ITALIAN PAINTING.
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE, 1500-1600.--CONTINUED.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: The works on Italian art before mentioned
and consult also the General Bibliography (p. xv.)
LEONARDO DA VINCI AND THE MILANESE: The third person in the great
Florentine trinity of painters was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the
other two being Michael Angelo and Raphael. He greatly influenced the
school of Milan, and has usually been classed with the Milanese, yet
he was educated in Florence, in the workshop of Verrocchio, and was so
universal in thought and methods that he hardly belongs to any school.
He has been named a realist, an idealist, a magician, a wizard, a
dreamer, and finally a scientist, by different writers, yet he was
none of these things while being all of them--a full-rounded,
universal man, learned in many departments and excelling in whatever
he undertook. He had the scientific and experimental way of looking at
things. That is perhaps to be regretted, since it resulted in his
experimenting with everything and completing little of anything. His
different tastes and pursuits pulled him different ways, and his
knowledge made him sceptical of his own powers. He pondered and
thought how to reach up higher, how to penetrate deeper, how to
realize more comprehensively, and in the end he gave up in despair. He
could not fulfil his ideal of the head of Christ nor the head of Mona
Lisa, and after years of labor he left them unfinished. The problem
of human life, the spirit, the world engrossed him, and all his
creations seem impregnated with the psychological, the mystical, the
unattainable, the hidden.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--LEONARDO DA VINCI. MONA LISA. LOUVRE.]
He was no religionist, though painting the religious subject with
feeling; he was not in any sense a classicist, nor had he any care for
the antique marbles, which he considered a study of nature at
second-hand. He was more in love with physical life without being an
enthusiast over it. His regard for contours, rhythm of line, blend of
light with shade, study of atmosphere, perspective, trees, animals,
humanity, show that though he examined nature scientifically, he
pictured it æsthetically. In his types there is much sweetness of
soul, charm of disposition, dignity of mien, even grandeur and majesty
of presence. His people we would like to know better. They are full of
life, intelligence, sympathy; they have fascination of manner,
winsomeness of mood, grace of bearing. We see this in his best-known
work--the Mona Lisa of the Louvre. It has much allurement of personal
presence, with a depth and abundance of soul altogether charming.
Technically, Leonardo was not a handler of the brush superior in any
way to his Florentine contemporaries. He knew all the methods and
mediums of the time, and did much to establish oil-painting among the
Florentines, but he was never a painter like Titian, or even Correggio
or Andrea del Sarto. A splendid draughtsman, a man of invention,
imagination, grace, elegance, and power, he nevertheless carried more
by mental penetration and æsthetic sense than by his technical skill.
He was one of the great men of the Renaissance, and deservedly holds a
place in the front rank.
Though Leonardo's accomplishment seems slight because of the little
that is left to us, yet he had a great following not only among the
Florentines but at Milan, where Vincenza Foppa had started a school in
the Early Renaissance time. Leonardo was there for fourteen years, and
his artistic personality influenced many painters to adopt his type
and methods. Bernardino Luini (1475?-1532?) was the most prominent of
the disciples. He cultivated Leonardo's sentiment, style, subjects,
and composition in his middle period, but later on developed
independence and originality. He came at a period of art when that
earnestness of characterization which marked the early men was giving
way to gracefulness of recitation, and that was the chief feature of
his art. For that matter gracefulness and pathetic sweetness of mood,
with purity of line and warmth of color characterized all the Milanese
painters.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--LUINI. DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS WITH HEAD OF JOHN
THE BAPTIST. UFFIZI.]
The more prominent lights of the school were Salaino (fl. 1495-1518),
of whose work nothing authentic exists, Boltraffio (1467-1516), a
painter of limitations but of much refinement and purity, and Marco da
Oggiono (1470?-1530) a close follower of Leonardo. Solario
(1458?-1515?) probably became acquainted early with the Flemish mode
of working practised by Antonello da Messina, but he afterward came
under Leonardo's spell at Milan. He was a careful, refined painter,
possessed of feeling and tenderness, producing pictures with enamelled
surfaces and much detail. Gianpietrino (fl. 1520-1540) and Cesare da
Sesto (1477-1523?) were also of the Milanese school, the latter
afterward falling under the Raphael influence. Gaudenzio Ferrara
(1481?-1547?), an exceptionally brilliant colorist and a painter of
much distinction, was under Leonardo's influence at one time, and
with the teachings of that master he mingled a little of Raphael in
the type of face. He was an uneven painter, often excessive in
sentiment, but at his best one of the most charming of the northern
painters.
