Venice and its Story Part 10

Marco Basaiti, a pupil of Alvise, and influenced by Bellini, is a good colourist and a lover of natural scenery; but his work lacks refinement, strength and character. The Accademia has five of his works, of which the Agony in the Garden, No. 69, is the best; another and later one, Peter Enthroned, is in S. Pietro di Castello. He was working between 1490 and 1521.

Catena (Vincenzio di Biagio), yet another of Giovanni Bellini's school, is a sweet and graceful painter. The Martyrdom of S. Cristina in S.

Maria Mater Domini is an early work of much charm. The church of S.

Simeon Profeta has a picture by this master; two are in the Accademia and one in the Ducal Palace. The Judith in the Quirini-Stampalia and a Virgin and Child with the Baptist and a female saint, in the Palazzo Giovanelli are a.s.signed to him by Mr Berenson. This n.o.ble and ingenuous artist has suffered much from the attribution of many of his best creations to Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. He was working between 1495 and 1531.

Another of the mainland painters attracted to Venice by the fame of the Bellini was Andrea Previtali of Bergamo, of whose works the Accademia possesses two, a Crucifixion and a Nativity. He, like Cima and Catena, loves to introduce landscape, giving it, however, more prominence, and adding cla.s.sic details. In the Sacristy of S. Giobbe is a good early work, the Marriage of St Catherine, formerly attributed to Giovanni Bellini. He died in 1525.

Bissolo, Pier Francesco, pupil and a.s.sistant of Giovanni Bellini, is a capable artist, the last of the school, whose best work, Christ offering the Crown of Thorns to St Catherine, is in the Accademia (No. 79) with three others. The Virgin and Child with St John and St Catherine in the Redentore, formerly attributed to Bellini, is now a.s.signed to Bissolo.

He died in 1554.

The advent of the romantic, almost mysterious, personality of Giorgione (Georgio Barbarelli) marks an epoch in the story of Venetian painting.

Few artists in so short a life wrought so great a work. He lifted Venetian painting to the highest sphere of poetic inspiration and technical perfection, and influenced the whole of its subsequent progress. Yet paintings by his hand are rare. One alone, the Castelfranco altar-piece, is beyond dispute, and that, says Morelli, is daubed over by a Venetian restorer. Of the scores of works formerly put upon him in Europe few can now be safely defended, and of these few a bare half-dozen are allowed to Italy. The unstable position of expert opinion may be exemplified by the vicissitudes of the Miracle of St Mark, No. 516, in the Accademia, long since removed from its former position of honour and placed in a badly lighted corridor.[73] This, once a.s.signed to Giorgione by Boschini, and at a later date generally attributed to Paris Bordone, is now esteemed by Mr Berenson to be one of Giorgione's greatest achievements. Crowe and Cavalcaselle doubt if the "inky and s.p.a.cious canvas" was ever touched by Giorgione. The official catalogue of 1895 a.s.signs it to Palma Vecchio, that of 1903 to Paris Bordone and restorers of the eighteenth century. We are on safer ground when we examine the Gipsy and Soldier in the Giovanelli Palace. Nothing can be seen at Venice to surpa.s.s this superbly beautiful composition for originality, poetic grace and romantic beauty. A fairly convincing work is the Apollo pursuing Daphne, almost ruined by a restorer's daubing, in the Seminario of the Salute. Of the many frescoes painted on Venetian palaces, especially those on the ca.n.a.l side of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi so eloquently described by Vasari, only a fragment remains, a head, torso and part of the arms, of a female figure. When Evelyn was at Venice in 1645, the frescoes seem to have been in good condition. The plague, or grief at the infidelity of his mistress, brought this great artist to a premature death in 1510. He was born about 1478.

Pa.s.sionately fond of music and song, his whole soul was attuned to impressions of inward and outward beauty. With him, romantic as distinguished from ecclesiastical painting leaps into being.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_Alinari, Florence_

S. MARIA MATER DOMINI--S. CRISTINA

BY CATENA]

t.i.tian (Tiziano Vecellio) is the complementary genius to Giorgione. In him is summed all that the Venetian school promised or attained to.

