Chapter II (1)

This design differs in nothing from the well-known picture of the Transfiguration, but the absolute nudity of all the figures.

That Raffaello was accustomed to sketch in naked outlines, may be known from most collections that possess something of his hand; but perhaps none but this may be able to produce a design, of a numerous and complete composition, in which every figure is rendered with anatomical correctness and finished chiaroscuro.

Another singularity of this important leaf is, the characteristic disparity of execution in the figures; for though all are drawn with the pen, and on the first glance seem hatched in one uniform manner, it soon appears on close inspection, that they cannot have been produced by the same hand.

The figures of the three Disciples on the Mount, especially the foreshortened one, are treated with that spirited facility and confident decision which always mark the pen of Raffaello. Those of the Saviour and the collateral prophets, though drawn with less precision and contours here and there, by repeated strokes, corrected, still exhibit on the whole the same spirit, facility, and confidence of hand. Of the actors below, the figure of John, with hands crossed on his breast, and the three next to him have the same Raffaellesque characteristics, and so the whole of the females kneeling on the foreground; but of the adjoining apostle, with the book in his hand, the projected leg and foot are absolutely out of drawing; whilst the Demoniac and his father, with all the remaining figures, drawn by mere practice, without a symptom of the master spirit, give palpable proofs of a different hand.

It appears no improbable conjecture that Raffaello, after settling the plan and fully arranging the figures of his picture, drew the nudities of this design as the bases of his draperies: for this reason only, the principal parts of the forms, and those muscles that would act most visibly on the draperies, are designed correctly, and finished with decision; whilst the heads, and what was either to be naked in the picture or did not act immediately on the drapery, remained in careless and superficial lines.

That Raffaello suffered parts of his Transfiguration, and in my opinion some of the most important parts, to receive all but the last finish from a pupil, if tradition had not told us, there is ocular demonstration in the picture itself. The proportions of the Demoniac's father are neglected as a whole, in relation of limb to limb, and the figure is sacrificed to place. The face of Christ himself, as it was seen in the Louvre, is unworthy of Raffaello's hand and conception.[98]

The reason why some of the figures are drawn in the true spirit of the artist, and others in a bald and insignificant manner, may be, that after slightly sketching the whole, he gave his own finish in the design to those parts only which he intended to execute with his own hand in the picture; and less solicitous for the rest, left them to the hand of some inferior pupil.

The height of this extraordinary design is one foot eight inches four lines; its breadth one foot two inches five lines; it is without injury.

* * * * *

Taddeo and Federigo Zuccari, the first declared mannerists of this school, sons of Ottaviano Zuccari, a mediocre painter of S. Angiolo in Vado, came to Rome successively, formed a school, and filled towns and states with an immense farrago of good, tolerable, and bad pictures. From the instructions of Pompeo da Fano and Giacomone da Faenza, but chiefly from an obstinate study of Raffaello's works, Taddeo, at no protracted period, gathered enough to diffuse over his own, an air, though not reality, of style, and to anticipate by contrivance and facility the rewards which time owes to invention and genius. Courting the senses of the multitude, he became the hero of the day; they saw their portraits in his faces, their limbs in his forms, their action in his attitudes; his draperies, hair, beards, had a cut of fashion. The simplicity of his disposition is often contrasted by half figures emerging from his foregrounds; perhaps less from a principle of imitating his more remote predecessors, than to invigorate the effect of his chiaroscuro, a method not unknown to Parmegiano.

Rome possesses vast works in fresco of Taddeo; among the best of these are some Gospel stories at the Consolazione. He seldom painted in oil, and less commendably in large than small: some of these are cabinet pictures of exquisite finish,--such a one, (formerly in the collection of the Duke of Urbino, but more recently at Osimo in the Palace Leopardi,) is the Nativity of the Saviour, and in Taddeo's very best style. But the work on which his fame chiefly rests, are the paintings of the Palazzo Farnese, at Caprarola (engraved in a moderate volume, by Prenner, 1748). They represent the Feats of the Farnese Family, in peace and war; to which are joined other stories, both sacred and profane; but what attracts attention most, is the celebrated "Stanza del Sonno," an apartment dedicated to Sleep, replete with a great variety of allegoric imagery, suggested to him by Annibale Caro, in a long, quaint letter, printed among his familiar ones, and reproduced among the "Lettere Pittoriche," t. iii. l. 99.

Dissimilar in the pursuits of life, Taddeo resembled Raffaello in death; he completed thirty-seven years, and obtained a monument close to Sanzio, in the "Rotonda."

His brother and pupil Federigo, inferior in design, resembles him in taste, though more mannered, more capricious in conceit, more crowded in composition. He completed what death had prevented Taddeo from finishing in the Sala Regia, that of Farnese, the Trinità de' Monti, and elsewhere, with the airs of heir-at-law to his brother's talents. Thus he raised an opinion of capacity for greater enterprise, and was invited by Francis I. to paint the great Cupola of the metropolitan church at Florence, which death alone had saved from Vasari's hands. There Federigo painted more than three hundred figures of fifty feet in height each, besides that of Lucifer, "so enormous," to use his own phrase, "that it makes the other figures appear infants;[99]--figures," he adds, "larger than the world ever witnessed before in Art." So little, however, hugeness excepted, is there to admire in this work, that at the time of Pier da Cortona, a painting of that master would have been substituted for it, had it not been feared that he would not live long enough to terminate the whole. After the Cupola, every work of consequence at Rome appeared his due, and he was recalled by Gregorio to paint the ceiling of the Paolina, and give a successor to Michael Angelo. It was at that period, that, on a charge preferred against him by some courtiers or domestics of Gregorio, he painted and exhibited the picture of Calumny, and his accusers with asses-ears, which raised a clamour that obliged him to fly from Rome. During his exile, which lasted some years, he visited Flanders, Holland, England; had a call even from Venice to paint a subject in the Ducal Palace, was everywhere caressed and remunerated, and, the Pope being mitigated, returned to reassume his interrupted labours in the Capella; the best work perhaps which, without the assistance of his brother, he has produced at Rome, though the larger altar-piece of S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and that of the Angioli at Gesù, with some others dispersed in other churches, may claim their share of merit. He built a house on Monte Pincio, rapidly and with the assistance of his scholars furnished with family portraits, conversations, and other whims in fresco, and left to prove him a trifler in Art, and the leader of decay.

Invited by Philip II. he went to Madrid, but failed to please; his place was supplied by Tibaldi, and he sent back with a good pension to Italy. Towards the end of his life he made another journey, scouring the principal towns of Italy, and leaving his works wherever he could place them: of these the Assumption of the Madonna in an oratorio at Rimini on which he wrote his name, and her Death at Sta. Maria in Acumine of the same place, with figures more than usually studied, deserve notice. His Presepio in the Duomo of Foligno, has simplicity and grace; nor less have the two stories relative to the Madonna, painted for the Duke of Urbino in a chapel at Loretto. The Miracle of the Snow, in the library of the Cistercians at Milano, is a multitudinous composition filled with portraits as usual, variously coloured and well preserved. The Borromean College at Pavia, has a saloon painted in fresco from incidents in the life of S. Carlo: the most approved of these is the Saint praying in his recess: nor might the other two, that of the consistory in which he received the Cardinal's hat, and the Pest of Milano, want commendation had they overflowed less in figures. At Torino he painted for the Jesuits a St. Paul; began to ornament a gallery for the Duke, Charles Emanuel; published his _Idea de' Pittori Scultori ed Architetti_, and dedicated it to the Duke. This was followed, at his return to Lombardy, by two other treatises; "_La dimora di Parma del Sig. Cav. Federico Zuccaro_; and _Il passaggio per Italia, colla dimora di Parma del Sig. Cav. Federigo Zuccari_," both printed at Bologna 1608. Next year, on his return to Rome, he fell sick at Ancona, and there died. His talents, which extended to sculpture and architecture, were inferior to his fortune, which preceded that of all his contemporaries, and was in a great measure the effect of personal qualities; lordly aspect and demeanour, some literary culture, persuasive manners, and a liberality that absorbed the wealth which his hand had accumulated.

Emulation seems to have been his chief motive of writing: he longed to break a lance with Vasari, whom, from whatever cause, as appears from the postils tacked to the _Vite_, he disliked. They have been sometimes, especially in the Life of Taddeo, quoted and treated as effusions of envy and malignity by the annotator of the Roman edition. To prove his superiority over the Tuscan, he chose a style as obscure and inflated as that of Giorgio is diffuse and plain; the whole of the treatise printed at Torino reels in a round of internal and external design, and contains less precept than peripatetic speculation, which rendered the schools of that day more loquacious than learned. His language runs over in intellective[100] and formative conceits, in substantial substances and formal forms; even the titles of his chapters are larded with equal fulsomeness of phrase, like that of the XIIth., that "philosophy and to philosophize, is metaphoric and similitudinarious design." These are the bait of fools--for none but fools can hope to gather meaning from the bubbles of sophistry, or stoop to disentangle etymologies which derive _disegno_ from "Dei signum," the sign of God!

This treatise was probably the offspring of his presidency in the Academy of St. Luke; for office gives insolence. The Academy dates its origin from the Pontificate of Gregorio XIII., who granted the brief of its foundation[101] to Muziano. It had not, however, its full effect till after the return of Zuccari from Spain, who put it in force and was unanimously declared "Principe," or President. That was his day of triumph; he returned from the inauguration in the church of S. Martino at the foot of the Campidoglio, accompanied by a great concourse of artists and litterators to his own house, where shortly after he built a saloon for the accommodation of the Academy, in whose praise he overflowed in prose and poems, more than once quoted in his larger treatise; and to seal his extreme affection, bequeathed like Muziano, in case his own line should fail, the bulk of his fortune to the establishment.

Giuseppe Cesari, sometimes distinguished by the name of Il Cavaliere d'Arpino,[102] his native place, was in art what Marino was in poetry--brilliancy without substance is the characteristic of both, and either proved the ancient observation, that Arts and Republics receive the greatest damage from the greatest capacities. The talent of Cesari bubbled up from his infancy, made him an object of admiration, procured him through F. Danti, the protection of Gregorio XIII., and in a short time the reputation of the first master at Rome. Less than the felicity with which he is said to have executed some pictures from certain designs of M. Agnolo, in the possession of Giacomo Rocca, his exuberance alone was sufficient to establish supremacy of name among a race who measured genius by quantity, and science by confidence of method. If his numbers were rabble, he arranged them with the skill of a general; if common-place furnished him with features, arrogance of touch brushed them into notice; and the horses which he drew with equal truth and fire, supplied the incorrectness or imbecility of the rider. The excellence of his colour in fresco, the gaiety which he spread over a vast surface, hid from the common eye monotony of manner, poverty of character, and want of finish in the detail of parts.

They were observed, reprobated and opposed by M.A. Caravaggio, A. Caracci, and the few who saw and thought with them. Quarrels arose, and challenges were given: that of Caravaggio, Cesari refused to accept, because he had not yet been knighted, and Annibale rejected that of Cesari, because, said he, "I know no other weapon than my pencil." They both experienced the difference of the difficulties that attend legislation and reform of taste, and were left ineffectually to struggle with an empiric, who outlived either upwards of thirty years, and then left a race worse than himself behind him.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] Bramante.

[90] Lett. Perug. V.

[91] "Cervello di porfido."

[92] See Vasari on Michael Angelo's observations on Tizian.

[93] "Fece li Schizzi e i Cartoni di tutte le Istorie."

_Vita di Pinturicchio._

"Fece alcuni de' disegni e Cartoni di quell' opera."

_Vita di Raffaello._

[94] In the picture on the facciata, Bottari says, "Si vede non solo il disegno, ma in molte teste anche il colore di Raffaello."

[95] Essendo con Pinturicchio a Siena--messo da parte quell' opera, e ogni utile e commodo suo, se ne venne a Fiorenza. Morta la Madre, partì e andò a Urbino, e accomodate le cose sue, ritornò a Perugia. Prima che partisse, &c.--Così venuto a Firenze, fece il cartone per il quadro di Madonna Atalanta Baglioni; dipinse per A. Doni e Dom. Canigiani; studiò le cose vecchie di Masaccio; acquistò miglioramento dai lavori di Lionardo e di Michelagnolo; ebbe stretta domestichezza con Frà Bartolomeo di S. Marco; ma in su la maggior frequenza di questa pratica fu richiamato a Perugia, dove finì l'opera della gia detta Madonna Atalanta Baglioni, &c.--Finito questo lavoro e tornato a Fiorenza, gli fu dai Dei cittadini Fiorentini allegata una tavola, &c. ma chiamato da Bramante si trasferì a Roma.--Vasari, Vita di Raffaello da Urbino, ed. Firenze, 1771. p. 163, 167, 172.

According to this account of Vasari, Raffaelle went three times to Florence; the first time, when roused by the fame of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, he left Pinturicchio 1504, and continued at Florence till he was called away by the death of his mother to Urbino, from whence, having settled his affairs, and painted certain things, he went to Perugia, and after some public works there, returned again to Florence with a commission from A. Baglioni. This is the period fixed by Vasari of his acquaintance with Bartolomeo di S. Marco, the progressive improvements of his style, and his pictures for A. Doni and D. Canigiani, and must have been his longest stay in that capital, though interrupted by a new call to Perugia, during which he finished the picture of the Burial of Christ, now in the Borghese Palace, for the Chapel Baglioni, and then returned for the third time to Florence.

[96] From the "Annalen der bildenden Künste für die Osterreichischen Staaten, Von Hans Rudolph Füessli." Erster theil. Wien. 1801. Annals of the Plastic Arts in Austria.

[97] 1515. Raffahell di Urbin, who was so highly esteemed by the Pope, has made these naked figures, and has sent them to Albrecht Durer at Nornberg, to show him his hand.

[98] This observation is founded on close inspection of this picture, in the room of the "Restoration," in 1802. The face of Christ not only appeared no longer that which all thought it to be who had seen it at S. Pietro in Montorio, but even inferior to that in the print of Dorigny, had assumed an expression nearer allied to meanness than to dignity, without sublimity austere, and forbidding. It is probable, however, that these changes originated under the sacrilegious hands of the restorers, who had before destroyed the better part of the Madonna di Foligno.

[99] "Sì smisurata, che fa parere le altre, figure di Bambini," &c. Idea de' Pittori, Scultori, e Architetti, inserted among the Lettere Pittoriche, t. vi. p. 147.

[100] Disegno interiore ed esteriore; concetti intellettivi e formativi; sostanze sostanziali, forme formali.--Titolo del capitolo XII. che la filosofia e il filosofare è disegno metaforico similitudinario.--Disegno, Segno di Dio.

[101] Baglioni, Vita di Muziano.

[102] 1560-1640.

THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES.

Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum, Stabiæ, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom of the middle ages.

But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage, on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[103] avails himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[104] who from them, judged him inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.

The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli, named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has reached our time.[105]

About 1325, Giotto was invited by King Robert to Naples, for the purpose of painting the church of Sta. Chiara; he came and filled it with Gospel history, and apocalyptic mysteries, from inventions, said in the time of Vasari to have been formerly communicated to him by Dante. These works, because they darkened the church, were whitewashed in the beginning of the last century, with the exception of a Madonna called della Grazia, and some other sainted image, preserved by female piety. Giotto conducted other works in Sta. Maria Coronata, and still others, which no longer exist in the Castle dell' Uovo. Maestro Simone, a Cremonese, according to some, but more probably a native of Naples, was the chosen partner of these works, and from so distinguished a choice, acquired some celebrity himself: from the resemblance of his style to Tesauro and to Giotto, he might have been the pupil of either, and was perhaps of both. Certain it is, that after the departure of Giotto, he received from Robert and Queen Sancia, many important commissions for various churches, and especially that of S. Lorenzo; there he painted Robert receiving the crown from his brother Lewis, Bishop of Toulouse, but died before he could finish the compartment of the chapel dedicated to that prelate after his demise and canonization. Though confessedly inferior in invention, character, and suavity of tone, he has nearly reached Giotto in some of his works: such as the dead Christ supported by his mother, in the church dell' Incoronata, and the Madonna with the Infant, on a gold-ground, now in the convent of the church della Croce, supposed by some to have been painted in oil.[106]

Simone had a son, Francesco di Simone, who died in 1360. His works are not numerous, but what has reached our days in the Capitolo di S. Lorenzo, is distinguished by an air of superior dignity and grace. Two other pupils of Simone, Gennaro di Cola and Stefanone, a similarity of manner associated in several public works, such as the chapel of S. Lewis, begun by Simone, and what still exists in S. Giovanni da Carbonara of subjects relative to our Lady. They are similar, however, without monotony. Gennaro, impressed by the difficulties of his art, and bent to overcome each obstacle by labour, appears precise, studied, and hard. Stefanone, guided by a spirit which in better days might have been called genius, boldly executed what he had conceived with warmth.

The pretended improvements of Colantonio del Fiore, (born 1352, died 1444,) a pupil of Francesco, neither appear to have been considerable enough in themselves, nor sufficiently authenticated, to place him at the head of a new epoch in style. Those barbarous relics of the middle ages, that meagerness of contour, dryness of colour, and want of perspective, which he is said to have abolished, had in a great measure vanished before, at the glance of Giotto. The gold grounds continued after both;[107] and if in enumerating some of his works his encomiast is in doubt whether they may not rather belong to M. Simone, what is it but a tacit confession, that the art had made no considerable progress during the course of a century?

The life of Colantonio grasped nearly the half of two centuries, and the refinements for which he has been extolled must be looked for in those of his works, on whose authenticity there is no hesitation, produced on the verge of life. Such is the Madonna, &c. in Sta. Maria Nuova, a compound of harmonious hues, though painted on a gold ground; and still more in S. Lorenzo, Saint Jerome drawing a thorn from the lion's foot, the date 1436, a picture full of truth, in high esteem with foreigners, and for its better preservation removed by the fathers of the convent from the church itself to the sacristy. He had a scholar in Angiolo Franco, who has obtained the praise of Marco di Siena, for having invigorated the most successful imitation of Giotto by the tone and chiaroscuro of his master.

But a name of far greater importance to art is that of Antonio Solario, commonly called Lo Zingaro, the reputed son-in-law of Colantonio. His story, still more romantic than that which in Quintin Metsis transformed a blacksmith to a painter, tells that Solario, bred to the forge, became enamoured of a daughter of Colantonio, forsook the anvil, and by successful submission to a ten years' trial of painting, and the mediation of a queen, obtained the idol of his soul. Let those who told the tale vouch for its truth: what is less disputable, and interests this history more, are his travels from Naples to Bologna, where for several years he studied under Lippo Dalmasio, and from thence over Italy, to become acquainted with the principles of other masters; those of Vivarini at Venice; of Bicci at Florence; of Galasso at Ferrara; of Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano at Rome. These two, it is believed that he assisted, and Luca Giordano asserted that some heads in their pictures at the Lateran bore the legitimate marks of Solario's pencil. In heads he excelled; he inspired them, according to Marco da Siena, with the air of life. In perspective, if the times be weighed, his skill was considerable; in composition not contemptible. There is variety in his scenery; and if his dresses be not drapery, they are at least naturally folded. In the design of the extremities he was less happy; his attitudes often border on caricature, as his colour on crudeness. On his return to Naples, nine years after his departure, applauded by Colantonio and the public, he enjoyed the patronage of King Alfonso. His greatest work is the Life of S. Benedetto, in the compartments of the cloister of S. Severino,--frescoes filled with an incredible variety of objects. Other churches possess some altarpieces by him: he left many portraits and some very attractive Madonnas; but in the Dead Christ of S. Domenico Maggiore, and the S. Vincent of S. Pier Martire, including some stories of that Saint's life, he is said to have excelled himself. Zingaro reared a school, which with more or less felicity disseminated his principles for nearly half a century, and retained his name. Of its pupils, Niccola di Vito, long forgot in his works, is barely remembered as a buffoon; Simone Papa and Angiotillo di Roccadirame, scarcely emerged to mediocrity; Pietro and Ippolito (Polito) del Donzello deserve less transient attention. Sons-in-law of Angiolo Franco, and pupils of Giuliano da Majano in architecture, they were, according to Vasari,[108] employed by him to decorate with paintings the fabric of Poggio Reale, which he had constructed for King Alfonso, where, continuing to operate under his son and successor Ferdinand, they represented the story of the Conspiracy formed in against him, a work celebrated by Jacopo Sannazaro.[109] Ippolito, alone or with his brother, filled the refectory of Sta. Maria Nuova with a number of subjects for the same prince, and then retired to Florence, where, not long after, he died. Piero remained at Naples distinguished and followed. Their style is that of their master, but with more suavity of colour. The first successful imitation of friezes, trophies, and storied basso-relievoes in chiaroscuro, may with probability be dated from them. That Pietro excelled in portraits, is evident from some animated heads saved among the ruins of certain frescoes of his on a wall of the Palace Matalona. Both were, however, surpassed in tone, and force of light and shade, and mellowness of outline, by Silvestro de Buoni, their pupil, whose pictures, scattered over the temples of Naples, have been enumerated by Dominici. Silvestro himself yields to Tesauro of questionable name,[110] whose works approach much nearer to the succeeding epoch than the united labours of his predecessors in vigour of invention, in judgment, propriety of attitude, truth of expression, and general harmony of the whole, with a relief beyond what seems credible in an artist unacquainted with other schools and other works than those of his native place. Such was his power of execution, that it challenged the wonder of Luca Giordano in the vigour of his career, when he contemplated the ceiling of San Giovanni de' Pappacodi, where Tesauro had painted the Seven Sacraments. They have been minutely described, and the portraits of Alfonso II. and of Ippolita Sforza, whom he is said to have represented, for the work itself is no more, in the Sacrament of Matrimony, afford some light as to the time in which it was painted. Another of his works, equally praised, in the Chapel Tocco of the Episcopal church, which represented a series of subjects from the life of Saint Asprenas, perished under the hands of one of Solimena's pupils. He was the father or uncle of Raimo Epifanio Tesauro, a considerable Frescante, who, according to Stanzioni, rekindled the evanescent spark of Zingaro's principles. Some few vestiges of his works remain in Sta. Maria Nuova and Monte Vergine. His dates reach from 1480 to 1501, and he may be considered as the last of this school, for Gio. Antonio d'Amato acquired fame by abandoning its style for that of Pietro Perugino.

Such were the masters that marked the first epoch of the Neapolitan school; neither inconsiderable in number, nor contemptible in progress, for a state nearly always perplexed by war: it derives, however, its greatest lustre from having produced within the state the memorable artist whose resolution and perseverance made Italy mistress of the new-discovered method in oil-painting, and changed the face of art.[111]

Antoniello, a Messinese, of the Antonj family, universally known by the name of Antoniello da Messina, educated, according to Vasari, to the art at Rome, returned from that place to Sicily, and after some successful practice at Palermo and Messina, sailed to Naples, where he saw an historical picture painted in oil by John ab Eyk, which had been presented or disposed of to king Alfonso, by some Florentine traders. Charmed by the method, Antoniello forgot every other concern, passed into Flanders, and by close attendance, and some presents of Italian designs, captivated the heart of the old painter, who made him completely master of the secret, and soon after died. Antoniello then left Flanders, and after some months spent at Messina, repaired to Venice, where he practised with general admiration of his new method; communicated it to Domenico there, and he at Florence to the felon Castagna, till by gradual progress it embraced all Italy. What remains to be related of Antoniello, is reserved for the history of the Venetian school, to which by residence and practice he properly belongs, and which alone carried his new discovered method to the height it was capable of.

The second epoch of Neapolitan art was auspicious. P. Perugino had painted for the Cathedral an Assumption of the Virgin, now lost, a work which led to a better taste. Already, Amato, as we observed, had abandoned the manner of Zingaro to follow Pietro, though his style had still too much of the former to form more than the connecting link between the two epochs; when Raffaello and his school came into vogue, Naples was the first of exterior towns to profit by them, and they, about the middle of the century, were followed by some adherents of Michael Angiolo; nor till near 1600, was any attention paid to other masters, if we except Tiziano.

The new series begins with Andrea Sabbatini[112] of Salerno. Smitten with the style of P. Perugino, Andrea set out for Perugia, to enter his school; but hearing some painters at an inn on the road talk of Raffaello and the Vatican, he altered his mind and route, and went to Rome. Though not long under the guidance of Sanzio, being by the death of his father, 1513, obliged to return to Naples, he returned another man. He is said to have painted with Raffaello at the Pace and in the Vatican. A good copyist, and what is rare, a better imitator, if he did not soar with Giulio, he kept pace with the best of that school, and excelled some in correctness, and a style equally remote from affectation and manner, with depth of chiaroscuro, breadth of drapery, and a colour which has defied time. His works in oil and fresco, scattered over the metropolis and the kingdom at large, have been celebrated as miracles of art, though now either lost or greatly impaired.

Of his scholars all persevered not in his manner: thus Cesare Turco, as commendable in oil as unsuccessful in fresco, drew nearer to P. Perugino. More of Andrea was retained by Francesco Santafede, the father and master of Fabrizio,--painters whom few of that school equal in colour, and so uniform that their works can only be discriminated by the superior tinge and chiaroscuro of the father. But the scholar who most resembled Andrea was one Paolillo, whose works, nearly all ascribed to his master, till restored to their real author by Dominici, leave little doubt of his right to the first honours of that school, had his career not been intercepted by a violent death, occasioned by intrigue. Polidoro Caldara, of Caravaggio, escaped to Naples in 1527, from the sack of Rome, but not, as Vasari with less information than credulity relates, to starve. Received in the house of Andrea, formerly his fellow scholar, he soon acquired acquaintance, commissions, and even formed pupils before his departure for Sicily. He had been celebrated for his chiaroscuros at Rome: at Naples and Messina he attempted colour. The shadowy and pallid specimens he has left, leave a doubt whether he would ever have arrived at a degree of strength or brilliancy worthy of invention and style, though he has been praised with enthusiasm by Vasari for the colour of the Christ led to Calvary, a numerous composition, and the last before his assassination at Messina.

Gian Bernardo Lama left the school of Amato to attach himself to Polidoro, whom he more than once imitated with sufficient success to incur the suspicion of having been assisted by the master: he had, however, more sweetness than energy, and, in the sequel, was noted for his opposition to the vigorous inroads of the Tuscan style and the prevalence of Marco di Pino.

Francesco Rubiales, a Spaniard, from his felicity of imitation called Polidorino, is likewise named in Naples among the scholars of Caldara, whom he assisted in painting for the Orsini, and singly conducted several works at Monte Oliveto, and elsewhere, the greater part of which are no more.

There are who class with the scholars of Polidoro, Marco Cardisco, called Marco Calabrese.[113] Him Vasari prefers to all the natives of that epoch, and admires as a plant sprung from a soil not its own: he knew not, perhaps, that, of Magna Grecia, modern Calabria was the spot most favoured by the arts. Possessed of a dextrous hand and florid colour, Cardisco spread his labours over Napoli and the State: of what remains, the most praised is the Dispute of Saint Augustine at Aversa. Gio. Batista Crescione and Lionardo Castellani are slightly mentioned by Vasari as his scholars.

Gio. Francesco Penni, called "Il Fattore," came to Naples some time after Polidoro; and, during the short time which he lived, for he died in 1528, contributed to the advancement of the art by leaving his great copy of Raffaello's Transfiguration and his pupil Lionardo Grazia, of Pistoia, behind him, a name more celebrated for colour, and far less for design, than might have been expected from a nurseling of the Roman School. He is said to have been one of the masters of Francesco Curia, who went to Rome to study the style of Raffaello, but returned with the manner of Zucchero. His composition is, however, praised for decorum and suavity, his angels and female countenances for beauty, and his colour for a tone of nature:--their full display distinguished that Circumcision at the Church della Pietà, which Ribera, Giordano, and Solimene placed among the masterpieces of Naples. Curia left a close imitator in Ippolito Borghese, of whom little is seen at home, where he seldom resided, but the Assumption of Maria at the Monte della Pietà,--an extensive work, marked by equal vigour of execution.

Perino del Vaga, at Rome, instructed, and was assisted by, two Neapolitans, Giovanni Corso and Gianfilippo Criscuolo. The best that remains of Corso at Naples, is a Christ bearing his Cross, in S. Lorenzo. Long a pupil of Sabbatini, Criscuolo, during the little time of his stay at Rome, studied the works of Raffaello with a perseverance which acquired him the name of the Studious Neapolitan; but without native vigour, timid, correct, and dry, he remained fitter to teach than to lead. Such were the principal followers of the Roman School at Naples; for neither Francesco Imparato, who abandoned the dry precepts of Criscuolo for the genial example of Tiziano, nor his son Girolamo, who long after followed the same principles with more pretence and less success, can properly be classed among the pupils of Rome. About 1544[114] a Tuscan introduced at Naples, what is as commonly as impertinently called, the style of Michael Angiolo: a cold enumeration of sesquipedalian muscles, groups uninspired by thought, feeble in effect, and crude or faint in colour, methodized by manner and despatched by practice. Thus Giorgio Vasari filled the Refectory of Monte Oliveto, during one year of residence, with an enormous work, which he considered as the electric stroke that was to animate that indolent taste, till then vainly solicited by Raffaello and his school. Whether he disgusted the national pride by such insolent civility, or provoked the indignation of those who, in Andrea Sabbatini, venerated a superior name, it appears that, so far from creating a school, he was discountenanced by the public, and incurred the perpetual censure of every Neapolitan writer on art. He ought to have known, that he who challenges a nation, courts an eternal feud.

Another, less pompous, but more effectual follower of Michael Angiolo, was Marco da Pino, or Marco da Siena: the date[115] of his arrival at Naples ought probably to be placed after 1560. He was well received, presented with the freedom of the city, and deserved the courtesy by the amenity of his manners and sincerity of character. With the reputation of the first artist, Marco was employed in the most conspicuous churches of the city and the state. Though he sometimes repeated his inventions, he approached Michael Angiolo nearer than any other Tuscan, because he affected less to do it. His forms are appealed to by Lomazzo as instances of just proportion, and, in keeping and aërial perspective, he is ranked with Lionardo and Robusti. As his design is less charged, so is his colour more vigorous and glowing than the usual tinge of the Tuscan School: sometimes, however, he is unequal, trusts to practice, and deviates into manner. He was an able architect, and of the good writers on that art.

Of many pupils reared in his school, none was comparable to Gio. Angiolo Criscuolo, brother of G. Filippo. Though bred a notary, he had practised miniature from his youth; emulation with his brother prompted him to attempt larger proportions; and, under the tuition of Marco, he became a good imitator of his style.[116]

To dwell circumstantially on the crowd of artists that fill the biographic pages of this period, humiliating as mere nomenclature may appear, is below the dignity of an art, which, like poetry, admits not of mediocrity. Reputation during life, the partiality of friends and countrymen, some single work which escaped to excellence from the insignificant productions of a long career, are but equivocal claims on the homage of posterity: and more legitimate ones in oil or fresco, have neither Silvestro Bruno, Simone del Papa, the younger Amato, Mazzolini, Cola dell' Amatrice, Pompeo dell' Aquila, Giuseppe Valeriani, Marco Mazzaroppi, Gio. Pietro Russo, Pietro Negrone of Calabria, nor the Sicilian Gio. Borghese. Pirro Ligorio, the favourite architect of Pio IV. in Rome, and the engineer of Alphonso II. at Ferrara, owes the preservation of his name more to his Augean collections of antiquarian lumber and the intrigues by which he perplexed the last years of M. Angiolo, than to the flimsy exertions of his pencil.

Matteo da Leccè, of obscure education, displayed in Rome a perverse attachment to the manner of M. Angiolo by the usual conglobation of muscles and extravagance of action. He worked chiefly in fresco, and with a relief, which, in the phrase of Baglioni, makes some of his figures burst from the wall. Though many Florentines were then at Rome, he alone appeared capable of completing the plan of Buonarroti, in the Sistina, by facing the Last Judgement with the Fall of the Rebel Angels. Matteo girt himself boldly for the work, and left it a lamentable proof of the ridicule that must attend the presumption of a mere craftsman to ally himself with a man of genius. He worked likewise in Malta and in Spain, and, passing from thence to the Indies, became a thriving trader, till duped by the rage of digging for treasures, he dissipated his wealth, and died of penury and grief.

* * * * *

After the middle of the sixteenth century, the flame-like rapidity of Tintoretto's style at Venice, and soon after, the powerful contrast of Caravaggio's method at Rome, and the eclectic system of the Carracci, at Bologna, spread general emulation over Italy, and divided Naples into three parties, of nearly equal strength, led by Corenzio, Ribera, and Caracciolo, differing from each other, but ready to unite against all foreign competition. During their flourish, Guido, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Artemisia Gentileschi were at Naples, and formed some pupils;--a period as enviable in the number of excellent artists and the progressive powers of execution, as disgraceful for the dark manœuvres and the vile intrigues that fill it--intrigues and manœuvres too closely interwoven with the history of Neapolitan art, and, unfortunately, too well attested, merely to be dismissed with silence and contempt.

Belisario Corenzio,[117] an Achæan Greek, after passing five years in the school of Tintoretto, fixed his abode at Naples about 1590. A native stream of ideas and unparalleled celerity of hand placed him, perhaps, on a level with his master in the dispatch of a prodigious number, even of most extensive works; but his rage was too ungovernable often to admit of more distinguished comparisons with Robusti; though few excelled him in design, and his works abound in conceptions, attitudes, and airs of heads confessedly inimitable to the Venetians themselves. The work in which he has best succeeded as an imitator of Tintoretto, is the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd by the Saviour, in the Refectory of the Benedictines, a huge performance, but, under his hands, a task of forty days. Though generally too much of a mannerist to sacrifice the readiest to the best, he still preserves a character of his own, an air of originality, in glories especially, which he embosomed in darkness and clouds pregnant with showers. With a decided turn for works of large dimension in fresco, which seldom allowed him to submit to the finish of oil colour, he contrived to please by various compositions of sacred history, in small proportions, and is even said to have enlivened the perspectives of the Frenchman Desiderio with diminutive figures admirably toned and adapted to the scenery.

The native country of Giuseppe Ribera[118] was a subject of dispute between the Spaniards and Neapolitans, till the production of an extract from the baptismal register of Xativa (Antologia di Roma, 1795) decided the claim in favour of Spain, and proved him a native of that place, now "San Felipe," in the district of Valencia. If the date of his birth, January 12, 1588, be correct, he must have come to Italy and entered the school of Caravaggio at a very early period. From him Ribera went to Rome, Modena, Parma, saw Raffaello, Annibale, Correggio, and in imitation of their works attempted to form a more luminous and gayer style, in which he had little success, dismissed it soon after his return to Naples, and once more embraced the method of Caravaggio, as more eminently calculated by its force, truth, and effect to fix the eye of the multitude, the object of his ambition; he soon became painter to the court, and by degrees the arbiter of its taste.

The studies he had pursued enabled him to go beyond Caravaggio in invention, mellowness, and design: the grand Deposition from the Cross at the Certosa proves the success of his emulation, a work, by the verdict of Giordano, alone sufficient to form a painter: the Martyrdom of S. Gennaro in the royal chapel, and the S. Jerome of the Trinità, excel his usual style, and possess Titianesque beauties. S. Jerome was among his darling subjects; S. Jerome he painted, he etched in numerous repetition, in whole-length and in half figures. He delighted in the representation of hermits, anchorets, apostles, prophets, perhaps less to impress the mind with gravity of character and the venerable looks of age, than to strike the eye with the imitation of incidental deformities attendant on decrepitude, and the picturesque display of bone, veins, and tendons athwart emaciated muscle. A shrivelled arm, a dropsied leg, were to Ribera what a breast-plate and a gaberdine were to Rembrandt. As in objects of imitation he courted meagreness or excrescence, so in the choice of historic subjects he preferred to the terrors of ebullient passions, features of horror or loathsomeness, the spasms of Ixion, St. Bartholomew under the butcher's knife. Nor are the few ideas of gaiety by which he endeavoured to soothe his exasperated fancy, less disgusting: Bacchus and his attendants are grinning Lazaroni or bloated wine-sacks; brutality under his hand distorts the feature of mirth.

Giambatista Caracciolo,[119] first attached to Franc. Imparato, then to Caravaggio, grew to manhood before he had produced any work of consequence: roused afterward by the fame and the impression made on his mind by some picture of Annibale, he went to Rome, and by a pertinacious study of the Farnese Gallery became one of the best imitators of that style. This was the basis of his fame on his return to Naples, and by this, whenever provoked to competition, he maintained it: such are the Madonna of S. Anna de' Lombardi; S. Carlo, in the church of S. Agnello; and the Christ under the Cross, at the Incurabili. The rest of his performances, by their strength of chiaroscuro, betray the school of Caravaggio. From so considerate and finished an artist, haste and flimsiness were not to be feared, and yet there exist productions of his so feeble that his biographer[120] is reduced to account for them from the artist's wish of retaliating by paltry work for paltrier prices; or from suffering them to be finished by Mercurio d'Aversa, no very estimable pupil.

Such were the three leaders of that cabal which for some years persecuted every stranger of eminence in the art who freely came, or was invited to come, to Naples. Reputation, fiction, violence, had raised Belisario to the tyranny of fresco; the most lucrative commissions he considered as due to himself, the rest he distributed among his dependants, the greater number of whom possessed little merit. Massimo Santafede, though independent of him, remained neuter, afraid to interfere with a man who, to obtain his purpose, would stop at neither fraud nor crime; a proof of which he is said to have given, in administering poison to the gentlest and best of his pupils, Luigi Roderigo, whose growing powers he envied.

