Chapter VII: English, Eighteenth Century 329–428 (3)

“True, it is more Botticellian than any other Botticelli in existence. He must have uttered this completest note of his own music just before he was seized by the Savonarolian madness, from which he never recovered, just at the moment when he was most peculiarly and poignantly, and, if I may say so, most extravagantly, himself. The isolation of this head, too, exaggerates the impression. Perhaps if we found it as an Angel in a _Magnificat_, or a _Madonna with the Pomegranate_, in a _Tobias_ or some Allegory, the other figures, the landscape and all the accessories would prevent our attention from concentrating on what is almost uncannily characteristic of the master’s style.”

Berenson also notes the important hand, which, by the way, is especially lighted as if to draw our attention to it most particularly.

“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this portrait,” he observes, “is the manifest competition of the hand with the face. The hand is studied just as carefully, drawn, and modelled with as much intention, as the face itself. Its action reveals the automatic nervous tension of an overstrung physique that the conscious mind, controlling the expression, tries to keep in order. It thus becomes, in a sense, the most important clue to understanding the character. If you think it away, the expression, of course, remains, but what makes it comprehensible disappears.”

It is this peculiar intelligence and sensitiveness of the hand that makes me suspect the musician.

MADONNA AND CHILD.

_Sandro Botticelli
(1444–1510)._

_Collection of
Mr. Max Epstein._

This picture is the latest Botticelli to have been brought to this country for it arrived only in May, 1928. It was painted in Botticelli’s early period, about 1470 or 1472. The Holy Child is handsome, although robust, and His embrace of the Madonna is touchingly affectionate and human. In this picture the Madonna would seem to have had a vision of the coming tragedy and she is not yet resigned. She loves her Child too well. That her eyes are full of tears we can feel in those heavily drooping lids. Her face is full of pain. But even in her suffering and quiet anguish this Madonna is beautiful and graceful; and we cannot fail to see in her face some little resemblance to Botticelli’s Venus in the _Primavera_ and Venus in her scallop-shell borne over the waves in the early morning in the _Birth of Venus_.

_Collection of Mr. Max Epstein_

MADONNA AND CHILD

--_Sandro Botticelli_]

In this picture the Holy Child seems to have little or no consciousness of His Divinity. The Mother here is the enlightened one.

The picture is tempera on panel (35¾ × 23¼ inches) and came into possession of M. Féral in Paris in 1907. It has been accepted by Bode and Jashiro as a genuine and an early Botticelli.

The Madonna’s robe is deep blue with a lining of dull green, which shows at the left wrist and slightly down the front and on the left shoulder a star is embroidered. She wears a closely folded diaphanous veil and a red scarf, one end of which is gracefully thrown around the Holy Child. The sleeve of the dress has a band of golden embroidery at the wrist.

The cruciform _nimbus_ of the Holy Child foretells His destiny. The _nimbus_ of the Virgin is plain. The Angel wears a tunic of deep cream white ornamented with gold on the sleeves and a black band ornamented with gold at the throat. On the parapet stands a vase apparently of alabaster containing myrtle leaves and white star-shaped flowers, probably jasmine (see page 25). Through the open arch we see a gentle landscape, with a river winding around distant hills.

GIOVANNA TORNABUONI.

_Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449–1494)._

_Collection of
Mr. J. P. Morgan._

With this picture, which is considered “one of the finest Italian portraits in existence,” we step back into the period of the Renaissance and into the very presence of one of the most gifted and celebrated of the younger women of the Fifteenth Century.

_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_

GIOVANNA TORNABUONI

--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]

“Art coulds’t thou but portray character and the mind, then there would be no picture in the whole world more beautiful than this.”

Such is the translation of the legend inscribed in capital letters on the cartel:

“_Ars ultinam mores animumque effingere posses
Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret_”

with the date MCCCCLXXXVIII.

The charms of Giovanna degli Albizzi, who was married to Lorenzo Tornabuoni in 1486, were sung by all the poets of Florence. Giovanna came of the noted Albizzi family, famous for wealth and rank and for leading the party of Nobles (_Grandi_) against the Medici, whom they considered upstarts and enemies of the aristocratic faction in Florence. By a former marriage, however, the Albizzi had become connected with the Medici, for the wife of Piero de’ Medici (il Gottoso) was Lucrezia Tornabuoni, one of the most accomplished women of the age and whose portrait by Botticelli hangs to-day in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Giovanna’s husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni (Lucrezia Tornabuoni’s nephew), was, therefore, the first cousin of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici.

Subsequent to the ownership by the Tornabuoni and Pandolfini families, the portrait represented here passed to a private Collection in Paris and thence to the late Mr. Henry Willett of Brighton, England; to the famous Collection of Mr. Rodolphe Kann of Paris and, finally, to that of Mr. J. P. Morgan.

The picture is painted on a wooden panel (29¾ × 19½ inches).

Standing in profile to the left and against an architectural background, the lady appears at half-length. She wears a rich dress of gold brocade of a handsome and decorative pattern with square neck, the sleeves of a different material, dark-red in color and having yellow diamond-shaped compartments bearing a floral design in the centre. A handsome pendant, consisting of a ruby with three pearls, hangs from a fine black silk cord around her neck. Her hair falls in light, wavy tresses over her temples and covers her ears. In the recess at the back is placed a cluster of precious stones. On the right is a _Book of Hours_, and above is looped a necklace of coral beads. All of these things undoubtedly have some particular and sentimental association for Giovanna. Giovanna died the same year this portrait was painted; in this year her father-in-law, Giovanni Tornabuoni, also uncle of Lorenzo de’ Medici, commissioned Ghirlandaio to decorate the walls of the choir of Sta. Maria Novella with the _Lives of John the Baptist and the Virgin_; and here again the portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi appears. Let us turn to Mrs. Cartwright for a description of this remarkable series of frescoes:

