The Uffizi II: The First Six Rooms
Lorenzo Monaco--Fra Angelico--Mariotto Albertinelli turns
innkeeper--The Venetian rooms--Giorgione's death--Titian--Mantegna
uniting north and south--Giovanni Bellini--Domenico
Ghirlandaio--Michelangelo--Luca Signorelli--Wild flowers--Leonardo
da Vinci--Paolo Uccello.
The first and second rooms are Venetian; but I am inclined to think
that it is better to take the second door on the left--the first Tuscan
salon--and walking straight across it come at once to the Salon of
Lorenzo Monaco and the primitives. For the earliest good pictures
are here. Here especially one should remember that the pictures
were painted never for a gallery but for churches. Lorenzo Monaco
(Lawrence the Monk, 1370-c. 1425), who gives his name to this room,
was a monk of the Camaldolese order in the Monastery of the Angeli,
and was a little earlier than Fra Angelico (the Angelic Brother),
the more famous painting monk, whose dates are 1387-1455. Lorenzo
was influenced by Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's godson, friend, pupil, and
assistant. His greatest work is this large Uffizi altar-piece--he
painted nothing but altar-pieces--depicting the Coronation of the
Virgin: a great gay scene of splendour, containing pretty angels who
must have been the delight of children in church. The predella--and
here let me advise the visitor never to overlook the predellas, where
the artist often throws off formality and allows his more natural
feelings to have play, almost as though he painted the picture for
others and the predella for himself--is peculiarly interesting. Look,
at the left, at the death of an old Saint attended by monks and nuns,
whose grief is profound. One other good Lorenzo is here, an "Adoration
of the Magi," No. 39, a little out of drawing but full of life.
But for most people the glory of the room is not Lorenzo the Monk,
but Brother Giovanni of Fiesole, known ever more as Beato, or Fra,
Angelico. Of that most adoring and most adorable of painters I say much
in the chapter on the Accademia, where he is very fully represented,
and it might perhaps be well to turn to those pages (227-230) and read
here, on our first sight of his genius, what is said. Two Angelicos are
in this room--the great triptych, opposite the chief Lorenzo, and the
"Crowning of the Virgin," on an easel. The triptych is as much copied
as any picture in the gallery, not, however, for its principal figures,
but for the border of twelve angels round the centre panel. Angelico's
benignancy and sweetness are here, but it is not the equal of the
"Coronation," which is a blaze of pious fervour and glory. The group
of saints on the right is very charming; but we are to be more pleased
by this radiant hand when we reach the Accademia. Already, however,
we have learned his love of blue. Another altar-piece with a subtle
quality of its own is the early Annunciation by Simone Martini of
Siena (1285-1344) and Lippo Memmi, his brother (d. 1357), in which
the angel speaks his golden words across the picture through a vase
of lilies, and the Virgin receives them shrinkingly. It is all very
primitive, but it has great attraction, and it is interesting to
think that the picture must be getting on for six hundred years of
age. This Simone was a pupil of Giotto and the painter of a portrait
of Petrarch's Laura, now preserved in the Laurentian library, which
earned him two sonnets of eulogy. It is also two Sienese painters
who have made the gayest thing in this room, the predella, No. 1304,
by Neroccio di Siena (1447-1500) and Francesco di Giorgio di Siena
(1439-1502), containing scenes in the life of S. Benedetto. Neroccio
did the landscape and figures; the other the architecture, and very
fine it is. Another delightful predella is that by Benozzo Gozzoli
(1420-1498), Fra Angelico's pupil, whom we have seen at the Riccardi
palace. Gozzoli's predella is No. 1302. Finally, look at No. 64,
which shows how prettily certain imitators of Fra Angelico could paint.
