a , University of Virginia Library ND450 .A2 1927 The great painters in relation uy) 40? ARTS MUNA U OL X Ofeat! eek eae or sooee math, Beet th ex ‘ ay A Aaty epee fae Neen tas, s as ee Nose ie so aae apeAy Aya Peery ap yagi Saat ote aku iP as + aR vs : te v3 ile Ba apntty igi? ee > > QQU0 Qrw > OWFSaQo >WaIQ > >o B B lS Lt arX1V LIST OF TLEUSTRATIONS FLORENCE INTERIOR RICCARDI CHAPEL . FOUQUET GUILLAUME JOUVENEL DES URsINs GADDI, AGNOLO StorY OF THE TRUE Cross GADDI, TADDEO MEETING OF JOACHIM AND ANNA . GAINSBOROUGH HonoraB_Le Mrs. GRAHAME . Mrs. SIDDONS ; WATERING PLACE . GAUGUIN TAHITIAN GIRLS AND YOUTH GENTILE DA FABRIANO ADORATION OF THE KINGS GERICAULT RarFt OF THE MEDUSA GHIRLANDAJO CALLING OF PETER AND ANDREW Op Man AND CHILD Pore CONFIRMING THE FRANCISCAN ORDER : GIORGIONE FETE CHAMPETRE . : MaponnNA ENTHRONED . SLEEPING VENUS THe TEMPEST THREE PHILOSOPHERS GIOTTO BETRAYAL. : DEATH OF ST. FRANCIS ‘ MEETING OF JOACHIM AND ANNA ( (DeTatt) NATIVITY : : VAN DER GOES ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS VAN GOGH L’ ARLESIENNE GOYA FAMILY OF CHARLES IV GOZZOLI, BENOZZO PROcESSION OF THE Maai (DETAIL) GRUNEWALD ANNUNCIATION, NATIVITY, RESURRECTION CRUCIFIXION . ; : : HALS BANQUET OF St. GEORGE’s COMPANY Jortty Torer. OFFICERS OF ST. AprIAN’ s Company PoRTRAIT OF A WOMAN . : PLaTe Fic. 12 75 A 7 c 7 B 71 A 71 B 70 . 93 B II C 77 B 20 C 19 D 21 ¢ 7 B 36 D 37 C 38 A 37 A 5 B 5 D 5 ¢ 5 A 48 B OC 62 A 12 D 53 B 53 A 64 A 63 B 64 B ¢LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HOBBEMA AVENUE AT MIDDELHARNIS HOGARTH MarRIAGE ALA Mope . Tue SHrimP Girt. HOLBEIN ANNE OF CLEVES . DRAWING, THE LaDy BARKLEY : MADONNA WITH FAMILY oF Mayor MEYER ; RoBert CHESEMAN 2 : : HOMER MAINE Coast DE HOOCH Dutcu INTERIOR THE Pantry . INGRES Tue BaTHER . Mme. LEBLANC ODALISQUE INNESS EVENING AT MEDFIELD . JOHN, AUGUSTUS Woman SMILING JUSTUS VON GHENT AND MELOZzO DA FORLI Music . LA FARGE Tue AscENSION LEONARDO ADORATION OF THE KINGS Last SuPPER. MADONNA OF THE Rocks Mona Lisa . : VircIN AND CHILD wits Str. ANNE LIPPI, FILIPPINO, AND MASACCIO RAISING OF THE KING’s Son . VISION OF St. BERNARD LIPPI, FRA FILIPPO ADORATION OF THE CurisT CHILD . FUNERAL OF St. STEPHEN MaApDONNA AND CHILD LOCHNER MADONNA WITH THE VIOLET . LUNDENS (COPY BY) Nicut WatTcH ; MANET OLYMPIA La SERVANTE DE Bocks Woman WITH PARROT PLATE 70 72 72 54 54 54 53 88 67 67 80 78 8I 88 oO MN oO “ WR NO YW NNN WH 14 13 14 63 92 86 XV Fic. A QFQO OQ oO >> >owd wOQ FW — W WeXVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MANTEGNA CRUCIFIXION . : ; THE GonzaGA FaMILy . PARNASSUS . ; : . P St. James BLEsstnG HERMOGENES Tue Vicrory Maponna MANTUA Sata Dec tt Sposi, CASTELLO MARTINI, SIMONE ANNUNCIATION : : ARMING OF St. MARTIN MaApONNA ENTHRONED . MASOLINO Feast or HERopD RAISING OF TABITHA MASACCIO THE ExPuLsIon : ; : : : PeTER HEALING THE SICK WITH His SHADOW TriBuTE Money j : 3 MASSYS MADONNA AND CHILD PoRTRAIT OF A CANON . ° MASTER OF ST. VERONICA St. VERONICA ; : MATISSE ODALISQUE MELOZZO DA FORLI PorTRAIT GRouP MEMLINC Mystic MarriaGE OF St. CATHERINE . MICHELANGELO AN ATHLETE . ; CREATION OF ADAM DANIEL . ; ‘ : ? : 4 SECTION OF THE CEILING, SISTINE CHAPEL MILLET AUTUMN MONET BRANCH OF THE SEINE NEAR GIVERNY . MURILLO THE CoNncEPTION . Tue Hoty Famity ORCAGNA CHRIST AND THE VIRGIN (DETAIL OF PARADISE) PERUGINO Curist DELIVERING THE Keys To PETER CRUCIFIXION . : : a ‘ j Vision oF St. BERNARD PLATE Fic. : 29 ¢ 30 B 30 g 32 B 31 A 30 A 6 B 6 A 6 C 9 Cc 10 B 9 B 9 A IO A 49 B 47 C 51 A 94 B 15 C 47 > aa 28 B 27 A 28 A 27 B 79% 88 e: 60 A 60 B 8 c 18 ¢ 17 G APIERO DELLA FRANCESCA THE RESURRECTION . SOLOMON RECEIVING THE QuEEN OF SHEBA : VISION OF CONSTANTINE : : PISANELLO VISION OF St. EusTACE . PISANO, GIOVANNI NATIVITY PISANO, NICOLA NATIVITY . POLLAJUOLO HERACLES AND THE HypDRA POUSSIN BLIND OrION SEARCHING FOR THE SUNRISE SHEPHERDS IN ARCADIA. TrriumMPH OF Davip PUVIS DE CHAVANNES INSPIRATION CHRETIENNE THE SACRED GROVE : SAINT GENEVIEVE BRINGING BRE AD TO Paris RAPHAEL ANSIDEI MADONNA La BELLE JARDINIERE TueE DispuTa GraANDUCA MADONNA Mass or Bo.LsEna. PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE Castic LIONE REDON THE CLOsED EyYEs. REMBRANDT NicoLaEs BRUYNINGH Noir Me TANGERE : Op Woman Cuttinc Her Nats . PorTRAIT OF AN OLD Lapy PRESENTATION : SUPPER AT EMMAUS Tue Synpics. ‘ RENOIR THE BATHERS Le MoulLIN DE LA GALETTE Mme. CHARPENTIER AND HER CHILDRE? N Younc GIRLS AT THE PIANO. : REYNOLDS Lapy BAMFYLDE Lapy CocKBURN AND HER CHILDREN PoRTRAIT OF JOHNSON : : RIBERA MartTyrRpoM OF St. BARTHOLOMEW RIGAUD PorTRAIT OF BossuET LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XVII PLATE Fic. 16 17 16 29 Own QOvi vi NYwHwWH YD N nN A B B BXVill LIS? OF ILLUSTRATIONS ROME Apse Mosaic, St. CECILIA IN TRASTEVERE Arse Mosaic, St. PUDENZIANA : Borcita APARTMENTS, VATICAN ROSSETTI BEATA BEATRIX ROUSSEAU EpGE oF THE Woops RUBENS ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN . CurisT BEARING THE CROSS . Henry IV. REcEIVING PORTRAIT OF Marie DE Mepicr JupDGMENT OF Paris : : : Tue KeErmIis. LANDSCAPE RUISDAEL WHEATFIELDS SARGENT Portrait oF Mme. X SCHAMBERG, MORTON CANEPHOROS . SCHONGAUER MADONNA OF THE ROSE GARDEN . ‘ ‘ - SEURAT Circus . SIGNORELLI AR: ABESQUE PAN THE RESURRECTION TER BORCH Tue CoNcERT ; PATERNAL ADMONITION . TINTORETTO CRUCIFIXION . Last JUDGMENT (Li OWER . PART) MarRIAGE AT CANA MarRIAGE OF BAccHUS AND ARIADNE PorTRAIT OF VINCENZO MorosINI TITIAN BaccHUS AND ARIADNE . : CHARLES V. ON HorRSEBACK . THE ENTOMBMENT : MAapONNA AND Four SAINTS . MADONNA WITH THE Pesaro F AMILY MAN WITH THE GLOVE : : SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE . TURNER CROSSING THE BROOK . : Uxysses DERIDING POLYPHEMUS . PLATE 79 ON UUuiiimn vi own oo wm ON Se) mWraer > ow QOS +S > QF eo Gow, QOS rma} (ele)UCCELLO Rout oF San Romano . Sir Joun Hawkwoop UNKNOWN PAINTER TriumpH oF Deata (DETAIL) VELAZQUEZ Tue HeErmITs Ip1or oF CorIA QueEEN MarIANA Maps oF Honor . SURRENDER OF BREDA VENUS WITH A Mirror. VERMEER Lapy PLAyInGc A LuTE . Tue Peart NECKLACE . VERONESE ADORATION OF THE KINGS FEAST IN THE House oF LEvI FINDING OF MosEs MarRRIAGE AT CANA VERROCCHIO BAPTISM : VIVARINI, ALVISE MApoNNA ADORING THE CHILD RESURRECTION ‘ ; VIVARINI, BARTOLOMMEO MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS WATTEAU EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA . WATTS Love TRIUMPHANT WEYDEN, ROGER VAN DER ANNUNCIATION ; : : ‘ Curist APPEARING TO His MoTrHER DESCENT FROM THE Cross WHISTLER Tue MorHer ZURBARAN LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS St. BONAVENTURA SHOWING THE CrucIFIX To St. THomas AQUINAS PLATE 13 14 8 58 61 55 62 66 68 68 68 43 43 44 xix Fic. D WOW > Wem > C D BINTRODUCTION Since the purpose of this book is to focus attention upon certain great achievements in painting, no attempt has been made to write a complete history of the development of the art. The intention has rather been, while throwing emphasis on the great periods, to illustrate the continuity of what may be called the European tradition in painting. Generally speaking, the creative age in each school is the period of great personalities. Before and after these creative ages, the national characteristics appear in the corporate work of the school rather than in individual geniuses. The subject falls into three main divisions: the Renaissance, the seventeenth century, and the modern period, leadership pass- ing from one to another country. Painting after the Middle Ages revived first in Italy, flourishing there for three hundred years (fourteenth to sixteenth century). During this time, the great masters of the Renaissance emerged from a body of well-trained and often highly-gifted artists of secondary importance. No other school produced an equal num- ber of distinguished personalities nor shows such consistent and prolonged vitality. During the fifteenth century, painting in the North was repre- sented by the realistic school of the Netherlands. In Germany, the Renaissance was cut short by the Reformation, but during this interval of turmoil the characteristics of the Teutonic race found expression in the art of Durer and Holbein. Upon the close of the religious wars between Spain and the Netherlands, a great revival in painting occurred. Velazquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt were contemporaries, and in their re- spective countries, Spain, Flanders, and Holland, arose important schools of naturalistic painting. New subjects and new technical methods marked an epoch in art. In the eighteenth century, England, so long a patron of foreign artists, finally produced a characteristic native school of por- traiture. French painting, in the service of the court during the seven- XX1 < : g niente me s ie i A Ri cae an aT ye RTEXX INTRODUCTION teenth and eighteenth centuries, gained momentum after the French Revolution and since that time has set the standard for European art. The spread of this influence, facilitated by modern conditions of transportation and intercommunication, has resulted in the cosmopolitan character of modern art, in which French influence is still dominant. The historical background of the nation or of the individual painter is treated in this survey only in so far as it affects the choice of subjects, the treatment, or the ideals of painting. Standard biographical data concerning the artists, when not bearing di- rectly on the text, are included in the appendix for reference. Biog- raphies are very brief. For each epoch or important master recognized authorities in English have been mentioned, and books of a less specialized character have also been added. History is the matrix of art, and painting can be fully compre- hended only in relation to the epoch which brought it forth. It is, however, to be interpreted not only as the expression of a past age but as a revelation of the world about us today, of which we really see so little. Painting is addressed to the eye. In order to be understood it must be seen intelligently. Numerous illus- trations have therefore been included, and lists of paintings are added as a guide to securing additional reproductions to use in connection with the text. As far as possible, terms and phrases used in a professional sense have been explained in the text so that no glossary is re- quired. Certain words, however, are employed with such diverse meanings by different writers that it is well to define the present usage. By design is meant the element of structure in a picture de- pendent on the line, form, and colour. “Without design there is no art” (Cox). Composition is the relation of the parts of the picture to the ideas which it expresses. Pattern deals with surface, or two-dimensional relationships, and tends toward conventional rather than realistic effects. Balance in painting results from an equal pull on the eye from the two sides of a picture. Rhythm results from the movement of the eye directed by the artist’s lines, masses, and colours. Harmony involves the idea of a common factor in the treatment of line, tone, or colour. (All the colours may be intense, or all the colours may be neutral.)Unity results from the successful fusion of all the parts of the picture to express the central idea. Tradition “is the establishment of universal standards as against merely local . . . or individual fashions in art” (Rankin). Naturalism is used to denote a representation of Nature which would be recognized by the general observer as corresponding to what he sees. Realism is applied to work in which the study of specific facts interests the painter, rather than their relation to a synthetic whole. Reality in the larger sense is “‘an effort to objectify intrinsic truth . . . and implies a creative imagination.” “The great con- ception of Plato—the idea more real, more permanent than the object—is the message of every art’? (Pach). Three problems confront the artist: the interpretation of subject- matter, the organization of Nature by design, and his method of presentation. In painting, the subject-matter is found in the world of images, both objective and subjective, and the interpretation offers as wide a variation as is possible in literature. Design and composi- tion are the means of securing unity in every art. The principles by which the artist is guided are not invented by him arbitrarily, but are recognized as the expression of cosmic order. In rendering or presenting his subject in his particular art, however, further limits are set for him. His method is conditioned by the medium he uses—words, a musical instrument, or colour. It is his busi- ness, then, to bring his work into conformity with the principles of order, and in the case of painting, to reveal through the medium of the brush “‘the confidences he has received from the universe.” INTRODUCTION XXill ae a SN a ee —_THE GREAT ALN ERSCHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN PAINTING IN ITALY The recovery of the ruined city of Pompeii in the eighteenth century brought to light the most extensive cycle of paintings surviving from classic times. No important examples of monu- mental Greek painting exist. The mural decorations of Pompeii, in large measure Greek in inspiration and in motive, furnish the best evidence, therefore, of classic pictorial art. The majority of the paintings were executed during the first century and illustrate the pagan style at the moment when the earliest conversions to Christianity were being made. On this account it is important to inquire what are the specific qualities of classic painting, which was the point of departure for the new Christian art. Painting, like other arts of the Romans, was derived from Greece. For the Greeks, the body was of primary importance. Religious conceptions were involved in their ideal of physical beauty. “That which is beautiful” the poet writes, “‘is dear to the gods and that which is not beautiful is not dear to the gods.”’ This beauty we may study in Greek sculpture and in a less perfect form in Roman painting—an echo of the lost painting of the Greeks. In mythological and religious subjects, the figures expressed the ideals of physical perfection. The body was rendered with the intention of exhibiting the fully rounded forms of Nature with as great reality as possible short of a plastic material. The func- tion of drapery—to reveal, not conceal, the form and movement of the body—led to its careful organization. The head was well formed and well poised. Rich masses of hair framed the broad forehead; the eyes were wide apart and deep-set; and the jaw-bone gave determination to the face, with its firm chin and rich, curved lips. By the Roman painter these characteristics were delineated with less subtlety than by the Greek artist, but the ideal was evolved from the same phenomena in both cases. The painter was at home in his craft, and he found little difficulty in grouping the figures or in expressing lively action or restrained dramatic intensity. y] eepienaninn cman i ia a Cape ere aC pitcalge a a i i retin et pea ge ag na facet li Cat ciate a a sesTHE GREAT PAINTERS In certain of these paintings is reflected the pastoral feeling which had been a conspicuous characteristic of the Hellenistic period. The figures are small in scale, and the landscape setting shows a command over perspective which enabled the artist to suggest atmospheric distances of surprising naturalness in a technique which might be called “sketchy.” The colour was strong as a rule and well related to the tones in the garden court on which the principal apartments of the house opened. The garden was planted with trees and shrubs, and a central pool re- flected the blue of the Italian sky. In the portraits, especially those from Fayum of somewhat later date, other aspects of classic painting are illustrated. A realism comparable to Roman portrait busts gives to these heads an astonishingly modern aspect. Competent execution of figure compositions; the embodiment of an ideal of physical well-being in figures of plastic reality, either nude, or clad in simple, broadly-handled drapery; the treatment of landscape backgrounds, reproducing varied atmospheric effects; a native (Italian) sense for colour as an element in decoration, and naturalistic portraiture are, then, the most obvious charac- teristics of Roman painting. The earliest examples of Christian painting are found not in house decorations, but in the decorations of the catacombs, es- pecially those of Rome. The pictures were executed by inferior artisans and well illustrate the statement that early Christian art was at the same time both nascent and decadent. It con- stituted technically the last phase of classic art, which was al- ready in a state of decline. The small body of Roman converts had no conception that they were living in a new era, as Chnis- tianity made no immediate mark on history, and several hundred years elapsed before the calendar recorded “‘the year of our Lord.” The catacomb paintings spoke a universal language, that of symbolism. Often a Christian interpretation was given to a classic theme, such as Orpheus with his lyre charming the beasts, as a type of Christ drawing all souls to himself. At other times the representation was in the nature of a hieroglyph. The fish was a symbol of Christ because the Greek word ¢y@Us was the acrostic of his title, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour. But in neither case was this symbolism favourable to the continuance of a naturalistic style of painting. Obviously the imagination of the believer was stirred in inverse ratio to the material reality of the object represented. Hence it is the student of religious thought,BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN PAINBING 5 rather than the art historian, who is led to a study of the catacomb paintings. After the recognition of Christianity by Constantine, the artist had very different demands to meet. A decoration of the church building was required which should express the triumph of the new faith and its organization. This took the form of mosaics, first used in the semi-dome of the apses and later spread over the entire wall spaces and ceiling. The effects are magnificent and impress the mind with the idea of the immutability of the religious concepts they celebrate. The gradual decline which is apparent in comparing early mo- saics with those of a later date was the result of general causes, of which two were particularly important: first, the breaking up of the Roman Empire, resulting in widespread misery and disasters; second, the crystallization of Christian teaching into a dogmatic formula that was universally applicable and binding. This dog- matic tendency was of eastern origin centring in Constantinople, which had been founded on the site of the Greek colony of Byzan- tium. Byzantine influence was more or less strongly felt in Italy from the sixth to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In art this was especially evident after the ninth century. Medieval painting existed as the visual counterpart of ecclesiastical teaching. The church as teacher dictated the choice of subjects and the order in which they should be placed in the building; thus the Visitor passing from one medieval church to another will find cer- tain subjects from Old and New Testament often repeated, to the exclusion of others which would seem equally important. In their own day such paintings required no explanation, for they were designed for persons to whom doctrinal and symbolic thought were second nature. Today this type of mind is non-existent, and to understand its art we must build up a knowledge sympathetic to the working of the medieval mind. The technical changes which mark the decline through the medieval period may be summarised roughly as follows: The figure (Pl. 1a and Pl. 2c), at first well proportioned, free in movement, sculpturesque in form, becomes incorrect in proportion (the head large, the body withered), stilted in movement (a for- ward-facing pose without any action), and entirely without plastic form, like a paper doll, because of the omission of light and shade. The faces, at first resembling those found in classic painting, be~ come elongated, the eyes large and staring, the forms emaciated, and the expression morose. Draperies, originally sculpturesque6 THE GREAT PAINTERS and conditioned by the action of the body, are reduced to a calli- graphic scheme and become so entirely a formula that the same lines and angles recur from century to century. Backgrounds, which in the fourth century prove the ability of the artists to use complicated material with success, are gradually impoverished until a conventional flat colour (preferably gold) is substituted for a natural setting. The change is caused by an increasing disregard of natural appearances. As the rendering diverges further and further from objective reality, another factor—that of design—is increasingly apparent. This change from naturalism to convention in treatment is accompanied by a corresponding change in spirit. The ideal of a sane mind in a sane body, dominant in the classic period, gradually gives place to the ascetic ideal of medieval monasticism. The Christ, who in the fourth century gathers his followers about him to receive his intimate instruction, in the twelfth century is treated as an emperor whose inaccessibility and omnipotence are signified by colossal proportions. This was the official art during the Middle Ages. Naturalism of the local tradition was only now and then betrayed in some ‘ntimate detail at variance with the formal conception, as in the arm of Christ about the Virgin’s shoulders in the apse mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Almost imperceptibly, however, from about the ninth century, there began to be a slight stirring of new life, an awakening of the people which finally brought about the liberation of human emotions, both in religion and in art. At last a personal and human interpretation, which might be dimly dis- cerned for several centuries, frankly asserted itself and changed the goal toward which effort was directed. The triumph of this new human quality was intimately con- nected with the Franciscan movement and is symbolized in the legend which tells how the image of the Christ Child came to life in the embrace of St. Francis. St. Francis was the embodiment of the Gothic spirit in Italy. The songs of the troubadours of France awoke an echo in him, and he chanted with the birds; the earth became his ‘“‘mother” and fire and water his servitors; flowers and all the timid creatures of the wilds knew him as their brother. The memorial church raised to St. Francis at Assisi in 1226 was the cradle of the new art, and his life provided material for the painters hardly second in artistic importance to that of the gospels. On the steep slope of the hill of Assisi the Church of St. FrancisBEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN PAINTING 7 rises in three storeys—the crypt below ground, the lower church, and the upper (cruciform) building. For the decoration of these great wall spaces the best Italian artists were summoned. The lower church is entered from the parching, blinding light of the piazza (Pl. 1c). Perhaps it is a helpful initiation, for the sig- nificance of the spot is realized as one waits for sight to be given back. Then in the silence and coolness of the dim interior the round arches make a solemn approach to the altar, standing at the intersection of the arms and body of the Latin cross. Here, in the decoration of transepts and crossing, one of the supreme ex- periences of all Italy awaits the visitor. Above the altar, against a ground of lapis lazuli, figures in soft pastel shades of ochre, rose, green, and white are massed as if to form a canopy. They seem to vibrate and throb with colour. Wherever the eye may wander over adjoining walls or ceiling, the colour repeats itself. The pigment is water-colour, but its mellow splendour is like that of a rich tapestry. Ornament is everywhere obedient to architectural form, and satisfaction comes largely from a sense of the fitness of things. A winding stair leads to the upper church. Blashfield has de- scribed the transition; it is like passing from the music of the organ to that of the harp. Just as in the lower church, every sur- face is covered with colour, which now remains as a faint memory where forms have become indecipherable. The walls of choir, apse, and transepts are still a glory of soft colours contrasted with the sudden depth of the ultramarine vaults varied by splotches of brilliant malachite and the orange background of the four Evan- gelists in the crossing. These same colours are carried down into the nave; in the lower portion, shades of Indian red and rose predominate; all the blues of the upper series have turned to turquoise. The scenes from the Old and New Testaments and from the life of St. Francis in the nave illustrate the painting of the later years of the thirteenth century. Various hands are discernible in these works, but the problem of authorship need not be entered on here. One of the masterpieces of early art, however, is to be found in the left transept—the “Crucifixion,” regarded as the work of the Tuscan painter Cimabue (1240-c. 1301). The reproduction is sufficient to show its deplorable condition (Pl. 2a). Only here and there is any vestige of the original surface found. It looks like the rubbing from an old bronze, the dark parts representing the raised portions. It is difficult in studying the photograph to art a8 THE GREAT PAINTERS form any conception of the power that in the original makes so profound an impression. Venturi has given a wonderful description of this “Drama of Golgotha.”” He speaks of the passion of the Magdalen crying aloud, the centurion proclaiming the divinity of Christ, the priests wrapped in garments stained with the blood of the innocent one, the Christ vanquished by the force of his enemies, the angels “flying in a storm” about the cross. Feeling expresses itself in the tempest of heaven and earth—a violent, intense, crude, human emotion. It is necessary to study the picture attentively, first trying to feel the dramatic intensity and then considering the treatment. The drawing is very powerful. The figures of Mary and John on the left are remarkable in truth of form and largeness of movement. Their clasped hands and the languor of Mary’s figure recall classic grave-reliefs. Certain heads show energy and determined characterization. The old Byzantine (Oriental) for- mula characteristic of medieval art still dominates the painter, but a surge of dramatic intensity is unmistakable. The painting 1s elemental and has the grandeur that expresses itself through crude and rugged forms. Cimabue’s work shows a close dependence on the tradition in- herited from the Middle Ages. This tradition, dignified by the sanction of many generations, had been perfected to express an idea rather than a material fact. There is something about it which is formidable and splendid—it has the value of communal speech. Its strength is the absence of a narrowed personal ex- pression. The prevalence of this common tradition, however, offers serious difficulties in determining the authorship of early paintings. Only one work by Cimabue is documented; this is a mosaic in the Cathedral of Pisa. Among the paintings discussed in connection with his name are pictures attributed by some critics to the contemporary Roman school and by others to Sienese painters. The most important altar-piece ascribed to Cimabue by general consent is the enthroned Madonna of the Uffizi (Pl. 28). Medie- val formality is modified by more graciousness both in the mother and in the child. Beauty is enhanced by the angels flanking the throne, whose bending action leads the eye by gentle curves to the main group. If we concentrate on the central figures, remem- bering that the picture is a devotional altar-piece, the symbolic intention becomes evident; and we realize that the artist sought to present an idea rather than an actual group. His symbol ofPLATE I Silt Me Leet Mee) t Yet er cee oe(B) Cimabue Madonr Florence. (AndersBEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN PAINTING 9 the Divine Mother speaks with the authority of the Church. Intense personal quality is felt in the half-length patriarchs be- neath the throne, where the “energetic drawing” recalls figures in the Assisi ‘‘Crucifixion.” Little is recorded of Cimabue’s life. His name has waxed and waned on the pages of modern criticism. His art marked the awak- ening of Tuscany, and he has been called the Michelangelo of the thirteenth century. Availing himself of the approved tradition, he was able to infuse into it something intense that expressed a racial consciousness and was bound in the end to shake itself free from deadening restrictions. For a long period, in spite of upheavals and disasters, Rome had been a centre of artistic production, and in the thirteenth century it fostered an important school of mosaicists and painters. The representative Roman artist was Pietro Cavallini (fl. 1250-1330). Cavallini’s work survives in mosaics and in a fragmentary wall- painting of the “Last Judgment” which decorated the west wall of the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere and is now enclosed in the gallery of the convent connected with the church (PI. 1B). This work shows that the beauty of classic models appealed to him across the gulf of the Middle Ages. There isa certain gravity, reticence, and sobre dignity about his figures. They are well- proportioned, and the forms are brought out by square-cut masses of light and shadow which convince the eye of their solidity. Drapery folds are simplified, and line is made subordinate to plastic form. Movement is dignified and tranquil. The shapes of the heads and the placing and rendering of the features suggest classic types. The Christ is a majestic judge. Similar characteristics may be found in Cavallini’s mosaics of Santa Maria in Trastevere in spite of the unresponsive material. The “Birth of the Virgin” is especially fine in breadth of handling, expressive drawing, and facial types. It is evident, however, that Cavallini’s work is not directed toward new goals or new solutions of old problems. He is not revolutionary, but represents, rather, the end of the early Christian tradition. He recerved many commissions and seems to have had a large school working, among other places in the upper church of St. Francis at Assisi. What might have occurred in Rome if the school had continued, we cannot tell. The removal of the papal court to Avignon in the first decade of the fourteenth century marked the end of the Roman school of painting. From this time until the activities of the Renaissance popes, comparatively little work was done in St eeIO THE GREAT PAINTERS the city, and the great monuments of the Renaissance were the work of artists summoned from other parts of Italy. It may be well at this point to mention the technical methods in general use at this time. Mosaic decoration was brought to its highest perfection by Byzantine workers who through the medieval period executed numerous commissions in Italy. Medieval mosaics were generally made of glass cubes varying in size and set in a bed of cement. The slightly irregular surfaces catch the light like the facets of a gem and enhance the colour effects. It was a costly and magnif- icent form of interior decoration, suited to the conventions of religious art. With the development of a naturalistic style this medium was gradually abandoned. Fresco painting was executed directly on the plastered wall (Pl. 18). The surface to be decorated was prepared for the day’s stint by the addition of a thin layer of wet plaster (the intonico). On this surface, while still moist, the painting was executed in earth colours mixed with water. Plaster and pigment dried to- gether and became homogeneous. Any portion of the intonico remaining after the day’s work was cut away and a new surface laid the following day. For this fresco painting there is needed, as Vasari says, ‘‘a hand that is dextrous, resolute, and rapid, and most of all a sound and perfect judgment.” Italian painters were primarily decorators, and mural painting remained in favour for many centuries. Panel pictures increased in popularity from the twelfth century. They were executed on carefully seasoned panels of poplar wood, often covered with linen to prevent splitting. This was overlaid with a thin coating of gesso (a mixture of lime and marble dust) which was covered with a reddish under-painting and overlaid with gold leaf for the background areas. The colours, ground and pre- pared in the workshop (bottega) as required, were mixed with egg or some other sticky substance. This method is known as tempera painting and was practised by the Italians until late in the fifteenth century, when experiments in the oil method had become successful (Pl. 28). The altar-piece of the early period was a simple gabled panel. Often the figure of a saint was surrounded by scenes from his life. Gradually these narratives were withdrawn from the principal field, and eventually they formed a band below the main panel, like foot-notes on a page. They are known as predella panels.BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN PAINE UNG 11 Scenes related to the principal figures in the altar-piece generally appeared here. By the middle of the fourteenth century elaborate Gothic frames were general, and the altar-piece was made up of numerous panels separated by colonnettes. As naturalism devel- oped, various devices were employed to unite the attendant saints with the main group, and finally architectural partitions were abandoned. GENERAL BOOKS FOR REFERENCE ON CHAPTERS I-XXI Berenson, Bernhard, Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. N.Y., Putnam, 1909. Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance. N. Y., Putman, 1909. —— —— North Italian Painters of the Renaissance. N.Y., Putnam, 1907. Venetian Painters of the Renaissance. N. Y., Putnam, 1909. Blashfield, E. H. and E. W., Italian Cities. N. Y., Scribner, 1912. Brown, A. V. V., and Rankin, William., 4 Short History of Italian Painting. N. Y., Dutton, 1914. Burckhardt, J. C., The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (tr. S. G. Middlemore). London, Sonnenschein, 1909. Castiglione, Baldassare, Book of the Courtier (tr. Opdycke). WN. Y., Scribner, 1903. Creighton, M., History of the Papacy. 6v. N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1902-1904. Crowe, J. A., and Cavalcaselle, G. B., New History of Painting in Italy. 3v. N.Y., Dutton, 1908-09. — History of Painting in North Italy. (Ed. Douglas, Borenius.) 6 v. London, Murray, 1914. Dennistoun, James, The Dukes of Urbino. N. Y., Lane, 1909. Fattorusso, G., Italian Schools of Painting. (Chart.) Florence, 1923. Hare, C., Courts and Camps of the Renaissance. N. Y., Scribner, 1908. Klaczko, J., Rome and the Renaissance. N. Y., Putnam, 1903. Layard, A. L., Italian Schools of Painting, Based on the Handbook of Kugler. London, Murray, 1907. Mather, Frank J., 4 History of Italian Painting. N. Y., Holt, 1923. Morelli, Giovanni, Italian Painters; Critical Studies of Their Work. London, Murray, 1900. Pater, Walter, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. London, Macmillan, 1900. Sedgwick, H. D., Short History of Italy. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1gos. Symonds, J. A., Renaissance in Italy: the Fine Arts. London, Smith, Elder, 1906. A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy. N. Y., Holt, 1894. Taine, H. A., Lectures on Art (tr. Durand). N. Y., Holt, rgor. Van Marle, Raimond, Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. The Hague, Nijhoff, 1923. Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Archt- tects (tr. Blashfield and Hopkins). 4 v. N. Y., Scribner, 1909. Venturi, Adolph, Storia dell’ Arte Italiana. v. 1-9. Milan, Hoepli, 1901-1925. Villani, P. Life and Times of Machiavellie. London, Unwin, 1898. Life and Times of Savonarola. London, Unwin, 1889. Winchester Charts. Painters of Florence, Umbria and Siena; Painters of North Italy. London, Mansell.CHAP TE & II DUCCIO AND THE BYZANTINE TRADITION The early years of the fourteenth century brought to a culmina- tion the development of painting in Siena. Here as in Rome the awakening sense of beauty led men back to old sources of inspira- tion; but Siena’s affiliations were with the East, her outlet being through the port of Pisa. At the opening of the fourteenth century, the city was at the height of her prosperity and showed an intense feeling for beauty and colour which inspired some of the loveliest art of the century. The forms and conventions of Byzantine art were followed and the result shows what splendour and refinement can be created on a purely decorative scheme. Italo-Byzantine painting, in contrast to the oriental style, while following the conventions of Byzantine art, generally lost refinement, perfection of technique, and beauty of colour—the qualities of supreme excellence. Duccio, however (active 1279- 1319), the founder of the Sienese school, possessed these qualities to so marked a degree that some critics have thought he must have been trained in Constantinople. But there was ample opportunity in the numerous Greek convents in Italy for contact with Byzan- tine painters as well as models. Duccio’s art is the typical example of the best that the old Byzantine tradition could inspire. He produced pictures whose greatest charm is their decorative beauty; they are design first and then representation. In a sense they take their place with works of cloisonné, with Persian rugs and Japanese prints, but in the best examples there is added the graciousness of the human appeal, ‘‘and even in his abstract backgrounds touches of local scenery and architecture are kaleidoscoped in”’ (Rankin). Duccio’s qualities are illustrated in the altar-piece executed for the Cathedral of Siena in 1308 (Pl. 3c). It had disappeared when Vasari wrote his “‘ Lives of the Painters” in the sixteenth century, but has since been recovered, though dismembered and no longer in its old frame. The central panel representing the Virgin and Child measures seven by fourteen feet. Above and below this monumental enthronement (“Maesta”), small panels illustrating 12DUCCIO AND THE BYZANTINE TRADITION 13 the Virgin’s life enriched the effect. The painting originally was placed on the altar which stood at the intersection of nave and transept and the pictorial decoration adorns both faces. On the reverse the large area is covered with scenes from the life of Christ. The Florentine type of vertical altar-piece with the enthroned Virgin “‘looming” against the gold ground as in Cimabue’s picture is here exchanged for a low, broad field in which the Virgin is enthroned, surrounded by the hierarchy of angels, patronesses of Siena and saints. Each has his prescribed place in the symmetrical scheme, and once there, is given no chance to move. Such a dis- position of masses in bilateral symmetry produces the impression of stability and, by implication, of the qualities of permanence, security, and peace. Duccio composes by means of line. This furnishes a path of least resistance for the eye through the intricacies of the composi- tion. The unity of his picture is secured by an all-embracing scheme of line carefully thought out—or felt out, for it was prob- ably not a matter of conscious calculation. The skill with which the elements are brought into an orderly and logical relation is the determining factor in achieving a harmonious result. Duccio makes no attempt by the use of strong contrasts of light and shadow to create bodies of flesh and blood like those of Cavallini, but his drawing reveals an innate grace and rhythm which gives reality to the movements. In spite of anatomical inaccuracies, the Madonna panel is full of lovely details of drawing. By his sinuous flowing line, the painter modifies the austerities of the Byzantine style and creates a mood of gracious melancholy. The flat patterned surfaces which result demand a splendid en- richment by colour. This is one of the supreme beauties of Duccio’s work. Without colour illustrations, it is a question whether it is possible to suggest the thmill of the original but this must be attempted. It may not be amiss at this point to define the terms which must be used in describing colour. Three are particularly important— hue, value, and intensity. Hue is the name by which colour is identified: as blue, orange, red. Value is the quantity of light in a colour from its emergence from the unity of white light to its disappearance in darkness. Intensity is quality of light. This is sometimes called saturation. It is difficult to discriminate between value and intensity. Imagine the yellow of a buttercup beside a : ; ah oe ey ke 1 A tentative reconstruction of its original form is illustrated in Weigelt: “Duccio di Buoninsegna” (Pl. 66).14 THE GREAT PAINTERS pale straw colour of the same value (the same lightness) and the difference is one of intensity. The buttercup is yellow at its yellowest, its saturation point; straw colour is that same yellow neutralized. Generally speaking, the old masters made a greater use of in- tensities than is made today. This was particularly true of prim- itive painters. The ideals of decorative art were always uppermost. They were not attempting to reproduce effects of nature but to create a design which should present a surface as perfect as enamel and equally durable and brilliant. Gold played an important part in all these effects. The colour pattern of Duccio’s altar-piece resolves itself into the spotting of the halos, and the smouldering richness of the low- toned colours, through which gold runs like Ariadne’s thread—now flecked through the design of the fabrics, now creeping along the edge of the draperies like a thin line of fire. Against all this splen- dour is set the blue of the Virgin’s robe—a deep lapis lazuli—and the delicate lilac of the Child’s garment studded with stars. In its pinnacled frame, with narrative scenes above and below, what a magnificent effect the painting must have made! On the reverse, the gold areas of background shine out, throwing the figure groups into silhouetted masses. The “Garden of Geth- semane” is typical in this (Pl. 38). The sky is an intense red gold. The autumn tones of all the rest are so closely related in value that browns, crimsons, greens, and blues blend in a rich harmony. It is evident that in photography the picture suffers a complete transformation. Not only is all play of intensities lost, but the values also are falsified. An intense vermilion placed for emphasis at a given point in the composition often becomes an almost black spot in the photograph; a night sky of deep blue photographs in a pale value. Turning from technical considerations to interpretation, the “Garden of Gethsemane’”’ illustrates a convention in general use during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which is called the narrative method. When the painter is obliged to tell a serial story, he often includes several episodes in one field, even when it necessitates representing the same person more than once. This was not a new idea, but originated in Roman times. Since the function of painting was primarily to recall stories which had to be retained in the memory after being heard, not read, the method was a practical aid. On the whole it has been successfully employed here, the landscape being used to suggest the element of time byDUCCIO AND THE BYZANTINE TRADITION 15 separating the two scenes: Christ speaking with the group of disciples at the left, and kneeling in prayer at the right. But this landscape presents a difficulty to the modern mind. Why was the painter so incapable of rendering the background with reality? ‘This is a natural question, yet the fourteenth century painter would not have understood such an inquiry. Background was used merely to suggest locality. Much was left to the imagina- tion. Cennino Cennini, who gives the most complete idea of the painter’s methods at this time, writes, “If thou wouldst paint mountains in a good style and to look natural, take some large stones full of cracks and copy them.” We are reminded of the scenery of the Elizabethan stage. But for the painter, the ex- planatory function of the background was secondary to its poten- tialities as pure design. The “cracks” which he copied from his stones were also considered most carefully in relation to the decora- tive factors in his composition. Problems of spacing and distribu- tion of mass often were solved inimitably. All the qualities we have been discussing are illustrated in the “Crucifixion” (Pl. 3a). See how beautifully the crosses are spaced against the gold ground and the dignity that is given by their height. These are shapes which stand isolated against light; below is a mass of dark figures; in order to bind the two parts together so that the eye shall realize the unity of the composition, Duccio has utilized the lines of uplifted spears and torches to make the transition—to what effect one may judge by blotting them out. The figure of Christ is drawn with correct proportions and with an exquisite sympathy, and the lines of weeping angels, darting about the cross, almost convey the sensation of motion in the abstract. Possibly the only defect in the composition is the insistence on the space between the foreground groups. The importance of this one altar-piece is so great that it adequately illustrates the achieve- ment of Duccio without the analysis of other works. Duccio executed commissions in Florence as well as in Siena and many critics now believe that the Rucellai ““Madonna”’ in Santa Maria Novella (Pl. 44) was painted by him, not by Cimabue. Duccio formed a large school, but those followers who drew their inspiration exclusively from their master never reached his stand- ard of workmanship, his refinement of drawing, or his richness of colour. When the art of Duccio is described as a development from the Byzantine tradition and that of Cavallini from the Roman, it should not be interpreted to mean that there was no intermingling.16 THE GREAT PAINTERS During the early middle ages, the whole of Italy had been dom- inated by Byzantine formule which continued to reappear even as late as the fifteenth century. On the other hand, Italy never quite lost touch with her Greco-Roman inheritance. It is only when we study contemporary painting elsewhere (as in Flanders) that we realize how fundamental this was to her whole method of seeing and interpreting the world. During the thirteenth century Gothic factors also were apparent in the art of Italy. Minor works of French decorative art, such as ivories, exerted their influence, and the presence in Italy of French builders and sculptors strengthened these tendencies. A com- parison of the diverse “‘manners”’ resulting from the classic and the Gothic tradition is afforded in the work of the sculptors Nicola and Giovanni Pisano after the middle of the century. The father based his figure drawing and his conception on Greco-Roman marbles; the son infused his forms with an intimacy foreign to the classic style and exemplifying the emotional ardour of the Middle Ages (Pl. 48, c).er pirat oR ' i | i | ' | agyenene — esPIRES SE TI Ee PLATE 4 (A) Attributed to Duccio and to Cima- bue. Madonna Enthroned. ~The Rucel- lai Madonna.” Santa Maria Novella, Florence. (Alinari) (C) Giovanni Pisar Nativity. Pul- pit, San Andrea, Pistoia. (Alinari)GHA PTVER] [it GIOTTO AND THE CONTEMPORARY SIENESE SCHOOL Saint Francis, at the opening of the thirteenth century, taught the dignity of everyday life; Dante a hundred years later wrote in the tongue of the common people; and Giotto (1276-1336) in his painting told the Gospel anew in the language of human emo- tions. Each in his day made a vital contribution toward the rec- ognition of human worth. At this period, “Italy suddenly leaped forward as if she had drained a beaker of champagne” (Sedgwick). Giotto was the first painter to make a fearless and consistent use of the speech of the people and to give it an epic quality. He belonged to what is called historically the Gothic period. He is generally considered a Gothic painter but it is true of him, as of Dante, that “he lays immense stress on individuality and delin- eates real life with wonderful vividness. These traits mark him as belonging to the new world coming in rather than to the old world going out” (Sedgwick). At the opening of the fourteenth century he showed characteristics that anticipated the Renaissance. He had a shrewd hard-headedness and a fund of common sense which formed one important source of his dramatic style. He was never deceived by pretence. This side of his character ts suggested in the account which Vasari gives of his life, but more convincingly in his own poem on poverty where the philosophy of the man of the world is outlined. Giotto was born near Florence and according to Vasari was the pupil of Cimabue, but increasing emphasis is now laid on the importance of his early contact with the Roman school. He worked throughout the length and breadth of Italy, and his influence was felt during the whole century. He was architect and sculptor as well as painter and at the time of his death held the office of chief superintendent of the Cathedral of Florence. The campanile which he designed was completed after his death. Giotto’s share in the decoration of the church of St. Francis at Assisi is a matter of dispute. His earliest unquestioned frescos are in the Arena Chapel, Padua. This is a small barnlike room with 1718 THE GREAT PAINTERS an arched ceiling and no architectural mouldings or divisions. Its only claim to be called Gothic is the pointed form of the win- dows. The painter had a free hand here to show what he could do as interior decorator. In this case, his function involved that of an architect to supply by painting what the actual building lacked. Giotto decorated the ceiling with medallions on the blue field of the vault studded with stars. The lower section of the wall was treated as a dado, painted in grisaille to simulate architectural mouldings. At intervals sculptured panels were represented in which he treated the Virtues and Vices. Above this the side walls were divided into three rows of narrative paintings separated by broad bands of ornament. Executed directly on the wall, these show the usual “‘pastel” tones of fresco painting. Shades of ochre, pink, and green are unified by areas of azure common to all the scenes. Here is spread out a great series of pictures illustrating the life of Christ and the Virgin, intelligible to every worshipper. They tell a continuous story, beginning with the history of Joachim and Anna (the Virgin’s parents) and terminating on the west wall with the “Last Judgment.” Each episode is complete, but the designer has never lost sight of the necessity for leading the eye without fatigue from one picture to the next. All is ‘‘facile to the sense of vision.” Such decoration fulfilled the destiny indicated as early as the fifth century. Then Paulinus of Nola advocated decorating the church walls with pious scenes to hold the attention of those who otherwise might be tempted to spend the hours between services in some less edifying pursuit. Here “‘they could feed with their eyes instead of with their lips . . . and learn how satisfying to thirst is sobriety.” If, as Vasari recounts, the Rucellai ‘‘Madonna’’ astonished the people by its reality, what must have been the original effect of those graphic tales which still seem to us so vivid? To the peas- ant from an outlying village, they must have been as enthralling as the motion picture is today. There was even a likelihood, as with the motion picture, that a man might recognize himself in one of the very scenes, for many of the visitors had without doubt taken part at some time in the mystery and miracle plays which were an education to the public and exercised a direct influence upon pictorial conceptions. As we examine the paintings, we must be impressed with the wealth of life shown there. The legends are no longer of a past age, a foreign country, a miraculous nature: they are the annalsGIOTTO AND THE SIENESE SCHOOL 19 of the neighbourhood. Giotto treats the sacred stories intimately, but the paintings never become commonplace: they are infused with human emotion, which has no past tense. In the “Presenta- tion of the Virgin” and in the “Nativity,” he shows the solici- tude of motherhood (PI. 54). The variations from the prescribed Byzantine formula in the latter are slight, but the change in spirit is complete. Stereotyped forms are replaced by tender humanity, where the child is passed from hand to hand with lingering touch. In a similar tenderness the contemporary poet sang— By thy great and glorious merit Mary, Mother, Maid, In the firstling newborn child All our hopes are laid. In the “Meeting at the Golden Gate” the embrace of Joachim and Anna suggests their whole life history (Pl. 5c). Look partic- ularly at the expressiveness of the hands. Recall the story of the meeting: Joachim hastening from the sheepfold, Anna from her home, to bear the glad news that miraculously, after the appointed time, they were to have a child! In this picture the composition is admirably centralized, bound together by the architectural setting, suggested perhaps by the Augustan Gate at Perugia. Careful study will reveal that subtle differences of mood are shown throughout the series. Giotto has no formula for emotion— he shows it as it wells up spontaneously in the individual heart, exultant, tender, grave. These ‘‘Songs of Innocence” are charming stories of human relationships: the love of husband and wife, the joy of childhood, marriage, and motherhood. Other qualities are required for the remaining subjects. Can this lyric poet acquit himself equally well in tragedy? Among the scenes of the Passion, the “Betrayal”’ stands out with startling vividness (Pl. 58). The action is vigorous, the gestures forceful and expressive. Note the dense crowd, repre- sented by a few individuals, the spears and clubs and flaming torches suggesting confusion and tumult by their clashing lines. The jarring elements reach their climax in the contrasted heads of Christ and Judas. What other interpretation of the scene equals this in dramatic power? Certain impersonations of the Vices show what Giotto could embody in allegory. Envy he represents as self-destructive. Thus the vice is laid bare at the root. It is a figure as powerfully delin- eated as that by Dante in the “ Divine Comedy”:RI Rig LONI RS RAIN CMTE SRAM NB I Ft NEE ROTO E22 TOTES TR EI THE GREAT PAINTERS Accursed be thou, Inveterating wolf! whose gorge ingluts more prey Than every beast beside, yet is not filled, So bottomless