“These twenty-one subjects have been much injured by damp and restoration and the hand of inferior assistants is plainly seen in many of the best preserved portions. But as a splendid illustration of Florentine life the whole series is of rare interest. On the one hand we have the public and official life of the Tornabuoni, their stately banquets and processions; on the other, we catch a glimpse of their private and domestic history. In the guests seated at _Herod’s Feast_, in the crowds who throng the temple court, we recognize the Tornabuoni and their kinsmen, the partners of the Medici bank, Gianfrancesco Ridolfi, Roderigo Sassetti, and Andrea de’ Medici. On one side we have a group of famous humanists--Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo’s tutor, Gentile de’ Becchi; on the other, we see the painter with his aged father and his brother, David, and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, the assistants who helped in the decoration of the choir. Giovanna degli Albizzi, the fair maiden who on the 16th of June, 1486, became the bride of Lorenzo Tornabuoni, is here in her stiff brocades and rich jewels with her young sister-in-law, Lodovica, and many noble dames on their way to visit the mother and new-born babe. These frescoes, which were finally completed in 1490, filled the Tornabuoni family with delight and wonder, and Ghirlandaio was next employed to paint the chapel of their _villa_ near Fiesole, which was unfortunately destroyed by floods in the next century.”

As in the case of so many Italian painters, the name by which Ghirlandaio is known is only a nickname: it means “Garland-maker,” and was given to him because his first reputation was derived from the beautiful gold and silver garlands and wreaths he made for the wealthy ladies of fashion. Ghirlandaio, son of Tommaso Bigordi, a silk merchant of Florence, was born in that city in 1449. He began his life as apprentice to a goldsmith--as so many superlative painters have done--and early showed talent for drawing and sketching. Before long he left the goldsmith and entered the studio of Alesso Baldovinetti (see page 48); and he undoubtedly owed much to this painter in his fondness for decorative effects. Ghirlandaio was tremendously industrious and always worked with the best artists of his time. At San Gimigniano in 1475 he worked with Pier Francesco Fiorentino and he assisted Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel in 1481. His own independent work was stupendous. Ghirlandaio devoted himself almost exclusively to sacred subjects and his frescoes are practically scenes of the Florentine world he knew so well. Whether he painted scenes from the life of St. Francis, or of the Virgin, or Herod, or St. Zenobius, the characters represented are members of the Medici, the Tornabuoni, the Sassetti, the Albizzi, and other important Florentine families. In fact, his attention to details and the careful way he rendered them, show that he had some knowledge of contemporary Flemish paintings; and consequently Ghirlandaio is regarded as chief of the Florentine realists. However, Ghirlandaio ranked in his day with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, and he enjoyed the patronage and friendship of the Medici. Ghirlandaio’s most important frescoes are those in Sta. Maria Novella representing _Lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist_, commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni, described above, and those in Santa Trinità depicting the _Life of St. Francis_, ordered by Francesco Sassetti described on page 72.

Ghirlandaio died in 1494 of the Plague, comparatively young, but having accomplished a vast amount of work and having trained a number of painters, the most important of whom was Michelangelo. Ghirlandaio’s son, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561), became a painter and was an intimate friend of Raphael.

FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO.

_Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449–1494)._

_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._

Francesco Sassetti, a wealthy banker and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s agent at Lyons, is shown here slightly under life-size, wearing a purple skull cap and a red robe lined with fur and held at the waist by a black cord, from which hangs a pouch, or purse. His right hand rests upon the arm of the chair in which he is seated. His eyes look downward upon his son, who stands at his left, in profile, gazing upward into his father’s face. His hands are clasped and he is wearing a costume of silvery grey brocade trimmed with white fur, undersleeves of dark-green and slashed, and a scarlet cap. Through the window we have an interesting view of an inlet of the sea (or a large river) with mountains and buildings. On the top of the window-frame there is an inscription: “_Franciscos Saxettvs Theodorus QVE_.” The picture is an oil painting on panel (29½ × 20½ inches) and is supposed to have been executed in 1487–1489. Francesco Sassetti was born about 1420 and died in 1491. Teodoro was born on March 11, 1479, and is seen here at about the age of eight or nine, which fixes the date of the picture. It is interesting to note that Teodoro Sassetti was the grandfather of Filippo Sassetti, an early traveller in India (see Marencci, _Lettere di Filippo Sassetta_, Firenze, 1855).

_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_

FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO

--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]

This picture comes from the Benson Collection and was formerly owned by Mr. William Graham. Francesco Sassetti also appears in the frescoes depicting the _Life of St. Francis_, which Ghirlandaio painted in the Sassetti Chapel in the Trinità in Florence. Ghirlandaio introduced into this series other members of the Sassetti family, as well as many of his illustrious contemporaries and friends, including Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Honorius, Maso degli Albizzi, Palla Strozzi, and Angelo Acciaiuoli. In the fifth fresco, where St. Francis is bringing a dead child to life, Ghirlandaio has painted his own portrait. He is conspicuous in a red cap and resting his hand upon his hip.

_THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL_

The Umbrian School occupied the relative place in the Early Renaissance that the Sienese School held in the Middle Ages. At first, Umbrian painting was the offspring of Siena, but it fell under and developed under the influence of Florence. Florentine artists came to Umbria and Umbrian artists went to Florence, and gradually the Umbrian School, which had certain qualities of its own, developed and reached full flower in the beloved of all the world,--Raphael.

The word Umbrian is used rather loosely by critics to include many Tuscan painters who have to be gathered into this group, which dates from the end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century. One particular quality of the Umbrians was their essentially deep religious feeling.

