PALMA VECCHIO AND LORENZO LOTTO
Among the many who clustered round Titian's long career, Palma attained
to a place beside him and Giorgione which his talent, which was not of
the highest order, scarcely warranted. But he was classed with the
greatest, and influenced contemporary art because his work chimed in
so well with the Venetian spirit. A Bergamasque by birth, he came of
Venetian parentage, and learnt the first elements of his art in Venice.
He never really mastered the inner niceties of anatomy in its finest
sense, and the broad generalisation of his forms may be meant to conceal
uncertain drawing, but his large-bosomed, matronly women and plump
children, his round, soft contours, his clean brilliancy, and the clear
golden polish in which his pictures are steeped, made a great appeal to
the public. His invention is the large Santa Conversazione, as compared
with those in half-length of the earlier masters. The Virgin and saints
and kneeling or bending donors are placed under the spreading trees
of a rich and picturesque landscape. It is Palma's version of the
Giorgionesque ideal, which he had his share in establishing and
developing. The heavy tree-trunk and dark foliage, silhouetted almost
black against the background, are characteristic of his compositions. As
his life goes on, though he still clings to his full, ripe figures and
to the same smooth fleshiness in his women, the features become delicate
and chiselled, and the more refined type and subtler feeling of his
middle stage may be due to his companionship with Lotto, with whom he
was in Bergamo when they were both about twenty-five. He touches his
highest, and at the same time keeps very near Giorgione, in the
splendid St. Barbara, painted for the company of the _Bombadieri_ or
artillerists. Their cannon guard the pedestal on which she stands; it
was at her altar that they came to commend themselves on going forth to
war, and where they knelt to offer thanksgiving for a safe return; and
she is a truly noble figure, regal in conception and fine and firm in
execution, attired in sumptuous robes of golden brown and green, with
splendid saints on either hand. Palma was often approached by his
patrons who wanted mythological scenes, gods, and goddesses; but though
he produced a Venus, a handsome, full-blown model, he never excels in
the nude, and his tendency is to seize upon the homely. His scenes have
a domestic, familiar flavour. With all his golden and ivory beauty he
lacks fire, and his personages have a sluggish, plethoric note. In his
latest stage he hides all sharpness in a sort of scumble or haze. It
would, however, be unfair to say he is not fine, and his portraits
especially come very near the best. Vienna is rich in examples in
half-lengths of one beautiful woman after another robed in the ample and
gorgeous garments in which he is always interested. Among them is his
handsome daughter, Violante, with a violet in her bosom, and wearing the
large sleeves he admires. The "Tasso" of the National Gallery has been
taken from him and given first to Giorgione and then to Titian, but
there now seems some inclination to return it to its first author. It
has a more dreamy, intellectual countenance than we are accustomed to
associate with Palma; but he uses elsewhere the decorative background
of olive branches, and the waxen complexion, tawny colouring, and the
pronounced golden haze are Palmesque in the highest degree. The
colouring is in strong contrast to the pale ivory glow of the Ariosto
of Titian, which hangs near it.
[Illustration: _Palma Vecchio._
HOLY FAMILY.
_Colonna Gallery, Rome._
(_Photo, Anderson._)]
No one could be more unlike Palma than his contemporary, Lorenzo Lotto,
who has for long been classed with the Bergamasques, but who is proved
by recently discovered documents to have been born in Venice. It was
for long an accepted fact that Lotto was a pupil of Bellini, and his
earliest altarpiece, to S. Cristina at Treviso, bears traces of
Bellini's manner. A Pietà above has child angels examining the wounds
with the grief and concern which Bellini made so peculiarly his own, and
the St. Jerome and the branch of fig-leaves silhouetted against the
light remind us of the altarpiece in S. Crisostomo. Lotto seems to have
clung to quattrocento fashions. The ancona had long been rejected by
most of his contemporaries, but he painted one of the last for a church
in Recanati, in carved and gilt compartments, and he painted predellas
long after they had become generally obsolete. We ask ourselves how it
was that Lotto, who had so susceptible and easily swayed a nature,
escaped the influence of Giorgione, the most powerful of any in the
Venice of his youth--an influence which acted on Bellini in his old age,
which Titian practically never shook off, and which dominated Palma to
the exclusion of any earlier master.
It would take too long to survey the train of argument by which
Mr. Berenson has established Alvise Vivarini as the master of Lotto.
