The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume III Part 20

The Duke of Alba possesses of Correggio, in figures somewhat less than Nature, Mercury teaching Cupid to read in the presence of Venus. Venus has the singular attribute of wings, and of a bow in her left hand; and Mengs persuades himself to discover in her forms a reminiscence of an imitation of the Apollino, formerly in the Villa Medici at Rome. The characteristic excellence of the execution, and an evident pentimento in the arm of the Mercury, leave no doubt of its having a better claim to originality than the duplicates in France and Germany. It formerly made part of the collection of Charles the First, and Sandrart saw it in the Palace of Whitehall, from whence it was purchased by an ancestor of the Duke of Alba.

Not to waste time on conjectural works, we finish this list with a picture formerly in the house Barberini, now supposed to be in England: it is painted on panel, and represents from the narrative of S. Marc, the young man who followed our Saviour at the moment of his captivity, but fled on being laid hold of, and left his garment in the hands of the captors. Mengs describes a duplicate of this picture, painted on canva.s.s, at his time in the hands of an Englishman at Rome, and though, in his opinion, only the study for the other, in the princ.i.p.al parts, especially the figure of the youth, highly finished: his expression, form and att.i.tude, remind the critic so strongly of the same in the eldest son of the Laoc.o.o.n, that he is persuaded they are an imitation, though in a style more consonant with Correggio's manner.

The cause and circ.u.mstances of his death we are not acquainted with, since the idle tale has been discarded which Vasari tells, of his perishing in consequence of having carried home a load of sixty scudi in copper, which he had received in payment at Parma. He who considers what strength would be required to carry sixty crowns in quattrini, will find its confutation in the tale itself; let it be added that the extreme heat which is said to have aggravated the fatigue, and accelerated his death, is, even in Italy, not coincident with the season in which he must have taken the journey,[165] as he died on the fifth of March. The magnificence and number of his commissions; the deference paid to his powers in the face of rival artists, by the very patrons of those men, or societies, that might have saved expense by admitting concurrence; the handsome, though not quite metropolitan prices, which he received, and what Mengs has observed, the expensive goodness of his colours, of his panels, and canva.s.ses--make it not only extremely improbable that he should have lived in the depressed circ.u.mstances, to which vulgar tradition has sunk him; but add an air of truth to the opinion of those who thought him, if not opulent, yet nearer allied to affluence than want.

Correggio was a monument without a tomb; but it appears strange that a century and a half should have elapsed before the thought of erecting him one occurred to the Senate and citizens of his native place, and then was suffered to evaporate in ineffectual projects. The boastful intentions of Padre Resta proved equally nugatory: the tombstone set and inscribed by Girolamo Conti still remains a solitary offering to his genius:

D. O. M.

Antonio. Allegri. Civi.

Vulgo. Il Correggio.

Arte. Picturae. Habitu. Probitatis.

Eximio.

Monum. Hoc. Posuit.

Hier. Conti. Concivis.

Siccine. Separas. Amara. Mors.

Obiit. Anno. aetatis. XL. Sal. MDx.x.xIV.

On such a face as Correggio's, physiognomy might have established principles or drawn some inferences from it, had not a perverse destiny left us as ignorant of it, as of his complexion, stature, character, and habits. Vasari's exertions to obtain a portrait of him were not only unsuccessful, but hopeless; and the profile which is shown in the dome of Parma as his, becomes inadmissible from the very name of the artist to whom it is ascribed.[166] The head which found its way into the third and every following edition of Vasari, has certainly nothing repugnant with the notions we may form of his character, but age. Meditation, simplicity, serenity, compose it. It is said to have been copied from a picture not quite finished, which appears to have the touch of Correggio, and came from Sicily to Naples. He is represented contemplating a design, the original of which, report has placed at Vienna with Prince Esterhazy. The portrait which is at Turin, in the "Vigna della Regina," engraved by Valperga, with the epigraph, in part hid by the frame, but read by Lanzi "Antonius Corrigius f." (_i. e._ fecit) though by some believed genuine, appears spurious from this very circ.u.mstance, the large character of the letters and the s.p.a.ce they occupy; a manner of writing often used to indicate the person painted, never the painter. Another portrait, which from Genoua is said to have been carried to England, with the indorsed inscription "Dosso Dossi dipinse questo ritratto di Antonio da Correggio," fronts the Memorie of Ratti. Without examining the authenticity of this inscription, it is sufficient to observe, that Antonio da Correggio is likewise the name of Antonio Bernieri, a celebrated miniature painter, and fellow citizen of Allegri, whose date coincides with that of Dosso, and whom there will be occasion to mention again.