thy maw. The Paduan frescos represent the most dramatic phase of Giotto’s work. The shapes in which he chose to compose and the scale which he selected for his figures obliged him to use few actors. This epitomized rendering intensifies his effect, but the result is not meagre because in the individual he invariably renders the type. His expression is epigrammatic. Admiration grows with the study of one episode after another. Without exception, the scenes are as vivid as if the artist had been present. He had the actor’s ability to portray each part with complete conviction. For this reason his art is never melodramatic. The record he makes is like that of a newspaper reporter who seizes the salient points and lets the rest go. A certain blunt downrightness is found every- where. There is no sentimentality; the tears he shows are shed by the heart-broken (Pl. 5p). His people do not gesticulate; their every movement is impelled from within. Consider the figure of Christ in the “Raising of Lazarus,” or St. John the Evangelist in the “Raising of Drusiana”; there is no posing; power radiates from their action. This integrity gives permanent value to every- thing he did. Giotto’s knowledge of the human figure was rudimentary but his observation was accurate. If he did not stand on the street corners of Florence with pencil and sketch book, as artists do today, his memory notes were more effective than have been most jottings since his time. He noted the attitudes of passers-by and learned how to transmit the tension and rhythm of the human body by his expressive line. Giotto’s method of seeing was closer to that of Cavallini than to that of Duccio. He had a vivid sense of the reality of form. Its bulk seemed to him important and this he emphasized by every means. His peasant-like figures are stocky and scantily draped; a few lines suffice to mark the area of suspension at shoulder and hip, and light and shade raise them into three-dimensional form. This is well shown in the “Betrayal” (Pl. 58). Generally the faces are types without individual traits, so that the dramatic thought must be conveyed of necessity through the body. Greater knowledge would have enabled him to produce images more faithful to the outer aspect of nature, but it would haveGIOTTO AND THE SIENESE SCHOOL 21 contributed very little that is essential. Too little knowledge is better than too much, for the essential is not facts, but contagion, stimulus, an experience of life shared by the spectator: this is what Berenson terms the life enhancing quality in art. For proper appreciation our own bodies must become our laboratories. If the painter, or the actor, fails to make us share the experience he has projected into material form, he has missed the one thing which justifies his labours. Such figures as Giotto represented require a certain amount of space in which to move, and the artist constructs a shallow stage which gives them sufficient room. The setting is so limited in depth (the third dimension) that it may well be called painting in two dimensions (low relief). The picture is like a tableau crowded up to the footlights with only the space of ground nec- essary to the support of the actors, and a setting of architecture or landscape bent up at right angles to form a background. Although shallow, the spatial relations are actually apparent to the eye rather than symbolically indicated—as, for instance, by Duccio (Pl. sa, 38). In some of the simpler examples background accessory is prac- tically eliminated and the groups are raised from the conventional blue field in an almost sculpturesque fashion (see the “‘ Visitation’’). One of the most beautiful examples of this type is the stately “Return of the Virgin to her Home.” More richly dressed than usual, she moves majestically to the sound of bridal music. The painting has well been compared to a hymn since its rhythmic cadence is so strong. Thé measured progression of the figures seems to result from the alternation of wide and narrow spacing in the arrangement of the folds of the drapery. Spirit and method both suggest a comparison with groups on the Parthenon frieze. Following the comple tion of the work in Padua, Giotto executed commissions in various parts of Italy. His influence was wide- spread. Everywhere the naturalistic aspects of his work found enthusiastic admirers, even if the great quality of his design was often overlooked. Shortly after the termination of the Paduan frescos may be placed the “Madonna Enthroned” in the Uffizi, a most impor- tant altar-piece by Giotto. It hangs in the same room with Cima- bue’s “Madonna” and a comparison of the two shows clearly the advance in naturalism and the inevitable loss of the mystic element of medieval painting. The authorship of the Stefaneschi altar-piece, formerly inMit co sinha a tone cae a eee ee Rg ae Se eee eee 22 THE GREAT PAINTERS the Sacristy of St. Peter’s, Rome, is a matter of dispute. The hieratic majesty of the older art is combined with a grace and emo- tional intensity which have led to its attribution to a follower of Giotto influenced by Sienese painting. The majesty of the en- throned Christ, the beauty of design in the treatment of the side panels, and the splendid colour, make this one of the most superb altar-pieces of the century. Certain changes in conception and composition appear in Giotto’s later works in Santa Croce, where he decorated several chapels. Of these the frescos of the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels still remain, though they have suffered to some extent from re- painting. The pictures are rectangular in shape and the figures more numerous than in Padua. They are less stocky, the gar- ments longer and more flowing. The backgrounds have become an integral part of the design, but they are as frankly a conven- tional staging as before. The composition is more studied and the dignity of the “grand style” compensates for what is sacrificed of dramatic brevity. Very fine examples are the “Raising of Dru- siana,” the ‘‘ Ascension of St. John the Divine,” and the “Death of St. Francis” (Pl. 5p). In the latter, the lines of composition bind the group of mourners about the body of the saint. Waves of grief seem to break over the bier. The standing monks at either end stabilize the composition and make a structural framework about the intimate scene. The arrangement is so simple that it seems casual at first sight; the perfect adjustment of the parts is realized only by considering the result of any change. What would happen if the banner bearer grew tired and lowered the cross? What if an individual in the central group were diverted for a moment from St. Francis’ face? What if the convent wall had not been panelled? What if the acolyte had not worn white? No hard and fast calculation gave this result; it was the culmination of lifelong practice—a practice beginning with apprenticeship to Cimabue, or some other painter, grinding and preparing colour, watching and judging the master’s success in its use, the laying in of minor parts, and finally, the youthful independent works. Such training was of immense value to the world. The change which Giotto brought into art is indeed comparable to the substitution of the Italian for the Latin language, and the parallel is all the closer because we are conscious in both of the derivation from the classic sources. The moderation of Giotto 1 By certain critics it is still regarded as the work of Giotto, by others it is attrib- uted to a close follower.GIOTTO AND THE SIENESE SCHOOL 23 both in conception and style makes him the connecting link between the Greco-Roman tradition and the Renaissance. While Giotto in the Florentine school was laying the founda- tion for a new study of nature, painting in Siena was carried for- ward by Simone Martini (c. 1285-1344) who delighted in aris- tocratic splendour and elegance. He was a pupil of Duccio and his style was based on that of his master, but this eastern tradition was united in his work with Gothic feeling for line and rhythm, At the same time the influence of Giotto led him in some instances to endow his figures with an unusual degree of plas- ticity. Simone’s earliest painting is a direct derivative of Duccio’s “Maesta” and yet a picture with an entirely new spirit (Pl. 6c). This is partly the result of the altered spatial relations and of the festive character of the Gothic throne but chiefly of the im- passioned feeling. Duccio’s panel is meditative, almost sad in sentiment; the saints worship silently as they have worshipped for centuries. Devoutly as they bend their heads to conform to the limits of the field, there is a feeling of repression. In Simone, all this is changed. The open space above the group gives a sense of freedom, and by the same means the Virgin is set apart from her court. She is no longer the impersonal product of an old tradition. She has become “Our Lady.” ‘Well may such a lady God’s mother be.” ‘The saints no longer stand as passive attendants. They have suddenly awakened to intense ac- tivity; they lose their identity in the fervour of their emotion; they pour out all their personal life in some act of devotion. The sen- timent is identical with that which inspired the medieval hymns— There grief is turned to pleasure, Such pleasure as below No human voice can utter, No human heart can know. Little remains of the original colour, which, however, may be inferred from other examples of Simone’s art. As Giotto’s life was drawing to a close, Simone was engaged upon the decoration of the chapel of St. Martin of Tours in the church of St. Francis of Assisi. The story of the warrior saint was exactly suited to his love of ceremony. The “Arming of the Knight” (Pl. 6a) may well have perpetuated the ceremony in which the painter himself received knighthood. This picture and St. Martin’s “‘ Advance against the Enemy,” protected by the cross 8 ———————— ee ae |24 THE GREAT PAINTERS alone, bring us closer to the age of chivalry than any contemporary work. This is the very temper of St. Louis. Simone is believed to have visited Naples. At that cosmopol- itan court he may have found models for the Teutonic types appearing in this work which are startling in their individuality. The group of minstrels in the arming scene might well have been inspired by minnesingers from beyond the Alps. A high degree of ability in portraiture, not equalled in Italian painting for a hun- dred years, is shown in all his work. Simone is not altogether at ease in narrative or in the grouping of numerous figures, and the simpler scenes in which there are only one or two figures are the most successful, such, for instance, as “St. Martin in a Trance.” In the single figures of St. Clara and St. Elizabeth, he contrasts the nun and the court lady. Although the figures are admirably drawn, it is the problem of abstract design even here that enthralls him. The movement of draperies, the answering balance between the two figures, and their relation to the painted Gothic niches 1s a supremely fine example of design —perhaps originally inspired by the study of Gothic ivories (van Marle). Simone was one of the greatest colourists of the early Italian school. In his small narrative panels, inferiority of composition is atoned for by the sparkling brilliance of a scheme in which almost every colour of the spectrum is used in full intensity. This is illustrated in the Passion scenes in Berlin and Paris. But even his frescos attain something of the intensity which was so much a part of himself that he was able to produce skies more splendid than lapis lazuli and Gothic interiors rivalling the colour of old ivory. Like Duccio, Simone expressed himself best through line, but a line far more compelling and far more insistent than that em- ployed by Duccio. All his characteristics are illustrated in the “Crowning of King Robert,” where incident has become ceremony and been given an almost denaturalized expression, “a ritual expression exactly analogous to music” (Rankin). This panel has marvellous beauty of pattern. The balance is subtly main- tained and the intensely vital contour has the finality of cloisonné. Scale in the ornament is used with perfection of taste, and the colour scheme of black, gold, and old rose is as original as are the other features. No doubt the types, with their greatly elongated form, and the affectation of the saints’ gestures are disturbing at first, but they cannot obscure the extraordinary beauty of this masterpiece of pure design.Pirate 6 (A) Simone Martini. Arming of St. Martin. Church of St. Francis, Assisi. (Anderson (B) Simone Martini. An- nur tior fizi, Florence. nunciation. (Anderson) a: o> (C) Simone Martini. Ma- donna Enthroned. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. (Alinari)GIOTTO AND THE SIENESE SCHOOL 25 Similar qualities are seen in the more familiar “Annunciation” of the Uffizi, one of Simone’s last works (Pl. 68). Line is domi- nant. The eye follows its sinuous flow with perfect delight and is indifferent to the inconveniences imposed on human anatomy. In such a picture, human beings have no right to material bodies. The painter deals with them as non-existent. The Virgin fits her shape as best she may, for she is a unit of pure design and her restricted expressiveness is conditioned by its demands. Simone was not an artist with as rich an appeal as Giotto, but his quality was unique and his method in adapting linear design to the expression of objective form found disciples in later art and persisted in Italy until his true successor appeared at the end of the fifteenth century in Botticelli. The painter’s later years were spent at the Papal court at Avignon and as a result his influence on European art was enormous—it “practically amounted to the founding of a school” (Offner). Van Marle says, “There is not one French painting of the fourteenth century in which Simone’s influence cannot be detected . . . we find in all that peculiar spiritual and Gothic grace which Simone may have borrowed from French sculpture, but which he transmuted into painting . . . the French . . . promptly accepted it and incorporated it in their own art.” His line finally acquired the studied forms and complex melodies which drifted back into Italy in what is known as the International style. Painting in Siena, after Simone’s departure, was carried on by Pietro (active 1305-1348), and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (active 1323-1348). Pietro was a vigorous draughtsman and an innovator in the treatment of landscape. His forms were rugged and some- times heavy, as in the “‘Crucifixion” (Siena) or the Passion scenes of the left transept of the lower church of St. Francis of Assisi. At other times, he used an abstract pattern of line, as in the “Assumption” in the Gallery of Siena. The mystic content is the real subject in his Madonna pictures, the most beautiful being the fresco in Assisi. The sad foreboding of the Madonna does not give way to the efforts of the Child, however engaging he may be. Ambrogio was a man of fine intellect and a gifted painter. The beauty of colour and sense for splendour which he inherited were modified by a feeling for plastic form owing to the influence of Giotto. In certain works, he attempts to unify his figures with the setting, showing a new feeling for spatial relations which influenced later painters. His facial types have a strange, almost oriental character, and his Madonna is given poignanceOO satel Sine nipeeiea RRhs IN ce Ge er a Re ROR i 26 THE GREAT PAINTERS by the suggestion that beneath the aloofness of her hieratic pose there is suppressed emotion. Among the simpler examples are the “Madonna del Latte” (Oratorio adjoining San Francesco, Siena) and the ‘‘ Madonna Enthroned” (Gallery, Siena). Ambrogio decorated the Sala della Pace in the Palazzo Pubblico in which were represented the attributes of justice and the results of good and bad government. The best preserved of these wall decorations is “Good Government,” which is illustrated in an extended picture showing life in the city and in the country. The chronicle of a typical day in the fourteenth century makes the picture important as an historical record. The view of the city with recognizable buildings and the contrada beyond the wall form the background and furnish the continuity essential in holding together the loose procession of events. The treatment is episodic, individual groups having great charm. The landscape here is remarkable in truth of general aspect; indeed landscape motives are notable in the work of both the Lorenzetti. With the death of these painters about the middle of the fourteenth century, the naturalistic phase of Sienese art ended. The contrast between the interests natural to the Florentine and to the Sienese painter is strong at this time. It is clearly seen in comparing Giotto’s normal peasants, Simone’s saints quivering with feeling, and Pietro Lorenzetti’s brooding Madonnas. Giotto inhabited an everyday world; Simone associated with knights and high-born ladies. Giotto pictured human nature as it is; the Sienese invented a world of fantasy, poetry, and mysticism. Giotto seldom varied his facial type, while both Simone and the Lorenzetti showed individualized features and at times naturalis- tic portraits. Technically the differences were just as great between the Florentine, for whom plastic form was the essential, and the Sienese, whose vision of nature was usually arrived at through the convention of line. The two modes of expression were destined to exercise reciprocal influence during the remaining years of the fourteenth century and gradually to deteriorate. Plastic form grew weaker until in the pale contrasts at the end of the century it seemed to lose all semblance of reality, and line, interpretative and decorative, became mechanical and finally degenerated into mere calligraphy.GHAPTER IV THE TREND OF PAINTING IN THE LATER FOURTEENTH CENTURY The first creative period of Italian art ended in 1348, the year of the Black Death which has been called ‘‘an historical landmark between two ages’ (Symonds). The demoralization which fol- lowed was experienced in every department of life. In Siena three-quarters of the population perished, the prosperity of the city became a thing of the past, and the race with Florence for supremacy was over. In Florence the plague was less severe, but here also it was followed by a decline in manners and morals and an enfeeble- ment of civic order. The lowered ideals in painting in the second half of the fourteenth century correspond to those in letters. As Dante and Petrarch were succeeded by Boccaccio, so was Giotto by the decorators of the Spanish Chapel. The decline was rec- ognized at the time. Thus, Sacchette, writing in the second half of the century, puts into the mouth of Taddeo Gaddi the words: “There have certainly been plenty of able painters . . . but this art has grown and is growing worse and worse every day”’ (Siren). Cennino Cennini is careful to give his artistic pedigree in the opening of his treatise which he dedicated to the saints “‘and in reverence of Giotto, of Taddeo, and of Agnolo, the master of Cennino.” He recommends a technical method by saying that it was learned by Agnolo from Taddeo and practised by Giotto. Giotto’s name became a fetish, and recognition of his superiority led to imitation. At the end of the fifteenth century Leonardo wrote, “After the time of Giotto, the art of painting declined again because everyone imitated the pictures that were already done.” Taddeo Gaddi (c. 1300-1366) himself was a direct pupil of Giotto, and in comparing his cycle from the life of the Virgin and Christ in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce with that of his master, the loss of poetry and significance of interpretation, of simplicity and coherence of composition, of correct proportions and expressive figure drawing, shows the weakness of a man who has taken tradition rather than experience as his guide (PI. 7s). 27 ee ee = See hy pci alee erent maa ae: =Si takRict kes Seah eae cee tc ae a 28 THE GREAT PAINTERS Elsewhere he proves his ability as a colourist and in his panel pictures often reaches a high degree of beauty (see the excellent example in the Metropolitan Museum). Among the most beautiful works of the first half of the fourteenth century are the decorations in the crossing and north transept of the lower church of St. Francis in Assisi (Pl. 1c). These paint- ings are regarded as works of Giotto’s immediate followers. They show a greater sweetness and loveliness, a grace and refinement which do not suggest the same vigorous hand as the Paduan series. The complicated allegorical rendering of the “ Vows” at the crossing of the lower church contrasts with the dramatic simplicity of Giotto’s “‘Virtues and Vices” and indicates the later trend towards doctrinal subjects. But these pictures have not only touches of humour which are thoroughly Giottesque but also a very high poetic quality combined with naturalistic incident. They are in excellent preservation. Nowhere can we better appreciate what effect the churches must originally have given in which, as in this case, a perfect feeling for harmony of tone bound together the diverse colours in a unity which is really symphonic. The colour has a life of its own quite indescribable apart from the physical sensations it awakens. The art of the second half of the century shows the mingling of Florentine and Sienese tendencies. Realization of the figure as plastic mass and consequent suppression of non-essentials were the true heritage from Giotto, while Sienese influence tended towards a more decorative treatment and “painterly”’ rather than plastic emphasis, a descriptive rather than a dramatic narrative style. Greater delicacy appeared in facial types and more grace and melody of line in the arrangement of draperies. The series from the life of San Silvestro in Santa Croce, generally attributed to Giottino (middle of fourteenth century), shows the mingling of the two tendencies. In spite of the difficulties offered by the subject matter, great nobility has been given to the principal figure, which is simple and expressive in drawing. The surroundings are more important than before and are brought into sympathy with the mood of the scene. In this respect the painter anticipates Masaccio. The emphasis on spatial effects seems to show the influence of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The doctrinal tendencies of the day are well shown in the dec- orations of the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, built 1350-1355 for the use of Spanish Dominicans in Florence. The scenes on the ceiling symbolize the constant presence of Christ(C) Orcagna. Paradise (detail). 8. M. Novella, Florence, (Alinari)in the church, the altar-wall is decorated with the Crucifixion, but interést centres on the walls devoted to theological allegories based on the works of St. Thomas Aquinas” (Pl. 7a). On one wall the saint is enthroned in an immense Gothic structure and about him are shown the sources of his inspiration. Inspired by Christ, attended by the Cardinal Virtues, flanked by great teachers and prophets, fortified by the Arts and Sciences, the Scholastic holds his open book, from which rays of gold emblematic of his divine wisdom strike to the earth the pagan philosophers at his footstool. It is a diagrammatic statement in which little in the way of interpretation is needed. The figures are hieroglyphics. The symmetrical arrangement and the ornamental tracery of the Gothic canopy, combined with the silvery colours of the fresco, give it much charm. On the opposite wall is represented the “Church Militant and Triumphant” (Pl. 8a), where the figures are dispersed over the field in a flat pattern suggesting tapestry design. At the left, the emperor and the pope—heads of the State and of the Church—are raised on a double throne and at their feet the “‘lambs” of the flock rest, secure, in the protection of black and white hounds (Domini canes). Groups of the painter's contemporaries (many of them named by Vasari) fill the foreground, and behind them rises the Florentine cathedral which, it is interesting to note, the painter has carried to completion, the dome of the building being unfinished at this time. Giotto’s tower may also be recognized, although in the interests of the composition it has been moved behind the cathedral. In the right foreground, Dominican preachers, attended by their hounds, refute the teaching of the heretics, who are shown tearing the leaves from their books with commendable energy. In the upper part of the lunette, the Church Triumphant is represented, with Christ in the centre surrounded by the redeemed. A garden landscape connects the two parts and miniature souls are crowned by angels as they pass two by two through the portal of heaven, suspended in midair and guarded by Peter with a great key. The decorations of this chapel make no demand upon our attention by their intrinsic importance, since they belong to the ~ art of embellishment rather than to that of representation. The room which Ruskin called the “Vaulted Book” is one of the most pleasing in general effect of the period. The treatment of allegory here given is in a lyric vein; in the Campo Santo at Pisa ts a dra- matic allegory, the ‘Triumph of Death,” painted by an unknown TREND OF LATER FOURTEENTH CENTURY 2930 THE GREAT PAINTERS artist strongly influenced by Pietro Lorenzetti. In this painting the active life is contrasted with the contemplative life, the life of pleasure with the life of prayer. The “Last Judgment and Hell,” on the adjoining wall, stresses its teachings in a cogent manner. Death the great leveller is inevitable; how, the author asks, must we live today in order to attain eternal bliss hereafter? Or rather, how must we live today in order to escape the unquenchable fire of Hell, flames from which are seen darting out of the mountain side to engulf the unhappy souls borne by demon messengers? The great fresco presents a confusing juxtaposition of groups, but the argument is crystallized in two main incidents which are among the most powerful expressions of any period. On the left is illustrated the tale of the hunting party of lords and ladies whose gay progress is suddenly arrested by the sight of three coffins in which, in various stages of decomposition, appear the bodies of three kings (Pl. 8B). While the onlookers stand paralysed with horror, a monk descends with deliberate tread from the pastoral retreat in the hills above, and with a great scroll, prepares to take advantage of their terror-stricken remorse. Here is shown with admirable force “the shuddering aversion, mingled with more shuddering fascination, with which men of the day contemplated the decay of the fair tenement they so delicately cherished” (Vida Scudder). The horror is contagious. On the right is a garden party cut off by its shade trees from the surround- ing scenes of death. Such an irresponsible and fashionable com- pany as these were those pleasure-lovers of Boccaccio who a few years earlier assembled in the gardens of Fiesole to tell their Hundred Tales while the victims of the plague blocked the streets of Florence. A spirit very like that of Boccaccio inspired the painter in his portrayal of these ladies fondling their lap-dogs or coyly eyeing their suitors as they touch the strings of their guitars. The life of the senses is made very seductive in these rounded bodies with their rich, clinging draperies. But if they think to escape they are mistaken. Down upon the garden swoops the bat-winged figure of Death with her scythe! With a vivid sense of the irony of life, the artist has flanked this scene with a wretched group of the halt, the lame, and the blind, who cry fruitlessly to Death for liberation. The unknown author of these frescos has illustrated the teachings of the church but he has made no attempt to conceal the enigma of the universe: it is expressed throughout his presentation with crude force. The dramatic ability of this painter and his reiteration of theTREND OF LATER FOURTEENTH CENTURY 31 theme from various angles enable him to reach our intelligence in plastic language, but, feeling uncertain whether the full import of his message will be grasped, he enforces it by written scrolls at two points. The painter is out of his depth in subjects which are intended to convey a moral lesson instead of an esthetic truth, and fourteenth century art is full of examples in which the written word is a nec- essary accompaniment of the visual image. When this is the case, the province of moralizing and that of the arts have been confused. For the painter only such ideas are legitimate as can be conveyed best through the graphic arts, or, more properly, the arts of space. There are certain conceptions, like that of Hell, which, by the nature of the case, can never be successfully shown in immobile images. Hell becomes both static and grotesque in a painting, whereas the same subject in an art of time, like poetry, acquires a tremendous potency from the character of the medium. Dante’s images are created and dispelled and re-created until the imagina- tion is overwhelmed by the accumulated horror (Griggs). The Florentine plastic tradition was sustained in the face of other tendencies by Orcagna (1308[?]-1368) who bridged the gulf between Giotto and Masaccio. Like Giotto, Orcagna was an architect and sculptor as well as a painter, and the reliefs on his tabernacle in Or San Michele help us to appreciate the impor- tance of his influence as the “head of a great artistic family” (Venturi). Because Tuscan painting was throughout its course in close alliance with contemporary sculpture, its evolution is intel- ligible only by constant reference to the work of the sculptors. In the tabernacle of Or San Michele, Orcagna created one of the most perfect architectural monuments of the fourteenth century. He was registered earlier as a painter than as a sculptor and in all his work his severe figure style is given relief and charm by the use of colour. In the tabernacle, the charm is enhanced by an inlay of coloured glass; in the Strozzi altar-piece colour softens the stern silhouettes. Since he was architect as well as sculptor, a clear and coherent arrangement was Orcagna’s first concern. This is illustrated in the important decorations of the Strozzi Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, certainly executed under his direction if not entirely by his hand. In the “Paradise,” the redeemed are arranged in serried ranks with no attempt at a natural setting. Itisa perfectly flat all-over decoration varied by colour and by facial types of great beauty. The central figures of Christ and the Virgin are on a uray os: ad A ate tl etl aacPo a He 32 THE GREAT PAINTERS larger scale than the saints and separated from them by the struc- ture of the throne. Orcagna’s study of figure drawing is illustrated here, suggesting the use of the model. With each stroke, he seems to consider what is the most direct and economical means by which to attain a complete realization of plasticity (tactile values). This is more apparent in the treatment of the draperies than elsewhere. The figures acquire increased reality as a result of the drapery, an achievement that could hardly be claimed for the work of any other artist before the fifteenth century. The folds are more ample than in Giotto, but there is none of the fourteenth century tendency towards flourishes. It is the conscious study of naturalis- tic form—an exact gauging of the lines and folds which will give the true impression of life (Pl. 8c). In the Strozzi altar-piece, one of the most magnificent of the fourteenth century (Offner), he is working on a problem of mon- umental design, and the structural feeling of the architect is almost as apparent as in the building of the tabernacle. Compared with contemporary altar-pieces Orcagna has made a decided advance in unification by omitting the colonnettes and by throwing the pyramidal line of the central group far to right and left. This broad effect is enhanced by the shape and space filling of the beautiful predella panels, so large and free in composition. Perhaps it is the strong colour contrasts that give a somewhat insistent icon-like silhouette to the Christ. The seraphim, arranged like a leaf and chrysalis guilloche, are archaic and have none of the beauty of his angels. There is clear characterization in the types, but the portrait studies are less striking than those in the sculptured panels from the life of Mary on the tabernacle. During the whole century altar-pieces were painted and the churches of Italy still contain numberless reminders of this lovely art. Bernardo Daddi (1299[?]-1338), who was working shortly before the middle of the century, is called by Sirén ‘‘the most distin- guished representative of Sienese pictorial style in Florentine art.” An early example attributed to him may be seen in the New York Historical Society. The picture is a diptych (two panels) repre- senting the ‘‘Virgin Enthroned” and the “Last Judgment.” This is the earliest panel extant in which the Last Judgment is treated by a Florentine painter (Offner). In this subject the in- fluence of Giotto is apparent while the Madonna recalls Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Solidity of form is united with great decorative beauty in spacing, rhythm of line and colour—a splendid scheme of crim-TREND OF LATER FOURTEENTH CENTURY 33 son, gold, blue, and copper. Mr. Offner’s phrase characterizes the picture exactly; it is a “monumental miniature.” The Metropolitan Museum possesses a rare example of the period in the painting attributed to Spinello Aretino (1333[?]- 1410) which is believed to be a unique surviving example of the processional banner of the fourteenth century. Spinello in this instance shows strong affinity to Orcagna. The correct propor- tions of the figure and the realization of plastic qualities are un- usual in a design treated with such formality as the Magdalen who, clad in vermilion, sits enthroned in a frontal position against the gold ground. As chief of penitents she is the patron saint of the order of San Sepolcro which is represented by the flagellants kneeling at her feet. The effectiveness of such a design can well be imagined, carried through the streets during Holy Week in penitential procession. The last quarter of the fourteenth century is represented in wall-painting by narrative scenes executed by Antonio Veneziano (fourteenth century) in Pisa and by Agnolo Gaddi (1333-1396) in Santa Croce. In both, the Giottesque style appears in an atten- uated form. By reason of “‘his technical achievements in design and colour” van Marle regards Antonio as “‘the most important link between the Giottesque tradition under Sienese influence and the first generation of fourteenth century artists.” In Agnolo Gaddi’s work in the choir of Santa Croce, the story of the True Cross is told with childlike incoherence. The composi- tion is crowded with little figures taking a ‘“‘busy” interest in what is going on. A fragile delicacy is seen in the female types and the line is graceful but has already become calligraphic, lacking both expressive quality and rhythm. A more ambitious landscape is attempted, without conspicuous success, as the lack of veri- similitude is correspondingly apparent (Pl. 7c). (Notice the little monk tightly fitted in between the sides of the bridge.) Lorenzo Monaco (1370-1425) has been called the last artist of talent among the Giotteschi. In his panel pictures, the interest is almost purely decorative. His linear rhythms are inherited, with an evident interval of time, from Simone, and his altar-piece in Santa Trinita is a direct derivative from Simone’s “ Annuncia- tion.” Humanized motives are subordinated to the dignity derived from the Sienese tradition. His colour is distinctive in its play of hepatica and lilac hues, and the strong blue-blacks of drapery masses shown against beautiful gold grounds. By juxtaposition,i EE LL LEI IE ELLE I DEERE Hs 34 THE GREAT PAINTERS delicacy of effect is attained with colours in reality strong. Lo- renzo’s frescos in the Bartolini Chapel of Santa Trinita are among the most charming of fourteenth century survivals. These scenes from the life of the Virgin illustrate well his personal feeling for beauty. Lorenzo Monaco lived until 1425, but there is no hint in his work of the dawn of a new epoch. BOOKS FOR REFERENCE ON CHAPTERS I-IV Berenson, B., Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting. N. Y., Sherman, 1918. Cennino Cennini, Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini (tr. Herringham). London, Allen and Unwin, 1899. Conway, Sir W. M., Early Tuscan Art. London, Hurst and Blackett, 1902. Dalton, O. M., Byzantine Art and Archaeology. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911. Douglas, Langton, History of Siena. N. Y., Dutton, 1903. Duff-Gordon, C. L., Story of Assisi. London, Deut, 1913. Francis of Assisi, Saint, The Little Flowers and the Life of St. Francis. N. Ys Dutton, 1917. Fry, Roger, “Art before Giotto,’ Monthly Review, October, 1900. Vision and Design. London, Chalto and Windus, 1920. Gosche, Agnes, Simone Martini. Leipzig, Seemann, 1899. : Heyward, W., and Olcott, L., Guide to Siena: History and Art. Siena, Torrini, 1904. James, M. R. (tr)., The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford University Press, 1924. Lodge, R., Close of the Middle Ages. N. Y., Macmillan, 1901. Lowrie, Walter, Monuments of the Early Church. N. Y., Macmillan, 1901. Michel, André, Histoire de l’Art. v. 1-8, pt. 1. Paris, Armand Colin, 1905-25. Ruskin, John, Mornings in Florence. Boston, Caldwell, 1912. Sabatier, Paul, Life of St. Francis of Assisi (tr. Houghton). London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1913. Scudder, Vida, The Disciple of a Saint. N. Y., Dutton, 1907. Siren, Osvald, Giotto and Some of his Followers. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1917. Wilpert, Joseph, Die riimischen Mosaiken und Malereien. Freiburg in Breisgau, Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1917.CHAPTER V THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FLORENCE With the opening of the fifteenth century a great tide of creative life arose. Society was no longer a compact social unit. Man suddenly awoke to his power as an individual. A new rational- izing spirit was abroad. This exalted moment was expressed in sculpture by Donatello and in painting by Masaccio. In order to share the outlook of their contemporaries, let us imagine our- selves brought up on such fairy-tales as Agnolo Gaddi’s ‘“‘Story of the True Cross”’ or the theoretic treatises of the Spanish Chapel. Turning from these works to the frescos of the Brancacci Chapel, decorated in the first quarter of the fifteenth century by Masaccio (1401-1428), we face reality as we have not faced it since Roman days. Without the necessity for any readjustment of a twentieth century habit of mind, we could step across the barrier and join the central group of the “Tribute Money” (Pl. 10a). If it were our aim to take a snapshot of such a group we should choose just this moment—for note how, in the natural swaying of this group of people, it happens that every one of the faces is visible. In another instant some one will surely turn, or intervene, but now we have them at the propitious moment. Three separate and consecutive episodes are treated here, frankly divided into groups and yet so admirably interrelated that the picture would suffer if any part were cut away. It is an organic whole; no member can be lopped off without a vital injury. The Apostles press around the central figure in order to hear his reply to the tax-gatherer who has demanded the payment which they are unable to make. Christ has just instructed Peter to go to the lake and take the coin from the fish’s mouth. The Apostle’s gesture seems to indicate his questioning reiteration of the directions. At the left we see him bending over the fish at the edge of the water, and on the right paying the money to the tax-gatherer. Notice that the narrative requires the repetition of Peter and the tax-collector to complete the sequence of events, yet this has been effected without disturbing the unity of the picture. 35THE GREAT PAINTERS The advance in naturalism over earlier work is immense. One of the devices which gives reality is the point of sight chosen. Our eyes are at the same level as those of the group. Perspective relationship is conveyed by the placing of the feet on the ground. We might construct a ground-plan which would reveal the utiliza- tion of depth in a manner less like that of the stage than heretofore. The settings, architectural and landscape, are no longer stage properties brought in for the occasion, but suggest actual surround- ings in correct proportion to the figures. Masaccio is illustrating the life of Peter, a life of which surprisingly few episodes are recorded, and which has seldom been treated, even in Roman Catholic decoration. The incident in itself is in no way significant. Most artists of the day would have interpreted it as a miracle, little more significant than a sleight-of-hand trick. By Masaccio, as by all great men, the trivial is made interpretative. The incident becomes a commentary on personal leadership in which there is no vestige of the supernatural or of the ecclesiastical. The men have been drawn, from fish-net or seat of customs, because the attraction was irresistible. Masaccio gives expression to the momentous dis- covery of the Renaissance. Before Pico della Mirandola, he pro- claims, ““Thou hast within thee the power of an eternal life.” Through this minor episode he interprets the humanistic outlook of his age. In the years immediately preceding Masaccio, energy had been frittered away on so many side issues that one thing came to appear as important as another in the eyes of the painters, who showed a conglomeration of objective forms, more or less organized. Masaccio is intent upon a subjective message. His thoughts must reach us at the burning point; consequently, he returns to the figure arts pure and simple—to the body. About these massive shoulders are thrown cloaks of heavy stuff, falling by their own weight into deep, simple folds, entirely unorna- mented. They are no impediment to the realization of bodily form and movement. Masaccio makes no empty statement of movement, he makes us feel in our bodies the tension experienced by each of the figures, which are represented as solid, three-dimen- sional bodies. He builds them up in their main forms as he has seen them, visual images, constructed, however, from intuitive rather than from scientific knowledge. Coming suddenly upon these people after concentrating on fourteenth century art gives almost a shock. They make the earlier figures seem vaporous, soPLATE 10 ) Win 1 Wh my. | | (C) Masaccio and Filippino Lippi, Raising of the King’s Son, Brancacci Chapel, S. M. del Carmine, Florence, (Alinari)THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FLORENCE 37 boldly are they defined by broad planes of light and shadow, which the late fourteenth century painters had subordinated to a calli- graphic outline. The earlier painters were afraid of attempting the line of demarcation where light and shadow meet, of attacking the terrible facts of sight. The transition is like passing from a dim corridor into a brightly lighted interior. By bringing painting back to this plastic basis, Masaccio laid the foundation for the evolution of European art in its entirety from his time to the present day. Van Marle points out that the action of Giotto’s figures was in general parallel with the plane of the wall. Masaccio makes a greater use of foreshortening. On this account, the figures require a greater depth than Giotto’s in which to move. This the back- ground affords. Mr. Offner shows that Giotto’s space extended forward from a plane immediately behind his figures but that in Masaccio the figures, which bear very much the same relation to the picture plane, are suddenly set out in a freer air by the pushing back of the distance. The first he calls “‘room,” the second “space.” This use of space makes of the group a more independent entity than before and we are led to a study of its organization as plastic mass. The figures beara relation to the group similar to that which the individual parts of the figure bear to one another. Masaccio has composed on the basis of the group, the individual being subor- dinated as required. The large scale of the figures for the extended field and the compact coherence of the rectangular mass give weight and force. The enlarged space also modifies the handling of the elements composing the background. Although the surface of the ‘““Tribute Money” is in bad condition and the forms obscure, it is still clearly evident that Masaccio’s pictorial vision has been consistently used here as elsewhere. The landscape becomes a sensuous and emotional factor in the composition. Such a treat- ment is not found again before Leonardo. Although it was realized as desirable by such men as Piero della Francesca, the choice of forms was too largely conditioned in their work by an actual place or peculiar section of the country to be entirely satisfying. Masac- cio’s mountain lines are dictated by his pictorial needs, not by a specific locality. It might be said that all that is essential to the understanding of the figure arts is contained in this one picture. The fact that it never fails to stir the imagination, is convincing evidence of the potency with which creative vision may endow external form.38 THE GREAT PAINTERS “‘Masaccio,” writes Leonardo, “‘showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but nature—the mistress of all masters—weary themselves in vain.” The decoration of the Brancacci Chapel as a whole is an impor- tant example of the Florentine Renaissance, but the interior can never have been completely successful. The space is too cramped and the great figure designs not sufficiently relieved by decorative setting in painted pilasters, mouldings, etc. The figures are almost like great fragments which we should like to set in a proper architec- tural framework. Vasari tells us that the decoration of this chapel, dedicated in 1422, was begun by Masolino, who, after executing a small part, dropped the work for some reason (not his death, we now know). The painting was continued by his pupil Masaccio who died before finishing it. After an interval of sixty years the completion of the interior was put into the hands of Filippino Lippi, upon whom the mantle of Elijah seems to have fallen. It is a remarkable fact that the casual visitor would be quite unconscious of any interval of time or change of authorship. Below the “Tribute Money” is the picture left unfinished by Masaccio and completed by Filippino (Pl. 1oc). With a close study of the original, or even of photographs, distinct differences of style and execution are easily recognized, and we can follow the critics in their assignment of the various parts of the picture to Masaccio and Filippino. This is not surprising; the astonishing fact is that two men so different in temperament and separated by a period of years in which scientific knowledge advanced as at no other time, could have produced so unified a result. If Masaccio executed the parts generally attributed to him, we must assume that he had prepared sketches of the entire composi- tion which were not essentially modified by Filippino. In the “Tribute Money,” although three incidents are treated in the narrative style, the main figure, that of Christ, is represented once only. It is impossible, in showing two moments in which Peter is the principal actor, to avoid a certain incongruity, alien to the con- ception of a dramatic painting. Masaccio has managed, however, to lead the eye and the thought from the act of power at the left, where Peter resuscitates the youth, to the solemn enthronement on the right. This is so intensely conceived and so well balanced by the large group at the left that the eye can rest here without a sense that the equilibrium of the whole has been disturbed. It would be hard to find another example of prayer comparableTHE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FLORENCE 39 with the detail of Peter enthroned as the first pope. The matter- of-fact Florentines who kneel in worship are lifted by their com- plete absorption into an atmosphere of serenity which is deeply impressive. In the narrow space at the side of the altar Peter and John are represented passing through the streets (of Florence, notice) on errands of mercy. The effect is unpremeditated, as if a curtain had been raised, revealing the busy life. We feel that the same feet will tread the pavements whether or not we stop to watch. Peter approaches with free swinging gait. As his shadow falls on the expectant cripples crouching against the wall, they rise, from infirmity to praise. This series from the ministry of the Apostolic age is wonderfully in harmony with our own interpreta- tion of the Gospel. It is entirely free from the limitations of a special age or a sectarian belief. (Pl. ga.) In keeping with the custom general throughout the Middle Ages, the Fall and the Expulsion are included in the interpretation of St. Paul’s thought: ‘As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”’ (Pl. gs). With the exception of the shivering youth in the “Baptism,” the “Expulsion” affords the only opportunity to study Masaccio’s rendering of the nude. His knowledge is rudimentary, the ex- tremities being understood only in their most general forms, but for the first time the significance of the figure arts has been realized. The figures are treated as symbols in an emotional and esthetic speech. The problems of composition have been so successfully met that we are unconscious of their existence. The space is very narrow, yet the painter has rendered the action without any suggestion of limitation—the figures stride forward unimpeded. ‘‘Here we experience movement as we experience heat, cold, or hunger” (Offner). To contrive that the two figures should function as a unit without the aid of drapery was equally difficult. Yet the eye is led by every accentuated line to em- brace the two figures at a glance. The success of this grouping impressed later painters and was adopted with little alteration by Michelangelo and Raphael. Again we find perfect equilibrium between form and content and an equal penetration of spiritual truth. Retribution fol- lows swiftly upon crime, the angel commands imperiously, the wretched figures leave the threshold of Paradise in haste, but bowed down by self-accusing grief. ‘‘I acknowledge my faults and my sin is ever before me. Turn Thy face from my sins. . . .40 THE GREAT PAINTERS Make me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” These are the words that we hear on their lips. Since Masaccio’s day no one has succeeded in echoing that cry of the Hebrew psalmist. Masaccio was twenty-seven when he died. Compared with the Brancacci Chapel, remaining works are unimportant if we except the “Trinity” in Santa Maria Novella. This picture is remarkable in its mastery of perspective and in the portraits of the donors which are among the earliest individualized por- traits in the Florentine school. Masaccio was the first complete master of the Renaissance. He established his work on a nat- uralistic basis, but was able to subordinate the facts of nature to his pictorial ideal. He was brought up in the midst of spec- ulations concerning natural phenomena which encouraged spe- cialization, but by a rare natural instinct he avoided all secondary interests, producing work which is marked by a synthesis found only in the greatest masters. Masaccio’s career ended before 1430, but Florentine art was carried on after his death by men who were his elders by ten or more years. The contest for the Baptistry door in 1401 which tested their powers as established artists was initiated in the year of his birth, and, although they outlived him by at least twenty years, their achievements were his inspiration as a youth. The more important of these among the painters were Masolino and Angelico. There is considerable uncertainty as to the attribution and the chronology of Masolino’s (1384-1440) work. He was the master of Masaccio, and the majority of critics, with certain notable exceptions, accept Vasari’s statement that he began the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel, executing the “Fall,” on the entrance pilaster, the “Raising of Tabitha” (Pl. 108), and the ‘‘Preaching of Peter,” which still remain, and other decorations since destroyed. A comparison of these paintings with Masaccio’s masterpieces reveals a difference of ability which is fundamental. The frescos by Masaccio show an advanced power of co-ordination and a rendering less delicate but much more forceful than that of the transitional painter, who regards the problems of the new day more as spectator than contributor. The “Raising of Tabitha” has an openness and looseness characteristic of Masolino’s composition. In the rectangular portico at the right, Peter and John are raising Tabitha. ThePLATE 11 B)A Crucif DI S. Marco, I ence. (Anderson)(4) Angelico. Coronation of the Virgin. S$. Marco, Florence. (Brogi J J y piece, St. Bavon, Ghent. (© Reinthal and Newman, (C) Interior of Chapel, Riccardi Palace (D) Benozzo Gozzoli. Procession of the Magi Florence. (Alinari) (detail). Riccardi Chapel, Florence. (Alinari)THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FLORENCE 41 same figures at the left give alms to a cripple. As a whole the painting is well-balanced, but the parts are not closely co-ordinated, and the absence of a strong central interest is all the more ap- parent from the insistence of the perspective lines leading to an empty centre. The composition is sectional, as if the panel might be hinged and folded like a three-part screen. The actors stand back to back with a space between in which two fashion- able youths who traverse the city square are brought into prom- inence. Their bizarre appearance is in strong contrast to the Apostolic figures. The groups occupy a plane no deeper than that used by Giotto, but the Florentine houses are pushed much further back, thus securing an open effect not found in fourteenth century paintings. Comparison with his great successor is almost inevitable in studying the Brancacci frescos and the charm of Masolino’s style is overshadowed. Fortunately, other works remain in Castiglione d’Olona near Milan, where he decorated the church and Baptistry and in the latter “created one of the most beau- tiful interiors of the early Renaissance”? (Toesca). In these scenes from the life of John the Baptist, the “Feast of Herod” and the “Baptism” are of especial beauty. In the former he displays his interest in perspective and adorns his palace with antique motives of putti and garlands (Pl. 9c). Interest in portraiture is evident in his male heads, while in the “‘ Baptism” he takes ad- vantage of the opportunity to introduce the nude in the figures dressing on the shore. Refinement and delicacy characterize his drawing and his line suggests influences from beyond the Alps. The “‘soft and bird-like forms” of his flaxen-haired maidens are like those of Angelico. Offmer speaks of a fairy-like remoteness in the ac- tion of his figures. His delicate pale colours are the antithesis of Masaccio. These decorations are ‘‘as like the music of Mozart as can be imagined” (Offner). In the case of Masolino, the incompatibility of the old and the new is more apparent than in Angelico because he 1s more sensitive to his surroundings and less intent upon an ideal bound up as Angelico’s is with a particular view of life. The lyric charm which relates him to Angelico is contrasted with the secular spirit which leaves him free to express his delight in the fashions of his day. —— Se nh ren ee . = Tie nea ap M ERE ae Si i th hate lt eee 7CHAPTER VI ANGELICO AND BENOZZO GOZZOLI Fra Angelico (1387-1455) was born in the same decade as the early realists whose mission it became to conquer the natural world. Contrasted with their eager struggles his spirit appears singularly tranquil, and his works charm and refresh us by their spontaneity. Vasari says that Angelico “used frequently to say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet and should live without cares or anxious thought.” But his mind was not closed to new ideas. His drawing from the figure shows gradual improvement gained from the study of Masaccio, and in his altar-pieces the substitution of Renaissance for Gothic forms in the later work proves his familiarity with the new ar- chitectural style. Nevertheless, it is as a medieval survival that we think of him, for he continued to work in the spirit of the preceding period, and of him, as of his contemporary, Thomas a Kempis, it may be said that his art was “‘the last sweet and composite echo of all mellifluous medieval piety.” Angelico probably received his training in Florence before he entered the Dominican order at the age of twenty. His paintings prove not only his natural aptitude as a colourist and designer but also the thoroughness of his preparation. Cennino Cennini has described how exacting were the processes of tempera painting, and years of apprenticeship alone could have produced so ex- cellent and scrupulous a craftsman as Angelico. Shortly after he entered the monastery, the monks moved from Fiesole to Umbria, where they remained until 1418, settling first at Foligno and then at Cortona. The heights of Cortona overlook one of the most extended and entrancing landscapes of Central Italy. In an early predella panel, Angelico shows a view of Lake Trasimene taken from this point. It is the first painting we know in which a definite locality has been identified. Angelico loved nature, as numberless pictures prove, and, although he never attempted to execute a realistic scene, his awakened sense of beauty is shown in everything he did. Berenson says he was the first to communicate a sense of the pleasantness of nature. 