He must have uttered this completest note of his own music just
before he was seized by the Savonarolian madness, from which he
never recovered, just at the moment when he was most peculiarly and
poignantly, and, if I may say so, most extravagantly, himself. The
isolation of this head, too, exaggerates the impression. Perhaps if
we found it as an Angel in a _Magnificat_, or a _Madonna with the
Pomegranate_, in a _Tobias_ or some Allegory, the other figures,
the landscape and all the accessories would prevent our attention
from concentrating on what is almost uncannily characteristic of the
master’s style.”
Berenson also notes the important hand, which, by the way, is
especially lighted as if to draw our attention to it most particularly.
“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this portrait,” he observes,
“is the manifest competition of the hand with the face. The hand is
studied just as carefully, drawn, and modelled with as much intention,
as the face itself. Its action reveals the automatic nervous tension
of an overstrung physique that the conscious mind, controlling the
expression, tries to keep in order. It thus becomes, in a sense, the
most important clue to understanding the character. If you think
it away, the expression, of course, remains, but what makes it
comprehensible disappears.”
It is this peculiar intelligence and sensitiveness of the hand that
makes me suspect the musician.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Sandro Botticelli
(1444–1510)._
_Collection of
Mr. Max Epstein._
This picture is the latest Botticelli to have been brought to
this country for it arrived only in May, 1928. It was painted in
Botticelli’s early period, about 1470 or 1472. The Holy Child
is handsome, although robust, and His embrace of the Madonna is
touchingly affectionate and human. In this picture the Madonna would
seem to have had a vision of the coming tragedy and she is not yet
resigned. She loves her Child too well. That her eyes are full of tears
we can feel in those heavily drooping lids. Her face is full of pain.
But even in her suffering and quiet anguish this Madonna is beautiful
and graceful; and we cannot fail to see in her face some little
resemblance to Botticelli’s Venus in the _Primavera_ and Venus
in her scallop-shell borne over the waves in the early morning in the
_Birth of Venus_.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Max Epstein_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Sandro Botticelli_]
In this picture the Holy Child seems to have little or no consciousness
of His Divinity. The Mother here is the enlightened one.
The picture is tempera on panel (35¾ × 23¼ inches) and came into
possession of M. Féral in Paris in 1907. It has been accepted by Bode
and Jashiro as a genuine and an early Botticelli.
The Madonna’s robe is deep blue with a lining of dull green, which
shows at the left wrist and slightly down the front and on the left
shoulder a star is embroidered. She wears a closely folded diaphanous
veil and a red scarf, one end of which is gracefully thrown around the
Holy Child. The sleeve of the dress has a band of golden embroidery at
the wrist.
The cruciform _nimbus_ of the Holy Child foretells His destiny. The
_nimbus_ of the Virgin is plain. The Angel wears a tunic of deep cream
white ornamented with gold on the sleeves and a black band ornamented
with gold at the throat. On the parapet stands a vase apparently of
alabaster containing myrtle leaves and white star-shaped flowers,
probably jasmine (see page 25). Through the open arch we see a gentle
landscape, with a river winding around distant hills.
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI.
_Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449–1494)._
_Collection of
Mr. J. P. Morgan._
With this picture, which is considered “one of the finest Italian
portraits in existence,” we step back into the period of the
Renaissance and into the very presence of one of the most gifted and
celebrated of the younger women of the Fifteenth Century.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
“Art coulds’t thou but portray character and the mind, then there would
be no picture in the whole world more beautiful than this.”
Such is the translation of the legend inscribed in capital letters on
the cartel:
“_Ars ultinam mores animumque effingere posses
Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret_”
with the date MCCCCLXXXVIII.
The charms of Giovanna degli Albizzi, who was married to Lorenzo
Tornabuoni in 1486, were sung by all the poets of Florence. Giovanna
came of the noted Albizzi family, famous for wealth and rank and for
leading the party of Nobles (_Grandi_) against the Medici, whom
they considered upstarts and enemies of the aristocratic faction
in Florence. By a former marriage, however, the Albizzi had become
connected with the Medici, for the wife of Piero de’ Medici (il
Gottoso) was Lucrezia Tornabuoni, one of the most accomplished women
of the age and whose portrait by Botticelli hangs to-day in the Kaiser
Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Giovanna’s husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni
(Lucrezia Tornabuoni’s nephew), was, therefore, the first cousin of
Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici.
