_Altobello Melone_ (Cremonese: painted about 1500).
There was no native and independent school of Cremona. Melone
was a pupil of Romanino at Brescia. He painted some of the
frescoes in the nave of Cremona Cathedral.
Two of Christ's disciples are walking after his death and burial to
Emmaus. The risen Christ "drew near, and went with them. But their
eyes were holden, that they should not know him" (Luke xxiv. 16). The
painter makes excuses for the disciples not recognising their Master by
naïvely dressing Him as a tourist with an alpenstock.
755. RHETORIC.}
756. MUSIC. }
_Melozzo da Forli_ (Umbrian: 1438-1494).
Melozzo, born at Forli in the Romagna, near Ravenna, is classed
with the Umbrian School, both because he studied (it is
believed) under Piero della Francesca, and because he worked at
Urbino. Giovanni Santi, who was his friend, especially praises
Melozzo, "to me so dear," for his skill in perspective; and,
like many other artists of these times, he was an architect
as well as a painter. In 1472 he was in Rome; he was one of
the original members of the Roman Academy of St. Luke, founded
by Sixtus IV., and in the book of the Academy he signs his
name as "Painter to the Pope." Some of his Roman frescoes are
preserved. In the Vatican gallery is a fresco transferred to
canvas, commemorating the restoration of the Vatican Library
and containing many portraits. This work has been published by
the Arundel Society, but Melozzo is more widely known by the
figures of angels playing on musical instruments, now in the
sacristy of St. Peter's, which have been published by the same
Society. These grand figures of youths with abundant flowing
hair are "among the most beautiful and masterful creations
of the Renaissance spirit, caught up, it would seem, into a
certain ecstasy and rapture of divine things." Portions of a
fresco, painted for SS. Apostoli, representing the Ascension
of our Lord, are now on the staircase of the Quirinal Palace.
The work was "one of the most grand and daring feats of
foreshadowing that art has bequeathed, and may be considered
as the first illustration of that science which Mantegna and
Correggio further developed" (Kugler). In this connection we
may notice in our pictures that "the steps and the figures
thereon are drawn in perspective, as if they were real objects
seen from below; they present the earliest example the Gallery
possesses of this kind of perspective illusion, which was
practised with great success by Mantegna, and carried out on
the grandest scale by Michael Angelo in the ceiling of the
Sistine chapel" (Monkhouse, _In the National Gallery_, p. 115).
About the year 1480 Melozzo went to Urbino, where he executed
the work described below. In Forli itself a few frescoes by
Melozzo survive. In the British Museum there are some drawings
by this rare master.
These pictures are two of a series of seven, which were painted for
the good Duke Frederick to decorate the library of the Ducal Palace
at Urbino. The words on the frieze above our pictures are portions
of a running inscription describing the Duke's style and titles. He
was created "Gonfaloniere of the Church" (756) in 1465 and "Duke
of Urbino" (755) in 1474. The series represented symbolically the
seven arts--grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry,
and astronomy--which, until the close of the Middle Ages, formed
the curriculum of a liberal education. Notice in both pictures that
the figures of the learners are kneeling--an attitude symbolical of
the spirit of reverence and humility which distinguishes the true
scholar ("I prayed, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me"); whilst
the figures representing the sciences to be learned are seated on
thrones--symbolical of the true kingship that consists in knowledge
("And I set her before kingdoms and thrones"), and are clothed about
with pearls and other precious stones ("She is more precious than
rubies").
In the picture of Rhetoric (755) the youth is being taught not to
speak, but to read--"You must not speak," the Queen of Rhetoric seems
to tell him, "until you have something to say." Notice, too, that
Rhetoric is robed in cold gray. "You think Rhetoric should be glowing,
fervid, impetuous? No. Above all things,--cool."
But Music (756) is robed in bright red, the colour of delight. The book
now is closed. "After learning to reason, you will learn to sing; for
you will want to. There is so much reason for singing in this sweet
world, when one thinks rightly of it." Music points her scholar to a
small organ--"not that you are never to sing anything but hymns, but
that whatever is rightly called music, or work of the Muses, is divine
in help and healing" (_Mornings in Florence_, v. 128, 134). Hanging
from the wall on the left, almost above the scholar's head, is a sprig
of bay, the Muses' crown. Other pictures of this same series are in the
gallery at Berlin and in the Royal Collection at Windsor. The latter
is of peculiar interest in the history of the Renaissance. It shows
the Duke, his son and the Court, and a black-robed humanist, seated in
a sort of pulpit--"the unique representation of a scene of frequent
occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a
part of every day's occupation" (_see_ the description in Symonds, ii.
p. 221).