Notwithstanding that Bellini's great superiority was becoming clear to
the more cultured Venetians, Alvise, when Lotto was a youth, was still
the painter _par excellence_ for the mass of the public. In the S.
Cristina altarpiece the Child standing on its Mother's knee is in the
same attitude as the Child in Alvise's altarpiece of 1480, and the
Mother's hand holds it in the same way. Other details which supply
internal evidence are the shape of hands and feet, the round heads and
the way the Child is often represented lying across the Mother's knees.
Lotto carries into old age the use of fruit and flowers and beads as
decoration, a Squarcionesque feature beloved of the Vivarini, but which
was never adopted by Bellini.
About 1512 Lotto comes into contact with Palma, and for a short time the
two were in close touch. A "Santa Conversazione," of which a good copy
exists in Villa Borghese, Rome, and one at Dresden, with the Holy Family
grouped under spreading trees, is saturated with Palma's spirit, but it
soon passes away, and except for an occasional touch, disappears
entirely from Lotto's work.
Lotto may have had relations in Bergamo, for when in 1515 a competition
between artists was set on foot by Alessandro Martino, a descendant of
General Colleone, for an altarpiece for S. Stefano, he competed and
carried off the prize. This was the first of the series of the great
works for Bergamo, which enrich the little city, where at this period
he can best be studied. The great altarpiece (now removed to San
Bartolommeo) is a most interesting human document, a revelation of the
painter's personality. He does not break away from hieratic conventions,
like the rival school; his Madonna is still placed in the apse of the
church with saints grouped round her, a form from which the Vivarini
never departed, but the whole is full of intense movement, of a lyric
grace and ecstasy, a desire to express fervent and rapturous devotion.
The architectural background is not in happy proportion in relation to
the figures, but the effect of vista and space is more remarkable than
in any North Italian master. The vivid treatment of light and shade, and
the gaiety and delicacy of the flying angels, who hold the canopy, and
of the putti, who spread the carpet below, the shapes of throne and
canopy and the decorations have led to the idea that Lotto drew his
inspiration from Correggio, whom he certainly resembles in some ways;
but at this time Correggio was only twenty, and had not given any
examples of the style we are accustomed to call Correggiesque. We must
look back to a common origin for those decorative details, which are so
conspicuous in Crivelli and Bartolommeo Vivarini, which came to Lotto
through the Vivarini and to Correggio through Ferrarese painters, and
of which the fountain-head for both was the school of Squarcione. For
the much more striking resemblances of composition and spirit, the
explanation seems to be that Lotto on one side of his nature was akin
to Correggio; he had the same lyrical feeling, the same inclination to
exuberance and buoyancy. To both, painting was a vehicle for the
expression of feeling, but Lotto had also common sense and a goodly
share of that humour that is allied to pathos.
Till the year 1526 Lotto was much in Bergamo, where the first altarpiece
gained him orders for others. The reputation of a member of the school
of Venice was a sure passport to employment. We trace Alvise's tradition
very plainly in the altarpiece in San Bernardino, where the gesture of
the Madonna's hand as she expounds to the listening saints recalls
Alvise's of 1480. The little gathered roses, which Lotto makes use
of to the end of his life, lie scattered on the step; angels, daringly
foreshortened, sweep aside the curtain of the sanctuary. The colour is
in Lotto's scarlet, light blues, and violet. He soon shows himself fond
of genre incidents, and in "Christ taking leave of His Mother" gives a
view into a bedroom and a cat running across the floor. The donor kneels
with her hair fashionably dressed and wearing a pearl necklace. In the
"Marriage of S. Catherine" at Bergamo the saint is evidently a portrait,
with hair pearl-wreathed. She kneels very simply and naturally before
the Child, and the exquisitely lovely and elaborately gowned young woman
who represents the Madonna, looks out towards the spectator with a
mundane and curiously modern air. It was probably the recognition
of Lotto's success with portraits that led to their being so often
introduced into his sacred pieces. In the one we have just noticed, the
donor, Niccolas Bonghi, is brought in, and is on rather a larger scale
than the rest, but Lotto has evidently not found him interesting. The
portraits of the brothers della Torre, and that of the Prothonotary
Giuliano in the National Gallery, inaugurate that wonderful series
of characterisations which are his greatest distinction. A series of
frescoes in village churches round Bergamo must also be noticed. They
are remarkable for spontaneous and original decoration, and may compare
with the ceremonial groups of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio. Lotto's
personages, as they chatter in the market-places, are full of natural
animation and gaiety, and we realise what a step had been made in the
painting of actual life.
