_Art in Milan_
“Cosa bella mortal passa e non d’arte.”—LEONARDO DA VINCI.
The Milanese as a people do not take a great place in the story of
Italian art. They show at no time the spontaneous artistic character
which was the blessed birthright of the Florentines, Sienese, Umbrians,
Venetians. They granted, however, splendid hospitality to the art of
others. Talent of every kind was attracted to this wealthy and luxurious
city, and the concourse of foreign artists roused and developed
considerable industry in the natives from early times.
Lombardy, and in particular Milan, its principal city, were exposed to
influences which did not reach further south. The strain of northern
blood in the people, derived from their Gallic origin, readily received
the impress of the ultramontanes who flowed down throughout the
centuries into the fertile plains of Po and Ticino, and the thoughts and
ideas which they brought, assimilating with the natural instincts of the
soil, and with the ancient traditions of the Latins, resulted in an
artistic character which is quite Italian, though very different from
the more southern populations. It lacks their spontaneity and daring,
their lofty imagination and idealism, has little of their sense of
beauty, falls short in sheer ability. But it is distinguished by
sincerity, a love of realism, a humble and zealous industry, and also by
certain marked and inveterate mannerisms. And though the Milanese, or
rather the Lombards who peopled the wide Duchy of the Visconti and
Sforza, remained always very receptive, looking for a lead, and owing
their strongest artistic impulses to some genius from abroad, their work
keeps always its strong native character.
Milan’s greatest moment was one in her art, and in her public life. The
same spirit of freedom which stood up to Barbarossa and Frederick II.,
raised her incomparable brick buildings of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. In this development of architecture on the large and
reasonable lines of the old Roman building, modified by the mystic ideas
and melancholy sentiment of the North, and by the capabilities of the
rich and plastic material yielded by the alluvial soil, Lombardy shows
the highest result of the mingled elements of her artistic life. When no
longer inspired by freedom, architecture was still fostered in Milan by
ostentatious tyranny, and continued to be the most genial art of the
people. In the fourteenth century, the Visconti raised beautiful
churches and palaces, but the builders inclined more and more to abandon
the national traditions for Gothic lightness and grace. In the crowning
work of the Cathedral, the false Gothic ideal finally triumphed. The
classical revival, which followed under the Sforza and filled the city
anew with churches and palaces, was communicated to Milan by Tuscan
architects. It was cherished by the eclectic spirit of princes and
nobles, and owed nothing to popular impulse. But in adapting her
peculiar material, brick, to the new style, Lombardy gave it a local and
special character, and only when the vulgar exaggeration of the classic
fashion overwhelmed Italy in a general flood of baroque extravagance,
did Lombardy lose architectural individuality.
Sculpture, as the handmaid of architecture, was also actively practised
in Milan from the twelfth century onwards. The same masters from the
shores of Como, from the valley of Antelamo, close to Maggiore, from
Campione near Lugano, who carried the Lombard or Romanesque style all
over North Italy and into Tuscany in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, built her churches and carved upon the façades mystical
figures and devices. The Romanesque sculpture remaining in Milan is very
rude, and the names of its authors are in few cases remembered. In the
fourteenth century the family or guild of masters from Campione is
prominent in the records of Milanese architecture and sculpture, and
individuals are distinguished by name. Under the guidance of the Pisan
sculptor Giovanni di Balduccio, one of the ablest of Nicola Pisano’s
followers, who worked long in Milan, these Campionese produced
numberless sepulchral monuments, a few of which survive still in the
churches and museums. The Pisan traditions appear in them, modified by
the native character. The classic nobility and severity, the ideal grace
of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano degrade into heaviness and coarseness in
these ruder and more realistic hands, and the forms learnt from them are
remoulded according to certain inveterate predilections which persist
always in Lombard sculpture.
At the end of this century, artistic industry received an extraordinary
impulse throughout the Visconte States from the splendid patronage of
Gian Galeazzo. His vast new foundations, the Duomo of Milan, the Certosa
of Pavia, his mighty engineering enterprises, gave endless employment to
workers in stone. In this fervour of activity Lombard sculpture began to
evolve clearly its special character, and agreeably to the gorgeous
tastes of the Prince, which became a tradition for his successors, a
love of excessive and exaggerated ornamentation appears, and marks it
henceforth.
