ITALIAN PAINTING.
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE--1500-1600.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Those on Italian art before mentioned,
and also, Berenson, _Lorenzo Lotto_; Clement, _Michel Ange,
L. da Vinci, Raphael_; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Titian_;
same authors, _Raphael_; Grimm, _Michael Angelo_; Gronau,
_Titian_; Holroyd, _Michael Angelo_; Meyer, _Correggio_;
Moore, _Correggio_; Muntz, _Leonardo da Vinci_; Passavant,
_Raphael_; Pater, _Studies in History of Renaissance_;
Phillips, _Titian_; Reumont, _Andrea del Sarto_; Ricci,
_Correggio_; Richter, _Leonardo di Vinci_; Ridolfi, _Vita di
Paolo Cagliari Veronese_; Springer, _Rafael und Michel
Angelo_; Symonds, _Michael Angelo_; Taine, _Italy--Florence
and Venice_.
THE HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT: The word "Renaissance" has a broader meaning
than its strict etymology would imply. It was a "new birth," but
something more than the revival of Greek learning and the study of
nature entered into it. It was the grand consummation of Italian
intelligence in many departments--the arrival at maturity of the
Christian trained mind tempered by the philosophy of Greece, and the
knowledge of the actual world. Fully aroused at last, the Italian
intellect became inquisitive, inventive, scientific, skeptical--yes,
treacherous, immoral, polluted. It questioned all things, doubted
where it pleased, saturated itself with crime, corruption, and
sensuality, yet bowed at the shrine of the beautiful and knelt at the
altar of Christianity. It is an illustration of the contradictions
that may exist when the intellectual, the religious, and the moral
are brought together, with the intellectual in predominance.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--FRA BARTOLOMMEO. DESCENT FROM CROSS. PITTI.]
And that keen Renaissance intellect made swift progress. It remodelled
the philosophy of Greece, and used its literature as a mould for its
own. It developed Roman law and introduced modern science. The world
without and the world within were rediscovered. Land and sea, starry
sky and planetary system, were fixed upon the chart. Man himself, the
animals, the planets, organic and inorganic life, the small things of
the earth gave up their secrets. Inventions utilized all classes of
products, commerce flourished, free cities were builded, universities
arose, learning spread itself on the pages of newly invented books of
print, and, perhaps, greatest of all, the arts arose on strong wings
of life to the very highest altitude.
For the moral side of the Renaissance intellect it had its tastes and
refinements, as shown in its high quality of art; but it also had its
polluting and degrading features, as shown in its political and social
life. Religion was visibly weakening though the ecclesiastical still
held strong. People were forgetting the faith of the early days, and
taking up with the material things about them. They were glorifying
the human and exalting the natural. The story of Greece was being
repeated in Italy. And out of this new worship came jewels of rarity
and beauty, but out of it also came faithlessness, corruption, vice.
Strictly speaking, the Renaissance had been accomplished before the
year 1500, but so great was its impetus that, in the arts at least, it
extended half-way through the sixteenth century. Then it began to fail
through exhaustion.
MOTIVES AND METHODS: The religious subject still held with the
painters, but this subject in High-Renaissance days did not carry with
it the religious feeling as in Gothic days. Art had grown to be
something else than a teacher of the Bible. In the painter's hands it
had come to mean beauty for its own sake--a picture beautiful for its
form and color, regardless of its theme. This was the teaching of
antique art, and the study of nature but increased the belief. A new
love had arisen in the outer and visible world, and when the Church
called for altar-pieces the painters painted their new love,
christened it with a religious title, and handed it forth in the name
of the old. Thus art began to free itself from Church domination and
to live as an independent beauty. The general motive, then, of
painting during the High Renaissance, though apparently religious from
the subject, and in many cases still religious in feeling, was largely
to show the beauty of form or color, in which religion, the antique,
and the natural came in as modifying elements.
In technical methods, though extensive work was still done in fresco,
especially at Florence and Rome, yet the bulk of High-Renaissance
painting was in oils upon panel and canvas. At Venice even the
decorative wall paintings were upon canvas, afterward inserted in wall
or ceiling.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--ANDREA DEL SARTO. MADONNA OF ST. FRANCIS.
UFFIZI.]
THE FLORENTINES AND ROMANS: There was a severity and austerity about
the Florentine art, even at its climax. It was never too sensuous and
luxurious, but rather exact and intellectual. The Florentines were
fond of lustreless fresco, architectural composition, towering or
sweeping lines, rather sharp color as compared with the Venetians, and
theological, classical, even literary and allegorical subjects.