“Whereas the devotion of Sienese art had been hieratic, aristocratic, and akin to the ideals of Mediæval Byzantium, that of Umbria became ecstatically human. The Renaissance trend towards bringing to earth the regal Christian gods of the Middle Ages was nowhere so strong as in Umbria; and it is not an exaggeration to say that we owe to the Umbrians our modern visual images of the Eternal, the Madonna, and the other important members of the Christian Pantheon. The piety and humility of the figures was deepened and dignified by a specially emphasized space-composition, both architectural and landscape. Landscape backgrounds were given unusual importance and delicate beauty. The Umbrian School thus became the most charming, the tenderest, and the most intimately human of Renaissance Italy.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).

The first great Umbrian painter was Gentile da Fabriano (1370?–1427), pupil of an earlier Umbrian painter, Allegretto Nuzi (active from 1346 to 1373), in turn a pupil of the Florentine Bernardo Daddi.

The next important Umbrian was Piero della Francesca or Pier dei Franceschi (1416?–1492), pupil of Domenico Veneziano of Florence, important in his own work and important as a master, forming Luca Signorelli, who in turn influenced Michelangelo. Piero della Francesca was also influenced by the Florentine, Paolo Uccello, whose scientific leanings towards perspective he shared. As a colorist, as a painter of light and atmosphere, and as a master of composition, Piero della Francesca ranks with the greatest Italian masters of the Early Renaissance.

By this time Perugia had become the most important centre of painting in Umbria. Among its conspicuous artists was Benedetto Bonfigli (1425–1496); Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521), the supposed master of Perugino and Pintoricchio; Perugino, whose real name was Pietro Vannucci (1446–1523); Bernard Pintoricchio “the little painter” (1454–1513), whose real name was Bernard di Betto, or Biagio; and the great Raphael (1483–1520), son of the painter Giovanni Santi of Urbino; and with this painter of the world’s favorite Madonnas the Umbrian School practically ends.

MADONNA AND CHILD.

_Gentile da Fabriano
(1370–1427)._

_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._

No little suggestion of the Giotto Madonna (shown on page 27), appears in the _Madonna and Child_ by Gentile da Fabriano, which, according to Colosanti, was painted in the best period of the artist, shortly before he produced the _Adoration of the Kings_, now in the Uffizi. In comparing it with the Giotto _Madonna_, we see that the arch has become slightly more pointed than the one in the Giotto picture and we find also a gold background; but in the Fabriano painting a _graffito_ design of two winged Angels with flowing robes on either side is slightly visible. As in the Giotto picture the two _nimbi_ are different; the Virgin’s _nimbus_ having an Arabic inscription and the _nimbus_ of the Holy Child having a Gothic foliage. The Virgin is seated on a _cassone_, or chest (a not unusual but hardly very comfortable seat in the Fourteenth Century), covered with a dark-brown cloth with floral figure behind which a tiled floor is seen. The Virgin wears a long tunic of claret-colored damask with gold border, on which appears the motto “_Ave Maria Plena Dom---- Tecu---- Ben_.” On the border around the neck the word “_Mater_” appears. The mantle is slit at the sides through which the arm protrudes in a long sleeve of rich gold brocade with the pomegranate pattern. A scarf of thin yellow woollen material, decorated with red and blue flowers and red fringe, is worn around her head and neck. The Holy Child has on a little dress, very neatly made and fitting very snugly, of dark-blue trimmed with a border of red and gold. He is standing with His left foot on His mother’s knee and is stepping forward with the other. He has raised His right hand as if to emphasize the words He is speaking and to which His mother is listening with rapt admiration. This movement of the Child takes something away from the solemnity of the picture and the Virgin’s maternal pride shows her to be more of this earth than the Giotto _Madonna_ whose calm, impassive yet tender beauty, proclaims her to belong to a higher sphere than does the Fabriano.

_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_

MADONNA AND CHILD

--_Gentile da Fabriano_]

The picture, tempera on panel (38 × 22½ inches), belonged to the Alexander Baker Collection, London, and to the Collection of Madame E. J. Sartoris, Paris.

Gentile da Fabriano’s full name was Gentile di Nicola di Giovanni di Masso and he was born at Fabriano about 1370. He was a pupil of Allegretto Nuzi and possibly of Ottaviano Nelli. Vasari says, too, that he studied under Fra Angelico. He worked in Fabriano, Brescia, and Venice; and in 1422 he became a member of the Guild in Florence. Later he painted in Orvieto, Siena, and Rome, where Pope Martin V called him to paint in San Giovanni Laterano. Subsequently Gentile painted in Venice, Florence and other places, learning all that was new from other painters he met and everywhere attracting followers; but never forgetting his early Sienese inheritance in his love for beauty and for decoration.

Gentile da Fabriano became so much of a traveller and cosmopolitan that he has to be classed as an “Internationalist” as well as a Sienese painter. Gentile had a marvellous talent for presenting brilliant and beautiful pictures of the courtly life he saw around him and which was fast passing away for the styles and fashions of the approaching Renaissance. His _Adoration of the Magi_, now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence, is a gorgeous representation of a procession such as the painter had doubtless many times witnessed. It is while thinking of this brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_ that Berenson exclaims: “Fair knights and lovely ladies, spurs of gold, jewelled brocade, crimson damasks, gorgeous trains on regal steeds ride under golden skies wherein bright suns flatter charmed mountain tops. All the faces are aglow with blitheness. Why are they so happy? Have they waked from nightmare hauntings of Purgatory and Hell? So it would seem; and they rejoice in the blood tickling their veins, in the cool breezes, in the smell of flowers. And what a love of flowers! Gentile fills with them even the nooks and crannies of the woodwork enframing his gorgeous Epiphany.”

Gentile died in 1427,--the one great Umbrian of the Middle Ages.

Michelangelo remarked of Gentile that his name was in perfect harmony with the tone of his works.

MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.

