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 S. 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. Cristoforo in Vercelli, Gaudenzio Ferrari at the
full height of his powers showed what he could do to justify Lomazzo'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 frescoes) neutralised by an incurable defect of
the combining and harmonising faculty, so essential to a masterpiece.
There is stuff enough of thought and vigour 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 frescoes 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 frescoes. 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 colouring, control over his
own luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought
grandeur in size and multitude, richness, éclat, contrast. Being the
disciple of Lionardo 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
realised them with a force and _furia_ granted to very few of the
Italian painters.