42ANGELICO AND BENOZZO GOZZOLI 43 The religious associations of Umbria must have appealed strongly to him also. It was the country of St. Francis and of St. Catherine. From Cortona, a pilgrimage to the church at Assisi was not difficult, and the building held artistic as well as religious inspiration. Here he could study the decorative art of the fourteenth century at its highest perfection in the work of Simone Martini. The enforced absence from Florence of more than a decade had therefore compensations for an artist of An- gelico’s temperament. It was many years after his return to Florence, however, before his work showed a complete under- standing of the naturalistic tendencies in which Florentine painting led the way. Angelico’s early paintings are small, resembling enlarged illuminations and combining the greatest finesse with the greatest freedom. Sparkling colours are employed, with a lavish use of gold. Each little area is as pure and permanent as a jewel. Some- times, in the light of a modern gallery, the pictures seem almost too brilliant; we have to imagine them in a dim chapel picked out by the flicker of the altar-candles. The predella in the National Gallery is a typical example of Angelico’s colour. The reds are like the petals of poppies through which the sunlight shines; the limpid azures and ceruleans are like morning-glories fresh with dew. Opaque leaf greens interspersed throughout the panel prepare the eye for pale chocolates and mahoganies. Dominican robes, in ones and twos in the side panels, form the entire group in the outer panels, relieved by the fleck, now and again, of a vermilion book. Angelico’s work brought together in the galleries of San Marco affords an unusual opportunity for study and comparison. One of the most perfect of the early devotional pictures is the “Coronation” painted for Santa Maria Nuova (PI. 12a). The figures are shown against a ground of gold. It is as if the ball of the sun were hidden behind the central group, from which shafts of light seem to dart along the etched lines of the glory. The impor- tance of the central figures is shown by their large size. Attendant saints are arranged on a symmetrical plan. Oppositions of minor movement vary the group of angels at the side of the throne; some play stringed instruments, while others move rhythmically in a slow dance. Those at the confines of the group lift high into the upper space their trumpets with long, delicate stems. The gentle play of lines is like the swaying of flowers in the wind. All is tender and ecstatic but not intense, as in Sienese painting.44 THE GREAT PAINTERS In the ‘‘Last Judgment,” executed in the same period, Angelico’s limitations are felt. He had little dramatic power and was in- capable of conceiving evil or suggesting severity. His Divine Judge lacks judicial power and his Hell is bogy-land. But he atones for all inadequacies in the representation of Para- dise (Pl. 154), which would have delighted medieval mystics. Never were so perfectly visualized Those eternal bowers Man hath never trod, Those unfading flowers Round the throne of God. The redeemed rush to the gentle embrace of the flower-crowned angels with naive joy. The angel ring, dancing knee-deep in the verdure of Paradise, is drawn with enchanting daintiness. In 1433, while Angelico was still at Fiesole, he received an order from the Linen Guild of Florence which proved that his reputation was extending beyond his convent walls. The dimensions of the picture required figures over life-size. The difficulties he expe- rienced in executing this order, Wingenroth considers, led to a serious study of form, the results of which are splendidly illus- trated in the noble figures from the Perugia altar-piece, executed shortly afterwards. In 1436 the monks moved from Fiesole to the convent of San Marco, which had been renovated for their use by Cosimo de’ Medici. The walls were undecorated and ready for Angelico’s brush. Strictly speaking, there was no problem of interior decora- tion here, as he painted a separate devotional picture in each cell and in certain of the public rooms. The direction in which his art had been developing coincided with the requirements of the fresco medium which he now used. A comparison with earlier tempera paintings shows how greatly he simplified both composi- tion and detail: the intricacy which he had formerly used he rightly considered inappropriate for fresco. No pictures were ever better suited to their environment. Typical of his exquisite feeling is the lunette above the door of the room where strangers were enter- tained where he represented in allegory the journey to Emmaus. Two Dominicans constrain a stranger to “abide with them, for the day is far spent” and the cruciform halo indicates the revela- tion to come in the breaking of bread. In the corridor at the head of the stairs, Angelico painted the “Annunciation,” representing the scene as if it were taking placeANGELICO AND BENOZZO GOZZOLI 45 in his own convent (Pl. 11a). The figures are placed in a Ren- aissance cloister opening on the garden, in the background of which is shown one of the tiny cells of San Marco. The Virgin bows her head in acquiescence, “‘Be it unto me according to Thy word,” as Gabriel alights noiselessly as a moth. The lines of the figures blend harmoniously with the arcade, the colour is silvery. This was a favourite subject and with each repetition Angelico varied the design but preserved always the devotional atmosphere. The decorations in the cells represent scenes from the life of Christ. Among the finest are the “Transfiguration,” the ‘“‘ Resurrection,” and the ‘‘Noli Me Tangere.” Inequalities in execution and draughtsmanship in a number of examples betray the hand of assistants. In the Chapter House Angelico painted a large lunette of the “Crucifixion” (Pl. 118). The three crosses rise high against the dull red sky; light breaks at the horizon and the row of figures is silhouetted against it in pastel shades of rose, straw, green, and blue-grey. The figures are strung through the picture singly or in loose groups. They include not only historical personages but saints and monks of a later day. The autobiography of the picture is written here, for the choice of figures reveals for what city, church, patron, and religious order it was intended. The scene is not historical but doctrinal and should properly be called the Dogma of the Redemption. At the foot of the Cross are gathered “the fruits of the Divine compassion.” Wingenroth compares it with the ‘‘Disputa” of Raphael as an interpretation of the Catholic faith. Among the devotional pictures is the “Madonna Enthroned.” The saints are no longer separated from the central figure, but, although they are assembled on either side of the throne, they have not forgotten their long isolation and remain self-contained units somewhat fortuitously brought together. Angelico never understood the art of massing; his interest was concentrated on the individual, not on the group, as a unit. The hall in which the saints are assembled is designed in the purest Renaissance style. Perhaps the painter never did a lovelier altar-piece than this, with its studied symmetry, its solemn atmosphere, and the hush of its santa conversazione. Angelico’s last works were done in the Vatican; the frescos in the chapel of Nicholas V. still survive. It is of particular value to have this complete decoration, tiny as the room is (about eleven by thirteen feet), as a record of the early school to compare with = etree S ~ . ae46 THE GREAT PAINTERS the achievements of the next century, seen in the Stanze. The art is unencumbered, the vision clear. As a designer, Angelico makes use of a wealth of decorative motives. The gold of his backgrounds is enriched with fine orna- ment, which also outlines the flowing contours of the garments. The all-over patterns of the fabrics are sometimes based on a symbolic motive, as is the flame on the vestments of St. Lawrence. Landscape is arbitrarily arranged, as may be seen in his pointed cypresses rising against an interlacing of hills “like lances planted in the ground” (Venturi). His backgrounds “‘smile”’ with flower- ing shrubs, and the lawn is starred with radial tufts of grasses or tiny blossoms laid on a flat ground, each touch forming a solid little petal. All are combined with a perfect sense of order, so that the eye delights in the alternation of broken and solid areas. This abstract feeling for design rendered in pure and sparkling colour is the distinctive quality of Angelico’s work. However interesting it may be to observe the development of his figure drawing or the evolution of his architectural forms, the value of his work is affected very little if at all by such considerations. It is his presentation rather than his representation that is im- portant. On the other hand, Angelico is almost alone among fifteenth century artists in retaining the symbolic interpretation of the Middle Ages. Like the Gothic sculptors, he shows the Fall with the Annunciation, his Last Supper is treated as the Institution of the Sacrament; and the Crucifixion conveys the promise of the Redemption. Angelico’s art, like his life, is simple, unaffected, and spontaneous. In his last years Angelico was assisted by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497), a young man whose hand Venturi believes may be detected even in the frescos of San Marco. Descriptive and nat- uralistic features in the decoration of the Chapel of Nicholas V. betray his assistance. Benozzo was one of the most delightful among the painters of secondary rank in the Florentine school. After Angelico’s death he worked in Umbria, mingling with the devotional feeling of his master works of pure genre. Benozzo’s secular feeling was given free rein when he undertook the decora- tion of the chapel in the Medici (now Riccardi) Palace in Florence. The close dependence of such works on the elaborated pageants of the fifteenth century would be interesting to demonstrate. Burckhardt speaks of such festivals as the intermediate stage making easy the transition from actual life to art. They wereANGELICO AND BENOZZO GOZZOLI 47 especially important at this moment when secular commissions gave the painter a wider choice of subjects. Although Benozzo’s theme was the time-honoured one of the Adoration, the method he adopted was that of a pageant painter. The tiny chapel in the Riccardi Palace is divided so that the sanctuary is separated from the main room and Benozzo seems to have felt no restraint in handling the procession. The journey of the kings exhibits, as in some gay missal, the pomp and circum- stance of life (Pl. 12c). The landscape is fanciful and exaggerated and yet in parts quite true in spirit to Italian scenery, so that, as one studies it, the de- scriptions of Boccaccio or of Bembo are recalled. The emerald green of the clipped lawns is shut in by the solid foliage of the ilex; into the garden paths, no ray of sun can penetrate through the hedge of blossoming roses; the hillsides with their vineyards look as if a carding comb had drawn them into their neat lines. This aspect of the richly cultivated areas is suddenly broken by abrupt hills behind a screen of tall, straight trees stifly trimmed. Many are exceedingly attenuated, and some are cut in fantastic shapes (Pl. 12D). The procession makes a rich glint of colour in the distance, passing through a defile in the rock or silhouetted against the sky, where the animals are seen to best advantage. The more serious purpose of the journey is enlivened by episodes of the hunt; the diversions of the middle distance are endless. The kings are on their way to Bethlehem, but how pleasant and en- tertaining is the country through which they pass! The fond- ness for “outlandish” animals of all kinds was very general in the fifteenth century. They were a feature of the pageants. Extraordinary life and movement are shown in the many wild creatures coursing up the mountain passes of these paintings. Lions and tigers neatly peppered with all-over designs are a feature throughout, and a naive disregard for scale enhances the sense of a fairy-tale adventure. The design is like that of a Gothic tapestry, perfect in its treat- ment of “all-over pattern” and splendid in colour, enhanced with gold embossing, set jewel-like against a verdant green land- scape bright with fruit-trees and with birds. The “strength and science of the Renaissance were here added to the daintiness of a Gothic illuminator.” The work has been described at some length both on account of its intrinsic charm and because it is a type of much contemporary painting, like that employed in 4 aeet ie tees oe Se See 7 < — - tid A Ra et i a eB tees <3 en.48 THE GREAT PAINTERS furniture decoration (cassone), in which art Francesco Pesellino was the leading Florentine master. Benozzo lived until the last years of the century and continued his work with unabated enthusiasm. The vastest cycle under- taken by any fifteenth century painter he executed in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Mintz says Benozzo was the first painter to bring an idealistic picturesque interpretation to the Old Tes- tament. The colour is light and harmonious, a pale green recurring throughout. There are delightful realistic groups from contem- porary life (note specially the vintage scene), interesting por- traits, and charming architectural settings, such as the Tower of Babel. If Benozzo chose the “pomps and vanities” of the everyday world as his subject, he showed as great a singleness of purpose as Angelico in pursuing his end.CHA PAVE RY Vali THE GROWTH OF SECULAR INTERESTS The first half of the fifteenth century was the age of scien- tific inquiry which laid the foundations for the world in which we live today. It bred a race of stern, fearless men, looking life, experience, the facts of nature, straight in the face, and asking—What are you? In art, the answer was given by the realists. A few years after Cennino Cennini wrote, “A man has on his left side one rib less than a woman—and all over the body there are bones,” an artist was handling the scalpel in order to master the science of anatomy. Knowledge of the laws of optics enabled the sculptor Donatello to adapt figures sculptured in his shop to the elevation above the eye for which they were in- tended, while other artists furthered the studies in perspective which made possible the representation of objects in three di- mensions on a flat field. These men personified a revolt against hearsay, against sym- bolic expression, against superficialities of every kind. This was admirable, it was the attitude of progress; but in the en- thusiasm for their special subjects they sometimes lost the sense of proportion. Their works are often like battlefields where ignorance is overcome by knowledge but not without leaving signs of carnage. Such productions are often stepping-stones rather than esthetic achievements in themselves. The synthetic art of Masaccio was followed by the analytical studies of Uccello, Castagno, and Domenico Veneziano. Uccello and Castagno not only painted but worked in mosaic and de- signed for stained glass, examples of which adorn the Duomo in Florence today. Vasari tells us that Uccello (1397-1475) was first apprenticed to Ghiberti. We see no sign of Ghiberti’s in- fluence in the types or forms of Uccello’s painting, but the study of perspective which became his absorbing interest may well have resulted from this connection. Vasari says that Uccello’s wife could not persuade him to take his necessary sleep at night be- cause “perspective was so sweet a thing.” No better description could be given of the scientific temperament. Secular interest 4950 THE GREAT PAINTERS was growing every day, and the work of the generation of art- ists beginning their activity in the second quarter of the cen- tury was no longer confined to religious subjects. One of Uccello’s earliest commissions was for an equestrian portrait of a contemporary mercenary captain, Sir John Hawk- wood (Pl. 14p). It was painted in 1439 and is one of the earliest portraits of the century—a familiar figure from contemporary life. The Florentine government had originally intended to erect a monument to this English captain, who had remained true to the Florentine cause although offered a bribe by the enemy. For some reason this project was not carried out; in- stead Uccello simulated in a mural painting a stone statue against a conventional background of dull red. The peculiar conditions of this commission occasioned the conventional non-pictorial treatment and exclusively plastic rendering. Uccello’s knowl- edge of perspective enabled him to construct the mounted figure on its pedestal as if seen above the eye. Horse and rider alike embody the war spirit of the day. Crowe and Cavalcaselle call attention to the reciprocal influence of sculpture and painting at this period, which led Ghiberti to represent in bronze essen- tially pictorial effects of receding atmospheric planes, while painters created the illusion of plastic relief. Certain frescos by Uccello in the green cloister of Santa Maria Novella illustrate how far these artists were led from what is generally considered the primary concern of the painter. This series from the Old Testament is executed in monochrome. Uccello’s mastery over form is nowhere better illustrated than in a sepia drawing of a head in the Uffizi. The modelling is as sure and firm as if it were executed in bronze. The type is interesting to compare with the portraits which begin at this time to be described in contemporary literature. Shortly after the middle of the century, Uccello was commis- sioned to execute four scenes from Florentine warfare as a dec- oration for the Medici palace (Pl. 13c). This was a novel theme. A special episode is shown in each picture with the military leader in a prominent place. “The scenes are like tournaments staged rather than battles,” Mr. Rankin says. The contest between opposing factions gives the painter an opportunity to show the armour and weapons of the day. The background is formed in part by the foliage of near-by trees, in part by distant rising ground on which are other warriors, armed with cross-bows, etc. The contest is confused and the parts so closely fitted togetherTHE GROWTH OF SECULAR INTERESTS 51 that there seems to be some question whether any further move- ment will be possible; certain positions having been taken, the only thing to do, it would seem, is to hold them until the machin- ery runs down. The horses look like mechanical toys, and the helmets, with top-heavy branching forms, resemble chandeliers. A fantastic effect results from the obvious way in which the broken lances are disposed in order to illustrate the principles of perspective; such illustration is even imposed upon the dying and the dead. : But in spite of the introduction of such details the principal importance of these paintings is their decorative quality. The example in the National Gallery is a delightful piece of pure de- sign, in medium values and neutralized colour. Before a mouse- coloured hill msing against a dull gobelin blue sky, spears of cardinal, pale yellow, and leaf green move now backward, now forward. It is “a masterpiece of decorative colour’? (Berenson). These panels, by their fine handling of spaces, shapes, and col- our, and their feeling for massing of line, were the inspiration of much decorative work, such as cassone painting, which was a flourishing activity at this period of luxurious house furnishing in Italy. Through the medium of Piero della Francesca this type of design became the inspiration of modern art (Rankin). The work of Uccello shows a rich diversity and we may not consider his rendering of contemporary types nor his studies of perspective as his greatest achievement. This is found rather, as Mr. Rankin points out, in his originality in adapting the me- dieval panorama to the recital of the deeds of his own day. Castagno (c. 1396-1457) was a realist to whom his contempo- raries were of absorbing interest—those men of iron, spending the greater part of their time in the saddle, inured to every hard- ship, ready to meet any emergency. We do not know from whom he learned his art, but it was based primarily on the study of Donatello as may be seen in the frescos for the Villa Pandolfi, now at Sant’ Apollonia in Florence. Especially successful are the figures of fighters; that, for instance, of Pippo Spano (PI. 148), clad in mail, standing with legs braced wide apart. The weight of the figure is tremendous; it is closely knit, compact, and for- midable. Its dare-devil bravado almost justifies Vasari’s ac- cusation that Castagno committed murder, though we now know that his supposed victim long outlived him. These figures are invigorating and compel one to become, with them, captains of adventure. Each man in turn is a study52 THE GREAT PAINTERS in anatomical construction, in the adjustment of weight and the co-ordination of the body. Pippo Spano poses on both feet; Farinata stands with the weight on one foot. It is a delight to the artist to know and to illustrate the laws of equilibrium. Their frames are large, their hands out of proportion, their grip re- lentless. The heads are portraits either of the man himself or one of his contemporaries. Female figures are also included in the series, but they seem to be built on the same heavy frame- work as the men; they suggest Amazons. Castagno perhaps derived the type from Masaccio. It was taken up by later art- ists and at last, by Michelangelo, was given majestic beauty in the sibyls of the Sistine ceiling. Such a man as Castagno had little aptitude for treating religious subjects. He lacked imagination and subtlety. The conception of the “Crucifixion,” also in Sant’ Apollonia, is traditional, but naturalistic effects were too tempting to resist, and the angels hovering about the Cross are experiments in foreshortening and in plastic effects which seem to tempt recklessly the laws of gravi- tation. In the ‘Last Supper” (Pl. 13a), the artist’s serious purpose as a painter of the figure and the limitation of his abilities on the interpretative side are well shown. He intends to render the subject in a faithful manner, but he is incapable of elevating it above an ordinary scene of soldiers at mess. It is impossible to judge of its original quality, however, from the present state of the fresco, which has been greatly restored. As an expression of the plastic world, it is very powerful, showing “‘an energy which fired the creative faculties of the painter as he worked.” In addition to the series of heroes or of famous men popular at this time, there was a demand for individual portraits of both men and women. Castagno produced one of the finest, a picture regarded by certain critics as the most splendid Florentine painting of the fifteenth century. This is the “Portrait of a Man”’ in the collection of Mr. Morgan. The sincerity, the search for an un- equivocal statement of form in its geometric significance, the immediate impression of the individual with his pronounced physiognomy, the force with which this is brought over to the spectator, explain this estimate. Castagno shows none of the attractive qualities which we may desire in a work of art; his forms are coarse and at times repul- sive; he lacks freedom of articulation, so that the gestures are often stilted; he has not Donatello’s ability to idealize and ele- vate his work to beauty; but with the masters of plastic structureTHE GROWTH OF SECULAR INTERESTS 53 he takes his place as one of the important influences of the century. Very little remains by which to judge the art of Domenico Veneziano (c. 1400-1461), whose name suggests a Venetian origin which is borne out by certain characteristics of form and colour in his painting. Although his ‘Madonna Enthroned,” in the National Gallery, is a ruin, enough remains to show his able draughtsmanship and his sense of monumental composition, which make him a factor in the evolution from Masaccio to the High Renaissance. The colour is soberly rich and flat like that of a Chinese painting—gobelin blue, maroon, vert antique, weath- ered stone colour—all neutralized by common injury. But in the better-preserved altar-piece of the Uffizi, the colour is both gay and mellow, and his pupils, especially Piero della Francesca, prove the stress which he must have laid on harmonious tone. The lightly constructed arbour of pointed arches and the fruit- trees seen against the sky form a charming setting. The gala effect is enhanced by the flood of light pouring into the picture. Mr. Offner considers that this altar-piece, in its un-Florentine division of space, is an instance of North Italian reminiscences. The male figures are forcible naturalistic studies; the women, graceful and feminine, but with stronger physique than Angelico’s. Their heads are carried on slender necks, and their features are small in proportion to the high, rounded foreheads dictated by the fashion of the day. The influence of Masaccio is evident in a greater feeling of reality. The work of the realists was brutal often, but vital, pulsating with the life of the day. They were important painters, each making his contribution towards the conquest of nature. Even beside Masaccio, they do not seem insignificant. But in turning back to the “Tribute Money,” one is lifted above “unselect” nature by an ideal quality to which these painters did not even aspire. ‘The ideal is based on selection. The realists lost sight of this in their desire for complete statement and working out of their science” (Crowe and Cavalcaselle). Every fact was so important that their art became encyclopaedic. Historically they are very important because they perfected the tools which at the end of the century in the hands of a Leonardo produced an art all-comprehensive, significant, subtle—endowed with the very qualities which they lacked. The secular tendencies in art were not confined to the real- ists or to subjects from contemporary life. It has been said of or aT ee54 THE GREAT PAINTERS Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) that he secularized and domesti- cated art. This is true, notwithstanding the fact that his sub- jects were, without exception, religious, that he scarcely ever treated the nude, and that he had no interest in the scientific innovations of his day. Since he was a monk, the orders he received were for religious subjects, but he was incapable of a significant interpretation of spiritual meanings and his pictures all reflect the sympathy he felt for the traits of common humanity found in his own so- cial class. The ‘Holy Family” is transformed by the butcher’s son into a winsome middle-class group in which strong and tender affections create an atmosphere of poetry. The world he finds full of beauty, and for him that is enough. According to Brown- ing, he thinks— If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents. One trait Fra Filippo and Angelico had in common. Both were contented to utilize the technical knowledge which they inherited without adding to it materially; Angelico because it was fully adequate to express his medieval visions, Fra Filippo because he was naturally easy-going and had no inclination to struggle with difficulties. His method of composition is elementary. The formal pic- tures have generally a central pyramidal group, with flanking figures at the sides. Lines of floor and cornice form the limits of a shallow stage and the picture is made ornamental by colour and detail. Narrative scenes are expressive but often fail in organization into a unified whole; even the masterly “Feast of Herod” and “Death of Stephen” suffer from the intrusion of irrelevant episodes. The simple Uffizi Madonna is perhaps the most successful in arrangement and the Pitti tondo in colour. Filippo’s first master, it is believed, was Lorenzo Monaco, whose training in line he never forgot. His early work shows affinities also with Angelico and Masolino, but gradually he develops his own style, in which a half-pensive, half-whimsical vein gives peculiar charm. Among his early works is the tondo in the Cook Collection, an exquisite illumination. The figures form a nosegay of sky-blue, pale vermilion, saffrons, and ochres. All is blithe and radiant. A typical altar-piece is the “Coronation of the Virgin” (1441). It is beautiful in colour and lovely in its accompaniment of angelTHE GROWTH OF SECULAR INTERESTS 55 choirs bearing branching lilies like candles against the banded blue ground. But the main group is beyond his imaginative power. He is so tied to earth that when he draws the Queen of Heaven crowned by the Almighty all he can call up is the memory of a childish veiled figure kneeling at her first communion. “Let this go,” he seems to say; “now we come to the really interesting thing.”” And with perfect complacency, he proceeds to delineate with his best grace the attendant figures with their heavy mantles, delicate ornaments, and elaborate veils. We forget about the coro- nation, as they have done, for they have turned their backs on the heavenly group in their wondering interest in the things of the world. Indeed, ‘“‘the true subject of his works was as little veiled by their titles as the true nature of the man by his habit” (Horne). Every one is friendly in Fra Filippo’s world. When Gabriel comes with the Annunciation message, he brings a companion who waits at the portal to accompany him on his return. Filippo loved people and interpreted them very tenderly at times, as in the predella of the Virgin’s death. Legend recounts that when the angel came with his starred palm to announce to the Virgin her approaching death, she asked that the Apostles might be brought to bid her farewell. The scene had been treated before, but Fra Filippo was the first to remember how very old and frail some of the Apostles must have been, and how fraught with dangers their journey. He shows us the aged men with their staffs, gently guided and sustained by attendant angels. Exquisite sensitiveness is shown again in the “Adoration” in Berlin (Pl. 14c). The strange, unnatural forms of rock and tree of which his landscape backgrounds are composed are here used to construct a setting far from the haunts of men where, if anywhere, might be revealed the mystery of the Trinity. Stratified rocks rise to the boundary of the panel; through the dense growth of fir trees we see dimly a mountain stream trickling down the shelving rocks. It is like the Maine woods. All is still; in the foreground the Virgin kneels in adoration before the Child; above them hovers the Dove beneath the spread arms of the Almighty. The colour is harmonious and beautiful. This motive of the Virgin adoring the Child was one newly introduced into art and one which never lost its charm for Florentine painters. Its simultaneous appearance in various European schools of painting is evidence of the wide- spread influence of the mystery plays, as Male has shown. As a youth in the Carmelite convent which he entered as a child, Filippo witnessed the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel.56 THE GREAT PAINTERS His feeling for plastic form was immeasurably weaker than that of Masaccio but now and again the memory of the older master’s work is revealed in an unexpected grandeur of form, as in the women at St. Stephen’s bier who appear like mourning figures on a monument. This fresco, in the Cathedral at Prato (c. 1456), is his masterpiece. The subject of the choir decoration is the lives of St. John the Baptist and of St. Stephen. The walls are dark and injured; the paintings are difficult to see, but can be appreciated only on the spot, where their beauty of colour can be judged. The final scene in each series is of great interest: the “Dance of Herodias’ Daughter” and the “Funeral of St. Stephen” (PI. 138). In the latter, the groups are well massed; the setting of the basilican church with its simple proportions is admirably designed; and the figure of the youthful deacon in its serene beauty is equal to the effigies on the finest of Florentine tombs. Filippo has preserved the unity of the group, at the same time introducing portraits more individualized than those of Masaccio. Some of his people turn their gaze towards us with an expression which makes us wonder what thoughts are in their minds. This constant appeal to the spectators for recognition puts his art on an entirely different plane from that of either Masaccio or the realists. He is neither epic nor truly dramatic, since he fails to keep his “psychic dis- tance.” It is only when Filippo is dominated for the moment by the memory of Masaccio, however, that he suggests the strong down- ward pressure of plastic form or composes within a compact en- circling contour. His contours are constantly forgetting their structural function and doubling back upon themselves in some enchanting irrelevance or elaboration. He really loved line for its own sake, although he could also use it grandly at times. He had various mannerisms in which he evidently delighted, like the arrangement of the draperies, in which the folds lie on the ground, so carefully pleated that they seem to be ironed in. He loved the movement and billowing of thin material in the wind, as he shows in Salome, and in the figure in the Pitti tondo. Both anticipate Botticelli. His most characteristic panel paintings are the Uffizi “Madonna,” executed for the Medici, and the Pitti tondo. In the latter, the design is well fitted to the circular boundary. The Virgin holds the Child, who displays the seeds of the pomegranate, the symbol of Eternal Life. In the background, the meeting of Joachim and Anna and the birth of the Virgin are introduced. The colour(C) Uccello, Rout of San Romano,Pippo Spano. S. Apollonia, (Alinari) (C) Fra Filippo Lippi. Adoration of the Christ Child. (D) Uccello. Sir John Hawkwood. Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin. (© Reinthal and Cathedral, Florence. (Alinari) Newman, New York)THE GROWTH OF SECULAR INTERESTS G7. scheme is quite unusual, a play of bottle-green and vermilion united by a background in which both are neutralized, the green becoming a cool grey. _ The Uffizi “Madonna” (Pl. 144) shows a simple unconyen- tional group in which the Virgin, with folded hands, adores the Christ Child, upheld by two urchins eager for our approval. The angels have the breadth of face and width of jaw which are char- acteristic of Fra Filippo; the acolytes who served at his morning mass may well have been his models. The Child is heavy and phlegmatic, the large head being embedded in His shoulders with no neck apparent. The sentiment, rather than devotional, is pensive and playful—a bit of poetry charming us by its disregard of earlier conventions: a mother and children are the subject. The half-length figures are arranged before a window and their ara- besque against the sky forms a lovely design. The Virgin is dressed in contemporary fashion. The veil which tradition has prescribed to conceal her feminine attractions he perversely contrives of transparent material, loops in a hundred cascades, and fastens with pearls. “Despite his cowl he had an uncloistered eye” (Taylor), and feminine beauty took the form of “the Prior’s daughter to the life.” Usually the forehead is broad and high, the eyes wide- spaced and liquid, the cheeks softly rounded, the lips full; the shoulders are rather narrow and sloping and the hands small and delicate but not often well drawn. Add to this great beauty of colour and irresistible human sympathy. Browning represents Fra Filippo as “making eyes and noses to his music notes,”’ a quite probable surmise, for we feel how naturally artistic expression came to him. He did not mould the world or even his own career. Cir- cumstance played upon him, and temperament controlled his life. When he followed the tradition of the fourteenth century, he did so without penetrating its symbolic meaning. His outlook on life was genial and tolerant; his handling of sacred subjects was familiar and friendly. Berenson speaks of the peculiar waywardness of his style. With him began the translation of the sacred legend into middle class language which persisted in Florence until the masters of the High Renaissance suddenly elevated the Holy Family to the aristocracy.CHAPTER VIII UMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS Siena was the only important locality in which a school dating back to the early fourteenth century persisted until the High Renaissance. At the close of the fourteenth and opening of the fifteenth century Taddeo di Bartolo (c. 1362-1422), the head of the school, was active in the Umbrian towns of central Italy where his influence was important. Accepted types of composition, competent drawing and craftsmanship, characterize his style, which without originality added naturalistic feeling to the late medieval tradition. Artistic gifts of a high order are found in Sassetta (1392-1450). The quality of the earlier Sienese masters is preserved in his art in which at the same time he shows the study of nature. In land- scape “he makes a generalization from specific geographical facts” and certain of his panels, appearing in recent exhibitions, are startling from the “modernist” effects of his colour schemes. At times his interpretation recalls the Fioretti by the naiveté of his religious conceptions, as in the “Marriage of St. Francis” (Chan- tilly); while at other times, as in the “St. Francis in Ecstasy,” he “unites in the manner of Far Eastern Buddhist painters the rarest esthetic satisfaction, with a vivid realization of the sublime temper of Christian faith’? (Brown and Rankin). Vecchietta (1412-1480) may be selected among the later men as an illustration of the consistent preference in Siena for con- ventionality in painting. Vecchietta was architect and sculptor as well as painter, and his sculptural works show a realism inspired by Donatello and as drastic as that of any Florentine, while in painting, in spite of the introduction of naturalistic details, he is essentially an idealist and a traditionalist. Sano di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, and Matteo di Giovanni are distinctly local and altogether delightful but without historic significance. Other painters of individual gifts following the local tradition are Francesco di Giorgio, Neroccio di Landi, Ben- venuto di Giovanni, and Bernardino Fungai. Until the final years of the fifteenth century when the Sienese 58UMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS 59 school practically died out and artists from elsewhere were em- ployed in the city, local and traditional elements were almost the only source of inspiration. Sienese painting lived on the memory of her great masters, and their tradition became the inheritance of the school during the whole century. Conventional, con- servative, aristocratic, with a subtle blending of mystic aloof- ness and gentle sentiment, their altar-pieces fill the churches and galleries of Siena, but they did not often find their way beyond its walls, nor can they be adequately appreciated apart from their environment. The disinclination to welcome either craftsmen or ideas from the outside which was so persistent in Siena is in strong contrast with the development in Umbria, which maintained so close a connection with the Florentine school that its history must be reviewed briefly at this point. ; Under the classification of the Umbrian school is grouped the work of artists of Umbria itself and of the Marches. Here there was no dominant city like Florence. The towns were small and scattered through the hill country, remote from the centres of activity. By the middle of the fifteenth century a number of local centres of indigenous art had developed. Though often attractive in their own setting, such schools had nothing to con- tribute to the evolution of Italian painting. ‘Early Umbrian art was a survival of Byzantine formalism but lacked its serious- ness” (Rankin). Form, drawing, composition, and colour show resemblances to Sienese painting, but the hieratic mood of the Sienese is replaced by sentimentality in which grace and languor are combined. Among the early painters, Nelli of Gubbio, Lorenzo and Jacopo da San Severini, Allegretto Nuzi, and Gentile da Fa- briano (1360-1427) are the chief names. Of these painters, Gentile da Fabriano alone need detain us here. “His art was the culmination of a provincial and isolated movement,” but he was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and the circumstances of his life lent an importance to his painting out of proportion to its real value. He was evidently a man of initiative. We hear of him first in the early years of the fifteenth century at Venice and Brescia, where his influence was important. Later he worked in Florence, and finally in Rome, when, following the long disorders, Martin V. summoned artists to decorate the Lateran. He was employed there at the time of his death. Un- fortunately, the works executed in Venice and Rome are lost and the most important source for the study of Gentile is the “ Adora- aT. —— ———— ne ee ee OT eee60 THE GREAT PAINTERS tion” painted for Santa Trinita, Florence (1423) (Pl. 11c). The art of the illuminator is delightfully illustrated in this ‘‘vivacious spectacle.” The soft glow of the gold holds the parts together in a sumptuous harmony. With his Gothic draughtsmanship and his beautiful use of relative scale in ornament Gentile employs a range of colours which seem almost sombre beside those of Angel- ico and Monaco. Shades of rosewood, walnut, bronze, greenish black, and dull peacock blue are enlivened by the interplay of gold and by a touch of scarlet suddenly flaming out. This “Adoration” is the earliest painting of the subject in which the pageant interest is predominant. Gentile had no followers in Fabriano and little of importance was produced in the small Umbrian cities after 1450. One of the earliest contacts of Umbria with Florentine art dates from the middle of the century, when Benozzo Gozzoli executed extensive frescos in Montefalco. Benozzo had been Angelico’s journeyman in Rome and was still under his spell at this time, but beneath the thin veneer of his devoutness a lively interest in everyday life is apparent. This naturalistic style impressed the provincial Umbrian painters with its mastery, still beyond their powers. Benozzo’s influence is apparent in the art of Nicola da Foligno, Bonfigli, and others. Florentine training came to be recognized as an essential by the later painters. It was looked upon much as their sojourn in Paris was regarded by American painters fifty years ago. With few exceptions, the Umbrian masters whose names are familiar either worked there as apprentices or came in touch later in life with Florentine ideals. Not one of them, however, lost altogether the qualities inherited from his birthplace. The most important of these was harmonious composition, which fitted them to take a leading place as decorators. One group of Umbrian painters were so strongly attracted by the scientific interests of the Florentine school that they are classi- fied as Umbro-Florentines. By anatomical and naturalistic studies these men acquired power as figure draughtsmen equal to that of the best Florentines. The earliest representative of this group is Piero della Francesca (1416-1492), born in 1416 in Borgo San Sepolcro, but as early as 1439 working as the assistant of Domenico Veneziano in Florence. The young man, by this connection, was drawn into the group of naturalists whose studies would be most congenial to one with his scientific bent. His paintings illustrate the command he acquired over the realistic aspects of nature (Pl. 164) but prove him to have had as well a feeling for the signifi-oe MPLS Tet PLATE 15 RE RR OE I er _— - * a -Pirate 16 ' ; ; rae iy } } tf et \ (C) Signorelli. The Resurrection. Duomo, Orvieto. (Anderson)UMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS 6r cance of his subjects which leads one to believe that the study of the Brancacci frescos constituted an important part of his educa- tion. Shortly after 1450, Piero decorated the choir of the church of St. Francis at Arezzo with the story of the True Cross. These frescos are among the most impressive works of the century. To give any idea of this series, at least four examples should be illustrated, and that is impossible here. The one shown is “ Solo- mon Receiving the Queen of Sheba” (Pl. 178). The picture includes, at the left, the Queen and her women kneeling in venera- tion as they recognize in the log floating on the water the wood of the True Cross. These colossal figures, with their slow movement and their strange unadorned heads, stand “‘on the verge of carica- ture,” as Blashfield says, but they are to be regarded primarily as elements of design. The painter’s real concern seems to be meas- ured space and mathematical proportion. What significance the figures have results rather from their place in this scheme than from any meaning he has attempted to give them. On account of the low horizon line, the figures appear to be of superhuman propor- tions. Those in the distance diminish rapidly in size, and the relation between the two is like that of rows of columns in a roof- less building. By this device, the depth and cubic content of the space are accentuated. Although dramatic interpretation is a secondary concern with the painter, something in the way he has treated the figures con- vinces us that what is taking place is momentous, self-contained as the actors appear to be. Berenson says that part of their impressiveness comes from their imperturbability. The women belong to the same large-boned race as those of Castagno; they are not unlike the lay figures on which costumes might be adjusted. Indeed, Vasari tells us that Piero made figures of clay which he draped and used as models. Their garments are of heavy stuff and hang in deep folds, marked out in bold light and shade, and have a grand simplicity like that of Masaccio. The heads are like block heads. Their naturally high foreheads are increased by the fashion of shaving, no hair escaping from under their strange head-dresses. Their throats are long and powerful. The painter seems to have reserved all his love of ornament for the architecture. The hall at the right in which Solomon receives the Queen 1s designed in the purest Renaissance style; the detail of shaft and capital is rendered with exquisite delicacy. Other examples of the series illustrate Piero’s landscape and pean sang aaa eR pa or aasinsomeans aga i pei iene sree = >.62 THE GREAT PAINTERS treatment of clouded sky, and the “‘Victory of Constantine over Maxentius” with its spears and banners is also magnificently decorative. This, and the “Battle and Death of Chrosroes,”’ in their fitting together of complicated figures illustrating a nar- rative in the form of ornamental pattern, show the influ- ence of the war panels which Uccello at this time was executing for the Medici palace. Piero’s colour has more atmospheric tone than that of his contemporaries: it is rich, harmonious, and beau- tiful. By this means any harshness suggested by the photograph is obviated. The pictures seem to be radiant with out-of-door light. » Itis evident that Piero’s conception of nature was wholly plastic. For him the convention of line hardly existed. Nevertheless we are unprepared for his revolutionary use of chiaroscuro in the night scene illustrating the “Vision of Constantine’ (Pl. 16s). Here he employs a method nearer to Rembrandt than to his own countrymen. For, as in the seventeenth century, the medium of composition is shadow, in which the figures loom as silhouettes or are picked out by the shaft of supernatural light. There is nothing in contemporary painting with which to compare it. His style is consistent and is illustrated in numerous altar-pieces, the finest being the ‘‘ Resurrection” of Borgo San Sepolcro (Pl. 16a). The position of Christ behind the sarcophagus, with one foot resting on the edge as if about to draw himself forth and step out, is a Byzantine tradition. It may be seen in Pietro Lorenzetti’s frescos in Assisi. Piero shows his genius in his handling of this theme. The form of Christ, in no sense beautiful or attractive, even awkward in position, towers triumphant over death. It is as if Piero were illustrating an inevitable law to which even the Christ conformed. With means like those of medieval art, frontal- ity, opposition of line, and a grand immobility, he creates an impression beyond that of any other painter of this subject. The experience of the last three days, rather than the joy of resurrec- tion, is stamped on the gaunt face with its deep-set eyes (Berenson). From these lips must come, to the adoring woman, the warning, “Noli Me tangere.” It is not necessary to assume that Piero was searching for a profound religious symbol, for all his figures have a comparable solemnity. This is the result in part of his weighty plastic masses, still close to the rudimentary geometric forms, and in part to his understanding of scale and purely formal relation- ships. He was a master of proportion and he fully appreciated the advantages to be gained by the placing of his figures. TheseUMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS 63 abstract qualities give his work a special value for the student of the present day. The boldness shown in the examples already examined leaves us unprepared to find him so great a master of delicacy as he appears in the portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the Uffizi. The draughtsmanship is magnificent—the cameo-like relief of “Battista Sforza,” pale ivory against the cerulean sky, is particularly fine. The heads are shown in strict profile, cut at the bust like portrait medallions, and interpreted with complete impersonality; no hint is given of their emotional life. Fortunately from other sources the full record of these wise rulers and great patrons of the arts is available. The commission for these portraits brought Piero to Urbino and his influence is evident in the work of a number of North Italian painters. This sojourn also brought him into intimate relation with Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, and with Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494) who became his pupil. Melozzo was born in the Marches and shows afhliation with North Italian painters as well. The influence of Piero is apparent in the fresco executed in Rome to commemorate the reorganization of the Vatican Library by Sixtus IV. in 1475 (Pl. 15c). It is notable as one of the earliest historical portrait groups. As such, it is a splendid achievement. Sixtus IV., Platina, his librarian, and the attendant cardinals are superb portraits. The scene takes place in a magnificent Renais- sance hall representing the Vatican Library, Crowe and Caval- caselle believe. It is designed in a highly ornate style. The point of sight suggests that the picture was placed high on the wall, and the science with which the perspective is treated points both to the thoroughness of Melozzo’s training and to his natural interest in the problem. The background, in its soft tones of white (with touches of gold?), necessitates a colour scheme in a light key. This has been carried out with the happiest result. The fine tonal harmony may well have resulted from Piero’s teaching, but the painter shows originality in his colour combinations. Interest