After Gian Galeazzo a lull came in art with the civic confusion of Gian
Maria’s few years, and the continuous wars of Filippo Maria’s
thirty-five. This period represents the pause between the mediæval era
and the Renaissance in Milan. The building and decoration of the
Cathedral was continued slowly by men whom the old principles no longer
inspired, and the new had not yet reached. No great names occur in the
host of craftsmen engaged in the work. The Campione fraternity was still
represented, and continued to exist for a long time, though its
traditions were dying out, and Jacopino da Tradate, who worked in the
earlier half of the century, was a sculptor of some power.
The triumph of Francesco Sforza in 1450 began a new era of prosperity
for Milanese art. A long peace, a succession of sovereigns in whom a
policy of splendour was assisted by stupendous wealth and a genuine love
of beauty and culture, the concourse of strangers of genius to their
Court, bringing the inspiration of the great classic revival from
Tuscany and Central Italy, roused the Lombards to an enthusiasm and
activity which carried them to their highest pitch of achievement at the
end of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Brunelleschi, employed by
Filippo Maria to build a fortress, Antonio Averulino, known as Filarete,
whom Francesco Sforza summoned to design the Ospedale Maggiore and to
assist on the Castle, Michelozzo, builder of the beautiful Portinari
Chapel, and finally the great Bramante, twelve years resident in the
city in the Moro’s days, and Leonardo da Vinci himself, master of all
the arts and sciences, were their guides in the new or rediscovered
mysteries of architecture. Giuniforte Solari, and Pietro his son,
architects of the Duomo, Certosa, and many of the churches and convents
raised everywhere by Francesco and Bianca Maria in the ardour of their
piety and the joy of their newly-won glory, show the transition from
Gothic to the Renaissance style, slowly accomplished however, for the
Lombards were tenacious of their local traditions and not ready to
accept new ideas. Even in the next generation of builders, Amadeo,
Dolcebuono, Cristoforo Solari, Briosco, and the rest, all nursed in the
precepts imparted by the Tuscans, and fully inspired by the Renaissance
spirit, there was still a lingering adhesion to certain Gothic
predilections. The Lombard character, especially noticeable in a love of
ornamentation, still expressed itself in the forms learnt from foreign
example. In all that peculiarly graceful building in Milan of the later
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which is called
indiscriminately Bramantesque, and attributed to the influence of the
Urbino master—cloisters and cortiles with elegant pillared porticos and
sculptured capitals of rich and fanciful design, and archivolts and
cornices decorated with terra-cotta mouldings, grand arched portals
often decorated with classic heads—a Lombard character may almost always
be detected.
In sculpture the Mantegazza are the first of the Milanese artists to
show signs of the Renaissance. These two brothers, Cristoforo and
Antonio, natives of Milan, were working from about 1443 until late in
the century. They represent the old Campionese traditions revivified by
contact with the new ideas, as expressed by the Paduans and Florentines.