Of Correggio's numerous pretending imitators, Lodovico Carracci appears to be the only one who penetrated his principle. The axiom, that the less the traces appear of the means by which a work has been produced, the more it resembles the operations of Nature, is not an axiom likely to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour, the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation, which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the contemplation of some preceding style, a.n.a.logous to his own feelings and its comparison with Nature; and where could that be met with in a degree equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of Correggio's effusions? They inspired his frescoes in the cloisters of S. Michele in Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the hermitage, and of the ponderous demon that mocks their toil; the warlike splendour in the Homage of Totila; the Nocturnal Conflagration of Monte Casino; the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidious charms of the sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of Correggio.

His triumph in oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching in a chapel of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil, and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in tones austere, p.r.o.nounced, and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrors on the astonished sense.

FOOTNOTES:

[154] Mantoua preserved a certain attachment to Virgil in the darkest ages; for besides numerous coins stamped with his image, his statue, honoured by annual festivals, remained in the forum, till the brutal fanaticism of Carlo Malatesta condemned it to the river. Vide _Ant.

Possevini Junioris Gonzaga_, lib. v. p. 486. Paul of Florence and Peter Paul Vergerius wrote against Malatesta: the latter under the following t.i.tle, 'De Diruta Statua Virgilii P.P.V. eloquentissimi Oratoris epistola ex tugurio Blondi sub Apolline.' No date.

[155] Some codices decorated with miniatures and the portrait of that Countess: the most conspicuous of which is that by Donizone, a Benedictine at Canossa, in the diocese of Reggio, but a German by extraction, who lived at the court of Mathilda, and in two books of barbarous verse composed her life and history. It is preserved in the Vatican Library, No. 4922, and was first published by Sebastian Tagnagolio, at Ingolstadt, 1612. 4to.

The original portrait of Mathilda, by an unknown hand, drawn from her monument at Polirone, has been published by _J. Bat. Visi in Notizie Storiche della citta di Mantoua e dello stato_, t. ii. p. 122. She is represented on a horse with a pomegranate in her hand.

[156] In the Convent "alle Grazie," tradition dates the remains of several old pictures from the time of Mantegna. That miniature or rather missal painting had attained a high degree of excellence at that period, is proved by a large folio Bible, in the Estensian Library, decorated with admirable copies of insects, plants, and animals. The contract made between Duca Borso, 1455, and the two artists who painted it, Taddeo de Crivelli and Zuanne de Russi da Mantova, has been preserved by Bettsh.e.l.li, Lett. Mant. Mantova, 1774. 4to.

[157] Vasari, whom rage of dispatch and eager credulity seldom suffered to wait for authentic information, not content, in spite of his epitaph, to tell us that he was born of low parents in some district of Mantoua, confounds the date of his death with that of the inscription itself.

[158] See Nic. Vleughels, in his notes to Dolci.

[159] Garofalo.

[160] Cataloghi, p. 498.

[161] Indice del Pam. de' Pittori, p. 21.

[162] ----"pe?? ?e?s? d? des?? ???a ???se??, ?????t??."--Ilias, xv. 19.

[163] Du Change. Copy of the Leda in the Colonna.

[164] In the palace G.o.dolphin.

[165] In the obituary of the Franciscans at Correggio we read, "A di 5 Marzo 1534 mori Maestro Antonio Allegri Dipintore e fu sepolto a 6 detto in S. Francesco sotto il Portico."

[166] Lattanzio Gambara.

THE SCHOOL OF BOLOGNA.

Three epochs divide the history of painting in Bologna and the neighbouring districts. The first is from its restoration to the time of Francesco Raibolini, or Francia; the second reaches from him to the Carracci, when it attained its height, and gradually decayed in the variety of deviations which mark the third.

Bologna, at an early period of the fifth century, appears to have been considered as a nursery of sciences and arts; the foundation of its University is dated up to Petronius, its bishop at that period; afterwards, under the successive invasions of barbarians, when the alternate prey of clerical and secular rapacity, as a powerful republic, or oppressed by civic usurpation, and at last reduced to a Papal province, Bologna never lost its predilection for sciences and arts.

