Renaissance in Italy Volume III Part 10

[165] See above, Chapter III, Andrea Verocchio, for what has been said about Verocchio's "David."

[166] A drawing made in red chalk for this "Dream of Constantine" has been published in facsimile by Ottley, in his _Italian School of Design_.

He wrongly attributes it, however, to Giorgione, and calls it a "Subject Unknown."

[167] The one in S. Francesco at Rimini, the other in the Uffizzi.

[168] Two angels have recently been published by the Arundel Society who have also copied Melozzo's wall-painting of Sixtus IV. in the Vatican. It is probable that the picture in the Royal Collection at Windsor, of Duke Frederick of Urbino listening to the lecture of a Humanist, is also a work of Melozzo's, much spoiled by re-painting. See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 220.

[169] Muratori, vol. xxiv. 1181.

[170] For Ciriac of Ancona, see Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 113.

[171] The services rendered by Squarcione to art have been thoroughly discussed by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Painting in North Italy_, vol. i. chap. 2. I cannot but think that they underrate the importance of his school.

[172] He was born between 1360 and 1370, and he settled at Florence about 1422, where he opened a _bottega_ in S. Trinita. In 1423 he painted his masterpiece, the "Adoration of the Magi," now exhibited in the Florentine Academy of Arts.

[173] See, for instance, the valuable portraits of the Medicean family with Picino and Poliziano, in the fresco of the "Tower of Babel" at Pisa.

[174] _L'Art Chretien_, vol. ii. p. 397.

[175] The same remark might be made about the Venetian Bonifazio. It is remarkable that the "Adoration of the Magi" was always a favourite subject with painters of this calibre.

[176] I may refer to the picture of the hunters in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford, the "Vintage of Noah" at Pisa, the attendants of the Magi in the Riccardi Palace, and the _Carola_ in the "Marriage of Jacob and Rachel"

at Pisa.

[177] "Stories of Isaac and Ishmael and of Jacob and Esau" at Pisa, and "Story of S. Augustine" at San Gemignano. Nothing can be prettier than the school children in the latter series. The group of the little boy, horsed upon a bigger boy's back for a whipping, is one of the most natural episodes in painting.

[178] Riccardi Chapel.

[179] For an example, the picture of Madonna worshipping the infant Christ upheld by two little angels in the Uffizzi.

[180] In the Academy of Fine Arts at Florence.

[181] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap. 19. Nothing was more common in the practice of Italian arts than for pupils to take their names from their masters, in the same way as they took them from their fathers, by the prefix _di_ or otherwise.

[182] The most simply beautiful of Filippino's pictures is the oil-painting in the Badia at Florence, which represents Madonna attended by angels dictating the story of her life to S. Bernard. In this most lovely religious picture Filippino comes into direct compet.i.tion with Perugino (see the same subject at Munich), without suffering by the contrast. The type of Our lady, striven after by Botticelli and other masters of his way of feeling, seems to me more thoroughly attained by Filippino than by any of his fellow-workers. She is a woman acquainted with grief and nowise distinguished by the radiance of her beauty among the daughters of earth. It is measureless love for the mother of his Lord that makes S. Bernard bow before her with eyes of wistful adoration and hushed reverence.

[183] The study of the fine arts offers few subjects of more curious interest than the vicissitudes through which painters of the type of Botticelli, not absolutely and confessedly in the first rank, but attractive by reason of their relation to the spirit of their age, and of the seal of _intimite_ set upon their work have pa.s.sed. In the last century and the beginning of this, our present preoccupation with Botticelli would have pa.s.sed for a mild lunacy, because he has none of the qualities then most in vogue and most enthusiastically studied, and because the moment in the history of culture he so faithfully represents, was then but little understood. The prophecy of Mr. Ruskin, the tendencies of our best contemporary art in Mr. Burne Jones's painting, the specific note of our recent fashionable poetry, and, more than all, our delight in the delicately poised psychological problems of the middle Renaissance, have evoked a kind of hero-worship for this excellent artist and true poet.

[184] A friend, writing to me from Italy, speaks thus of Botticelli, and of the painters a.s.sociated with him: "When I ask myself what it is I find fascinating in him--for instance, which of his pictures, or what element in them--I am forced to admit that it is the touch of paganism in him, the fairy-story element, _the echo of a beautiful lapsed mythology which he has found the means of transmitting._" The words I have printed in italics seem to me very true. At the same time we must bear in mind that the scientific investigation of nature had not in the fifteenth century begun to stand between the sympathetic intellect and the outer world.

There was still the possibility of that "lapsed mythology," the dream of poets and the delight of artists, seeming positively the best form of expression for sentiments aroused by nature.

[185] _De Rerum Natura_, lib. v. 737.

[186] The rose-tree background in a Madonna belonging to Lord Elcho is a charming instance of the value given to flowers by careful treatment.