_Benedetto Bonfigli
(1425–1496)._

_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn._

We have here a very unusual background, reminding us of the Arabian desert,--tall, barren rocks; and against these the Virgin is seated. Her costume is very lovely, consisting of a red tunic cut square across the neck and finished with a broad band of gold embroidery, and a blue mantle lined with yellow. Over her blonde hair, which is arranged in the style favored by Italian ladies of fashion, waved and parted and falling down at the sides of the cheeks, a white veil is folded in intricate plaits and made to ripple gracefully down over the shoulders. Above this complicated head-dress is a golden _nimbus_. The Holy Child, resting on her lap, steadied by the Virgin’s hand and additionally supported by the graceful hand of the little Angel, is partly swathed in muslin. One of His little hands rests on His mother’s veil and the other reaches for a pomegranate,[10] which she is holding. The dress of the Angel is red bordered with ermine and the bottom of the tunic is edged with a deep gold band of Cufic lettering. The _nimbi_ are tooled in gold and that of the Holy Child is cruciform. The strong wings of the Angels soar up boldly above their heads and make a perfect balance to the rocks behind the Virgin.

_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn_

MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS

--_Benedetto Bonfigli_]

The picture is tempera on wood (31½ × 21 inches).

Bonfigli is regarded as the founder of the School of Perugia which became so famous through Perugino, who perpetuates the name of the town.

Little is known of Benedetto Bonfigli, who was born about 1425, in Perugia, and was buried there in the Church of St. Domenico in 1496. Bonfigli shows in his work the influences of Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Camillo Boccatis, and Benozzo Gozzoli. Bonfigli was in Rome in 1453 working for Pope Nicholas V, and in the following year he was back in Perugia painting a series of frescoes for the Capella dei Priori in the Palazzo del Consiglio depicting _St. Louis of Toulouse and St. Ercolano_, which were unfinished at the time of his death. Bonfigli painted processional banners and small pictures as well as frescoes. Many of Bonfigli’s works are now in the Gallery at Perugia.

“As an artist Bonfigli scarcely ranks as high as Niccolò da Foligno, his fellow-pupil under Benozzo Gozzoli. He was a much more dependent person, but being more imitative, with the models of Fra Angelico or Benozzo before him, he at times painted exquisite things and by nature he was gifted with that sense of the charming wherewith Perugia was later to take the world captive. Some of the freshest and loveliest of all angel faces may be seen in Bonfigli’s altar-pieces and standards. His color has almost always that tint of gold which never fades from Umbrian art.”[11]

MADONNA AND CHILD.

_Perugino
(1446–1523)._

_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._

In red robe and blue mantle the Virgin appears seated three quarters to the left and supporting the Holy Child on her left knee with both hands. Her head is slightly inclined and the hair, parted above her forehead, is brushed plainly down either side and looped up rather curiously at the back and tied there by a narrow veil. The Holy Child looks away towards the left. Behind the figures is seen one of those delightful Umbrian landscapes made so famous by Perugino and Raphael.

This picture, an oil painting on panel (27¾ × 19½ inches), has an interesting pedigree. From the family of the Marquis of Villafranca it came into possession of the Marquis de la Romana from the Palace of Anglona, Madrid, and then belonged to the Collection of the Marquis de Villamajor, Madrid. The wife of the latter says:

“This painting of the _Madonna and Child_ by Perugino has been for many generations in my husband’s family. It comes from the family of the Marquises de Villafranca who lived in Italy in the Sixteenth Century and of which several members were Viceroys of Naples (Alvarez de Toledo). The Marquis of Romana, having acquired the Palace of the Prince d’Anglona in Madrid, assembled all the pictures and works of art inherited from his ancestors which were in the Palaces of Valencia, Palma de Mallorque, and in Italy, thus forming a fine and important Collection in which were paintings by Goya, Cameron, Ribera, Velasquez, and many paintings of the Italian, Flemish, and French Schools. On the death of the Marquis de la Romana, his son, the Marquis de Villamajor, received a part of this Collection (which was divided between him and his brothers), and this Perugino comes from the Marquis de Villamajor’s heritage.”

_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_

MADONNA AND CHILD

--_Perugino_]

Perugino was born at Città della Pieve, near Perugia, about 1446, and died (probably of the Plague), at Castello di Fontignano, also near Perugia, in 1523. His real name was Pietro Vannucci and he was also called Pier della Pieve; but he is known always and everywhere as Perugino from Perugia, where he spent his early life and learned his art. It is uncertain under whom he studied before he went to Florence, but he certainly assisted Piero della Francesca at Arezzo. At Florence, he worked in Verrocchio’s studio, having Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi for fellow-students. Then in 1475 he was commissioned to paint in the Palazzo Pubblico, Perugia. In 1481–1482 he was working in Rome in the Sistine Chapel with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, and Signorelli. Of his four frescoes here only one remains, _Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter_; the other three were destroyed to make room for Michelangelo’s _Last Judgment_. Perugino also painted in the Vatican and remained about ten years in Rome. Then he returned to Florence and had a studio there and also in Perugia. Besides, he travelled about a great deal to execute commissions in various cities. In 1490, for instance, he was in Rome again painting for Cardinal della Rovere an altar-piece now in the Villa Albani; in 1494 he was in Venice and Cremona; and in 1496 in Pavia, working for “Il Moro,” Duke of Milan. The three principal pictures of the beautiful altar-piece that Perugino painted for the Certosa, or Carthusian Convent near Pavia--_The Virgin adoring the Infant Christ_; _Tobias and the Angel Raphael_; and the _Archangel Michael_--are now in the National Gallery, London.

In 1495 Perugino was again working in Perugia; and it was then that Raphael, a boy of about twelve, became his pupil. At this time Perugino was the most celebrated of all the Umbrian painters. His best work was accomplished between 1490 and 1505. To this period belongs _The Marriage of the Virgin_, now in the Museum of Caen, Normandy, a picture that Raphael very closely followed, but eclipsed in beauty, in his _Sposalizio_, now in the Brera, Milan.

