Old World Masters in New World Collections

Italian

Sienese

Florentine

Umbrian

North Italian

Venetian

Sienese

There are no beginnings of art in Italy. The old civilizations of Etruria, Rome, and Byzantium never perished entirely; and upon their surviving traditions “Christian Art” was built. Old pictorial ideas and old decorative motives were absorbed, rearranged, and worked over again and again in conjunction with theological dogma until in the Thirteenth Century, largely owing to the beautiful character, ideals, and influence of St. Francis, to the intellectual teachings of Dante, and to the fervor aroused by the Crusades, “Christian Art” became a living movement, which inspired, among other important things, the creation of magnificent Cathedrals. When the architects, the carvers of wood and stone, and the makers of the jewel-like windows had finished their work, the best painters of the day were called on to produce altar-pieces that would stimulate religious devotion, charm the worshippers by beauty, and instruct the people (unaccustomed to books) by representation of saintly lives and scriptural stories.

Italian Painting in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries thus shows many of the old Byzantine traditions still lingering in the new “Christian,” or “Gothic Art.”

Siena and Florence were the chief early Italian Schools. Siena was at first the more important of the two and greatly influenced Florentine and also French Painting. The leading early artists of Siena were Guido da Siena, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Ugolino da Siena, Segna di Bonaventura, Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lippo Vanni, Andrea Vanni, Bartolo di Fredi, Taddeo di Bartolo, and Stefano di Giovanni (Sassetta).

The next group includes Domenico di Bartolo, Lorenzo Vecchietta, Neroccio di Landi, Benvenuto di Giovanni, Girolamo di Benvenuto, and Matteo di Giovanni.

“To understand and appreciate the painting of Siena one should think of it as the culmination of the art of the Middle Ages rather than as a promise of anything modern. Therein lies the difference which caused so great a gulf between the art of Siena and that of contemporary Florence only forty miles away. Sienese Art may be regarded as the most perfect expression of the Byzantine ideal. It was hieratic and mystic. While Giotto was forecasting the development of modern art by studying nature and making his figures act like the real people whom he saw about him, Duccio and Simone Martini were sounding the Byzantine creed that the Christian saints were not human but divine, not vulgar but regal, not approachable but aloof. To the early Sienese, as to the Byzantine, the Raphaelesque conception of the Madonna as the most tender possible human mother would have been blasphemous bad taste.

“Although Sienese Art was founded on Byzantine and was in a sense the culmination of Byzantine, it was, nevertheless, a Gothic art. In other words it belonged to its period, but it selected certain elements of Gothic style for emphasis.

“In Florence Giotto was inspired by the plasticity of Gothic Art and its naturalism. In Siena Duccio and his followers developed the Gothic living line; and, later, the emotionalism of Gothic spirit. Thus both Florentines and Sienese were Gothic, but in a different way.

“Technically as well as spiritually, the Sienese approached the artistic abstractions of China and Japan. The analogies between Sienese and Oriental Art have been observed by practically every writer on the Sienese School. They have been tacitly attributed however, to accidental similarities in ideals and modes in Siena and the East. As yet no one has been bold enough to suggest an influence derived from actual contact with Eastern Art, but such contact is not beyond the bounds of possibility. In the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries overland communication with the Near East and with China was common and secure. Merchants like the Polos, prelates like John of Monte Corsino, Andrew of Perugia and Friar Odoric of Friuli readily found the way to Cathay, as China was then called. Peking was made a Roman Catholic diocese and Pegolotti of the Bardi banking-house in Florence was moved to write a traveller’s itinerary, remarkably like a modern Baedeker, giving the most minute instructions as to inns, food, servants, and so forth, on the route from Constantinople to Peking. Moslems like Ibn Batuta travelled as widely as Christians, and Oriental travellers visited the Occident. Thus Bar Sauma, a Nestorian of Peking, visited the Pope in 1287 and passed through Tuscany on his way to Paris and Bordeaux two years after Duccio painted the Rucellai Madonna. Not only the Near East and China, but India, was opened to the European and we hear of the martyrdom of one Brother Peter of Siena at a place near Bombay. It was not until the end of the Fourteenth and the beginning of the Fifteenth Century that the conversion of the western Tartars to Islam, the advance of the Seljuk Turks, and the overthrow of the broad-minded hospitable Mongol dynasty in China closed the overland trade-routes. During the next hundred and fifty years while the sea-routes were being discovered Europe seems largely to have forgotten the existence of the Orient. Wild as the theory may sound, therefore, it is possible that actual contact with Oriental Art may account not only for the occasional Mongolian types and bits of Oriental armor to be observed in Sienese Art, but even for something of the spirit of the style.”—Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).

St. Francis and the Beggar

Sassetta	Collection of
(1392–1450).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

On September 5, 1437, the Minorites of Siena ordered an altar-piece for the Church of San Francesco at Borgo San Sepolcro from Stefano di Giovanni, better known as Sassetta. The artist promised “to paint it with fine gold, ultramarine, and other good colors, to employ all the subtleties of his art, and to make it as beautiful as he could.” Also he promised to complete it in four years. Sassetta, however, made a wrong calculation; for the work occupied him seven, instead of four, years. It was finished on June 5, 1444, and placed above the high altar at Borgo San Sepolcro, where it remained until 1752, when the panels were dispersed. From contemporary documents nine panels were proved in recent years to have been among the decorations of this famous altar-piece; and these panels were shown at the Retrospective Exhibition of Sienese Art held in Siena in 1904.

Seven of these nine panels are now in the Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay: St. Francis and the Poor Knight; St. Francis Renounces his Heritage; St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio; St. Francis before the Soldan; St. Francis before Pope Honorius III; St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata; and The Burial of St. Francis.

Another panel, The Marriage of St. Francis to Poverty, is in the Chantilly Museum and the central panel of the altar-piece, representing The Glory of St. Francis, is in the Collection of Mr. Bernard Berenson.

The panel representing St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio was long in possession of the Comte de Martel at the Château de Beaumont, near Blois, and the other six panels came from the Collection of the late M. Georges Chalandon, Paris.

It was obvious that for a church dedicated to St. Francis the story of his life should be told in paintings.

It is a little hard to realize that the frescoes by Giotto and his companions depicting the Life of St. Francis had been admired and worshipped for a hundred odd years before Sassetta was called upon by the Sienese Minorites to tell the story again. Sassetta produced an entirely new version with regard to composition, color, and spiritual interpretation.

There is much to attract an artist in the story of St. Francis, for although his life is not one of much variety, it is full of striking episodes, which afford splendid pictorial opportunities. St. Francis, founder of the great Order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans, and called “the Poor Man of Assisi,” was born in Assisi in 1182, and died there in 1226. He was the son of a rich merchant, who, furious because his son lavished money on the starving poor of the vicinity, demanded that he should renounce his inheritance. This he did with a joyful spirit in public and before the Bishop of Assisi, thereafter devoting himself to the service of the poor. Disciples flocked to his little chapel, called the Portiuncula; and when the New Order celebrated its General Chapter in 1219, five thousand friars assembled there. The Order was approved by Pope Innocent III and by his successor, Pope Honorius III. Poverty was the leading characteristic of the Franciscans, or Begging Friars; individually and collectively they refused to own anything whatsoever.

St. Francis journeyed about doing good. His wanderings took him as far as Egypt and Palestine; and it was in the year 1224, on the desolate Mount Alvernia, that he received the Stigmata, or Impression on the flesh of Our Lord’s Five Sacred Wounds, in memory of which the Church instituted a special festival. St. Francis was canonized in 1228, two years after his death.

St. Francis and the Beggar, shown here, tells two episodes of the story. On the left and in the immediate foreground the young St. Francis, having dismounted from his horse, whose head (very finely drawn) appears above his shoulder, is in the act of giving his cloak to a poor beggar; and the latter, very dramatically expresses his delight, surprise, and gratitude. Beyond these figures a winding road, bordered with cypress trees, leads to a handsome villa, presumably the home of St. Francis, beyond which little hills appear on the horizon. The sky, very expansive, is silvery above these hills and grows gradually bluer and bluer until it reaches the top of the picture, or dome of the sky, where a strange castle is seen with banners of the Holy Cross floating from its battlements and turrets. This castle really belongs to the second episode represented on the right, which shows St. Francis sleeping in a little room. This heavenly castle is the vision he has in his dreams. It would appear that the Angel, standing over St. Francis and pointing to the mystical castle in the clouds, is inspiring this mystical dream. It is interesting to note here that Giotto made at Assisi two pictures of St. Francis and the Beggar and The Dream of St. Francis. Sassetta combined the two episodes into one picture.

“Even without documents,” says Berenson, “we should know that this Borgo San Sepulcro polyptych was painted by a contemporary of Masolino, Pisanello, Jacopo Bellini, and Antonio Vivarini. And that the master was a Sienese we should know not only from his pure, flat color and his devotion to line, but in other ways as well. At all events it is he, Stefano Sassetta, who has left us the most adequate rendering of the Franciscan soul that we possess in the entire range of painting.

“Sassetta was not only one of the few masters in Europe of imaginative design, but the most important painter at Siena during the second quarter of the Fifteenth Century, the channel through which Sienese Trecento traditions passed and became transformed into those of the Quattrocento, for nearly all the later painters of Siena were his offspring.”

Stefano di Giovanni was born at Siena in 1392. He was a pupil of Paolo di Giovanni Fei and was deeply influenced by the earlier Sienese painters, Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers. In 1427 he was asked to furnish a design for the font in the Siena Baptistery and he painted the altar-piece of the Madonna Enthroned with Saints in the church, since known as the Osservanza, built for St. Bernardine on the site of his hermitage. Sassetta’s work for the Borgo San Sepulcro did much to popularize Sienese ideas in Umbria. Sassetta made many paintings in Siena and at Cortona, where he was influenced by Fra Angelico. In 1447 he was commissioned to complete the frescoes on the Porta Romana at Siena, begun by Taddeo di Bartolo; and he died in 1450 from exposure while working on this gate. Fifteen years later the frescoes were finished by Sano di Pietro, one of Sassetta’s many pupils and followers.

For a long time Sassetta was forgotten; but of late years there has been much interest in his works, which are of great pecuniary as well as artistic value.

Madonna and Child With Saints and Angels

Matteo di Giovanni	Collection of
(1430?–1495).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

Among the most important pupils of the famous Sassetta was the painter and sculptor, Lorenzo Vecchietta, who in turn was the principal master of Matteo di Giovanni, the most celebrated Sienese painter of his time. Therefore we have direct artistic ancestry for Matteo di Giovanni through Vecchietta to Sassetta and to Duccio.