Probably this was largely due to the classic bias of the painters and
the intellectual and social influences of Florence and Rome. Line and
composition were means of expressing abstract thought better than
color, though some of the Florentines employed both line and color
knowingly.
This was the case with Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517), a monk of San
Marco, who was a transition painter from the fifteenth to the
sixteenth century. He was a religionist, a follower of Savonarola, and
a man of soul who thought to do work of a religious character and
feeling; but he was also a fine painter, excelling in composition,
drawing, drapery, color. The painter's element in his work, its
material and earthly beauty, rather detracted from its spiritual
significance. He opposed the sensuous and the nude, and yet about the
only nude he ever painted--a St. Sebastian for San Marco--had so much
of the earthly about it that people forgot the suffering saint in
admiring the fine body, and the picture had to be removed from the
convent. In such ways religion in art was gradually undermined, not
alone by naturalism and classicism but by art itself. Painting brought
into life by religion no sooner reached maturity than it led people
away from religion by pointing out sensuous beauties in the type
rather than religious beauties in the symbol.
Fra Bartolommeo was among the last of the pietists in art. He had no
great imagination, but some feeling and a fine color-sense for
Florence. Naturally he was influenced somewhat by the great ones about
him, learning perspective from Raphael, grandeur from Michael Angelo,
and contours from Leonardo da Vinci. He worked in collaboration with
Albertinelli (1474-1515), a skilled artist and a fellow-pupil with
Bartolommeo in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli. Their work is so much
alike that it is often difficult to distinguish the painters apart.
Albertinelli was not so devout as his companion, but he painted the
religious subject with feeling, as his Visitation in the Uffizi
indicates. Among the followers of Bartolommeo and Albertinelli were
Fra Paolino (14901547), Bugiardini (1475-1554), Granacci (1477-1543),
who showed many influences, and Ridolfo Ghirlandajo (1483-1561).
[Illustration: FIG. 40.--MICHAEL ANGELO. ATHLETE. SISTINE, ROME.]
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531) was a Florentine pure and simple--a
painter for the Church producing many madonnas and altar-pieces, and
yet possessed of little religious feeling or depth. He was a painter
more than a pietist, and was called by his townsmen "the faultless
painter." So he was as regards the technical features of his art. He
was the best brushman and colorist of the Florentine school. Dealing
largely with the material side his craftsmanship was excellent and his
pictures exuberant with life and color, but his madonnas and saints
were decidedly of the earth--handsome Florentine models garbed as
sacred characters--well-drawn and easily painted, with little
devotional feeling about them. He was influenced by other painters to
some extent. Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and Michael Angelo were his models
in drawing; Leonardo and Bartolommeo in contours; while in warmth of
color, brush-work, atmospheric and landscape effects he was quite by
himself. He had a large number of pupils and followers, but most of
them deserted him later on to follow Michael Angelo. Pontormo
(1493-1558) and Franciabigio (1482-1525) were among the best of them.
Michael Angelo (1474-1564) has been called the "Prophet of the
Renaissance," and perhaps deserves the title, since he was more of the
Old Testament than the New--more of the austere and imperious than the
loving or the forgiving. There was no sentimental feature about his
art. His conception was intellectual, highly imaginative, mysterious,
at times disordered and turbulent in its strength. He came the nearest
to the sublime of any painter in history through the sole attribute of
power. He had no tenderness nor any winning charm. He did not win, but
rather commanded. Everything he saw or felt was studied for the
strength that was in it. Religion, Old-Testament history, the antique,
humanity, all turned in his hands into symbolic forms of power, put
forth apparently in the white heat of passion, and at times in
defiance of every rule and tradition of art. Personal feeling was very
apparent in his work, and in this he was as far removed as possible
from the Greeks, and nearer to what one would call to-day a
romanticist. There was little of the objective about him. He was not
an imitator of facts but a creator of forms and ideas. His art was a
reflection of himself--a self-sufficient man, positive, creative,
standing alone, a law unto himself.
Technically he was more of a sculptor than a painter. He said so
himself when Julius commanded him to paint the Sistine ceiling, and he
told the truth. He was a magnificent draughtsman, and drew magnificent
sculpturesque figures on the Sistine vault. That was about all his
achievement with the brush. In color, light, air, perspective--in all
those features peculiar to the painter--he was behind his
contemporaries. Composition he knew a great deal about, and in drawing
he had the most positive, far-reaching command of line of any painter
of any time. It was in drawing that he showed his power. Even this is
severe and harsh at times, and then again filled with a grace that is
majestic and in scope universal, as witness the Creation of Adam in
the Sistine.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--RAPHAEL. LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE. LOUVRE.]