About 1590 Perugino painted his famous frescoes in the Sala di Cambio, Perugia, in which he introduced his own portrait; and in 1505 he painted The _Triumph of Chastity_ for the Marchese Isabella of Mantua, which is now in the Louvre.

After another visit to Rome he worked principally in churches in the neighborhood of Perugia, the last of which is supposed to be _The Nativity_, painted for the Church of Fontignano (where he died), and which is now in the South Kensington Museum.

Perugino was one of the earliest of the Italians who mastered the use of oil, then a new medium. In his constant moving around and visiting so many important cities, Perugino had every opportunity of seeing what the other artists of his day were doing. However, although he worked with the latest materials, Perugino remained faithful to the style of art known as the Quattrocento, which before his death was being rapidly superseded by the Cinquecento, of which Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were the chief exponents. Like Piero della Francesca he also advanced the science of perspective. For a time Perugino adopted the Florentine style, especially with regard to composition; but eventually he developed his own manner of grace, softness, delicacy, tenderness of color, great expression in faces and figures, and his unusually charming landscapes.

Berenson speaks particularly of Perugino’s “space composition:”[12] and in this art “Perugino surpassed all who ever came before him, and indeed all who came after him, excepting, however, his own pupil, Raphael, by whom even he was left far behind. Perugino had a feeling for beauty in women, charm in young men, and dignity in the old, seldom surpassed before or since. Then there is a well-ordered seemliness, a sanctuary aloofness in all his people which makes them things apart, untouched, and pure. Great reserve also does much for him. Violent action he doubtless avoided because he felt himself unequal to the task--indeed, so little did he ever master movement that his figures when walking dance on tiptoe and on their feet they never stand; but he as carefully kept away from unseemly expression of emotion. How refreshingly quiet are his _Crucifixions_ and _Entombments_! The still air is soundless and the people wail no more; a sigh inaudible, a look of yearning, and that is all. How soothing must such paintings have been after the din and turmoil and slaughter of Perugia, the bloodiest town in Italy! Can it be wondered that men, women, and children ran to see them? Nor yet is life so free from sordid cares and meaningless broils that we can forego such balm for the soul as Perugino brings.”

THE NICCOLINI MADONNA.

_Raphael
(1483–1520)._

_Collection of
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._

This picture came directly from the Niccolini Palace where it was purchased in 1780 by George Nassau, third Earl Cowper, who was at that time His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Court of Tuscany; and it was so prized that in order to get the picture out of Florence without any disturbance it had to be hidden in the lining of the Ambassador’s carriage. Another name for the picture is _The Cowper Madonna of 1508_. The picture now comes from the Collection of Lady Desborough, of Panshanger, Hertfordshire, who inherited it from her brother, Francis Thomas, seventh Earl Cowper.

The painting, an oil on panel (30½ × 22 inches), represents the Madonna seated in the open air in a dark, rose-red robe with long close-fitting undersleeves of yellow-green, ultramarine-blue mantle, and diaphanous veil. Around the neck of the dress and the hem of the mantle what appears to be a decorative band of golden embroidery is really the signature of the painter “M(D or CCCC)VIII. R. U. Pin,” meaning 1508 Raphael of Urbino Pinxit. And, by the way, is it not possible that Sir Joshua Reynolds got the idea from this picture of painting his name on the robe of _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_? It will be remembered that Mrs. Siddons sat for that magnificent portrait in 1784. The _Niccolini Madonna_ was bought by Earl Cowper in 1780 and, undoubtedly, Sir Joshua was very familiar with it. Moreover, at this date, Raphael’s masterpiece was also very fresh in the mind of the English picture-world.

_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._

THE NICCOLINI MADONNA

--_Raphael_]

The Holy Child is seated on a white cushion in the Virgin’s lap gently supported by her hand, which also lightly holds an end of her floating veil. The suggestion of a light breeze rippling the veil is an exquisite thought. The _nimbi_ of both Mother and Child are very delicate. The background consists of a blue sky.

It is very interesting to compare this picture with the other _Cowper Madonna_ and on doing so we find that the same model was used for the Child, although the women are different. The hand of the _Small Cowper Madonna_ is noticeably more refined than the hand in the _Niccolini Madonna_, yet, on the whole, the model used for the _Niccolini Madonna_ seems to be of a slightly higher social status. In the latter, we find the plucked eyebrows and forehead which Raphael’s taste has softened by the hair, lightly blown about, like the veil, by the breeze.

The _Niccolini Madonna_ was one of the last pictures painted by Raphael in Florence, as he went to Rome in 1508, the date given on this painting. It may be noted here that the _Madonna del Granduca_ (which belonged to the Grand Duke Ferdinand III, who carried it with him wherever he went), was the first picture Raphael painted in Florence.

The _Madonna del Cardellino_ (of the Goldfinch), in the Uffizi, and _La Belle Jardinière_ (in the Louvre), also date from the Florentine period--painted when Raphael was about twenty-five,--which seems almost incredible.

THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA.

_Raphael
(1483–1520)._

_Collection of
Mr. Joseph E. Widener._

This Madonna was painted in 1505, soon after the _Granduca Madonna_ (now in the Pitti). It was purchased in Florence about 1780 by Lord Cowper and was one of the ornaments of his Collection at Panshanger.

_Collection of Mr. Joseph E. Widener_

THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA

--_Raphael_]

The Madonna is seated on a stone bench and wears a red dress and a mantle of blue lined with green. The Holy Child throws His arms lovingly around His mother’s neck and steadies Himself by planting His left foot against her right hand. The hair of both mother and Child are blonde and encircled by a thin golden _nimbus_. The eyes are, in both subjects, of a warm and deep brown. A lovely Umbrian landscape carries us many miles away to the left; and nearer the figures on the right, there appears a building, identified as San Bernardino, a Franciscan Convent near Urbino.