Matteo di Giovanni, also called Matteo da Siena, was the son of a tradesman who came from Siena to Borgo San Sepulcro, where Matteo was born about 1430. His first master is supposed to have been the Umbrian, Piero della Francesca (or Pier dei Franceschi). Removing to Siena, Matteo spent the rest of his days there. His life was uneventful, for he gave all his time to painting. His domestic life must have been somewhat exciting for he was twice married—the second time to a countess—and he had a large family. Matteo was particularly famous for his Madonnas, tender and wistful, with very decorative accessories.

The lovely Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, represented here, shows this decorative quality of Matteo in its highest expression. The Sienese love for Oriental fabrics1 appears in the rich attire of the Virgin. Here is no peasant woman in simple robe and mantle, but a lady of high degree, wearing a gown of handsome brocade with the significant pattern of the pomegranate. A white veil, soft and transparent, lightly covers her forehead and her mantle is gracefully drawn up over her head to form a hood. The Holy Child rests comfortably upon her left arm while her right hand, large and firm, gives Him additional support. A light drapery passes around the body of the Holy Child—the Sienese were Oriental enough in their discriminating taste to avoid uninteresting nudity and they also knew how to manage both heavy and light materials—who grasps the Virgin’s tunic with His right hand and has placed his left hand over that of His mother. The golden nimbus of the Virgin is inscribed “Ave (Maria) Gratia Plena.”

St. Catherine of Siena stands on the right, also wearing a handsome brocade gown and a white veil. She is holding a missal and a fragment of her wheel of torture. On the left we see St. Anthony, in monk’s habit, writing in a book. Behind this group two Angels are singing loudly and joyfully. The background and all the nimbi crowning the heads of the figures are of gold, made the richer by burnished ornamentation.

This picture, painted in tempera on a panel 29 × 20 inches, came from the Collection of Lord Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place, Battle, Surrey, England. Of it Berenson says: “It is not only his (Matteo di Giovanni) most typical and his most characteristic, but also his most impressive and beautiful work; it has every advantage of ivory flesh, golden tone, and gorgeous brocade; and with all these decorative qualities it possesses real humility.”

Among Matteo di Giovanni’s other important paintings are: the Madonna Enthroned (1470) in the Accademia; the Madonna della Neve (1477) and the Coronation of St. Barbara in St. Domenico, Siena; the Assumption of the Virgin in the National Gallery, London; and St. Jerome in his Cell, in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Adoration of the Magi

Benvenuto di Giovanni	Collection of
(1436–1518).	Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart.

We have here a charming Sienese version of the ever-popular subject—the Adoration of the Magi. Everything about this picture is radiant, charming, and decorative. The groups in pyramidal form with masses at the base, made rich and beautiful by means of the wise lighting and graceful arrangement of draperies, balanced with lively animals on the right and left, rise higher and higher with more and more delicacy of treatment that suggests the technique of old ivory carving or the miniature painting of Mediæval manuscripts, until the peak is reached in the charming presentation of a lovely walled town with spires lifted heavenward.

The picture is full of movement, life, joy, and expression. The Holy Child is appreciative (which is an unusual feature) and the animals, too, are taking an enthusiastic part in the ceremony.

The tender and gentle Virgin, seated on a stone bench directly in front and wearing a red robe and a blue mantle, has the Holy Child comfortably placed on her knee. On her left hand she is holding one of the presents. The Holy Child, according to the Sienese fashion, is draped and the linen folded around Him is embroidered in gold. His expression is animated and very sweet and He is raising His little hand in blessing. The eldest of the Magi,2 Melchior with white hair (what there is left of it) and white flowing beard, is kneeling before the Holy Child and kissing His right foot, wearing a rich golden mantle with a damask pattern in raised gold relief, held by a jewelled girdle. The second Magus, on the left, Balthasar, is clothed in a red brocade mantle embroidered in gold. He has a dark complexion and is removing his crown from his thick black hair and holds in his right hand a piece of gold plate. The third King, Caspar, on the right, is the most attractive figure in the picture,—a typical young prince and dandy of the period dressed in a pale tunic, cut with point in front showing a rich brocade undergarment, and plaited and slashed and bordered according to the latest Fifteenth Century fashions. The sleeves are slashed and ornamented with puffs and a rich girdle holds the dagger with hilt of gold. Lilac trunk-hose, red shoes, and a golden crown complete the costume. His face is delicate and charming and his wavy hair is blonde. He, too, is bringing a piece of gold plate. This radiant figure looks as if he might have stepped from the pages of the Romaunt of the Rose. St. Joseph, behind Balthasar, leans his head on his hand as if he were puzzled. Each one of these six important figures has a flat golden nimbus. Behind St. Joseph, on the left, the ox and the ass, by the intelligent gleam in their eyes, allow us to believe in the legend that animals are endowed with the power of speech on Christmas Eve. Over the roof of their open shed sparkles and scintillates the Star of the East and under the Star we note a bush laden with fruit,—a real Christmas tree! On the right, the group is that of the retinue of the three Kings—people on foot, wide-eyed and curious, and knights on horseback. A beautiful white horse arches his head majestically and surveys the scene; behind him are a very superior horse and a very superior camel, who gaze downward somewhat haughtily, while a third horse looks backward at these companions to see what they are thinking of it all!

As in many ancient paintings, the scene is enacted for us in two episodes. If we look ardently we see the three Magi on their approach to the shrine. We can identify Balthasar on the left; Caspar in the centre; and Melchior on the left of Caspar, followed by their retinue defiling through the gateway of the machicolated wall, behind which the town, with its towers and turrets, domes and roofs, stands out clearly and poetically from its golden horizon.

This painting, tempera on panel (70 × 53 inches), came from the Collection of Sir William Neville Abdy, Bart., Dorking, Surrey, and was exhibited in Paris at the Salle des Etats, Musée du Louvre, in 1885.

Benvenuto di Giovanni di Meo del Guata, also known as Benvenuto da Siena, was, like Matteo di Giovanni, a pupil of Vecchietta. He was born in Siena, September 13, 1436, the son of a mason. In 1453 he was painting in the Baptistery in Siena. He painted in Siena all his life and aided in designing the inlaid marble pavement in the Cathedral and he also decorated the cupola. Benvenuto di Giovanni cared little about the scientific experiments the contemporary Florentine painters were essaying, content to paint in the decorative and charming traditional Sienese manner, of flat and ornamental designs beautifully enriched with gold. It is very interesting to compare this painting with the pageants of Benozzo Gozzoli and Gentile da Fabriano. It holds its own, thereby, for its high decorative quality and peculiar charm.

Florentine

It is not strange when Sienese Painting was at its height that its influence should have been felt in Florence, which is only about forty miles distant. The fame of Cimabue (1240?–1301), the founder of the Florentine School, indeed, rests chiefly on the Madonna in the Rucellai Chapel of S. Maria Novella, which modern criticism attributes to Duccio of Siena. Vasari was responsible for accrediting the Rucellai Madonna to Cimabue; and Vasari’s story that when finished “it was carried in solemn procession with the sound of trumpets and other festal demonstrations from Cimabue’s house to the church, Cimabue being highly rewarded and honored for it,” reads like an echo of the triumphal procession of Duccio’s great altar-piece—the Majestas—from the house of that painter to the Cathedral of Siena.

Cimabue, whose name was Cenni dei Pepe, transitional from Byzantine to Gothic, is particularly famed for being the discoverer and teacher of Giotto.

Giotto di Bordone (1276–1336), sculptor and architect as well as painter, is the dominating personality in Trecento Art, and the first Gothic painter of Florence. Giotto’s influence lasted for a hundred years or more (see page 25).

One of Giotto’s associates and followers was Bernardo Daddi, son of Daddo di Simone, a Florentine. The date of his birth is supposed to have been 1280. He died in 1348. About 1317 he was admitted to the Arte de Medici e Speziale, the Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries, from whom the painters obtained their pigments. According to the laws of the period no painter could pursue his art unless he took his degree in that confraternity. The early painters became independent of the Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries after the Guild of St. Luke3 was formed—the special brotherhood of all painters, which spread to every country and to every town—and there is a tradition that Daddi was one of the founders of this Compagnia di San Luca, which would show that this Florentine Guild of St. Luke was organized as early as 1348.

Daddi painted the fresco over the San Giorgio Gate of Florence about 1330 and he also painted the frescoes of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence in Santa Croce. Daddi comes very close to Giotto (1276–1336), in dates and in style, although he shows great sympathy with the Sienese painters.

Giotto’s followers—the Giotteschi—worked from about 1330 to 1430 and include: Taddeo Gaddi, Andrea di Cione (better known as Orcagna), Giovanni da Milano, Agnolo Gaddi, Cennino Cennini, Andrea di Firenze, Antonio Veneziano, Spinello Aretino, and Lorenzo Monaco.

These painters prepared the way for greater changes by studying perspective and the human form and by gradually introducing Classic Architecture into their pictures in place of Gothic decoration.

In studying Fifteenth Century Art in Florence we are struck by the great number of goldsmiths and other workers in metal who became painters. There is a reason for this. The most important work in Florence for twenty-two years was the making of the four bronze doors for the Baptistery, the competition for which was won by Ghiberti in 1401. The undertaking was so vast that Ghiberti engaged, at one time or another, nearly all the most talented artists and artisans of Florence. Many painters and sculptors who acquired fame afterwards, such as Masaccio and Donatello for instance, received their early training under Ghiberti.

Of the last-mentioned painter Leonardo da Vinci wrote:

“After the days of Giotto, painting declined again, because everyone imitated the pictures that were already in existence; and this went on until Tommaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed, by his perfect works, how artists who would take any teacher but Nature—the mistress of all masters—labor in vain.”

Tommaso Masaccio (1401–1429?) and Tommaso Masolino (1383–1447) worked together in the Brancacci Chapel. Masaccio was the son of a notary in the parish of Castel S. Giovanni in Val d’Arno, learned to draw and paint, joined the Guild of St. Luke in 1424, and became Masolino’s assistant for painting the frescoes in the new Chapel built by Felice Brancacci in the Carmine. When Masolino went to Hungary, Masaccio worked there alone.

Masaccio’s frescoes made an epoch in art, although the painter was little appreciated in his day. He left his work suddenly and went to Rome. Nothing more was ever heard of him. He is thought to have died in Rome in 1429. Almost immediately Masaccio’s work began to be valued and all the Florentines of the Fifteenth Century flocked to study these Brancacci frescoes. Masolino (1383–1447) was appointed in 1423 to paint frescoes in the new Brancacci Chapel in the Carmine and two years later went to Hungary. Returning home after several years, he painted frescoes in various cities (see page 28).

