Page images
PDF
EPUB

art, he compelled his men to respect the painter and his property, and was contented with the present of some pen-and-ink sketches and other drawings for himself. The picture was placed, for better security, in the monastery of Santa Maria della Pace, whence it was subsequently moved to Città di Castello.1

The mannerism observable in the figures of this picture is characteristic of Parmigiano generally: he imitated the peculiarities of Correggio, and they became in him so exaggerated and prominent as to constitute the characteristic defects of a manner. Foreshortening and soft gradated roundness of form, mere accessories with Correggio, became important or even paramount ends with Parmigiano; he endeavoured further to combine the forms of Michelangelo and Raphael with his own peculiarities of manner, but his elongated necks and limbs rendered such a result impossible.

GIROLAMO MAZZOLA, a good colourist, was still living at Parma in 1580; he was the cousin of Parmigiano; he executed several works in the Steccata, and was employed about 1560 to complete the frescoes there left unfinished by Michelangelo Anselmi, who had been engaged by the monks to continue a portion of Parmigiano's neglected work.

MICHELANGELO ANSELMI, a native of Lucca, where he was born in 1491, is called also Michelangelo da Siena, because he studied under Bazzi there; but his family was of Parma. When Correggio was commissioned in 1522 to paint the cupola and choir of the cathedral of that city, the chapels were given to Parmigiano, Rondani, and Anselmi, which shows that the last was held in great estimation at Parma. He was an enthusiastic admirer and follower of Correggio, though his senior in years. He executed many works in the churches of Parma, of which Lanzi has singled out as the most graceful and nearest to the style of Correggio, a Madonna with St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen adoring, in the church of San Stefano: there is a picture of this subject in the Louvre, but of no great merit. Anselmi was weak in composition, yet large and full in his forms, studied in his heads, and gay in his colouring he was fond of red, of which he introduced various tints in the same picture. He died at Parma in 1554.

FRANCESCO MARIA RONDANI, of Parma, was an imitator of Correggio, and his assistant in the cupola of San Giovanni Evangelista : he was a distinguished painter as early as 1522, but was already dead in 1548.2

LELIO ORSI, called LELIO DA NOVELLARA, was born at Reggio in

Affò, "Vita," &c. p. 61.

2 Affo, "Il Parmigiano Servitor di Piazza," p. 29.

1511, and died at Novellara in 1587. He was one of the best imitators of Correggio, but few of his pictures are preserved or can be now identified. His life was passed chiefly at Reggio and Novellara, where some works remain, and hence, says Lanzi, he is little known; he, however, had studied both at Venice and at Rome.1

Girolamo de' Carpi, a scholar of Garofalo, already noticed, was also a great student of the works of Correggio at Parma, and copied many of his pictures there.

CHAPTER XXII.

VENETIAN SCHOOL-COLOUR—GIORGIONE AND TITIAN, AND THEIR

FOLLOWERS.

In the works of Giorgione and Titian at Venice, we find the perfect accomplishment of the last great principle we have to consider in the review of the complete development of paintinglocal colouring.

While the rest of the Venetian painters were with more or less success contentedly following the dry manner of Gian Bellini, it was completely exploded by these two great masters, Bellini's own scholars.

GIORGIO BARBARELLI, on account of the beauty of his person commonly called GIORGIONE, was born in the neighbourhood of Castelfranco in 1477. He is the first painter who practically and decidedly gave up the mere sentiment or religion of art for its exclusive sensuous development. He threw aside all convention, and embraced art for its own sake. Beauty of form, colour, and effect appear to have been his principal motive in all his works: he was essentially an artist. This is the characteristic development of the Venetian school; and as such a development could not be more powerfully evinced than by a consummate mastery of colouring, colour became the predominant quality of the works of the Venetian painters.

Giorgione appears to have worked upon the principle that the imitation of the effect of nature as a whole was the true object of a painter, whatever might be the nature or purpose of his representation: this is applying the dramatic to the lowest principles. The difficulties, however, involved in carrying out this system are immense; the very mechanical process of painting becomes in the

1 Pungileoni, "Memorie," &c., vol. ii.

highest degree laborious, and requires an accuracy of observation and patience in delineation which it falls to the lot of few to possess. When, however, this accuracy of representation is all that a painting evinces, it is more a work of mechanical than creative or imaginative art. The greatest difficulties, however, of this style, local colour and tone, are those which the painters of Venice have most fully mastered. Mind appears from the beginning of the sixteenth century to have been ever less an object of study with the Venetian painters than the mere pictorial representation, which may perhaps be safely said to be the end of their efforts as a school; the moral or lesson of a picture, if it has any, being always subordinate to the one great aim of displaying a beautiful composition of colours: this is a style which may be fairly characterized as the ornamental.