Lacking perhaps the sunny radiance of Giorgione's temperament, his larger experience of life, his deep, strong nature give him a pathetic insight into the tragedy, as well as the beauty, of existence, so characteristic of great artists and poets. To judge fully of t.i.tian's life-work one would need to travel over the greater part of Western Europe--to Madrid above all. Venice possesses but a score of his paintings, and these not the very greatest. Early works, attributed by some critics to Giorgione, are the Ecce h.o.m.o in the Scuola, and the Christ bearing the Cross, in the Church of S. Rocco. A somewhat later work, St Mark Enthroned, in the Sacristy of the Salute, painted in 1512, for S. Spirito, still bears traces of Giorgione's influence. The famous a.s.sumption in the Accademia, first of the grand compositions of the later Venetian school and generally regarded as a masterpiece, was painted in 1518. A finer picture, painted in 1526 in the maturity of his power, is the Pesaro Madonna, in the Frari. The beautiful Annunciation in the Scuola di S. Rocco was painted in 1525. The Presentation in the Accademia, now restored to its original position, is a later work, 1538.

The Tobias and the Angel, perhaps painted about 1537,[74] in S.

Marziale, is a work composed with unusual simplicity and charm. We see the great master in one of his happy moods like a strong man bending to play with his children. In addition to Doge Grimani's ceremonial portrait there exists an unrestored fres...o...b.. his hand in the Ducal Palace. Many sacred subjects were painted late in life. In S. Salvatore are an Annunciation, a finely conceived work, and a Transfiguration, both executed when he was nearing ninety years of age. The grand old fellow died in harness. He failed to finish the Deposition, now in the Accademia, completed by Palma Giovane. "t.i.tian is our standard-bearer,"

said Velasquez when he saw him in Venice, and when Vasari was there in 1566 he called on the veteran painter and found him, although eighty-nine years old, brush in hand. The friends had much converse together of their art and of the master's works. He died in 1576, wanting but one year to complete his century.[75]

With t.i.tian, Venetian painting reached its meridian glory. Inspiration and technical mastery went hand in hand. He has been defined as the painter _par excellence_ as distinguished from the draughtsman who colours. In his new manner, that became absolute painting which in the Bellini and Carpaccio was but coloured drawing.

Palma Vecchio (Jacopo Negretti), 1480-1528, t.i.tian's contemporary, is the third of the dominant sixteenth-century painters. Without the finely endowed nature of his two fellows, he works with much energy and freshness, is masterly in his use of colour, and has a breadth and serenity of style which make of him a great, but not a paramount artist.

The well-known St Barbara in S. Maria Formosa is the most grandiose and majestic female figure in Venetian art. The recently acquired Santa Conversazione, No. 147 in the Accademia, is an excellent example of a mode of composition which Palma brought to its ultimate form. He was the creator of that opulent type of female beauty with "marmoreal neck and bosom uberous" so characteristic of Venetian art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ACCADEMIA--THE DEAD CHRIST

BY t.i.tIAN]

Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani), 1485-1547, a pupil of Giorgione, was a younger painter of the school, a competent but not very gifted interpreter of the prevalent type of sensuous beauty. The painting on the high altar in S. Giov. Crisostomo is a fine example of his early style and in Vasari's time was attributed to Giorgione. There is an early Pieta in Lady Layard's collection and a doubtful Visitation in the Accademia. Early in his career he went to Rome and won the friendship of Raphael and Michel Angelo by whom his later style was profoundly influenced. This period of his activity belongs to Roman rather than to Venetian art.

Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), pupil of Alvise Vivarini, is a highly gifted but unequal painter, who was working in Venice early in the sixteenth century. He is one of the more original of the contemporaries of t.i.tian.

Much attention has recently been given to this artist, especially to his portrait work, by Mr Berenson, who gives him high, but perhaps somewhat exaggerated praise, as the first painter who sought to interpret the varying moods of the individual human soul; as an artist of penetrating sympathy and charity, preserving for us in his portraits the lineaments of the more gentle and refined of his contemporaries. These, however, must be sought anywhere but in Venice. One fine altar-piece, painted in the maturity of his powers, may be seen in the Carmine, St Nicholas in Glory, a work of real poetic feeling; another, better preserved, the Apotheosis of S. Antonino, is in S. Zanipolo. A later work, the Virgin and Child with Saints, is in S. Giacomo dall' Orio.

A room in the Accademia is devoted to examples of the works of the Friulian school, a group of painters working in the capital, Udine, and other towns and villages of the northernmost Venetian territory during the second half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries. Of Martino da Udine (Pellegrino da S. Daniele), the Accademia possesses three examples. No. 151, an Annunciation, is a replica of the same subject in his best work, the series of frescoes in the church of S. Antonio, at S. Daniele, near Udine. Pictures by him have been a.s.signed to Giorgione.

A greater man than Martino came to Venice from Pordenone, about thirty miles from the capital, his pupil Giov. Ant. Sacchiense, known as Pordenone. He was an artist of power, but who showed that pride in technical skill so characteristic of a declining art. He parades his anatomical knowledge and science of foreshortening, with all Michael Angelo's daring, but with none of his genius. Most of his works are on the mainland, but one characteristic altar-piece, No. 316, and three other paintings are in the Accademia in Venice. In the cloister at S.