Their work is marked by that excessive zeal in the search for realism
common to North Italian art at this time, leading to the representation
of exaggerated action and emotion. With the Mantegazza violence is not
always accompanied by strength, and their conception is not lofty enough
to save their naturalistic tendency from vulgarising the sacred subjects
which they set forth. The Northern element in them, encouraged by the
German and Flemish artists at the liberal Sforza Court, appears in their
extreme sincerity and pains, their lack of grace and idealism, their
attention to minutiæ rather than to broad effect. Their figures are
usually long and ill-proportioned, with small heads, the contours
angular and sharp, the faces rude, with projecting cheek-bones and
cavernous eyes; and the Lombard peculiarity of numberless arbitrary
folds, flattened to the form beneath as if the draperies had been
wetted, gives to the whole compositions of these sculptors the
appearance of crumpled paper. The Mantegazza are closely followed by an
artist of much more sweetness and geniality, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo
(1447-1522), the most productive and typical of the new generation of
sculptors. The joyous vitality of the Renaissance overflows in Amadeo
and carries all his native characteristics to unrestrained excess. The
Lombard love of pomp and gorgeous decoration runs to a riot of
ornamentation in his reliefs, which are crowded and overloaded with rich
and fertile fancies. Builder as well as sculptor, he sacrifices
architectural effect without scruple for the sake of decorative detail,
as the extraordinarily ornate façade of the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo,
one of his most famous works, testifies. This is a fault common to the
Lombard architects. The façade of the Certosa, that museum of
Renaissance art in Lombardy, the characteristic production of the busy
school of the Mantegazza, Amadeo, Benedetto Briosco, and their
assistants and followers, is an enduring monument of architects spoiled
by being decorative sculptors, the building being treated chiefly as a
space to load with decoration. The production of Amadeo’s prolific
talent, during a long and prosperous career, was very large, and
continued till shortly before his death. Amadeo shares the naturalistic
tendency of the Mantegazza and their native mannerisms, especially that
of the crumpled paper folds. A love of story-telling, amounting to
loquacity, appears in his subject reliefs, with their multitudinous
figures and redundant action. The florid, extravagant fancy of his
decorative work is not restrained by his sense of proportion, and in his
indiscriminating use of classical motives borrowed from other
schools—heads of emperors, allegorical conceits, etc.—a want of culture
and scholarship is evident. The vulgarity of Lombard art in comparison
with the Tuscan is exemplified in Amadeo, but is redeemed by the
sympathetic qualities of gaiety, spontaneity and artlessness, which give
his work often much charm and sweetness.
Amadeo’s activity was at its height at the time when Leonardo was
working in Milan upon the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza. Duke
Galeazzo Maria’s failure to find a native to do the work shows the
limitations of the Lombard sculptors. All shunned the problem of casting
a bronze figure on so large a scale. But Lodovico il Moro, taking up the
interrupted project after his brother’s death, found in the Tuscan
Leonardo one who feared no difficulties. The completion of the model of
the horse, after years of preliminary study, was the greatest sculptural
event that ever happened in Milan. But it remains outside the story of
the Lombard sculptors. Unlike the painters, they seemed to have been
little disturbed in their course by the tremendous personality of the
Florentine. If traces of his influence appear in their work, it is in
types borrowed from his paintings.
A host of well-known sculptors accompany and follow Amadeo. Gio.
Dolcebuono, Cristoforo Solari, known as il Gobbo (the Hunchback),
Benedetto Briosco, the Cazzaniga brothers, Agostino Busti, called il
Bambaia—all show the local characteristics. But an inclination to
softness and sensuousness and a lack of the old virile energy begins to
vitiate their work as time goes on, and signals the coming of the
decadence, though the technical skill of the school increases. Il Gobbo,
scion of the old artistic stock of the Solari, was one of the most
highly-reputed of the sculptors, though he has left little of high worth
behind him. He was much favoured by the Moro, who chose him to execute
the monument for Beatrice’s tomb. The interesting sepulchral figures of
this ill-fated pair, completed many years later, and now in the Certosa,
are his work. In Agostino Busti the school reaches its highest technical
proficiency. But the old freshness and inspiration is gone. Il Bambaia,
who is at times great—as in the beautiful recumbent figure of Gaston de
Foix—degenerates often into coldness and conventionality, and his
decorative taste was as ill-regulated as that of his less accomplished
predecessors and contemporaries. A number of other artists—Gian Giacomo
della Porta, Andrea Fusina, Cristoforo de’ Lombardi, Angelo Siciliano,
and, later on, Gabrio Busca, Vincenzo Seregni, etc.—were engaged on
architectural and decorative work in Milan in the sixteenth century,
chiefly on the never-ending subject of the Duomo, the exterior of which
is a vast object-lesson in the artistic decadence of the Milanese. The
pious zeal of S. Carlo and the cultured tastes of his nephew and
successor in the Archbishopric, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, gave a new
impetus to art; but it was ill-directed by the false taste of the age,
and Lombard sculpture, like the architecture, ends in the empty
pomposity and extravagance of the baroque style.