After the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco let us enter the first Tuscan
room. The draughtsmanship of the great Last Judgment fresco by Fra
Bartolommeo (1475-1517) and Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515) is very
fine. It is now a ruin, but enough remains to show that it must have
been impressive. These collaborators, although intimate friends,
ultimately went different ways, for Fra Bartolommeo came under
the influence of Savonarola, burned his nude drawings, and entered
the Convent of S. Marco; whereas Albertinelli, who was a convivial
follower of Venus, tiring of art and even more of art jargon, took
an inn outside the S. Gallo gate and a tavern on the Ponte Vecchio,
remarking that he had found a way of life that needed no knowledge
of muscles, foreshortening, or perspective, and better still, was
without critics. Among his pupils was Franciabigio, whose lovely
Madonna of the Well we are coming to in the Tribuna.
Chief among the other pictures are two by the delightful Alessio
Baldovinetti, the master of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Nos. 60 and 56;
and a large early altar-piece by the brothers Orcagna, painted in
1367 for S. Maria Nuova, now the principal hospital of Florence
and once the home of many beautiful pictures. This work is rather
dingy now, but it is interesting as coming in part from the hand
that designed the tabernacle in Or San Michele and the Loggia de'
Lanzi. Another less-known painter represented here is Francesco
Granacci (1469-1543), the author of Nos. 1541 and 1280, both rich
and warm and pleasing. Granacci was a fellow-pupil of Michelangelo
both in Lorenzo de' Medici's garden and in Ghirlandaio's workshop,
and the bosom friend of that great man all his life. Like Piero
di Cosimo, Granacci was a great hand at pageantry, and Lorenzo de'
Medici kept him busy. He was not dependent upon art for his living,
but painted for love of it, and Vasari makes him a very agreeable man.
Here too is Gio. Antonio Sogliani (1492-1544), also a rare painter,
with a finely coloured and finely drawn "Disputa," No. 63. This painter
seems to have had the same devotion to his master, Lorenzo di Credi,
that di Credi had for his master, Verrocchio. Vasari calls Sogliani a
worthy religious man who minded his own affairs--a good epitaph. His
work is rarely met with in Florence, but he has a large fresco at
S. Marco. Lorenzo di Credi (1459-1537) himself has two pretty circular
paintings here, of which No. 1528 is particularly sweet: "The Virgin
and Child with St. John and Angels," all comfortable and happy in
a Tuscan meadow; while on an easel is another circular picture, by
Pacchiarotto (1477-1535). This has good colour and twilight beauty,
but it does not touch one and is not too felicitously composed. Over
the door to the Venetian room is a Cosimo Rosselli with a prettily
affectionate Madonna and Child.
From this miscellaneous Tuscan room we pass to the two rooms which
contain the Venetian pictures, of which I shall say less than might
perhaps be expected, not because I do not intensely admire them but
because I feel that the chief space in a Florentine book should be
given to Florentine or Tuscan things. As a matter of fact, I find
myself when in the Uffizi continually drawn to revisit these walls. The
chief treasures are the Titians, the Giorgiones, the Mantegnas,
the Carpaccio, and the Bellini allegory. These alone would make
the Uffizi a Mecca of connoisseurs. Giorgione is to be found in his
richest perfection at the Pitti, in his one unforgettable work that
is preserved there, but here he is wonderful too, with his Cavalier
of Malta, black and golden, and the two rich scenes, Nos. 621 and
630, nominally from Scripture, but really from romantic Italy. To me
these three pictures are the jewels of the Venetian collection. To
describe them is impossible: enough to say that some glowing genius
produced them; and whatever the experts admit, personally I prefer
to consider that genius Giorgione. Giorgione, who was born in 1477
and died young--at thirty-three--was, like Titian, the pupil of
Bellini, but was greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Later he
became Titian's master. He was passionately devoted to music and to
ladies, and it was indeed from a lady that he had his early death,
for he continued to kiss her after she had taken the plague. (No bad
way to die, either; for to be in the power of an emotion that sways
one to such foolishness is surely better than to live the lukewarm
calculating lives of most of us.) Giorgione's claim to distinction
is that not only was he a glorious colourist and master of light and
shade, but may be said to have invented small genre pictures that
could be earned about and hung in this or that room at pleasure--such
pictures as many of the best Dutch painters were to bend their genius
to almost exclusively--his favourite subjects being music parties
and picnics. These Moses and Solomon pictures in the Uffizi are of
course only a pretext for gloriously coloured arrangements of people
with rich scenic backgrounds. No.621 is the finer. The way in which
the baby is being held in the other indicates how little Giorgione
thought of verisimilitude. The colour was the thing.