The picture is painted on wood (23 × 17 inches). The original drawing is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

“And now we are face to face with the most famous and beloved name in modern art--Raphael Sanzio. Raphael was endowed with a visual imagination, which has never even been rivalled for range, sweep, and sanity. When it has been surpassed, it has been at single points and by artists of more concentrated genius. Thus gifted and coming at a time when form had, for its own sake, been recovered by the Naturalists and the essential artists, when the visual imagery, of at least the Italian world, had already suffered along certain lines, the transformation from the Mediæval into what ever since has been for all of us the _modern_, when the ideals of the Renaissance were for an ineffable instant standing complete, Raphael, filtering and rendering lucid and pure all that had passed through him to make him what he was, set himself the task of dowering the modern world with the images that to this day, despite the turbulent rebellion and morose secession of recent years, embody for the great number of cultivated men their spiritual ideals and their spiritual aspirations. ‘_Belle comme une madonne de Raphael_’ is, among the most artistic people in Europe, still the highest praise that can be given to female beauty. And, in sooth, where shall one find greater purity, more utter loveliness than in the _Granduca Madonna_, or a sublimer apparition of woman than appeared to St. Sixtus?

“When looking at the _Granduca Madonna_, has it ever occurred to you to note that the whole of her figure was not there? So perfect is the arrangement that the attention is entirely absorbed by the grouping of the heads, the balance of the Virgin’s draped arm and the Child’s body. You are not allowed to ask yourself how the figure ends. And observe how it holds its own, easily poised, in the panel which is just large enough to contain it without crowding, without suggesting room for aught besides.

“But great as is the pleasure in a single group perfectly filling a mere panel, it is far greater when a group dominates a landscape. Raphael tried several times to obtain this effect--as in the _Madonna del Cardellino_, or the _Madonna del Prato_, but he attained to supreme success once only--in the _Belle Jardinière_. Here you have the full negation of the _plein-air_ treatment of the figure. The Madonna is under a domed sky, and she fills it completely, as subtly as in the _Granduca_ panel, but here it is the whole out-of-doors, the universe, and a human being _supereminent_ over it. What a scale is suggested! Surely the spiritual relation between man and his environment is here given in the only way man--unless he becomes barbarized by decay or non-humanized by science--will ever feel it. And not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.”

Raphael Santi--everybody’s Raphael,--best beloved of all painters, was born in Urbino in 1483, the day unknown. He was the son of Giovanni Santi, a painter, and was first taught by him. Then it is supposed that he studied under Evangelista di Pian di Meleto, with whom he painted an altar-piece and worked afterwards with Evangelista’s partner, Timoteo Viti. Next we find him assisting Perugino at Perugia and also Pintoricchio. In 1504 he went to Florence and fell under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolommeo. During his four years in Florence, Raphael painted a number of important works including the _Terranuova Madonna_ (Berlin Museum); the _Small Cowper Madonna_ and the _Niccolini Madonna_ (on page 87 and page 85); the _Madonna del Cardellino_ (Uffizi); the _Madonna in the Meadow_ (Belvedere, Vienna); _La Belle Jardinière_ (Louvre); and a number of portraits including the famous self-portrait (Uffizi). He was but twenty-five! Called to Rome in 1508 to decorate the Stanze in the Vatican this immense work occupied him until 1514. In the meantime, he was given the decoration of the Loggia, but while he made the designs, the actual painting of “Raphael’s Bible” was done by his pupils. In the pressure of all this stupendous work he found time to paint _The Triumph of Galatea_ for Agostino Chigi in the Farnesina Palace, _The Madonna della Seggiola_ (Pitti), the _Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami_ and many portraits. In 1516 he painted _Baldassare Castiglione_ (Louvre); in 1517 the _Madonna di San Sisto_, for the convent of San Sisto at Piacenza (Dresden Gallery) and the _St. Cecilia_ (Bologna Gallery). In 1518 he began _The Transfiguration_, which was unfinished at the time of his death and which was placed beside his bier.

All this magnificent work which expresses such high creative power and such vast technical knowledge is the performance of a young man of twenty-seven! Had he painted but three pictures, _La Belle Jardinière_, the _Madonna of the Chair_, and the _Sistine Madonna_, Raphael’s place would have been with the greatest of the immortals. Taking his entire list of works into consideration Raphael, perhaps, comes nearer than any other painter to the term “inspired.”

AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

_Raphael
(1483–1520)._

_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._

This panel (9½ × 11 inches), was one of four belonging to the Predella of the large altar-piece representing the _Madonna Enthroned with Saints_, painted by Raphael in 1505 for the Nuns of S. Antonio, Perugia. It is, therefore, one of Raphael’s early works.

_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_

AGONY IN THE GARDEN

--_Raphael_]

The Saviour in a grey robe kneels in prayer at the right near a tree and towards him an Angel holding a chalice descends from the clouds. The other characters are sleeping: St. John the Evangelist in a green and red robe lies upon a grassy bank at the left; St. Peter reclines against a grassy mound at the right; and St. James, in a green and yellow robe, has propped himself against the tree in the centre. Trees and low-lying hills form the background. All four panels forming the Predella were purchased from the Nuns of St. Anthony in 1663 by Christina, Queen of Sweden. This particular panel--_The Agony in the Garden_--passed from the Queen of Sweden’s possession into that of Cardinal Azzolini, and thence into the Collection of Don Livio Odescalchi, whose heirs sold it to the Regent, the Duc d’Orleans. The Orleans Collection was sold in London in 1798 and _The Agony in the Garden_ then went into the Bryant Collection. Lord Eldin bought it next and subsequently the poet, Samuel Rogers, at whose sale in 1856 the panel was purchased by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. After the sale of the W. Burdett-Coutts Collection at Christie’s in 1917, the panel found its way to New York. The other three panels are: _St. Anthony of Padua and St. Francis_ (now in the Dulwich Gallery); the _Procession to Calvary_ (in the National Gallery, London); and a _Pietà_ (in the Gardner Collection, Boston).