The other branches of mediæval and Renaissance art found a busy centre
also in Milan. The decorative crafts of the goldsmith, wood-carver, of
the intarsia worker and embroiderer, flourished here early. In the
fourteenth century the fame of the Milanese armourers was shared by the
hands which engraved the swords and shields and cuirasses forged in the
clanging quarter of the Spadari. The unparalleled wealth and luxury of
the Visconti and of their nobles called for the finest skill of the
embroiderer and goldsmith to adorn their apparel and harness, and
lavished ornamentation on their palaces, their pageants, their feasts,
which shone with gold and glowed with costly and beautiful colour. In
the following century all these crafts were still more encouraged by the
Sforza. Matteo da Civate was a goldsmith of repute, and the Mantegazza
and others of the sculptors pursued this delicate craft also with great
success. The fame of the Milanese goldsmiths was finally crowned by
Ambrogio Foppa, known as Caradosso, whose figures chiselled in gold were
of such admirable workmanship that Cellini himself praised and envied
him as one of the greatest masters in this art that he had ever known.
The native workers were, however, but a few of those employed at the
Sforza Court, which in the days of Lodovico and Beatrice was a very
museum of artistic work of every kind, contributed by the finest talent
of Italy, Germany, Flanders and Spain.
Nor was the art of painting less cherished in Milan. The Visconti, for
the adornment of their great palace at Pavia, the Sforza for the
splendid halls of the Castle of Milan, and of their hundred villas and
palaces of pleasure, engaged an army of painters. But until the later
half of the fifteenth century not one name occurs there of any
significance in the history of painting. Giovanni da Milano, mentioned
by Vasari as a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, and an excellent painter, shows in
his surviving works the conventional style of the later Giottesque
school, varied by something of that heaviness and darkness of colour
which we see afterwards in the Milanese Quattrocentists. From Giovanni
onwards the few artists that we hear of, and the many that certainly
worked in Milan, have left little trace behind them, and that little
does not differ from the rude and homely style common in North Italy
before the development of the Paduan school. Early in the fifteenth
century the influence of Pisanello, who worked in the Visconti Court,
and of the artistic ideals which he represents, made itself felt in
Milan, and painters like Michelino da Besozzo and the Zavatarii peopled
the walls of the ducal and aristocratic palaces of the Milanese state
with such decorative, but strangely proportioned figures as are still to
be seen in a chamber of the Palazzo Borromeo. Other and stronger
influences, however, must have been working in the Milanese at this
time, and under the spur of Florentine and Paduan example, and that of
the German artists who thronged the court of Filippo Maria and Francesco
Sforza, they were doubtless evolving obscurely the more or less
distinctive character which emerges first into notice with Vincenzo
Foppa. Were the works of the earlier contemporaries of Foppa, Bonifacio
Bembo, Pietro dei Marchesi, Stefano de’ Fedeli, Constantino da Vaprio,
Bernardino de’ Rossi, etc., still existing, we should probably find that
they were already moving in the direction which his greater talent was
able to pursue definitely and to point out to his successors.
Foppa’s is the first figure that stands out for real artistic excellence
in the history of Milanese painting, and he is always called the founder
of the school. Born at Brescia sometime in the first half of the
fifteenth century, Foppa is generally supposed to have studied in the
school of Squarcione. His earliest known work is the Crucifixion, at
Bergamo, dated 1456. He worked chiefly in Milan and the neighbourhood,
and died in 1492. He was a very serious painter, and though he had not
the inspiration of genius, with sound artistic sense he grasped the
material facts of nature and gave force and reality to his creations.
His treatment of forms is simple and direct, and his sincerity and
singleness of purpose redeem the homeliness of his types, and render his
figures noble and impressive. The Squarcionesque tradition is to be seen
in the classical backgrounds and inlaid marble thrones, etc., of his
pictures, but the general character of his work shows a distinct
departure from the Paduan style. The heavy forms and dark grey flesh
tones are native qualities, and are very persistent throughout the
Milanese school of painting.
Zenale, born at Treviglio in 1436, died in 1526, is little more than a
name to us, for in spite of his long life scarcely any of his work has
survived. The altarpiece at Treviglio, in which Buttinone was associated
with him, is the only work extant that can with certainty be called his.
Buttinone was his contemporary and co-worker in the frescoes in S.
Pietro Gessate in Milan, as well as in the Treviglio altarpiece.
