_Girolamo dai Libri_ (Veronese: 1474-1556).
Girolamo inherited his surname ("of the books") from
the occupation of his father, who was an illuminator of
manuscripts. Girolamo himself excelled in this branch of art,
but he also became famous as a painter of altar-pieces. He
had "a playful fancy, and loved to introduce into his pictures
festoons of flowers and fruit, trees of rich green foliage
bearing lemons and oranges, and angels singing and playing on
musical instruments. He was a true Veronese in his feeling
for colour, which in his works is always rich and gay. In his
backgrounds are frequently seen distant views of his native
city, with her castellated hills and blue mountains" (Layard,
i. 269). Girolamo, whose friendship with Francesco Morone
(285) is on record, was born in Verona, and it is there that
many of his principal works are preserved. In the Pinacoteca
are several charming pictures, and there also is a collection
of Girolamo's missals. In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a "Madonna
Enthroned," dated 1526, which is by many considered the
painter's masterpiece. The German artist Ludwig Richter,[178]
thus records (in his _Lebenserinnerungen_) the impression
it made upon him:--"I thought that I had scarcely ever seen
anything so beautiful and touching. The picture was by Girolamo
dai Libri, an old master of whom until then I had never heard,
nor, indeed, have I seen any other picture by him since. Here
it was that there first arose in me a suspicion of what a depth
of spiritual life, and of the heavenly beauty that is born
of it, lay in the masters of the pre-Raphaelite period. The
master's way of seeing and feeling, his style--and the style
is the man--impressed me deeply and permanently, touched me
sympathetically. In fact this dear old painter became veritably
my patron saint, for he it was who first opened to me the gates
of the inner sanctuary of Art" (quoted by Dr. Richter, in the
_Art Journal_, February, 1895).
A picture "with a pedigree," being mentioned by Vasari. "In the church
of the Scala (at Verona)," he says, in his life of the painter, "the
picture of the Madonna with St. Anna is by his hand, and is placed
between the San Sebastiano of Il Moro and the San Rocco of Cavazzola
(Morando)." The latter picture (735) and Girolamo's now hang on the
same wall of our Gallery. In the composition of this picture one may
trace, perhaps, the influence of the dainty work Girolamo was first
accustomed to. Thus the trefoil, or cloverleaf pattern, is followed
both in the arrangement of the Virgin, St. Anne, and the Child, and in
that of the little playing angels below. Notice the pretty trellis-work
of roses on either side, and the slain dragon at the Virgin's feet,
emblematic (the latter) of Christ's victory over the powers of evil,
and (the former) of the "ways of pleasantness" and "paths of peace"
that he came to prepare.