After the Giorgiones the Titians, chief of which is No.633, "The
Madonna and Child with S. John and S. Anthony," sometimes called the
"Madonna of the Roses," a work which throws a pallor over all Tuscan
pictures; No.626, the golden Flora, who glows more gloriously every
moment (whom we shall see again, at the Pitti, as the Magdalen);
the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Nos.605 and 599, the Duchess set
at a window with what looks so curiously like a deep blue Surrey
landscape through it and a village spire in the midst; and 618,
an unfinished Madonna and Child in which the Master's methods can
be followed. The Child, completed save for the final bath of light,
is a miracle of draughtsmanship.
The triptych by Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) is of inexhaustible
interest, for here, as ever, Mantegna is full of thought and
purpose. The left panel represents the Ascension, Christ being borne
upwards by eleven cherubim in a solid cloud; the right panel--by far
the best, I think--shows the Circumcision, where the painter has set
himself various difficulties of architecture and goldsmith's work
for the pleasure of overcoming them, every detail being painted with
Dutch minuteness and yet leaving the picture big; while the middle
panel, which is concave, depicts an Adoration of the Magi that will
bear much study. The whole effect is very northern: not much less
so than our own new National Gallery Mabuse. Mantegna also has a
charming Madonna and Child, No. 1025, with pleasing pastoral and
stone-quarrying activities in the distance.
On the right of the triptych is the so-called Carpaccio (1450-1519),
a confused but glorious melee of youths and halberds, reds and yellows
and browns, very modern and splendid and totally unlike anything else
in the whole gallery. Uccello may possibly be recalled, but only for
subject. Finally there is Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516), master of
Titian and Giorgione, with his "Sacra Conversazione," No. 631, which
means I know not what but has a haunting quality. Later we shall
see a picture by Michelangelo which has been accused of blending
Christianity and paganism; but Bellini's sole purpose was to do
this. We have children from a Bacchic vase and the crowned Virgin; two
naked saints and a Venetian lady; and a centaur watching a hermit. The
foreground is a mosaic terrace; the background is rocks and water. It
is all bizarre and very curious and memorable and quite unique. For the
rest, I should mention two charming Guardis; a rich little Canaletto;
a nice scene of sheep by Jacopo Bassano; the portrait of an unknown
young man by an unknown painter, No. 1157; and Tintoretto's daring
"Abraham and Isaac".
The other Venetian room is almost wholly devoted to portraits, chief
among them being a red-headed Tintoretto burning furiously, No. 613,
and Titian's sly and sinister Caterina Cornaro in her gorgeous dress,
No. 648; Piombo's "L'Uomo Ammalato"; Tintoretto's Jacopo Sansovino,
the sculptor, the grave old man holding his calipers who made that
wonderful Greek Bacchus at the Bargello; Schiavone's ripe, bearded
"Ignoto," No. 649, and, perhaps above all, the Moroni, No. 386,
black against grey. There is also Paolo Veronese's "Holy Family with
S. Catherine," superbly masterly and golden but suggesting the Rialto
rather than Nazareth.