Zenale’s share in these frescoes is quite unrecognisable, and there is
nothing else in Milan that can be identified as his work.
Buttinone’s paintings are rare, but some survive in Milan and the
neighbourhood. He has a good deal in common with Foppa, and probably
derived his training from the same source; but there is a decided
individuality in his work, an almost painful struggle after realism
which results in a strange ugliness. His faces have great protruding
foreheads and enormous ears, the flesh tones are dark and grey with
streaks of high light, the children have large heads and
disproportionately small limbs. There is something pathetic in his
painstaking efforts and their poor results.
Ambrogio da Fossano, called Borgognone, is a much better artist. His
name first appears in 1481 as a painter of the University of Milan. His
early work is characterised by a simplicity and refinement and a sense
of beauty which is much developed later on. He has at first the same
tendency to grey flesh tones as Foppa and Buttinone, only with him they
are modified to pleasant cool colour harmonizing with the silvery hues
of background and draperies. Later he develops a freer expression, which
we see at its best in the beautiful frescoes of S. Satiro (now in the
Brera) and the Certosa. He may have felt the influence of Leonardo, but
he never lost his individuality. All through his life he kept the
religious feeling which is his marked characteristic, and which makes
the deepest appeal of his work. His drawing, however, is often bad; his
flying angels are wrongly foreshortened, and there is no movement in his
figures. He did an immense amount of painting and there is a sameness in
his pictures, graceful though they are.
About 1483 Leonardo da Vinci came from Florence and settled in Milan.
His art must have been a revelation to the Lombard painters. Not only
was his technique infinitely superior to theirs, but his scope was so
great, his imagination so profound, he created new forms, new types, a
new world of light and shadow and perspective. His enterprises were
gigantic, not in painting only, but in sculpture, architecture and
engineering. The Milanese, who had little originality of their own and
were always susceptible to outside influence, gathered round him, and a
school of painting was formed in which we see his types imitated to such
a degree that much of his pupils’ work has been attributed to the master
himself, until modern criticism, headed by Morelli, has given it back to
the true authors. The painters we shall now mention must all have felt
more or less Leonardo’s influence.
Ambrogio de Predis was Court painter to Lodovico il Moro in 1482, and
therefore was a painter of repute when Leonardo arrived in Milan; but
that he became a close follower of the master is shown by the fact of
his being associated with him in the altarpiece of the Virgin of the
Rocks, of which de Predis painted the two side panels, the angels in the
National Gallery, and many critics think he also executed the London
version of the central part under the direction of Leonardo. Of the
portraits attributed to him, some are very good, a profile of a girl in
the Ambrosiana being the best. So much better is it than the
coarsely-painted clumsy angels of the National Gallery, that it is
difficult to recognise the connection between them; we can only suppose,
however, that portrait painting was more congenial to him.
Bartolomeo Suardi, called Bramantino, painted at the end of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He is said to have
been a pupil of Foppa and of Bramante, working architecturally with the
latter. His work is free and broad in manner, though often empty and
wanting in drawing; the forms are full and the faces wide, with very
regular features, particularly noticeable in the profiles. The blonde
colouring of his flesh tones is unlike the usual low tones of the
Milanese. There is little evidence in his work of Leonardo’s influence.
Andrea Solario, born about 1460, was an accomplished painter. Of his
early training we know nothing; but his elder brother Cristoforo was a
sculptor, and may have helped Andrea to arrive at the excellence of
drawing which we see in his portraits. Some of his work shows the
influence of Leonardo, but he was also affected by the Venetians, and
especially by Antonello da Messina; his portraits also show affinity
with the Flemish school, in their clear outlines and high finish. The
landscape backgrounds to his subjects are fine in colour and effect. He
was fond of painting half-length pictures of the Madonna and Child, and
treated the subject with a tender realism that is very charming.
Technically he reached a higher excellence than any of his
fellow-Milanese painters. With the exception of the large altarpiece at
the Certosa, his pictures are mostly small and unambitious in subject.
He was, however, employed by Charles d’Amboise, in 1507, to decorate
with frescoes the chapel in his Castle of Gaillon in Normandy. These
have perished.