Of the progress made in painting anterior to the time of Cimabue, some monumental relics still remain, though by far the greater part were ignorantly destroyed at the beginning of the last century. Some that escaped the whitewasher's hand are ascribed to an artist who marked his work with the letters _P.F._ Of these, one which represents a Maria, is preserved in the Church della Baroncella, and was done about 1120. Two others are in the Basilica of S. Stephano.

Baldi, a collector of antique pictures, in a MS. quoted by Malvasia, mentions some of _Guido da Bologna_, painted in 1178 and 1180, and others executed by _Ventura da Bononia_ in 1197. Of this last something still remains, especially one picture with the date 1217, and the inscription _Ventura pinsit_: and the name of _Urso_, or _Ursone_, a contemporary of _Guido da Siena_, is found on a picture inscribed _Urso f. 1226_; and some others ascribed to him have dates of 1242 and 1244.

In those times painting, sculpture, architecture, chasing, were frequently exercised by one man. A certain _Manno_, contemporary with Cimabue, is mentioned as the painter of a Madonna by Baldi, and as the sculptor of Pope Bonifazio VIII. by Ghirardacci who calls him likewise a goldsmith. His dates are from 1260 to 1301. Some remains or rather ruins of these masters are still visible in the palace Malvezzi.

The age of Giotto and Dante gives Art an air of greater certainty.

Tradition and monument go hand in hand. Franco of Bologna, with his supposed master Oderigi of Gubbio, are celebrated in the poet's poem of the Purgatory. Franco was called to Rome by Bonifazio VIII. to decorate the books and missals of the Vatican library with miniature; and on his return to Bologna founded a school which numbered among its scholars _Vitale_, _Lorenzo_, _Simone_, and _Jacopo d'Avanzi_, whose works, especially what remains of the two last, make it probable that Vasari is correct when he a.s.serts that Franco excelled in large as well as in miniature painting. Michael Agnolo and the Carracci are said to have been struck with the fire of conception and the tone of colour in the pictures still preserved of Simone and Jacopo d'Avanzi, at the Madonna di Mezzaratta, and to have advised a careful restoration of the decaying parts. Simone, who loved to paint the crucifix, from the number which he executed obtained the surname of "de' Crocefissi;" and Jacopo, smitten with the love of Maria, was marked by the t.i.tle "dalle Madonne."

He excelled, however, in subjects of a martial kind, if the conflict in the Chapel of S. Jacopo del Santo at Padova, and the Capture of Jugurtha, with the Triumph of Marius, in a saloon at Verona, be his performances: works which excited the wonder of Mantegna. As he sometimes subscribed "Jacobus Pauli," it has been surmised that he was of Venetian extraction, and perhaps the son and a.s.sistant of that Paolo who painted the Ancona of S. Marc.

Of the artists who at that period painted in Mezzaratta, Cristoforo, whether of Ferrara, Modena, or Bologna, for he is claimed by all, seems to have shared the highest repute. He had the commission of the princ.i.p.al altar, where he painted on panel the Madonna with the Infant between her knees, and some figures kneeling before her; it still exists, marked with his name Christofano, 1380. A most copious work of his, divided into ten compartments of saints, rudely designed, languid in colour, but of original style, is preserved among the fragments of the house Malvezzi.

Lippo di Dalmatio,--who was supposed to have been a Carmelite, till Bianconi, in Piacenza's edition of Baldinucci, produced proofs of his wife and family,--came from the school of Vitale, and from his predilection for the Mother of Christ acquired, like Jacopo d'Avanzi, the byname of "Lippo dalle Madonne." There goes a tale that he gave instruction to Saint Catherine Vigri, of whom certain miniatures and an Infant Christ on panel still remain. A better union of tints, and some easier arrangement in the folds of his draperies, though with a profusion of gold lace, is all that discriminates him from the crudeness and exility of the ancient style. Such, however, was his felicity in the character of Madonnas, that they captivated Guido Reni,[167] who used to repeat that Lippo, in expressing at once the majesty, the sanct.i.ty, and the mildness of the divine mother, must have been a.s.sisted by a celestial power. Some of these Madonnas are said to be in oil colours, with dates of 1376, 1405, and 1407. Guido is likewise the guarantee of certain frescoes representing facts of Elia, painted with great spirit by the same master.