Gerardo, better known as “Starnina” (1354–1408), a pupil of Antonio Veneziano, spent nine years in Spain and on his return to Florence, achieved great fame by his frescoes in the Carmine. The name was taken from that of his father, Jacopo Starna. It is said that “Starnina” was the master of Masolino and Fra Angelico.

Fra Angelico (1387–1455), brings us to another transitional period,—this time from the Gothic to the Renaissance. Fra Angelico, or Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, the angelic and mystical painter and the most beloved of all the early artists, spent his life painting frescoes and altar-pieces for churches and cloisters. He was frequently called by the Pope to Rome, where he died (see page 32).

To this period belong Andrea del Castagno (1390?–1457), a vigorous and austere painter, and Paolo Uccello (1397–1475), named Paolo di Dono, but called Uccello because he kept in his house and painted so many birds. Uccello began life as a goldsmith and assistant to Ghiberti.

No survey of painting in Florence in the Fifteenth Century, however slight, would be complete without reference to the Medici. Art, like all other branches of learning, owed its splendid development to their intelligent sympathy and generous patronage. The Medici began this patronage early. Giovanni de Bicci (1360–1428), the founder of the family, was one of the judges who selected Ghiberti to make the Baptistery doors and Cosimo, “the Father of his Country” (1389–1464), was so liberal a patron of Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, and many others, that we may safely say the great flowering of Florentine Art is almost entirely due to his taste and encouragement.

The Florentine artists, too, were greatly stirred by the meeting of the Council of the Eastern and Western Churches, which was one of the most important gatherings ever held anywhere in the history of the world. This Council was invited by Cosimo to Florence and all the dignitaries and their suites were his personal guests, entertained by him in his various palaces and villas. Picturesque and bizarre these dignitaries were; and the painters had full opportunity to see them when they sat in the Duomo under Brunelleschi’s newly completed dome (then the Eighth Wonder of the World), or when they moved about the streets with their suites.

In his delightful book, The Medici, Col. G. F. Young has called particular attention to the importance of this great Council; how it led Cosimo to found the Platonic Academy; and how the Fall of Constantinople, fourteen years later, changed the world so utterly that no such meeting could ever take place again. In part he says:

“This great gathering of 1439 in Florence had its effect also on Art. We are often inclined to wonder where such painters as Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Gentile da Fabriano got the idea of the gorgeous robes and strange-looking head-dresses which we see in their pictures of Eastern subjects. It was all taken direct from the life of Florence of this year. During that summer the inhabitants of Florence saw a perpetual succession of grand processions and imposing functions in which these visitors from the East appeared in every kind of magnificent and strange costume. Vespasiano da Bisticci and other writers of the time dilate upon their rich silken robes, heavy with gold, and their fantastic-looking head-dresses, regarded with deep interest by the learned on account of their ancient character. And the painters reproduce these before us in pictorial records, which are valuable to us on that very account, and because this was the last occasion on which these costumes were destined to appear.”

Piero il Gottoso (1416–1469), Cosimo’s son, “carried on” the traditions of the Medici, encouraging Art to such an extent that practically every great work produced in Florence in his time was made for, or inspired by, him. Piero il Gottoso and his cultured wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, recognizing Botticelli’s genius, took him into their home and made him one of the family. All of Botticelli’s early works, therefore, belong to the period he spent under the patronage of Piero de’ Medici. Yet, of course, Botticelli is recognized as the particular painter of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449–1492), son of Piero, and a friend and boyhood companion.

“As had been the case with his father, Piero, the leading artists of the day did most of their work for him, and nearly every work of eminence in painting or sculpture belonging to Lorenzo’s time remaining in Florence, was commissioned by him. Verrocchio did almost all his work for him; that sculptor’s graceful tomb in San Lorenzo over Lorenzo’s father and uncle, his bronze David, and his fountain of The Boy with a Dolphin were all executed for Lorenzo. Botticelli he made his family painter as well as friend and all the pictures of Botticelli’s second period were painted for him. It was Lorenzo who caused Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in Sta. Maria Novella and Santa Trinità to be painted; and it was he who selected and sent Leonardo da Vinci to Milan to become ‘Il Moro’s’ great painter. Among others he also gave commissions to Filippino Lippi, Signorelli, Baldovinetti, Benedetto da Majano, Andrea del Castagno and the Pollaiuoli. The Medici Palace became, Symonds says, ‘a museum at that period unique in Europe, considering the number and value of its art-treasures;’ and these he made available to all young artists for purposes of study. There being at that time no school for sculpture, Lorenzo formed one in his garden near San Marco, collected there casts from many antique statues, placed the school in charge of Donatello’s pupil, Bertoldo, and invited all young sculptors to study there. Among those who did so were Lorenzo di Credi, Michelangelo, and many others afterwards famous.”—Col. G. F. Young, The Medici (London, 1909).

The roll-call is large and marvellous; and when we think of the troubles of the time,—the quarrels, the conspiracies, the dangers of murder, and the constant visitations of the Plague, we almost comprehend refuge in the cloister rather than such extraordinary activity in Art and Learning. Let us look at the greatest names.

Domenico Veneziano (1400–1461), a native of Venice, as his name plainly shows, but employed by Piero il Gottoso, classed in his day with Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, a delightful musician, playing on the lute and singing well, and said by Vasari, to have introduced into Florence the Flemish method of using oils. Veneziano taught Piero della Francesca, the Umbrian painter. Then there is Fra Angelico, already mentioned, and there is Fra Filippo Lippi (1406?–1469), a monk, but not a saint like Fra Angelico,—wild and adventurous yet a superlative painter, whose reputation continues to increase and whose Madonnas, usually with the face of Lucrezia Buti, are justly admired (see page 42).

Francesco Pesellino (1422–1457), whose real name was Francesco di Stefano, pupil of his grandfather, Giuliano, and a follower of Fra Filippo Lippi, famous for his decorative qualities and his animals, rare and valued to-day. Another painter of decorative taste, charming and refined, is Alesso Baldovinetti (1425–1499), a follower of Domenico Veneziano and teacher of Ghirlandaio (see page 48).

Then come the famous brothers, workers in gold, silver, and bronze, painters of heroic frescoes, and celebrated as draughtsmen—Antonio Pollaiuolo (1432–1498) and Piero Pollaiuolo (1443–1496), sons, too, of a goldsmith, all three busy, at various times, on the Ghiberti doors (see page 51).

Then there is Pier Francesco Fiorentino, an Umbrian, born in Borgo San Sepolcro about 1430, pupil of Domenico Veneziano, and said to have assisted Ghirlandaio at S. Giminiano in 1475. Next comes Andrea Verrocchio (1435–1488), goldsmith and sculptor, pupil and assistant to Donatello. Andrea di Cione’s nickname of “Verrocchio” (true eye) is self-explanatory. Verrocchio was also an accomplished musician. He was employed by the Medici all his life; and he trained in his workshop, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi. Verrocchio also planned many of the splendid pageants, for which Florence was so famous, and designed the artistic helmets worn by young Lorenzo and Giuliano at their tournaments. When Lorenzo became head of the Medici he continued the family patronage to Verrocchio. Cosimo Rosselli (1439–1507), followed Paolo Uccello and Alesso Baldovinetti.

Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510), who belongs to both Piero and Lorenzo de’ Medici, was a pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi and was influenced by Antonio Pollaiuolo before he blossomed forth in his full individuality. For many centuries Botticelli has charmed the world, his prestige ever growing greater (see page 55).

Botticelli leads us into another group. Here is Domenico del Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), “the garland-maker,” first a goldsmith, then a pupil of Alesso Baldovinetti and much influenced by Botticelli and Verrocchio. Into his decorative scenes this painter introduced portraits of distinguished Florentines (see page 70).

Then we have one of the world’s greatest geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), painter, sculptor, architect, decorator, designer of pageants and masques, musician, and engineer, and, moreover, a personage of charm and many social gifts. Leonardo was apprenticed to Verrocchio and patronized by Lorenzo de’ Medici, who sent him in 1482 to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (see page 93).

Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), son of Fra Filippo Lippi and the nun, Lucrezia Buti (see page 44), a pupil of Botticelli, achieved a fine reputation as a painter and as a man. Lorenzo di Credi (1457–1537), fellow-pupil with Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci in Verrocchio’s studio, esteemed for his execution and careful finish, was an especial favorite with Verrocchio.

Piero di Cosimo, or Piero di Lorenzo (1462–1521?), called Cosimo after his master, Cosimo Rosselli, assisted the latter in decorating the Sistine Chapel in 1480. Piero di Cosimo is famed for his mythological pictures and for a portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (see page 59), now in the Chantilly Museum.

Fra Bartolommeo (1472–1517), whose name was Baccio della Porta, an apprentice of Cosimo Rosselli, became an ardent follower of Savonarola. It was, therefore, a natural step for him to become a Dominican monk in 1500; but he continued to paint and had for a partner Mariotto Albertinelli (1474–1515), a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo.

Michelangelo (1475–1564), painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and military engineer, was born at Castel Caprese, where his father, Ludovico Buonarroti, was governor of the Castle. Apprenticed to Ghirlandaio, he also worked in the Medici Gardens and became a favorite with Lorenzo. After Lorenzo’s death in 1492, he worked for his son, Piero. Michelangelo’s commanding work, however, was done in Rome, where he went in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1547 Michelangelo succeeded Antonio di San Gallo as architect of St. Peter’s.

Raphael Santi (1484–1520) has to be included among the Florentine painters for he worked in Florence during 1504–1508, when he fell under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolommeo and painted several important pictures, including the Madonna del Gran Duca (now in the Pitti) and the Madonna del Cardellino (now in the Uffizi). (See page 86.)

Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolommeo, and Michelangelo influenced Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531), pupil of Piero di Cosimo. His real name was Andrea d’Agnolo and because of his facile technique was called “Andrea senza errori”. Francis I had Andrea come to Fontainebleau in 1518; but he soon went home to Florence and died of the Plague.

Franciabigio (1482–1525), son of Christoforo Bigio, partner of Andrea del Sarto and pupil of Albertinelli and Piero di Cosimo, noted for his religious pictures and portraits, and Bronzino (1502–1572), poet and painter (whose name was Angelo Allori), pupil of Jacopo da Pontormo, and famous for his portraits of the Medici family, bring us to the last quarter of the Sixteenth Century.

The great days of painting were over; and they had been great days!

Madonna and Child

Giotto di Bordone	Collection of
(1276–1336).	Mr. Henry Goldman.

Framed by a slightly pointed arch, not sufficiently removed from the old Romanesque curves to be full Gothic, and projected upon a background of gold, appears this graceful Madonna, so unusual in type and of such amazing beauty. Her face, with its almond-shaped eyes (not set obliquely however) and its sweet flower-like mouth, has a Chinese quality that bestows a great charm. On the face there is also an Oriental radiation of gentleness, resignation, and spiritual experience. While looking at us this lovely Madonna—who might answer as well for the Chinese goddess Kuan Yin—seems to be trying to draw us into a contemplation of the Infinite. The dress, too, is unusual. All that we see is a blue mantle lined with silk, shaded in green, white, and pink, decorated by a gold border with an Arabic inscription. This mantle is carried over the head to form a hood and one end is very gracefully thrown across the left arm. On the right shoulder a conventionalized flower is embroidered in gold, reminding us of the star that the Sienese Madonnas usually carry. A white drapery, also having an Arabic border, is folded around the Holy Child, who grasps His mother’s forefinger with His left hand, while with His right He tries to take from her a white rose4 that she is holding upward. Each head is encircled by a nimbus: that of the Virgin is very large and very decorative with an interlaced pattern of Oriental design; and that of the Holy Child has a foliage design reminiscent of Byzantine ornament. On both sides of the Virgin’s face a pink veil is visible.

This picture, painted on a panel (34 × 25 inches), came from the Collection of M. Eugène Max of Paris.

Many legends have gathered around the name of the great Florentine, doubly famed as painter of marvellous frescoes and as the architect of the Campanile in Florence that is still called by his name. The story of how Giotto, the little shepherd boy tending his father’s flocks on the Apennines, was discovered drawing a sheep on a rock by Cimabue and taken by him to Florence and trained, ultimately becoming the greatest painter of his time and founder of a School, was told by Ghiberti and Leonardo da Vinci many years before Vasari’s day.

Giotto di Bordone is supposed to have been born at Colle di Vespignano, about twenty miles from Florence, in 1266 and he died in Florence in 1337. He was a pupil of Cimabue but surpassed him. About 1300 he was in Rome making the mosaics in the portico of St. Peter’s, a polyptych, and some frescoes in the choir. In 1303–1306 Giotto painted the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua; at Assisi he painted the scenes from the Life of St. Francis in the Upper Church and also some of the frescoes in the Magdalen Chapel in the Lower Church. After 1316 he decorated the Bardi and the Peruzzi Chapels in S. Croce in Florence.

“From the first,” says Mrs. Cartwright, “Giotto adopted a clear, pale tone of coloring, which forms a marked contrast to the dark and heavy tints in use among Byzantine artists, and produces the effects of water-color, while that of the older painters more nearly resembles oils. The technique which he used, both for tempera and fresco-painting, and which remained in use among Florentine artists for the next hundred and fifty years, was in reality founded on the old Greek method which had been practiced during many centuries, although the improvements which he introduced were sufficient to justify the Giottesque artist, Cennino Cennini, in saying that Giotto changed painting from the Greek to the Latin manner and brought in modern art. Yet more striking were the innovations which he introduced in his types, the almond-shaped eyes, long noses, and oval countenances with square, heavy jaws which he substituted for the staring eyes and round faces of Byzantine artists. The few and simple lines of his draperies give a majestic effect to his figures and at the same time sufficiently indicate the structure of the human form beneath; so that in spite of his ignorance of anatomy and modelling, the result is remarkably good.”

Giotto was working in Naples for King Robert in 1333 when he was sent for by the Signoria of Florence and appointed Chief Architect of the State and Master of the Cathedral Works, succeeding Arnolfo del Cambio, who had died in 1310. All work had stopped since that date; but now the authorities had decided to erect a bell-tower and they announced: “For this purpose we have chosen Giotto di Bordone, painter, the great and dear master, since neither in the city, nor in the whole world, is there any other to be found as well fitted for this and similar tasks.” The whole achievement of Giotto’s life was summed up more than a hundred years later when Lorenzo the Magnificent commanded Angelo Poliziano to write a Latin inscription for a bust of Giotto he was placing on Giotto’s tomb in the Duomo:

“Lo, I am he by whom dead Painting was restored to life, to whose right hand all was possible, by whom Art became one with Nature. No one ever painted more or better. Do you wonder at yon fair Tower which holds the sacred bells? Know it was I who bade her first rise towards the stars. For I am Giotto—what need is there to tell of my work? Long as verse lives, my name shall endure!”

The Annunciation

Masolino	(1383–1447).
Collection of	Mr. Henry Goldman

We have here a very interesting and important example of interior decoration. The Renaissance has arrived as well as the Announcing Gabriel! The round arch of grey stone (the spandrels of which contain rosettes) frames a sumptuous room divided by a slender Corinthian column. The walls and the cassette ceiling are inlaid with mosaic of different colors and the archway leading into another room—the Virgin’s bedroom—has a blue sky sprinkled with gold stars. In the centre of the background richly decorated doors lead into the adjoining room. The general hues of the wall and ceiling are grey, green, and red. The Virgin is seated on the right upon a tall and not very comfortable Italian settee. She has on a light blue mantle which falls around her in graceful folds. Her parted light hair is surrounded by a golden nimbus of decorative design. She holds an open prayer-book with one hand and with the other makes a gesture of submission and humility as she listens to the message of the Angel. Whether she sees Gabriel or not, she evidently hears what he has to tell her. The Angel, too, expresses reverence with hands crossed upon his breast. He wears a rich claret-colored, velvet brocade embossed with gold flowers and above his fair hair, which is tightly curled, shines a golden nimbus decorated with flower-like rosettes. His wings seem not to have quite quieted down from the flight from Heaven to earth.5 Of this picture (painted on a panel 58¼ × 45¼ inches), which came from the Collection of Lord Wemyss at Gosford House, Longniddry, Haddingtonshire, Scotland, Berenson says:

“The decorative effect is so strong and so enchanting that like the rest of Masolino’s art it scarcely finds precedence in Florence or even in Italy. The suavity, the grace, the splendor, although paralleled in Gentile da Fabriano and in Sassetta, would seem inspired rather by the ecstatic mood of Parisian painting toward 1400 with its figures of angelic candor and skies of heavenly radiance than by Tuscan models.”

Masolino, the son of a house painter, was born in Panicale in 1383. His real name was Tommaso di Cristoforo di Fino, and he was familiarly called Masolino da Panicale. According to Vasari he was a pupil of “Starnina” and worked under Ghiberti. He was admitted into the Florentine Guild of Painters in 1423. In that year he was commissioned to paint the frescoes in the new chapel of the Carmine, built by Felice Brancacci, and he took for his assistant, Masaccio, who went on with the work when Masolino was sent to Hungary in 1425 to decorate a church at Stuhlweissenburg.

When Masolino returned to Florence—after several years—he found that great changes had taken place in art, for the painters had been busy with the new problems of perspective and light and shade and the substitution of Classic for Gothic architecture and decoration. Masolino availed himself of the new ideas, but could not quite forget his Giottesque traditions. He painted frescoes in Rome, Naples, and Lombardy.

“Masolino,” Vasari wrote, “was a man of rare intelligence and his paintings are executed with great love and diligence. I have often examined his works and find his style to be essentially different from the styles of those before him. He gave majesty to his figures and introduced finely designed folds in his draperies. He began to understand light and shade and to give his forms relief and succeeded in some very difficult foreshortenings. He also gave greater sweetness of expression to his women heads and gayer costumes to his young men, and his perspective is tolerably correct. But, above all, he excelled in fresco-painting. This he did so well, and with such delicately blending colors, that his flesh tones have the utmost softness imaginable; and if he could have drawn more perfectly, he would deserve to be numbered among the best artists.”

Gabriel, the Announcing Angel

Fra Angelico	Collection of
(1387–1455).	Mr. Edsel B. Ford.

This panel and the one succeeding it, The Virgin Receiving the Divine Message, originally formed a diptych. In treatment and expression they resemble the figures in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation in the Oratorio del Gesù at Cortona.

The Archangel, according to Dante’s expression, has brought the long-desired tidings and he stands on a background of gold with wings still extended like those of a dove, just alighted from the heavens, looking into Mary’s face very earnestly, and pointing upward to emphasize to her that he comes from the spheres above. This Gabriel is one of the most beautiful of Fra Angelico’s most beautiful angels, his wings being of an extraordinary elegance of contour and a peculiar loveliness of color—rose, violet, green, and yellow, scintillating in iridescent play. His crimson robe, shading into high lights and fainter tones, is richly, although very simply, decorated with bands of gold embroidery in the Byzantine style. The hair is blonde and beautifully curled and the head stands out in fine relief from the golden glory. Notice the beauty of the ear and the distinguished line of the neck, the calm, deep, unattached gaze of the eye, the refined and sensitive nose, the pure and lovely mouth, and the graceful, strong, and very psychic hands. This figure perfectly fits Ruskin’s tribute to Fra Angelico in Modern Painters:

“The art of Fra Angelico, both in drawing and color, is perfect, and his work may be recognized at any distance by its rainbow play and brilliancy, like a piece of opal among common marbles. In order to effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of this world, he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the purest color, crowned with glories of burnished gold and entirely shadowless; the flames on their foreheads waving brighter as they move; the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of the sun upon the sea; while they listen in the pauses of alternate song for the prolonging of the trumpet blast and the answering of psalm and harp and cymbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star-shores of Heaven. This mode of treatment, combined as it is with exquisite choice of gesture and disposition of drapery, gives perhaps the best idea of spiritual beings which the human mind is capable of forming.”

The Virgin Receiving the Divine Message

Fra Angelico	Collection of
(1387–1455).	Mr. Edsel B. Ford.

In an attitude of divine submission, devout humility, and serene grace, the Virgin Mary is listening to the words of the Angel Gabriel. Her brow is almost as clear and pure as that of Gabriel himself and her features are beautiful, especially those heavy-lidded eyes. Her blonde hair is exquisitely arranged, confined by a band of black velvet and encircled by a nimbus, of which she is apparently unconscious. Mary wears a crimson robe with bands of gold around the neck and sleeves, over which is a blue mantle lined with yellow. Her hands are capable, exquisite, and very high bred; and in the left one she holds, with rare grace, a red book.

Like the companion panel, Gabriel, the Announcing Angel, the background is gold. The dimensions of each are 14½ × 10 inches. Both pictures were long in the Collection of the Duke of Hamilton at Hamilton Palace; and afterwards were in the Collection of Mr. John Edward Taylor and in that of Mr. Carl W. Hamilton. In an unpublished letter regarding these works Mr. Berenson writes:

“They are among the sweetest, purest, and most candid of Fra Angelico’s paintings. I could not easily point to others which better justify the surname of ‘The Angelic’ given to this artist, who was so great that he was child-like. These panels date from about 1425, that is to say from the best year of Fra Angelico’s maturity. They show his best self, emancipated from the cramping traditions he was heir to, but not yet showing sign of spiritual fatigue leading finally to his painting a little by rote. In coloring they are exquisite; and for pictures five centuries old, they are almost miraculously well preserved.”

Vasari’s words show how deeply Fra Angelico was appreciated by men who lived closer to his time than we:

“This truly angelic father spent his whole life in the service of God and his fellow-creatures. He was a man of simple habits and most saintly in all his ways. He kept himself from all worldliness and was so good a friend to the poor that I think his soul must be already in Heaven. He worked continually at his art, but would never paint anything but sacred subjects. He might have been a wealthy man, but he did not care for money and used to say that true riches consist in being content with little. He might have enjoyed high dignities both in his convent and in the world, but he cared nothing for these things, saying that he who would practice painting has need of quiet and should be free from worldly cares; and that he who would do the work of Christ must live continually with Him. He was never known to be impatient with the Brothers,—a thing to me almost incredible! When people asked him for a picture he always replied that, with the Prior’s approval, he would try and satisfy their wishes. He never corrected or retouched his works, but left them as he first painted them, saying that such was the will of God. He never took his pencil up without a prayer and could not paint a Crucifixion without the tears running down his cheeks. And the saints that he painted are more like saints in face and expression than those of any other master. And since it seemed that saints and angels of beauty so divine could only be painted by the hand of an angel, he was always called Fra Angelico.”

Fra Angelico was born in 1387 in a little hamlet called Vicchio, in the province of Mugello in Tuscany, about twenty miles from Florence. His surname is unknown—if indeed he had one—for his father, who lived in a cottage belonging to the lord of the Castle of Vicchio, was simply known as Pietro of Mugello. Guido was the name his father gave him but he changed this to Fra Giovanni, when he became a monk of the Dominican Order at Fiesole in 1406. It is supposed that he had been thoroughly trained as a painter, because he immediately began to paint frescoes for the monks; and it is also supposed that “Starnina” was his master. Owing to religious troubles, the Dominican monks were driven from Fiesole to Foligno and thence to Cortona, where the earliest extant works—movable altar-pieces—of Fra Angelico are preserved. In 1418 the Dominicans returned to Fiesole, where Fra Angelico, or rather Fra Giovanni, lived for the next few years and where he painted many of his most famous altar-pieces.

In 1434 Cosimo de’ Medici was recalled from banishment and he immediately had the Convent of San Marco rebuilt for the Dominican monks of Fiesole. When the new building was ready in 1436 he commissioned Fra Angelico to decorate the walls. In a cell which Cosimo de’ Medici had reserved for his own personal retreat from worldly cares, he had Fra Angelico paint a large Adoration of the Magi, for he desired to have “this example of Eastern kings laying down their crowns at the manger of Bethlehem always before his eyes as a reminder for his own guidance as a ruler.”

While Fra Angelico was busy on a series of small panels depicting the Life of Christ for a credenza in which the altar-plate was kept and which had been ordered by Piero de’ Medici (Cosimo’s son), Pope Eugenius IV called him to Rome, to paint a chapel in St. Peter’s. Three of the remaining panels of the credenza were painted by Alesso Baldovinetti.

After completing the chapel in St. Peter’s, Fra Angelico was invited to paint in the Cathedral at Orvieto; and, on finishing the work there, he returned to Rome to spend three years decorating the Pope’s Oratory in the Vatican. In 1450 he was back in Florence, and he began the new year of 1451 as Prior of his old monastery at Fiesole. Again he went to Rome and died there in the House of his Order at Santa Maria sopra Minerva on March 18, 1455. He was buried in the monastery church by the high altar and not far from the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena. Pope Nicholas V wrote for him a Latin epitaph, the last line of which reads: “That city which is the flower of Etruria bore me, Giovanni.”

The paintings of Fra Angelico are noted for their fine composition, beautiful coloring, and variety and expression in the heads and faces of his persons and Angels. Fra Angelico’s Angels are particularly beautiful; and it is reasonable to infer that it is because of these Angels so many of his works have been preserved. No other painter of the Fifteenth Century has been treated with so much reverence as Fra Angelico. The consequence is that there are somewhere between two and three hundred of his compositions in existence. The greater number are still in Florence. Every large gallery, however, possesses one or more. Among the most famous ones that all the world knows and loves are The Virgin and Child surrounded by Twelve Angels, ten of whom are playing musical instruments (now in the Uffizi); Christ with the Banner of Resurrection (in the National Gallery, London); and The Coronation of the Virgin (in the Louvre), of which Gautier said the figures represented “visible souls rather than bodies—thoughts of human form enveloped in chaste draperies of white, rose, and blue, sown with stars and embroidered, clothed as might be the happy spirits who rejoice in the eternal light of Paradise.” Fra Angelico’s greatest frescoes are in the Convent of San Marco at Florence and in the Vatican at Rome.

Fra Angelico is classed variously as a “Primitive,” a “Gothic,” an “International,” and an “Early Renaissance” painter. The fact is he stands between the old and the new. His position in Art is very definitively described by Berenson:

“Yet simple though he was as a person, simple and one-sided as was his message, as a product he was singularly complex. He was the typical painter of the transition from Mediæval to Renaissance. The sources of his feeling are in the Middle Ages, but he enjoys his feelings in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his means of expression. Moreover, he was not only the first Italian to paint a landscape that can be identified (a view of Lake Trasimene from Cortona) but the first to communicate a sense of the pleasantness of Nature.”

As a tribute to his spiritual qualities let us listen to Mrs. Cartwright’s eulogy:

“All the mystic thought of the Mediæval world, the passionate love of God and man that beat in the heart of St. Francis, the yearnings of Dante’s soul after a higher and more perfect order, the poetic dreams of the monks who sang of the Celestial Country are embodied in the art of Angelico. The depth and sincerity of his own religious feeling lent wings to his imagination and the exquisite purity of his soul breathes in every line of his painting: it is his own sweet and gentle fancy that brings down these enchanted visions of Paradise.”

St. Cosimas and St. Damianus

Fra Angelico	Collection of
(1387–1455).	Mr. Albert Keller.

About the year 1436 Cosimo commissioned Fra Angelico to paint the altar-piece for the Church of San Marco in Florence (see page 37). Underneath the group of the Virgin and Child Fra Angelico painted for the predella nine beautiful panels representing the legendary history of Cosimas and Damianus, the patron saints of the Medici family. The panel, shown here, tempera on wood (14¼ × 18 inches), which comes from the collection of Mr. F. Böhler of Munich, is one of these nine pictures. The companion pictures of this S. Marco altar-piece are now in Dublin, Florence, Munich, and Paris.

This composition, divided into two episodes in one building, represents the traditional benevolence of the two Saints, Cosimas and Damianus. In the scene at the left, enacted within a room, which we view through a large, rounded, door-like opening, St. Cosimas and St. Damianus, with golden nimbi, are administering to a sick man sitting up in a bed which is elevated on a daïs. The two Saints, in the blue robe, red mantle, and red and white biretta of the physicians, are standing on either side of the bed, offering nutriment to the invalid and giving their benediction. Kneeling behind the bed-head are a man and a woman, the latter wearing a red mantle and white hood, the former a turban-like cap. Over the bed stretches a deep, square, brown canopy with an olive-green curtain all around it. On the daïs rests a tray with an ewer, and beside it on the floor, we see a round stool with three legs, and a foot-stool.

The scene on the right, takes place in a cobbled court-yard of a white house, and here we see one of the Saints, in his physician’s gown, colored as in the first scene, who has just handed to an aged woman a loaf of bread, receiving no payment but raising his right hand in benediction. The woman, dressed in a mauve gown and white veil, is cleverly and gracefully posed within a small doorway, and behind her is a room with an open door still farther back, through which flowering shrubs are seen; and in this inner room a ray of light glints on the floor. High on the top of the wall a large terra-cotta flower-vase is silhouetted against a blue sky, and at the left of this there is a narrow slit window.

“Cosimas and Damianus were two brothers, Arabians by birth, but they dwelt in Ægæ, a city of Cilicia. Their father having died while they were yet children, their pious mother, Theodora, brought them up with all diligence, and in the practice of every Christian virtue. Their charity was so great, that they not only lived in the greatest abstinence, distributing their goods to the infirm and poor, but they studied medicine and surgery, so that they might be able to prescribe for the sick, and relieve the sufferings of the wounded and infirm; and the blessing of God being on all their endeavors, they became the most learned and the most perfect physicians that the world had ever seen. They ministered to all who applied to them, whether rich or poor. Even to suffering animals they did not deny their aid, and they constantly refused all payment or recompense, exercising their art only for charity and for the love of God; and thus they spent their days. At length those wicked Emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, came to the throne, in whose time so many saints perished. Among them were the physicians, Cosimas and Damianus, who, professing themselves Christians, were seized by Lycias, the proconsul of Arabia and cast into prison. At first they were thrown into the sea, but an Angel saved them; and then they were cast into fire, but the fire refused to consume them; and then they were bound on two crosses and stoned, but of the stones flung at them, none reached them, but fell on those who threw them and many were killed. So the proconsul, believing that they were enchanters, commanded that they should be beheaded, which was done.” This Oriental legend, which is of great antiquity, was transplanted into Western Europe in the first ages of Christianity. The Emperor Justinian, having recovered, as he supposed, from a dangerous illness, by the intercession of these saints, erected a superb church in their honor. Among the Greeks Cosimas and Damianus succeeded to the worship and attributes of Æsculapius; and from their disinterested refusal of all pay or reward they are distinguished by the honorable title of Anargyres, which signifies moneyless, or without fees.

Madonna della Stella

Fra Filippo Lippi	Collection of
(1406?–1469).	Mr. Carl W. Hamilton.

This picture came directly from the Monastery of the Carmine Brethren in Florence to the present owner. It is painted in tempera on a panel 32⅝ × 25¼ inches. The Madonna, with head half turned towards the right, is standing at half length and holding the Holy Child very lovingly in her arms. She wears a dark-green, hooded mantle, with wide gold border and fastened across the breast with two narrow straps of gold embroidery. Under this is seen a bright crimson robe falling in tight, formal plaits from the neck. The sleeve of the right arm shows a gold embroidered band at the wrist. On the right shoulder of the mantle is embroidered a golden star (reminiscent of the Sienese decoration), from which the picture takes the name of Madonna della Stella. The head-dress, which permits a little of the blonde hair to be seen, is of a soft, white muslin, which is delicately folded and carried around the base of the long, slender neck. Above the head-dress is a very large golden nimbus with lines radiating from the centre. The Holy Child is firmly supported by both arms of the Virgin and rests His left foot on her right arm, while His right leg hangs down behind her wrist. The Holy Child is swathed in a drapery of purple hue and His head is also encircled by a golden halo. With His left hand He grasps the folds of His mother’s head-dress, where it falls upon her neck, and with His right He supports His chin in a very mature and contemplative way. The background is composed of a loosely hanging gold brocade of decorative pattern. The extravagant use of gold produces a warm and lustrous gleam and glow and the deep colors stand out from the background with great richness and beauty.

It is generally accepted that Lucrezia Buti, the young nun whom Fra Filippo Lippi stole from the Convent of Santa Margherita, served as the model for this Madonna and that the Infant Jesus is none other than Fra Filippino Lippi, the future painter. Comparison with the tondo in the Pitti Palace, representing the Madonna with Saints, in which Lucrezia Buti is known to appear, shows the same oval face, slender neck, expressive eyes, dilated nostrils, full lips, slightly dimpled chin, and wistful glance.

Fra Filippo Lippi is one of the strangest personalities in the history of art. He became a Carmelite monk from circumstance rather than choice; and nobody was ever less fitted to belong to Holy Orders than this gay, adventure-loving Florentine. “Lippi was very fond of good company,” Vasari notes, “and led a free and joyous life.” Fra Filippo Lippi presents a strange contrast to the saintly Fra Angelico, who was his contemporary and fellow-worker. Filippo Lippi, son of a butcher, was born in or about 1406, in a street behind the Carmine Church in Florence; and, being left an orphan, was cared for by an aunt, who took him at the age of eight to the Convent of Sta. Maria del Carmine and gave him to the Friars to rear. The Friars soon discovered the boy’s extraordinary talent for drawing, and, fortunately, encouraged it, sending him to study under Lorenzo Monaco.

At this time Masaccio was at work in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine Church, and young Lippi used to watch him with profound interest and delight. In 1421 Filippo Lippi became a Carmelite monk; but he was permitted to continue his painting and he executed many frescoes for church and cloister. In ten years’ time he left the monastery to give his whole life to his art. However, he always signed his pictures “Frater Philippus.” Though not a copyist, by any means, Fra Filippo Lippi shows in his works how much he admired and how much he learned from Masaccio, Masolino, Domenico Veneziano, and Fra Angelico.

Adventures of many kinds filled his life; for instance, there is a story that he was captured by Moorish pirates one day while sailing for pleasure, and taken to Barbary as a slave and that because he drew his master’s portrait so cleverly, he was given his freedom a year or so later. This—if it happened at all—happened in 1431–1434. About the last-named date Fra Filippo Lippi was employed by Cosimo de’ Medici, who took a great fancy to the lively Friar and was most indulgent to his pranks and misdemeanors, excusing everything he did because of his genius and his attractive personality. Fra Filippo Lippi decorated many churches, palaces, and villas for his patron. Among the first works that Lippi painted for the Medici Palace (now the Riccardi) were the Annunciation and St. John the Baptist with Six Other Saints (both in the National Gallery, London). Lippi’s most important picture in Florence is his Coronation of the Virgin.

“Lippi’s character, however, only affects his credit as a painter by accounting for the kind of success he achieved. He had, as was to be expected, no ears for the message which Donatello was at this time teaching, and consequently his pictures on religious subjects have an exceedingly mundane character. Nevertheless, the sweet seriousness of his Madonnas falls in no way short of those of Fra Angelico, and the faces of his children are full of a quaint, mischievous character which is delightful, while in both drawing and coloring he shows the immense advance which had now taken place in Painting. And it is here that Lippi’s true claim to fame lies. Masaccio, the only man who up to that time had found out the true methods of the art of Painting, had died too soon to be able to make known his discovery, except to the few who could visit Florence and the Brancacci Chapel. It was left for Lippi, the rough boy whom he had taught, to show the world Masaccio’s discovery. And Lippi did so. Vasari says: ‘Taught as he had been by Masaccio, he was a faithful follower of Masaccio’s style;’ and he adds that he followed the latter’s methods so faithfully, that it appeared that the spirit of Masaccio had entered Lippi’s body. Thus what Masaccio had done for the art of Painting is chiefly to be seen by a comparison of Lippi’s pictures with those of Masaccio’s immediate predecessors, the Giotteschi. Lippi’s principal picture in Florence is his Coronation of the Virgin painted for Cosimo and now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti; but his best work is considered to be his frescoes in the Cathedral at Prato painted between 1456 and 1465.

“It was not an easy thing to get any work out of Lippi. There is an amusing story of how, when he was painting this picture for Cosimo, the latter being at last in despair (owing to Lippi’s lazy ways) of ever seeing the picture finished, had him locked up in the room in the Medici Palace where it was being painted, declaring that he should not be let out until the work was done. Whereupon Lippi tied his bedclothes into a rope, let himself down from the window into the street and disappeared into the slums of Florence, not to be found again for many days.”6

Lippi’s drunkenness and his unscrupulous behavior brought him many times before the magistrates and on one occasion he was flogged for embezzlement. However, the Medici family always came to the rescue and helped him out.

In 1452 he was made Chaplain of San Niccolò de Fieri, Florence, and in 1456 Chaplain of Santa Margherita, Prato, and here again it was Cosimo de’ Medici, who obtained these posts for him. At Prato he painted some of his finest pictures. Requested by the Abbess of Sta. Margherita to paint a picture for the Chapel, the gay Friar, who was now over fifty, fell in love with a young nun of twenty-one, Lucrezia Buti, who had taken the vows two years previously. At the Festival of the Holy Girdle in 1456, Fra Filippo Lippi managed to carry off the pretty nun and take her to his house in the vicinity. The next year Filippino Lippi was born, who appears in the arms of Lucrezia Buti in the Madonna della Stella represented here. Two years later Lucrezia Buti re-entered the Convent; but she soon tired of it and returned to Fra Filippo Lippi. A charge of abduction was then brought against the painter, who again appealed to Cosimo de’ Medici; and, through the latter’s influence, Pope Pius II absolved monk and nun from their religious vows and declared them lawfully married.

“I laughed heartily when I heard of Fra Filippo’s escapade,” Giovanni de’ Medici, Cosimo’s younger son, remarked; and that remark shows exactly how the Medici felt towards Fra Filippo Lippi. They adored him as an artist and they did not take him seriously as a man.

About 1465 Fra Filippo Lippi left Prato and went to Spoleto, taking Lucrezia and his two children (there was now a daughter); and there, still under the patronage of the Medici, the energetic painter-monk produced a splendid series of frescoes depicting one of his favorite subjects, the Coronation of the Virgin. Fra Filippo was working on the Duomo at Spoleto when he died in 1469. Fra Filippo Lippi gains additional fame for having been the first master of Botticelli. His contemporaries—without dissent—regarded Fra Filippo Lippi as the “rarest master of the time.” Fra Filippo Lippi was one of the first to use the tondo form.

“His dreams were all of the earth and his thoughts never soared beyond the gladness and beauty of the natural world. He paints the merry, curly-headed boys whom he met in the streets of Florence as cherubs, takes his mistress as a model for his Madonnas, and peoples the court of heaven with fair maidens in rich attire and dainty head-gear. A thorough-going realist at heart, his naturalism differed wholly from that of his contemporaries, Paolo Uccello, or Andrea del Castagno. He never troubled his head with scientific problems, or new technical methods. The old tempera painting was good enough for him and he carried this form of art to the highest perfection, while at the same time he profited by all the advance which Masaccio and his followers had made, and gave a marked impulse to the new realism by the strong human element which he introduced in his works. His genial delight in all bright and pleasant things, in the daisies and the springtime, in rich ornament and glowing color, in splendid architecture and sunny landscapes, in lovely women and round baby faces, fitted him in especial manner to be the herald of that fuller and larger life which was dawning on the men and women of the Renaissance.”7

Fra Filippo Lippi’s son, Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), inherited his father’s talent and was trained by Botticelli. It was Lorenzo de’ Medici, who recommended to the Friars of the Carmine that they should employ Fra Filippo Lippi’s son to finish Masaccio’s frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel. Filippino did this to everyone’s satisfaction and in The Trial of St. Peter and St. Paul he introduced portraits of Antonio Pollaiuolo, Botticelli, and himself. Filippino achieved an enormous reputation and was beloved for his modesty and gentleness of character. As in the case of his father, the next generation of the Medici continued their patronage to a Lippi.

Madonna and Child

Alesso Baldovinetti	Collection of
(1425–1499).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

In the charming picture represented here, on canvas transferred from panel (29 × 21 inches), which was formerly in the possession of Arnoldo Corsi in Florence and afterwards in the Collection of Mr. William Solomon in New York, the Madonna, seen at three-quarter length, is seated in a chair. She is turned slightly to the left and wears a red tunic edged with gold and a blue mantle. Over the white veil, which covers her temples and hides her ears, is folded a golden-brown head-dress that descends to her shoulders. Her head is encircled by a gold nimbus. She is gazing at the Holy Child in her lap with downcast eyes and pensive expression. The Holy Child, who is nude, wears a red coral necklace, from which a “charm” hangs. Around His head is a very decorative cruciform nimbus. In His right hand He holds a narrow piece of white drapery and He raises His left hand in a benediction in the Greek manner. The landscape in the background recedes gently towards a distant range of hills, showing scanty vegetation beneath a light-blue sky. Bernhard Berenson has pronounced this a very characteristic work of Baldovinetti’s middle years, painted before the pictures now in the Uffizi.

Alesso Baldovinetti, born in Florence in 1425, was a pupil of Domenico Veneziano and became a member of the Painters Guild in 1448, when he was twenty-three. His entry-book, a copy of which is preserved in the Archives of S. Maria Nuova, containing his accounts and orders, begins with the date 1449. One of his first commissions was to finish some panels begun by Fra Angelico for a credenza in the Medici Chapel of the Annunziata (see page 37), and some paintings on the doors of the vestry of Santa Annunziata (now in the Museum of San Marco), which also completed a series begun by Fra Angelico. Thenceforward he painted frescoes and altar-pieces, including an altar-piece representing the Annunciation for the Chapel of the Medici villa at Caffagiuolo (now in the Uffizi) and the fresco representing the Birth of Christ in Santa Annunziata (1460–1462). In 1470–1473 he was busy on the altar-piece in the San Ambrogio and the Trinita (now in the Accademia). Of the frescoes of Santa Trinità, on which he worked until 1497, only a small portion remains. Other unquestionable works by Baldovinetti are the Madonna and Saints (in the Uffizi) and a few pictures in private collections.

Baldovinetti also painted a great number of panels for private altars and he frequently turned from religious subjects to decorate marriage-chests and other sumptuous furniture. He also worked in mosaics, made cartoons for stained glass, and produced designs for intarsia,—all of which developed his delightful, decorative qualities.

Baldovinetti’s entire life seems to have been absorbed in painting. He married late. After the death of his wife, he entered the hospital of S. Paolo of the Third Order of St. Francis and bequeathed what few possessions he had to this house of charity. After his death in Florence in 1499, a large chest that belonged to him was opened; but the monks, instead of seeing the hoped-for gold, only found a book on mosaic-work and some drawings. “No one was really surprised,” says Vasari, who tells the story, “for Baldovinetti was so kind and courteous that he shared everything he possessed with his friends. Alesso was a very diligent artist, who tried to copy minutely every detail in Mother Nature. He loved painting landscapes exactly as they are, and you see in his pictures rivers, bridges, rocks, plants, fruit-trees, roads, fields, towns, castles, and an infinite number of similar objects. In his Nativity you can count the separate straws and knots in the thatched roof of the hut and you see the stones in the ruined house behind, worn away by rain, and the thick root of ivy growing up the wall is painted with so much accuracy that the green leaves are differently shaded on either side; and among the shepherds he introduced a snake crawling in the most natural manner along the wall.”

Portrait of a Young Lady

Piero Pollaiuolo	Collection of
(1443–1496).	Mr. Nils B. Hersloff.

In profile to the right, with features clear-cut and strongly outlined against a light-green background, appears a young Florentine lady, whose dress and bearing proclaim her to be a patrician. She has not been as yet identified; but doubtless she was one of those elegant and gay Florentines whom we meet with in song and story. We are very safe to guess that she was a friend of the Medici and Tornabuoni group and played her part in the brilliant life of the period. Her dress, pink brocade with a floral pattern, is edged with white around the neck. Her hair is fancifully plaited with pale blue ribbons and partly covered with a head-dress of thin white gauze, which falls over the right ear on to her neck; and her hair is also decorated with a jewel set in pearls. According to the fashion of the time, her forehead and the nape of her neck are shaven; for the long line of the neck was considered of the greatest importance. It was also important to hold the head properly; and this young lady has certainly acquired the correct and noble carriage of the head.

An unpublished letter of Berenson exclaims enthusiastically: “This profile portrait of a Young Lady by Piero Pollaiuolo I believe to be one of the most delightful of the series of female profiles which, from Paolo Uccello and Domenico Veneziano down to Botticelli and Amico di Sandro, glorifies the art of Florence during the Fifteenth Century. Few of them have survived to our own time. With the exception of one in the Poldi Collection at Milan, this is the most satisfactory of them all; for besides representing an extraordinarily attractive personality of the highest Florentine society of the time (as, indeed is confirmed by the dress and the jewels), it is a work of art of exquisite draughtsmanship, subtle modelling, and delicate, pure color.”

The painting in tempera is on a panel, 18 × 13 inches, and came from several important Collections,—that of the Conte Isolani Bologna; Baron Lazzaroni, Rome; and the late Mr. William Solomon, New York.

Mr. Berenson notes the fine draughtsmanship in this picture. Unusual drawing is to be expected from the brothers Pollaiuolo. Benvenuto Cellini called Antonio “the best draughtsman of his day in Florence” and tells us that all the goldsmiths worked from his designs; and, as Antonio trained his youngest brother, Piero, we cannot be surprised at the simple, direct, and commanding lines and these telling effects produced by such economical methods.

The real name of the talented brothers was Benci. Their father, Jacopo d’Antonio Benci, was nicknamed by his friends, Pollaiuolo, because his father kept a poulterer shop. Jacopo was a goldsmith and was employed by Lorenzo Ghiberti; and it is said that he made a remarkable quail on one of the Baptistery Gates.

Antonio (1432–1498) was apprenticed to Bartoluccio Ghiberti, a goldsmith, and soon achieved fame in Florence as a worker in jewelry and niello. Lorenzo Ghiberti called him to work on the Baptistery “Gates of Paradise” and the Bronze Doors. In 1459 he started to work independently and became renowned as a painter, sculptor, and master goldsmith. His bottega near the Ponte Vecchio was the most popular workshop in Florence; and here he remained until he went to Rome in 1484. Piero Pollaiuolo helped Antonio in his work and was also very versatile. Engravings, drawings, niello, sculpture, and painting, besides a vast amount of gold-work, silver-work, and bronze-work prove these men to be as industrious as they were talented. They also followed Alesso Baldovinetti in trying out new oil glazes and varnishes. In 1460 the Pollaiuoli painted in the Medici Palace, and about the same time executed the six life-sized Virtues for the Tribunal of the Mercatanzia. In 1471 Piero painted a portrait of Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, who was visiting Florence; and this portrait, which hung for many years in the Medici Palace, is now in the Uffizi. Piero’s fresco of St. Christopher, painted at San Miniato outside the gates, is considered by most authorities to be the same St. Christopher now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Piero also painted a very fine Annunciation (now in the Berlin Gallery), which has a view of Florence and the Val d’Arno through the open windows and which is remarkable for its Renaissance architecture; for the profusion of pearls and other jewels adorning the Virgin’s chair and the robes of the Angels; and for three Cherubs playing the lute, viol, and organ.

In 1489 Antonio was called to Rome by Pope Innocent VIII to make the bronze tomb of Sixtus IV, and a monument for himself in St. Peter’s. He was joined by Piero. The Pollaiuoli never saw Florence again; for, on account of the raging Plague, no travellers were allowed to come within twenty miles of Florence. Piero died in 1496 and Antonio in 1498; and at the request of the latter he was buried in the same tomb with Piero in the church of S. Pietro in Vincula.

The Pollaiuoli were closely associated with Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Ghiberti, and Verrocchio.

Giuliano de’ Medici

Sandro Botticelli	Collection of
(1444–1510).	Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn.

This proud, intellectual, refined, and cold face is painted almost in profile; but, notwithstanding that we see only a part of the face, we seem to see it all. Never did painter achieve a more complete presentation of personality and of character. Moreover, Botticelli has painted the whole of Florentine Society in this portrait. And with what amazingly simple means! There is practically no costume,—a black doublet, giving a glimpse of a red tunic below, and a severe white linen band doing duty for a collar. Even the background is neutral!

The simplicity of presentation and the economy of line are almost Japanese in their severity. The skillful handling is almost Oriental, too. Nothing seems to have been done here for effect,—yet what effect is here! There is almost no color; and the hair, too, which falls to the neck, is black. If we did not know that Giuliano de’ Medici was a dashing young Florentine of high mettle and full of the zest of life, we might easily mistake him for a priest.

The picture, painted on wood (21 × 13½ inches), gives us the impression of a life-size portrait. It was formerly in the Collection of Conte Procolo Isolani, in Bologna.

Giuliano de’ Medici was one of the most romantic characters in history; and the tragedy that cut the thread of his life at the age of twenty-five adds no little to the romantic appeal he makes to us to-day. Yet even at this age, he had so perfected himself in all the accomplishments that belonged to a gentleman of the Fifteenth Century that he stands as the very type of the elegant young man of his period. Giuliano was, like his brother, Lorenzo, proficient in the arts, a lover of pictures, music, and poetry; he wrote charming love-songs and other lyrical verse; he was intellectual and witty and talked extremely well; and he was a brilliant jouster and a well-trained all-round athlete and devoted to the chase. For all these things the Florentines admired him; but they loved him for his character, his high-mindedness, and his courtesy. He adored his brother; and Lorenzo, who was far from handsome, had no jealousy for the admiration that his younger brother inspired. The terrible murder of this public idol at High Mass in the Cathedral first shocked and then grieved the entire community. The grief manifested at the great public funeral in the church of the Medici family, San Lorenzo, was violent and sincere, for Giuliano de’ Medici was the beloved of both high and low.

In his book, The Medici, Col. Young writes:

“Giuliano de’ Medici, the youngest of the five children of Piero il Gottoso and Lucrezia Tornabuoni, was, unlike his brother Lorenzo, exceedingly good-looking; he was gifted with considerable abilities, and for his many endearing qualities was greatly beloved, not only in his own family but also by the people of Florence. Before his early death he had already shown on several occasions that he possessed plenty of political capacity and could give valuable advice to his brother.

“The relations which existed between these two brothers is one of the pleasantest things in the history of the Medici. At that epoch jealousy between brothers placed in such a position as Lorenzo and Giuliano were was the normal state of things. That it was entirely absent in their case speaks well for both of them.

“Giuliano was twenty-five at the time of his death. He left an illegitimate son, born just at that time. Lorenzo took the child and brought him up with his own sons; and this child became in the next generation the well-known Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VIII.”

Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi was born in Florence in 1444, the son of a prosperous tanner who had four sons, the eldest of whom, Giovanni, was called “Bottecello” from the sign of a barrel which hung over his shop, and which name was given to all the other members of the family. Sandro Botticelli, like so many other Florentine painters began life as a goldsmith. Then he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, who was, of course, able to hand on to him the old Giottesque tradition. Botticelli next fell under the influence of the Pollaiuoli, with whom he worked. It was not long, however, before the young painter began to exhibit his originality.

Soon after returning from Prato, where he had gone to help Fra Filippo Lippi with the frescoes in the Cathedral, he was immediately employed by Piero il Gottoso, who with his wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, recognized the genius and peculiar charm of the young painter, and took him into the Casa Medici almost like a son. Botticelli was at this time about twenty-one, only five years older than Lorenzo, the eldest son. Consequently, Botticelli was on the most intimate terms with Lorenzo and Giuliano.

All the pictures of this period except Fortitude were painted for Piero, who bestowed large rewards on the painter. The Madonna of the Magnificat, one of his most beautiful pictures (now in the Uffizi) was painted in 1465 (when Lorenzo and Giuliano were about sixteen and twelve); and it must have been done especially to please Lucrezia Tornabuoni, for her two sons are represented as Angels kneeling before the Madonna and holding the inkstand and the book. Giuliano is the one facing us with the conspicuous lock of hair on his forehead, while Lorenzo, of darker complexion, is in profile and in full light.

The Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1467 for Sta. Maria Novella (now in the Uffizi) is also a Medici family group surrounded by their protégés in art and letters. Cosimo, “Pater Patriæ” (then dead), is kneeling before the Holy Child; Giovanni, brother of Piero il Gottoso (then dead), stands at the left in a red and black costume; Piero il Gottoso is kneeling in the centre with back to the spectator; Giuliano, in a robe of white and gold, is kneeling at the latter’s right and Lorenzo, aged seventeen, stands at his left, holding a sword. The last figure, standing on the right, is Botticelli himself. Botticelli’s portrait of Lucrezia Tornabuoni is in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.