Boltraffio, Cesare da Sesto, Gianpietrino, Bernardino dei Conti, Marco
d’Oggionno, Melzi and Salai were all close followers of Leonardo. Their
work is not strong or original, nor is the drawing very good, but it has
a charm nevertheless, that of earnest and conscientious effort, striving
after the ideal of beauty their great master set before them, which
degenerates in their hands, however, into a fatal prettiness. Their
fault was an almost morbid exaggeration of the gradation of tones in the
modelling of contours, by which they lost all freshness and vigour.
Boltraffio, born 1467, was of noble family, and was a favourite pupil of
Leonardo’s. His painting is highly finished and has distinction; his
Madonnas, clad always in rich garments, are stately and beautiful, with
oval faces and regular features. The painting is very smooth, which
gives a cold and unnatural effect to the flesh. The fresco in St.
Onofrio in Rome, formerly ascribed to Leonardo, is now given to him, and
some critics consider him the author of the much-disputed Belle
Ferronière of the Louvre.
Cesare da Sesto’s work was very Leonardesque to begin with; later on he
was influenced by Raphael. His manner is lighter and more graceful than
most of the Lombards. In Gianpietrino’s painting the Lombard greyness of
flesh tones is carried to an almost gloomy extreme. His Madonnas and
Magdalens often have charm, but in the former he imitated Leonardo too
closely, and the execution is timid.
Bernardino dei Conti painted Madonnas in the Leonardesque manner, but
the colour is peculiarly hot and the contours lumpy. His drawings, which
are better than his paintings, have a great resemblance to those of
Ambrogio de Predis, by whom, Morelli says, he was much influenced. Marco
d’Oggionno’s pictures are lifeless imitations of the master, in which
all the subtlety is lost, the chiaroscuro is too strong and the colours
too intense. In his large canvases, such as the Archangels of the Brera,
he fails signally. Of the work of Melzi and Salai we know little. Salai
is mentioned by Vasari as a youth of singular grace and beauty with
waving curly hair. He may have served as model for some of those
Leonardesque drawings of youths with curling hair with which we are
familiar.
Painters deriving still from Leonardo but who have achieved a great
celebrity of their own are Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari. Luini
is the most popular painter of the Lombard school, probably because his
paintings are so numerous and therefore widely known. There is always a
sweetness and charm in his work, though rather superficial and
sentimental, and in the best examples he attains beauty and dignity; but
his forms have the Lombard heaviness and his drawing is not good. There
is want of imagination and a tameness in his pictures that make them
very monotonous. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, nor is
anything known of his early training. He certainly imitated Leonardo,
but his best work has a character and individuality of its own. The
frescoes of the Monastero Maggiore in Milan, of Saronno and Lugano are
considered very fine.
Gaudenzio Ferrari was born about 1481 at Valduggia. Little is known of
his early life; he must have felt the influence of Bramantino and Luini;
his work is sometimes confused with that of the latter painter. He had
much more inventive and dramatic power than Luini, as his frescoes show.
He was a most prolific painter, and had too much energy and too little
self-restraint. His colour is fiery and his compositions overcrowded. In
spite of his ability he fell into bad taste and careless workmanship,
showing unmistakable signs of that decadence which gradually overtook
Italian art.
The most talented of all the Lombard painters was Giovanni Antonio
Bazzi, called il Sodoma, for though Tuscany and Rome were the scenes of
his activity and possess his greatest works, yet he derives his artistic
descent from Lombardy. He was born at Vercelli in Piedmont in 1477, and
studied painting for two or three years at Milan before going to Siena,
where we hear of him in 1501. His painting shows plainly his origin, and
some of his works have great affinity to Leonardo, though he is not
known to have been actually his pupil.
The Leonardesque tradition was carried on by the brothers Martino and
Albertino Piazza of Lodi, whose work is suave and pleasing, but weak.
The family of Campi, two generations, worked through three-quarters of
the sixteenth century. Their work is able, but without distinction; they
show a Venetian influence.
Bernardino Lanino was a pupil and imitator of Gaudenzio Ferrari; he was
active through the middle of the sixteenth century. The school dies away
with Lomazzo, more famous for his writings on Art than for his
paintings, and with Daniele Crespi, in whom we see all the exaggerated
realism of the decadence of Art.