SODOMA AND THE SIENNESE: Sienna, alive in the fourteenth century to
all that was stirring in art, in the fifteenth century was in complete
eclipse, no painters of consequence emanating from there or being
established there. In the sixteenth century there was a revival of art
because of a northern painter settling there and building up a new
school. This painter was Sodoma (1477?-1549). He was one of the best
pupils of Leonardo da Vinci, a master of the human figure, handling it
with much grace and charm of expression, but not so successful with
groups or studied compositions, wherein he was inclined to huddle and
over-crowd space. He was afterward led off by the brilliant success of
Raphael, and adopted something of that master's style. His best work
was done in fresco, though he did some easel pictures that have
darkened very much through time. He was a friend of Raphael, and his
portrait appears beside Raphael's in the latter painter's celebrated
School of Athens. The pupils and followers of the Siennese School were
not men of great strength. Pacchiarotta (1474-1540?), Girolamo della
Pacchia (1477-1535), Peruzzi (1481-1536), a half-Lombard half-Umbrian
painter of ability, and Beccafumi (1486-1551) were the principal
lights. The influence of the school was slight.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--SODOMA. ECSTASY OF ST. CATHERINE. SIENNA.]
FERRARA AND BOLOGNESE SCHOOLS: The painters of these schools during
the sixteenth century have usually been classed among the followers
and imitators of Raphael, but not without some injustice. The
influence of Raphael was great throughout Central Italy, and the
Ferrarese and Bolognese felt it, but not to the extinction of their
native thought and methods. Moreover, there was some influence in
color coming from the Venetian school, but again not to the entire
extinction of Ferrarese individuality. Dosso Dossi (1479?-1541), at
Ferrara, a pupil of Lorenzo Costa, was the chief painter of the time,
and he showed more of Giorgione in color and light-and-shade than
anyone else, yet he never abandoned the yellows, greens, and reds
peculiar to Ferrara, and both he and Garofolo were strikingly original
in their background landscapes. Garofolo (1481-1559) was a pupil of
Panetti and Costa, who made several visits to Rome and there fell in
love with Raphael's work, which showed in a fondness for the sweep and
flow of line, in the type of face adopted, and in the calmness of his
many easel pictures. He was not so dramatic a painter as Dosso, and in
addition he had certain mannerisms or earmarks, such as sootiness in
his flesh tints and brightness in his yellows and greens, with dulness
in his reds. He was always Ferrarese in his landscapes and in the main
characteristics of his technic. Mazzolino (1478?-1528?) was another of
the school, probably a pupil of Panetti. He was an elaborate painter,
fond of architectural backgrounds and glowing colors enlivened with
gold in the high lights. Bagnacavallo (1484-1542) was a pupil of
Francia at Bologna, but with much of Dosso and Ferrara about him. He,
in common with Imola, already mentioned, was indebted to the art of
Raphael.
CORREGGIO AT PARMA: In Correggio (1494?-1534) all the Boccaccio nature
of the Renaissance came to the surface. It was indicated in Andrea del
Sarto--this nature-worship--but Correggio was the consummation. He was
the Faun of the Renaissance, the painter with whom the beauty of the
human as distinguished from the religious and the classic showed at
its very strongest. Free animal spirits, laughing madonnas, raving
nymphs, excited children of the wood, and angels of the sky pass and
repass through his pictures in an atmosphere of pure sensuousness.
They appeal to us not religiously, not historically, not
intellectually, but sensuously and artistically through their rhythmic
lines, their palpitating flesh, their beauty of color, and in the
light and atmosphere that surround them. He was less of a religionist
than Andrea del Sarto. Religion in art was losing ground in his day,
and the liberality and worldliness of its teachers appeared clearly
enough in the decorations of the Convent of St. Paul at Parma, where
Correggio was allowed to paint mythological Dianas and Cupids in the
place of saints and madonnas. True enough, he painted the religious
subject very often, but with the same spirit of life and joyousness as
profane subjects.
[Illustration: FIG. 46--CORREGGIO. MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE AND
CHRIST. LOUVRE.]
The classic subject seemed more appropriate to his spirit, and yet he
knew and probably cared less about it than the religious subject. His
Dianas and Ledas are only so in name. They have little of the
Hellenic spirit about them, and for the sterner, heroic phases of
classicism--the lofty, the grand--Correggio never essayed them. The
things of this earth and the sweetness thereof seemed ever his aim.
Women and children were beautiful to him in the same way that flowers
and trees and skies and sunsets were beautiful. They were revelations
of grace, charm, tenderness, light, shade, color. Simply to exist and
be glad in the sunlight was sweetness to Correggio. He would have no
Sibylesque mystery, no prophetic austerity, no solemnity, no great
intellectuality. He was no leader of a tragic chorus. The dramatic,
the forceful, the powerful, were foreign to his mood. He was a singer
of lyrics and pastorals, a lover of the material beauty about him, and
it is because he passed by the pietistic, the classic, the literary,
and showed the beauty of physical life as an art motive that he is
called the Faun of the Renaissance. The appellation is not
inappropriate.
How or why he came to take this course would be hard to determine. It
was reflective of the times; but Correggio, so far as history tells
us, had little to do with the movements and people of his age. He was
born and lived and died near Parma, and is sometimes classed among the
Bologna-Ferrara painters, but the reasons for the classification are
not too strong. His education, masters, and influences are all shadowy
and indefinite. He seems, from his drawing and composition, to have
known something of Mantegna at Mantua; from his coloring something of
Dosso and Garofolo, especially in his straw-yellows; from his early
types and faces something of Costa and Francia, and his contours and
light-and-shade indicate a knowledge of Leonardo's work. But there is
no positive certainty that he saw the work of any of these men.