Stefano are some frescoes (in which medium he excelled), now almost ruined, and a St Sebastian, better preserved, in the church of S. Rocco, where also is a fine painting of St Christopher and St Martin. Another good work is the altar-piece--S. Rocco, St Sebastian and St Catherine--in S. Giov. Elemosinario. His Entombment, in the Monte di Pieta at Treviso, has been ascribed to Giorgione. He was working in Venice in the early half of the sixteenth century, and died at Ferrara in 1539.

The name of Bonifazio is a.s.sociated with a remarkable revolution and counter-revolution in the history of criticism. Vasari and the older writers knew but one painter of that name, who was called by some Bonifazio of Verona, by others, of Venice. In 1864 Bernasconi, by the aid of doc.u.mentary evidence, discovered two Bonafazios; and in 1877 Morelli,[76] by applying his famous method (the shape of the ears, outline of the bodies and other similar criteria) evolved three, who were distinguished as Bonifazio I., II., and III. With few exceptions the whole of the works in European Galleries, including the Accademia of Venice, formerly attributed to one Bonifazio, were then grouped under these three heads, and re-catalogued.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE STEPS OF THE REDENTORE.]

Vasari's accuracy has, however, been vindicated by the recent publication[77] of Gustav Ludwig's patient and conclusive researches, which demonstrate (1) that Bonifazio Pasini of Verona (1489-1540), the so-called Bonifazio I., could never have left Verona for any length of time between 1515 and his death, and that nothing is now known of his works: (2) that Bonifazio di Pitati of Verona (1487-1553), Morelli's Bonifazio II., came, a youth of eighteen, with his father, a soldier, to settle in Venice in 1505; learned his craft at Palma Vecchio's workshop; married a basketmaker's daughter; became one of the most famous painters in Venice; in 1530 was commissioned to decorate the Palazzo de'

Camerlenghi (Treasury offices); and died, childless, in 1553, leaving the work to be completed by Tintoretto, who for a period adopted Bonifazio's style: (3) that Bonifazio III. is a mere phantom of Morelli's imagination. Bonifazio, like all the successful painters of the Renaissance, kept a large number of a.s.sistants and pupils to supply the demands of his clients at home and abroad, himself executing the more important parts of his productions, and supervising the work done in his atelier. The paintings a.s.signed to Bonifazio I., such as the Rich Man's Feast, number 291 in the Accademia, and the Virgin and Child with SS. Omobono and Barbara in the Palazzo Reale, are those executed by Bonifazio di Pitati's own hand in the days before prosperity had rendered personal execution of the whole of his work impossible. The paintings attributed to Bonifazio II., such as the Woman Taken in Adultery, No. 278 in the Accademia, the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, and the Fall, in the Palazzo Reale, works which betray a falling off in vigour and firmness of drawing while retaining the old brilliancy of colour, are those which were partly executed by his a.s.sistants. The paintings allotted to Bonifazio III., feeble work, such as the Last Supper in S. Maria Mater Domini, and most of the panels with figures of two or more saints, of which the Accademia possesses so many examples, were painted wholly by a.s.sistants during Bonifazio's lifetime, or after his death. Nearly the whole of those in the Accademia formerly attributed to Bonifazio III., many of which have been post-dated owing to a vicious theory of interpretation, were side panels painted for more important central compositions in the Treasury Offices. The 1903 (Italian) edition of the official catalogue adopts Ludwig's conclusions.

Bonifazio, who always signs himself "da Verona," is an eminently naturalistic painter. With perfect art he portrays for us the sensuous magnificence of the Venetian patrician's life: his luxurious home; his well-nurtured body; his powerful, sagacious intellect; his love of the country; his gorgeous costume; his pet animals; his ideal of female beauty.

A talented pupil of t.i.tian who came under Michael Angelo's influence was Paris Bordone (1495-1571). He has the distinction of producing the finest of Venetian ceremonial paintings, No. 320 in the Accademia. No picture will evoke in the beholder a deeper sentiment of the peculiar charm of Venice. The magnificent architecture; the dignified Fathers of the State in their rich costumes; the romantic legend it ill.u.s.trates; the warm, golden, sunny atmosphere in which the whole composition is bathed, make this the most essentially Venetian picture in the world.

The Accademia has other works by this artist--the Paradise, No. 322, a poor canvas, and a small panel, No. 311.