One picture gives the next room, the Sala di Michelangelo, its name;
but entering from the Venetian room we come first on the right to a
very well-known Lippo Lippi, copied in every picture shop in Florence:
No. 1307, a Madonna and two Children. Few pictures are so beset by
delighted observers, but apart from the perfection of it as an early
painting, leaving nothing to later dexterity, its appeal to me is
weak. The Madonna (whose head-dress, as so often in Lippo Lippi,
foreshadows Botticelli) and the landscape equally delight; the
children almost repel, and the decorative furniture in the corner
quite repels. The picture is interesting also for its colour, which
is unlike anything else in the gallery, the green of the Madonna's
dress being especially lovely and distinguished, and vulgarizing
the Ghirlandaio--No. 1297--which hangs next. This picture is far too
hot throughout, and would indeed be almost displeasing but for the
irradiation of the Virgin's face. The other Ghirlandaio--No. 1295--in
this room is far finer and sweeter; but at the Accademia and the Badia
we are to see him at his best in this class of work. None the less,
No. 1295 is a charming thing, and the little Mother and her happy
Child, whose big toe is being so reverently adored by the ancient
mage, are very near real simple life. This artist, we shall see,
always paints healthy, honest babies. The seaport in the distance is
charming too.
Ghirlandaio's place in this room is interesting on account of his
relation to Michelangelo as first instructor; but by the time that the
great master's "Holy Family," hanging here, was painted all traces
of Ghirlandaio's influence had disappeared, and if any forerunner
is noticeable it is Luca Signorelli. But we must first glance at
the pretty little Lorenzo di Credi, No. 1160, the Annunciation,
an artificial work full of nice thoughts and touches, with the
prettiest little blue Virgin imaginable, a heavenly landscape, and
a predella in monochrome, in one scene of which Eve rises from the
side of the sleeping Adam with extraordinary realism. The announcing
Gabriel is deferential but positive; Mary is questioning but not
wholly surprised. In any collection of Annunciations this picture
would find a prominent place.
The "Holy Family" of Michelangelo--No. 1139--is remarkable for more
than one reason. It is, to begin with, the only finished easel picture
that exists from his brush. It is also his one work in oils, for he
afterwards despised that medium as being fit "only for children". The
frame is contemporary and was made for it, the whole being commissioned
by Angelo Doni, a wealthy connoisseur whose portrait by Raphael we
shall see in the Pitti, and who, according to Vasari, did his best to
get it cheaper than his bargain, and had in the end to pay dearer. The
period of the picture is about 1503, while the great David was in
progress, when the painter was twenty-eight. That it is masterly and
superb there can be no doubt, but, like so much of Michelangelo's
work, it suffers from its author's greatness. There is an austerity
of power here that ill consorts with the tender domesticity of the
scene, and the Child is a young Hercules. The nude figures in the
background introduce an alien element and suggest the conflict between
Christianity and paganism, the new religion and the old: in short, the
Twilight of the Gods. Whether Michelangelo intended this we shall not
know; but there it is. The prevailing impression left by the picture
is immense power and virtuosity and no religion. In the beautiful Luca
Signorelli--No.74--next it, we find at once a curious similarity and
difference. The Madonna and Child only are in the foreground, a not
too radiant but very tender couple; in the background are male figures
nearly nude: not quite, as Michelangelo made them, and suggesting
no discord as in his picture. Luca was born in 1441, and was thus
thirty-four years older than Michelangelo. This picture is perhaps that
one presented by Luca to Lorenzo de' Medici, of which Vasari tells, and
if so it was probably on a wall in the Medici palace when Michelangelo
as a boy was taught with Lorenzo's sons. Luca's sweetness was alien
to Michelangelo, but not his melancholy or his sense of composition;
while Luca's devotion to the human form as the unit of expression
was in Michelangelo carried out to its highest power. Vasari, who
was a relative of Luca's and a pupil of Michelangelo's, says that
his master had the greatest admiration for Luca's genius.
Luca Signorelli was born at Cortona, and was instructed by Piero della
Francesca, whose one Uffizi painting is in a later room. His chief work
is at Cortona, at Rome (in the Sixtine Chapel), and at Orvieto. His
fame was sufficient in Florence in 1491 for him to be made one of
the judges of the designs for the façade of the Duomo. Luca lived
to a great age, not dying till 1524, and was much beloved. He was
magnificent in his habits and loved fine clothes, was very kindly
and helpful in disposition, and the influence of his naturalness and
sincerity upon art was great. One very pretty sad story is told of him,
to the effect that when his son, whom he had dearly loved, was killed
at Cortona, he caused the body to be stripped, and painted it with the
utmost exactitude, that through his own handiwork he might be able
to contemplate that treasure of which fate had robbed him. Perhaps
the most beautiful or at any rate the most idiosyncratic thing in the
picture before us is its lovely profusion of wayside flowers. These
come out but poorly in the photograph, but in the painting they
are exquisite both in form and in detail. Luca painted them as if
he loved them. (There is a hint of the same thoughtful care in the
flowers in No. 1133, by Luca, in our National Gallery; but these at
Florence are the best.) No. 74 is in tempera: the next, also by Luca,
No.1291, is in oil, a "Holy Family," a work at once powerful, rich,
and sweet. Here, again, we may trace an influence on Michelangelo,
for the child is shown deprecating a book which his mother is
displaying, while in the beautiful marble tondo of the "Madonna and
Child" by Michelangelo, which we are soon to see in the Bargello,
a reading lesson is in progress, and the child wearying of it. We
find Luca again in the next large picture--No.1547--a Crucifixion,
with various Saints, done in collaboration with Perugino. The design
suggests Luca rather than his companion, and the woman at the foot of
the cross is surely the type of which he was so fond. The drawing of
Christ is masterly and all too sombre for Perugino. Finally, there is
a Luca predella, No. 1298, representing the Annunciation, the Birth
of Christ (in which Joseph is older almost than in any version), and
the Adoration of the Magi, all notable for freedom and richness. Note
the realism and charm and the costume of the two pages of the Magi.
And now we come to what is perhaps the most lovely picture in the whole
gallery, judged purely as colour and sweetness and design--No.1549--a
"Madonna Adoring," with Filippino Lippi's name and an interrogation
mark beneath it. Who painted it if not Filippino? That is the question;
but into such problems, which confront one at every turn in Florence,
I am neither qualified nor anxious to enter. When doctors disagree any
one may decide before me. The thought, moreover, that always occurs
in the presence of these good debatable pictures, is that any doubt
as to their origin merely enriches this already over-rich period,
since some one had to paint them. Simon not pure becomes hardly less
remarkable than Simon pure.
If only the Baby were more pleasing, this would be perhaps the most
delightful picture in the world: as it is, its blues alone lift it to
the heavens of delectableness. By an unusual stroke of fortune a crack
in the paint where the panels join has made a star in the tender blue
sky. The Tuscan landscape is very still and beautiful; the flowers,
although conventional and not accurate like Luca's, are as pretty
as can be; the one unsatisfying element is the Baby, who is a little
clumsy and a little in pain, but diffuses radiance none the less. And
the Mother--the Mother is all perfection and winsomeness. Her face
and hands are exquisite, and the Tuscan twilight behind her is so
lovely. I have given a reproduction, but colour is essential.
The remaining three pictures in the room are a Bastiano and a
Pollaiolo, which are rather for the student than for the wanderer,
and a charming Ignoto, No. 75, which I like immensely. But Ignoto
nearly always paints well.
In the Sala di Leonardo are two pictures which bear the name of
this most fascinating of all the painters of the world. One is the
Annunciation, No. 1288, upon the authenticity of which much has been
said and written, and the other an unfinished Adoration of the Magi
which cannot be questioned by anyone. The probabilities are that the
Annunciation is an early work and that the ascription is accurate:
at Oxford is a drawing known to be Leonardo's that is almost certainly
a study for a detail of this work, while among the Leonardo drawings
in the His de la Salle collection at the Louvre is something very
like a first sketch of the whole. Certainly one can think of no one
else who could have given the picture its quality, which increases
in richness with every visit to the gallery; but the workshop of
Verrocchio, where Leonardo worked, together with Lorenzo di Credi and
Perugino, with Andrea of the True Eye over all, no doubt put forth
wonderful things. The Annunciation is unique in the collection, both
in colour and character: nothing in the Uffizi so deepens. There are
no cypresses like these in any other picture, no finer drawing than
that of Mary's hands. Luca's flowers are better, in the adjoining
room; one is not too happy about the pedestal of the reading-desk;
and there are Virgins whom we can like more; but as a whole it is
perhaps the most fascinating picture of all, for it has the Leonardo
darkness as well as light.
Of Leonardo I could write for ever, but this book is not the place;
for though he was a Florentine, Florence has very little of his work:
these pictures only, and one of these only for certain, together
with an angel in a work by Verrocchio at the Accademia which we
shall see, and possibly a sculptured figure over the north door of
the Baptistery. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Francis I of
France, lured him away, to the eternal loss of his own city. It is
Milan and Paris that are richest in his work, and after that London,
which has at South Kensington a sculptured relief by him as well as
a painting at the National Gallery, a cartoon at Burlington House,
and the British Museum drawings.
His other work here--No. 1252--in the grave brown frame, was to have
been Leonardo's greatest picture in oil, so Vasari says: larger, in
fact, than any known picture at that time. Being very indistinct,
it is, curiously enough, best as the light begins to fail and the
beautiful wistful faces emerge from the gloom. In their presence one
recalls Leonardo's remark in one of his notebooks that faces are most
interesting beneath a troubled sky. "You should make your portrait,"
he adds, "at the hour of the fall of the evening when it is cloudy
or misty, for the light then is perfect." In the background one can
discern the prancing horses of the Magi's suite; a staircase with
figures ascending and descending; the rocks and trees of Tuscany;
and looking at it one cannot but ponder upon the fatality which seems
to have pursued this divine and magical genius, ordaining that almost
everything that he put forth should be either destroyed or unfinished:
his work in the Castello at Milan, which might otherwise be an eighth
wonder of the world, perished; his "Last Supper" at Milan perishing;
his colossal equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza broken to pieces;
his sculpture lost; his Palazzo Vecchio battle cartoon perished;
this picture only a sketch. Even after long years the evil fate still
persists, for in 1911 his "Gioconda" was stolen from the Louvre by
madman or knave.
Among the other pictures in this room is the rather hot "Adoration
of the Magi," by Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507), over the Leonardo
"Annunciation," a glowing scene of colour and animation: this Cosimo
being the Cosimo from whom Piero di Cosimo took his name, and an
associate of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and Luca Signorelli
on the Sixtine Chapel frescoes. On the left wall is Uccello's battle
piece, No. 52, very like that in our National Gallery: rich and
glorious as decoration, but quite bearing out Vasari's statement that
Uccello could not draw horses. Uccello was a most laborious student
of animal life and so absorbed in the mysteries of perspective that
he preferred them to bed; but he does not seem to have been able to
unite them. He was a perpetual butt of Donatello. It is told of him
that having a commission to paint a fresco for the Mercato Vecchio
he kept the progress of the work a secret and allowed no one to
see it. At last, when it was finished, he drew aside the sheet for
Donatello, who was buying fruit, to admire. "Ah, Paolo," said the
sculptor reproachfully, "now that you ought to be covering it up,
you uncover it."
There remain a superb nude study of Venus by Lorenzo di Credi,
No. 3452--one of the pictures which escaped Savonarola's bonfire
of vanities, and No. 1305, a Virgin and Child with various Saints
by Domenico Veneziano (1400-1461), who taught Gentile da Fabriano,
the teacher of Jacopo Bellini. This picture is a complete contrast to
the Uccello: for that is all tapestry, richness, and belligerence,
and this is so pale and gentle, with its lovely light green, a rare
colour in this gallery.