Subsequent to the ownership by the Tornabuoni and Pandolfini families,
the portrait represented here passed to a private Collection in Paris
and thence to the late Mr. Henry Willett of Brighton, England; to the
famous Collection of Mr. Rodolphe Kann of Paris and, finally, to that
of Mr. J. P. Morgan.
The picture is painted on a wooden panel (29¾ × 19½ inches).
Standing in profile to the left and against an architectural
background, the lady appears at half-length. She wears a rich dress of
gold brocade of a handsome and decorative pattern with square neck, the
sleeves of a different material, dark-red in color and having yellow
diamond-shaped compartments bearing a floral design in the centre. A
handsome pendant, consisting of a ruby with three pearls, hangs from
a fine black silk cord around her neck. Her hair falls in light, wavy
tresses over her temples and covers her ears. In the recess at the back
is placed a cluster of precious stones. On the right is a _Book of
Hours_, and above is looped a necklace of coral beads. All of these
things undoubtedly have some particular and sentimental association
for Giovanna. Giovanna died the same year this portrait was painted; in
this year her father-in-law, Giovanni Tornabuoni, also uncle of Lorenzo
de’ Medici, commissioned Ghirlandaio to decorate the walls of the
choir of Sta. Maria Novella with the _Lives of John the Baptist and
the Virgin_; and here again the portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi
appears. Let us turn to Mrs. Cartwright for a description of this
remarkable series of frescoes:
“These twenty-one subjects have been much injured by damp and
restoration and the hand of inferior assistants is plainly seen in
many of the best preserved portions. But as a splendid illustration
of Florentine life the whole series is of rare interest. On the one
hand we have the public and official life of the Tornabuoni, their
stately banquets and processions; on the other, we catch a glimpse of
their private and domestic history. In the guests seated at _Herod’s
Feast_, in the crowds who throng the temple court, we recognize
the Tornabuoni and their kinsmen, the partners of the Medici bank,
Gianfrancesco Ridolfi, Roderigo Sassetti, and Andrea de’ Medici. On one
side we have a group of famous humanists--Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio
Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo’s tutor, Gentile de’ Becchi;
on the other, we see the painter with his aged father and his brother,
David, and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, the assistants who
helped in the decoration of the choir. Giovanna degli Albizzi, the
fair maiden who on the 16th of June, 1486, became the bride of Lorenzo
Tornabuoni, is here in her stiff brocades and rich jewels with her
young sister-in-law, Lodovica, and many noble dames on their way to
visit the mother and new-born babe. These frescoes, which were finally
completed in 1490, filled the Tornabuoni family with delight and
wonder, and Ghirlandaio was next employed to paint the chapel of their
_villa_ near Fiesole, which was unfortunately destroyed by floods
in the next century.”
As in the case of so many Italian painters, the name by which
Ghirlandaio is known is only a nickname: it means “Garland-maker,”
and was given to him because his first reputation was derived from
the beautiful gold and silver garlands and wreaths he made for the
wealthy ladies of fashion. Ghirlandaio, son of Tommaso Bigordi, a silk
merchant of Florence, was born in that city in 1449. He began his life
as apprentice to a goldsmith--as so many superlative painters have
done--and early showed talent for drawing and sketching. Before long he
left the goldsmith and entered the studio of Alesso Baldovinetti (see
page 48); and he undoubtedly owed much to this painter in his fondness
for decorative effects. Ghirlandaio was tremendously industrious and
always worked with the best artists of his time. At San Gimigniano
in 1475 he worked with Pier Francesco Fiorentino and he assisted
Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel in 1481. His own independent work was
stupendous. Ghirlandaio devoted himself almost exclusively to sacred
subjects and his frescoes are practically scenes of the Florentine
world he knew so well. Whether he painted scenes from the life of St.
