Andrea Mantegna was born, not at Padua, where his greatest work is to be
found--three frescoes in the Eremitani--but at Vicenza. Here in the
Uffizi, however, we have two works of his middle period, certainly among
the best, if not the most beautiful, of his easel pictures. In one we
see Madonna and Child in a rocky landscape, where there are trees and
flowers (1025); the other is a triptych (1111), one of the many
priceless things to be found here. In the midst you may see the Three
Kings at the feet of Jesus Parvulus in his Mother's arms, while on one
side Mantegna has painted the Presentation in the Temple, and on the
other the Resurrection. Long ago this marvellous miniature, that even
to-day seems to shine like a precious stone, was in the possession of
the Gonzagas of Mantua, from whom it is supposed the Medici bought it.
Five male portraits by the Bergamesque master Moroni are to be found
here. One (360) is said to be a portrait of himself, though it certainly
bears no resemblance to the portrait at Bergamo. I cannot forbear from
mentioning the Portrait of a Scholar, which seems to me one of his best
works. Moroni was born at Bondo, not far from Albino, in 1525. It is
probable that Moretto, who, as Morelli suggests, was a Brescian by
birth, though his parents originally came from the same valley as
Moroni, Valle del Serio, was his master. Moretto is, I think, a greater
painter than Moroni, though perhaps we are only beginning to appreciate
the latter.
Three pictures here are from the hand of Correggio: the early small
panel of Madonna and Child with Angels (1002), once ascribed to Titian,
a naïve and charming little work; the Repose in Egypt (1118), grave and
beautiful enough, but in some way I cannot explain a little
disappointing; and the Madonna adoring her little Son (1134), which is
rather commonplace in colour, though delightful in conception.
It might seem impossible within the covers of one book to do more than
touch upon the enormous wealth of ancient art in the possession of
almost every city in Italy; and here in Florence, more than anywhere
else, I know my feebleness. If these few notes, for indeed they are
nothing more, serve to group the pictures hung in the Uffizi into
Schools, to win a certain order out of what is already less a chaos than
of old, to give to the reader some idea almost at a glance of what the
Uffizi really possesses of the various schools of Italian painting, they
will have served their purpose.[126]
Of the sculpture, too, I say nothing. Vastly more important and beloved
of old than to-day, when the work of the Greeks themselves has come into
our hands, and above all the Greek work of the fifth century B.C., there
is not to be found in the Uffizi a single marble of Greek workmanship,
and but few Roman works that are still untampered with. For myself, I
cannot look with pleasure on a Roman Venus patched by the Renaissance,
for I have seen the beauty of the Melian Aphrodite; and there are
certain things in Rome, in Athens, in London, which make it for ever
impossible for us to be sincere in our worship at this shrine.