His drawing was faulty at times, but not obtrusively so; his color and
brush-work rich, vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm,
penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere
omnipresent, enveloping. In composition he rather pushed aside line in
favor of light and color. It was his technical peculiarity that he
centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. And in
this very feature he was one of the first men in Renaissance Italy to
paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and
darks through a tapestry of rich colors. That is art for art's sake,
and that, as will be seen further on, was the picture motive of the
great Venetians.
Correggio's immediate pupils and followers, like those of Raphael and
Andrea del Sarto, did him small honor. As was usually the case in
Renaissance art-history they caught at the method and lost the spirit
of the master. His son, Pomponio Allegri (1521-1593?), was a painter
of some mark without being in the front rank. Michelangelo Anselmi
(1491-1554?), though not a pupil, was an indifferent imitator of
Correggio. Parmigianino (1504-1540), a mannered painter of some
brilliancy, and of excellence in portraits, was perhaps the best of
the immediate followers. It was not until after Correggio's death, and
with the painters of the Decadence, that his work was seriously taken
up and followed.
PRINCIPAL WORKS: MILANESE--Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper S.
M. delle Grazie Milan (in ruins), Mona Lisa, Madonna with
St. Anne (badly damaged) Louvre, Adoration (unfinished)
Uffizi, Angel at left in Verrocchio's Baptism Florence
Acad.; Luini, frescos Monastero Maggiore, 71 fragments in
Brera Milan, Church of the Pilgrims Sarrona, S. M. degli
Angeli Lugano, altar-pieces Duomo Como, Ambrosian Library
Milan, Brera, Uffizi, Louvre, Madrid, St. Petersburgh, and
other galleries; Beltraffio, Madonna Louvre, Barbara Berlin
Gal., Madonna Nat. Gal. Lon., fresco Convent of S. Onofrio
Rome (ascribed to Da Vinci); Marco da Oggiono, Archangels
and other works Brera, Holy Family Madonna Louvre; Solario,
Ecce Homo Repose Poldi-Pezzoli Gal. Milan, Holy Family
Brera, Madonna Portrait Louvre, Portraits Nat. Gal. Lon.,
Assumption Certosa of Pavia; Giampietrino, Magdalene Brera,
Madonna S. Sepolcro Milan, Magdalene and Catherine Berlin
Gal.; Cesare da Sesto, Madonna Brera, Magi Naples Mus.;
Gaudenzio Ferrara, frescos Church of Pilgrims Saronna, other
pictures in Brera, Turin Gal., S. Gaudenzio Novara, S. Celso
Milan.
SIENNESE--Sodoma, frescos Convent of St. Anne near Pienza,
Benedictine Convent of Mont' Oliveto Maggiore, Alexander and
Roxana Villa Farnesina Rome, S. Bernardino Palazzo Pubblico,
S. Domenico Sienna, pictures Uffizi, Brera, Munich, Vienna
Gals.; Pacchiarotto, Ascension Visitation Sienna Gal.;
Girolamo del Pacchia, frescos (3) S. Bernardino,
altar-pieces S. Spirito and Sienna Acad., Munich and Nat.
Gal. Lon.; Peruzzi, fresco Fontegiuste Sienna, S. Onofrio,
S. M. della Pace Rome; Beccafumi, St. Catherine Saints
Sienna Acad., frescos S. Bernardino Hospital and S. Martino
Sienna, Palazzo Doria Rome, Pitti, Berlin, Munich Gals.
FERRARESE AND BOLOGNESE--Dosso Dossi, many works Ferrara
Modena Gals., Duomo S. Pietro Modena, Brera, Borghese,
Doria, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Gals.; Garofolo, many works
Ferrara churches and Gal., Borghese, Campigdoglio, Louvre,
Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Mazzolino, Ferrara,
Berlin, Dresden, Louvre, Doria, Borghese, Pitti, Uffizi, and
Nat. Gal. Lon.; Bagnacavallo, Misericordia and Gal. Bologna,
Louvre, Berlin, Dresden Gals.
PARMESE--Correggio, frescos Convent of S. Paolo, S. Giovanni
Evangelista, Duomo Parma, altar-pieces Dresden (4), Parma
Gals., Louvre, mythological pictures Antiope Louvre, Danae
Borghese, Leda Jupiter and Io Berlin, Venus Mercury and
Cupid Nat. Gal. Lon., Ganymede Vienna Gal.; Pomponio
Allegri, frescos Capella del Popolo Parma; Anselmi, frescos
S. Giovanni Evangelista, altar-pieces Madonna della
Steccata, Duomo, Gal. Parma, Louvre; Parmigianino, frescos
Moses Steccata, S. Giovanni Parma, altar-pieces Santa
Margherita, Bologna Gal., Madonna Pitti, portraits Uffizi,
Vienna, Naples Mus., other works Dresden, Vienna, and Nat.
Gal. Lon.