[187] I cannot bring myself to accept Mr. Pater's reading of the Madonna's expression. It seems to me that Botticelli meant to portray the mingled awe and tranquillity of a mortal mother chosen for the Son of G.o.d. He appears to have sometimes aimed at conveying more than painting can compa.s.s; and, since he had not Lionardo's genius, he gives sadness, mournfulness, or discontent, for some more subtle mood. Next to the Madonna of the Uffizzi, Botticelli's loveliest religious picture to my mind is the "Nativity" belonging to Mr. Fuller Maitland. Poetic imagination in a painter has produced nothing more graceful and more tender than the dance of angels in the air above, and the embracement of the angels and the shepherds on the lawns below.

[188] In the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice. I do not mention this picture as a complete pendant to Botticelli's famous _tondo_. The faces of S. Catherine and Madonna, however, have something of the rarity that is so striking in that work.

[189] I might mention stanzas 122-124 of Poliziano's _Giostra_, describing Venus in the lap of Mars; or stanzas 99-107, describing the birth of Venus; and from Boiardo's _Orlando Innamorato_, I might quote the episode of Rinaldo's punishment by Love (lib. ii. canto xv. 43), or the tale of Silvanella and Narcissus (lib. ii. canto xvii. 49).

[190] I hope to make use of this pa.s.sage in a future section of my work on the Italian Poetry of the Renaissance. Therefore I pa.s.s by this portion of Piero's art-work now.

[191] Uffizzi Gallery.

[192] See the bas-relief upon the pedestal of his "Perseus" in the Loggia de' Lanzi.

[193] In the National Gallery.

[194] His family name was Domenico di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. He probably worked during his youth and early manhood as a goldsmith and got his artist's name from the trade of making golden chaplets for the Florentine women. See Vasari, vol. v. p. 66.

[195] What, after all, remains the grandest quality of Ghirlandajo is his powerful drawing of characteristic heads. They are as various as they are vigorous. What a nation of strong men must the Florentines have been, we feel while gazing at his frescoes.

[196] In many houses he painted roundels with his own hand, and of naked women plenty.

CHAPTER VI

PAINTING

Two Periods in the True Renaissance--Andrea Mantegna--His Statuesque Design--His Naturalism--Roman Inspiration--Triumph of Julius Caesar--Bas-reliefs--Luca Signorelli--The Precursor of Michael Angelo--Anatomical Studies--Sense of Beauty--The Chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto--Its Arabesques and Medallions--Degrees in his Ideal--Enthusiasm for Organic Life--Mode of treating Cla.s.sical Subjects--Perugino--His Pietistic Style--His Formalism--The Psychological Problem of his Life--Perugino's Pupils--Pinturicchio--At Spello and Siena--Francia--Fra Bartolommeo--Transition to the Golden Age--Lionardo da Vinci--The Magician of the Renaissance--Raphael--The Melodist--Correggio--The Faun--Michael Angelo--The Prophet.

The Renaissance, so far as Painting is concerned, may be said to have culminated between the years 1470 and 1550. These dates, it must be frankly admitted, are arbitrary; nor is there anything more unprofitable than the attempt to define by strict chronology the moments of an intellectual growth so complex, so unequally progressive, and so varied as that of Italian art. All that the historian can hope to do, is to strike a mean between his reckoning of years and his more subtle calculations based on the emergence of decisive genius in special men. An instance of such compromise is afforded by Lionardo da Vinci, who belongs, as far as dates go, to the last half of the fifteenth century, but who must, on any estimate of his achievement, be cla.s.sed with Michael Angelo among the final and supreme masters of the full Renaissance. To violate the order of time, with a view to what may here be called the morphology of Italian art, is, in his case, a plain duty.

Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to regard the eighty years above mentioned as a period no longer of promise and preparation but of fulfilment and accomplishment. Furthermore, the thirty years at the close of the fifteenth century may be taken as one epoch in this climax of the art, while the first half of the sixteenth forms a second. Within the former falls the best work of Mantegna, Perugino, Francia, the Bellini, Signorelli, Fra Bartolommeo. To the latter we may reckon Michael Angelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, t.i.tian, and Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da Vinci, though belonging chronologically to the former epoch, ranks first among the masters of the latter; and to this also may be given Tintoretto, though his life extended far beyond it to the last years of the century.

We thus obtain, within the period of eighty years from 1470 to 1550, two subordinate divisions of time, the one including the last part of the fifteenth century, the other extending over the best years of the sixteenth.

The subdivisions I have just suggested correspond to two distinct stages in the evolution of art. The painters of the earlier group win our admiration quite as much by their aim as by their achievement. Their achievement, indeed, is not so perfect but that they still make some demand upon interpretative sympathy in the student. There is, besides, a sense of reserved strength in their work. We feel that their motives have not been developed to the utmost, that their inspiration is not exhausted; that it will be possible for their successors to advance beyond them on the same path, not realising more consummate excellence in special points, but combining divers qualities, and reaching absolute freedom.