After 1409, the last date of Lippo's pictures, the School of Bologna somewhat declined, nor could it be otherwise: no vigorous school ever sprang from the timid precepts of a portrait painter, and Dalmatio possessed more of that than of historic power: this, rather than the supposed imitation of certain images imported from Constantinople, was the cause of that insignificance which consigned, with few exceptions, his school and successors to oblivion. Of Pietro Lianori, Michele di Matteo, Bombologno, Severo and Ercole Bologna, Catherina di Vigri, Giacopo Ripanda, Marco Zoppo, time has left little but the names, and of that little, enough not to regret the loss of what vanished. Let us not, however, be too fastidious to repeat what tradition has persevered to report of some; if Bombologno may be left to the votaries of the crucifix, and Catherina to the rubric that saints her, Michele Lambertini claims the attention of artists for a mellowness of tints which Albano judged superior to the tints of Francia; Giacopo Ripanda for the dangers which he braved in designing the groups of the Trajan pillar;[168] and Marco Zoppo as no despicable compet.i.tor of Andrea Mantegna, and the reputed master of Francesco Francia.

Francesco Raibolini, surnamed Francia, born in 1450, may be considered as the head of the Bolognese school, because his works appear to have been framed on that collective principle which became its leading feature in the sequel, and was probably the result of the long theory that preceded his practice, a.s.sisted by that readiness in design which distinguished him as a goldsmith, chaser,[169] and die-cutter, professions to which he had been trained up from his infancy, and which he raised to celebrity before he attained complete manhood.

Francia was fortunate in contemporaries; the School of Squarcione had furnished him with style and form; the genius of Lionardo da Vinci, with effect and chiaroscuro; Pietro Vanucchi with arrangement if not composition, and though not beauty, with amenity of aspect; and Bellino with tone, breadth of drapery and colour. Ardour of mind, energy of application and dexterity, supplied the want of early practice, and we find him in the palace of Giov. Bentivoglio on a par with the most expert Frescanti conscribed from Ferrara and Modena, and soon after intrusted with the commission of painting the altar-piece of his chapel at S. Jacopo, a work of great subtlety of execution; though modestly inscribed "Opus Francia Aurificis," and a pledge of that superior style at which he aimed and in the sequel attained.

If from what has been premised of Bolognese artists anterior to Cimabue, it is evident that the germs of art belong to their own soil, their claim to originality in the progress of style has been and still is matter of dispute between the champions of the Tuscan school and those of their own. The Florentines insist on having taught the Bolognese, what the Bolognese deny to have learnt from the Florentines.[170] As in a dispute of this kind, candour is often sacrificed to the fervour of patriotic vanity, and the obstinacy of local attachment, the real state of the question is better learnt from those monuments of the fourteenth century, which still remain scattered over Romagna or collected and more cla.s.sically arranged in Bologna itself. Among all these some specimens will be found evidently Greek, others as evidently Giottesque; some in a Venetian style, and not a few in a manner peculiar to Bologna only.

These have a body of colour, a taste in perspective, a mode of design in figures, and a choice of forms and hues in draperies, which no other school practised. From all which it appears, that if Giotto during his stay at Bologna raised pupils, and formed imitators, his own school had no influence on, nor dislodged, that aboriginal one which continued to disseminate and to improve the principles imbibed from the antique mosaics and the painters of miniature.

FOOTNOTES:

[167] Malvasia.

[168] "Floret item nunc Romae Jacobus Bononiensis, qui Trajani Columnae picturas omnes ordine delineavit, magna omnium admiratione, magnoque periculo circ.u.m machinis scandendo."--V. Raphaelis Volaterrani Anthropologia, p. 774. A. ed. 1603. fol.

[169] "Unum apud modernos reperio, de quo apud antiquos nulla extat memoria, de incisoribus seu sculptoribus in argento; quae sculptura Niellum appellatur. Virum cognosco in hoc celeberrimum et summum, nomine Francisc.u.m Bononiensem, aliter Franza, qui adeo in tam parvo orbiculo seu argenti lamina, tot homines, tot animalia, tot montes, arbores, castra ac tot diversa ratione situque posita figurat seu incidit, quod dictu ac visu mirabile apparet."--Camillo Leonardi, Speculo Lapidum, lib. iii. c. 2.

The a.s.sertion that Niello was unknown to the ancients, it is unnecessary to refute here. Francia was master of the mint during the usurpation of the Bentivogli, after their expulsion by Giulio the Second, and continued to superintend its issue to the Pontificate of Leo. His coins and medals are said by Vasari to equal those of the Milanese Caradosso; and it is probably for their excellence that he was looked up to as a G.o.d (un Dio) at Bologna.