He came out of Florence, a pupil of Ghirlandajo, with a school feeling
for line, stimulated by the frescos of Masaccio and Signorelli. At an
early age he declared himself, and hewed a path of his own through
art, sweeping along with him many of the slighter painters of his age.
Long-lived he saw his contemporaries die about him and Humanism end in
bloodshed with the coming of the Jesuits; but alone, gloomy, resolute,
steadfast to his belief, he held his way, the last great
representative of Florentine art, the first great representative of
individualism in art. With him and after him came many followers who
strove to imitate his "terrible style," but they did not succeed any
too well.
The most of these followers find classification under the Mannerists
of the Decadence. Of those who were immediate pupils of Michael
Angelo, or carried out his designs, Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566)
was one of the most satisfactory. His chief work, the Descent from the
Cross, was considered by Poussin as one of the three great pictures of
the world. It is sometimes said to have been designed by Michael
Angelo, but that is only a conjecture. It has much action and life in
it, but is somewhat affected in pose and gesture, and Volterra's work
generally was deficient in real energy of conception and execution.
Marcello Venusti (1515-1585?) painted directly from Michael Angelo's
designs in a delicate and precise way, probably imbibed from his
master, Perino del Vaga, and from association with Venetians like
Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547). This last-named painter was born in
Venice and trained under Bellini and Giorgione, inheriting the color
and light-and-shade qualities of the Venetians; but later on he went
to Rome and came under the influence of Michael Angelo and Raphael. He
tried, under Michael Angelo's inspiration it is said, to unite the
Florentine grandeur of line with the Venetian coloring, and thus outdo
Raphael. It was not wholly successful, though resulting in an
excellent quality of art. As a portrait-painter he was above reproach.
His early works were rather free in impasto, the late ones smooth and
shiny, in imitation of Raphael.
Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) was more Greek in method than any of the
great Renaissance painters. In subject he was not more classic than
others of his time; he painted all subjects. In thought he was not
particularly classic; he was chiefly intellectual, with a leaning
toward the sensuous that was half-pagan. It was in method and
expression more than elsewhere that he showed the Greek spirit. He
aimed at the ideal and the universal, independent, so far as possible,
of the individual, and sought by a union of all elements to produce
perfect harmony. The Harmonist of the Renaissance is his title. And
this harmony extended to a blending of thought, form, and expression,
heightening or modifying every element until they ran together with
such rhythm that it could not be seen where one left off and another
began. He was the very opposite of Michael Angelo. The art of the
latter was an expression of individual power and was purely
subjective. Raphael's art was largely a unity of objective beauties,
with the personal element as much in abeyance as was possible for his
time.
His education was a cultivation of every grace of mind and hand. He
assimilated freely whatever he found to be good in the art about him.
A pupil of Perugino originally, he levied upon features of excellence
in Masaccio, Fra Bartolommeo, Leonardo, Michael Angelo. From the first
he got tenderness, from the second drawing, from the third color and
composition, from the fourth charm, from the fifth force. Like an
eclectic Greek he drew from all sources, and then blended and united
these features in a peculiar style of his own and stamped them with
his peculiar Raphaelesque stamp.
In subject Raphael was religious and mythological, but he was imbued
with neither of these so far as the initial spirit was concerned. He
looked at all subjects in a calm, intellectual, artistic way. Even the
celebrated Sistine Madonna is more intellectual than pietistic, a
Christian Minerva ruling rather than helping to save the world. The
same spirit ruled him in classic and theological themes. He did not
feel them keenly or execute them passionately--at least there is no
indication of it in his work. The doing so would have destroyed unity,
symmetry, repose. The theme was ever held in check by a regard for
proportion and rhythm. To keep all artistic elements in perfect
equilibrium, allowing no one to predominate, seemed the mainspring of
his action, and in doing this he created that harmony which his
admirers sometimes refer to as pure beauty.
For his period and school he was rather remarkable technically. He
excelled in everything except brush-work, which was never brought to
maturity in either Florence or Rome. Even in color he was fine for
Florence, though not equal to the Venetians. In composition,
modelling, line, even in texture painting (see his portraits) he was a
man of accomplishment; while in grace, purity, serenity, loftiness he
was the Florentine leader easily first.
[Illustration: 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 classic
subject and tried to adopt Raphael's style, but he was not completely
successful. Raphael's refinement in Giulio's hands became exaggerated
coarseness. 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.
PRINCIPAL 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. Zenobio
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 Trinità 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., Pietà
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 Tè
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 Musée de Cluny; Giovanni da
Udine, decorations, arabesques and grotesques in Vatican
Loggia; Perino del Vaga, Hist. of Joshua and David Vatican
(with Raphael), frescos Trinità 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.