To maintain his primacy in fresco, the exclusion of every stranger who excelled in that branch became, of course, his principal object. Annibale Caracci arrived at Naples in 1609, to paint the churches "dello Spirito Santo" and "di Gesu Nuovo," and produced a small picture as a specimen of his style. The Greek and his associates, called upon to give their opinion of it, unanimously condemned it as cold, and its master far too tame to manage an extensive work. Thus baffled, Annibale returned to Rome during the most oppressive heats of summer, and soon after died. But the work most contested with strangers was the royal chapel of S. Gennaro, which the deputies had reserved for Giuseppe d'Arpino, then painting the choir of the Certosa. Belisario, leaguing himself with Spagnoletto, not less fierce and arrogant, and with Caracciolo, who both aspired to that commission, attacked Cesari with a fury which forced him, before he could terminate his choir, to fly for safety, first to Monte Cassino, and then back to Rome. The commission was now given to Guido; but not long after, two men unknown cudgelled his servant and dismissed him with a message to his master immediately to depart or to prepare for death. Guido fled; but Gessi his pupil, not intimidated, having demanded and obtained the grand commission, repaired to Naples with two assistants, G. Batista Ruggieri and Lorenzo Menini; both were decoyed on board a galley, that immediately slipped its cable and transported them to some place which no researches could discover, and Gessi was obliged to return with his disappointment to Rome.

Dispirited by the violence of these manœuvres, the deputies began to give way to the cabal of the monopolists, allotting the frescoes to Correnzio and Caracciolo, and flattering Spagnoletto with the hope of being intrusted with the altar-pieces; when all at once, repenting of their agreement, they ordered the two fresco painters to throw up their work, and transferred the whole of the chapel to Domenichino, at the splendid price of a hundred ducats for every entire, fifty for each half figure, and twenty-five for every head.[121] They likewise took measures for his personal safety, by obtaining the Viceroy's protection, but in vain. The faction, not content with crying him down as a cold insipid painter and discrediting him with those who see with their ears and fill every place, alarmed him with anonymous letters, threw down what he had painted, mixed ashes with his materials to crack the ground he had prepared, and, by a stroke of the most refined malice, persuaded the Viceroy to give him a commission of some pictures for the Court of Spain. These, when little more than dead-coloured, they carried from his study to court, where Ribera superciliously ordered what alterations he thought proper, and then, without allowing him leisure to terminate the whole, dispatched them to Spain. The insolence of the rival, the complaints of the deputies on the successive interruptions of their work, and hence the suspicion of mischief, induced Domenichino at last secretly to depart for Rome, in hopes of being able from thence to bring his affairs into a better train,--and not without success; the rumours of his flight subsided, new measures for his safety were taken, he returned to Naples, and, without more interruption, completed the greater part of the frescoes, and considerably advanced the altar-pieces.

Here death surprised him, accelerated, as some have suspected, by poison, certainly by repeated causes of disgust from his relations, competitors, and, above all, the arrival of his old adversary Lanfranco. He succeeded to Domenichino in the remaining fresco, Spagnoletto in one of the oil pictures, and Stanzioni in another. Caracciolo was dead; Belisario, excluded by age from sharing in the spoil, soon after was destroyed by a ruinous fall from a scaffold. Nor had Ribera, if the prevailing fame be true,[122] a desirable end; dishonoured in his daughter, gnawed by remorse for the vile persecutions in which he had shared, odious to himself, and sick of light, he escaped to sea, and none tells where he perished.

Opposed at its onset by these three, the School of Bologna triumphed after their demise, and Naples was divided into its imitators; for the mannered style of Cesari, which approached that of Belisario, terminated with Luigi Roderigo, and his relative Gian Bernardino.

At the head of those who adopted Caracciesque principles with success, may be placed Massimo Stanzioni[123] a scholar of Caracciolo, and, as he himself asserts, of Lanfranco in fresco, in portrait of Santafede. At Rome he strove to embody the forms of Annibale with the tints of Guido. Thus equipped, he braved the foremost talents at Naples, and opposed at the Certosa a Dead Christ among the Maries to Spagnoletto, who, to escape comparisons, persuaded the friars to have the picture of his rival washed to recover its somewhat darkened tone, and with a corrosive liquor so defaced it, that Stanzioni, declaring so black a fraud ought to remain an object of public indignation, refused to retouch it; he left, however, other specimens of his powers at that repository of rival talents, and above all the masterpiece of S. Bruno. The ceilings of Gesu Nuovo and of S. Paolo give him a distinguished rank among fresco painters. His gallery pictures, though not rare at Naples, are seldom met with elsewhere. Whilst single, he sought and aimed at excellence, and courted the art for its own sake; after his marriage, with a woman of fashion, gain became necessary to maintain her in a state of splendour, and he sunk by degrees to mediocrity.

The School of Massimo is celebrated for the number and excellence of its pupils, but the two who promised most, Muzio Rossi and Antonio de Bellis, perished in the bloom of life. The first, who had entered the School of Guido at Bologna, was at the age of eighteen thought worthy to face at the Certosa men of the first ability, and shrinks from no comparison, but scarcely survived his work. The second, whose style is nearly balanced between Guido and Guercino, began at the church of S. Carlo various pictures from the life of that Saint, which he lived not to finish.