; but
as the century drew to a close this melted away into the growing
splendor of Venetian color. Giovanni Bellini lived into the sixteenth
century, but never quite attained the rank of a High Renaissance
painter. He had religious feeling, earnestness, honesty, simplicity,
character, force, knowledge; but not the full complement of
brilliancy and painter's power. He went beyond all his contemporaries
in technical strength and color-harmony, and was in fact the
epoch-making man of early Venice. Some of his pictures, like the S.
Zaccaria Madonna, will compare favorably with any work of any age, and
his landscape backgrounds (see the St. Peter Martyr in the National
Gallery, London) were rather wonderful for the period in which they
were produced.
Of Bellini's contemporaries and followers there were many, and as a
school there was a similarity of style, subject, and color-treatment
carrying through them all, with individual peculiarities in each
painter. After Giovanni Bellini comes Carpaccio (?-1522?), a younger
contemporary, about whose history little is known. He worked with
Gentile Bellini, and was undoubtedly influenced by Giovanni Bellini.
In subject he was more romantic and chivalric than religious, though
painting a number of altar-pieces. The legend was his delight, and his
great success, as the St. Ursula and St. George pictures in Venice
still indicate. He was remarkable for his knowledge of architecture,
costumes, and Oriental settings, put forth in a realistic way, with
much invention and technical ability in the handling of landscape,
perspective, light, and color. There is a truthfulness of
appearance--an out-of-doors feeling--about his work that is quite
captivating. In addition, the spirit of his art was earnestness,
honesty, and sincerity, and even the awkward bits of drawing which
occasionally appeared in his work served to add to the general naive
effect of the whole.
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--ANTONELLO DA MESSINA. UNKNOWN MAN. LOUVRE.]
Cima da Conegliano (1460?-1517?) was probably a pupil of Giovanni
Bellini, with some Carpaccio influence about him. He was the best of
the immediate followers, none of whom came up to the master. They were
trammelled somewhat by being educated in distemper work, and then
midway in their careers changing to the oil medium, that medium
having been introduced into Venice by Antonello da Messina in 1473.
Cima's subjects were largely half-length madonnas, given with strong
qualities of light-and-shade and color. He was not a great originator,
though a man of ability. Catena (?-1531) had a wide reputation in his
day, but it came more from a smooth finish and pretty accessories than
from creative power. He imitated Bellini's style so well that a number
of his pictures pass for works by the master even to this day. Later
he followed Giorgione and Carpaccio. A man possessed of knowledge, he
seemed to have no original propelling purpose behind him. That was
largely the make-up of the other men of the school, Basaiti
(1490-1521?), Previtali (1470?-1525?), Bissolo (14641528), Rondinelli
(1440?-1500?), Diana (?-1500?), Mansueti (fl. 1500).
Antonello da Messina (1444?-1493), though Sicilian born, is properly
classed with the Venetian school. He obtained a knowledge of Flemish
methods probably from Flemish painters or pictures in Italy (he never
was a pupil of Jan van Eyck, as Vasari relates, and probably never saw
Flanders), and introduced the use of oil as a medium in the Venetian
school. His early work was Flemish in character, and was very accurate
and minute. His late work showed the influence of the Bellinis. His
counter-influence upon Venetian portraiture has never been quite
justly estimated. That fine, exact, yet powerful work, of which the
Doge Loredano by Bellini, in the National Gallery, London, is a type,
was perhaps brought about by an amalgamation of Flemish and Venetian
methods, and Antonello was perhaps the means of bringing it about. He
was an excellent, if precise, portrait-painter.
PRINCIPAL WORKS: PADUANS--Andrea Mantegna, Eremitani Padua,
Madonna of S. Xeno Verona, St. Sebastian Vienna Mus., St.
George Venice Acad., Camera di Sposi Castello di Corte
Mantua, Madonna and Allegories Louvre, Scipio Summer Autumn
Nat. Gal. Lon.; Pizzoli (with Mantegna), Eremitani Padua;
Marco Zoppo frescos Casa Colonna Bologna, Madonna Berlin
Gal.
VERONESE AND VICENTINE PAINTERS--Vittore Pisano, St. Anthony
and George Nat. Gal. Lon., St. George S. Anastasia Verona;
Liberale da Verona, miniatures Duomo Sienna, St. Sebastian
Brera Milan, Madonna Berlin Mus., other works Duomo and Gal.
Verona; Bonsignori, S. Bernardino and Gal. Verona, Mantua,
and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Caroto, In S. Tommaso, S. Giorgio, S.
Caterina and Gal. Verona, Dresden and Frankfort Gals.;
Montagna, Madonnas Brera, Venice Acad., Bergamo, Berlin,
Nat. Gal. Lon., Louvre.
VENETIANS--Jacobello del Fiore and Semitecolo, all
attributions doubtful; Antonio Vivarini and Johannes
Alemannus, together altar-pieces Venice Acad., S. Zaccaria
Venice; Antonio alone, Adoration of Kings Berlin Gal.;
Bartolommeo Vivarini, Madonna Bologna Gal. (with Antonio),
altar-pieces SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Frari, Venice; Luigi
Vivarini, Madonna Berlin Gal., Frari and Acad. Venice;
Carlo Crivelli, Madonnas and altar-pieces Brera, Nat. Gal.
Lon., Lateran, Berlin Gals.; Jacopo Bellini, Crucifixion
Verona Gal., Sketch-book Brit. Mus.; Gentile Bellini, Organ
Doors S. Marco, Procession and Miracle of Cross Acad.
Venice, St. Mark Brera; Giovanni Bellini, many pictures in
European galleries, Acad., Frari, S. Zaccaria SS. Giovanni e
Paolo Venice; Carpaccio, Presentation and Ursula pictures
Acad., St. George and St. Jerome S. Giorgio da Schiavone
Venice, St. Stephen Berlin Gal.; Cima, altar-pieces S. Maria
dell Orte, S. Giovanni in Bragora, Acad. Venice, Louvre,
Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Vienna, and other galleries;
Catena, Altar-pieces S. Simeone, S. M. Mater Domini, SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, Acad. Venice, Dresden, and in Nat. Gal.
Lon. (the Warrior and Horse attributed to "School of
Bellini"); Basaiti, Venice Acad. Nat. Gal. Lon., Vienna, and
Berlin Gals.; Previtali, altar-pieces S. Spirito Bergamo,
Brera, Berlin, and Dresden Gals., Nat. Gal. Lon., Venice
Acad.; Bissolo, Resurrection Berlin Gal., S. Caterina Venice
Acad.; Rondinelli, two pictures Palazzo Doria Rome, Holy
Family (No. 6) Louvre (attributed to Giovanni Bellini);
Diana, Altar-pieces Venice Acad.; Mansueti, large pictures
Venice Acad.; Antonella da Messina, Portraits Louvre, Berlin
and Nat. Gal. Lon., Crucifixion Antwerp Mus.