Chapter VI: Painting (3)

[222] "Fu Pietro persona di assai poca religione, e non se gli potè mai far credere l'immortalità dell' anima: anzi, con parole, accomodate al suo cervello di porfido, ostinatissimamente ricusò ogni buona vita. Aveva ogni sua speranza ne' beni della fortuna, e per danari arebbe fatto ogni male contratto." Vasari, vol. vi. p. 50. The local tradition alluded to above relates to the difficulties raised by the Church against the Christian burial of Perugino: but if he died of plague, as it is believed (see C. and C., vol. iii. p. 244), these difficulties were probably caused by panic rather than belief in his impiety. For Gasparo Celio's note on Perugino's refusal to confess upon his death-bed, saying that he preferred to see how an impenitent soul would fare in the other world, the reader may consult Rio's _L'Art Chrétien_, vol. ii. p. 269. The record of Perugino's arming himself in Dec. 1486, together with a notorious assassin, Aulista di Angelo of Perugia, in order to waylay and beat a private enemy of his near S. Pietro Maggiore at Florence is quoted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 183.

[223] "Guadagnò molte ricchezze; e in Fiorenza murò e comprò case; ed in Perugia ed a Castello della Pieve acquistò molti beni stahili." Vasari, vol. vi. p. 50.

[224] "Goffo nell arte." See Vasari, vol. vi. p. 46. See too above, p. 196.

[225] I select these for comment rather than the frescoes at Spello, beautiful as these are, because they have more interest in relation to the style of the Renaissance.

[226] The "Assumption" in S. Frediano at Lucca should also be mentioned as one of Francia's masterpieces.

[227] His father was a muleteer of Suffignano, who settled at Florence, in a house and garden near the gate of S. Piero Gattolino. He was born in 1475, and he died in 1517.

[228] In S. Domenico at Prato in 1500. He afterwards resided in S. Marco at Florence.

[229] May 23, 1498.

[230] In addition to the pictures mentioned above, I may call attention to the adoring figure of S. Catherine of Siena, in three large paintings--now severally in the Pitti, at Lucca, and in the Louvre.

[231] In the Uffizzi. As a composition, it is the Frate's masterpiece.

[232] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 487, for this consequence of the sack of Prato.

[233] _L'Art Chrétien_, vol. ii. p. 515.

[234] Two of our best portraits of Savonarola, the earlier inscribed "Hieronymi Ferrariensis a Deo Missi Prophetae Effigies," the later treated to represent S. Peter Martyr, are from the hand of Fra Bartolommeo. See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 433.

[235] See below, chapter vii.

[236] This sonnet I have translated into English with such closeness to the original words as I found possible:--

He who can do not what he wills, should try
To will what he can do; for since 'tis vain
To will what can't be compassed, to abstain
From idle wishing is philosophy.
Lo, all our happiness and grief imply
Knowledge or not of will's ability:
They therefore can, who will what ought to be.
Nor wrest true reason from her seat awry.
Nor what a man can, should he always will:
Oft seemeth sweet what after is not so;
And what I wished, when had, hath cost a tear.
Then, reader of these lines, if thou wouldst still
Be helpful to thyself, to others dear,
Will to can alway what thou ought to do.

[237] See the letter addressed by Lionardo to Lodovico Sforza enumerating his claims as a mechanician, military and civil engineer, architect, &c. It need scarcely be mentioned that he served Cesare Borgia and the Florentine Republic as an engineer, and that much of his time at Milan was spent in hydraulic works upon the Adda. It should be added here that Lionardo committed the results of his discoveries to writing; but he published very little, and that by no means the most precious portion of his thoughts. He founded at Milan an Academy of Arts and Sciences, if this name may be given to a reunion of artists, scholars, and men of the world, to whom it is probable that he communicated his researches in anatomy. The _Treatise on Painting_, which bears his name, is a compilation from notes and MSS. first printed in 1651.

[238] The folio volume of sketches in the Ambrosian Library at Milan contains designs for all these works. The collection in the Royal Library at Windsor is no less rich. Among Lionardo's scientific drawings in the latter place may be mentioned a series of maps illustrating the river system of Central Italy, with plans for improved drainage.

[239] Shelley says of the poet:--

He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy bloom;
Nor heed nor see what things they be,
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality.

[240] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 143, for this story.

[241] In the _Treatise on Painting_, da Vinci argues strongly against isolating man. He regarded the human being as in truth a microcosm to be only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, as a painter, the same thought as Pico. (See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning,_ p. 35.) Therefore he urges the claims of landscape on the attention of artists.

[242] I might refer in detail to four studies of bramble branches, leaves, and flowers and fruit, in the royal collection at Windsor, most wonderful for patient accuracy and delicate execution: also to drawings of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush, and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are as valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific character of each plant with greater precision would be impossible.

[243] See the series of anatomical studies of the horse in the Royal Collection.

[244] Engraved by Edelinck. The drawing has obvious Lionardesque qualities; but how far it may be from the character of the original we can guess by Rubens' transcript from Mantegna. (See above, Chapter VI, Mantegna's Biography.) De Stendhal says wittily of this work, "C'est Virgile traduit par Madame de Staël," op. cit. p. 162.

