_Lorenzo di Credi_ (Florentine: 1459-1537).
Lorenzo di Andrea Credi has been called by Morelli the Carlo
Dolci of the fifteenth century. His pictures are sweet and
gentle, but lack force or inspiration. His colouring tends
towards crudeness; his careful execution and finish are
remarkable. "He was a very careful and laborious workman,
distilling his own oils and grinding his own colours; and when
he was working he would suffer no movement to be made," says
Vasari, "that would cause dust to settle on his pictures."
What Vasari adds about him may be partly seen in this and the
companion picture (648), with their bright colouring and pretty
distances: "His works were finished with so much delicacy
that every other painting looks but just sketched and left
incomplete as compared with those from his hand." Lorenzo
was the son and grandson of goldsmiths, and was placed when
quite a child under the tuition of Verocchio (296), and was
still working under him at the age of twenty-one, content with
the modest salary of one florin (about £2) a month. Like his
master, he was a sculptor as well as a painter, and Verocchio
in his will requested that Lorenzo might finish his famous
statue (at Venice) of Bartolommeo Colleoni. (The Venetians,
however, gave it to Alessandro Leopardo to finish.) Lorenzo was
one of the few men who lived through the Renaissance without
swerving from the religious traditions of earlier art, and even
without being much influenced by his fellow-pupils--though in
his grave and sweet Madonnas there is yet a suspicion of the
sidelong look, half sweet, half sinister, and of the long,
oval face, which distinguish Leonardo. He was a disciple of
Savonarola, and burnt his share of pictures in the famous
bonfire. "His will bears witness to his contrition. After
having assured the future of his old woman-servant, to whom
he left his bedding and an annuity in kind; after having made
certain donations to his niece and to the daughter of a friend,
a goldsmith; he directed that the rest of his fortune should go
to the brotherhood of the indigent poor, and that his obsequies
should be as simple as possible" (Müntz: _Leonardo da Vinci_,
i. 29). Lorenzo is not represented so well in the National
Gallery as in the Louvre and at Florence. His "Nativity" in
the Florentine Academy is perhaps his best work. Lorenzo's
range was limited, and "Holy Conversations" or "Madonnas" were
his most frequent subjects. A peculiarity of them is the large
head and somewhat puffy and clumsy forms he gives to the Infant
Christ.