Giorgione was in a great measure the founder of this new style, though the roundness and tone of light and shade for which his works are conspicuous may have been acquired from the works of Leonardo da Vinci, with some of which he must have been acquainted. Giorgione appears to have been the first to imitate the texture of stuffs: he painted all his draperies from the actual stuff represented, and imitated as nearly as possible their various substances. Before his time draperies were generally represented as of the same material, and differed only in their colours or patterns. The exceptions to this practice, if any in Italy, are very few; Raphael appears in the cartoon of the Beautiful Gate, and in others, to have attempted an imitation of shot-silk, or some such stuff, in some of his draperies; but the effect alluded to may have arisen from some change which has taken place in the colours.

Giorgione was a great master of portrait, for, with the power of objective imitation already described, he combined good drawing; and his handling was remarkably skilful and precise. He executed several historical pictures and some extensive frescoes, but a few portraits are now the chief of his productions which remain. He died young, in 1511, having attained only his thirty-fourth year. Whether, if he had lived longer, he would have executed great works, in which every part and object would have been as perfectly wrought as some of his single figures and their costumes, must remain a matter of opinion. Titian did attain this high degree of excellence, and produced such a series of masterpieces that, though originally the assistant and imitator of Giorgione, his fame completely eclipsed Giorgione's, and he became the acknowledged head of the new and great Venetian school of painting. Titian, doubtless, owed much to the example of Giorgione: they worked together, about 1507, on the exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and their works were so similar, that these frescoes were supposed

by his friends to have been wholly by the hand of Giorgione. And Vasari tells us that some of the portraits of Titian executed at this time are hardly to be distinguished from those of Giorgione. Fra Sebastiano del Piombo was the scholar of Giorgione. The small picture of Gaston de Foix, or Knight in Armour, the study of the figure of San Liberale in the altar-piece by Giorgione at Castelfranco, now in the National Gallery, is a fine specimen of Venetian objective painting.

TITIANO VECELLIO,' commonly called TITIAN, was born at Capo del Cadore, in the Venetian state, in 1477. He studied successively with Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, but he remained only a very short time with Gentile. In 1512, owing perhaps to the great age of Giovanni, Titian was employed to complete his unfinished works in the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The Senate were so well satisfied with the manner in which he executed this task, that they conferred upon him the office of La Sanseria, with a salary of 120 crowns, by which he was obliged to paint for eight crowns the portrait of every Doge created in his time, to be placed in the palace of St. Mark. He accordingly painted by virtue of this place the portraits of five Doges; he lived to see two others, but he was too infirm to paint their portraits. About 1515-16 he painted the Tribute Money in the Dresden Gallery, and the Bacchus and Ariadne, which is now in the National Gallery; and in 1516 he produced his great masterpiece, the Assumption of the Virgin, now in the Academy of Venice: it was originally painted for the high altar of the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa de' Frari. This is one of the finest pictures in the world; it is of very large dimensions, the figures being larger than life. The Virgin ascends surrounded by angels into the presence of the Creator, who, attended by angels, is seen in the uppermost part of the picture: below are the assembled Apostles indicating by their attitudes various degrees of admiration and astonishment. The St. Peter Martyr, another of Titian's masterpieces, was painted in 1528, twelve years later than the Assumption. Others of his most celebrated works are the Entombment of Christ, in the Louvre at Paris, and the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, at Madrid, of which there is a repetition in the church of the Jesuits at Venice. This picture also is one of the finest productions of modern art. The "San Sebastiano," in the Vatican, is a less successful work, though of high repute. In portraits and pictures of a cabinet size, by Titian, the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna is very rich: among many are conspicuous,

2

1 He signed Titiano Vecellio, Titianus, and Ticianus; and sometimes Titianus Eques Cæs. The modern Italians write Tiziano.

There is a very remarkable etching and engraving of this picture by John Le 3 Engraved by C. Cort.

Mare.

« PreviousContinue »