Owing to the unsettled state of the rest of Italy, the years
from 1530 to 1540, which Lotto spent in Venice, found that city the
gathering-ground of many of the most distinguished scholars and deepest
thinkers of the day. Men of all shades of religious thought were engaged
in learned discussion, and Lotto's ardent and inquiring temperament must
have been stimulated by such an environment. During these years, too, he
became intimate with Titian, and experimented in Titian's style, with
the result that his painting gets thicker and richer, more fused and
solid, and his figures are better put together. He imitates Titian's
colour, too, but it makes him paint in deeper, fiercer tints, and he
soon finds it does not suit him, and returns to his own scheme. His
colour is still rather too dazzling, but the distances are translucent
and atmospheric. He continues to introduce portraits. In his altarpiece
in SS. Giovanni and Paolo the deacons giving alms and receiving
petitions curiously resemble in type and expression the ecclesiastics
we see to-day.
Lotto was now an accepted member of Titian's set, and Aretino, in a
letter dated 1548, writes that Titian values his taste and judgment as
that of no other; but Aretino, with his usual mixture of connoisseurship
and clever spite, goes on to insinuate accidentally, as it were, what he
himself knew perfectly well, that Lotto was not considered on a par with
the masters of the first rank. "Envy is not in your breast," he says,
"rather do you delight to see in other artists certain qualities which
you do not find in your own brush, ... holding the second place in the
art of painting is nothing compared to holding the first place in the
duties of religion."
An interesting codex or commentary tells us that Lotto never received
high prices for his work, and we hear of him hawking pictures about in
artistic circles, putting them up in raffles, and leaving a number with
Jacopo Sansovino in the hope that he might hear of buyers. His work
ended as it had begun, in the Marches. He undertook commissions at
Recanati, Ancona, and Loreto, and in September 1554 he concluded a
contract with the Holy House at Loreto, by which, in return for rooms
and food, he made over himself and all his belongings to the care of the
fraternity, "being tired of wandering, and wishing to end his days in
that holy place." He spent the last four years of his life at Loreto
as a votary of the Virgin, painting a series of pictures which are
distinguished by the same sort of apparent looseness and carelessness
which we noticed in Titian's late style; a technique which, as in
Titian's case, conceals a profound knowledge of plastic modelling.
Though Lotto executed an immense number of important and very beautiful
sacred works, his portraits stand apart, and are so interesting to the
modern mind that one is tempted to linger over them. Other painters give
us finer pictures; in none do we feel so anxious to know who the sitters
were and what was their story. Lotto has nothing of the Pagan quality
which marks Giorgione and Titian; he is a born psychologist, and as such
he witnesses to an attitude of mind in the Italy of his day which is of
peculiar interest to our own. Lotto's bystanders, even in his sacred
scenes, have nothing in common with Titian's "chorus"; they have the
characterisation of distinct individuals, and when he is concerned with
actual portraits he is intensely receptive and sensitive to the spirit
of his sitters. He may be said to "give them away," and to take an
almost unfair advantage of his perception. The sick man in the Doria
Gallery looks like one stricken with a death sentence. He knows at least
that it is touch and go, and the painter has symbolised the situation in
the little winged genius balancing himself in a pair of scales. In the
Borghese Gallery is the portrait of a young, magnificently dressed man,
with a countenance marked by mental agitation, who presses one hand to
his heart, while the other rests on a pile of rose-petals in which a
tiny skull is half-hidden. The "Old Man" in the Brera has the hard,
narrow, but intensely sad face of one whose natural disposition has
been embittered by the circumstances of his life, just as that of our
Prothonotary speaks of a large and gentle nature, mellowed by natural
affections and happy pursuits. We smile, as Lotto does, with kindly
mischief at "Marsilio and his Bride;" the broad, placid countenance of
the man is so significantly contrasted with the clever mouth and eyes of
the bride that it does not need the malicious glance of the cupid, who
is fitting on the yoke, to "dot the i's and cross the t's" of their
future. Again, the portrait of Laura di Pola, in the Brera, introduces
us to one of those women who are charming in every age, not actually
beautiful, but harmonious, thoughtful, perfectly dressed, sensible, and
self-possessed, and the "Family Group" in our own gallery holds a
history of a couple of antagonistic temperaments united by life in
common and the clasping hands of children. Lotto does not keep the
personal expression out of even such a canvas as his "Triumph of
Chastity" in the Rospigliosi Gallery. His delightful Venus, one of the
loveliest nudes in painting, flies from the attacking termagant, whose
virtue is proclaimed by the ermine on her breast, and sweeps her little
cupid with her with a well-bred, surprised air, suggestive of the
manners of mundane society.