Two great artists preserved the power and grandeur of the Venetian school during a time when elsewhere in Italy painting had sunk to nerveless mannerism and mawkish sentimentality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari, Florence_

ACCADEMIA--PRESENTATION OF ST MARK'S RING TO THE DOGE

BY BORDONE]

Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti), 1518-94, a pupil of Bonifazio, and much influenced by t.i.tian and Michel Angelo, is a painter who may only be studied at Venice. A fine example of his early work painted under t.i.tian's influence, is the Adam and Eve, No. 43 in the Accademia. In 1552 he painted two panels for the Palazzo Camerlenghi, in continuation of Bonifazio's work, now in the Anti-Chiesetta of the Ducal Palace; and, a year later, the dramatic Miracle of St Mark, Accademia No. 42. This central work admirably displays the qualities of his genius. The composition is grandly conceived; the drawing stupendously clever and virile. But the craftsmanship is too insistent. The artist aims at displaying his triumph over difficult but non-essential problems of foreshortening and perspective. The whole scene is characterised by that "bustle and tumult" which Reynolds complains of in his criticism of Tintoretto's work. Other paintings that may be noted are the Marriage of Cana in the sacristy of the Salute; two large and confused canvases, the Last Judgment and the Golden Calf, in the choir of the Madonna dell'

Orto; the charming Ariadne and Bacchus, with its companion pictures, and the colossal Paradise in the Ducal Palace. His last work, S. Marziale, is in the church of that name. Admirers of Tintoretto may sate themselves at Venice. The Accademia and the Ducal Palace are rich in his works. The Scuola of S. Rocco alone is a veritable Tintoretto museum.

The sixty-two compositions there, exhibit the painter's characteristics fully developed, his weakness as well as his strength. Never had sacred history been treated with such uncompromising realism. No one can contemplate these tremendous scenes without being impressed by the power of the genius that conceived them; none can turn away without a feeling of regret that so greatly endowed an artist should, in his later career at least, have been wanting in reverence and in the _incredibile diligenza_, which Vasari noted in all t.i.tian's work. He was a pa.s.sionate, impatient worker, too often unconscionably superficial. His bold, vigorous, rapid execution is such that the practice of painting in his hands seems to partake of the nature of physical exercise. When Goethe was frequenting the official picture-restorers at S. Zanipolo in 1790, it was discovered that Tintoretto had been in the habit of leaving s.p.a.ces for the more important heads in the large compositions executed _in situ_ (probably by pupils), which he would paint at home and stick on the canvas afterwards. How _presto e resoluto_ he was may be learned from the story told by Vasari of the march he stole upon his compet.i.tors for the decoration of a room in the Scuola di San Rocco. He had already painted his masterpiece, the Crucifixion, for the Sala dell' Albergo, and the guild determined to decorate the hall with something _magnifica ed onorata_. Salviati, Zucchero, Veronese and himself were selected to send in designs. While his rivals were diligently at work, Tintoretto had taken the measurement of the s.p.a.ce to be filled, painted his canvas with incredible rapidity and secretly fixed it in its place in the hall.

When the masters of the guild met to examine the designs they found his work already finished. To their angry remonstrances the artist coolly replied that that was his way of competing, and if they did not care to pay him he would make them a present of the painting. Even in 1790 much of Tintoretto's work had become dull, almost leaden in colour, due, Goethe thought, to the artist's habit of painting _alla prima_ without ground colours, or simply on red paint. Tintoretto left many followers, who neither sounding the depths of his knowledge nor possessing the magnanimity of his style, imitated him in his "splendid negligence" and contributed to the final decadence of painting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. CATERINA--THE MARRIAGE OF ST CATHERINE

BY VERONESE]

His younger contemporary Veronese (Paolo Caliari), 1530-88, reverts to and develops to an even higher degree the warmer and more brilliant colour of the school. He is the unsurpa.s.sed interpreter of the festal pomp of Venetian society. Without possessing the elemental force of Tintoretto he is a more careful artist. How n.o.bly and gently he could conceive, may be seen in the decoration of the church of S.

