The History Of Painting In Italy Volume I Part 9

Another method of painting on gla.s.s, or rather on crystal, was much in fashion in the last century, and was employed for ornamenting mirrors, caskets, and other furniture of the chambers of the great. Maratta and his contemporaries on crystal for such works in the same style that they employed in painting on canva.s.s; and above all Giordano, who taught it to several pupils. Among these, the best was Carlo Garofalo, who was invited to the court of Charles II. of Spain, to practise this species of painting,[180] the era of which does not embrace a great number of years.

[Footnote 128: Although Vasari, Borghini, and Baldinucci, have also treated of other schools, they have chiefly ill.u.s.trated that of Florence, with which they were best acquainted. To them succeeded the respectable authors of the _Florentine Museum_, and of the _Series of the most celebrated Painters_, containing choice anecdotes of those masters, which are now republished, and accompanied by a print from the work of each painter, in the _Etruria Pittrice_ of the learned Sig. Ab.

Lastri. Other anecdotes are to be found in the work of P. Richa _On the Churches of Florence_, and in Sig. Cambiagi's _Guide_ to that City. Pisa too, has its _Guide_ by the Cav. t.i.ti; to which has succeeded the much larger work of Sig. da Morrona, above noticed. Siena has one by Sig.

Pecci, Volterra another by Ab. Giachi, and Pescia and Valdinievole by the Ab. Ansaldi. Sig. Frances...o...b..rnardi, an excellent connoisseur in the fine arts, prepared a guide to Lucca after Marchi; it remains inedited since his death, together with his anecdotes of the painters, sculptors, and architects of his native country. Meanwhile the _Diario_ of Mons. Mansi affords considerable information.]

[Footnote 129: Condivi promised to publish them, but this was never performed. See Bottari's notes on the life of Michelangiolo, p. 152, in Florent. edit. 1772.]

[Footnote 130: See the fine eulogy on him by Sig. Durazzini, among his Panegyrics on ill.u.s.trious Tuscans, where he corrects Vasari, his annotators and others, who have fixed the birth of Lionardo before this year. Tom. iii. n. 25.]

[Footnote 131: See Sig. Piacenza, in his edition of Baldinucci, t. ii.

p. 252. He has dedicated a long appendix to Vinci, in which he has collected all the anecdotes scattered through Vasari, Lomazzo, Borghini, Mariette, and other modern authors.]

[Footnote 132: "Leonardo seems to have trembled whenever he sat down to paint, and therefore never finished any of the pictures he began; for by meditation on the perfection of art, he perceived faults in what to others appeared admirable." Lomazzo, _Idea del Tempio della pittura_, page 114.]

[Footnote 133: Both have perished, after serving as models to the best painters of that age, and even to Andrea del Sarto. See what has been written by Vasari, and by M. Mariette, in the long letter concerning Vinci, which is inserted in tom. ii. of _Lett. Pittoriche_.]

[Footnote 134: It was on account of the same procrastinating disposition that Leo X. withdrew the patronage he had conferred on him, and which he was accustomed to bestow upon all men of genius.]

[Footnote 135: Vasari.]

[Footnote 136: Vasari, who published a life of him in 1550, and enlarged it in another edition; and Ascanio Condivi da Ripatransone, who printed one in 1553, ten years before the death of Bonarruoti.]

[Footnote 137: He was very partial to this poet; whose flights of fancy he embodied in pen-drawings in a book, which, unfortunately for the art, has perished; and to whose memory he wished to sculpture a magnificent monument, as appears from a pet.i.tion to Leo X. In it the Medicean Academy requests the bones of the divine poet; and among the subscribers we read the name of Michelangiolo, and also his offer. _Gori Ill.u.s.traz.

alla vita del Condivi_, p. 112.]

[Footnote 138: He projected a tract on "All the movements of the human body, on its external appearances, and on the bones, with an ingenious theory, the fruit of his long study." Condivi, p. 117.]

[Footnote 139: "Zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id amplius et augustius ratus; atque ut existimant Homerum secutus, cui validissima quaeque forma etiam in foeminis placet." Inst. Orat. lib. xii. c. 10.]

[Footnote 140: None however of these great men presumed to despise Michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of Christ, in the Minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the _Arte di Vedere_.

Mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. Juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (See Satire iii. v. 100.)

----"rides? majore cachinno Concut.i.tur; flet si lacrymam conspexit amici, Nee dolet: igniculum brumae si tempore poscas Accipit endromidem; si dixeris: aestuo, sudat."

[Footnote 141: Bottari confesses "that he shews somewhat of mannerism, but concealed with such skill that it is not perceptible;" an art which very few of his imitators possess.]

[Footnote 142: See Winckelmann in his "Gems of Baron Stochs," where he records and comments upon the text of the historian, p. 316.]

[Footnote 143:

"Duo Dossi e quel che a par sculpe e colora Michel piu che mortal Angiol divino."

Orl. Fur. Cant. x.x.xiii. 2.

[Footnote 144: Raffaello came to Florence towards the end of 1504.