[Illustration: _Lorenzo Lotto._
PORTRAIT OF LAURA DI POLA.
_Brera._
(_Photo, Anderson._)]
The painter who was thus able to unveil personality had evidently a mind
that was aware of itself, that looked forward to a wider civilisation
and a more earnest and intimate religion. His life seems to have been
one of some sadness, and crowned with only moderate success. He speaks
of himself as "advanced in years, without loving care of any kind, and
of a troubled mind." His will shows that his worldly possessions were
few and poor, and that he had no heir closer than a nephew; but he
leaves some of his cartoons as a dowry to "two girls of quiet nature,
healthy in mind and body, and likely to make thrifty housekeepers," on
their marriage to "two well-recommended young men," about to become
painters. His sensitive and introspective temperament led him to prefer
the retirement and the quiet beauty of Loreto to the brilliant society
of which he was made free in Venice. "His spirit," says Mr. Berenson,
"is more like our own than is perhaps that of any other Italian
painter, and it has all the appeal and fascination of a kindred soul
in another age."
PRINCIPAL WORKS
_Palma Vecchio._
Bergamo. Lochis: Madonna and Saints (L.).
Cambridge. Fitzwilliam Museum: Venus (L.).
Dresden. Madonna; SS. John, Catherine; Three Sisters; Holy Family;
Meeting of Jacob and Rachel (L.).
London. Hampton Court: Santa Conversazione; Portrait of a Poet.
Milan. Brera: SS. Helen, Constantine, Roch, and Sebastian;
Adoration of Magi (L.), finished by Cariani.
Naples. Santa Conversazione with Donors.
Paris. Adoration of Shepherds.
Rome. Villa Borghese: Lucrece (L.); Madonna with Saints and Donor.
Capitol: Christ and Woman taken in Adultery.
Palazzo Colonna: Madonna, S. Peter, and Donor.
Venice. Academy: St. Peter enthroned and six Saints; Assumption.
Giovanelli: Sposalizio (L.).
S. Maria Formosa: Altarpiece.
Vienna. Santa Conversazione; Violante (L.); Five Portraits of Women.
_Lorenzo Lotto._
Ancona. Assumption, 1550; Madonna with Saints (L.).
Asolo. Madonna in Glory, 1506.
Bergamo. Carrara: Marriage of S. Catherine; Predelle.
Lochis: Holy Family and S. Catherine; Predelle; Portrait.
S. Bartolommeo: Altarpiece, 1516.
S. Alessandro in Colonna: Pietà.
S. Bernardino: Altarpiece.
S. Spirito: Altarpiece.
Berlin. Christ taking leave of His Mother; Portraits.
Brescia. Nativity.
Cingoli. S. Domenico: Madonna and Saints and fifteen Small Scenes.
Florence. Uffizi: Holy Family.
London. Hampton Court: Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527; Portrait (E.);
Portraits of Agostino and Niccolo della Torre, 1515;
Family Group; Portrait of Prothonotary Giuliano.
Bridgewater House: Madonna and Saints (E.).
Loreto. Palazzo Apostolico: Saints; Nativity; S. Michael and Lucifer
(L.); Presentation (L.); Baptism (L.); Adoration of Magi (L.).
Recanati. Municipio: Altarpiece, 1508; Transfiguration (E.).
S. Maria Sopra Mercanti: Annunciation.
Rome. Villa Borghese: Madonna with S. Onofrio and a Bishop, 1508.
Rospigliosi: Love and Chastity.
Venice. Carmine: S. Nicholas in Glory, 1529.
S. Giacomo dall' Orio: Madonna with Saints, 1546.
SS. Giovanni e Paolo: S. Antonino bestowing Alms, 1542.
Vienna. Santa Conversazione, etc.