in perspective was not confined to architecture but led to novel experiments in its application to the figure seen above the eye. About 1480, Melozzo decorated the cupola of SS. Apostoli, Rome, with the “Ascension of Christ.” Unfortunately this example, which would have been most interesting to study, is preserved only in isolated fragments. The central figure is in the Quirinal, the cherubs and musical angels in the Sacristy of St. Peter’s. Melozzo’s types and colour are well illustrated, but in et re ae a ee ee eee See ————64 THE GREAT PAINTERS judging the pictures one must remember that they were intended for a position far removed from the eye and were consequently painted in a manner which may seem coarse, close at hand. The atmospheric effects, nevertheless, are extraordinary. The angels look just as they would against the Italian sky. They are robust types with auburn hair and garments in which moss greens, laven- ders, and pink-reds make daring spots against the della Robbia blue. In its original setting this must have been magnificent and for this early date it was equalled in originality only by Man- tegna, whose experiments of a similar nature were no doubt its inspiration. Similar problems engaged him in decorating the ceiling of the Sacristy at Loreto. Here, however, the space is crowded with architecture and figures and the difficulties he encountered are too evident. Spatial relations are not successful, although there is much to admire in the virile drawing of the enthroned prophets, the monumental simplicity of their draperies, and the unusual combination of colour. Signorelli was also a pupil of Piero, belonging to the same Umbro- Florentine group. He was so greatly indebted to Florentine science, however, that it is necessary to review the progress taking place in the Florentine school. The succession of interests there is illustrated in the sculptural work of Donatello, for he was the recognized leader. His early figures were designed in the linear rhythms which were a Gothic inheritance and which necessitated the yielding of organic structure to a more or less arbitrary scheme. This style persisted in the work of men for whom abstract beauty sufficed, but Donatello threw it off with incredible rapidity and stiffened the pose until the model stood more or less at attention, braced against surprise. The anatomical organization of the figure now conditioned the pose, just as man’s self-sufficiency and asser- tion shaped his career. Similar problems were treated by the first naturalist painters who made the isolated figure their main study. They were too much interested in the problems inherent in struc- ture itself to concern themselves with complications of pose or with grouping, which would demand a different interest. But the next step was inevitable: the study of motion soon displaced the monumental figure. In 1433, Donatello designed for the Duomo a choir gallery in which childish playfellows chase each other in a complicated interlace. This treatment of unified action became an absorbing interest. The scientists working in the third quarter of the fifteenthUMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS 65 century investigated the details of anatomy and the muscular system. Vasari says that Antonio Pollajuolo (1429-1498) was the first artist to dissect the body. The knowledge he obtained gave him a command over action hitherto unknown and he was im- patient to put it to the test. Preparedness in pose was changed to anticipation, the muscles were tense, the figure vibrated with nervous energy. Sharp angles and abrupt changes in the direction of the axes of the body appeared whenever possible, subjects were selected which would bring into play the contraction and relaxation of the body and show its flexibility, and in conveying the idea of quick response to stimulus an emergized line was some- times used to accentuate the masses of light and shadow. All this tended away from the broad treatment of Masaccio, where the mechanical side was subordinated to the inner meaning. Every device was used to accelerate the effect of motion by repetition. Donatello gives us the romping children. Paolo Uccello makes his company of bowmen run together up the hill. The contest, the dance, the chase, are favourite themes. Antonio Pollajuolo and Verrocchio were the leaders in this development, which culminated in such marvellous feats of drawing and design as Leonardo’s “Battle of the Standard.” Both these men were sculptors as well as painters and did their best work in bronze. Their contact with hard material tended to make them emphasize contour; designing for bronze led them to break up areas into small planes and to introduce elaborate ornamental motives. Such characteristics appear repeatedly in Florentine paintings of the latter part of fthe century. Just as these men were maturing, the range of subject-matter was extended by the addition of classical myths. Interest in antiquity had been vivid since Petrarch’s day (middle fourteenth century) and shortly after his death a professorship in Greek had been established in Florence. Original manuscripts were acquired in increasing num- bers, and af fresh impulse was given by the influx of Eastern scholars after the fall of Const intinople i in 1453. From about the middle of the century classical ruins appeared in the background of the Adoration, and myths and allegories furnished popular subjects for painting. Among the most famous of such pictures are exam- ples by Pollajuolo, Pinturicchio, and Botticelli. Such subjects provided exactly the opportunity these painters desired. Pollajuolo painted, among others, ° ‘Heracles and the Hydra,” ‘‘ Heracles Strangling Anteus,”’ and “ Apollo and Daphne.” The small picture of “Heracles and the Hydra”’ in the66 THE GREAT PAINTERS Uffizi (Pl. 158) gives some suggestion of his power, but the pen- and-ink study for it in the British Museum carries irresistible force in the lightning-like swiftness of its line, the staccato touches articulating every joint, and the ferocious energy of the action. This is as abbreviated a notation of esthetic stimulus as one could find. It is identical in feeling with the concentrated fury of certain of Leonardo’s drawings. Pollajuolo was not always equally successful, and in his “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,” in the National Gallery, the figures, seen in abrupt foreshortening as they bend over their cross-bows, move painfully, as if they were rheumatic. Each figure interests him as an individual problem, so that the group appears to be compiled from a number of life-class drawings. In some cases, no doubt, the attention given to muscles, ten- dons, and even veins, interferes with the general aspect of the figures. Action suffers by too much attention to mechanics. In spite of his knowledge of the muscular system and movement Pollajuolo remained all his life indifferent to beauty of propor- tion between the parts of the body. His figures are short-waisted and wasp-waisted, and the legs seem disproportionately long. But when a thigh or a lower limb escapes from the flying dra- peries (as in Daphne) his modelling is so sure that it has the actuality of a bit of classic sculpture. Pollajuolo’s influence was decisive in forming the style of Signorelli (1441-1523), an Umbro-Florentine painter working at first under Piero della Francesca at Arezzo. Although his art bears little resemblance to that of his first master, a similar seriousness of purpose united the two men. It was contact with Florentine art, however, that perfected Signorelli’s means of expression and left an indelible stamp on his mind. He is notably lacking in the Umbrian love of space and simplicity, and although he uses Umbrian background motives (natural bridges, small dis- tant groups, etc.), the planes of distance are not in proper rela- tion and the result is apt to be confusing because his knowledge of colour values is defective. A certain harshness characterizes not only the conceptions but the execution of his work. Although exaggerated in the photographs, the contrasts are extreme in the originals, and the line where the light and the shade meet shows little modulation. Textures are metallic or leathery, the result both of sharp con- trasts and of lack of feeling for atmosphere. For this reason, Signorelli’s work has little charm. But his colour is strong andUMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS 67 vigorous, in keeping with the boldness of his style. The Umbrian sentimentality of certain of his feminine types seems incongruous with their stalwart frames. His nude women are neither elemental nor charming. They are too close to the individual model and they fall short of beauty, although it seems near to realization. Their skin is thick and there is nowhere any of the exquisite quality which of right be- longs to the woman’s figure. The painter’s real interest lay in the masculine type; his martyrs are splendid athletes, his saints venerable old men or emaciated beggars bent double over the staffs on which they lean heavily, showing the play of muscles under the tanned skin. In the chapel of the Holy House at Lo- reto he painted the Twelve Apostles standing two by two about the eight-sided room, each strongly individualized and magnifi- cently masculine. They are nearer to being prototypes for Mi- chelangelo’s prophets than any other figures produced in the fifteenth century. He executed a great volume of work, and among his many altar-pieces those are the most impressive in which scenes from the Passion are treated—the ‘Descent from the Cross” or the “Pieta,”’ stern and terrible pictures with a powerful expression of despairing grief. Sometimes the tension is relieved by the intro- duction of an auxiliary group in the distance with some lovely bit of Umbrian landscape as a background. The Uffizi tondo combines Umbrian types with the interest of the Florentine scientist, which impelled him to introduce the pagan figures in the background. A special interest attaches to the “Pan” (PI. 17A) as one of the few surviving examples from mythological subjects. The surface has suffered from the removal of the heavy coat of paint with which the figures were at one time concealed. Hence the surface is left in a raw state and the details of the composition isolated. Roger Fry found in the neo-Platonic writers of the fourth century the text which apparently furnished the inspiration for this composition: an exaltation of a goat-footed Pan as the em- bodiment of All Things, crowned by the light of sun and moon, clad in a mantle typifying the firmament. He was overcome by the love of Syrinx, for love conquers all things. Of the four fig- ures which remain Fry makes the suggestion that they may rep- resent the “four phases of activity of natural man—if Pan were the supreme god. The first phase is devoted to love; . . . the AMES TRS —- ee ee ee68 THE GREAT PAINTERS second phase is that of the cultivation of rustic arts; ... the third is that of intellectual activity; . . . the fourth is devoted to reverie and retrospection.” In the forms the artist has shown a characteristic attention to the bodies of youth, of maturity, and of old age. The female figure is perhaps the most beautiful example in Signorelli’s work, falling short in charm but superb in the rendering of plastic reality. The combination in this figure of accurate knowledge with a heroic non-personal quality and a reluctance to appeal through feminine qualities approaches the attitude of certain painters of our own generation. It was not until he was over sixty that Signorelli received a commission which was entirely congenial. This was the decora- tion of the chapel in the Cathedral of Orvieto which had been begun by Angelico fifty years earlier. The end of the world is depicted. The figure designs occupy a series of lunettes. The lower part of the wall is decorated with arabesques which form the setting for a number of portraits of poets of the nether world, surrounded by episodes illustrating their works, executed in grisaille (Pl. 15p). Each scene represents figures in rhythmic motion. It is interesting to compare the subjects from Dante with Botticelli’s illustrations of the Divine Comedy. The grace and fantasy shown in the arabesque and the variation of scale and colour in this part of the decoration are indispensable to the success of the whole; without this relief, both the ideas and the method of presentation employed in the figure composition would be unendurable. In the latter, it is Signorelli’s intention to overwhelm the mind with terror and to afford no means of escape, not even so much as a tree or a sprig of grass. A naturalism with difficulty held within the bounds of decoration adds to the oppressiveness. Separate figures, nude or draped, might be mistaken for modern sketches from the model; a contemporary in tight trunks, with feet planted wide and arms akimbo looks like a descendant of Donatello’s swaggering soldiers. The men of the final day of destruction who lurch forward and appear about to plunge into the room, the tormentors in human form binding the condemned, winged demons straight from Dante, and powerful angels, “birds of the Lord” sustained on mighty pinions—all bear witness to the intellectual and artistic vitality of their creator. Signorelli has power to make us participate in all that he de- picts. We share the superhuman energy of the archangels blow-Pirate 18 n of St. Bernard. Munich. gia Apartments, Vatican, \ L\iinariUMBRIAN AND FLORENTINE CHARACTERISTICS 69 ing their trumpets to raise the dead; the summons is irresistible: [he trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise, and we shall be changed.” In answer, life seems to seethe beneath the crust of the earth as the dead struggle to respond and at last break through, painfully disentangling their bodies from the weight of clay. Some are flesh, some skeletons only, as if they had had no time to wait for flesh, but even these are given an expression of expectant hope (PI. 16c). It was enough in developing this subject to create life, as the painter did convincingly, but the representation of the redeemed calls for an ideal quality of beauty which is lacking. He shows us men and women of the everyday world, without clothes, giving no suggestion of redeemed humanity, failing to interpret Para- dise; the corruptible has not put on incorruption. They stand on firm ground in a compact mass; there is no distance and no spa- ciousness, no wide horizon of a new life. When Signorelli repre- sents angels, all is changed. They are superhuman in their strength. Robust physique, masses of hair, a great stretch and sweep of wings give their heroic beauty. The qualities which failed to interpret Heaven succeed in inter- preting Hell. The scene of the condemned is terrifying, the crowd- ing and congestion add to the pressure of despair. Through the confused struggling group of demons and their victims plays a fitful wave of changing gaseous colours; this is in reality the colour of the demons, but they are so closely interwoven with the other figures that it appears to embrace them both, as if to show how closely human life may approach the life of demons. All Signorelli’s delight in the difficulty of interlaced groups 1s shown in the foreground, and the figures in the air pinioned on the backs of winged demons or hurled to destruction illustrate his mastery of foreshortening. This is nowhere better proved than in the figures that fall forward from the painted archway over the door; vainly trying to shut out the clamour, they crumple up under the rain of blood and fire hurled upon them by ashen- coloured demons. The mind quails before the force of this im- agination. As the successor of Pollajuolo and the ancestor of Michelangelo, the author of these frescos is bound into the succession of the Florentine masters of form.CHAPTER IX PERUGINO AND PINTURICCHIO The commission for the decorations in Orvieto which Signorelli executed had first been offered to Perugino, one of the painters whose work was in most constant demand during the second half of the fifteenth century. Perugino (1446-1523) belonged to the branch of the Umbrian school which adhered more closely than the Umbro-Florentine group to native tendencies. His local master may have been Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, a painter of importance but one whose career and whose works remain matters of considerable uncertainty, although his personality gradually is being recovered. It is believed that Perugino came into touch with Florentine training at some time, as his work shows a vigour of draughtsman- ship which he could not easily have acquired in Umbria. Few early works remain, but that he was regarded as one of the leading artists by 1481 is proven by his inclusion in a group of painters from Florence called by Sixtus IV. to take part in the decoration of the chapel which he had recently added to the Vatican. This project was one of great importance and the collaboration of a number of painters affords an instructive opportunity for com- parative study. The Sistine Chapel at this time was lighted by windows on three sides. Between them appear the portraits of historic popes standing in painted niches. Beneath the windows, the wall is divided into rectangular panels by painted pilasters. Here are represented scenes from Old and New Testaments by which the lives of Moses and Christ are paralleled. The series begins on the altar wall and meets on the entrance wall. A list of the subjects and of the principal painters who took part in the decoration is given on the next page. 7°PERUGINO AND PINTURICCHIO FRESCOS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL Parallel Scenes from the Lives of Moses and Christ Gh a ees , 1. Finding of Perugino. 1. Adoration of Perugino. Moses. Magi. 2. Journey of Pinturicchio 2. Baptism. Pinturicchio. Moses. and Perugino. 3. Moses and the Botticelli. 3. Temptation. Botticelli. Daughters of Jethro. 4. Destruction School of Ghirlandajo 4. Calling of Ghirlandajo, of Pharaoh. formerly attributed to Peter and Andrew. Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo. 5. Moses destroy- Cosimo 5. Sermon on the Cosimo ing Tables of Rosselli. Mount. Rosselli. the Law. 6. Destruction of Botticelli. 6. Christ giving Perugino. Children of the Keys to Korah. Peter. 7. Death of Moses. Bartolommeo 7. Last Supper Cosimo della Gatta and Crucifixion. Rosselli. and Signorelli. 8. Contest for Salviati. 8. Resurrection. Ghirlandajo. body of Moses. This decorative scheme, with single figures between the windows and a great frieze of paintings illustrating types and prototypes surrounding the chapel, recalls the decoration of the Early Chris- tian basilicas. It must have been very impressive when it was viewed for the first time on the Feast of the Assumption, 1483. The opening scenes were painted by Perugino but unfortunately they no longer exist. In 1534 the decorations of the end wall were destroyed and the windows above the altar filled in to provide an unbroken area for Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” which now occupies the entire space. The example of Perugino’s work which remains, “Christ Delivering the Keys to Peter’’ (Pl. 18c), eo eta72 THE EAT PAINTERS is thoroughly characteristic. Ona great paved esplanade the scene is set forth. In the distance a beautiful domed tempietto forms the central motive, on each side of which are triumphal arches. The action takes place in the immediate foreground. From right and left, a procession of Apostles, two by two, has moved slowly forward. They have halted to witness the ceremony as Christ bends forward to invest the kneeling Peter with the keys of Heaven and Hell. The figures stand out in isolation as in a tableau; no great effort had been made to give the impression of group solidarity. The usual types of old age, middle age, and adolescence are employed for the Apostles, who lack intellectuality. But this group is flanked at each side by bystanders, and here are portraits as fine as any in the chapel. They are drawn boldly and are full of life. Among them are men of affairs, and papal courtiers; the bull-necked “‘vital’’ type is well done, and the benignant kindly face at the right is very fine. But Perugino’s peculiar excellence is not revealed through analysis of detail. It is perceived only when we regard his work from a sufficient distance to realize the dignity and beauty of the general effect. This results from the harmonious relation of every part and from the utilization of space itself as a factor in composition. Berenson, in his essay on space composition, shows by what means the impression of space is given and analyses its psychological effect. The distant figures, which are smaller than we would expect from their place in the picture plane, increase the apparent size of the Apostles, empha- sized also by the tessellation of the pavement against which we measure them. The eye moves inward, delighting in the sensations of freedom and expansion, and rests with satisfaction on the build- ings and distant landscape. Purely technical devices thus become interpretative and the organization of the picture strengthens the conception in which the boundless horizons and eternal stability of the church are symbolized. Perugino’s popularity brought him more orders than he could fill. There was a demand for repetitions of some of his loveliest works (like the Pitti “Pieta’’), and though at first he refused to make replicas, gradually, under pressure, he lowered his standard. His original conceptions, the result of sincere if somewhat senti- mental feeling, soon became stereotyped. One recipe sufficed for all, and often the use of the same cartoon may be traced through a series of years, employed with slight variation now for a male, now for a female figure. The outer appearance, the “shadow shapes” of the world as they pass before him, he records, but he is often tooPERUGINO AND PINTURICCHIO 73 indifferent to make compelling symbols. They lack integrity. Virtue has not gone out from him in creative effort. The axes of the body are arranged in an equilibrium which is palpably artificial, and in his last period the drawing becomes slovenly. Emotion is shown by tipping the head this way or that, up or down, forward or back. The beauty of the Umbrian type is illustrated in all his works—the pure oval of the face framed in soft dark hair, the delicate modelling around the eye, and the buttonhole mouth, used for youth and maiden and even for Roman hero! In his late work sweetness often degenerates into sentimentality. When it comes to the setting, his interest is enlisted at once. If he uses architecture it is simple and unornamented, beautifully pro- portioned in itself and unerringly placed within his picture plane. When his figures stand before these supports, as in the “Vision of St. Bernard” (Pl. 18a), they no longer seem unstable, and they acquire a stateliness resulting entirely from the proportion and scale of the surroundings. Often the arches frame a sky limpid and far extending, whose ethereal clarity is accentuated by the firmness of the defining contour. In landscape backgrounds Perugino excels all his contemporaries. At first he shows the influence of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, using a kind of botanical garden. Trees of different varieties with tall slender trunks spread their foliage against the sky in a thin filigree that suggests pressed sea- weed. Sometimes abrupt perpendicular rocks and natural bridges are introduced. The detail of foreground growth is naturalistic and shows careful observation. All these characteristics are illustrated in the ‘“‘Crucifixion” in the Hermitage, known as the “Galazzine Raphael.” But he quickly passes from this ornamental style to a broader unity of forms in which detail becomes subor- dinate to the planes of foreground, middle distance, and far distance. The handling of clouds and mountains is sometimes almost modern (see predella, Metropolitan Museum—“a consum- mate trifle,” Rankin). Wherever a view of landscape ap- pears, it is felt emotionally by the painter, even if it is merely a thread of distance against a wide sky. Here Perugino is really great. Cox says that in the rendering of space in landscape he was the greatest of all masters save only Raphael; he adds with perhaps undue severity, “The rest is ecclesiastical millinery.” His col- our generally is harmonious. Sometimes, as in the Certosa “Madonna,” he uses a splendid azure which ranges through the entire panel. Against its lovely depth the angels appear like celestial fleurs-de-lis. ——— a ee eae ee . ——-74 THE GREAT PAINTERS Perugino lived until 1523, but his late work was done chiefly for provincial towns, his great pictures having been executed in the last decade of the fifteenth century. He excels in one mood, that of languorous bystander, and his best works are those in which the serenity of motionless figures is sufficient interpreta- tion: the Crucifixion, after the struggle has been succeeded by death; the Pieta, in which tears flow unrestrained; St. Bernard mildly marvelling at the apparition of the Virgin; and the shep- herds, neat Noah’s Ark figures, disposed in adoration about the newborn Saviour. The “Vision of St. Bernard” has already been mentioned. It is an example of a harmony so complete that subject and actors are forgotten. It is like music, like a summer day, like a silent church. The sky is modulated from a summer blue to the warm light of the distant horizon. The landscape is blue-green, but the foreground figures stand in a warm illumination. ‘The flesh is gold, the whites golden umber; deep cobalt, leaf greens, and cardinal with violet shadows appear in the draperies (PI. 18a). Perugino left one unforgettable fresco in Florence, the “Cru- cifixion” in Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi (Pl. 17c), painted in 1496. From across the room one seems to look through a three- arched casement upon an Umbrian landscape stretching to the blue horizon; the undulating hills which form a common back- ground are interlaced in the central panel, binding the parts firmly together. The mourners, standing motionless and isolated, follow a broad pedimental line rising to the figure on the central cross. No sound breaks the stillness. The life of the individual is merged in that of Nature, his fevers quieted in her magnanimous peace. “Earth hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.” Here Peru- gino’s lyric style rises to real poetry. ‘This picture makes a sanc- tuary of the tiny room which it adorns. At this time Perugino was receiving more commissions than he could undertake and when, in 1499, he accepted the invitation to decorate the Cambio in Perugia, it was apparently with a special appreciation of the honour offered him by his adopted city. It is of primary importance because here only can we estimate the painter as an interior decorator. This is one of the rare interiors of the Italian Renaissance which remain unaltered. It is almost impossible to form any conception of the effect of the room unless one stands beneath its vaulted ceiling ornamented in the new fashion of the day with arabesques and medallions, dainty and graceful in design. The lunettes abovePERUGINO AND PINTURICCHIO 75 the inlaid dado appear to open out shallow apses about the small chamber. It is easy to forget to be critical here. One is indifferent to faults of drawing and puerile conceptions, although they abound. The qualities of space composition, harmony, and scale redeem work that, judged apart from its setting, would seem slipshod enough. Indeed, one is almost inclined to feel that the very in- adequacies of individual figures or compositions give greater coherence to the whole; unquestionably the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. : From such achievements, we should rank Perugino very high. Crowe and Cavalcaselle say somewhere, ‘“‘Leonardo created the Mona Lisa’ and Perugino the Certosa ‘Madonna,’” but the inference is not altogether just. Perugino’s outlook was narrow and the field in which he excelled was restricted, and if Cox has been severe in his analysis, at least he has shown in what direction both the strength and the weakness of the painter lay. However, some even of his late works “show the man in love with his craft and with beauty”’ (Rankin). In 1481 when Perugino accepted the summons to Rome, he was accompanied by his fellow citizen, Pinturicchio (1454-1513), a painter ten years his junior. Pinturicchio’s style was derived from Umbrian training and apparently he came into no closer contact with Florence than that which resulted from his presence among the group of artists working in the Sistine Chapel. Opinion differs as to his share in the two works there which are generally associated with his name, the ‘Journey of Moses” and the “Baptism.” They are characteristically Umbrian in landscape forms, vignette treatment of groups in the middle distance, grace of drawing, and “ec charm of colour. His talent was quickly appreciated and his independent work may be judged in the scenes from the life of St. Bernard in the Church of Ara Cceli, executed in the same decade. They are typical in spaciousness, beauty of colour, and lack of profundity. Pinturicchio was busily employed in Rome for the next twenty- five years. The most notable commission was that for the decora- tion of the apartments of Alexander VI. in the Vatican. These magnificent rooms exhibit the most lavish use of marble, mosaics, etc., and Pinturicchio’s decorations enhance the splendour by the addition of paintings covering walls and vaulted ceilings with an incrustation of colour like that of a peacock’s feather (PI. 188). The effect is further enriched by the introduction as a part of the paintings of architectural details built up in gesso. If the method a ——————e Soe ere ager76 THE GREAT PAINTERS is somewhat barbaric, the result almost justifies the means, for as long as we are in the rooms the delight of the senses seems to be a sufficient excuse. No one of the pictures would bear careful analysis, but there are many interesting details, among which the portrait of the Borgia pope adoring the risen Christ may be men- tioned. In the opening years of the sixteenth century, Pinturicchio decorated the library of the Cathedral of Siena with a cycle from the life of Aineas Sylvius Piccolomini, delightful as descriptive narrative but less successful from the decorative standpoint. Although inferior to Perugino he shared with him the Umbrian command over space which delights us in his final frescos in the little town of Spello. The discussion of these artists has carried us well into the six- teenth century, and in estimating their rank it is important to remember that they both outlived Leonardo, whose profound studies and comprehensive style seem to belong to a subsequent age.PLATE 19 Old Man ar (Giraudon)A Poors ie pitaaCHAPTER X BOTTICELLI AND GHIRLANDAJO It has been said that one function of art is to transport us from here and now to some region of the imagination richer in poetic suggestion, and among Italian painters this applies best to Botticelli, ““who recalls all at once whatever we have read of the fifteenth century.’ The great personalities of the day come unbidden to our memory: Pico della Mirandola longing to rec- oncile the wisdom of antiquity with the teaching of the church; Savonarola with his denunciations, which sent Botticelli with the rest to the bonfire of vanities; Lorenzo the Magnificent, now the inspiration of the Platonic Academy, now the carnival merry- maker with his bitter-sweet carol— BLS pigaa tants Se Quant’ é bella giovinezza Che si fugge tutta v1a a s Chi VUOL ESSET 112i Di doman non c é certezza. ) Sid, 1 An inability to reconcile the pagan world with the Christian in- heritance, and the persistence of medieval modes of thought at the moment when the modern world was forming, are evident in the work of Botticelli (1444-1510) and make it representative of the confused allegiances of the Renaissance. Like other great Italians, he was deeply influenced by Dante. He undertook the illustration of the “ Divine Comedy ” canto by canto; Vasari complains that he wasted much time over this project. Such a study must have made a profound impression on his mind, “not only in deepening his religious tendencies but in enriching his thought with the classic world of ideas which ‘was still alive in Dante.” He was also swayed by the mystic teachings and prophecies of Savonarola; hence, although ul, intellectually he was keenly alive. his outer life was uneventt 1 Fair is youth and void of sorrow, But it hourly flies away— Youths and maids enjoy to-day; Naught ye know about to-morrow. 77 Pea ae78 THE GREAT PAINTERS As an artist he was influenced by both the idealist and the naturalist schools. He was the pupil of Fra Filippo, and was pe- culiarly fitted to appreciate the ‘“‘waywardness” of his master’s style, his delight in beauty, and the delicacy of perception which he often showed. But Botticelli’s work gives abundant evidence of close connection with the realists as well. His “Saint Augustine” might have been designed by Castagno, and the influence of Pollajuolo is evident here and elsewhere in peculiarities of form as well as in technical method. Botticelli had none of the specialized interests of a scientist, however. The nude concerned him primarily as an element in design and he failed to improve upon the strange proportions of the figure inherited from Polla- juolo. He made only such modifications in the treatment as were required to carry out his decorative idea. Personal bias is evi- dent in everything he did; it is equally apparent in his concep- tions and in his technique. The line which Botticelli inherited from his master was Gothic line perfected by Simone Martini and brought to Florence through Lorenzo Monaco. It lost the intensity given it by Simone dur- ing the later fourteenth century and was often treated for its own sake rather than as a means of emotional expression. Bot- ticelli reinvigorated it, and from the study of Pollajuolo learned to give it increased structural power. He consciously adopted the convention of line as it is described by Walter Crane, “a treaty between the mind and nature, signed by the free hand of the designer and sealed by the understanding and imagination.” Every contour was firm, sustained, and vibrant. Any attempt to copy it proves with what intensity it was incised. It has the same finality as that produced by the Japanese brush, which requires a concentration achieved only after years of training. But with this quality of power inherent in the medium itself he associated the interpretative function. Botticelli drew his in- spiration from the same objective world to which his contem- poraries had recourse, but it yielded to him a wealth of imagina- tive suggestion quite beyond their range. It is important to realize, however, that forms and types that we are tempted to call abstract have models behind them and have not lost con- tact with the concrete earth. In discussing the Dante drawings Mr. Rankin speaks of the ‘“‘dematerialization of the objective vision with no impairment of its reality.” Botticelli sometimes excelled his contemporaries even on their own ground, for no portraits are stronger in documentation thanBOTTICELLI AND GHIRLANDAJO 79 those of the Medici in the “Adoration of the Kings” (Uffizi). The same truthfulness marks heads in the Sistine frescos as well as such single portraits as the “Youth” (National Gallery) or the “Man with the Medallion” (Uffizi). Yet his interest was not absorbed by the objective world, nor were naturalistic aspects those that he chose to emphasize. As a decorative designer he avoids foreshortening, which presupposes the depth required for a given movement, since he is indifferent to the problems of plastic volume upon which the Florentine school as a whole was intent, and he conveys the sense of reality through motion rather than by three-dimensional form. Langfeld shows how consist- ently he avoids all the pressures by which weight is communi- cated and how he exhilarates us by endowing us with etheral light- ness, free from bodily limitations. The subjects treated by Botticelli may be classified roughly under narrative, devotional, and mythological scenes. It 1s perhaps easiest to discuss them under these headings. In the Uffizi are two early companion panels illustrating the story of Judith and Holofernes. One shows the headless body of Holofernes discovered in his royal tent, the other Judith re- turning to the Israelitish camp. Holding an olive-branch in one abruptly bent-back hand, her curved sword in the other, she mounts a rise of ground with the wind blowing her draperies a-flutter. Her naked feet dance over the ground. She looks out with wide eyes; her childish face, a shield-shaped mass, and her hair, curling and braided in fantastic fashion, add to the inno- cence of her appearance. Behind her, with furtive gesture, stalks the servant, carrying on her head the half-concealed head of Holofernes. She thrusts her face forward so that it 1s seen as a foil to Judith’s charms, while with one hand she lifts her skirts that they may not impede her swift movement. This might be a scene from the Arabian Nights. It is as foreign to the spirit of the Old Testament as anything one could imagine. Already we are aware of the temperament “fantastic and bizarre” which is revealed in Botticelli’s most typical works. In 1481 Botticelli was called to Rome to take part in the decora- tion of the Sistine Chapel. According to Vasari, the direction of the work was entrusted to him. He contributed to the series of single figures of the popes and executed three of the frescos in the cycle in which the lives of Moses and Christ are paralleled. In all these he excels in line, in portraiture, and in the virility of his draughtsmanship. His qualities are particularly well illus-80 THE GREAT PAINTERS trated in the fresco depicting the early life of Moses (Pl. 20s). This is a narrative painting in which the figure of Moses appears seven times! No doubt this was unavoidable, as a certain amount of material had to be included in each picture. The series from the Old Testament begins at the left side of the altar. The scenes are therefore arranged in reverse order, to read from right to left. The incidents represented are Moses (1) killing the Egyptian, (2) fleeing from justice, (3) driving the shepherds from the well, (4) drawing water for the daughters of Jethro, (5) taking his shoes from off his feet, (6) meeting the Lord in the burning bush, and (7) leading the Children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. There is no difficulty in deciphering these episodes and no con- fusion in their arrangement, but the exigencies of the case here imposed on the painter a rather scattered grouping. His problem was to achieve unity without making too great a sacrifice. For the central motive he selected the romance at the well. From the standpoint of composition this was by far the best selection, as anyone will understand; it afforded him a central interest and furnished the raison d’étre for a beautiful grove, by means of which he provided stage exits and points of vantage for the various groups. By this means the episodes are held together and at the same time each is given adequate setting. A person who did not know the story would recognize no incongruity. It was not only considerations of composition, however, that led Botticelli to feature the well scene so prominently. He was a poet and all the romance that gathers about the thought of shep- herdesses and their flocks appealed to him in this motive. Never were there shepherdesses more unusual and arresting than the daughters of Jethro with their strange costumes, their elabo- rately coiled hair, and their elfin faces poised on long necks. It is all so unexpected that the eye is constantly delighting in new surprises. The procession at the left suggests the influence of Fra Filippo in spirit and in certain heads; in the charming motive of the little boy carrying his puppy tucked under his arm—the woman who bends over him still shows the facial type of Fra Filippo. There are many magnificent portraits such as that of the swarthy oriental in a great turban. The soft colour of the figures is played through the greens of the landscape and 1s kept sufficiently quiet to preserve the decorative flatness. If Hebrew history reads so strangely, it is not surprising to find an equally personal undercurrent in Botticelli’s devotional pictures. One of his earliest Madonnas is that at the Isabella Stew-BOTTICELLI AND GHIRLANDAJO 81 art Gardner Museum, the so-called “Chigi Madonna” (PI. IQA). Certain details of drawing show Pollajuolo’s influence, while the arrangement at the casement is based on Fra Filippo, though already the harmony is more perfect. ; But the mood, which seems to require explanation, very soon impresses us. Why should the Virgin be so sad? When we look attentively, we see that with foreknowledge of his destiny she gathers for the Christ Child wheat and grapes, the symbols of the Passion. “ Botticelli’s conceptions are as original as his feel- ing 1s solemn, mysterious and suggestive.” On the pedestal of the Virgin’s throne, in one of his later works, the ‘‘Madonna of St. Barnabas,” is inscribed from Dante the opening line of St. Bernard’s hymn, “O Virgin, mother, daughter of Thy Son,” which furnishes the clue to Botticelli’s religious meditations. He shows none of Angelico’s child-like happiness, for paradox enthralls his mind. Hidden and enigmatical meanings fascinate him. The groping of the human spirit, bafled before divine mysteries, is his subject. This undercurrent of thought is present in all his religious pictures. Nor did he free himself from it altogether in pagan myths; often he treated them “in the spirit of medieval mysticism. Symonds says: “It was Italy’s vocation to resuscitate antiquity, to gather up afresh the products of the classic past and so to blend them with the medieval spirit as to generate what is spe- cifically modern.”” In Botticelli the two are inexorably bound together. Even in pictures that have been called “reanimate Greek,” he has failed to recapture the serenity of the pre-Chnis- tian age. He saw the pagan world through the coloured glass of medievalism. “Spring” (Pl. 20a) was the first picture in which so complex a mind was expressed in painting. We may still ask Rossetti’s question, “What masque of what old wind-weathered New Year honours this lady?” The motive, according to Horne, was suggested by Lucretius, but it makes little difference what theme is illustrated, for the appeal is made through the manner of presentation. The picture is the norm for Botticelli’s style; the technical qualities illustrated here will be found to some de- gree in all his work. It is in an “extraordinary state of preser- vation” (Horne) and is one of the most beautiful examples of colour in Florentine painting. It has a mellowness that sug- gests tapestry. The gold pointed leaves cut boldly against the pale turquoise of the sky, which becomes green in hue in the figure of Zephyrus. Venus and Hermes wear mantles of clear “e 3 = ate atonal82 THE GREAT PAINTERS cherry red; the diaphanous veils of the Graces are like a smoke- tree in blossom. The greens are bronze, and the foreground is carpeted with a mille-fleurs pattern, like star points in the grass. The resemblance to tapestry is carried out also in the flatness and intricacy of this surface decoration. The element of depth, often subordinated, is sometimes, as here, entirely eliminated by Botticelli. The orange grove is a drop-curtain brought very close to the actors. The trees are silhouetted against the sky, the inter- play of the dark and light masses determining the principal rhythm. A screen of finer growth is arranged behind the figure of Venus, to whom attention is called by the Cupid above. She presides with an air of pensive inquiry. The Graces standing ‘“‘’neath bower- linked arch of white arms glorified” are not Graces in their bodily form but only in their exquisite unity as a group. Their rhythms are not the repetition of a calisthenic exercise, but as in the figures of a dance, the individual is part of a complex organism. Encountered in the actual world these figures would be con- sidered far from beautiful; indeed to take their poses, imitating the sharp angles of wrist or elbow, would be a difficult feat. It is clear that Castagno or Pollajuolo would have chosen entirely different movements, in order to accentuate three-dimensional space and give added naturalism to the figures. Botticelli’s love of intricacy has full play in the treatment of the hair, which is massed and coiled and braided and even contrived into a necklace from which to hang a pendant! Flora, flower-crowned and flower- bedecked, half smiles with “‘a wistfulness which is the wistfulness of animals, and in which the soul and its regrets have no part.” In his exquisite analysis of the art of Botticelli, Laurence Binyon compares “‘pattern” in a work of art to quick hungry flame which without fuel burns out and dies down. The fuel is the representative matter which the painter fuses in its heat. The more powerful and glowing the rhythmical force in the painter’s nature, the more matter will he be able to fuse into his design. Illustrations may be found in all great art, but the applica- tion is most pertinent in the case of Botticelli. The “Birth of Venus” (Pl. 228) was done after his return from Rome. It is a little simpler than ‘‘Spring.” Here the sea 1s unbounded but treated conventionally to avoid the suggestion of space. The promontories of land vary the pattern but have little reality. The group of the entwined winds is a superb instance of rhythm and of swiftness as well as of quality of line. The central figure poised on a shell answers like a sail to their breath.BOTTICELLI AND GHIRLANDAJO 83 Her heavy hair is lifted in numberless undulating strands. Her strangely proportioned figure conforms with absolute perfection to the requirements of the design. Could one think to improve upon the result by making her more like real life? The garment of the awaiting nymph billows in the wind, drawn in at knee, ankle, and waist almost as if caught by an invisible thread. At these points the folds are closely bunched. The tugging and flap- ping and rippling of the draperies and the inflated cloak serve to accelerate the force of the wind. “Venus and Mars” in the National Gallery is a supreme instance of linear harmony—in which a pattern like that on a Greek vase is created. In his late period, Botticelli often became vehement. In “Calumny,” a small picture in which he was inspired by Lucian’s description of a painting by Apelles, his figures are like leaves scuttling before the wind, now driving them forward, now swirling them into a corner. Even the architectural statues in the niches seem to sway in sympathy. Botticelli’s movement was always nervous; in his late works it is sometimes too impetuous. Botticelli was distinctly the product of his age and yet it is by his ability to see with a peculiar poignancy which was his individ- ual gift that he is distinguished, and although he chose to con- centrate upon one technical mode of expression he carried it to so high a degree of perfection that it became an adequate vehicle for a comprehensive art. He embroidered his panels with an intricate pattern of light and dark, with forms interwoven and interdependent, “in labyrinthine intricacy through which the grace of order may give continual clue’ (Ruskin). His execu- tion combined the precision of a goldsmith with the swiftness of the Japanese; Berenson calls him the greatest master of line in Europe; Cox, the greatest in the world. As interpreter, he charms us by “that undercurrent of original sentiment which appeals to us as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject” (Pater). In turning from this individualist to a painter who was the spokesman of the middle class with its sound common sense and indifference to the call of uncharted worlds of the intellect, read- justment is necessary. Ghirlandajo (1449-1494) was connected with the moderate branch of Florentine naturalism through his master Baldovinettt (1425-1499), who in his early work was idealistic and even mystic. “Tater the artist was killed by the craftsman” (Berenson). But84 THE GREAT PAINTERS in the “Virgin and Child” of the Louvre (Pl. 198), Baldovinetti reached an abstract beauty seldom attained in Western painting. The repetition of the pyramidal line and its arrangement in the field were calculated, Offner feels, to overcome what he calls the obsession of plastic weight. The result certainly approaches oriental art in its release from the material world. The mood of abstraction is strengthened by the colour scheme. The deep cardinal of the Virgin’s robe is encased in her mantle of old blue, lined with black. The Child rests on a vermilion cush- ion. The landscape is treated in shades of umber. The ivory of the Virgin’s face is delicately defined against the pale cerulean sky; the simple lines of the veil vary the contour of the head. Her position is almost frontal, her lids downcast, her mouth reminiscent of a smile, her hands folded in prayer. She is remote and im- perturbable, like Buddha. The background is a little uncouth with its jagged hills and serpentine river, but the ensemble of figure and landscape, as well as the inscrutable expression, show in germ the elements of Leonardo’s ‘Mona Lisa.” It was not this rare quality, however, which influenced Ghirlandajo, but rather the Baldovinetti of the later period, intent upon objective effects. A comparison of Ghirlandajo’s enthroned Madonna with that of Baldovinetti in the Uffizi illustrates the relationship. But Ghirlandajo was heir to the whole Florentine movement. He was in some ways the most logical outgrowth of the earlier tradition which he continued with such modifications as were caused by temperament and training. He died in 1494, but preserved to the end a consistent style. His work shows no sign of the intellectual interests of his day and breathes none of the fervour that we think of as belonging to all fifteenth century life. We should not know that Machiavelli was a contemporary, or Poliziano a fellow citizen. It is a middle-class view of Florence which he gives, more con- cerned with the routine of the household and the values of the market place than with the stirring life of the imagination. We enjoy his art with little intellectual effort or stimulation. The painting of the “Calling of Peter and Andrew” in the Sis- tine Chapel illustrates his usual ordering of composition (Pl. 2o0c). If we turn back to Giotto, Masaccio, and Fra Filippo, we have an opportunity to compare both composition and conception. His figures are much smaller in scale in relation to the field of the picture than is the case in the preceding. This necessitates the use of a larger number of people, and a more panoramic back- ground. Ghirlandajo often shows a river bank or a coast line, andPLATE 22 (A) Leonardo. Madonna of the Rocks. Louvre, Paris. Alinari (B) Botticelli. Birth of Venus. Uffizi, Anderson) Florence.BOTTICELLI AND GHIRLANDAJO 85 sometimes it 1s possible to recognize the buildings of a known local- ity in the towns on the shore. The middle distance enables him to introduce auxiliary scenes to the narrative without encroaching on the main story. In this instance, he shows Christ calling the disciples from their nets and preaching on the shore. Quite a new aspect is given to the picture by the augmented groups of spectators. There are no bystanders in Giotto or Masaccio—that is, there are no people present who are there by chance. Ghir- landajo gives us mob psychology. Something happens which attracts the attention of a passer-by. He stops to see what is going on, and an increasing number of people gather because some one else is interested—they may even be unable themselves to see anything that takes place. They are not so much interested in what takes place as they are afraid they may miss something. These flanking groups have been compared to the chorus in a Greek drama. They have no part to perform at the moment but stand in readiness to respond when their turn comes. But the presence of the “unemployed”’ is bound to lower the dramatic temperature of the whole picture. Ghirlandajo was a gifted por- trait painter, and the people of his day were glad of the opportunity which the spectators afforded for the introduction of contemporary likenesses. Probably the painter himself was equally pleased with this opportunity. He enjoyed doing what he did so well. He was anxious that each individual should be given equal prominence, and arranged the heads like a hand of cards, one beyond the other —but what was gained in local interest was lost in concentration. On his return to Florence Ghirlandajo painted scenes from the life of St. Francis in Santa Trinita. His greatest work was done here. The general disposition of the masses especially that of the altar-wall, is excellent. The colour also is fine. Grey corresponding to the stone-work of the church is the predominant tone. The groups are treated in Indian red, slate-blue with blue-silver lights, and grape with lilac lights. The death of the saint 1s particularly instructive to compare with Giotto’s picture in Santa Croce, which served Ghirlandajo as a model. With all the advantages he possesses in knowledge and in naturalism, he has not improved on his model. He has fallen short because he has given a genre scene instead of an interpretation of universal human experience. The masterpiece of the series is the “Confirming of the Francis- can Order” (Pl. 21c). The architectural background is spacious and impressive, almost anticipating Raphael. The main incident is given prominence even if it is not treated with any great degreediamine 86 THE GREAT PAINTERS of inspiration, but Ghirlandajo’s ingenuity is shown in his method of satisfying the demand for contemporary portraits without sacrificing the artistic effect. A group of three on-lookers is introduced at the extreme right, among whom the strong features of Lorenzo de’ Medici are unmistakable. But Lorenzo wished to have included other members of his household. It was a stroke of genius to build, in the immediate foreground, a flight of steps in such a position that persons mounting them and thus brought into a central position should be visible to the breast only. In this way his clients were kept subordinate, but at the same time were gratified by their large scale and prominent position. Loren- zo’s little son and his tutor Poliziano mount the stairs. The hawk- like features of the poet are seen in profile; the lad looks straight out of the picture with winning frankness. Ghirlandajo’s best known paintings were executed in the choir of Santa Maria Novella. The effect of the high narrow walls is deco- rative, but in spite of the beauty of individual figures and details, the pictures suffer from an over-amount of ornamentation and from a style too purely genre. At this time the painter had many assistants. Add to this fact the success of his portraiture, which forced him to include more contemporaries than could possibly be absorbed pictorially. Berenson has reproduced in his book, “The Drawings of the Florentine Painters,” the sketch prepared by Ghirlandajo for the “ Birth of the Virgin.” Compare this with the finished fresco and see how his whole plan for concentrating interest on the washing of the child had to be sacrificed in order to increase the number of visitors. Although the group of women is admired as one of the finest examples of portraiture in the century, the picture Ghirlandajo had intended to paint was never executed. The scenes are full of information for the student of interior decora- tion and costume, and delightful because of the enjoyment which the painter took in doing them. It is hard to omit other important pictures like the beautiful “Last Supper” of Ognissanti or the “‘ Adoration of the Shepherds,’ but one other example must be included. This is the portrait of Sassetti and his grandson in the Louvre (Pl. 19p). Here was a man with a repulsive deformity. It was Ghirlandajo’s habit to paint things as they were. How was he to handle this subject and make it not only tolerable but even winning? He did it by making us look through the eyes of the grandchild who feels nothing but affection for the old man and sees only the reality behind the mask. How eager and how tender the little bodyBOTTICELLI AND GHIRLANDAJO 87 appears. This is one of the most touching pictures in the world. In much of his work, Ghirlandajo shows a middle-class mind but this is a wonderful evidence of finer sensibilities. Ghirlandajo was one of the best technicians of the century. A close examination of his frescoed walls shows the rapidity and ease with which he handled his brushes. He falls below Giotto in dramatic power and depth of feeling and below Masaccio in imagination and significance, but the average of his work is very high. He pursues a via media, never falling into slovenly ways, for he loves his work, but seldom striking a highly imaginative note. Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) was born a decade later than Botticelli and Ghirlandajo; he matured early and died before his fiftieth year. He was the son of Fra Filippo, who left him under the care of Botticelli, but he was so responsive to every influence that his own personality was at times almost wholly submerged, and, like those submitting to hypnotic suggestion, his powers were weakened, and his last work appears to be that of a neurotic. At the opening of his career Filippino was commissioned to finish the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel, which had re- mained incomplete for sixty years. The Florentines seem to have been inspired to wait for the one man who could subordinate him- self entirely to another’s spirit. He was completing the work of a youth of his own age, and some splendid realization of his responsi- bility strengthened brain and hand so that he completed it in a manner that would have been acceptable to Masaccio himself. The “Crucifixion of Peter” was the only large original composition which he added, but he also finished the “Raising of the King’s Son.” The parts executed by Filippino lack the boldness of Masaccio, they are more evenly illuminated, and his interest in portrait heads leads to greater detail (Pl. 1oc). In the final fresco from the life of Peter, representing the trial and crucifixion, Filippino has succeeded in producing a noble effect with the almost impossible subject of Peter’s crucifixion, but there is a distinct conflict of interests in the work as a whole. A vista through the arched opening in the centre of the picture, while it charms the eye, diverts the attention from the narrative and introduces a rival interest in a plane entirely beyond the range of the important part of the picture. In both examples his abil- ity as a portrait painter is well illustrated. Particularly fine are thesfigures at the extreme right in the trial scene in which the painter himself and his master Botticelli have been recognized.88 THE GREAT PAINTERS In the “Vision of St. Bernard” (PI. 218), painted a little earlier, idealistic tendencies are strong. Here he appears as the successor of his father and of Botticelli. The head of the saint is delicate and refined and the tremulous ecstasy of the visionary is well suggested. The Virgin is sad and this sentiment in his later works becomes dolorous. Through all the loveliness of his pictures premonition of decay is felt; they lack the virility of Botticelli. Filippino executed an important series of frescos in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Venturi says: “The sweet timid Filippino becomes baroque in Rome,” and by the time he accepted the commission for a chapel in Santa Maria Novella he had lost the sense of proportion and monumental design. The figures are so small that huge buildings have to be manufactured to fill the background spaces. These are without feeling for archi- tectural design, unwieldy and over-ornate. He had come back from Rome with antiquarian interests, having failed to gain any real knowledge of the classical spirit. He introduces a great number of objects that might form the stock-in-trade of an antique shop. His figures are unscientifically grouped and they appear almost grotesque from their exaggerated gestures, often isolated against the sky. A breathless haste which is suggestive of the cinema seizes all his actors. Scarfs fly, dogs bark, children run in terror as a melodramatic St. John conjures Drusiana back to life.CHAPTER XI LEONARDO DA VINCI Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the earliest master of the High Renaissance. He began his career in the same decade as Ghirlandajo and Botticelli, and he outlived the latter by only nine years; but we think of him as belonging to a later genera- tion, for his art may be called complete in a sense which would not apply to the art of any of his contemporaries. Although he was prepared to take advantage of every achieve- ment of the preceding century, what he produced was the fruit of creative joy, not of inherited knowledge. Leonardo considered painting his real profession, but his activities were so manifold that though the quality of his imagination is suggested in his paintings they can give no conception of the range of his mind, which ‘‘was equally at home in speculative philosophy, physical science, and applied mathematics.” It has been said that “the artistic, inventive, and reasoning faculties were never so com- pletely developed before or since.” He left manuscript notes dealing with scientific subjects, with applied mathematics, with the practice and theory of the arts. The pages are illustrated with sketches and diagrams which flowed from his pen as natu- rally as the letters of the alphabet. Leonardo’s experiments in the use of media resulted in the loss or deterioration of a number of his paintings, but he seems to have been indifferent to material results and to have preserved the same detached attitude towards his own productions as towards the universe. He was a man of great personal charm, but he does not appear to have had any of the strong loyalties which so embittered the life of Michel- angelo. He has been called the Italian Faust, and the illusive and enigmatical qualities which appear in his paintings seem also to have characterized his personality. Leonardo led a wandering life, leaving Florence, while still a young man, at the summons of Ludovico Sforza. He remained in Milan until the end of the century, returning to Florence after the fall of the Sforza family. Shortly afterwards he was travel- ling through Italy making topographical maps and designing fortifications for Caesar Borgia. Later upon returning to Florence, 89go THE GREAT PAINTERS he received the commission for the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio. The cartoon of this scene from Florentine history, which included the struggle for the standard, excited the deepest enthusiasm. The work was never executed and the cartoon perished. Afterward he returned to Milan to work under French patronage and eventually followed Francis I. on his return to France, where he died in 1519. Leonardo began his study of painting with Verrocchio, who held first rank as a sculptor both in bronze and in marble in the late fifteenth century, and whose bottega was the centre of pro- gressive studies; here he had as fellow students Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. There are such uncertainties with regard to Verrocchio’s work as a painter that his greatness must be judged from such sculpture as the equestrian statue of Colleoni, the Tomb of Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici in San Lorenzo, and the highly refined and beautiful portrait busts in marble. The one authentic painting by Verrocchio is the “Baptism” in the Uffizi probably executed about 1470 (Pl. 19c). The figures of the Baptist and Christ afforded the enthusiastic anatomist great opportunities. Saint John, a close-knit, agile type, with an almost distressing angularity and tenseness, is represented with concentrated force, the muscles and tendons only thinly veiled with flesh. The execution itself is achieved with an almost breath- less intensity. In the fuller forms of the figure of Christ, the in- vestigator has taken up the study of surface modelling with equal zest. The heads of both command our admiration by their pains- taking devotion to truth of form and of surface. With these quall- ties impressed upon the mind we turn to the angels at the left. Are we right in feeling here something different in kind rather than in degree? Vasari says that Leonardo painted an angel in this picture, and even if both were executed from Verrocchio’s cartoon, as some believe, they have been given a beauty and maturity not found in the other figures—nor is there anything like them in contemporary or earlier painting: they recall the work of such sculptors as Desiderio, who excelled in delicacy and refine- ment. The main figures bear witness to laborious research; these childish forms appear to have been created painlessly. Notice the poise of the head with its cascades of waving hair, the gracious humanity of the face, the radiance of expression, the hands laid delicately one on the other, the warmth and fulness of form be- neath the draperies. This is a rehearsal of the qualities which characterize Leonardo’s authentic works.LEONARDO DA VINCI gI About 1481 Leonardo received a commission for an “Adoration of the Kings” (Pl. 248). The picture was never completed, but the underpainting still exists in the Uffizi. a thinly laid-in prepara- tion in dull green and mahogany on an ochre ground difficult in parts to decipher. Ordinarily the “Adoration” had been shown in profile, the Virgin seated at one side and the kings advancing in a procession, but, in keeping with the composi- tional ideals of the fifteenth century, experiments had been made leading to a more compact composition, and shortly before Leo- nardo received this commission Botticelli had treated the subject in a centralized scheme, once in a rectangular form and again in a tondo, where he took advantage of the opportunity to echo the boundary lines in a series of arched openings in the ruins above the Virgin’s head. It was an expansion of this compositional scheme which was used by Leonardo. The central pyramidal group is set against a mass of figures forming irregular concentric circles; the organization is thus consolidated without disturbing the dominance of the principal figures. The central group is composed of the Virgin and Child and the worshipping kings, with two quiet figures at right and left dimly discerned. Behind these three, who occupy the foreground plane, the crowds cry out greetings or invitations to those beyond the frame, the lines of extended hand or arm again lead back towards the Virgin immediately above whose head rises a straight tree-trunk. Seated facing the left, she turns with inclined head towards the king on the right; this rich complexity of movement is repeated in the action of the Child. The drapery which falls straight down from the Virgin’s arm beneath that of the Child (not seen in the photograph) repeats the vertical of the tree- trunk and accentuates the curved contours of the figures. The group could be transferred into plastic material without altera- tion, for the design is compact, minor forms are subordinated to a general mass-contour, and the diversified action suggests varied beauty from every side. To represent it on a flat surface required a command of figure drawing and foreshortening far beyond any of Leonardo’s contemporaries; the differences can be seen by comparing this picture with any of the wall frescos executed at this date in the Sistine Chapel. The composition and conception alike depend on dramatic contrasts, lights and shadows, movement and rest, serenity and emotion. With a mother’s obliviousness to all the disturbance around her—the neighing horses and pressing crowds—the Virgin92 THE GREAT PAINTERS sits absorbed in the Child and the adoring old man. Behind her surge all the peoples of the world—exuberant figures instinct with joyous life. They push forward in such a way that the final act of humble adoration of one king seems to be the culmination of the action of all: the goal to which each would come. In no other rendering of this subject is quite the same thrilling interpretation given of the following of a star. It may be regarded as fortunate that the “Adoration” was left incomplete. In this state it suggests a more mature conception of form than is shown in the highly finished ‘Madonna of the Rocks” (Pl. 22a) painted shortly afterwards. This extraordinary picture has no prototype; it is original in composition, conception, and technical method. There is little to hint at the ostensibly religious nature of the theme, the beauty of the Virgin and the angel having a haunting strangeness more characteristic of wood nymphs than of heavenly beings. Mystery is suggested by the unfamiliar elements of the background, the cavern, and the mirage- like distance. The resonance of the colour is splendid. The pea- cock blue of the Virgin’s mantle is repeated in the stained glass quality of the upper sky. The figures gradually emerge from the coloured depths of the picture into a brilliant light, and Leonardo has given infinite care to the modelling, more delicate and highly finished than anything previously attempted in painting. He has not been satisfied with a generalized treatment, but has sought to establish the subtle gradations of tone from light to dark, and by this mastery of minor surface modelling he suggests the silky texture of the skin. In the bodies of the children, the forms flow into one another, so that our fingers are tempted to aid the eye in following the delicate and exquisite modulations. The “Madonna of the Rocks” in the National Gallery is generally regarded as a copy of this picture by Leonardo’s assistant, Ambrogio da Predis. In the last years of the fifteenth century, Leonardo was com- missioned to paint the “Last Supper” in the Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan (Pl. 238), where he was working at that time for the Sforza family. It was the logical subject for the decoration of the Refectory and there are numerous earlier exam- ples. In the fifteenth century the scene was treated in a matter- of-fact way, following closely on prescribed lines, and Judas was separated by the width of the table from the other figures. Ghir- landajo’s rendering is one of the most beautiful. The decorative possibilities were quite frankly accepted by him as the chief attraction, and he elaborated the background and the charmingPLATE 23 (B) Leonard M. delle Gra (Alinari)Mona Lisa. Louvre, Giraudon)LEONARDO DA VINCI 93 view of the garden seen from the arcades, reducing the figures to a continuous ornamental band made up of the triangular shapes they filled separated at elbow length. Castagno has attempted a more serious interpretation but failed from lack of significance in the individual figures (PI. 13a). Difficulties both of composition and conception confronted the painter in this subject. The long row of seated figures was monot- onous, and in addition to noble individual types mastery of facial expression was required. Leonardo was the earliest artist who could meet these requirements successfully, and his presentation was so complete and so satisfying that no attempt since made has left any permanent impression. We are not concerned to know whether the incident happened exactly as Leonardo represented it because he has given it a universal quality by which we under- stand its meaning better than if we had a photograph of the actual scene. We know from his sketches that he made a number of experiments before he decided on the final form. The subject admitted of two interpretations: it might represent either the institution of the sacrament, or the moment when Christ says, “One of you shall betray me.” ‘The first was the more limited doctrinal conception; it was the one chosen by Angelico; the second might be treated on broader lines. This was an incident in the life of Christ, but it was also the revelation of the meaning of treachery in the inner circle eating into the heart of any great cause. Nat- urally Leonardo chose the dramatic moment when the word is spoken and every one in the company, accused by conscience, cries, “Is it 1?” This was a problem for a psychologist and a psychologist solved it. In attempting to give the strongest dramatic effect possible he has used a method of contrast similar to that in the “ Adora- tion.” The central figure is passive, it conveys the sense of final- ity; ‘irrevocable is his word.” The imperturbable figure is like a rock against which the turmoil of the assembled Apostles breaks without avail. Christ appears the embodiment of an immutable law. In the interest of concentration, the length of the table has been reduced and the figures crowded together. Earlier painters hesitated to place Judas with the other Apostles for fear he would not be recognized, but Leonardo grouped all together on the further side of the table; he had no need to perpetuate a tradition which was in itself a confession of inadequacy. A diagram of the compositional line of the picture shows how slight is the deviation from the symmetrical scheme given by the94 THE GREAT PAINTERS perspective of the upper chamber where the supper takes place. The vanishing point coincides with the head of Christ, placed on the axis and silhouetted against the window, through which a view of the open country is seen. It is in the arrangement of the group that the only variation from the symmetrical scheme occurs, and the eager gestures of the figures as they press towards the cen- tre are so varied, so natural and so rich in their rhythmic interplay that we follow the thought interpreted and almost fail to notice the orderly principle of grouping which is in reality one great source of our understanding and enjoyment. No trivial detail is allowed to intrude; whatever is included contributes in some way to the concentration, which is absolute. All the technical aids which Leonardo knew were used to reinforce his creative idea. The condition of the fresco makes it difficult to examine the heads in detail, but fortunately a series of drawings exists in Windsor in which the power and beauty of these accomplished portraits can be studied. Aside from the masterly character study, each one is an example of supreme beauty; up to this time no one had ever reached such perfection; few have touched such a level since. Leonardo has given the interpretation of*this scene which the world agrees in considering final. Another of Leonardo’s pictures has a similar finality, although not quite so great an importance. In order to understand what the “Mona Lisa” (Pl. 24a) really means, it should be studied as it occurs in the chronology of portrait painting: it is original not because it is novel but because it is supreme. Portraiture had begun as an almost merciless rendering of every idiosyncrasy, a study through the scientist’s enlarging lens so that no detail should escape attention. In the “Mona Lisa”’ the search has been no less penetrating than before, but it has passed from surface aspects to the depths of personality. The subtle smile, the elusive expression that plays over the face, do not for a moment hide the analysis of character which Leonardo of all painters was most capable of giving. If it is true that he had music playing while he painted, one wonders whether it was planned so much for the ben- efit of the sitter as to enable the artist to take advantage of the strange power of music to draw aside the veil of reserve. The expression is baffling and enigmatic. The forms of the background and what remains of the colour strengthen its mysterious beauty—all contribute to the perfection of the woman’s figure conveyed by a subtlety of gradations im- possible for any reproduction to record. In the presence of theLEONARDO DA VINCI 95 original, we seem to be looking at a new thing more living and real than can be imagined from the photograph. Here we learn some- thing of Leonardo’s standard, which one is led to compare with that of the Greeks; an ultimate perfection which is classic in essence was his ideal. All along the line Leonardo’s work is a flowering of earlier efforts. In his scientific studies he discusses the casting of shades, aerial perspective, and atmosphere. His employment of chiaroscuro shows an advance over earlier painters. Horne says that in the painting of Leonardo the various objects in the picture are for the first time considered in relation to their place in a given scheme of chiaroscuro. Piero della Francesca only, among the earlier men, made a similar attempt. As early as 1473, Leonardo made a drawing of landscape which showed his power of bringing the separate parts into a unified scheme. He was “the inventor of modern landscape,” Corot said. and the red chalk drawing of a cloud-burst gives a vision which spans the centuries. Only in our own age by dint of long toil has the western world reached anything comparable in beauty, power, and suggestiveness. ‘In this example Leonardo surpasses both Hokusai and Turner” (Thuis). His treatise on anatomy is illustrated with studies of the details of structure and with the analysis of proportions—the records of a scientist: but his finished works show not only the results of such study but the effort to reach the harmony of a clearly conceived ideal form, the synthesis of what has gone before. In the figures of his women, the firm curves convey the suggestion of mature perfection. His Madonna of 1481 is one of the first beautiful figures in Italian painting. The splendid women in the Diploma cartoon again illustrate the new ideal. He presents types of the High Renaissance, and in their presence we are conscious of the poise which belongs to those who understand themselves. Like the Parthenon gods they seem ~ unconditioned in circumstance and environment, and represent the equilibrium and poise of life which is disturbed when the mind and vital forces are called to action, but towards which they tend again as the sea to calm” (PI. 23a). Taking the dramatic element which in the earlier work was vivid and elemental, Leonardo made it more profoundly lies he shows us find only half their the mind of which we are always but primitive interpretative, and the boc interest in beauty; it is the play of “if its meaning is sometimes obscure. With his conscious, even attitude or axis is expressive of personality figures, every change ofSe 96 THE GREAT PAINTERS or of inner emotion. Thus the figures in the “‘ Last Supper” are all self-interpretative; the action of each is consistent and harmonious in itself as well as in relation to its group. Leonardo was charmed by the graces of woman and he often gave something of her delicacy to his male heads, as in Christ and St. Philip. But his analysis of human form and expression also carried him far afield, as we may see in the studies of grotesque and monstrous heads, of which he left numerous examples. Leonardo’s people are impenetrable. Their conscious and their unconscious beings seem at variance. We are not sure how to regard them. The character of the “Mona Lisa”’ is endlessly dis- cussed. The painter leaves us in doubt and adds mystery to the other qualities by which he has captivated the world. By his power over elusive expression Leonardo brought the study of personality to its final point. His contemporaries borrowed one or another loveliness—as we may see in Raphael, del Sarto, and Bartolom- meo—but no one of them gave so comprehensive a revelation of personality. The Milanese school ‘‘smiled after Leonardo,” but the smile was a frozen surface on a shallow pool; with Leonardo it was like a surface ripple which left unfathomed the deeper currents of the personal life.CHAP TER XTI RAPHAEL A year after Leonardo died “in the arms of Francis I.,” as tradition said, Raphael (1483-1520) fell a victim to the plague in Rome. In order to preserve our perspective we must turn to the work of this Umbrian painter before considering the remaining artists of the Florentine school. Raphael was born in Urbino. The early training he received there was later supplemented by the teaching of Perugino. Four years in Florence broadened his outlook and prepared him for the authoritative position he assumed in Rome. Gracious and winning, generous and teachable, Raphael was always greatly beloved. He had the quality so highly prized by the Italians, that of charming at first sight. His life flowed along with a happy tranquillity as if he had no inhibitions or antagonisms to hold him back. One difficulty after another was surmounted as he increased in power until, when he died in his thirty-seventh year, he had achieved a place of the highest distinction. Raphael was brought up under peculiarly fortunate conditions. His father was among the artists employed by Federigo Monte- feltro, and although the boy was only ten when his father died, this connection with the ruling family brought him many advan- tages. The picture which is believed to be one of Raphael’s earliest works, the “Vision of a Knight,” is a tiny panel seven inches square, which looks like a painting on porcelain. The vision is exactly what might be expected from an impressionable youth brought up in such cultivated surroundings. The knight sleeps and dreams. Life offers him pleasure and ease on the one hand; on the other, the book and the sword, the living tradition of the court. The background is inspired by the hilly country seen from the heights of the town. The figures are gentle and yield- ing, prettily drawn, but not yet either vigorous or correct. The picture is the outcome of the teaching received from local paint- ers, from his father, Giovanni Santi, and from Timoteo Viti. In 1499 at the age of sixteen, Raphael left Urbino to attach 9798 THE GREAT PAINTERS himself to Pietro Perugino, then at the height of his popularity and engaged upon the decoration of the Cambio in Perugia. Raphael was thus brought immediately to the consideration of the problems of mural decoration, which accentuates the quality essential in all composition—that of the harmonious relation of the parts to the whole and the sacrifices which may be necessary to achieve that end. He learned the lesson so well that harmony became his leading characteristic as a painter. An example of this period is the ‘Marriage of the Virgin,” in the Brera, which might at first sight be mistaken for a work by Perugino, except for an indescribable freshness and naiveté, a loveliness that be- longs to youth. Four years was long enough for what Umbnia had to give him and in the fall of 1504 Raphael went to Florence. After his experience in provincial schools, this contact with the art life of Florence must have been intoxicating. At this time, Raphael’s biography might almost be written from his paintings. He saw everything by earlier artists that adorned the city. He hastened with the crowds to view Michelangelo’s “David” just put in place; he gazed at Leonardo’s cartoon. The things that permanently impressed him we find recorded in his paintings with the most unaffected directness. It was natural that the perfection of Leonardo’s work should appeal especially to him. Raphael’s whole training would lead to the appreciation of the finished beauty of the older master’s style. With Michelangelo, it was a different matter. In charac- ter, experiences, and interests as artists the two men were antipa- thetic and yet no one in Florence in those days could escape Michelangelo’s powerful influence. Raphael, as his ‘“Entomb- ment” shows, paid his homage like the rest to the naturalistic ten- dencies in Florentine art. The picture was extolled by Vasari, but to us, even when we acknowledge its importance as a human expression, it is interesting chiefly as evidence of his method of assimilation, not always, certainly not here, productive of an artistic result. While these and many other pictures show the strength of the new impressions Raphael was absorbing, other examples remain to delight us with a more individual quality. One of the most perfect is the ‘‘Granduca Madonna,” a picture in which his youthful style reaches perfection (Pl. 25a). The type is Umbrian, the spirit still youthful, but the draughtsmanship has strengthened, and he shows here, perhaps for the first time, his mastery of composition. The arrangemént seems so inevitableRAPHAEL 99 that, like a delicate and simple melody, one might believe it un- studied. But this is true only in that judgment has been trained to function intuitively. It was a period of Madonna pictures, of which several new types appeared from Raphael’s brush. In 1505, he contracted to paint two pictures of the enthroned Virgin for Perugian patrons. One, the “Colonna Madonna,” ‘we are fortunate in having in the Metropolitan Museum; the other is the “Ansidei Madonna” of the National Gallery, In this example, the Umbrian type of enthroned Madonna reaches its loveliest expression. All that has been said of Umbrian painting—its weaknesses as well as its excellences—may be verified here, though all has become sensitive and refined to the point of highest delicacy (PI. 258). Other pictures show variations of Leonardo’s “Madonna of the Rocks.” In harmony with Umbrian practice, Raphael in- creased the size of the figures for the field and arranged the Mother and Children in a pyramidal group entirely naturalistic in pose. A new type of composition resulted, since this one unit must comprise within its own contour a sufficiently rich scheme to hold the interest. This required a full utilization of the possi- bilities inherent in the body itself, resulting from the interplay of axes. It is the scheme of a sophisticated period. There is little devotional content, as the names imply—the “Belle Jar- diniére,”’ the ‘‘Madonna of the Meadow,” the “Madonna with the Goldfinch” (PI. 25c). Raphael was twenty-five when he was called to Rome. His name was perhaps suggested to the pope by his fellow citizen Bramante, then preparing plans for the new Saint Peter’s. He came into the midst of a company of artists employed by Julius II. to hurry to completion the extensive alterations he had under- taken in the Vatican apartments. Raphael possessed to a remarkable degree the faculty of adap- tation. He was singularly free from conceit and teachable as few have been. He drew inspiration from every available source yet always retained his independence. The youth who had profited so greatly by four years of association with Florentine masters found in Rome, as Crowe and Cavalcaselle point out, two new sources of inspiration: the masterpieces of classic sculpture, at that time an absorbing interest, and the mosaic decorati@ns of the Early Christian churches. The latter must hay¢ been ot particular value as he entered upon work so different in -charac- ter from anything he had attempted previously. Raphael was100 THE GREAT PAINTERS now undertaking the decoration of large wall spaces for the first time. Unwilling to occupy the apartments of the hated Borgia pope, Julius II. was having prepared for his use the suite of rooms now known as the Stanze. The ceiling of the Sala della Segna- tura had been decorated by Sodoma, but the pope seems to have been unsatisfied and Raphael began his labours by an alteration of the design. The general division of the space Raphael retained. In four medallions against a ground simulating gold mosaic, he placed allegorical figures of Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, and Justice, which were to receive their illustrative interpretation in the frescos of the side walls. ‘In Poetry,” Blashfield says, “Raphael prescribed the composition for a medallion for all time.” Following the completion of the ceiling, full responsibility was given to him for the decoration of the Stanze. His first picture was the “Disputa” of the Sala della Segna- tura (Pl. 26a). The work of the assimilator and of the creator is illustrated here. If we were to study the picture under the first category we should have to turn for “sources” to Perugino and Bartolommeo, to Leonardo and to the apse of Santa Puden- ziana. Raphael’s problem was to unite in one composition groups on the earth and in the heavens and he was not content to super- impose one row of figures above the other as Perugino had done in the Cambio. He secured an organic unity by a scheme of related lines, segments of a great sphere which appears to extend the wall into a shallow apse. Let us not forget in looking at the reproduction that the wall is lat. The limits are well defined and no difficulties of complicated perspective confuse the eye. A subtle reverse curve in the contours of the central mass is em- ployed to relate them as closely as possible, and the chasm between Earth and Heaven is spanned by the structural lines of a pyramid, the lower corners of which are marked by prominent standing figures, the apex by the Eternal Father. A study of the preparatory drawings illustrates the clearness of Raphael’s general conception and the process of refinement which followed as he developed the scheme. It is interesting to observe the unity of the design and to realize the power of the central motives to hold the attention and then to observe that, as a result of the segmental line of the composition, the principal groups are of much smaller dimensions than the accessory figures. In fact, the importance of the actors increases in in- verse ratio to their size. Thus the power to control the eye by(C) Raphael 1 Belle Jardinié ] aphael. Baldassare Castiglione. Louvre, Paris. eandon Louvre, Paris. I yiraudon)PLATE 26 (B) Raphael. The Mass of Bolsena. Stanza, Vatican, Rome. (Anderson): RAPHAEL ee 101 compositional line, by the “‘anatomy of his‘ pattern,” is tested’ as never before. The byoad; unoccupied foreground leads to three low steps by which the altar is approached. The vertical axis is marked by the persons df the Trinity above and by the monstrance on the altar symbolizing the presence of Christ on earth. In some of the sketches a sense of haste is evident which is quieted in the painting to express concentration and steadied faith. The suction acting on the group of worshippers is prevented from becoming too apparent by the strong verticals of two impor- tant figures, Sixtus IV. (uncle of Julius II.) on the right, and a powerful figure with back turned:on the left. These stand as pillars of the inner sanctuary, the corner groups being on a lower level. On the right, the door from the adjoining room encroaches upon the wall space. This is incorporated as a feature of the design and a foreshortened figure resting on the moulding bends forward into the room in order to see what is pointed out by his companion. The horizontal line is continued at the opposite corner by an open parapet and the two figures conversing here reverse the action of the other side, producing a rich complement of lines. Admiration for Raphael’s achievement as a decorator increases rather than diminishes when we study isolated parts. The radi- ance and majesty that Raphael later imparted to his sacred figures is often lacking, although the cherubs, bearing the Four Gospels, suggest scions of a divine lineage and the angels of the upper sphere have something of the beauty given them by Dante. The enthroned Apostles are not remarkable figures. It is by their welding together and by the way in which the great hemi- sphere of the upper air surrounds and sustains them that the majestic effect is produced. An element of variety and beauty results in the original from the lighting and the consequent play of colour. The left side is in shadow, parts only being picked out by a direct light. The right is illuminated, with shadows at intervals giving a deeper note of colour. No painter so nearly achieves an apocalyptic vision, yet the effect is secured entirely by esthetic means, by majestic composi- tional line, by rich subordinate rhythms, by beautifully modulated colour, and by “ineffable Umbrian horizons.” Its exultant climax is like that of Gounod’s “Sanctus.” A more assured draughtsmanship is shown in the “School of Athens.” The general line scheme is more complex and the com-102 THE GREAT PAINTERS position contains a number of groups subordinate to the central subject but intent upon an interest of their own. The lofty arches of the background echo the boundary of the lunette and framed in the triple repetition stand the central figures of Plato and Aristotle. The connection with the foreground group is made at right and left by figures or gestures less exactly balanced than those in the Disputa. The excitement and intensity characterizing the eager knots of men and boys in the foreground, gradually die away as the eye is led to the figures of the great speculative philos- ophers. We cannot speak of Raphael as an interior decorator without mentioning at least one of the frescos in the adjoining room, the Sala d’Eliodoro. The general theme in this room is the deliver- ance of the Church from enemies within and without. The “Mass of Bolsena” (Pl. 268) typifies deliverance from heresy, and when we remember that Raphael and Luther were born in the same year, the pertinence of the subject is apparent. Raphael has enlarged the scale of his figures here so that the number of persons 1s greatly decreased. The scene takes place upon an elevated stage in the foreground approached at each side by flights of steps and enclosed by a parapet or railing seen above the eye so that beyond its curve are revealed arches against the sky. None of the forms exactly duplicates those of a church, but the scene is easily imagined as taking place within the choir, the parapet being substituted for the rood-screen, and the nave stretching beyond. Motionless, the doubting priest holds up the bleeding wafer. Opposite kneels Julius II., an embodiment of the Faith of the Church. Astonishment is shown only in the movement of acces- sory figures—the acolytes and, below at the left, the woman who rises to acclaim the miracle. The excitement among the cardinals behind Julius becomes in the Swiss Guards a merely nominal interest. The fresco occupies a wall unsymmetrically divided by the win- dow. So adroitly has Raphael managed this difficulty and counter- acted the irregularities by his massing that the actual shape 1s less apparent than the one he has chosen to show us. The portraits in this instance are superb. The draughtsmanship is vigorous and masculine and the powerful effect is enhanced by the deeper colour scheme. Only the figures at the left seem to have been handed over to an assistant unable to sustain the grandeur of the master’s style. This is an example in which Raphael is able to stand beside the Venetians as a colourist, Blashfield says.RAPHAEL 103 Compared with the preceding room, however, Sala d’Eliodoro lacks simplicity. It suggests the stress and strain of the final years, when the pressure of work was so great that an increasing amount of the actual execution was left to the hands of assistants. The scheme of colour is less unified. To return to the Sala della Segnatura is like turning to fourth century sculpture after the Hellenistic period. The forms are simple, the proportions perfectly related, and the colours reserved and harmonious. It is logical that Raphael, of all painters, should have left this record of the Renaissance vision of man’s capacity. During the years in which Raphael was directing the decoration of the Stanze he was engaged on countless other commissions, and after the accession of Leo X. there were added to his duties as a painter those of an archaeologist and architect. The portraits of this period show the breadth of the painter’s understanding of the world as well as his technical ability. Among the great interpretations are his portraits of Julius IJ. and Leo X. The latter is also an interesting example of the arrangement of a group. But one of Raphael’s greatest achievements as a painter is the likeness of his friend, the great courtier and interpreter of the Italian Renaissance, Baldassare Castiglione (Pl. 25D). The distinguished gentleman lives again: the portrait is admirable, but the picture is superlative. The tone is golden ochre permeated with grey, indescribably beautiful, reserved, and subtle. The values resolve themselves into simple relations in a closely modu- lated middle tone. The scheme of greys and taupes is very modern, and it is rather with nineteenth century painting than with Raph- ael’s contemporaries that one compares this picture. Altar-pieces of this period show a similar expansion of power. Nothing has been lost but all has been enriched. The “Sistine Madonna” has the simplicity and clarity of his earlier work but the style has acquired radiance and freedom. The movement of the great contours suggests the free winds of heaven. A similar resilience appears in other works. He seems to be making use of a “second wind” quite without effort and as the natural in- heritance of his maturity. It was in the midst of these manifold activities and at the height of his creative power that Raphael was stricken with the plague in his thirty-seventh year. His capacity of assimilation and of growth, his prodigious creative vitality, and the radiance of his final conceptions remain stamped on the memory. To him might be applied Whistler’s description of the artist, “through104 THE GREAT PAINTERS whose brain, as through the last alembic, is distilled the refined essence of that thought which began with the gods and which they left to him to carry out.” Raphael’s influence has been transmitted not by means of his pupils but through contact with his masterpieces. His immediate assistants and followers were painters of little invention or delicacy. Giulio Romano (1492-1546) completed the Stanze after Raphael’s death, availing himself of the master’s preparatory studies. Later, when with a corps of assistants he executed extensive decorations 1n Mantua, elevation of style and classic reserve are entirely lost. But if Raphael’s immediate followers were mediocre, the perfection of his masterpieces in Rome has brought disciples through all the ages who from this source repeatedly have renewed their sense of beauty.1) Michelangelo. The Creation of (B) Michelangelo. Section of ceiling, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome.(C) Bartolommeo. Virgin and Child with (D) Andrea del Sarto. Holy Family. Metropoli- Saints. Uffizi, Florence. (Anderson) tan Museum, New York. (Metropolitan Museum)CHAPTER XTII MICHELANGELO AND LATER FLORENTINE PAINTERS Michelangelo (1475-1564), like other great Florentines, was sculptor, painter, and architect. He created the “Piet,” decorated the Sistine ceiling, and designed the dome of St. Peter’s, each a supreme work in its class. On the technical side, he was a typical Florentine. He could find no emotional vehicle equal to the human figure and his profound knowledge of anatomy enabled him to give adequate expression to ideal conceptions. At the same time, the temptation was strong to display his mastery in technical tours de force and his work was not entirely free from this fault. It was the heritage that he handed on to the Baroque period. His life was embittered not only by personal misfortunes but by the calamities of Florence, to which he felt so deep a loyalty. A sombre and at times a violent mood made him difficult and un- approachable. A student of the Bible and of Dante, he was also deeply influenced by Savonarola, but “he was a lifelong alien on the earth and voyaged the sea of thought alone,” as Symonds says. His conceptions have the grandeur that results from independent and fearless thinking. As a boy he was so precocious that when, at the age of thirteen, he entered the bottega of Ghirlandajo, the customary procedure was reversed and the master paid for his services instead of re- ceiving recompense for his instruction. Ghirlandajo was an accomplished technician and the three years which Michelangelo spent with him resulted in a knowledge of the technique of fresco painting which later proved invaluable. His work shows no other evidence of this connection. The sources of his style are to be sought in the earlier sculptors, primarily in Jacopo della Quercia and in Donatello, and although he was trained both as painter and sculptor, marble seems in a special sense his medium. He struck fearlessly into the block with an assurance as to the result which he expressed in one of his sonnets: The best of artists has no thought to show Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell Doth not include: to break the marble spell Is all the hand that serves the brain can do. 105106 THE GREAT PAINTERS As a student in the Gardens of San Marco, his early experiments in sculpture attracted the attention of Lorenzo de’ Medici and led to his residence in the Medici household for several years, during which he associated with the best intellects of Florence. There is nothing tentative about Michelangelo’s early work. Among his rare panel paintings, the tondo of the “Holy Family” in the Uffizi illustrates the problems of draughtsmanship which occupied him all his life. The picture bears a superficial resem- blance to the tondo by Signorelli in the same gallery. The earlier work is tentative, but Michelangelo, without religious scruples, treats the figures as so many elements in his plastic arabesque. The composition is a rhythm of related planes. The Virgin is seated on the ground, the torso turned at a sharp angle to the left, and the arms stretched upward to receive the Child from Joseph’s knee. The interest of the picture is almost wholly technical. The following year, when he was preparing his cartoon for the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio, the war with Pisa furnished him with the incident of bathing soldiers called to arms. It was an opportunity for the study of complicated movement. The an- imated figures turn to point out the enemy as they struggle up the bank or pull on their garments in frenzied haste. Like the work of Leonardo designed at the same time, the cartoon was destroyed and the decoration never executed. During these same years, Michelangelo received commissions as a sculptor. He executed the “Pieta,” now in St. Peter’s, in which he ‘“‘challenges comparison with the achievements of, antiq- uity”; he proved his ability as a naturalist in the “David” and in 1505 he was summoned to Rome to execute a colossal tomb for Julius II. He had been engaged on this work for three years when the pope, losing interest in the scheme for some reason, suddenly changed his mind. As nephew of Sixtus IV., Julius II. naturally desired still further to enrich the Sistine Chapel built by the della Rovere family. Its earlier decoration has already been described. In 1508 the pope turned with determination to the project of adding a decorated ceiling to the Chapel and summoned Michel- angelo to carry out the scheme. The artist was absorbed in his work on the tomb and had no other interest or thought than its completion. To be obliged to turn from the profession in which he excelled and to leave un- finished a piece of work which had fired his deepest enthusiasm roused him to a passionate protest. But his rebellion had no effect; the pope was obdurate and Michelangelo was obliged to submit.MICHELANGELO AND LATER PAINTERS 107 The creative vitality of the artist is revealed as we watch him gradually warming to the new task and finally bringing to it the full force of his intellect. In a letter which he wrote at the time he undertook the work, he says, ‘According to the first project, I was to make the Twelve Apostles in the lunettes, and fill the rest with the usual ornaments.” His plan would thus have depended upon the earlier tradition of ceiling decoration shorn of its light motives and with the substitution of heroic types for figures of almost Pompeiian grace. “But,” he adds, “when I began, it seemed to me that this would never be more than a very poor thing. . . . Then [the pope] gave a new order; I should do what I pleased; and he would pay me accordingly.” When he altered his plan, all the inherited traditions of ceiling design were thrown to the winds (PI. 278). The Sistine vault presented an unbroken curved area of about ten thousand square feet, ““above each window a round arched flat surface cut into the vaulting for some distance” (Blashfield). The first essential was to subdivide this great area. Michelangelo, the architect, created with his brush an elaborate structural scheme. Let us examine this scheme, for it was by this means that he gave unity to the design. He divided the field into three parts by a painted cornice running just above the lunettes and supported by projecting (painted) piers which frame rectangular niches. A separate point of sight corresponds with the centre of each niche, the two piers showing an equal recessed surface at each side. Here figures alternately male and female are enthroned. Below, in the narrowing curved space, stand putti who carry scrolls inscribed with the names of the prophets and sibyls above them. The piers which mark off the niches are surmounted by reversed caryatid designs of putti. Above the cornice, square pedestals support the figures of naked youths (athletes) arranged in groups of four, facing inward. The simulated divisions continue behind the athletes and form a series of casements. This arrange- ment results in the alternation of large and small apertures through the central space and the strength of the framework makes it possible, without the appearance of instability, to fill the openings with figures in bold movement and foreshortening. This structural scheme having been adopted, the painter could work with a free hand knowing that the organic coherence of his design was assured. The first impression of the ceiling is of a rich and varied design. This must strike us as astonishing when we realize that the com- position depends on the almost exclusive use of the human figure.108 THE GREAT PAINTERS There are no ornamental motives, and landscape forms are spar- ingly employed. The designer was perfectly aware of the danger of monotony and we may see by what careful planning he sought to avoid it. As he worked out his scheme on paper, he determined upon a given proportion between the parts of the design. The sibyls and prophets were the largest in scale, the athletes and span- driel figures next (the cherubs in the niches their little brothers), the caryatids were next in size, then the figures in the historical subjects, and finally the reliefs on the medallions assumed very nearly the scale of ornament. This scheme may be studied at the west end of the ceiling where the rhythmic proportion is well illustrated, but this relation of sizes was not preserved throughout the area. Fine as the plan was in theory the units were not large enough to be effective as seen from below, and the fact that a sudden change of size takes place at about the centre of the ceiling has led critics to believe that Michelangelo altered his proportion on discovering its ineffectiveness from the floor. We cannot be certain whether this is the case, but the sudden increase in the size of the figures is evident, from the “Creation of Adam” on. It is seen in the historical panels, the athletes, the prophets, and even the bound caryatids. The whole cul- minates in the colossal ‘‘ Jonah” above the “Last Judgment.” Studied in reproduction the greater harmony of the first plan 1s unquestionable; in the Chapel, the necessity for its alteration is equally evident. When we turn from these general aspects of the design to the consideration of individual figures and groups, an equal care for artistic effects is evident, combined with profound creative thought. The prophets and sibyls which have usurped the place of the Twelve Apostles are seated on thrones set in the shadowed niches. They are figures of colossal size (eighteen feet in height if they stood) and are attended by wingless children. In these figures Michelangelo has changed the fashion and the ideals of an age; he has made an epoch in art. They are not without artis- tic antecedents, but the advance in knowledge and in beauty has so transformed them that there is little purpose in bringing together the various elements in the work of Piero della Fran- cesca, Signorelli, and Donatello which contributed this or that feature. As contrasted with preceding figure designs the com- plexity of attitude indicates the thought of the sculptor composing “in the round.” Michelangelo said that a piece of sculpture should be so com-MICHELANGELO AND LATER PAINTERS 109 posed that it would suffer no injury in being rolled down hill. An equal solidity is shown in these figures. Isaiah is swung in a sudden pivotal movement as he turns, aroused from reverie by the voice of inspiration. Child angels speak to him, “as if frail humanity could understand angelic messages from infant lips only.” The compact design is embraced in an oval contour. Daniel is a figure of transcendent beauty. Under the compul- sion of the Spirit, he writes “with indescribable eagerness of attention.” The book from which he copies “‘is supported by a boy who stands before the Prophet, and the beauty