Sebastiano, painted 1555-65, and in the marriage of St Catherine at the church of that name, his most tender and beautiful work. Of his well-known banquet compositions, the Accademia possesses the finest specimen, the Supper at the House of Levi, No. 203. In this magnificent painting, with its marvellous drawing and s.p.a.cious architecture, the artist revels in his power of expressing the joy of man in the satisfaction of material existence. This glorification of the pomps and vanities of the world, painted for the refectory of the Dominican friars at S. Zanipolo, did, however, shock the Church, and the head of the Holy Office called on the Prior and severely criticised the picture. On the 8th of July 1573, Master Paolo Caliari was cited before the tribunal of the Inquisition. Being asked his profession, he answered, "I invent and draw figures." The inquisitor objected to the absence of Mary Magdalene and ordered that she should be subst.i.tuted for the dog in the foreground; to St Peter carving a lamb; to a fellow dressed like a buffoon, with a parrot on his wrist; to another using his fork as a toothpick, and other indecencies. The artist defended himself stoutly and was ordered to reform his picture within three months. Veronese subst.i.tuted the name of Levi for that of Simon and altered no more.

Veronese was a noted house decorator of his time. None of his work survives at Venice, but visitors to Castelfranco may by a short detour see in the Villa Giacomelli, near Maser, some of the artist's best fresco work on the walls of a characteristic Palladian country-house.

With the works of the Ba.s.sani we reach the beginnings of modern painting. They are moderns not only in their dominant love of landscape, but in their touching affection for lowly peasant life and for the flocks and herds of their native hills. The family consisted of Jacopo da Ponte (1510-92), the father, and his sons Francesco (1549-92) and Leandro (1558-1623). The Accademia has good examples of their work, but to appreciate fully these homely and sympathetic artists one must travel to their native city Ba.s.sano, in the beautiful hill country north of Venice.

Palma Giovane, 1544-1628, son of Antonio Negretti and of Bonifazio's niece Giulia, is the last in whom the great traditions faintly survive.

Besides his pictures in the Accademia some of the best of his work may be seen in the Oratorio dei Crocifissi. The school is now decadent; its productions feeble and mannered.

Giov. Battisto Tiepolo, 1696-1770, was a famous painter of his time: in the eyes of his contemporaries the equal of Veronese. He was a fine colourist, a bold and skilful draughtsman, with a broad and facile style, an excellent interpreter of the decadent splendour of Venetian life. He was in much demand as a decorator of palaces and churches. His best work may be seen in the frescoes executed for the Palazzo l.a.b.i.a.

Among other churches, the Scalzi and the Gesuati have examples of his work in ceiling decoration, and there is a good altar-piece by his hand, St Lucy, in the SS. Apostoli.

Pietro Longhi, 1702-85, is a painter of scenes of intimate Venetian life in the eighteenth century with its trivial artificiality and social inanities. He has been aptly called the Goldoni of Venetian painters. Of Antonio da Ca.n.a.le (Ca.n.a.letto), 1697-1768, and Francesco Guardi, 1712-93, Venice has few and poor examples. They were patient, excellent craftsmen but without inspiration, who have faithfully transmitted to us the Venice of their day.

Most ancient and important was the art of the gla.s.s-worker, peculiarly favoured by the abundance of fine sand and of a marine flora rich in alkaline products. In the thirteenth century so great was the expansion of the industry that it was deemed prudent to transfer the many furnaces working night and day from Rialto to Murano. It was a jealously guarded monopoly. In 1459 the Ten took over the control of the art and forbade under severe penalties (in some cases death) the emigration of workmen or the divulging of the secrets of the craft to foreigners. The craftsmen had their own _libro d'Oro_ and ranked with patricians. Some beautiful examples of the masters, whom the genius of Marion Crawford[78] has invested with such dramatic interest, Zorzi il Ballarin and the Berovieri, may be seen at the Murano Museum, and an exquisite blue nuptial goblet in Room XII. at the Correr Museum in Venice.

Wondrous stories are told of the subtle art of the craftsmen who were famed to make goblets so sensitive that they would betray by fracture the presence of poison.

The Venetians were great bibliophiles and readers. Soon after the discovery of the art of printing, Venice became its most important centre in Italy. By the end of the fifteenth century more books had been published in Venice than in Rome, Milan, Florence and Naples put together. In 1469 the Senate authorised John of Spires to print books for a period of five years. In 1470 Nicolo Jansen was issuing the Latin cla.s.sics; in 1471 he published an Italian translation of the whole Bible, and in 1476 an edition of Pliny in the vulgar tongue. In 1490 the great humanist, Teobaldo Pio Manuccio of Rome (Aldus Manutius, or, as he wrote himself, Aldus Roma.n.u.s), chose Venice as the most appropriate city for the achievement of his stupendous design of editing and printing the whole of the Greek cla.s.sics. He gathered round him the greatest scholars of the age. Cretan Greeks were employed as designers of his types and compositors. Latin and Italian cla.s.sics were printed in the type first used in the Virgil of 1501 and known as italics or _aldino_. It is said to have been modelled on Petrarch's handwriting and executed by Francia.