The altar-piece--_The Madonna Enthroned with Saints_--was presented to the Metropolitan Museum by the late Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan.

_NORTH ITALIAN_

The greatest painters of Northern Italy were Altichiero Altichieri (1330?–1395), Pisanello (1397–1455), Domenico Morone (1442–1503), Liberale (1451–1536), Girolamo dai Libri (1474–1503), and Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), in Verona; Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), in Padua; and Cosimo Tura (1420?–1495), in Ferrara; Vincenzo Foppa (1427?–1515–16), Bramante da Milano (died about 1470), Bartolommeo Suardi, called Bramantino (1450?–1536), and Bernardino Luini (1475?–1531–2), in Milan; Lorenzo Costa (1460?–1535), and Francesco Francia (1450?–1517), in Bologna; Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), and Giambattista Moroni (1520–5–1578), in Brescia; and Antonio Allegri, better known as Correggio (1494–1534), in Parma.

The towns of Northern Italy were more or less influenced by Florentine artists who worked in various towns and who naturally attracted pupils and local assistants. Painters travelled too, a great deal, wishing, as they do now, to see the famous works of painters both living and dead and of learning the newest and latest technique. Lords and dukes also attracted celebrated painters to their courts; and, if they liked them, bestowed lavish orders for portraits, for their relatives and friends; small devotional pictures for their own cabinets; wall-paintings for their villas; and altar-pieces and frescoes for their local churches or cathedrals.

Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, sent to Lorenzo de’ Medici on two or three occasions to recommend painters from Florence for work that he wished to have done. The great intellectual and artistic activity of Lombardy at the end of the Fifteenth Century was largely owing to Lodovico Sforza, whose Court was one of the most brilliant of the day. “Here,” an enthusiastic contemporary exclaimed, “here the muses of poetry and the masters of sculpture reigned supreme; here came the most distinguished painters from distant regions; here, night and day, were heard sounds of such sweet singing and such delicious harmonies of music that they seemed to descend from heaven itself.”

New churches and palaces arose in Milan, Pavia, Como, Cremona, Piacenza, Lugano, and other places, and artists were necessary for decorating them. In 1496, Leonardo having all he could do, Lodovico wrote to Florence for a description of the best painters of the day. This is what he received; and it is very interesting as showing the estimation of the men mentioned while they were living:

“Sandro de Botticello--a most excellent master, both in panel and wall-painting. His figures have a manly air and are admirable in conception and proportion.

“Filippino di Frati Filippo--an excellent disciple of the above-named and a son of the rarest master of our times. His heads have a gentler and more suave air; but, we are inclined to think, less art.

“Il Perugino--a rare and singular artist, most excellent in wall-painting. His faces have an air of the most angelic sweetness.

“Domenico de Girlandaio--a good master in panels and a better one in wall-painting. His figures are good and he is an industrious and active master who produces much work.

“All of these masters have given proof of their excellence in the Chapel of Pope Sixtus, excepting Filippino, and also in the Spedaletto of the Magnificent Laurentio, and their merit is almost equal.[13]

The glimpse Leonardo da Vinci has given us of his life charms us across the long shadow of four centuries and more:

“The painter describes himself as living in a fine house, full of beautiful paintings and choice objects surrounded by musicians and poets. Here he sits at his work, handling a brush full of lovely color, never so happy as when he can paint listening to the sound of sweet melodies. The spacious _atélier_ is full of scholars and apprentices employed in carrying out their master’s ideas, or making chemical experiments, but careless of the noise of tools and hammers, the fair-haired boy, Angelo, sings his golden song, and, Serafino, the wondrous _improvisatore_, chants his own verses to the sound of the lyre. Visitors come and go freely--Messer Jacopo of Ferrara, the architect, who was so dear to Leonardo as a brother, the courtly poet, Gaspare Visconti, and Vincenzo Calmeta, Duchess Beatrice’s secretary, or, it may be, the great Messer Galeaz himself, whose big jennet and Sicilian horse the master has been drawing as models for the great equestrian statue standing outside in the Corte Vecchia. There, among them all, the painter bends over his canvas seeking to perfect the glazes and scrumbles of his pearly tints, or trying to realize some dream of a face that haunts his fancy with its exquisite smile. He has, it is true, many labors--(_a tanta faccenda!_) as he wrote to the councillors of Piacenza--and at times he hardly knows which way to turn; but he is his own master, free to work as he will, now at one, now at another. He has no cares nor anxiety. He can dress as he pleases, wear rich apparel if he is so minded, or don the plain clothes and sober hues that he prefers. He has gold enough and to spare; he can help a poorer friend and educate a needy apprentice, or save his money for a rainy day; and, above all, he has plenty of books and leisure to meditate on philosophical treatises, or ponder over the scientific problems in which his soul delights. He can find time to jot down his thoughts on many things, to write his great treatise on painting, and to draw the wonderful interlaced patterns inscribed with the strange words which have puzzled so many generations of commentators. And he has friends, too, dear to his heart--Messer Jacopo and the wise Lorenzo da Pavia, that master of organs whose hands were as deft in fashioning lyres and viols as in drawing out sweet sounds--with whom he loved to commune of musical instruments and eternal harmonies, and the boy, Andrea Salai, with the beautiful, curling hair, whom he loved to dress up in green velvet mantles and shoes with rose-colored ribbons and silver buckles. ‘Such,’ he tells us ‘was I, Leonardo the Florentine, at the Court of the most illustrious Prince, Signor Lodovic.’”[14]

In such surroundings Leonardo da Vinci spent sixteen happy years, during which he exercised all his talents as architect, engineer, sculptor, musician, and painter, also designing ingenious settings for masques and tournaments and superintending decorations for weddings and for other festivities. Here, too, he painted the _Last Supper_ in the refectory of the Dominican Friars of S. Maria delle Grazie, which “Il Moro” had taken under his special protection; the _Virgin of the Rocks_ (now in the Louvre), originally for the Church of S. Francesco of Milan, and many portraits, including those of Ludovico Sforza and of his talented young wife, Beatrice d’Este. When the French entered Milan in 1499 Leonardo returned to Italy.