[245] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are anatomical drawings for the construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic claws. The bony, muscular, and venous structure of its legs and feet is accurately indicated.

[246] See the drawings engraved and published by Gerli in his _Disegni di Lionardo da Vinci_, Milan, 1784.

[247] Vasari is the chief source of these legends. Giraldi Lomazzo, the Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply further details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality. There is a touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is wanting in the legend of Piero di Cosimo.

[248] Even Michael Angelo, meeting him in Florence, flung in his teeth that "he had made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and through shame left it as it was unfinished." See _Arch. St. It._, serie terza, xvi. 226.

[249] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there is a whole series of studies for these two statues, together with drawings for the mould in which Lionardo intended to cast them. The second of the two is sketched with great variety of motive. The horse is rearing; the fallen enemy is vainly striving to defend himself; the victor in one drawing is reining in his steed, in another is waving a truncheon, in a third is brandishing his sword, in a fourth is holding the sword in act to thrust. The designs for the pedestals, sometimes treated as a tomb and sometimes as a fountain, are equally varied.

[250] "Concevoir," said Balzac, "c'est jouir, c'est fumer des cigarettes enchantées; mais sans l'exécution tout s'en va en rêve et en fumée." Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du Lundi_, vol. ii. p. 353.

[251] See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 128, 129.

[252] It was finished, according to Fra Paciolo, in 1498.

[253] Signorelli, with his usual originality, chose the moment when Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples. In that rare picture at Cortona, we see not the betrayed chief but the founder of a new religion.

[254] The Cenacolo alone will not enable the student to understand Lionardo. He must give his attention to the master's sketch books, those studies in chalk, in tempera, on thin canvas and paper, prepared for the stylus or the pen, which Vasari calls the final triumphs of designing, and of which, in spite of the loss of many of his books, the surviving specimens are very numerous. Some are easily accessible in Gerli, Chamberlaine, and the autotype reproductions. It is possible that a sympathetic student may get closer to the all-embracing and all-daring genius of the magician through these drawings than if he had before him an elaborate work in fresco or in oils. They express the many-sided, mobile, curious, and subtle genius of the man in its entirety.

[255] "Raffaello, che era la gentilezza stessa ... restavano vinti dalla cortesia e dall' arte sua, ma più dal genio della sua buona natura; la quale era si piena di gentilezza e si colma di carità, che egli si vedeva che fino agli animali l'onoravano, non che gli uomini."--Vasari, vol. viii. pp. 6, 60.

[256] See above, Chapter VI, Fra Bartolommeo.

[257] The "Holy Family" at Munich, and the "Madonna del Baldacchino" in the Pitti, might be mentioned as experiments on Raphael's part to perfect the Frate's scheme of composition.

[258] See Vasari, vol. viii. p. 60, for a description of the concord that reigned in this vast workshop. The genius and the gentle nature of Raphael penetrated the whole group of artists, and seemed to give them a single soul.

[259] The fresco of "Alexander" in the Palazzo Borghese is by an imitator.

[260] The "Madonna di San Sisto" was painted for a banner to be borne in processions. It is a subtle observation of Rio that the banner, an invention of the Umbrian school, corresponds in painting to the hymn in poetry.

[261] See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 316, for Raphael's letter on this subject to Leo X.

[262] "La Spasimo di Sicilia" is the single Passion picture of Raphael's maturity. The predella of "Christ carrying the Cross" at Leigh Court, and the "Christ showing His Wounds" in the Tosi Gallery at Brescia, are both early works painted under Umbrian influence. The Borghese "Entombment," painted for Atalanta Baglioni, a pen-and-ink drawing of the "Pietà" in the Louvre collection, Marc Antonio's engraving of the "Massacre of the Innocents," and an early picture of the "Agony in the Garden," are all the other painful subjects I can now remember.

[263] For a fuller working out of this analysis I must refer to my _Sketches in Italy_, article "Parma." Much that follows is a quotation from that essay.

[264] Much of the controversy about Michael Angelo, which is continually being waged between his admirers and his detractors, might be set at rest if it were acknowledged that there are two distinct ways of judging works of art. We may regard them simply as appealing to our sense of beauty, and affording harmonious intellectual pleasure. Or we may regard them as expressing the thought and spirit of their age, and as utterances made by men whose hearts burned within them. Critics trained in the study of good Greek sculpture, or inclined by temperament to admire the earlier products of Italian painting, are apt to pursue the former path exclusively. They demand serenity and simplicity. Perturbation and violence they denounce as blemishes. It does not occur to them that, though the phenomenon is certainly rare, it does occasionally happen that a man arises whose art is for him the language of his soul, and who lives in sympathetic relation to the sternest interests of his age. If such an artist be born when tranquil thought and serene emotions are impossible for one who feels the meaning of his times with depth, he must either paint and carve lies, or he must abandon the serenity that was both natural and easy to the Greek and the earlier Italian. Michael Angelo was one of these select artistic natures. He used his chisel and his pencil to express, not merely beautiful artistic motives, but what he felt and thought about the world in which he had to live: and this world was full of the ruin of republics, the corruption and humiliation of society, the subjection of Italy to strangers. In Michael Angelo the student of both art and history finds an inestimably precious and rare point of contact between the inner spirit of an age, and its external expression in sculpture and painting.