(_Lett. Pitt._ tom. i. p. 2.) In this year Michelangiolo was called to Rome, and left his cartoon imperfect. Having afterwards fled from Rome, through dread of Julius II., he completed it in three months, in the year 1506. Compare the Brief of Julius, in which he recals Michelangiolo (_Lett. Pitt._ tom. iii. p. 320), with the relation of Vasari (tom. vi.

Ed. Fiorent. p. 191). During the time that Michelangiolo laboured at this work, "he was unwilling to shew it to any person (p. 182); and when it was finished it was carried to the hall of the Pope," and was there studied (p. 184). Raffaello had then returned to Florence, and this work might open the way to his new style, which, as a learned Englishman expresses it, is intermediate between that of Michelangiolo and of Perugino.]

[Footnote 145: He chose the companions of those who had painted in the Sistine, Jacopo di Sandro (Botticelli), Agnolo di Donnino, a great friend of Rosselli, and the elder Indaco, a pupil of Ghirlandaio, who were but feeble artists. Bugiardini, Gianacci and Aristotile di S.

Gallo, of whom we shall take further notice in the proper place, were there also.]

[Footnote 146: Varchio, in his Funeral Oration, p. 15.]

[Footnote 147: _Idea del Tempio della Pittura_, p. 47. Ed. Bologn.]

[Footnote 148: Tom. vi. p. 398.]

[Footnote 149: See _Entretiens sur les Vies et sur les Ouvrages des plus excellens Peintres_, tom. i. p. 502.]

[Footnote 150: See pp. 245, 253.]

[Footnote 151: Lett. Pitt. tom. iii. lett. 227. Rosa, Sat. iii. p. 85.]

[Footnote 152: Salvator Rosa in his third satire, p. 84, narrates the rebuke which the Prelate gave Michelangiolo for his indecency in painting the Saints themselves without garments.]

[Footnote 153: Microscosmo, p. 6.]

[Footnote 154: Tom. ii. p. 254.]

[Footnote 155: He is also blamed for this part of the perspective by others. (See P. M. della Valle in the "Prosa recitata in Arcadia," 1784, p. 260, of the Giorn. Pis. tom, liii.)]

[Footnote 156: Malv. tom. ii. p. 254.]

[Footnote 157: Vite de' Pittori, &c. p. 44.]

[Footnote 158: Dialogo sopra la Pittura.]

[Footnote 159: _Idea del Tempio della Pittura_, p. 41.]

[Footnote 160: Conca, Descriz. Odeporica della Spagna, tom. i. page 24.]

[Footnote 161: The ignorant believe that Michelangiolo "nailed a man to a cross and left him there to expire, in order to paint from the life a figure of our Saviour on the cross." See Dati, in his notes of the Life of Parrhasius, who is said to have committed a similar homicide. This story of the latter is probably a fable, and undoubtedly it is so of Michelangiolo. The crucifixions of this artist are often repeated, sometimes with a single figure, sometimes with our Lady and S. John; at other times with two Angels, who collect the blood. Bottari mentions several of these pictures in different galleries. To these we may add the picture of the Caprara palace, and those in the possession of Monsignor Bonfigliuoli and of Sigg. Biancani in Bologna. Sig. Co.

Chiappini of Piacenza has a very good one, and there is another in the church of the college of Ravenna.]

[Footnote 162: A name given by the Italians to pictures of a dead Christ on the knees of his mother.]

[Footnote 163: Bottari, in his _Notes_ to the Letter of Preziado, doubts whether this supposed scholar of Michelangiolo be Galeazzo Alessi, remarking at the same time that this last was rather an architect than a painter. I am inclined to think that the Matteo in question may have been the foregoing Matteo da _Lecce_, or da Leccio, and that owing to one of those errors, which Clerche in his "Arte Critica," calls _ex auditu_, his name in Spain became D'Alessi, or D'Alessio, the letters _c_ and _s_ in many countries being made use of reciprocally. Besides, this _Leccese_, of whom we write in the fourth volume, flourished in the time of Vargas, went to Spain, affected the style of Michelangiolo, and never settled himself in any place from his desire of seeing the world.

Memoirs of him appear to have been collected in Spain, by Pacheco, who lived in 1635 (Conca, iii. 252), who in his account, at this distance of time, must have been guided by vulgar report; a bad authority for names, particularly those of foreigners, as was noticed in the Preface. That he should further be called Roman instead of Italian, in a foreign country, and that he should there adopt the name of Perez, not having a.s.sumed any surname in Rome, can scarcely appear strange to the reader, and the more so as he is described as an adventurer--a species of persons who subsist upon tricks and frauds.]

[Footnote 164: Sebastiano painted it again for the Osservanti of Viterbo; and there is a similar one described in the Carthusian Monastery, at Naples, which is painted in oil, and is supposed to be the work of Bonarruoti.]

[Footnote 165: Limbo, among theologians of the Roman Church, is the place where the souls of just men, who died before the coming of our Saviour, and of unbaptized children, are supposed to reside.]

[Footnote 166: This n.o.ble fresco was ruined during the revolutionary tumults at Rome.--Tr.]

[Footnote 167: That Raffaello was at this time well versed in perspective it is unreasonable to doubt, as Bottari has done: he proceeded from the school of Perugino, who was very eminent in that science; and he left a good specimen at Siena, where he remained some time before he came to Florence.]