Francis, or of the Virgin, or Herod, or St. Zenobius, the characters
represented are members of the Medici, the Tornabuoni, the Sassetti,
the Albizzi, and other important Florentine families. In fact, his
attention to details and the careful way he rendered them, show that he
had some knowledge of contemporary Flemish paintings; and consequently
Ghirlandaio is regarded as chief of the Florentine realists. However,
Ghirlandaio ranked in his day with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, and
he enjoyed the patronage and friendship of the Medici. Ghirlandaio’s
most important frescoes are those in Sta. Maria Novella representing
_Lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist_, commissioned by Giovanni
Tornabuoni, described above, and those in Santa Trinità depicting the
_Life of St. Francis_, ordered by Francesco Sassetti described on page
72.
Ghirlandaio died in 1494 of the Plague, comparatively young, but having
accomplished a vast amount of work and having trained a number of
painters, the most important of whom was Michelangelo. Ghirlandaio’s
son, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561), became a painter and was an
intimate friend of Raphael.
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO.
_Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449–1494)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
Francesco Sassetti, a wealthy banker and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s agent at
Lyons, is shown here slightly under life-size, wearing a purple skull
cap and a red robe lined with fur and held at the waist by a black
cord, from which hangs a pouch, or purse. His right hand rests upon
the arm of the chair in which he is seated. His eyes look downward
upon his son, who stands at his left, in profile, gazing upward into
his father’s face. His hands are clasped and he is wearing a costume
of silvery grey brocade trimmed with white fur, undersleeves of
dark-green and slashed, and a scarlet cap. Through the window we have
an interesting view of an inlet of the sea (or a large river) with
mountains and buildings. On the top of the window-frame there is an
inscription: “_Franciscos Saxettvs Theodorus QVE_.” The picture
is an oil painting on panel (29½ × 20½ inches) and is supposed to have
been executed in 1487–1489. Francesco Sassetti was born about 1420 and
died in 1491. Teodoro was born on March 11, 1479, and is seen here at
about the age of eight or nine, which fixes the date of the picture.
It is interesting to note that Teodoro Sassetti was the grandfather of
Filippo Sassetti, an early traveller in India (see Marencci, _Lettere
di Filippo Sassetta_, Firenze, 1855).
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
This picture comes from the Benson Collection and was formerly owned
by Mr. William Graham. Francesco Sassetti also appears in the frescoes
depicting the _Life of St. Francis_, which Ghirlandaio painted in
the Sassetti Chapel in the Trinità in Florence. Ghirlandaio introduced
into this series other members of the Sassetti family, as well as many
of his illustrious contemporaries and friends, including Lorenzo de’
Medici, Pope Honorius, Maso degli Albizzi, Palla Strozzi, and Angelo
Acciaiuoli. In the fifth fresco, where St. Francis is bringing a
dead child to life, Ghirlandaio has painted his own portrait. He is
conspicuous in a red cap and resting his hand upon his hip.
_THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL_
The Umbrian School occupied the relative place in the Early Renaissance
that the Sienese School held in the Middle Ages. At first, Umbrian
painting was the offspring of Siena, but it fell under and developed
under the influence of Florence. Florentine artists came to Umbria and
Umbrian artists went to Florence, and gradually the Umbrian School,
which had certain qualities of its own, developed and reached full
flower in the beloved of all the world,--Raphael.
The word Umbrian is used rather loosely by critics to include many
Tuscan painters who have to be gathered into this group, which dates
from the end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century.
One particular quality of the Umbrians was their essentially deep
religious feeling.
“Whereas the devotion of Sienese art had been hieratic, aristocratic,
and akin to the ideals of Mediæval Byzantium, that of Umbria became
ecstatically human. The Renaissance trend towards bringing to earth
the regal Christian gods of the Middle Ages was nowhere so strong
as in Umbria; and it is not an exaggeration to say that we owe to
the Umbrians our modern visual images of the Eternal, the Madonna,
and the other important members of the Christian Pantheon. The
piety and humility of the figures was deepened and dignified by
a specially emphasized space-composition, both architectural and
landscape. Landscape backgrounds were given unusual importance and
delicate beauty. The Umbrian School thus became the most charming,
the tenderest, and the most intimately human of Renaissance
Italy.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, 1927).
The first great Umbrian painter was Gentile da Fabriano (1370?–1427),
pupil of an earlier Umbrian painter, Allegretto Nuzi (active from 1346
to 1373), in turn a pupil of the Florentine Bernardo Daddi.
