_Garofalo_ (Ferrarese: 1481-1559).
Benvenuto Tisio, called Garofalo[91] from the village of
that name on the Po to which his family belonged, was (like
Sodoma) the son of a shoemaker, and having shown a strong taste
for art, was apprenticed as a lad to the Ferrarese painter,
Domenico Panetti. Seven years later he went to Cremona and
attached himself to Boccaccino (806). He left Cremona suddenly,
as described in a letter, still extant, from Boccaccino to
Garofalo's father: "Had your son," he writes, "learnt good
manners as thoroughly as he has learnt painting, he would
scarcely have played me such a shabby trick. He has taken
himself off, I know not whither, and without a word. But this
may be a clue to his whereabouts, that he said, if he is to be
believed, that he would see Rome." From Rome he returned to
Ferrara, where he formed a warm friendship with the brothers
Dossi. In 1509 he was again in Rome, where he saw and admired
Michael Angelo's frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel in all the
splendour of their freshness. He also greatly admired the work
of Raphael; "and displayed," says Vasari, "so much diffidence
as well as courtesy that he became the friend of Raphael, who,
kind and obliging as he was, assisted and favoured Benvenuto
much, teaching him many things." In 1511 Benvenuto was at
Mantua, but in the following year he returned to Ferrara,
which remained his home for the rest of his life. There, says
Vasari, who was entertained by him, he lived a particularly
happy and busy life, being "cheerful of disposition, mild in
his converse, warmly attached to his friends, beyond measure
affectionate and devoted, and always supporting the trials of
his life with patient resignation." These trials were very
heavy, for soon after he was forty he lost the sight of one
eye; "nor was he without fear and much danger of losing the
other. He then recommended himself to God, and made a vow to
wear grey clothing ever after, as, in fact, he did, when by
the grace of God the sight of the left eye was preserved to
him so perfectly that the works executed by Garofalo in his
sixty-fifth year are so well done, so delicately finished,
and evince so much care, that they are truly wonderful." For
the last nine years of his life he was totally blind, in
which affliction he solaced himself by cultivating music.
Garofalo's works are very numerous; many of them are in France
and in Rome, and in our own Gallery he is well represented.
"He was conscientious and truthful within his scope, and the
ease and delicacy with which he carried out his smaller works
could hardly be exceeded." He was an eclectic rather than an
original painter, though he remained Ferrarese throughout in
his system of colouring. "His fellow-countrymen have called
him the 'Ferrarese Raphael,' in the same way that the Milanese
have called Luini the 'Lombard Raphael,' and, if properly
understood, both appellations have their meaning; for these
painters occupy much the same position in their respective
schools as did Raphael in the Umbrian, Andrea del Sarto in the
Florentine, etc., though the individual gifts of each were of
course very different." (Morelli's _Borghese and Doria-Pamfili
Galleries_, pp. 200-214, contains a detailed account of
Garofalo. His theory that the works attributed to Ortolano
are in reality early works of Garofalo is very doubtful. See
on this point under 699, and _cf._ Venturi's criticism in the
Catalogue of the Ferrarese Exhibition at the Burlington Fine
Arts Club).
A well-known incident in the life of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in
Africa (A.D. 354-430), one of the "doctors" of the Christian Church
whose writings have had a greater effect than those probably of any
one man on the beliefs and lives of succeeding Christian ages. Whilst
busied, he tells us, in writing his discourse on the Trinity, he one
day beheld a child, who, having dug a hole in the sand, was bringing
water, as children at the seaside do, to empty the sea into his hole.
Augustine told him it was impossible. "Not more impossible," replied
the child, "than for thee, O Augustine! to explain the mystery on
which thou art now meditating" ("Canst thou by searching find out God?
canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as
heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The
measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea,"
Job xi. 7-9). The painter shows the visionary nature of the scene by
placing beside St Augustine the figure of St. Catherine, the patron
saint of theologians and scholars, and in the background, on a little
jutting cape, St. Stephen, whose life and actions are set forth in St.
Augustine's writings. The saint himself receives the child's lesson
with the contemptuous impatience of a scholar's ambition; but all the
time the heavens whose mysteries he would fain explore are open behind
him, and the angel choirs are singing that he who would enter in must
first become as a little child, "for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."