It is possible that many visitors to the Cathedral of Como have carried
away the memory of stately women with abundant yellow hair and draperies
of green and crimson in a picture they connect thereafter with Gaudenzio
Ferrari. And when they come to Milan they are probably both impressed
and disappointed by a Martyrdom of St. Catherine in the Brera, bearing
the same artist's name. If they wish to understand this painter they
must seek him at Varallo, at Saronno, and at Vercelli. In the Church of
S. Christoforo, in Vercelli, Gaudenzio Ferrari, at the full height of
his powers, showed what he could do to justify Lomazzi's title chosen
for him of the eagle. He has indeed the strong wing and the swiftness of
the king of birds. And yet the works of few really great painters--and
among the really great we place Ferrari--leave upon the mind a more
distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary fertility of fancy,
vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of nature, and great command of
technical resources are here (as elsewhere in Ferrari's frescos)
neutralized by an incurable defect of the combining and harmonizing
faculty so essential to a masterpiece. There is stuff enough of thought
and vigor and imagination to make a dozen artists. And yet we turn away
disappointed from the crowded, dazzling, stupefying wilderness of forms
and faces on these mighty walls.
All that Ferrari derived from actual life--the heads of single figures,
the powerful movement of men and women in excited action, the monumental
pose of two praying nuns--is admirably rendered. His angels, too, in S.
Cristoforo, as elsewhere, are quite original; not only in their type of
beauty, which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari, without a touch of
Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity of their emotion, the
realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round the Cross in the
fresco of the "Crucifixion" are as passionate as any angels of the
Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those, again, which crowd the Stable of
Bethlehem in the "Nativity" yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's
in the Riccardi Chapel.
The "Crucifixion," and the "Assumption of Madonna" are very tall and
narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt to fill almost
unmanageable space with a connected action. Of the two frescos, the
"Crucifixion," which has points of strong similarity to the same subject
at Varallo, is by far the best. Ferrari never painted anything at once
truer to life and nobler in tragic style than the fainting Virgin. Her
face expresses the very acme of martyrdom--not exaggerated nor
spasmodic, but real and sublime--in the suffering of a stately matron.
In points like this Ferrari cannot be surpassed. Raphael could scarcely
have done better; besides, there is an air of sincerity, a stamp of
popular truth in this episode which lies beyond Raphael's sphere. It
reminds us rather of Tintoretto.
After the "Crucifixion," I place the "Adoration of the Magi," full of
fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes; then the "Sposalizio" (whose
marriage I am not certain), the only grandly composed picture of the
series, and marked by noble heads; then the "Adoration of the
Shepherds," with two lovely angels holding the bambino. The "Assumption
of the Magdalen"--for which fresco there is a valuable cartoon in the
Albertina Collection at Turin--must have been a fine picture; but it is
ruined now. An oil altar-piece, in the choir of the same church, struck
me less than the frescos. It represents Madonna and a crowd of saints
under an orchard of apple-trees, with cherubs curiously flung about
almost at random in the air. The motive of the orchard is prettily
conceived and carried out with spirit.
What Ferrari possessed was rapidity of movement, fulness and richness of
reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic
vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and
passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition,
simplicity of total effect, harmony in coloring, control over his own
luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought grandeur
in size and multitude, richness, eclat, contrast. Being the disciple of
Leonardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular. As a composer, the
old leaven of Giovenone remained in him; but he felt the dramatic
tendencies of a later age, and in occasional episodes he realized them
with a force and _furia_ granted to very few of the Italian painters.