The next important Umbrian was Piero della Francesca or Pier dei
Franceschi (1416?–1492), pupil of Domenico Veneziano of Florence,
important in his own work and important as a master, forming Luca
Signorelli, who in turn influenced Michelangelo. Piero della Francesca
was also influenced by the Florentine, Paolo Uccello, whose scientific
leanings towards perspective he shared. As a colorist, as a painter
of light and atmosphere, and as a master of composition, Piero della
Francesca ranks with the greatest Italian masters of the Early
Renaissance.
By this time Perugia had become the most important centre of painting
in Umbria. Among its conspicuous artists was Benedetto Bonfigli
(1425–1496); Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521), the supposed master
of Perugino and Pintoricchio; Perugino, whose real name was Pietro
Vannucci (1446–1523); Bernard Pintoricchio “the little painter”
(1454–1513), whose real name was Bernard di Betto, or Biagio; and the
great Raphael (1483–1520), son of the painter Giovanni Santi of Urbino;
and with this painter of the world’s favorite Madonnas the Umbrian
School practically ends.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Gentile da Fabriano
(1370–1427)._
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._
No little suggestion of the Giotto Madonna (shown on page 27), appears
in the _Madonna and Child_ by Gentile da Fabriano, which, according
to Colosanti, was painted in the best period of the artist, shortly
before he produced the _Adoration of the Kings_, now in the Uffizi.
In comparing it with the Giotto _Madonna_, we see that the arch has
become slightly more pointed than the one in the Giotto picture
and we find also a gold background; but in the Fabriano painting a
_graffito_ design of two winged Angels with flowing robes on either
side is slightly visible. As in the Giotto picture the two _nimbi_
are different; the Virgin’s _nimbus_ having an Arabic inscription
and the _nimbus_ of the Holy Child having a Gothic foliage. The
Virgin is seated on a _cassone_, or chest (a not unusual but hardly
very comfortable seat in the Fourteenth Century), covered with a
dark-brown cloth with floral figure behind which a tiled floor is
seen. The Virgin wears a long tunic of claret-colored damask with gold
border, on which appears the motto “_Ave Maria Plena Dom---- Tecu----
Ben_.” On the border around the neck the word “_Mater_” appears. The
mantle is slit at the sides through which the arm protrudes in a long
sleeve of rich gold brocade with the pomegranate pattern. A scarf of
thin yellow woollen material, decorated with red and blue flowers
and red fringe, is worn around her head and neck. The Holy Child
has on a little dress, very neatly made and fitting very snugly, of
dark-blue trimmed with a border of red and gold. He is standing with
His left foot on His mother’s knee and is stepping forward with the
other. He has raised His right hand as if to emphasize the words He is
speaking and to which His mother is listening with rapt admiration.
This movement of the Child takes something away from the solemnity of
the picture and the Virgin’s maternal pride shows her to be more of
this earth than the Giotto _Madonna_ whose calm, impassive yet tender
beauty, proclaims her to belong to a higher sphere than does the
Fabriano.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Gentile da Fabriano_]
The picture, tempera on panel (38 × 22½ inches), belonged to the
Alexander Baker Collection, London, and to the Collection of Madame E.
J. Sartoris, Paris.
Gentile da Fabriano’s full name was Gentile di Nicola di Giovanni
di Masso and he was born at Fabriano about 1370. He was a pupil of
Allegretto Nuzi and possibly of Ottaviano Nelli. Vasari says, too, that
he studied under Fra Angelico. He worked in Fabriano, Brescia, and
Venice; and in 1422 he became a member of the Guild in Florence. Later
he painted in Orvieto, Siena, and Rome, where Pope Martin V called
him to paint in San Giovanni Laterano. Subsequently Gentile painted
in Venice, Florence and other places, learning all that was new from
other painters he met and everywhere attracting followers; but never
forgetting his early Sienese inheritance in his love for beauty and for
decoration.
Gentile da Fabriano became so much of a traveller and cosmopolitan
that he has to be classed as an “Internationalist” as well as a
Sienese painter. Gentile had a marvellous talent for presenting
brilliant and beautiful pictures of the courtly life he saw around
him and which was fast passing away for the styles and fashions of the
approaching Renaissance. His _Adoration of the Magi_, now in the
Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence, is a gorgeous representation of
a procession such as the painter had doubtless many times witnessed.