The painters of the second group display mastery more perfect, range of faculty more all-embracing. What they design they do; nature and art obey them equally; the resources placed at their command are employed with facile and unfettered exercise of power. The hand obedient to the brain is now so expert that nothing further is left to be desired in the expression of the artist's thought.[197] The student can only hope to penetrate the master's meaning. To imagine a step further in the same direction is impossible. The full flower of the Italian genius has been unfolded. Its message to the world in art has been delivered.

Chronology alone would not justify us in drawing these distinctions. What really separates the two groups is the different degree in which they severally absorbed the spirit and uttered the message of their age. In the former the Renaissance was still immature, in the latter it was perfected.

Yet all these painters deserve in a true sense to be called its children.

Their common object is art regarded as an independent function, and relieved from the bondage of technical impediments. In their work the liberty of the modern mind finds its first and n.o.blest expression. They deal with familiar and time-honoured Christian motives reverently; but they use them at the same time for the exhibition of pure human beauty.

Pagan influences yield them spirit-stirring inspiration; yet the antique models of style, which proved no less embarra.s.sing to their successors than Saul's armour was to David, weigh lightly, like a magician's breast-plate, upon their heroic strength.

Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua in 1431. Vasari says that in his boyhood he herded cattle, and it is probable that he was the son of a small Lombard farmer. What led him to the study of the arts we do not know; but that his talents were precociously developed, is proved by his registration in 1441 upon the books of the painter's guild at Padua. He is there described as the adopted son of Squarcione. At the age of seventeen he signed a picture with his name. Studying the casts and drawings collected by Squarcione for his Paduan school, the young Mantegna found congenial exercise for his peculiar gifts.[198] His early frescoes in the Eremitani at Padua look as though they had been painted from statues or clay models, carefully selected for the grandeur of their forms, the n.o.bility of their att.i.tudes, and the complicated beauty of their drapery.

The figures, arranged on different planes, are perfect in their perspective; the action is indicated by appropriate gestures, and the colouring, though faint and cold, is scientifically calculated. Yet not a man or woman in these wondrous compositions seems to live. Well provided with bone and muscle, they have neither blood nor anything suggestive of the breath of life within them. It is as though Mantegna had been called to paint a people turned to stone, arrested suddenly amid their various occupations, and preserved for centuries from injury in some Egyptian solitude of dewless sand.

In spite of this unearthly immobility, the Paduan frescoes exercise a strange and potent spell. We feel ourselves beneath the sway of a gigantic genius, intent on solving the severest problems of his art in preparation for the portraiture of some high intellectual abstraction. It should also be observed that notwithstanding their frigidity and statuesque composure, the pictures of "S. Andrew" and "S. Christopher" in the chapel of the Eremitani reveal minute study of real objects. Transitory movements of the body are noted and transcribed with merciless precision; an Italian hill-side, with its olive trees and winding ways and crown of turrets, forms the background of one scene; in another the drama is localised amid Renaissance architecture of the costliest style. Rustic types have been selected for the soldiers, and commonplace details, down to a patched jerkin or a broken shoe, bear witness to the patience and the observation of the master. But over all these things the glamour of Medusa's head has fallen, turning them to stone. We are clearly in the presence of a painter for whom the attractions of nature were subordinated to the fascinations of science--a man the very opposite, for instance, to Benozzo Gozzoli. If Mantegna had pa.s.sed away in early manhood, like Masaccio, his fame would have been that of a cold and calculating genius labouring after an ideal unrealised except in its dry formal elements.

The truth is that Mantegna's inspiration was derived from the antique.[199] The beauty of cla.s.sical bas-relief entered deep into his soul and ruled his imagination. In later life he spent his acquired wealth in forming a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities.[200] He was, moreover, the friend of students, eagerly absorbing the knowledge brought to light by Ciriac of Ancona, Flavio Biondo, and other antiquaries; and so completely did he a.s.similate the materials of scholarship, that the spirit of a Roman seemed to be re-incarnated in him. Thus, independently of his high value as a painter, he embodies for us in art that sincere pa.s.sion for the ancient world which was the dominating intellectual impulse of his age.

The minute learning acc.u.mulated in the fifteenth century upon the subject of Roman military life found n.o.ble ill.u.s.tration in his frieze of "Julius Caesar's Triumph."[201] Nor is this masterpiece a cold display of pedantry. The life we vainly look for in the frescoes of the Eremitani chapel may be found here--statuesque, indeed, in style, and stately in movement, but glowing with the spirit of revived antiquity. The processional pomp of legionaries bowed beneath their trophied arms, the monumental majesty of robed citizens, the gravity of stoled and veiled priests, the beauty of young slaves, and all the paraphernalia of spoils and wreaths and elephants and ensigns are ma.s.sed together with the self-restraint of n.o.ble art subordinating pageantry to rules of lofty composition. What must the genius of the man have been who could move thus majestically beneath the weight of painfully acc.u.mulated erudition, converting an antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of line composed in the grave Dorian mood?