of that child is such that no pencil, by whatever hand it may be borne, will ever equal it” (Vasari) (PI. 28a). Here the artist has created full depth, extending his forms or thrusting them back in the richest arabesque of three-dimen- sional design. Daniel’s body is turned abruptly to the left as he bends over his tablet. The foreshortened arm has the reality of an image seen in the stereopticon. The figure bears downward with tremendous weight. To attempt to lift it would be like uprooting an oak, With Michelangelo, all movement is momentous and the weight of the parts is accentuated by foreshortening and drapery. “‘He seems to have first discovered the third dimension and fore- shortening.” The figures of the sibyls show an almost equal ponderousness. They, too, are full of titanic energy. The heavy body of the Persian sibyl contrasts with the aged profile peering into the book of wis- dom. The design of the Delphic sibyl recalls the sculptured tondo of the Madonna. The head is seen full face with a severe verti- cal axis and about this stabilized form revolve the balancing movement of the arms and the swinging curves of the contours. As in all Michelangelo heads, the beauty is of a purely impersonal type, depending on the fine form and proportion of the features. These figures have no individual life: they are types through whom speak universal voices. They are pervious to the spirit of the age. The prophets and sibyls are all heavily draped in undergar- ments and voluminous cloaks, and emerge into light from shadowed niches. In strong contrast are the athletes grouped about the smaller central panels. These are nude figures standing in close relation to the severe architectural framework. Their contours are relieved against draperies but not concealed by them. Al- though painted in the colour of flesh, these figures furnish theIIO THE GREAT PAINTERS sculptural element in the design. ‘“‘They are in succession pen- sive or gay, calm or agitated, ardent or inert, glowing, passion- ate, fervent, or frigid, lethargic and impassive”’ (Wilson). They have little significance in the intellectual scheme and complexi- ties of pose are here permitted to become the principal interest. Michelangelo’s superior conception of beauty endows them with superhuman attributes (Pl. 28s). The subjects treated in the central area depict the acts of Creation, followed by the Fall of Man, the Flood, or repurifica- tion of the world, and finally the second entry of sin, into the family of Noah, which necessitates the coming of a Redeemer. The scenes were executed in reverse order to the sequence of the incidents, and great disparity of scale will be found in comparing the first and the last frescos. In the first scene, the Almighty separates light from darkness by the outspreading of his arms, for He is Light. The second is a composition of surpassing force and majesty, God, the Creator, commanding the sun to rule by day and the moon to rule by night. The compactness of the shape, the swirl of the draperies, the energized soles of the feet convey the idea of a power that is joy as the Almighty speeds to new acts of creation. Astonish- ment at the technical tour de force of preserving balance by two opposing movements of such velocity is forgotten before the imaginative conception. Modern science has given us no symbol of unspent energy to equal this onrush of Jehovah as Creator. “Tn these works Michelangelo designed a figure of the Creator that has remained ever since the only possible symbol of God the Father” (Holroyd). Before Michelangelo, only the seers of the Old Testament saw such a vision; after him no one has been able to picture that vision (Pl. 278). In the next fresco, the Spirit of the Lord broods upon the face of the waters, calling a response of life from their far depths. In the fourth area he creates Man (Pl. 27a). Perfect, beautiful, formed in the likeness of God, the first Adam awaits the touch of the Spirit, the earnest of his second birth. Dead matter is to be- come the conductor of the divine current through the contact of the finger tips. The focus of the composition is that contact point, but the eye, like the current, sweeps in endless circuit through the space. It is this inner force of thought which binds together forms sharply dissevered. The figure of Adam is per- haps the highest single achievement of Renaissance draughts- manship. It is natural that it should be compared with the TheseusMICHELANGELO AND LATER PAINTERS III of the Parthenon pediment. Each expresses the heroic ideal of its age. From the piecing of the intonaco we learn that Michel- angelo executed this figure in three days. “Such power of work and of finish is utterly inconceivable in any artist of to-day” (Holroyd). The creation of Eve is followed by the Fall and the Expulsion, treated in one area divided by the vertical tree mass. The unity of the picture is preserved by the great arc line over which the eye passes, comprehending the parts simultaneously. The formal excellence of the composition is greater than is the interpretative content, as may be seen by comparing this Expulsion with that by Masaccio which was so obviously its inspiration. Every ad- vantage of knowledge is on the side of the later painter, but the earlier artist has in this instance reached a far higher conception. The terror of elemental forces is conveyed in the Flood and individual groups are magnificent in design—but this and the following scenes are not altogether successful as a part of the decorative scheme. Around the windows and in the triangular spaces of the ceil- ing above are represented the genealogies of Christ and the Virgin. These are informal groups. They have been called sketches where the artist recorded impressions of the life about him as he went back and forth from his work. The immense activity and strain of the central motives dip away here into quiet. The structure of the design and the variety of the figures in pose and treatment can be studied point by point in any good reproduction, but the unity dependent upon the massing of values and the colour are not illustrated in photographic repro- duction, which makes al] the lines and contrasts harsh. Photo- graphs of the whole ceiling are so small in scale that nothing can be seen satisfactorily and if photographs of details are studied, the effect of the big value masses which create planes is altogether lost. To realize these qualities we must stand beneath the vault itself. But although these points cannot be illustrated here, their consideration is too important to omit. The altar end of the Chapel is considered as the source of light for the paintings on the walls and for the ceiling, with the excep- tion of the central series, which is treated independently as if lighted from the left. Thus two general planes are easily dis- tinguished in the ceiling decoration. The corner areas and the window triangles are dark and duskyj throwing the area of the ceiling into a unit of somewhat lighter general key.1} 112 THE GREAT PAINTERS Perhaps the colour is best suggested by thinking of some grey stone monument on which the polychrome is soft and sombre, but clear and pure as well. But in this instance we may quote the description of colour in the words of a great critic, Kenyon Cox: ‘The whole central portion of the ceiling (with its stories of the Creation and Fall of Man) is based upon a chord of gold and violet. The lights which are mainly the illuminated masses of the flesh, are of a thousand tints of greyish yellow or pale orange: the darks, which are made by the draperies, are reddish violet, the grey-blue of sky forms the half tone. Occasionally there is a blue drapery but the lights of it are pale yellow, the local colour subsisting only in the shadows. As you descend from this central portion to the pendentives and the lunettes, the colour grows richer and fuller; you have deep blues and greens and rich reds, but always there is the golden light modifying the local tones, the full coloured shadow looking violaceous by reason of the contrast. The effect of the whole is so rich, so harmonious, so right in the relations of its parts and in the relation of the whole to its surroundings, so perfectly in the air and so lacking in heaviness, that, when I first saw it, I forgot for the time the stupendous design and marvellous draughtsmanship in admiration of its glory of colour and painter- like mastery of tone. Considering the overwhelming difficulty of the task, I know of nothing else in the world comparable to this as a display of the highest powers of the colourist.”’ “When this work was completed, all the world hastened from every part to behold it, and having beheld it, they remained astonished and speechless” (Vasari). Florentine art culminated with Michelangelo’s ceiling, in which the human intellect grasped anew the heroic story of creation. The ideas were not all new nor was the scheme of combining the varied elements tried for the first time, but the result is absolutely original because of the crea- tive genius which was able to invent a pictorial accompaniment worthy of the Hebrew epic. For a number of years following the completion of the Sistine ceiling, the artist was engaged on important sculptural work. In 1535 he returned to Rome and at the order of Paul III. executed the “ Last Judgment” on the altar-wall of the Sistine Chapel. To carry out this project, the windows were filled in and the earlier frescos destroyed. It is a harsh and terrifying spectacle that he depicts—vindictive and unmerciful, in spite of the beauty of certain motives. The absence of an architectural plan is apparent. Individual groupsMICHELANGELO AND LATER PAINTERS 113 rather than a general scheme appear to absorb the artist’s atten- tion. The nude is practically unrelieved by drapery and the “gladiatorial forms of the Apostles” lack dignity. Whereas the ceiling was completed in less than four years, this much less exten- sive work occupied the artist for seven years—an indication that he was no longer the physical giant he had been. This was his last important work as a painter and the final addition to the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, which embodies in one compre- hensive perspective the drama of Sin and Redemption: the Crea- tion, the Fall of man necessitating a Redeemer whose coming is foretold by prophet and sibyl, the life of Christ with its great prototype in the Old Testament, the ministry carried forward in the tapestries by Raphael to apostolic days, portraits of the popes and finally the Last Judgment. Artistically and decoratively, however, it is not unified. We have seen that an interval of sixty years did not make a great difference in the style of the Brancacci Chapel. But even in the twenty-five years which intervened between the decoration of the walls and that of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel an irrevocable break had occurred. Michelangelo’s work made the older artists appear antiquated. He was like some great athlete at the threat of whose touch the ordinary man cringes. In the “Last Judgment” he took that step, from which there was no turning back, toward the inevitable, the imminent decadence. Is not its shadow already apparent in the grandiose force of his “‘Day of Doom’’? Wolfflin expresses this thought in saying, “Michelangelo over- whelmed Italian art like a mighty mountain torrent, at once fertilizing and destructive.” Born in 1475, he outlived all his contemporaries and stood like an isolated oak, scarred by the storms which he had to face alone. He lived to see the earlier ideal of the figure arts superseded by the splendour of Venetian decoration. Italian painting was nearing its eclipse when he died in 1564. The pre-eminence of Florence long since had become a thing of the past. Both Michelangelo and Raphael produced their great- est paintings in Rome, while Leonardo as early as 1519 left Italy to accept service with the French king. These facts are significant. Throughout the fifteenth century, Florence, south of the Apen- nines, was the centre of artistic inspiration, but with the political changes at the close of the century she lost her position of leader- ship. The death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492 marked the end of anera. Already the ducal courts of North Italy had taken an114 THE GREAT PAINTERS important part in formulating educational programs, in the collection of books and manuscripts, and in the patronage of the arts, as has been mentioned in connection with Urbino. But during the early years of the sixteenth century, all eyes must have been focussed on Rome. No doubt the comprehensive plans of Julius II. raised hopes of employment in the minds of artists throughout Italy, and Leo X., a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, rivalled in Rome the patronage which his family had formerly exercised in Florence. When we turn back, therefore, to consider the contemporaries of Raphael and Michelangelo left in Florence when these artists transferred their activities to Rome, we shall understand why their work is more or less in the nature of an aftermath. The two leading painters at this time were Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto. Both were influenced by Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521), “who, though narrow and eccentric, has a strange originality” which is well illustrated in the “Death of Procris”’ (National Gallery) and in the panels depicting Hunting Scenes in the Metropolitan Museum. Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517) was a companion of Piero di Cosimo in the bottega of Cosimo Roselli, and much of his pro- fessional work was later done in collaboration with Albertinelli, his fellow student at this time. He came as a young man under the influence of Savonarola and one of his earliest paintings is the forceful portrait of the great preacher now in Savonarola’s cell in San Marco. This association led to his profession as a Domin- ican monk (1501) and to his exclusive treatment of religious sub- jects. The influence of Perugino was thus a natural one. In 1508 Bartolommeo visited Venice and contact with the brilliant and joyous art of the City of the Lagoons resulted not only in his use of Venetian motives but in an exuberant spirit which increased to the end of his career. Thus he enriched the Umbrian painter’s harmonious schemes of composition and varied his religious mood (PI. 28¢). Nowhere is this brought to a lovelier consummation than in the “Madonna of the Sanctuary” in Lucca. The element of space in the sky background serves to isolate the Virgin enthroned on a low pedestal between two saints and crowned by cherubs lightly poised in air. At her feet a third angel plays his musical instru- ment, a motive borrowed from Venetian painting. From this time until his early death Bartolommeo’s output was constant, and from year to year he built up more and moreMICHELANGELO AND LATER PAINTERS 115 elaborate schemes of composition. His work brought great honour to his convent and he was one of the painters invited to France by Francis I. It is important to remember that Bartolommeo was born in the same year as Michelangelo and died before Leonardo and that when he created such compositions as the “Marriage of St. Catherine” (Pitti) and the “Virgin of Mercy” (Lucca) imposing groups of this kind were seen for the first time in Florentine art. His altar-pieces carry admirably, his method of creating depth by line, composition, and lighting, is thoroughly effective, and his colour is pleasing. Such pictures look well on an altar and suit the needs of the worshippers. But his effects were easily attained and at times appear empty and bombastic, for his emotionalism is inflated on too small a foundation of intellectuality. These ambitious altar-pieces seem very academic today, we are too conscious of the mechanical means by which he builds them and could almost predict beforehand how he will deal with each dif- ficulty as it arises. His assurance and ease appear superficial. Although we must guard against attributing to Bartolommeo the empty mannerism of the Baroque period it is nevertheless true that these qualities are present in germ in his later altar-pieces. Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), was the last important master of the Renaissance group in Florence. He excelled as a fresco painter and was the author of important decorations in which he continued and amplified the narrative style of his predecessors. The death of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the execution of Savonarola occurred when Andrea was a youth, and it was a different Florence and a less strenuous day that his art delighted. It is not surprising if his work lacks the integrity of earlier painting and charms largely by superficial effects. This lack of integrity appears in another connection. Andrea was one of the painters who accepted com- missions in France at the invitation of Francis I. He spent some time there (c. 1510) and when he returned in answer to the sum- mons of his wife he was entrusted by the king with money for the purchase of works of art. This was never accounted for and Andrea never returned to France. Andrea’s most important decorations, those of the Scalzo and Santa Annunziata, occupied him intermittently during a series of years. Here may be studied the relation of his work to earlier and contemporary types of composition and the enriched effect re- sulting from his soft and varied harmonies of colour. He delighted in descriptive and genre motives and his style is typically repre-ee 116 THE GREAT PAINTERS sented in the imposing “Birth of the Virgin.” All that was quaint and whimsical in earlier art has been ruled out of this stately interior through which the figures move as if to the rhythm of a slow andante. In its urban elegance it might serve as an illustration of contemporary life as it is described in the letters of Isabella d’ Este. The female figures have the fully matured forms of the sixteenth century and the artist’s command of drawing enables him to em- ploy a rich variety of pose. The women in the foreground “show the aristocratic nonchalance and indolent self-abandonment” which Wolfflin says ‘‘found no more able an interpreter.” One of Andrea’s most gracious and buoyant altar-pieces is the “Annunciation” of the Pitti. Especially fine are the poise of the angel’s head and the perfect expressiveness of the gesture of salu- tation. Following this movement the eye is carried by the distant arch to the statuesque figure of the Virgin whose position sends it back to the angel once more to follow the rich sequence of curves. The freshness and expressiveness of Andrea’s earlier pictures gradually were lost as his work became stereotyped. As in later periods of art a rhetorical pose often is substituted for the genuine expression of an idea, and the designation of the “perfect painter” which has been applied to him suggests the superficial charm which his work exerts. It lacks the deeper significance of the greatest masters, such as Masaccio or Leonardo (PI. 28p). One of Andrea’s late pictures, the “Madonna of the Sack,” although without significance of interpretation, offers a novel solution of a balanced composition. Instead of filling the semi- circular lunette with symmetrical groups Andrea has disposed in it two equilateral triangles of varying size. One to the right of the centre is filled by the Virgin and Child who sit on a low step in the immediate foreground; the other, filled by the figure of Joseph leaning on a sack, is placed to the left and pushed well into the background. Balance results as in a teeter board from the placing and relative size of the weights or pulls with reference to the centre of equilibrium. The painting is executed in soft pastel shades of great beauty. Andrea’s ability as a draughtsman, the graciousness and ease which he expressed in every movement, and his harmony of tone are seen to their best advantage in his portraits. In that of himself in the National Gallery he interprets the dreamy artis- tic temperament so fully borne out in everything that he did. Andrea’s art was a kind of Indian summer following the Floren- tine Renaissance. Brown and Rankin, speaking of these painters,MICHELANGELO AND LATER PAINTERS 117 say: ‘“They are influenced and left behind by the giants in whom the High Renaissance culminated, and they paved the way for the mannerists of the final period”’ (PI. 28p). Andrea died just as Florence was entering upon a new phase under the rule of the returned Medici, soon to become Dukes of Tuscany. Cosimo I. sought to carry on the traditions of the Medici family, and as patron of art he atoned for some of his political crimes. But the middle of the sixteenth century was an arid period in art—that of the mannerists. Figure paintings are sterile and academic, but portraits often are charming in spite of their cold formality. Pontormo, Bronzino, and Vasari were the leading artists. Pontormo (1494-1556) was the pupil and assistant of Andrea del Sarto, and died before the style of the mannerists had been fully established. Bronzino (1502-1572), in the portrait of Eleanor of Toledo, the Spanish wife of Cosimo I., with her bright-eyed son Garcia, shows excellent interpretation, while the studied elegance of the beautiful Lucrezia Panciatichi well typifies the social ideal of the age. Vasari (1512-1574) was closely associated with Cosimo I. as counsellor, painter, and architect. In the latter capacity he designed a building for government offices which still retained its name when at a later time it was remodelled as an art gallery— the Uffizi. It was to Cosimo I. that Vasari dedicated the great work by which he is known today, the “Lives of the Most Eminent Paint- ers, Sculptors, and Architects,” published in 1550. It was an op- portune moment in which to gather this material together and the book remains one of the primary sources of study for all later investigators of Italian art. It is therefore a fitting termina- tion of the long line of Florentine masterpieces. BOOKS OF REFERENCE FOR CHAPTERS V-XIII Armstrong, E., Lorenzo de’ Medici and Florence in the Fifteenth Century. N. Y., Putnam, 1896. Berenson, Bernhard, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters. N. Y., Dutton, 1903. Biagi, G., Men and Manners of Old Florence. London, Unwin, 1909. Binyon, Laurence, The Art of Botticelli. London, Macmillan, 1913. Browning, Robert, Poems of Robert Browning. Oxford, University Press, 1923. Fra Filippo Lippi. Cartwright, Julia, Early Works of Raphael. London, Seeley, 1925. _ Raphael in Rome. London, Seeley, 1925. Cellini, Benvenuto, Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini (tr. Symonds). N. Y., Appleton, 1899.118 THE GREAT PAINTERS Colvin, Sidney, “Leonardo da Vinci.’ v. 16, p. 444. Cruttwell, Maude, Antonio Pollajuolo. N. Y., Scribner, 1907. Verrocchio. N. Y., Scribner, 1909. Douglas, Langton, Fra Angelico. London, Bell, 1902. Eliot, George, Romola. London, Unwin, 1907. Gobineau, J. A., Renaissance. London, Heinemann, 1913. Gronau, Georg, Leonardo da Vinet. N. Y., Dutton, 1902. Holroyd, Charles, Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. London, Duckworth, 1903. Horne, Herbert P., Alessandro Filippi, Commonly Called Sandro Botticelli. London, Bell, 1908. Leonardo da Vinci. N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1908. Hyett, F. A., Florence. London, Methuen, 1903. McCurdy, Edward, Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks. London, Duckworth, 1906. Ricci, Corrado, Pintoricchio (tr. F. Simmonds). Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1902. —— Pier della Francesca. Rome, Anderson, 1910. Richter, J. P., Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. London, Low, Sampson, Marston, 1883. Rolland, Romain, Life of Michelangelo (tr. Lees). London, Heinemann, 1912. Ross, Janet A., Florentine Palaces. London, Dent, 1905. Supino, I. B., Les deux Lippis (tr. into French by Crozal). Florence, Alinari, 1904. Toesca, Pietro, Masolino da Panicale. Bergamo, Istituto Italiano d’Arte Grafiche, 1908. Wingenroth, Max., Angelico da Fiesole. Bielefeld, Velhagen, 1906. Williamson, G. C., Perugino. London, Bell, rgoo. Wolfflin, Heinrich, The Art of the Italian Renaissance. N. Y., Putnam, 1913. Yashiro, Y., Sandro Botticelli. Boston, Medici Society, 1925. Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition,CHAPTER XIV NORTH ITALIAN PAINTING Florentine art showed so little dependence on outside influence that it is possible to study its whole course without knowing what was going on elsewhere. But as we take up the work of other schools, it is important to relate it to contemporary de- velopments in Florence. In North Italy, Padua and Verona were among the first cities to show important activity in the arts. Here, as elsewhere in the peninsula, the Byzantine tradition was strong and persistent, but perhaps as a result of northern connections (with Germany), there was a more general tendency towards Gothic line and emo- tion. The earliest name in the art of Padua is that of Guariento, a painter of the middle of the fourteenth century who combines with the usual Byzantine and Gothic features Florentine influence derived from a study of Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel. Guariento executed a large decoration in the Ducal Palace in Venice and exercised considerable local influence. A more important painter was Altichieri (c. 1330-1395), who practised his art chiefly in Padua, although he was probably born in Verona. With some assistance from Avanzi, he executed frescos which, “‘apart from the productions of the schools of Florence and Siena, are the most beautiful of fourteenth century works.” The decoration of the Chapel of San Felice in the Church of Sant’ Antonio, Padua, in spite of restoration, is an enchanting example of the late fourteenth century at its best. The painter shows familiarity with Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel, but his interest is less exclusively dramatic and he delights in all the accessories of the story. The influence of Siena is almost more apparent than that of Florence; it is shown in the colour and in the loveliness and refinement of some of the types as well as in the romantic mood. Architecture is a marked feature of all the scenes. The graceful and ornate forms of the Gothic structures suggest an effort to reproduce the picturesque style 119—— 120 THE GREAT PAINTERS of contemporary Venetian building. Although there is an over- emphasis on the architectural setting, it becomes as engrossing an interest to the spectator as it was to the painter. A picture in which Altichieri’s style is admirably illustrated 1s the votive fresco in Sant’ Anastasia, Verona. Knights of the Cavalli family (Pl. 294) kneel before the enthroned Madonna. The sacred group with the eager Child and intent angels is full of motives reminiscent of Giotto or Simone, but there is no feel- ing of an eclectic style, for all has been rendered with fresh delight. The knights, with their family crests prominently displayed, are recommended by warrior saints, also in contemporary costume. The Gothic hall is emblazoned with the Cavalli shields and the whole atmosphere, while recalling Simone’s “Life of St. Mar- tin,” has the secular feeling for which northern art of this period is known. These frescos were executed in the last years of the fourteenth century and far excel contemporary Florentine work in their beauty, dignity, and fantasy. The Gothic element which is here shown in specific motives and in romantic mood in the early fifteenth century sometimes dominated the draughtsmanship as well, as in the engaging art of Stefano da Zavio. But the great master of the early fifteenth century in Verona was Pisanello (1385-1455). He combined romantic vision with an astonishing veracity in the rendering of individual motives. In his portrait medallions made late in his career (beginning 1438) he appears a fully developed Renaissance master. His rendering of physiognomy, his incisive modelling, and his beautiful feeling for design entitle him to the rank of the “greatest medalist in Europe” (Brown and Rankin). As a painter he is more tenta- tive and transitional, and exemplified the Gothic tendencies of North Italian painting. He was associated with Gentile da Fabriano in several undertakings, and although he was a younger man and an artist of far greater ability, we think of the two as similar in their technical method and in their fresh, vivacious outlook upon their surroundings. Awakened observation led them to take greater interest in the world of nature and what earlier painters would have thought of in the terms of St. Bernard, they treated in the style of Hans Andersen. Pisanello led a busy and productive life, receiving commis- sions which took him to Rome, Florence, and Venice, as well as to the ducal courts of North Italy. His ‘Vision of Saint Eus- tace”’ (Pl. 298) in the National Gallery is like a square foot cutPLATE 29(A) Sala degli Sposi, Castello di Corte. Mantua. (Alinari) (B) Mantegna. The Gon- ly. Sala degli Sposi, zaga Family Castello di Corte. Mantua. (Anderson) (C) Mantegna. Parnassus. Le (Alinari) uvre, Paris.(Alinari)NORTH ITALIAN PAINTING 121 from a mille-fleurs tapestry. The scene is shown in a steep per- spective without sky. Here and there is a fleck of bright colour, blue, gold, or crimson, but as a whole the effect depends on the pattern of golden-ochre animals on a ground of bronze and bronze- green. The painter feels none of the trammels of naturalism; bird, beast, tree, and water follow each other with delightful in- consequence. Yet the study of animals is both truthful and decorative, not only their shapes are observed, but their stat- uesque poses. We are made aware of their keen senses and their timidities. Such study of naturalistic details has progressed far without any corresponding study of naturalistic effects. Pi- sanello also delighted in courtly ceremony, which he enlivened by his secular feeling, as may be seen in the frescos in Verona showing St. George liberating the Princess. Fry says, “He effected for art the change from the threadbare vestments of an ecclesiasti- cal academician to the modish garments of contemporary chivalry.” Pisanello had some local followers, but Padua become the in- fluential centre during the fifteenth century. The city had a proud historic tradition extending back to the time of Augustus, and in the thirteenth century, when the university was established, it became a famous seat of learning. The intellectual outlook was therefore not unlike that of Florence and the enthusiasm for antiquity rivalled that of the Tuscan city. It is a curious fact that little local interest seems to have been aroused in consequence of Giotto’s stay in Padua, as there was practically no general awaken- ing until the middle of the fifteenth century, when the city became famous for its school of art under the direction of Squarcione, a classical enthusiast intent upon overthrowing the medieval tradi- tion and encouraging naturalistic studies. His fame as a teacher was widespread and his school was attended by students from be- yond the Alps. Squarcione had brought together a collection of classical marbles for the instruction and information of his pupils, but his method of teaching was limited, and painters who were trained entirely by him never wholly freed themselves from his pedantic style. A strong initiative was necessary to acquire from other sources qualities essential to a balanced develop- ment. This was recognized by Mantegna (1431-1506), who was the one great master that the school produced. The presence of contemporary Florentine artists in Padua, es- pecially of Donatello brought Mantegna into contact with one of the finest creative minds of the Early Renaissance, supplying an element of inspiration lacking in the teaching of Squarcione.122 THE GREAT PAINTERS The presence of Jacopo Bellini and his two sons, who were es- tablished there for several years, was a further incentive to naturalistic studies. Mantegna was drawn into close connection with this family of great painters, and before 1453 married Jacopo’s daughter. Under these influences his style broadened, while the love of antiquity instilled by Squarcione remained a leading characteristic. Mantegna’s classicism had the seriousness of a religious cult. It was a determined effort to reconstruct the ancient world. In this he differed wholly from the Florentine painter, who often used a classical subject as a pretext for technical experiment. Better than his contemporaries, he succeeded in penetrating the mists that obscured the past and in producing works which the Romans themselves might have understood. It was his inten- tion to reproduce accurately the costumes and trappings of the past. His action is staged in columned courts or against trium- phal arches. Simeon circumcises the Child in a marble hall that might be a Roman bath. St. Sebastian and St. Christopher are bound against Roman pilasters, on which carved ornament is executed with zealous care for every antique motive of design, and the long “Triumph of Caesar’’ is overburdened with the tro- phies borne before him. For the first time an artist had arisen whose enthusiasm for antiquity was archaeological. Such a standpoint has obvious dangers. A master cannot afford to be so intent upon the problem of reconstruction as to lose touch with his own time. The artist in Mantegna is sometimes lost in the antiquarian. It is dangerous to study his work exclusively in reproduction even if we know the originals, for their colour fades from our mem- ory and we begin to think of his painting as hard and sharp, his world as stern and unyielding. It is a different effect that colour gives to his pictures. In the Eremitani frescos and the “St. Sebastian” of the Louvre the pale hues suggest Puvis de Chavannes rather than his contemporaries; in the latter picture, it is the extreme delicacy of the tone relations which gives so much beauty that the harsh realism of the head is overlooked and one forgets the martyr’s pains. In the Uffizi triptych, the panels sparkle with brilliance, the orange-yellows particularly never fade from the memory. The whole surface is like enamel. In the “Death of the Virgin” the night sky and the subdued colours echo the mood of the mourners. On the other hand, the half-length Madonnas, such as that at Bergamo, seem to be exhaled from the canvas.NORTH ITALIAN PAINTING 123 They have closely related values and a soft mealy surface, caused by the employment of the Venetian method of painting with water- colour on canvas (Fry). In the frescos executed in the Eremitani in 1459, Mantegna shows himself the disciple of Donatello and Uccello. His figures appear to be hewn from a solid material and forcibly thrown out by contrasts of light and shade; in some cases sculpturesque effects are deliberately imitated. In the picture showing St. James on the way to martyrdom he experiments with the sculp- turesque point of sight. The incident is pictured as if it took place on a high balcony above the spectator’s eye. As a result, only the figures in the immediate foreground are seen in full length. His interest in creating an illusion through the use of foreshortening is also illustrated in the “Martyrdom of St. James,” where a rod is painted in such a way that it appears to be on the outer surface of the picture plane and the bystander who leans over it projects into the room. These are doubtful experiments because they tend to destroy the convention of pictorial art, as is the case when actors address their remarks to the audience instead of to each other. Remarkable for so early a date is the composition in the “ Bap- tism of Hermogenes” and in “St. James before the Emperor.” The stage is cleared for the action which takes place in the middle distance beyond an open space; the subordinate figures occupy posi- tions at each side. It will be seen by comparing the illustrations that this is far in advance of contemporary work. Indeed, Kris- teller compares it to the practice of Raphael fifty years later (see “Disputa”’ [Pl. 32B and Pl. 26a)). The enthroned “‘Madonna” of St. Zeno should be studied as an important altar-piece of this period. It shows characteristic composition and figure drawing. The Renaissance architecture of the carved frame appears to constitute the entrance to the hall where the Virgin is enthroned. Identical architectural motives are repeated in the painted background. By this means the artist compels the eye to recognize frame and picture as indivisible. The predella panel representing the “Crucifixion” (Pl. 29c) is now in the Louvre. In spite of its small dimensions, it is one of Mantegna’s greatest works. His science, his intellectual power, and his impersonal interpretation give force to the conception. The crucified figures are raised high above the crowd on the three crosses which cut through the panel with emphatic vertical lines; behind them sweep the opposing diagonals of the groups. Per-124 THE GREAT PAINTERS spective and colour values create three planes of depth—the paved court, the distant city, and the pale green hill. Light falls from the upper right. The shadows on the warm brown rocks are deep plum. The picture is alive with colour: vermilions, rose, orange, yellow, blues, and deep bronze-green, all offset by the claret shadows. Certain compositional motives as well as the proportions of the long slender figures are derived from Jacopo Bellini. The figure of Christ is uncompromisingly drawn, stern and terrible, impersonal and hence doubly impressive. At the left is the rectangular group of women surrounding the old and broken form of his mother, collapsing as a dead weight. St. John, a terminal figure in the immediate foreground, wrings his hands in bitter disappointment and grief. On the other side the armoured warriors cast dice, oblivious of the conscience-stricken centurion gazing upon the Redeemer. This inward-leading figure balances St. John. Behind the central cross the horses and soldiers clank down the paved hill. The background shows the same relentlessness un- softened by any tree or shrub. Even Signorelli mitigated such scenes by the tenderness of a distant burial or a delicate Umbrian tree against the sky. This picture stands alone in its stern solem- nity. The effect is tremendous. Mantegna makes the power of Rome his subject—Rome fulfilling destiny. This is typical not only of the Paduan period of Mantegna’s work, but of the man himself and his outlook on the world. In these examples, executed while Botticelli and Ghirlandajo were still boys, we recognize the son of Florentine science. About 1460 Mantegna left Padua to become court painter for Ludovico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a position he retained during more than forty years. He continued to produce altar- pieces and devotional panels, but the most important works of this period are the decoration of the Sala degli Sposi in the castle of Mantua and the “Triumph of Caesar.” The frescos of the Sala degli Sposi (Pl. 30a), executed in 1474, form the most important secular decoration remaining from the fifteenth century. The small room is vaulted and the walls and ceiling have been treated in such a way that as we pass through the door we seem to enter a kind of pavilion. The room is inadequately lighted but the painter has ingeniously made capital of this dis- advantage. From the corbels which support the vaulting he painted rods carrying curtains simulating brocaded velvet, hanging in rich magnificence. On the dark walls these form a beautifulNORTH ITALIAN PAINTING 125 decoration in themselves, stretched from pilaster to pilaster. Where the light justifies a figure composition the curtains are drawn aside and a shallow stage is revealed, upon which the members of the ducal family are seen in the occupations of every- day life. Heavy garlands of fruits and leaves are festooned from the crown of each lunette, so that the whole room appears to be hung with Christmas greens. From the moment of entrance, the eye travels upwards to the novel ceiling decoration. The vaulted surfaces are painted to simulate gilded stucco modelled in high relief. This cool but sumptuous monotone sets off with strong effect the wonderful “eye”’ in the central compartment, a painted opening through which one sees the blue sky and a great white cloud passing over- head. Mantegna had not been to Rome when he designed this room, but he must have been familiar with the plan and lighting of the Pantheon and found in it his inspiration. The opening is finished by a parapet over which intent faces are looking down into the room. The picture is so arranged that the figures seem to be lighted from the sky above them, that is, the source of light appears to be in the picture itself. This is one of the first instances in which ceiling design assumed the importance it retained in all later interiors and the experiment here made of creating an illusion had important consequences in later art. The originality shown in the arrangement of the room is equalled in that of the family portraits. Restoration has coarsened the colour and the effect, but the main composition remains as the painter designed it. The principal group, above the mantel- piece, is seated in a garden court. The curtain has been drawn sharply to the left and appears to pass behind the painted pilaster. The figures are pushed well to the front, those in the foreground almost encroaching upon the space of the actual room; beyond the pilaster at the right the brocaded curtain forms a background for the courtiers mounting the stairs. Whether a special incident is represented we do not know, but in any case the great interest of the picture is in its expression of permanent qualities. Kris- teller says: “What Mantegna gives in his personages is almost more biography than characterization. He sums up with clearness and precision the traits that express their physical and spiritual conditions and the habits of their lives, nay, their whole life history.” For analogous examples one must go far afield. This conception is nearer to Hals or to the eighteenth century than to Mantegna’s contemporaries (PI. 30s).ST 126 THE GREAT PAINTERS On the entrance wall the scenes are embraced in an open loggia overlooking a highly varied stretch of country in which the char- acteristic forms of the medieval Italian landscape are broken by heights and natural bridges and enriched by towns and magnif- icent Roman ruins. These frescos are brought lower on the wall than the main group, but the original point of sight is retained, so that more of the ground space is visible than in the former picture. At the left stand the attendant grooms holding the great charger from which the marquis has dismounted. A number of blooded hounds remind us of the famous kennels kept by certain great Italian families (as Ercole d’Este). Behind them rises a high hedge of fruit-trees, so favourite a motive for North Italian backgrounds. Beyond the doorway to the right is the principal theme, the family of the duke greeting the oldest son, Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, a famous prince of the church. The scene depicted seems to be his triumphal entrance into Mantua, which took place in 1472, the duke and his retinue riding some miles outside the city that they might accompany the cardinal on his entry into Mantua. In this instance the brocaded curtain is thrust behind the corner partition above the level of the heads and conforms to the severe compositional motive of uprights used in the design. A tall tree in excellent proportion to the figures is carefully drawn and its full foliage enriches the upper part of the picture. The land- scape, recalling that in the “Death of St. James,” is arranged in formal lines encircling the citadel. Medieval and Roman buildings and sculptural monuments form a kind of allegorical setting for these Renaissance humanists and poets. Above the entrance door with its mouldings utilized as a pedestal, appears a group of putti supporting the dedicatory inscription “To the glory of Ludovico II., Marquis of Mantua. . . .” The fluttering movement here is in contrast to the staid sobriety of the portrait groups. Even the curtain is twisted sharply in a spiral. The forms of the putti are somewhat heavy, but their movement is admirably rendered and the painter has given them special charm with their moth and butterfly wings. So much space devoted to one piece of work is justified by its exceptional interest and originality. Kristeller says, “There are few creations of such epoch-making significance in the history of painting as the frescos in this small apartment.” Unfortu- nately, they are in poor preservation and neglected, but they are so complete, so right, so eloquent of Renaissance culture that too much emphasis can hardly be placed on them.NORTH ITALIAN PAINTING 127 At the height of his career Mantegna executed the imposing “Triumph of Caesar” (Hampton Court), a procession of figures passing through nine panels, perhaps intended as stage setting for the revived classical dramas. The composition is full of variety and interest but repainting has almost entirely destroyed the original surface. The rhythms of this procession in martial time contrast with the infectious dance of the nymphs in the “‘ Parnassus” (Pl. 30c). Here movement is entirely free from the angularity usual with Florentine painters and there is no sense of tension. The Graces approach classical types of mature beauty, being natural in pro- portion and well developed. They touch the ground with lightest tread because they are beautiful dancers, but it is real bodies of flesh and blood that are so lightly poised. The draperies ac- centuate the movement and the painter has simplified them as compared with other examples where he apparently moistened the material so that it should cling to the bodies. The measured gaiety of the theme is carried out in the colour. The distance is a deep green-blue, the late sunlight throws long shadows on the tender pea-green grass of the foreground, with which the parti-coloured costumes of the dancers are in complete accord. The highest attainment of pure classic beauty in Mantegna’s work is found in a finished drawing in the Uffizi representing Judith with the head of Holofernes. The sheet inscribed with the master’s name and the date 1491 is an example of great beauty of composition. It might be a study for bas-relief, so carefully has it been balanced. Judith, her back turned to the spectator, stands in a statuesque pose, her sword still firmly grasped. She slips the head of Holofernes—held with delicate disdain—into the open sack thrust forward by her accomplice, a swarthy negro with turbaned head and great hoop earrings. This heavy face offsets Judith’s clear-cut profile with loose falling ringlets, which may well have been suggested by some classic coin. The beautiful proportion of the skull is revealed by the fillet which confines her hair, the ends fluttering down in a long ribbon describing ornate but flat curves against the background. Mantegna was sixty-five when he painted the “Victory Ma- donna” (PI. 31a) of the Louvre. It exhibits the matured talent of the artist, his inventive faculties unimpaired. It is a long way from the static formality and iron-like figures of the St. Zeno altar-piece to this festive enthronement which might be selected as a typical altar-piece of the North Italian School, and one inSw 128 THE GREAT PAINTERS which the ideal reached its perfect expression. The Virgin’s figure is lifted high on its pedestal, decorated with bas-reliefs. Her mantle forms a hood about her face, which is grave and beautiful. With her left hand she supports the Child standing on her knee, as she bends in the opposite direction to extend to the kneeling donor a gracious benediction. The Virgin thus subordinates herself to the Child, who becomes the central ob- ject of worship. In this case, Mantegna has given him more winning human charm than usual. The aged St. Elizabeth, kneeling in the foreground, is such a type as may be seen in Italy or Spain where, in losing the fulness of youth, the face has acquired a kind of grandeur from the structure of the bones. The donor, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, who is present as a little snub-nosed boy in the decorations of the Sala degli Sposi, ex- hibits the same extraordinary features in this striking portrait of the armoured knight. About the throne stand heroic warriors looking like knights of the Niebelungenlied, with their Teutonic features and rope-like hair. The group stands in an “apse of dark green foliage in which great golden fruits gleam out and birds sit and sing against the sky” (Cruttwell). Deep arbor- vitae greens recur throughout the composition, which is bright- ened with vermilion in dispersed areas, orange-yellow and pale wine colour. Disciplined lives are shown in a disciplined art— fitting the dignity of human life as Marcus Aurelius would have conceived it, and fitting the solemnity of ecclesiastical ceremony. Mantegna painted numerous devotional Madonnas, among them several of unusual character. The example at Bergamo is so strange that it requires some time for adjustment to its mood of other-worldliness, unexpected in the work of a man generally intent upon the realization of the material world. It has a deep fascination and comes nearer to the Orient in its mystic content than any other Italian painting. During nearly half a century this great artist was engaged in the active practice of his profession. In all that time there is never a sign of weakness or uncertainty; his ability develops from year to year, his horizons broaden, and his creative impulse never fails.CHAPTER XV CORREGGIO Padua was the centre of inspiration for North Italian painting in the second half of the fifteenth century. Especially in the case of Ferrarese painters was this teaching productive of im- portant results. Cosimo Tura (1430-1495), a pupil of Squarcione, is a pre- eminent example. Tura made a virtue of Paduan defects and produced some striking results. He is always extreme, delighting in eccentric forms, metallic sharpness, and ugly types. Some- times he seems wilfully bizarre, as in the allegorical figure in the National Gallery with its extraordinary throne of gilded tin! At other times, as in the “ Pieta” of the Louvre, the deep colour in a closely related scheme of low value draws together and simplifies his form. In this case, the group has the actuality of polychromed sculpture, an effect which is enhanced by the use of the sculpturesque point of sight. There is something bitter about his style, which is ugly without being repulsive. One feels as if its bitterness had a remedial virtue. Berenson characterizes him by saying, “His world is an anvil; his perception is a hammer.” This harshness is somewhat less marked in Tura’s pupil, Cossa (c. 1435-1480), whose art was given a greater breadth as a result of contact with Piero della Francesca. The decoration of the Schifanoia Palace in Ferrara affords a most interesting example of work developing from these diverse influences. The execution of these frescos was, however, chiefly in the hands of assistants, and the impressive character of the master himself may better be studied in the beautiful decorative painting personifying Autumn (Berlin), a powerful female figure laden with grapes, who towers above a low-lying distant landscape. In the next generation, virility is gradually replaced by an enervating sentimentality well illustrated in the style of Costa (1460-1535). Before he moved to Bologna in 1483, Costa gave the first direction to the art of Dosso Dossi, which, enriched later by other contacts, developed into a style of much originality (see “Circe,” Borghese Gallery). In Bologna, Costa formed a fartner- 129130 THE GREAT PAINTERS ship with the goldsmith Francia (1450-1517), who took up paint- ing rather late in life and produced works with a smoothness of finish and soft sentimentality often irritating by their impecca- bility. The impressive altar-piece of the “‘ Virgin and St. Anne” (National Gallery) strongly recalls the work of Perugino. It is gracious and charming but too artificial and calculated. In the early years of the sixteenth century, many local artists were deflected from their normal course by the influence of the great personalities of the High Renaissance. In Milan, the art of the old Lombard school, under the leadership of Foppa, was to a great extent supplanted by Leonardo’s influence. Among Leonardo’s immediate followers were Ambrogio da Predis, Bol- trafho and Solario. Other painters of the older generation modi- fied their style as a result of his influence. This is illustrated in the work of Luini and in that of Sodoma, a painter of Piedmont. In other localities, as in Bologna, the arrival of Raphael’s great altar-pieces excited universal enthusiasm and was followed by an exodus to Rome of painters desirous to receive his instruction (Ricci). Before 1500 many provincial artists were attracted to Venice by the fame of Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini. The gathering in that centre increased during the sixteenth century as Titian’s name became more and more widely cele- brated. In contrast to this work of a more or less derivative character is the art of Correggio, which arose unheralded in a region hitherto barren of an important art movement—that of Parma. Antonio Allegri, one of the most exceptionally gifted painters of the Renais- sance (1494-1534), was named from the village of his birth, Correggio. Very little is known of Correggio’s first masters, but he appears, early in life, to have visited Mantua, where the work of Mantegna and of Costa became his inspiration. Temperamentally no two men could be farther apart than Mantegna and Correggio, but early acquaintance with the master’s works undoubtedly sug- gested the direction in which the younger man chose to turn his energies. Twenty years after the “Victory Madonna” was com- pleted, Correggio painted the “Madonna Enthroned with St. Francis,” now in the Dresden Gallery (Pl. 32a). The interval of time is evident; the picture is more open and spacious, and the poses are more suave than in the fifteenth century. The land- scape and the forms and attitudes of the foreground saints recall Umbria. The inheritance is strong in this case, although theCORREGGIO 131 individual qualities of Correggio’s style are already apparent. The Virgin, for whom Mantegna’s figure has been the direct inspiration, is silhouetted against the light, and the firm gracious- ness of her gesture is accentuated. The effect is queenly, as it was with Mantegna. Light surrounds her, a shimmering pale gold. ‘Here in peace, in the peace