It is while thinking of this brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_
that Berenson exclaims: “Fair knights and lovely ladies, spurs of gold,
jewelled brocade, crimson damasks, gorgeous trains on regal steeds ride
under golden skies wherein bright suns flatter charmed mountain tops.
All the faces are aglow with blitheness. Why are they so happy? Have
they waked from nightmare hauntings of Purgatory and Hell? So it would
seem; and they rejoice in the blood tickling their veins, in the cool
breezes, in the smell of flowers. And what a love of flowers! Gentile
fills with them even the nooks and crannies of the woodwork enframing
his gorgeous Epiphany.”
Gentile died in 1427,--the one great Umbrian of the Middle Ages.
Michelangelo remarked of Gentile that his name was in perfect harmony
with the tone of his works.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.
_Benedetto Bonfigli
(1425–1496)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn._
We have here a very unusual background, reminding us of the Arabian
desert,--tall, barren rocks; and against these the Virgin is seated.
Her costume is very lovely, consisting of a red tunic cut square
across the neck and finished with a broad band of gold embroidery,
and a blue mantle lined with yellow. Over her blonde hair, which is
arranged in the style favored by Italian ladies of fashion, waved and
parted and falling down at the sides of the cheeks, a white veil is
folded in intricate plaits and made to ripple gracefully down over the
shoulders. Above this complicated head-dress is a golden _nimbus_.
The Holy Child, resting on her lap, steadied by the Virgin’s hand
and additionally supported by the graceful hand of the little Angel,
is partly swathed in muslin. One of His little hands rests on His
mother’s veil and the other reaches for a pomegranate,[10] which she
is holding. The dress of the Angel is red bordered with ermine and the
bottom of the tunic is edged with a deep gold band of Cufic lettering.
The _nimbi_ are tooled in gold and that of the Holy Child is
cruciform. The strong wings of the Angels soar up boldly above their
heads and make a perfect balance to the rocks behind the Virgin.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn_
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS
--_Benedetto Bonfigli_]
The picture is tempera on wood (31½ × 21 inches).
Bonfigli is regarded as the founder of the School of Perugia which
became so famous through Perugino, who perpetuates the name of the town.
Little is known of Benedetto Bonfigli, who was born about 1425, in
Perugia, and was buried there in the Church of St. Domenico in 1496.
Bonfigli shows in his work the influences of Piero della Francesca,
Fra Angelico, Camillo Boccatis, and Benozzo Gozzoli. Bonfigli was in
Rome in 1453 working for Pope Nicholas V, and in the following year he
was back in Perugia painting a series of frescoes for the Capella dei
Priori in the Palazzo del Consiglio depicting _St. Louis of Toulouse
and St. Ercolano_, which were unfinished at the time of his death.
Bonfigli painted processional banners and small pictures as well as
frescoes. Many of Bonfigli’s works are now in the Gallery at Perugia.
“As an artist Bonfigli scarcely ranks as high as Niccolò da Foligno,
his fellow-pupil under Benozzo Gozzoli. He was a much more dependent
person, but being more imitative, with the models of Fra Angelico or
Benozzo before him, he at times painted exquisite things and by nature
he was gifted with that sense of the charming wherewith Perugia was
later to take the world captive. Some of the freshest and loveliest of
all angel faces may be seen in Bonfigli’s altar-pieces and standards.
His color has almost always that tint of gold which never fades from
Umbrian art.”[11]
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Perugino
(1446–1523)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
In red robe and blue mantle the Virgin appears seated three quarters
to the left and supporting the Holy Child on her left knee with both
hands. Her head is slightly inclined and the hair, parted above her
forehead, is brushed plainly down either side and looped up rather
curiously at the back and tied there by a narrow veil. The Holy Child
looks away towards the left. Behind the figures is seen one of those
delightful Umbrian landscapes made so famous by Perugino and Raphael.
This picture, an oil painting on panel (27¾ × 19½ inches), has an
interesting pedigree. From the family of the Marquis of Villafranca it
came into possession of the Marquis de la Romana from the Palace of
Anglona, Madrid, and then belonged to the Collection of the Marquis de
Villamajor, Madrid. The wife of the latter says: