CARRACCI, 1555-1609--GUIDO RENI, 1575-1642--DOMENICHINO,
1581-1641--SALVATOR ROSA, 1615-1673.
In the falling away of the schools of Italy, and especially of the
followers of Michael Angelo and Raphael, into mannerism and
exaggeration, fitly expressed in delineation of heathen gods and
goddesses, there arose a cluster of painters in the North of Italy who
had considerable influence on art.
The Carracci included a group of painters, the founders of the later
Bolognese School. Lodovico, the elder of the three, was born at Bologna,
1555. He was educated as a painter, and was so slow in his education,
that he received from his fellow-scholars the nickname of 'Il Bue' (the
ox). But his perseverance surmounted every obstacle. He visited the
different Italian towns, and studied the works of art which contained,
arriving at the conclusion that he might acquire and combine the
excellences of each. This combination, which could only be a splendid
patch-work without unity, was the great aim of his life, and was the
origin of the term _eclectic_ applied to his school. Its whole tendency
was to technical excellence, and in this tendency, however it might
achieve its end, painting showed a marked decline. As an example of the
motives and objects supplied by the school, I must borrow some lines
from a sonnet of the period written by Agostino Carracci:
'Let him, who a good painter would be,
Acquire the drawing of Rome,
Venetian action, and Venetian shadow,
And the dignified colouring of Lombardy,
The terrible manner of Michael Angelo,
Titian's truth and nature,
The sovereign purity of Correggio's style,
And the true symmetry of Raphael;
* * * * *
And a little of Parmegiano'a grace,
But without so much study and toil,
Let him only apply himself to imitate the works
Which our Niccolino has left us here.'
Lodovico opened a school of painting at Bologna, in which he was for a
time largely assisted by his cousins. He died 1619.
Agostino Carracci, cousin of Lodovico, was born at Bologna in 1559. His
father was a tailor, and Agostino himself began life as a jeweller. He
became a painter and an engraver in turn, devoting himself chiefly to
engraving. Towards the beginning of the seventeenth century he was with
his more famous brother, Annibale, at Rome, where he assisted in
painting the Farnese Gallery, designing and executing the two frescoes
of Galatea and Aurora with such success, according to his
contemporaries, that it was popularly said that 'the engraver had
surpassed the painter in the Farnese.' Jealousy arose between the
brothers in consequence, and they separated, not before Annibale had
perpetrated upon Agostino a small, but malicious, practical joke, which
has been handed down to us. Agostino was fond of the society of people
of rank, and Annibale, aware of his brother's weakness, took the
opportunity, when Agostino was surrounded by some of his aristocratic
friends, to present him with a caricature of the two brothers' father
and mother, engaged in their tailoring work.
Agostino died at Parma when he was a little over forty, and was buried
in the cathedral there, in 1602.
Annibale, Agostino's younger brother, was born in 1560. It was intended
by his parents that he should follow their trade and be a tailor, but he
was persuaded by his cousin Lodovico to become a painter. After visiting
Parma, Venice, and Bologna, he worked with his cousin and teacher for
ten years. Annibale was invited to Rome by the Cardinal Odoardo Farnese,
to decorate the great hall of his palace in the Piazza Farnese, with
scenes from the heathen mythology, for which work he received a monthly
salary of ten scudi, about two guineas, with maintenance for himself and
two servants, and a farther gift of five hundred scudi. It was a
parsimonious payment, and the parsimony is said to have preyed on the
mind and affected the health of Annibale, and a visit to Naples, where
he, in common with not a few artists, suffered from the jealous
persecutions of the Neapolitan painters, completed the breaking up of
his constitution. He painted, with the assistance of Albani, the
frescoes in the chapel of San Diego in San Giacomo degli Spagnole, and
pressed upon his assistant more than half of his pay. Annibale's health
had already given way, and after a long illness he died, when forty-nine
years of age, at Rome, 1609, and was buried near Raphael in the
Pantheon.
The merit of the Carracci lay in their power of execution, and in a
certain 'bold naturalism, or rather animalism,' which they added to
their able imitations, for their pictures are not so much their own, as
'After Titian,' 'After Correggio,' etc. In this intent regard to style,
and this perfecting of means to an end, thought and in a manner
neglected. Yet to the Carracci, and their school, is owing a certain
studied air of solemnity and sadness in 'Ecce Homos,' and 'Pietás,'
which, in proportion to its art, has a powerful effect on many
beholders, who prefer conventionality to freedom; or rather, who fail to
distinguish conventionality in its traces. Annibale was the most
original while the least learned of the Carracci; yet, even of Annibale,
it could be said that he lacked enthusiasm in his subjects. His best
productions are his mythological subjects in the Farnese Palace. A
celebrated picture of his, that of the 'Three Marys' (a dead Christ, the
Madonna, and the two other Marys), is at Castle Howard, and has been
exhibited at Manchester, and I think also at Leeds. At Manchester it
attracted the greatest attention and admiration. I believe this was not
only because Annibale Carracci in the 'Three Marys' does attain to a
most piteous mournfulness of sentiment, but because such work as that of
the Carracci finds readiest acceptance from a general public, which
delights in striking, superficial effects. The same reason, in
conjunction with the decline of Italian art, may account for the great
number of the Carracci school and followers.
Annibale Carracci was one of the first who practised landscape painting
and genre pictures, such as 'The Greedy Eater,' as separate branches of
art. Two of Annibale's landscapes are in the National Gallery.
Guido Reni, commonly called 'Guido,' was born at Bologna, 1575. His
father was a musician, and Guido was intended for the same calling, but
finally became a painter and student in the school of the Carracci. He
followed Annibale Carracci to Rome, and dwelt there for twenty years. He
obtained great repute and favour, but taking offence at some supposed
injustice, he left Rome, and settled at last in Bologna, where he
established a large school. Though he made great sums of money, which
might have enabled him to live in the splendour which he coveted, on
account of his addiction to gambling and his grossly extravagant habits,
he was constantly in debt, and driven to tax his genius to the utmost,
and to sell its fruits for what they would bring, irrespective of what
he owed to himself, his art, and to the giver of all good gifts. He died
at Bologna, and was buried with much pomp in the church of San Dominico,
1642.
Of Guido we hear that he had three styles: the first, after the vigorous
manner of Michael Angelo; the second, in the prevailing ornamental taste
of the Rome of his day and the Carracci. This is considered Guido's best
style, and is distinguished by its subtle management of light and shade.
His third, which is called his 'silvery style,' from its greys,
degenerated into insipidity, with little wonder, seeing that at this
stage he sold his time at so much per hour to picture-dealers, who stood
over him, watch in hand, to see that he fulfilled his bargain, and
carried away the saints he manufactured wet from the easel. Such
manufactory took him only three hours, sometimes less. His charges had
risen from five guineas for a head, and twenty guineas for a whole
figure, to twenty times that amount. He painted few portraits, but many
'fancy' heads of saints. Nearly three hundred pictures by Guido are
believed to be in existence. Guido's individual distinction was his
refined sense of beauty, but it was over-ruled by 'cold calculation,'
and developed into a mere abstract conception of 'empty grace' without
heart or soul.
His finest work is the large painting of 'Phoebus and Aurora' in a
pavilion of the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. In our National Gallery
there are nine specimens of Guido's works, including one of his best
'Ecce Homos,' which belonged to the collection of Samuel Rogers.
Domenico Zampieri, commonly called Domenichino, was another Bolognese
painter, and another eminent scholar of the Carracci. He was born in
1581, and, after studying under a Flemish painter, passed into the
school of the Carracci. While yet a very young man, Domenichino was
invited to Rome, where he soon earned a high reputation, competing
successfully with his former fellow-scholar, Guido. Domenichino's
'Flagellation of St Andrew,' and 'Communion of St Jerome,' in payment of
which he only received about five guineas; his 'Martyrdom of St
Sebastian,' and his 'Four Evangelists,' which are among his
masterpieces, were all painted in Rome, and remain in Rome.
Domenichino is said to have excited the extreme hostility of rival
painters, and to have suffered especially from the malice of the
Neapolitans, when he was invited to work among them. After a cruel
struggle Domenichino died in Naples, not without a horrible suspicion of
having being poisoned, at the age of sixty, in 1641. One of his
enemies--a Roman on this occasion--destroyed what was left of
Domenichino's work in Naples.
The painter's fate was a miserable one, and by a coincidence between his
fortune and his taste in subjects, he has identified his name with
terrible representations of martyrdoms. Kugler writes that martyrdom as
a subject for painting, which had been sparingly used by Raphael and his
scholars, had come into fashion in Domenichino's time, for 'painters and
poets sought for passionate emotion, and these subjects (martyrdoms)
supplied them with plentiful food.' Sensationalism is the florid hectic
of art's decay, whether in painting or in literature.
Domenichino is accredited with more taste than fancy. He made free use
of the compositions of even contemporary artists, while he
individualized these compositions. His good and bad qualities are those
of his school, already quoted, and perhaps it is in keeping with these
qualities that the excellence of Domenichino's works lies in subordinate
parts and subordinate characters. There are examples of Domenichino in
the National Gallery.
I shall close my long list of the great Italian painters of the past
with one who was quite apart from and opposed to the Carracci school,
and whose triumphs and failures were essentially his own. Salvator Rosa,
born in 1615 near Naples, was the son of an architect. In opposition to
his father Salvator Rosa became a painter. Having succeeded in selling
his sketches to a celebrated buyer, the bold young Neapolitan started
for Rome at the age of twenty years; and Rome, 'the Jerusalem of
Painters,' became thenceforth Salvator Rosa's head-quarters, though the
character of the man was such as to force him to change his quarters not
once or twice only in his life, and thus he stayed some time, in turn,
at Naples, Viterbo, Volterra, and Florence. At Volterra the aggressive
nature of the painter broke forth in a series of written satires on a
medley of subjects--music, poetry (both of which Salvator himself
cultivated), painting, war, Babylon, and envy. These incongruous satires
excited the violent indignation of the individuals against whom
Salvator's wit was aimed, and their efforts at revenge, together with
his own turbulent spirit, drove him from place to place.
Salvator Rosa was at Naples 1647, and took part in the riots, so famous
in song and story, which made Masaniello, the young fisherman, for a
time Captain-General and Master of Naples, when it was, according to
law, a Spanish dependency governed by a viceroy. Salvator was in the
Compagnia della Morte commanded by Falcone, a battle painter, during the
troubles, a wild enough post to please the wild painter, even had he not
been in addition a personal adherent of the ruling spirit Masaniello,
whom Salvator Rosa painted more than once. After so eventful a life,
the painter died peaceably enough in his fifty-ninth year, of dropsy, at
Rome, and left a considerable fortune to his only son.
Salvator Rosa was the incarnation of the arrogant, fickle, fierce
Neapolitan spirit, and he carried it out sufficiently in an
undisciplined, stormy life, without the addition of the popular legend
that he had at one time joined a troop of banditti, and indulged in
their excesses. The legend seems to have a familiarity with mountain
passes, and his love of peopling them appropriately with banditti in
action. Salvator Rosa was a dashing battle painter, a mediocre
historical painter, and an excellent portrait painter as well as
landscape painter. But it is chiefly by the savage grandeur of his
mountain or forest landscapes, with their fitting _dramatis personæ_,
that he has won his renown. Mr Ruskin, while he allows Salvator's gift
of imagination, denounces him for the reckless carelessness and
untruthfulness to nature of his painting. Many of Salvator Rosa's
pictures are in the Pitti Palace in Florence, and many are in England.