of summer and through its fragrant air, now one, now two, anon a shoal, of air-swimming children, who have no need of wings, who have no need of clothes, who have no need of parents, glide in, glide out”? (Sturge Moore). The cardinals, green-blues, and umbers belong in range and quality to the decorative colour of the fifteenth century. The delicate adjustment of old and new elements give the work great loveliness. Of the same period is the picture in the Ufhzi, formerly attrib- uted to Titian, the ““Madonna and Child in Glory.” Happy content and feminine beauty have developed here, and the pic- ture has an enchanting grace and refinement. The Child is like an exquisite jewel, the Mother serene but radiant. One other example shows decorative motives derived from Mantua and emerging entirely transformed in the care-free art of Correggio. He decorated an apartment in the Convent of San Paolo in Parma, enlarging the small square room into a garden bower. The ceiling is a dome divided by gilded ribs into concave compartments like melon sections. These the artist has adorned with trellises of verdure, in which apertures open revealing baby putti struggling in a riotous game (Pl. 31D). The shape of the openings is repeated by the light bunches of fruit above, and at the centre ribbons are gathered together to form a geometric design which suggests Leonardo. The planes of the decoration are preserved by the simple colour scheme of dark blue-green foliage, grey-blue sky, and warm tones of flesh, fruits, and ribbons. The curved sections of the wall below are decorated with figures in monochrome. The design has a fresh- ness, variety, and beauty all its own. The garland of childish forms is full of unstudied grace; the faces are those of really beau- tiful children, with large eyes, tumbled curly hair, and rollicking smile, their play bubbling over with merriment. How the abbess must have delighted in this room! Structure in this instance was conditioned by the architectural form of the vaulted room itself. The painter could not do other- wise than accept it and make his design conform to it. Correggio enriched the effect by emphasizing concentric circles as a second-132 THE GREAT PAINTERS ary movement. In his next ceiling design, that of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, the semi-spherical dome was without subdivisions, and the artist was free to choose his own anatomy of pattern. It is indicative of the direction in which his interests were tending that he did away entirely with vertical emphasis and relied solely upon a pattern of concentric circles formed by his figure groups. The scene represents the Ascension, treated as if actually taking place above our heads, so that Correggio here carried to their logical conclusion the experiments begun by Melozzo da Forli and by Mantegna. The outer circle is composed of the clouds upon which the heavenly hosts are seated. This the painter has built out so solidly against the upper illuminated sky that the shape of the dome itself seems to have been altered and the area contracted. This is in contrast to San Paolo, where the room appeared to be enlarged by the decoration. The effect of the great multitude seen from below is extraordinary. There is no mystery; they are all figures of flesh and blood. They have splendid physique, free and grace- ful movement, and little that is intellectual or spiritual, although there are types of brilliant and radiant beauty among them. The boy angels plunge in and out through the clouds as if this were their native element. This was painted within a decade of Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, from which it differs in every respect: in the application of the “illusionist ” point of sight, in the massing of light and shadow as a unifying basis for the grouping, and in the mood of joyous irresponsibility. Correggio was very original and very successful in this instance, but when immediately afterwards, he was employed to decorate the dome of the Cathedral of Parma, where, in similar fashion, he represented the Assumption, he lost the sense of propriety in his delight in problems of foreshortening and sacrificed essential qualities—simplicity, and restraint. All the extravagances of Bernini and the noisy vehemence of the Baroque are already apparent. Individual motives of great beauty are lost in the general confusion. Berenson shows that some of Correggio’s most successful smaller works were based upon figures drawn from such confused groups. “All they need is isolation.” This is illustrated in the lovely idyll of Ganymede. The figure repeats an angelic youth from one of the pendentives of San Giovanni Evangelista. Correggio, free from all neo-Platonic mysticism, all regrets and religious aspirations, was a true interpreter of Greek myth. SuchCORREGGIO 133 figures and conceptions as the “ Danaé” of the Borghese Gallery (Pl. 32c) recall the charm of fourth century terra-cottas on the one hand and the eighteenth century in France on the other, but in Correggio’s painting the silvery beauty of the colour casts a spell of pure poetry about the little figure who is no longer a thing of sense but a creature of the artistic imagination. No doubt a similar success in lifting the subject into the realm of fantasy accounts for the charm of the ‘‘Leda,” in which Correg- gio has treated the myth without a breath of indelicacy. The central group is isolated by line and mass from the background of trees. The picture embodies the “sylvan” spirit, the leaves swaying and light flickering across the beautiful young flesh; a passing sensation creates an answering expression on the face— both are equally fleeting and superficial. It is all rhythm and flowing ease. Ground and trees are golden brown which is carried into the flesh in shadow and lost in its cool ivory lights. The sky is luminous green-blue, the mountains blue-green. There are a few touches of local colour: the Millet blue of the figure behind Leda, and the saffron pink of the one behind her, Leda’s mantle is an ashen attar of rose—no words can describe the subtle play of the colour which Correggio employs. Although Correggio died in 1534, it is impossible to study his work without being conscious of the break with the convention of earlier painting. The tendency to astonish which constituted the essential characteristic of the Baroque is already well devel- oped. This is illustrated in all his typical altar-pieces, in which he departs more and more from the old balanced composition. For the emphasis on the median line and equal balance, whether strictly symmetric or unsymmetric, Correggio substitutes a strong diagonal from corner to corner of his picture, or swings the masses into the form of an S. The whole composition becomes uneasy and the poses melodramatic. It is with later art that we are obliged to compare his work, with the seventeenth century in composition and again with the eighteenth century French art in conception. There is no other Italian artist whose work shows so dainty a sophistication, such small and perfectly formed hands, with their pink finger tips, such bright-eyed invitation. It is in the execution of bits here and there that Correggio is ravishing and there is no canvas of his where they may not be found. All the gaiety and happiness of these sylvan creatures without mind or soul gathers about the pearly child—but that child is the Christ Child, not Dionysius, as one might expect!a 134 THE GREAT PAINTERS From his earliest canvases Correggio shows his interest in light and this, combined with beauty and originality of colour, is nowhere better illustrated than in the “‘ Holy Night” in Dresden (Pl. 318). It seems an answer to the fiat, “Let there be Light, and there was Light.” The effect is more real than any produced by modern impressionism, and the contrast of this radiance with night out-of-doors, its quiet and its dew, forms the real beauty of a picture in which the figures are affected and exaggerated. Brilliance and clarity of colour are shown at their best in the mystic “Marriage of St. Catherine” in the Louvre (Pl. 31), which is like Venetian glass. We seem to see the group through an amber transparency; the gold of the frame appears dull and lifeless beside the gold of the flesh tints. The limpid quality must be the result of glazes used over a white ground. The shadows are perfectly defined; there is no uncertainty, yet they seem like cloud shadows marking topography; they conceal no forms, but rather increase their beauty by the color relation, so that the eye passes with enchantment from light to shadow realizing that there is a common medium in the flesh itself. Hair, trees, and landscape are of closely related tones. Haze veils the brilliance of the sky. The Virgin’s dress is rose terra-cotta, her robe dullish peacock blue. The shadow behind 1s deep but vibrating. One is tempted to pass from picture to picture, led on by charm of colour and inviting types, but the master’s style has been sufficiently illustrated. Throughout his life Correggio employs the theme of masculine strength and feminine delicacy in a man- ner comparable to that of the sculptors of Louis XV.’s days. He chooses models lovely and engaging in themselves, but such is the beauty of his colour and the magic of his lighting—now sunlight, now moonlight—that he lifts these earthly types to captivating loveliness by his genius as a painter, for “in the art of paint- ing there was no secret hidden from him. . . . Correggio . gathered together as in a posy the jocund vigour of Emilian poets and painters” (Ricci). As Raphael chose the beautiful, and Michelangelo the heroic, so Correggio chose the dainty.CHAPTER XVI EARLY VENETIAN PAINTING With the exception of the art of Correggio it was the intellectual side of the Italian Renaissance that furnished the impetus in the period so far studied, but the inventive genius of Italy was by no means exhausted in this one phase. Thereafter the stimulus came from another source, however, for flesh as well as intellect was heir to the new freedom; the senses awoke later only because they had been so long repressed under the ban of religion. Venice became to the art of the sixteenth century what Florence had been to that of the fifteenth century. She was not, however, an intellectual centre but a trade centre; her honoured citizens were not scholars but merchant princes for whom the classical revival had little interest. Rising from the sea like Venus, beautiful, picturesque, and gay, Venice reflected in her art the opulence of her surroundings; everything she touched became picturesque. Painters developing here would necessarily have other aims and conceptions of beauty than those of Florence or Padua. Very reluctant at first to break with old tradition, Venice outdistanced all contemporaries when the naturalistic impulse was finally ac- cepted. Separated from the mainland and at home on the sea, she found intercourse as easy with East as with West. Venice “carried to the East arms and merchandise and Byzantium sent back ar- chitects and mosaicists” (Molmente). This resulted in the per- sistence of Byzantine characteristics here long after they had been abandoned elsewhere in Italy. The names and records of painters were kept from an early date, but these men were in reality artisans and all may be grouped together as illustrating the usual features of Byzantine art. The works produced under this impulse were very splendid in a purely omamental sense. Refulgent ornaments of an altar, they have been called. Magnificent carved and gilded frames in several storeys, with pinnacles and finials, provided a subordinate place only for the painted panel which fulfilled its function successfully by the mere sparkle of its colour against a gold ground. The struggle between Byzantine and Western elements, which ao 135136 THE GREAT PAINTERS in other Italian schools took place during the thirteenth century, was here prolonged for a hundred years. But as elsewhere in north Italy, the Venetians modified the severity of the Byzantine formulas by Gothic grace. There is nothing in Venice to cor- respond to the genre painting of the fourteenth century seen else- where; it is as though a chapter in the historical development had been omitted. The same traditionary type of work was still being produced in the first half of the fifteenth century when Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello of Verona were summoned by the Venetian Government to renovate the frescos of the Ducal Palace. Even as early as the visit of these painters, representations of the history of the Venetian Republic decorated the walls of the palace and each of them added a new incident to the proud record of the city. The decorations of this building, if they survived, would furnish priceless material for a history of Venetian painting, but periodically they were destroyed by fire. This fact must be borne in mind when we are inclined to think of the painting of Venice in the fifteenth century as restricted to devotional subjects. Although coming from different parts of the country, Gentile and Pisanello had inherited in common the medieval tradition. In their work, charm of sentiment and self-conscious Gothic line was combined with ‘‘a new fresh sentiment of natural beauty” (Testi). Painters of a city where even the routine of everyday life is transformed into pageantry could not remain unaffected by the appeal of human joyousness in such work, yet it was some years before any noticeable change appeared in local painting, which remained medieval in character even beyond 1450. Before this date, however, the founders had appeared of the two most important bottegas of the fifteenth century, those of the Vivarini and of the Bellini, and the new impulse was felt both by Antonio of Murano (active 1440-1464) and by Jacopo Bellini (active 1430- 1470). “They later separated from one another and proceeded by different routes; the first, rich and decorative, tended to strengthen the group of artists at Murano, the other, profound and illustrative, led the way to the true Venetian School,” Ricci says of their styles. These artists at Murano who originally signed themselves simply “da Murano” afterward added the surname Vivarini, which in consequence is sometimes applied to the earlier painters of the Muranese group, as well as to the later members of the school. In order to make their identity quite clear, the sequence of artists might be listed as follows: (1) Antonio da Murano, who worked at first in partnership with (2) GiovanniPLatE 33 (4) Antonello d Condottiere. I (C) Antonio da Murano. Adoration of the Kings. Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin. >) Reinthal and Newman, New York)EARLY VENETIAN PAINTING M37. d’Alemagna, whose style as well as his name proves his German origin. Later Giovanni’s name disappeared from the signatures and his place was taken by (3) Bartolommeo Vivarini, the younger brother of Antonio da Murano. The activities of the school were continued into the sixteenth century by (4) Alvise or Luigi Vivarini, the nephew of Bartolommeo. For the sake of clearness we will look first at the work of the Vivarini and later speak of the contemporary productions of the Bellini family. Italian characteristics are pronounced in the delightful ‘‘ Adora- tion” in Berlin (Pl. 33c), which shows the influence of Gentile and Pisanello and is apparently the independent work of Antonio da Murano before his association with Giovanni. The decorative convention is strong and nature makes no exactions. No light and shade disturb the flatness, and the stucco ornaments are not out of place. The brown and olive colouring of the background is more like intarsia than like landscape. It resembles some oriental pageant such as the Durbar, seen through many mellowing folds of gauze. The “Madonna Enthroned” in the Venetian Academy (1446) illustrates the style of the first partnership and in this instance the German characteristics predominate—notice the ornate “‘carpen- try’ form of the throne and the design of the parapet, the propor- tions of the figures and their lack of modelling, and the softly rounded, expressionless facial types. Influence of the Paduan school is evident in the work of Bartolommeo (active 1450-1499), after the middle of the fifteenth century. In the “Madonna” of 1464 in Naples (Pl. 34a), the design of the throne and its relief decoration, the forms of the putti, the magnificent brocades, and the garlands of flowers are all el- oquent of Paduan contacts. But even here Bartolommeo shows distinctive marks of the true Venetian painter, chief among which is the feeling for the mature rounded curves of the body, appearing formless in the work of the earlier painters, but with him suggesting the sensuous direction in which Venetian art tended. The enchanting ‘‘Adoration” belonging to Mr. Morgan is an outcome of the influence of Gentile and Pisanello. The formality of the devotional Byzantine Madonna was not forgotten and this, combined with the new suggestive form, resulted in some very lovely examples like that belonging to Mr. Platt. Phenomenally long from knee to shoulder, the contours of the figure are stately. The Virgin is clad in a soft rose under-dress138 THE GREAT PAINTERS and a deep green mantle, falling about her in simple folds. The face has a childlike roundness and exquisite delicacy of skin. The Christ Child and the cherubs wear the curious little belted tunics used by the Paduan painters, and the heavily bunched fruit gar- lands which hang from the throne are also Paduan motives. The preferences of Bartolommeo led him to develop on the painterly rather than the decorative side. He was Venetian in his sentiment, in his matured forms, in rich and harmonious colour, and in the combination of unidealized types with hieratic pose. As a product of the influence of the Paduan and Muranese schools, the work of Carlo Crivelli (1440-1493) should be men- tioned here. He was busy in Venice until about 1470. Soon after he left the city, and remained during the rest of his life in the hill towns of the Marches, where he left numerous anconas and small devotional pictures perpetuating a style long since gone out of vogue in Venice. He had a genius for expressing what he saw in terms of pure, almost heraldic, design and his unexcelled crafts- manship enabled him to create an entirely individual stylistic art. Crivelli’s treatment of form was not unlike that of the ancient Assyrians; for him, too, bones, muscles, tendons, veins, hair, and even facial expression, were primarily interesting as pattern and only secondarily as representation. Sometimes even flesh forms seem to have been achieved only after a struggle as with a resistant material like metal; at others the imitation of substances such as jewels or tears is so exact as to be deceptive. A thoroughly characteristic example is the “Pieta” of the Metropolitan Mu- seum (Pl. 34c), where the extreme exaggeration of frenzied grief is saved from melodrama by a fierce virility and primitive passion. His mannerisms of gesture are shown in the Virgin’s hand; ex- pression is almost a grimace in all the faces; stylistic treatment of form is well illustrated in the body of Christ. The quality of the colour is characteristic, as is this wonderful manipulation of the tempera medium, with which he produced a surface as perfect as porcelain. At the same time, he achieved with this exacting medium a plastic breadth and a luminosity of shadow which are astonishing. Crivelli brought the tempera technique to an un- equalled perfection. Several of his loveliest productions are in the Brera in Milan: narrow panels with the enthroned Madonna set in a strange profusion of fruits and magnificent brocades, or enchanting altar- pieces splendid in the lustre of jewelled surfaces, with saints who seem visitants from some romantic court of love.EARLY VENETIAN PAINTING 139 He left Venice about 1470, immediately before the visit of Antonello da Messina (c. 1430-1479) which had such important consequences for the school. As his name implies, this painter was a native of Sicily, but he had come into direct contact with Flemish painters and had acquired the mastery of their technical method, which differed from that in use in his own country. Oil as a medium was not new to Italian painters, for even Cennino Cennini gives directions as to its preparation and use, but the mixture or method employed in Flanders had apparently been as little understood heretofore by the Italians as it is by us to- day. That some new features were revealed to them in the method of Antonello is proved by the way in which the practice of contemporary Venetian painters changed at this time. Early in the sixteenth century, the Flemish method was superseded by what may be called oil-painting in the modern sense of the term. This came about largely as a result of improved methods of distillation which made turpentine or petroleum generally avail- able (Laurie). But Antonello had far more important qualifications as an artist than those of a merely technical nature. He stands apart from the popular schools of Italy and exhibits in his work both the strength of his personal conceptions and the technical achievements derived from Flemish teaching, whether or not he visited the Low Countries. His vivid manner of seeing and delineating form is illustrated in numerous portraits of the same virile type studied by Florentine realists. He represents the iron-like armature of the heads, the set jaws, and the frank bravado, as in the example in the Louvre (PI. 33a). The mask of the face is relieved against a dark ground and the modelling of the planes broadly defined by light and shade. The colour is clear and liquid. Here the hair is chestnut brown, the eyes of the same colour and full of life. In his religious pictures, he shows a very different side, some- times making a poignant appeal, as in the “Crucifixion” of the National Gallery where he has interpreted “The End.” Mary and John represent watchers for whom hope has gone out, Mary with her hands on her knees looking straight before her, John with arms opened out as he gazes upward as if to question what it all means. The picture is as motionless as a Perugino but charged with intense feeling. Returning from this digression to the painters of the Venetian school, we-find the work of the Muranese artists carried into the140 THE GREAT PAINTERS sixteenth century by Alvise Vivarini (active 1461-1503), who executed historical scenes in the Ducal Palace as well as the portraits and the ecclesiastical subjects which survive. In work- ing out problems of grouping, Berenson says, he was the most successful up to his time in the Venetian school. This is well illustrated in the enthroned Madonnas with the assembled saints. But although his sincerity is evident and the grouping is carefully planned, there is a certain constraint which prevents our full enjoyment. In the Berlin Museum, the “Enthroned Madonna,” under a vaulted niche decorated with gold mosaic, has great rich- ness and beauty of colour and is strong in its effects of lighting. The Virgin adoring the Child asleep on her knees, a motive of North Italian origin, became as popular in Venetian painting as was the Child lying on the grass before the kneeling Virgin in Florentine. It was never more charmingly interpreted than in the “Madonna” by Alvise in the Church of the Redentore (PI. 34p). The enchanting child-angels touch the strings of their imstru- ments very softly, with a full understanding of their grave respon- sibility. Such cherubs play to the Christ Child all through the Venetian school, in which the theme of music recurs constantly, Several peculiarities of treatment which frequently appear in Venetian painting may be noticed in this picture. The Virgin throughout the fifteenth century retains much of the Byzantine solemnity of expression. The heavy drapery, with few excep- tions, is drawn over the head and entirely conceals the hair. The Virgin thus retains more of the devotional character which Florence sacrificed to feminine charm. Half-length figures are general and are often posed behind a parapet on which the Child is supported. A hanging of some kind is in almost universal requisition as a background, endlessly varied according as formal- ity or freedom is to be emphasized. Now a panel of splendid brocade hangs severely as a central motive; now a piece of drapery is carelessly thrown over a curtain rod as in this instance, or 1s even thrown over a wire which bends with its weight; sometimes it is placed at one side and a landscape is shown beyond. Titian uses the great folds of the curtain, pushed sharply to one side, as an effective means of balance for his freer grouping. A late and very impressive work of Alvise is the “ Resurrec- tion” in the Church of San Giorgio in Bragora (Pl. 348). The panel is arched and the towering figure of the Saviour standing on the tomb entirely fills the space. This is one of the greatest conceptions of this subject, in spite of the effeminate type of theEARLY VENETIAN PAINTING I41 Christ and the over-elegant curve of the body. Alvise conceived the Redeemer as rising, triumphant indeed, but serene—rising as he had always expected to do. The miracle is revealed by the effect upon the two subordinate figures, who start back in aston- ishment. There is something Giorgionesque in their radiant joy. It is their movement reinforcing his which makes the upward sweep so compelling. Instances are rare in the treatment of this subject in which the attendant figures either contribute to the movement or enhance the dramatic effect. It is, however, quite impossible to judge the picture aside from the effects of colour and light, in which it is wholly original. The values are very quiet, the colours almost forgotten in the effect of light and atmosphere. The dawn is breaking. At the horizon, the colour is pulsating orange which merges into a clear jade green. The head and shoulders of the figure reach up into the heavens and are seen against the zenith, a grey-green blue, in which the stars have already faded from sight. It is a perfect representation of a sun-illumined sky. The art of the Vivarini family was brought to a close in the work of Alvise, although his influence as a teacher persisted in painters of the next generation.CHAP DER XVIT THE BELLINI It is necessary to turn back to the visit of Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello in the first half of the fifteenth century, for among the young men for whom it was of the utmost importance was Jacopo Bellini (active 1430-1470), the true founder of Venetian painting. It is generally considered that as a young man Jacopo received instruction as well as inspiration from Gentile da Fabriano and that he accompanied him to Florence. After 1450 Jacopo was established for a number of years in Padua and he was also active in the ducal courts of North Italy, where we are told he acquired the title of “‘a second Phidias.”” Among the few paintings which remain three are signed: the “Crucifixion” in Verona, the early “Madonna” in the Academy, Venice, and the “Madonna’”’ in Lovere. Both technical method and draughtsmanship recall Gentile, but the work reveals finer artistic qualities and greater seriousness. It is only since the recovery of two of Jacopo’s sketch-books, however, that it has been possible to form any adequate con- ception of his place in Venetian painting. When Jacopo’s widow died, several books of drawings were left to her son Gentile. Shortly before his death, he willed a book of their father’s draw- ings to his brother Giovanni on condition that the latter com- plete a painting which Gentile left unfinished. It is probable that the sketch-books which we still possess were among those so highly valued by Jacopo’s heirs. The originals are preserved in the British Museum and in the Louvre, the latter being the more advanced. Facsimiles are available in most art libraries, and from them an excellent idea may be gained not only of his astonishing fertility of mind and range of interests but of his technical characteristics as a draughtsman. The subjects embrace everything, and the treatment shows the quick play of Jacopo’s fancy and imagination. Fry points out that he uses motives not revived again until the sixteenth century. There are the usual religious and devotional subjects, 142THE BELLINI 143 but probably the most surprising pages are those in which pagan themes are treated. Jacopo’s classicism is in advance of con- temporary Florence and is free from the pedantic element char- acteristic of Padua; he treats these subjects with the zest of a new discovery. Backgrounds offer varied interests, sometimes a vast landscape is touched in an almost impressionistic way; again the distance is filled with buildings shown in an exaggerated perspective which at times makes them appear drawn out like an accordion. These architectural features are often illustrative of local surroundings. Streets and loggias, judgment halls, ban- queting rooms, stables, courtyards, exterior staircases, balconies and chimney-pots are shown. As if to prove that youth and life are eternal only as they ap- pear in art, he includes the study of an iris in full colour. With its succulent stem and fragile butterfly petals, it is as fresh now as when he first folded it into his book of drawings. From such a book, Ricci says, “the artists immediately following Jacopo acquired thoughts, motives, narratives, as the fathers of the church derived them from the Bible: in it one finds the themes that the following painters developed and amplified as in the Bible one finds the fundamental ideas of the books of the ages of our faith.” Jacopo Bellini had a more cosmopolitan spirit than either of his sons; whatever great titles they might have acquired, neither would have been called a second Phidias. When they turned the leaves of their father’s sketch-books, it was not to linger over his classical compositions or his fantasies, nor to be led into new helds of experiment; a clearly defined interest led each of them to seek inspiration along a special path, from which throughout his life he seldom deviated. Gentile followed the descriptive tend- ency seen in the older painter’s work, and Giovanni based his style on his father’s religious subjects. Gentile (1429-1507), probably the elder, was originally the more famous son. In 1479, when the Sultan Mahomet II. sent to Venice for the leading portrait painter, Gentile was selected to go to Constantinople, where he painted the portrait of the Sultan, now in an injured state in the National Gallery. The historical paint- ings which he executed in the Ducal Palace were described by Ridolfi. They have perished and we remember Gentile chiefly for his pictures of contemporary life. Exact rendering of buildings and surroundings appeared for the first time in his backgrounds (A. Venturi), as may be seen in the Corpus Christi procession passing through the square of San Marco (Pl. 388). Our interest144 THE GREAT PAINTERS is centred in an examination of detail, in comparing the facade of San Marco as it was then with its present condition, perhaps. Undoubtedly that was in large part Gentile’s interest, and he de- lighted in the ability which enabled him to transcribe all he saw with such accuracy and charm. This picture is not alone an illus- tration of the manners and customs in Venice at the end of the fifteenth century; it is also an example of his delicacy and precision of execution. Similarly the “Miracle of the True Cross” takes place in sur- roundings which no doubt represent an actual locality. The processional cross, having fallen into the canal, is recovered by a white-robed priest from the surface on which it floats. To left and right, on the banks of the canal, kneel the leading citizens of Venice, very compact and very immobile groups, taking no part in the action, not even that of interested spectators, but present as supporters of the faith. In the group at the right are magnificent portraits which Crowe and Cavalcaselle say “unite the dignity of Masaccio and the finish of Van Eyck.” They are all seen in profile and appear like a series of medallions, as Venturi says. The colour scheme is composed of pinks and ochres in the buildings and neutralized white, red, and black in the figure groups. The ‘Sermon of St. Mark” was finished by Giovanni after Gentile’s death and perhaps much altered. It has suffered from later restorations but it is still a brilliant and splendid canvas. The scene is laid in a foreign city where unfamiliar buildings and foreign customs are shown—notice the oriental women at the right. In the middle distance, with measured tread, a giraffe traverses the principal square (a traveller’s tale, perhaps). The descriptive style which we associate particularly with Gentile Bellini and his father was practised quite generally in Venice, and Molmenti considers that the art of Carpaccio was derived from other sources than the Bellini school. Carpaccio (active 1478-1522) is the Benozzo Gozzoli of Venetian painting. His reputation was at its height about 1500 and he was on several occasions associated with Giovanni Bellini and was able to com- mand an equal salary. Many of Carpaccio’s interiors suggest a comparison with Flemish paintings, but the sentiment is very different. The scenes show the winning grace and fantasy which is essentially Italian. Such examples as the “Birth of the Virgin” in Bergamo and the “An- nunciation” in the Venetian Academy illustrate his combination of realism and idealism. But Carpaccio’s talents were best dis-THE BELLINI 145 played in the continuous narratives which he executed for the halls or oratories of the Scuole of Venice. The stories of St. Jerome, of St. George, and of St. Ursula give delightful glimpses into the life of the day. Frequently his scenes are laid in foreign cities. For these views he was indebted to the illustrations at this time avail- able in a book of foreign travel published in 1486—Bruydenback’s “Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam,” with drawings by Reuvich (Molmenti). Carpaccio’s colour was used most successfully to unify his picture. This is well illustrated in the “ Preaching of St. Stephen” in the Louvre. The architectural settings, so differently designed from those of the Florentines, are important factors in unifying the colour schemes. In this example, sky and houses are the same value: one cool, one warm ivory. Costumes of black and white are dispersed through the group and a delightful harmony of crimsons and oranges is arranged, held together by the burnt grass colour of the ground. It is not startling or wonderful in any way but very good. Especial interest attaches to the St. Ursula series (Pl. 36s). A reconstruction of the room and its decoration is given in Mol- menti’s book on Carpaccio. In studying these pictures it should be remembered that as a result of alterations in the chapel which they originally decorated, six inches have been cut off the top of each picture. The only scene that escaped this mutilation is the “Departure of the English Ambassadors,” one of the most beauti- ful. Notice the relation of scale between the figures and the stately apartment, and the arches and staircases revealed through the open doorway, which add greatly to the effect. In his devotional pictures Carpaccio preserves a reminiscence of the tender, half playful solemnity so characteristic of Bellini (see “Santa Conversazione”’ Caen), but in certain panels of his later years he suddenly becomes sombre and austere. His “‘chang- ing outlook forced him to take lonely ways,” indeed. Such paint- ings as the ‘‘Blood of the Redeemer,” the “ Pieta” (Berlin), and the ‘Meditation of the Passion’”’ (Metropolitan Museum), exhibit this phase of his work. The descriptive painter is transformed. In the so-called ‘‘Meditation on the Passion,” the figure of the dead Redeemer is flanked by two hermit saints absorbed by the intensities of the inner life. Is the painter representing the dark night of the soul? Many of the elements of this compo- sition and of that in Berlin are fantastic in the extreme, but even with the insistence given to every detail by the strong demar-146 THE GREAT PAINTERS cation of light and shade, the spiritual content preserves the unity of a common emotion. The colour is rich and the landscape diversified by numberless groups of birds and beasts after the manner of earlier painters. The inspiration is that of a preceding generation and the work is essentially archaistic. In strong contrast to the running commentaries on Venetian life with their panoramic backgrounds upon which Carpaccio and Gentile were engaged is the contemporary painting of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516). For a long period, from about 1465 to 1505, he led the way in Venice with constantly enlarging concep- tions of the world of the senses. Although most of his subjects are religious there is no monotony, for the work of Giovanni shows his advance from year to year in the comprehension of the aims of painting as an art of light and colour. As a youth in Venice studying the Byzantine mosaics he responded equally to their ceremonial formality and to their splendidly sonorous colour. A vibration of gold runs through his painting which connects the golds of Byzantium with those of Titian. This early impression, if, as we suppose, his boyhood was spent in Venice, was overshadowed after the removal of the family to Padua by the harshness of the Paduan manner. There are instances where Giovanni approaches Mantegna, the closest resem- blances occurring when both derive their motives from Jacopo Bellini. There is never anything arid in Giovanni’s work and the influences which move him are fused in his early period to serve a devotional ideal never excelled in his later masterpieces. This is well illustrated in the ‘Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child” (Davis Collection) and in the “Pieta”’ of the Brera (Pl. 358). In the latter an intense note of personal bereavement is struck. Bellini is here revealed as the “painter of pity and of love.” The juxtaposition of the heads of Christ and the Virgin is eloquent, as is that of the hands. The Virgin seems to hold back her tears that she may assure herself once more of the incompre- hensible reality. Her features are large and heavy, the face old and careworn. Cold grey clouds make horizontal bands against the sky—grey dawn giving no promise of the sun. Such depth of feel- ing is rare in Giovanni’s work; it does not properly belong to his “delicate organization as a Venetian colourist”’; the true direction for his genius to take is toward more external display, freeing itself at each step from the personal element and increasing in ceremonial richness. Throughout his career Bellini’s treatment of landscape 1sTHE BELLINI 147 notable. He understood its interpretative function and attempted to relate the mood of nature to that of his subject long before such an idea had occurred to other painters, but it is impossible to appreciate this in a black and white reproduction. The “Geth- semane”’ of the National Gallery, an early work, illustrates this well. Without being able to co-ordinate the picture perfectly Giovanni has shown a transitory effect of light which he must have retained in his memory. The sky is suffused with the apricot glow of early dawn, and against its brilliance the clear-cut line of the hills is silhouetted. Through the middle distance at the right, still in the breathless tranquillity preceding the dawn, the band of soldiers approaches. The interpretation of the theme gains from the emphasis upon beauty and silence so soon to be desecrated. In the “Transfiguration” in Naples, the light strikes Christ’s garments and makes them “white and glistering.” “The landscape setting is important and “the invasion of the actual world by the divine spirit is wonderfully conveyed” (Fry). Examples might be multiplied, for there is scarcely an instance where the beauty and the meaning of his picture have not been enhanced by atmospheric effects. It was only by exception that Giovanni attacked the prob- lem of the nude figure. It is best treated in the Christ of the Berlin ‘“Pieta,” which is carefully and conscientiously studied, but even in this picture it is evident that qualities of texture in flesh, hair, and draperies compelled his warmer interest. In the altar-piece of San Giobbe there are two nude figures represent- ing St. Sebastian and St. Jerome. A Florentine painter would have made this the excuse for the study of an athlete and of an ascetic, but if the heads of Bellini’s figures were concealed it would be difficult to distinguish the youthful body from the aged one. In these altar-pieces little interest is evident in portrait study; the St. George, of the “Madonna with St. George and St. Paul,” is an exception. The Virgin’s type as a rule is rather immobile and expressionless, but in a few instances he has created feminine beauty which is a foretaste of Titian, as the St. Catherine in the “Madonna with St. Catherine and the Magdalen” (Pl. 35a). Throughout his work the graces of childhood appeal more than in that of any contemporary, with the possible exception of Leonardo. The lovely shapes of the small bodies, the opportunities they afford for delicate and sensitive rendering of texture, com- bined with their premature seriousness, give them an altogether148 THE GREAT PAINTERS exceptional charm. This applies to the angels rather than to the Christ Child, where a more conventional treatment is usual. Bellini rang countless changes on the simple theme of the Mother and Child, from the deeply devotional Madonna praying before the sleeping Infant to examples of a more superficial beauty in which the religious theme became secondary to the study of effects of light. These half-length figures are sometimes com- posed in a vertical, sometimes in a horizontal field. In the former case the Virgin is unattended. She is always grave and a little sad; she exhibits the Child to the outside world and rarely caresses him for her own pleasure. In 1488 Giovanni painted in an ex- tended horizontal form the “Virgin Attended by St. Catherine and Mary Magdalen” (PI. 35a). This was the prototype for numerous Sante Conversazioni in the work of later Venetian painters. In early examples by Titian the gradual steps by which he emancipated himself from the devotional type may be followed. Giovanni found his greatest opportunity in the formal altar- piece. Three paintings of the “Madonna Enthroned,” illustrate contrasting types of design, those of the Church of the Frari, of San Pietro in Murano, and of San Zaccaria. The Frari altar- piece is small and in its ornate frame appears to have been wrought in precious materials (Pl. 36a). It is of the very essence of Venice; San Marco and Byzantium are behind it; its painter seems to have been nurtured in the golden glow of the mosaics. As in the St. Zeno altar-piece of Mantegna, the architectural design of the frame has been repeated in the painted architecture, which suggests an apse and side chapels. The Virgin is enthroned beneath the semi-dome of the apse. At the foot of the throne are two en- chanting cherubs, “those who pipe and those who play.” The saints, separated from the central panel, are venerable aristocrats who stand as guardians, but their interest as individuals has been subordinated to the effect of lighting which has become the painter's principal theme. A wholly original treatment appears in the Muranese “Ma- donna” (1488), which is composed in a broad horizontal field (Pl. 35c). Architectural features are dispensed with altogether, the group is moved out of doors, and the formal element is furnished by the broad draperies hanging behind the figures. The kneeling doge is presented to the Madonna by St. Mark with a ceremonial grandeur which foreshadows Titian. Although represented out of doors, the group is lighted from a definite source and not shown under the diffused illumination of the sky. Lionello VenturiTHE BELLINI 149 thinks that Bellini was conscious of the incongruity of the effect and that for that reason he reverted in the later San Zaccaria altar-piece to the apsidal motive used in the “‘Madonna” of San Giobbe. This picture, executed in 1505, exhibits a fully matured and ripened style rather than further innovation. Bellini has carried to a broad sonorous finale the motives of the San Giobbe altar- piece. The architecture of the Renaissance niche provides a rich setting for the figures, but the painter’s love for nature leads him to include beyond the pilasters a narrow space of sky and a delicate tree branch. Peter and Gerome, splendidly draped figures in a frontal pose, are embraced in oval contours which are reinforced by the move- ment of the female saints seen in profile. Although brought together in the group, each saint is isolated by the absorption of religious reverie. The arrangement is architectonic, the line of the heads echoes the elliptical curve of the entablature, while a curve in the opposite direction first suggested in the position of the hands is strongly reinforced in the lower boundary of the group. In the Virgin’s figure important improvement in. com- position over Bellini’s earlier representations is to be noted in the position of the knees, which obviates the effect of two super- imposed cubes that makes an awkward appearance in the San Giobbe and Muranese altar-pieces. The simplicity of the motives employed and the perfect har- mony in all the relations of line and form are already representa- tive of the ideals of the High Renaissance. Bellini also shows in this example a greater dependence than heretofore upon the enveloping atmosphere, which leads him gradually to suppress the contours and to develop increasingly the special qualities of the colourist. In 1513, as a man of over eighty, Giovanni painted the altar- piece for San Crisostomo in which he tried a new arrangement of figures and landscape. The point of sight is on a level with the paved portico where St. Christopher and St. Augustine stand as heroic terminal figures directly lighted from the right. A Renaissance parapet with delicately carved pilasters separates them from the landscape, which is framed like a lunette by the sofit of the portico with its mosaic decoration. In the centre, elevated on a rocky pedestal, sits St. Jerome turning the leaves of a volume supported on the trunk of the tree, one branch of which with a tufting of leaves makes a strong pattern against150 THE GREAT PAINTERS the sky. The figure is raised high in front of the line of hills, and, in contrast to the foreground saints, is enveloped in a light by which the whole landscape is suffused. We must marvel once more at the adaptability of this painter whose power of inven- tion remained so fresh to the end of his long life. One superb portrait among those ascribed to Giovanni is uni- versally accepted—that of the Doge Leonardo Loredano (PI. 338) in the National Gallery. This is as great in draughtsmanship as in colour. The doge is represented in his robes of state and in his official aspect. It is direct and forcible: the face is full of anima- tion; the colour is a splendid play of white, gold, and orange, brilliantly illuminated against the old blue enamel-like surface of the background. Shortly before his death Bellini received a commission for a Bacchanal a subject not appearing elsewhere in his work. To analyse this last picture is to anticipate the work of a later painter. It is known that the canvas was completed by Titian, who added the landscape, exhibiting a type of design familiar in his contem- porary “‘ Bacchanals” in Madrid. Assembled in the foreground are Bellini’s goddesses, taking a sedate part in this scene of revelry. They might be engaging in a sacred rite, so virginal and restrained is their action. Draperies of ivory whites, blues—Antwerp, cerulean, and electric—cardinals neutralized by wine colours, shades of rose, and Naples yellow, are all treated with a fresh crisp play of light and shade. This delicate scheme adds to the effect of poetry which even the roistering satyrs cannot bring to earth. This picture is the final marvel of Bellini’s long career, in which an evolution, elsewhere the work of succeeding genera- tions, is compressed into the activity of one lifetime, where may be traced the transition from the Byzantine inheritance to the very threshold of the High Renaissance. Berenson says that Bellini ‘left an art more completely human- ized than any that the western world had known since the de- cline of Greco-Roman culture.’ His style increased in breadth, in freedom, and in exuberance to the very end. As we view the progress of Venetian painting, there is no indication of the place where Bellini’s work ended. He was so sensitively organized and so responsive that Giorgionesque qualities appear at the end of his career and no break is apparent when the brush is transferred from Bellini’s hand to the hand of Titian. Giovanni Bellini was the head of a great bottega, and the master indirectly, if not in person, of practically all the artistsTHE BELLINI 151 who gathered in Venice during the last years of the fifteenth and the opening years of the sixteenth century. “He is like the central sun of a universe—an entire planetary system is depend- ent upon him.” His followers were inspired from other sources as well. Many of them were drawn from the school of Alvise Vivarini, others from centres outside Venice. But it was hard to escape the influence of this splendid old painter whom Direr found in 1506 to be “the best of them all.” Venturi might be describing Bellini’s influence when he says, “As the eyes retain the image of a great light when they have turned away SO a great genius impresses himself on his pupils.” It would be out of proportion in such a general survey as this to do more than mention the leading painters of secondary talent who came under Bellini’s influence. Bartolommeo Montagna (1450-c.1523), the founder of the school of Vicenza, owed almost as much to Padua as to Venice. His art is austere and somewhat unyielding, with shadow masses a little laboriously mapped out, but it is relieved by the harmony of his colour schemes. His emotional power is shown in the “‘ Pieta” of the Sanctuary of Monte Berico. The central group could hardly be excelled in depth of feeling. The figure of the Saviour is delineated with infinite tenderness, the gesture of the Magdalen is expressive, and the picture is free from exaggeration. Cima da Conegliano (c. 1460-1517) was apprenticed to Mon- tagna, through whom he came in touch with the style of Alvise Vivarini. Later he was influenced by Giovanni Bellini. The traits derived from his first master remain the fundamentals of his style and are admirably illustrated in the “Tncredulity of Thomas” (1501) (National Gallery). Strong light defines the main blocks of shadow but fails to illuminate the group. The Apostles stand before the undecorated wall of the room broken by two arched openings revealing a landscape so subdued in value that it appears to continue the plane of the wall. The gesture with which Thomas advances to touch the wound of Christ is admirably expressive. Several of the types are interesting although the painter has slight command of facial expression. The richness and beauty of Cima’s landscape is seen in the “ Baptism” (San Giovanni in Bragora, Venice) and the “Madonna Enthroned”’ (Vienna) (Pl. 36c). In his Madonna pictures the Child is playful and ani- mated, the Mother grave, with a face rather heavy but not hieratic. The colour is strong and the effects are often quite festive (Louvre) without being thrilling in any sense.152 THE GREAT PAINTERS Marco Basaiti (c. 1470-1527) was first associated with Alvise Vivarini but later showed the influence of Giovanni Bellini. His style is simple, sincere, and direct. Landscape is always a charming feature of his work and in the “‘Madonna of the Meadow” (Na- tional Gallery) the cattle grazing in the middle distance are just such a motive as Puvis de Chavannes might use. His colours are often pale in range and the atmosphere highly clarified. Although these painters borrowed from many sources, they were working at a period of progressive development and they escaped the inertia of an eclectic style. Their paintings show an individual response to beauty. The galleries are full of examples which illustrate how the tradition of Giovanni Bellini was carried on and how it intermingled with other inheritances, and was mod- ified by later elements as the art of Giorgione and Titian began to be echoed. But the study of these artists as individuals belongs to a more detailed history.PLATE 35 (4) Giovann Bellini. Mad St. Catherine ar Magdalen. Venice.PLATE 36 ek arte eee ee ! | 7 ea y A ae t ee \ i VW ats) | Fi is Ei iI | Ha : } I (C) Cima. Madonna beneath the Orange Tree (D) Giorgione. Madonna Enthroned. Vienna. (© Reinthal and Newman, New York) Cathedral, Castelfranco. (Anderson)CHAPTER XVITI GIORGIONE Among the many painters who formed the school of Giovanni Bellini were two men of pre-eminent genius who brought to com- plete fruition all that was implicit in the earlier style. The art of the first, Giorgione (1478-1510), formed the transition from the ecclesiastical style of the fifteenth century to the freedom of the High Renaissance. There is little of incident to record in his brief life cut off in its thirty-second year by the plague, but his influence is commensurate only with that of Raphael and Michelangelo. The new conception of beauty which appears in Venetian painting in the first decades of the sixteenth century originated with him and compelled such universal homage that practically every young Venetian painter passed through what is known as a Giorgionesque period. Three paintings are universally accepted as Giorgione’s work, the “Madonna Enthroned,” Castelfranco (Pl. 36p), the “Three Philosophers,” Vienna, and the ‘‘Tempest,”’ Giovanelli Collection, Venice. The Castelfranco “Madonna” was executed about 1504. It arrests the attention at once because the composition is so un- expected, yet the elements are traditional and no arrangement could be simpler. The originality lies in the realization that new relationships and a new proportion are sufficient to produce so profound a transformation. Giorgione uses the nature setting while retaining the bilateral symmetry of the usual enthroned Madonna. The canvas is rather rigidly divided by vertical and horizontal lines, but the pyramidal arrangement of the figures serves to hold the parts together. The pictures of Mantegna and of Giovanni Bellini show the Virgin’s throne raised on a kind of pedestal above the group of saints and in a measure inaccessible. This theme has been em- ployed by Giorgione but although he elevates the throne extraor- dinarily, irrationally, there is nothing hieratic or forbidding about the exalted figure. Lost in the reverie which we shall find char- acteristic of Giorgione’s interpretation, the Virgin seems quite unconscious that she is ““blessed among women.” Her throne is 153eee 154 THE GREAT PAINTERS unadorned except for the brocaded panel, and she wears no jewels, crown, or halo. The point of sight in this picture is on a level with the arm of the Virgin’s high throne so that one commands a view of the landscape and feels the figure enhanced by the light and atmosphere which surround her. The profundity of the space against which the sacred figures are shown serves to give them the value of a revelation. The sense of unification with the universe which is the essence of the religious experience is perfectly exemplified here. It is as if Giorgione had suddenly discovered the immanence of spirit, the whole world spread out, the whole heaven rejoicing because a child, a new spirit-creature, had come to birth! The rush of joy seen in this picture is the new thing that Venice brings to art— that Florence had never felt. Florence is playful and whimsical in the fifteenth century, but in the sixteenth century she puts away childish things and becomes either profound or grandiose. The traditional blue and red of the Virgin’s robes here are changed for green and rose. How charming is the strong note of rose in her mantle; the green, like summer moss, of the central panel and her dress; and the green-black of the saints against the dusky crimson of the parapet! The group is broadly illumined from the upper right and the landscape swims in warm sunshine. The suggestion for this composition was given by Giovanni Bellini. Other painters took up the motive, but Lionello Venturi shows how easily the dignity of the religious subject was lost and the devotional aspect subordinated to the secular, as in the paint- ing of Cima (Pl. 36c). In Giorgione’s picture, “the religious spirit is liberated, not lost, but spiritualized and refined.” The picture stands midway between the conceptions of Bellini and those of Titian. Venetian patrons in the fifteenth century had shown little interest in idealistic subjects. Venturi considers that this resulted from the lack of a despot to gather about himself groups of artists and poets, as in Florence or Mantua. A change in taste took place in the sixteenth century and Giorgione was particularly fitted to meet the new demand. Vasari tells us that he had a predilection for the things of amore and was himself an admirable singer. Castelfranco was not far from Asolo, where Queen Cath- erine of Cornaro held her court. Echoes of the court life may have reached him even before he left home. It was inevitable that this Venetian painter so highly sensitive to beauty should take peculiar delight in subjects which left hisGIORGIONE 155 inventive powers unrestricted. Such are the canvases known as the “Three Philosophers” and the “Tempest.” In the former (Pl. 37a) the human element is predominant, but there is a new interest in the study of nature, and the treatment of colour and lighting creates a sympathetic mood in harmony with the serious- ness of the figures. “It is as if for the first time the artist had really seen nature.” There is no consciousness of motive hunting, mastery is attained by grouping little simple themes. The youth seated in the centre has something in common with the type of St. John the Evangelist. The seer at the right, as Venturi says, might hold the tables of the law in place of the “‘tavola cabalistica” of the astrologer. The lighting of the figures from the left is not consistent with the sun, which is sinking in the centre distance. The colours are brilliant. We see the disc of the sun behind a hill which makes a note of deep blue against the warm evening sky, with patterned clouds of a slightly violet-grey. Delicate trees are marked in an arabesque against the light. Warm greens in the middle distance lead up to the deep bottle-green of the seated figure. The vermil- ion of the next figure produces the richest effect, with the golden and mahogany garment of the bearded philosopher. The “Tempest” (Pl. 38a) is a pantheistic idyl in which the human figure is essential but no longer pre-eminent. The interest of the painter is captivated by the changing effects of light and the emotional appeal of nature. How true and how romantic is his interpretation of the storm. We participate in the excite- ment and the perturbation of nature waiting in anxious tension for the next clap of thunder, for the clouds are riven by the zigzag of the lightning. The trees move in plastic masses in the first breath of the storm, the houses seem to shiver on the bank. No reproduction gives the slightest suggestion of the enthralling beauty of this picture. The colour is splendidly interpretative as well as harmonious. The central note is struck in the deep blue thunder- clouds and in the water, still deeper in colour. The verdure is rich and golden green as it so often appears before a storm breaks; the houses on the river bank are golden with cool lights. The flesh of the woman is brought out against white drapery; the man wears a cardinal jacket. We may be inclined at first to resent the figures, but they are needed. They are indispensable as enriching elements and yet so absolutely secondary in interest that their importance is scarcely appreciated until one tries cutting them out; they stand with “‘life’s activity suspended, indifferent to physical conditions.”THE GREAT PAINTERS An effect of nature is here made the door through which we pass to the world of the imagination! Few pictures of any epoch equal the ‘‘Tempest”’ in sensuous beauty. It is as typical of the Venetian Renaissance as is the “Birth of Venus” of the fifteenth century in Florence. Florentine art, at its best in the fifteenth century, always tended towards a treatment of things in their essential nature. It was an epic school. Venice never sought to grasp structure in the same scientific way, but substituted the aspect of nature, the life of colour and light under which forms were lost in a richer pattern of chiaroscuro. Florentine painting is illuminated by a steady light “discovering” minutiae; in Venetian painting, whether figures or landscape, light and shadow chase each other over the surface until the objective world is transformed into a sensuous vision. Giorgione uses a landscape which has no pro- nounced topographical interest but is distinguished by its superior beauty. Looking back on the pictures of Venice, one is surprised to realize how few of them could from their background motives be identified as subjects painted in one of the most picturesque cities in the world. It seems as if the greater painters had sedu- lously avoided the very motives every visitor of today records in his note-book. “Journalistic” art was not an aim with them; from their extraordinarily brilliant life and surroundings they extracted the essence, the ceremony and gaiety, new and complex effects. They showed nature and its moods as an expressive accompaniment to the mood of man. Nowhere do we find in the great men a provincialism that limits the appeal of their work to one time or locality. It is interesting to realize this balancing of the interests of subject and design and to remember that the appeal is the appeal neither of subject nor of art but of the emotional content reaching what Pater calls the “imagina- tive reason” through the avenue of the senses. In these unquestioned works Giorgione reveals himself as a poet and a colourist, an innovator who created all things new. We turn now to attributed works with a criterion sufficiently xed so that we may recognize the Giorgionesque if not the real Giorgione. Records show that Giorgione painted a “Sleeping Venus” with which the picture in Dresden (PI. 37c) is generally identi- fied. It may have been begun by Giorgione and finished by Titian. It has Giorgione’s pure vision, which more nearly approaches the classicism of the fourth century Greek than that of any otherGIORGIONE 157 painter of the Renaissance. The figure is slim and youthful yet entirely free from the angularity of adolescent figures in Floren- tine painting. The firm flesh is set off by the brilliance of the crumpled folds of drapery, “which are of the same nature as the best Greek work” (Norton). This contrast is enhanced in the original, where the upper part of the body rests upon the car- dinal cushion from beneath which the sumptous ivory-white folds break against the flesh tones. The yielding line of the relaxed figure is in harmony with the tranquil horizon and is strengthened by the abrupt vertical cliff. The appeal is that of impersonal beauty approaching the perfection of the Divine Idea. This became the prototype of a long series of Venetian Venuses, none producing for us as this does the perfect moment. Later painters could not keep this unconscious loveliness, and in spite of compen- sating magnificence of colour and technique they fall short of ideal beauty. Shortly before his death Giorgione undertook the decoration in fresco of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. This is the one example authenticated by documents (Bode). The pictures are described by Vasari and others and were engraved by Zanetti, but nothing remains of the original works except a scarcely decipherable figure. This, with the engraving, shows us a standing woman half draped, and again suggests a Praxitelian type. The figure is more developed than the Venus and furnishes a link to connect the early style with the richer contours of the “Féte Champétre’”’ GPL 378): The first impression in the latter is of maturity, which is felt in the magnificent fulness of all the forms. The conception of beauty in this example is different from that in preceding pictures and the attibution to Giorgione is questioned. The pensive mood verges on languor in the figure at the left with its studied and ample curves. All the forms are heavier in build than before. Venturi points out Giorgione’s preference for the sunset hour and for mysterious atmospheric conditions, while here the figures are saturated with the warmth of noonday. The generous contours of the great tree masses at the right lead to the zigzags of the middle distance interlace. These rich forms are echoed in the central group. The figure in the immedi- ate foreground balances the distant oaks. In this complex ar- rangement of symmetrically disposed masses, the balance is at- tained within the depth of the three-dimensional space. The melting blue distance at the left is offset by the sun-illumined158 THE GREAT PAINTERS field through which a shepherd leads his flock. The colour rises to a crescendo in the dazzling note of the crimson cap. This concentration of heat against heat (against the fields of golden wheat) is emphasized by the strong grey-blue of the distance, by the near-by green hill behind the standing figure, which by contrast is cool, and by the violin player’s dress, a blue-black above the instrument. The flesh tones are deeper and richer than the frame, really “old gold,” against which the white drapery is distinctly green. One does not ask the raison d’étre of this strange group of costumed and nude figures, indeed they are almost forgotten as separate entities in the lyrical mood of the picture as a whole, like some incidental episode in a poem whose subject is in reality the fruitfulness of nature. Whether we attribute the Féte Champe- tre which Cox called “the loveliest of the Giorgionesque visions” to the artist himself or to a follower, it exemplifies a late phase of the period and we turn back from an art thoroughly matured to consider a number of portraits. One of the few of which “scarcely a doubt of authenticity has been expressed” is the portrait of a youth in Berlin, discovered some “twenty-five years ago in the Palazzo Giustiniani in Padua” (Bode). The youth stands behind a parapet upon which he rests his right hand. The pose is haughty and Venturi speaks of the “melancholy under the cold gaze.” The head is well preserved (Justi) and the interest centres in the expression of quiet restraint and dignity. We may see here “what dreams Giorgione dreamed” (Venturi). The flesh is warm golden living flesh, the hair dark brown, the background a neutral moss-green, the dress helio- trope-lilac. This is a youthful work. Another portrait generally attributed to Giorgione is the “Knight of Malta” of the Uffizi. It is thoroughly repainted but in its poetical conception and in its characteristically Giorgionesque modelling it is unsurpassed. The figure stands preoccupied in dreamy thought, fingering a rosary. There is a richer play of line than in the Berlin portrait and the light and shade on the face contribute to the mystery. Within recent years the “ Portrait of a Man” “has been brought to light in a villa near Florence.” It is now in the Metropolitan Museum. Unlike the preceding, it is in complete preservation. “Its unrivalled freshness has preserved for us the poetry of the great master’s conception and the magic of his art” (Bode). The figure is turned with the shoulder forward, we see the face only because, by chance, the dreamer has turned it towards us andGIORGIONE 159 transfixes us with that searching gaze. Here again, “life is sus- pended unaccountably”’ as the man absent-mindedly draws off his glove, the whole tide of his emotional life suddenly bearing down upon him. The mood is so dominating, the gaze so fraught with meaning, that the spectator is drawn into a responsive reverie. This is not a literary or an associated idea; it is a purely sensuous appeal. It is a natural step from portraiture of this type to the “‘Con- cert”’ of the Pitti, identical in its essential subject, the revelation of personality. Here the sensitive fingers sustain a chord whose penetrating quality reaches us in echo from the expressions made eloquent and moving in response to music. The controversy is still open as to whether Titian or Giorgione painted it. The forms bear close relationship to Titian’s “Man with Glove,” but the quality seems to be more nearly that of Giorgione than of Titian. The way in which the mask alone stands out from the background, the modelling of the planes of the head, the thin liquid painting, are Giorgionesque. In the development of portrait painting Giorgione’s work marked a definite advance. A momentous change in ideal takes place, fact and physiognomy are no longer foremost—mood has become the subject and momentary illumination has taken the place of scientific record. He opened the gate to a world of the imagination, to a vision of the actual transfigured by ineffable radiance, to humanity seeking to understand the poetic greatness felt in its own soul. The spirit of youth is still hesitant, almost reluctant to exer- cise all its new latent but unproven powers. The next moment the joy of the senses will be enough; the tremulous, half-pensive mood will have passed for ever. ‘Only Giorgione and Keats and such rare spirits can put in terms for the ordinary plodding mortal to grasp, the evanescent visions of the mind” (Norton). He created something of classic perfection and of pagan complete- ness in the few radiant years of his activity.qa CHAPTER XIX TITIAN Giorgione and Titian were born only a year apart, but although Giorgione died in 1510, for more than half a century thereafter Titian continued to produce one masterpiece after another. His works were sought by pope, emperor, and king. Among the hundreds of canvases which still remain there are surprisingly few which show any fatigue or any lack of the divine fire. It was a triumphant career in which every decade was marked by great achievements. Titian (1477-1576) was born in the southern Tyrol in 1477. He was in Venice, already pursuing his art education, ten years later. His early works show the influence of Giovanni Bellini, who, when Titian first entered upon his career, had produced the altar-pieces of San Giobbe and the Frari, the panels of the “Virgin and Child,” and the half-length sante conversazioni. Association with Giorgione left its deep impression also. Even in their own day, Vasari tells us, the work of the two young men could not be distinguished; so it is not surprising that there are still dif- ferences of opinion as to authorship. With Giorgione’s death, in 1510, and the natural development of Titian’s mature powers, the more naturalistic and dramatic qualities of his work are apparent; they are present however almost from the first, even in examples which are distinctly Giorgionesque. One of the earliest pictures attributed to him is the “Gipsy Madonna,” Vienna, which certain critics still believe to be by Giorgione. The quiet atmosphere, the thoughtful if not pensive Madonna, strengthen this view, but there is a greater feeling of naturalism, a little less refinement in the type. The composition is based upon the scheme of Bellini—the half- lengths standing behind a parapet, the curtain hung at one side to reveal the distance, how charming a bit of nature! The white linen kerchief in contrast to Bellini is loosened and slips back, revealing the warm richness of the hair. The Child is delightfully babylike and confiding as he leans against his mother. The composition of the “Madonna of the Cherries,” Vienna, 160TITIAN 161 has as its point of departure Bellini’s “Madonna with St. George and St. Paul.” The activity of the figures contrasts with the traditional placing. The forms are fuller and riper than those of s1orgione; the Virgin’s type is similar to that of the Flora (Gronau). One can imagine even in looking at the photograph how brilliant the effect is: the rich note of the central figure (a cherry red), the bronzed complexion of the male saints, and the quality of the baby flesh. With the next example, the “Madonna and Four Saints,” Dresden (Pl. 42a), the sixteenth century style is established. The figures are no longer posed as for a tableau behind the para- pet; the bilateral symmetry of the old arrangement is given up. A buoyant Virgin turns in a grandly curving pose towards the group of youthful and aged saints seen against the podium of a columnar building—a motive of constant recurrence in Venetian work. At the left the bearded and roughly clad precursor helps to support the Child—a playful child with his arm round his mother’s neck. The subordinate figures are massed against the building and the curtain, but the Virgin’s head, with loosely draped white headdress, gleams against the sky. The contrast between the fair Mother and Child and the deeply bronzed saints is unusually marked. The colours have the brilliance of clothes hung out to dry on a sunny day. How beautiful are the textures of the whites, the satin sleeve, the laundered linen headdress, and the fleecy golden-white cloud. Dr. Denman Ross has made a comparative analysis of colour as used by the Florentines and by the Venetians. He considers that the former employ for their shadows a colourless tone near to black, but that the Venetians, in making the transition from light to dark, avail themselves of intensities of colour and pass in the modelling of an orange-red drapery to red, red-violet, violet. That is, at each step towards darkness (each lowering of the value), intensity is preserved by the change to a hue which attains its intensity at a lower value than the preceding, thus the brilliance of effect is greatly enhanced. It is interesting in the Dresden Gallery to go from Titian’s picture to the “Sistine Madonna.” In the amount of actual light imprisoned by Titian the new attitude towards atmosphere and colour is demonstrated. Of the early period and similar in its use of half-length figures is the ‘Tribute Money,” “‘probably painted for Alfonso d’Este, whose device on gold coins includes the phrase, ‘Render unto Caesar’”’ (Gronau). The story is told in two figures, sharply162 THE GREAT PAINTERS contrasted in every respect. The Christ type unites depth, sweetness, and force. The features are almost classic and are opposed to the realism of the questioner. In the original the contrast is accentuated by the colour: the red bronze flesh tones of the latter figure with his golden white robe and the clear skin of the Christ against his robe of crushed strawberry with golden lights and his mantle of strong green-blue. The “Man with the Glove” of the Louvre (Pl. 39c) is still Giorgionesque. He looks into the future of his life and the steadi- ness of the averted gaze suggests its absorbing interest. Note the purpose of the brow and eyes and the youth of the mouth, controlled by this purpose but not yet possessing it. The physi- cal aspect is as far as possible subordinated to the interpretation. Not yet has the difference between Titian and Giorgione de- veloped to the point where Claude Phillips’s comparison would apply. Phillips says that in Giorgione sadness and foreboding come from the plenitude of inner life; he is passionate and con- templative; he sees the world lyrically. Titian’s portraiture is grander, more accomplished, and for obvious reasons more satis- fying, yet far less penetrating, less expressive of the inner fibre, whether of the painter or of his subject. Titian’s first great picture on an idealistic theme is the so- called “Sacred and Profane Love” (Pl. 40c), a title never as- sociated with it in the artist’s day. The subject is not known, and the various attempts to explain it have not met with gen- eral acceptance. Within the low rectangle of the frame, two women are seated by the side of a marble fountain adorned with classic reliefs. An amorino busily stirs the water, and the sug- gestion of liquid sound creates a distinctly pleasurable element. Titian never more perfectly preserved the balance between physical loveliness and purely idealistic qualities than in the nude figure at the right. One curve starting from the bent head follows the line of the brow to the long simple sweep of the left side. The firm young body is brilliantly set off against the red of the mantle; the uplifted left arm is seen against the sky, pat- terned with grey-white filmy clouds. The sumptuously robed figure at the left forms a complete contrast. The folds of her dress gleam dazzlingly against the quiet grey of the weathered well-curb. A bronzed tree binds the two figures together and accentuates the feeling of coolness. At the night stretches a landscape of meadows, with a distant church; at the left a town on the heights is half hidden by the trees.TITIAN In no way could this example be confused with the work of Giorgione, but we recognize that his Venus in its idealistic loveli- ness was the point of departure for such works. The next step that Titian took is illustrated in the canvases which he painted for Alfonso d’Este—now in Madrid and in London. The “Bac- chanal” of the Prado might be compared in its passion and mad revelry to Euripides’ “Bacchae.” How completely it contrasts with the Praxitelean idealism of Giorgione! This example is most instructive to study in colour because of the method which the painter has used to subordinate the individual parts to the requirements of pattern—a pattern which might almost be de- scribed in planes like those of a work in relief. But to make such an analysis without the original colour would be futile. Never was pagan passion more supremely rendered than in the “Bacchus and Ariadne” of the National Gallery (Pl. 40a). This represents as unique a moment in the development of the artist as did the visions of Giorgione—but it is a different mo- ment, a later one, in which the mad beating of the pulse and the pursuit of pleasure crowd out every other thought. The figures are inebriate with life’s desires, and this exhilaration has been conveyed in terms of life and colour intensified and emotionalized still further by the light, here accentuating a detail, there pulling a form into the obscurity of the mass. The episode is taken from Catullus and represents Ariadne forsaken by Theseus, overtaken in the wood by Bacchus and his followers. It is a story of how passion ruled the world in early times. Satyrs and nymphs break through the grove, their cymbals crashing. With lightning swiftness Bacchus wheels and leaps from his chariot at the sight of Ariadne. His straw- berry mantle with silvered lights billows behind him. His pivotal leap carries him from shadow into light. Ariadne turns recipro- cally in terrified flight, her lovely figure swathed in a lapis mantle vibrating against the green-blue water. The distance is circled at the horizon by lapis and violet-blue hills. Blue is repeated in the draped skirt of the leading nymph. The sky is cobalt with white clouds swinging in sympathy with Ariadne’s move- ment and leading the eye back to Bacchus to follow the circuit once more. Light breaks through here and there as the colour or interpretation requires. The movement of the whole group is impetuous. Soon the revellers will pass and no record will remain in this serene landscape except the crown of Ariadne high in the heavens.THE GREAT PAINTERS The abandon, the passion, the compositional type, all lead the mind on to the seventeenth century. But the way in which all these things are expressed is entirely Renaissance. The decorative convention is very strong. None of the figures is naturalistically done; on close examination one does not feel the model, or even an invention to follow the model. It is the poetry of form, not its physique, the only necessity the painter recognizes being beauty—beauty as Keats knew it. This is one of the greatest of Renaissance paintings. Titian’s interests at this period were so manifold that it is dificult to make any selection of examples. The last of the Bacchanals was not finished until 1523. The ‘‘Assumption,” to which we now turn back, was completed in 1518 and is the first of his great altar-pieces. For some reasons it should be spoken of first because it shows the exuberance of movement and colour dedicated to a religious theme and free from the sug- gestion of passionate desire, but this difference is perhaps better realized after having seen the Bacchanals. The “Assumption” is one of the great and popular altar-pieces. Titian has done almost more with paint than one would believe possible. The yellow sky is more brilliant than the real light shining on the golden frame, the illumination on the flesh is as strong as that falling on the actual spectator. Perhaps the most astonishing thing is the reality of it all, the solidity with which the figures are modelled, the truth of all the values. The Virgin is magnificent. The quality of her beauty is unique. Majesty and self-forgetfulness are wonderfully blended. The picture is like a hymn of exultation, but it has faults of composition in the too obvious divisions of the space, in the peculiarly meagre silhouette of the Almighty, and in the suggestion in the fore- ground group of the melodramatic. As painting, the cherub forms that sustain the Virgin’s pedestal of cloud are the finest part; the flesh in shadow is close in value to the cloud masses, and the way in which the baby forms emerge into the light of the upper day is altogether lovely. The Apostles below are thrown into the shadow of the cloud. A very different work of about the same period is the ““Entomb- ment,” Louvre. The figure of Christ is appealing in its helpless- ness. The weight is suggested in the kneeling figure at the left who gathers up the lifeless form with tender solicitude. The body is so turned that the outstretched arms form lines of unifica- tion in the compactly organized group. A ray of light which strikes(4) Titian. Madonna with the Pesar mily B) Titian. Charles VY on Horseback, Prado, Church of the Frari Venice. (Anderson Madrid, (Anderson) (C) Titian. Man with the Glove. Louvre, Paris. (D) Tintoretto. Vincenzo Morosini. Giraudon) National Gallery, London. (Mansell)(A) Titian. Bacchus and Ariadne. National Gallery, London. (Anderson) (B) Titian. The Entomb- ment Prado, Madrid. (Anderson) (C) Titian. Sacred and Pro- fane Love. Borghese, Rome. (Anderson)TITIAN 165 with splendid effect across the rich materials of lake, saffron, and Millet blue adds to the dramatic effect. The elements used here are exactly such as the seventeenth century might have used; the method of employment is totally different. The desire to preserve a comparatively shallow plane leads to the composition of Christ’s body almost without fore- shortening. The light which strikes the other figures is intended to define the planes they occupy rather than to round them up in three dimensions. By throwing the upper part of Christ’s body into deep shadow, Titian utilizes a naturalistic effect for an inter- pretative purpose. Not only does the difficulty of discerning the forms hold our attention, but it adds an element of mystery. The Pesaro “Madonna” (PI. 39A) was executed in 1526. In an earlier altar-piece (“St. Mark Enthroned’’), Titian had em- ployed bilateral symmetry, but the decentralized scheme which he had already introduced in his informal Madonna groups he ventured here to employ for a great altar-piece. The canvas is high and narrow, the figures are confined to the lower rectangle. On a pedestal at the extreme right, approached diagonally by two steps occupying the central plane, the Virgin sits “high and lifted up.” The level of the eye falls somewhat below the top of the pedestal, so that the graciously bending figure is seen abruptly foreshortened. Leaning upon her pedestal stands St. Peter in rich drapery. Jacopo Pesaro, for whom the work was executed, kneels’ at the left, and the members of his family on the opposite side are connected with the main group by the gesture of St. Francis. Above the group and filling fully half the canvas rise columns of a lofty building. Too strong a vertical emphasis is avoided by the introduction of a cloud, upon which cherubs support a cross. It throws its shadow, perhaps with a double significance, across one of the columns, and carries the eye once more to the Virgin and to the unconscious Child playing with his mother’s veil. With the exception of Correggio no one had led the eye by such diagonals and curves before. The following decade, 1530-1540, was an important turning- point in the artist’s life. In 1530 his wife died and a few years later Pietro Aretino settled in Venice and became an intimate friend. ‘Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino were spoken of as the Triumvirate for some twenty-five years. During this time the painter led an epicurean life at his home, Biri Grande. Claude Phillips calls this the period of great nudes and great166 THE GREAT PAINTERS portraits. One of the most famous is the so-called “Venus of Urbino.” The pose of the figure follows that of Giorgione very closely but the mood has changed utterly. “In Titian’s figures . the glance of the eye is often distinctly and sharply focused in the eye of the beholder, and the action of the figure is motived by the presence of the beholder. The painted image is the corollary of the being that looks upon her’ (Norton). In this instance a genre rather than an ideal atmosphere is suggested by the surround- ings. It is difficult to avoid wondering what splendid Venetian costume is to emerge from the cassone for the adornment of the lady. After his visit to Rome the proportions of his nude figures changed and the influence of Michelangelo is evident in such examples as the “Danaé” in Naples. In the picture of the “ Presentation” painted at this time (1534- 1538), Titian availed himself of the Venetian tradition in the treatment of the scene which may be studied in the earlier work of Carpaccio. The prototype is found in Jacopo Bellini’s London sketch-book. The picture was executed for one of the Scuole, whose building is now used for the Venetian Academy of Arts and the pic- ture is exhibited upon the wall for which it was designed. Gronau praises especially the fine colour of this composition, but compared with Titian’s other work it seems cold and studied, magnificently as it suggests the spectacle of Venetian life. Like Leonardo and Michelangelo, Titian, who drew a pension as state painter, was commissioned by the government to paint an episode from contemporary history. He chose the “Battle of Cadore.’”’ As in their cases, we know the subject and the enthu- siasm that the work aroused in its day, but although Titian’s work was completed, it was seen during forty years only, being destroyed in the fire of 1577, in the Ducal Palace. In 1530 Titian finished his great altar-piece for SS. Giovanni e Paolo, representing the assassination of St. Peter Martyr in a lonely wood. The picture was destroyed by fire in 1867 and is now replaced by a copy. It exhibited the most dramatic phase of his work and showed the full development of his powers as a landscape painter. Constable named it among the four greatest paintings of landscape. Titian was a mountaineer and his imagination was stirred by the trees “‘growing wild and free” and by a sky which had “‘lost its peace.” In the late picture of “Jupiter and Antiope” in the Louvre the theme supplies the motive, as in music, and the background gives the orchestration. The landscape is developed in broad pastoralTITIAN 167 Passages of supreme beauty. The warmth of luxuriant nature rejoices the eye and relaxes the senses: “he paints a certain opal- escent twilight which has in it as much of human emotion as of imitative truth.” The background of this picture is the type which was developed by the northern painters of the seventeenth century. Titian’s technical method—underpainting, blocking in of local colour, rubbing of opaque and transparent tone—is a decided factor in the greater likeness to nature which his works show. Vibrancy results from the interpenetration of colours. In 1545 Titian made his first visit to Rome. Vasari gives the account of his meeting with Michelangelo and of the honours he received. Many works of this period are lost, but one of the most astonishing remains, the unfinished group of Pope Paul III. and his grandsons (Farnese)—a wonderful and terrible picture of old age. The pose of the pope is tense; the head is thrust forward; the wizened face looks like that of an animal; the hands clutch the chair like claws. Gronau queries whether it was because the picture told too much that it was never finished. A comparison with Raphael’s portrait of Leo X., both as interpretation and com- position, is interesting. Titian had on several occasions been invited to Germany by Charles V. and finally, in response to a summons in 1547, the painter, then seventy years old, journeyed to Augsburg. At this time he painted the great portrait of the emperor as the victor of Muhlburg (Pl. 398). The interpretation is not realistic but highly imaginative. A comparison with the portraits by Velazquez in the adjoining room in the Prado illustrates to what degree it is removed from a naturalistic study. The emperor on his strange horse emerges from a mysterious wood. In the photograph we may criticize the unnatural drawing of the animal; in the original we are conscious of the symbolic interpretation. The horse is half merged in the dark mass of the wood. The surroundings are just real enough to afford support to the figure, in which is expressed the indomitable character of the man. “Small, pale, fading already out of life, he is yet, in his haughty composure, in his impenetrable reserve, as majestic as the half divine Pharaoh and more triumphant than Alexander him- self. . . .” (C. Philipps). Brown and Rankin say: “‘It is easily the greatest European equestrian portrait, in simplicity, dignity, and richness of design, as in the rhythm between the massive fore- ground and the open distance. ... The effect is heroic, epic. It is leadership embodied.” This is the first modern equestrian168 THE GREAT PAINTERS portrait. All English painting is anticipated here, but this has a grandeur unapproached by later painters. It is a work of high creative imagination. The eight months in Augsburg were crowded with commissions for portraits of numberless dignitaries, and Titian had scarcely returned to Venice when he was summoned to Milan to meet Philip IJ. and the Duke of Alva, whose portraits he sketched. After 1550 he was employed frequently by Philip, executing for him numerous mythological works and painting his portrait. Morelli says of the example in the Prado: “‘ Everything lives in it. The delicate aristocratic hands alone are a whole biography, the animated drawing of the legs, the brilliant armour, also the sallow, mysterious countenance, with its gloomy, silent gaze—t is really a miracle of art.” No praise could be too strong. “ These portraits of Philip are Titian’s greatest achievement as a court painter” (Gronau). Gronau discusses the change which Titian’s work was under- going during this decade (1540-1550), when, as he says, the master was becoming a colourist. That is, he was changing the point of attraction for the spectator from the easily analyzed and brilliant effects of his earlier canvases to the tonality of his later works, in which vivid colouring is absent and the whole canvas seems to breathe a colouristic atmosphere. Not all critics agree in finding the work of the last years of Titian’s life his greatest. In some instances the surrounding depth fails to vibrate and the mealy texture is, as says Cox, “like cheese.” Now and again the aged hand and eye betray themselves, but rarely; and we have such characteristic and beautiful examples of this later work as the “Rape of Europa” and the “Actaeon and Diana,” both painted for Philip II. A number of religious subjects date from his latter years, examples in which there is strong dramatic and emotional feel- ing. Although not among the latest works, the examples in the Louvre and Madrid may be chosen as thoroughly representative. Both show treatment or motive which can be traced in the art of the next century. In the “Crowning with Thorns” (1560), Titian allows great depth and employs forces of light against dark as the seventeenth century might do. Sharply foreshortened positions are pur- posely chosen, so that the figure emerges from dark to light in high relief. The contribution of all the pressures to a dramatic interpretation is again Rubens’ inspiration. The brutal forcePLATE 41 Tintoretto. Crucifixion. Scuola of San Rocco, Venice. (Alinari)TITIAN of the upraised arms is telling. Christ’s head forms the wedge of the movement of the right half. The doorpost is another line of concentration. The shadow in the doorway is deep and the contours are merged in it. Titian perhaps never gave to any theme a more profound interpretation than to the “Entombment” painted in 1559 (PI. 408). An immense advance has marked the years since the Louvre “Entombment.” The expression of emotional states by atmospheric tone as well as by every movement of the shrouded figures, the economy of means, the absence of detail, the large magnanimity of all the forms, the suppressed cries, the broken body, and the noble type of beauty in the Magdalen, make this one of Titian’s grandest works. Titian lived to be ninety-nine and painted to the end! His achievement is stupendous. It seems incredible that any one painter could have produced all that we see, and we must add to the collections of every gallery of Europe the numerous master- pieces destroyed by fire. Not only are the number and quality of these works to be considered, but the range of his interests and his grasp of beauty in the most varied forms. An immense physical endurance characterized Titian and made it possible for him to give expression in turn to the idealism and impetuosity of youth, the full-blooded activities of manhood, and the more philosophic attitude of age. No other painter excels in so many lines and none gives the impression of so dominant and triumphant a personality.CHAPTER XX TINTORETTO Before turning to the last great masters of the Venetian Ren- aissance, Tintoretto and Veronese, mention should be made of a group of secondary artists belonging to the generation of Gior- gione. They were important painters but as compared with their great contemporaries not outstanding personalities. Men of this generation were influenced first by the older tradition “which was not displaced in Venice until about 1520” (Brown and Rankin), soon passing from this training, however, to become followers of Giorgione and Titian. In the case of Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), other influences, as those of Raphael and Correggio, also affected his style, although he remained essentially “inventive and original.’ Important commissions which kept him busy during most of his life in provincial towns prevented him from being overshadowed by the later Venetians, and “he worked out a style of remarkably modern ease.” He treated religious themes with great diversity. Strong sentiment and overcrowding sometimes give a florid effect to his ambitious altar-pieces; but often, especially in his early work, magnificent prelates, putti as lovely as those of Correggio, rich landscape or architectural forms surround a Virgin of noble and severe beauty. He shows great felicity in the naive human touches with which he relieves the solemnity of grave and melan- choly groups. Usually the hands are expressive as those of a great actor. Lotto painted allegorical themes as well, and in the “Triumph of Chastity” he produced an alluring vision which recalls Correggio although in the subordination of sensuous ele- ments it is peculiarly his own. As a portrait painter Lotto was a subtle interpreter. The elegance and refinement of his models are entirely free from mannerism. Each is visualized as a com- plete interpretative conception. Beautiful examples are the Giorgionesque “Portrait of a Man” (Vienna), the “Portrait of an Architect” (Berlin), and the wonderful ““Old Man” in the Brera. In all these he pictures in fullest measure the Renaissance types of his day. 170TINTORETTO 171 Palma Vecchio (1480-1528) was born near Bergamo and added to the Venetian influences those of Lotto. He was one of the most important followers of Giorgione, but his best work has a rich splendour reflecting the preferences of a later period. This is especially well exemplified in the sante conversazioni, where the lines rise and fall in keeping with his opulent types. His ideal of feminine beauty appears at its best in the splendid full-length figure of “St. Barbara” (Santa Maria Famosa, Venice). She is radiant and exuberant—showing ‘“‘his native robustness and sumptuousness.” A fine example of portraiture is the ‘‘ Poet” (National Gallery). The figure, dressed in shades of red-violet and blue-violet, stands in meditative mood before a background of laurels against which the light flesh tones are strongly marked The early work of Sebastian del Piombo (1485-1547) recap- tures the spirit of Giorgione. The “Santa Conversazione” (San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice) is a remarkable example of the imaginative style of the first years of the sixteenth century. The ease with which the loosely arranged figures are related, the variety of types, and the enhanced beauty resulting from slight differences of axis are brought to a consummation in the woman at the left. Both figures and landscape combine real and ideal elements with a joyous tranquillity of mood which is thoroughly characteristic. About 1510 Sebastian was called to Rome where he became the friend and admirer of Michelangelo. In his enthusiasm for the Florentine master he relinquished his birthright as a Venetian and henceforward he replaced the splendour of Venetian art by formal monumental composition. A comparison of his early and late work “gives us some idea of the personal influence of Michelangelo which could . . . impel a Venetian painter of such excellence to adopt a line of art so totally opposed to his original tendency” (Kugler). The finest achievement of his later period is the powerfully conceived *Pieta” of Viterbo in which he approaches more closely than any other artist the solemnity of Michelangelo. How com- pletely he could become the academic painter is illustrated in the ‘Resurrection of Lazarus” (National Gallery). This is little more than a group of academic nudes. In sentiment, in com- position, and in the use of black shadows, it is a product of the late Roman school. As a portrait painter Sebastian produced impressive canvases such as the “Christopher Columbus”’ (Metro- politan Museum) where the composition and the grave harmony at ah en nie en72 THE GREAT PAINTERS of neutral tones produce an impressive effect and set off the strength of the head. One local school outside Venice produced a distinguished group of provincial painters. The peculiarly individual develop- ment of Renaissance ideals in the art of Brescia should be men- tioned although as a school it was affected indirectly by Venetian example. Savoldo (1480-1550) was influenced by Giovanni Bellini in Venice, but his compositional types were Brescian rather than Venetian. A broad somewhat grandiose arrangement is com- bined with individual figures of great simplicity. His master- piece, the “Virgin and Saints” (Brera) has a stately grandeur peculiar to the school. Romanino (1485-1566) also shows personal rendering of motives and colour derived from Venice which, however, were treated with a certain harshness by this provincial painter. Moretto (1498-1554), in his religious paintings, was an artist of high creative ability. Venetian and local influences he wholly assimilated and wrought into a style of real distinction. His colour is neutralized so that there sometimes appears to be an almost tangible atmosphere, creating a tonal unity suggestive of tapestry. The ‘“Pieta” (Metropolitan Museum) illustrates the deep emotional tone of his work. He sometimes introduces Baroque features but his solemnity and grandeur preserve him from sensationalism. Here he has placed the noble figure group in sumptuous but subdued colouring, against a distance in which cool tones suggest moonlight, the night effect according well with the sentiment of the picture. Moroni (1525-1578) was a pupil of Moretto but as an artist was notable only as a portraitist. Like other Brescian painters he made a fine use of tonal harmonies generally choosing a neutral scheme of colour. His arrangements are always well designed, but having little imagination the poses are often awkward and meaningless. At his best, however, as in the “Tailor” (National Gallery) he produced dignified and beautiful portraits. A cool colour scheme suggesting certain Spanish painters of the seven- teenth century gives unusual interest to the “Abbess’”’ (Estate of Theodore M. Davis), which is also admirable in characterization. Moroni was the last representative of this interesting provincial school. He died one year later than Titian but he belonged to the same generation as Veronese for although Titian died so late in the sixteenth century his great age must not be forgotten.TINTORETTO 173 He was born a year earlier than Giorgione and at a time when in Florence the careers of Botticelli and Ghirlandajo were just beginning. The conditions under which he was brought up and the ideas current in his day were therefore very different from those during the youth of Tintoretto and Veronese, who were born respectively in 1518 and 1528. Profound changes in political history and in intellectual ideals took place during the first half of the sixteenth century. Active intellectual leadership was fast passing to the north, where the conscience of Europe had already found expression in the revolt of Luther from ecclesiastical dictation. The endeavours of the Council of Trent to preserve the unity of Christendom occupied general attention in the middle of the century. By 1567-1573 the final struggle with Protestantism was nearing its end on the frontier of the Netherlands. It was a witness to the vitality of the artistic movement in Italy that it so long outlived the conditions which produced it, but the art of Tintoretto (1518-1592) and Veronese (1528-1588) lacks the universality of the Venetian masters of the preceding genera- tion. Turbulent and undisciplined as he is, the classic spirit 1s no longer the controlling factor with Tintoretto. He is a Romantictst, and the spirit of his art is allied to that of the great French Ro- manticists of the nineteenth century. His career opened at a period of transition in which adjustment was difficult and he seldom achieved a psychic distance which enabled him to see his work in true perspective. In struggling with the manifold problems and difficulties involved in his stupenduous tasks the maker of pictures sometimes eclipsed the artist. He carried foreshortening to extravagant lengths, employing suspended manikins in order to master the difficulties of figures in flight. Light and shadow were used for the purpose of giving added reality to his figures and he sometimes forgot to consider the shape of the group or of the mass, so that his canvases often present a broken and disorderly appearance. “They offer a diaper of varied effects rather than organized construction.” No doubt this characteristic is further accentuated at present by the fading and darkening of many of his pigments, which leave his canvases almost denuded of colour, a sooty black re- placing his deep shades of blue and lake. In many of Tintoretto’s paintings where the colour is preserved, there is a masterly play of soft cobalt blue and deep mulberry with pearly silver white.174 THE GREAT PAINTERS The blue ripples through the length of the canvas, unifying the whole as did the gold of the earlier conventional colour scheme. A fine example is the sketch for “Paradise” in the Louvre. At times he is able, in spite of naturalistic lighting, to create purely decorative effects. This is well illustrated in the enchanting small ceiling panels in the Prado. His use of light in landscape and his generalized handling suggest modern painting and his influence on later developments is more striking than his relation to his contemporaries. There is little of interest in the circumstances of Tintoretto’s life and we do not know with certainty who his master was, but his art gives unmistakable evidence of his debt to both Titian and Michelangelo, those leading personalities of the century, whose span of life so nearly coincided but whose art rang the changes from the exuberant to the profound. With eyes perhaps too constantly fixed on their attainments, Tintoretto failed, ex- cept in rare instances, to achieve the characteristic quality of either man. The exuberance of Titian was always expressed within the limits of a decorative convention. Too often by lack of con- formity to law Tintoretto fails to satisfy the eye. Michelangelo’s sense of significance, on the other hand, enabled him, even in his extravagant phases, to keep on the plane of high art conceptions that were perilously near to the Baroque, while Tintoretto’s grandiose concepts and technical display more often than not took the place of profound feeling. This was especially the case in his extensive mural decorations, such as those of San Rocco, where with incredible virtuosity he produced some seventy pic- tures, dashing them off with somewhat the verve that is seen in the best Pompeian house-painting. A very different quality of genius from that which brooded over the prophetic paintings of the Sistine ceiling! It is not necessary to see many examples nor to enter into the question of dates. There is development in Tintoretto’s technique and there are changes in his conception, but the quality of the man remains the same. The energy which sometimes over- whelms him is almost always apparent, even when held in abeyance. His characteristics are well illustrated in the “ Last Judgment ” in Santa Maria dell’ Orto. Tintoretto was dealing with a space twice as high as it was wide. To compose in such a shape was a most difficult feat. In the upper part the limitations are evident, but the attention is riveted on the lower half, where the impetuous fury of his vision is impelling (Pl. 41a). The earlier paintersTINTORETTO 175 of the “Last Judgment”—or the Last Things—had intentionally avoided “localization.” If the dead must be seen rising from their graves, a narrow strip of earth was given them, but the mind was not allowed to escape from the thought of the naked soul before its Judge. Michelangelo made no fundamental change; the introduction of the boat of Charon was merely incidental. Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment ”’ had been painted a few years before, and Tintoretto may have known it by description, but his method is very different. Michelangelo’s picture is dominated by the spirit of a vindictive judge. Tintoretto suggests the inev- itable consequence of the working of natural law. This could not be mistaken for the work of any contemporary. Never before in the art of Italy was a natural phenomenon realized with such appalling force as this torrent sweeping everything before it. A boat, with a wonderful oarsman, shoots the cataract; human forms are hurled headlong, the surge of the water around the trees on the brink is about to uproot them. Tintoretto has visualized the divine event as coincident with the natural convulsion predicted by Scripture and the picture has the horror of a cataclysm of nature. Yet often in the most terrible passages Tintoretto pre- served a wild beauty. Without regard to chronological sequence, let us turn to the frescos in the Scuola of San Rocco, which Ruskin considered the central shrine of Venetian art, and Cox regarded as one of its most pitiable failures. The earliest work there is the greatest: the “Crucifixion,” executed ‘‘at the very meridian of his pro- fessional career” (Pl. 418). Tintoretto treated this subject several times but never with equal clarity of arrangement or greater majesty in the central figure. Although it is not primarily a devotional picture the arrangement is formal, the cross being placed on the vertical axis and a strong pyramidal group occupying the foreground. Historic incidents are shown, but Tintoretto has given us the “ideal rather than the material substance of this historical event.”’ Osmaston’s comparison with the Greek drama is suggestive, for we have here in the realistic treatment of the subordinate scenes—the preparation for the raising of the other crosses, etc.—incidents which, however reserved in treat- ment, occasion in us almost the same reaction as to physical pain felt in our own flesh. But these sensations never predominate, the note of triumph and beauty calls us back, as does the chorus of a Greek drama, to the essential meaning of the theme, to the central figure, ‘‘ Whose arms to save us on the cross were spread.”