The presence of the supreme and superlative Leonardo in Milan for so long a time naturally stimulated art and artists of all kinds and even more particularly that of painting and painters. His style dominated the Milanese School of painters just as Richard Wagner dominated the musical composers of the Nineteenth Century; and we find, particularly in the case of Luini, some of the Master’s most engaging qualities appreciated and imitated (see page 110).

“It has often been asked,” Marcel Reymond notes in a finely thought-out criticism of the Milanese painters, “how it came to pass that Leonardo left no disciples in Florence when he created such a strong School in Milan. The first cause, in my opinion, should be sought for in the laws that presided over the formation and development of the Florentine School of painting. This School, created by fresco-painters accustomed to works of vast dimensions, did not care to tarry over the _finesse_ of execution, or the enumeration of minute details; it simplified its vision, attaching itself particularly to the broad lines and only retaining of the forms what was essentially expressive in them. This character will be noticed at all periods of Florentine painting from Giotto, Masaccio, Ghirlandaio, and Andrea del Sarto. When the Florentine painters depart from this general conception, it is only by accident and almost always in consequence of foreign action, an action that will be sometimes that of Flemish painters, such as Van der Weyden, or Van der Goes, and sometimes that of the Florentine sculptors, who, at a given moment, about the middle of the Fifteenth Century, exercised so powerful an influence upon the painters who were their contemporaries. The action of Verrocchio in particular was such as to transform the style of the Florentine School of Painting and to give birth to the so entirely individual, and in certain respects so little Florentine, of Leonardo da Vinci.

“But the fact that this new style was outside the traditions of the Florentine School of Painting must have hindered its development, and in reality Leonardo had no disciple in Florence. With Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, it is the old character of the School that reappears to follow out its natural evolution through the whole course of the Sixteenth Century.

“In the North of Italy, on the contrary, the precision of line and observation of detail form a predominant character of those Schools of which Mantegna is the most illustrious representative. These Schools, therefore, found in Leonardo a teaching that responded to their ancient traditions; and we may thus understand how the seed planted by Leonardo in the soil of Milan struck such deep root and produced such beautiful flowers there.

“But however this may be and whatever may have been the causes of this admirable blossoming of Milanese Art in the early years of the Sixteenth Century, we may say that it represents in a highly learned form one of the researches that have the most occupied Italian genius,--I mean the seeking after beauty pursued in the harmonious accord between form and poetry.”

Francesco Squarcione (1394–1474), was a native of Padua, the son of a notary. Beginning life as a tailor and embroiderer, he chose to become a painter, but first he decided to travel. He made a tour through Italy and, it is said, visited Greece. It is in 1441 that his name first appears in the Paduan Guild of Painters. Squarcione achieved more reputation as a teacher than as a painter; and it seems that in executing what commissions came to him he either gave over his orders to his talented pupils, or had them, indeed, do most of the work under his name. It is now thought that it was Mantegna’s refusal to continue painting for Squarcione that led to the rupture between master and pupil and not Squarcione’s anger at Mantegna’s marrying Nicolosia Bellini, which has long been a favorite legend. Squarcione’s school, however, was the most famous of its time and brought him the title of “Father of Painters.” The list of his pupils runs to about a hundred and thirty-seven. One of the features of Squarcione’s workshop was his fine collection of fragments of statues which he used as models. It is also said on good authority that Squarcione was a dealer in antiquities.

In Padua also lived Jacopo Bellini, with whom Mantegna worked and whose daughter Nicolosia he married, a relation that made him, of course, brother-in-law to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. For a number of years--presumably from 1444 to 1460--Jacopo Bellini had a workshop in Mantua and, here, himself a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, he trained and worked with his two gifted sons and also Andrea Mantegna. This _bottega_ became quite a rival of Squarcione’s. Indeed such a combination as the three Bellini artists and Andrea Mantegna would certainly offer a formidable competition to any rival, at any time, or in any place.

The founder of the Ferrarese School was Cosimo Tura (1420?–1495), also a pupil of Squarcione, the first Ferrarese painter of eminence; and, from 1451, in permanent service of the Dukes at Ferrara. Tura had certain affinities for Carlo Crivelli, Melozzo da Forli, and Andrea Mantegna.

At Bologna, in 1485, Lorenzo Costa (1460?–1535), a supposed pupil of Tura, established himself, thus forming one of the main links between the Schools of Ferrara and Bologna; and it was another pupil--also a fellow-worker of Costa, Francesco Francia (1450?–1517), who is the chief glory of the Bolognese School (see page 107).

In Verona, first comes the Mediæval painter, Altichiero Altichieri and next the greater Antonio (or Vittore) Pisano (1397–1455), called Pisanello, worker in medals, painter of portraits, and mural decorator (see page 99).

The School of Brescia is represented by Alessandro Bonvicino, called Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), influenced by Titian and Raphael and considered the greatest provincial painter in Northern Italy of his time. Moretto is also famous for having formed Moroni, the great portrait-painter (1520–5–1578). Moretto and Moroni are regarded as ranking among the greatest portrait-painters of the Sixteenth Century. In mode and technique they closely follow the greatest Venetian Masters; but the Brecians have a more silvery and a much “cooler” tone than Titian and Tintoretto (see page 112).