When Lorenzo, destined to become known as the “Magnificent,” became, on the death of his father, head of the Medici and ruler of Florence, he continued the Medici patronage to Botticelli.

“It was a period when the exuberant vitality of the Renaissance was at its height; and the first nine years of his rule, when he was from twenty to twenty-nine and his brother, Giuliano, from sixteen to twenty-five, was a time in Florence of constant festivities of music, art, and poetry, of joy and laughter and all the bright side of life. It was the fashion of the day to import into all amusements an imitation of the Classic times of ancient Greece, and the Florence of that time appears set before us as a city ‘with youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm’ and full of all the life, joy, and pleasure of the old pagan ideal of Greece set in a Fifteenth Century dress. Besides all his duties in regard to State affairs and labors in the founding of institutions to advance Learning, not to mention his own literary work, Lorenzo with his brother led these festivities organizing pageants and other spectacles of the most costly description (permeated with classical learning and poetical allusions) for the popular amusement.”8

These entertainments took the form of masques, tableaux, and tournaments. Young Lorenzo, too, gathered at his villa in Fiesole and even more particularly in that of Careggi the literati of the day and read classical authors with these scholars, particularly commemorating once a year the birthday of Plato. In 1469 Lorenzo held a magnificent tournament for his own glorification and in 1475 an even more elaborate one in honor of Giuliano in the Piazza Sta. Croce, with the beautiful Simonetta Cattaneo, who had lately been married at the age of sixteen, to Marco Vespucci, as the Queen of Beauty. Giuliano, now just twenty-two, wore a suit of silver armor and Verrocchio designed his helmet, and Lorenzo’s also.

Botticelli, of course, witnessed this tournament and did for it in painting what Politian did in his poem, La Giostra di Giuliano de’ Medici. The Primavera or Return of Spring (now in the Accademia, Florence), the Birth of Venus (in the Uffizi) and Mars and Venus (in the National Gallery, London), were all three painted for Lorenzo. All the elaborate imagery of Politian’s verse is reproduced in Botticelli’s painting representing the Birth of Venus in allusion to the Queen of Beauty, Simonetta, of Giuliano’s Tournament. In the second picture, Mars and Venus, Botticelli again follows Politian’s poem.

“And then having devoted one picture to the tournament’s Queen of Beauty, and one to the victor in its mimic warfare, Botticelli makes his third picture (the most important of the three) relate to Lorenzo and his part in all this, gathering up in one view the whole subject of these pastimes. This Botticelli does with great talent and in a manner all his own. He takes for his text the celebrated standard which had been borne in front of Lorenzo at both his and Giuliano’s tournaments, with its motto of Le temps revient, its device of the bay-tree, which had appeared dead, again putting forth its leaves, and its allusion to the new era of youth and joy which Lorenzo had inaugurated, and had likened to the Return of Spring after the gloomy months of winter. Making the leading thought of his picture the theme on Lorenzo’s standard, Botticelli paints for him the Return of Spring (the Primavera), perhaps the most widely admired of all Botticelli’s pictures.

“And so Botticelli depicts for us a scene of light-hearted, youthful joy, representing the return of spring, and by his great talent contrives that the entire picture shall speak of Lorenzo and breathe the very spirit of the poems in which the latter had sung of the joys of May-time in Tuscany. Shielded from rough winds and scorching sun by a grove of orange trees, backed by the ever-present laurel (always representing Lorenzo from the play on the Latin form of his name, Laurentinus), Queen Venus (Simonetta) stands presiding over the return of spring to Tuscany; the Graces dance before her; from out a laurel grove at her side the three spring months, March, April and May (or it may be Zephyr, Fertility and Flora), come bringing flowers of every hue; Mercury (Giuliano) scatters the clouds of winter; and the little blind God of Love aims his arrows recklessly around.

“These pictures relating to Giuliano’s tournament could not have been painted until some time afterwards, as in any case they could not have been so until Politian’s poem had appeared; and they may have been executed at any time during Lorenzo’s life. If painted, as is most probable, subsequently to Giuliano’s death in 1578, they would remind Lorenzo of a time of bygone joys; and would be all the more prized by him on that account.”9

A few months after Giuliano’s grand tournament the beautiful Simonetta was lying dead and three years later Giuliano was foully murdered, victim of the Pazzi conspiracy.

In 1481 Botticelli was sent for by Pope Sixtus to assist Perugino and Ghirlandaio in painting frescoes in the newly erected Sistine Chapel; and when this work was completed Botticelli returned to Florence with an added lustre to his name. It was the fashionable thing for wealthy owners of villas to have frescoes painted in these country-houses; and among many orders that Botticelli filled was an important series of frescoes for Lorenzo Tornabuoni in the villa of the Tornabuoni family (now Villa Lemmi) at Rifredi representing scenes in reference to the marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna degli Albizzi in 1486 (see page 68). These frescoes, recently discovered under whitewash, are now in the Louvre.

The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the banishment of the Medici, and the rule of Savonarola changed Botticelli’s life and his style of painting. In this third period the painter of nymphs and goddesses paints his charming and wistful Madonnas with many suggestions of Venus and Simonetta and the grace and loveliness of the pagan world.

To the last period, when Botticelli had emerged from the Savonarola influence, the great painter produced Calumny (in the Uffizi) and the Nativity (in the National Gallery, London); and with these two works the career of Botticelli ends.

The theory that the Birth of Venus, Mars and Venus and the Primavera were painted for Lorenzo di Pier Francesco has been thoroughly examined and disproved by Col. G. F. Young in his splendid history of The Medici.

Portrait of a Young Man

Sandro Botticelli	Collection of
(1444–1510).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

Standing behind a balustrade and looking wistfully toward the observer, this handsome young Florentine appears at half-length with his head inclined towards the left.

How we should like to penetrate his secret and help him away from the melancholy mood that has overwhelmed him!

Although we see that he is a dreamer (and most probably a lute-player as his hands might seem to indicate), something has touched him very deeply—far too deeply to be classed as a momentary sorrow. We should also like to know his identity. It is unlikely that it will ever be revealed. But of one thing we can be well assured,—he is an aristocrat and a young gentleman of wealth, for he has all the air of savoir faire and sureness of his position. We might make a guess that he is one of the Medici family. Could it be Giuliano? Look again at the Madonna of the Magnificat, at Giuliano immediately below the bending Angel! The resemblance is quite surprising and grows stronger as we study the two faces, only in the Madonna of the Magnificat Giuliano is younger and is seen with the characteristic lock on his forehead.

His costume in this portrait shows up well from the black background: the coat is purplish brown edged with fur with white puffs at the shoulders; and a red cap contrasts well with his light-yellow hair.

This picture, a tempera painting on panel (15¾ × 11¾), was long in the Collection of Baron Arthur de Schickler in Martinvast, Normandy, where it was attributed to Masaccio.

“There can be no question,” Berenson thinks, “that this portrait is Botticelli’s own handiwork. The glamor it cast when I first saw it frightened me into doubts that were dispelled directly I could study the painting at my leisure. There is no one, using this formula and technique, but Sandro himself who has the sinuous line, the inevitable contours, the structural articulation, the firmness, convincingness, and delicacy of modelling this work possesses; nobody else who could produce a rhythm so subtly vibrant, or could give this limpid, radiant, and ethereal coloring.

“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	Collection of
(1444–1510).	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.

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.

“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	Collection of
(1449–1494).	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).

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.

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	Collection of
(1425–1496).	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.

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.”

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	Collection of
(1483–1520).	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.

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	Collection of
(1483–1520).	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.

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	Collection of
(1483–1520).	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.

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).

We have now come to the High Renaissance, where Antonio Allegri, called Il Correggio, from his birthplace, a small town near Modena (1494–1534), is the dominating personality of the School of Parma. Francesco Bianchi (1457–1510), of Ferrara, is his traditional master; but he was influenced by Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia, and Andrea Mantegna. Correggio has been called “an isolated phenomenon in Italian art—we look in vain, after his earliest years of practice for any true affinity between him and other masters. In his treatment of light and shades and of atmosphere he contributed something new to Italian art.”

As the Sixteenth Century progressed the North Italians fell more and more under the spell of the Venetians. Dosso Dossi (1479–1541), for instance, a painter of Ferrara and a pupil of Lorenzo Costa, went to Venice and was charmed by Giorgione and Titian before he became court-painter of Alphonso I, Duke of Ferrara, and his wife, Lucrezia Borgia.

Northern Italy also claims Paolo Caliari, better known as Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), a native of Verona, whence his name; but classed with the Venetian School, as he spent the greater part of his life in Venice, gorgeously decorating its palaces, churches, and monasteries.

Portrait of a Lady

Pisanello	Collection of
(1397–1455).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

This is a particularly rare picture as it is one of only three portraits of this painter so far known, the other two being a female portrait in the Louvre and a male portrait in Bergamo. Berenson says of this portrait: “It is in the most mature and the most sumptuous manner of this greatest master of the fascinating epoch between Gothic and Renaissance. It has all the direct simplicity of that happy moment when art had recovered from the mannerisms of the late Gothic style and was still far from the modishness of the ripe Renaissance. How fascinating are its qualities of pure decoration!”

The lady is dressed in dark-blue velvet with a curious collar of white lawn and grey fur with another collar at its base of spangled embroidery and around the waist a narrow girdle to match. The dress is profusely decorated with gold filigree beads.

Gold pins are placed in her blonde hair, over which is a head-dress of curiously puffed and twisted material decorated by blue and gold sequins.

The background is black.

This portrait, painted in tempera on a panel (20¾ × 14¾), was purchased by M. Veil-Picard of Paris at the Villeroy Sale in Paris in 1922. Adolfo Venturi writes in L’Arte (April, 1925): “The Mackay portrait cut off below the waist, rises in the canvas with Gothic grace. Picturesqueness is the keynote. The relief, even in its slightest parts, has an ideal softness of planes. But in this picture Pisanello’s genius has attained its maximum of expression. Everything shows an advance on the Louvre picture—the eye sunk deep in its socket; the eyebrow like the valve of a shell molded over the round, while in the Louvre picture it is a mere silken strip; the ear, no longer a mere piece of cartilage, is downy velvet; above all, the superb decorative effect of the oval face between the strange volutes of the turban and the chains of perforated gold beads.

“In the other portraits the decorative effect is helped by the fantastic blossoms standing out against the dark background of the hedge, making a greater contrast with the background than with the face. In the Mackay portrait the background is equally dark throughout. The interest of the face itself is accentuated by the myriad gold lights in the gilded trefoils on the dress and in the golden beads of the chains (light as balls of silk) and in the nebulous phosphorescence of the little balls which adorn the neck of the dress and the dark enamel of the ivy on the turban of Oriental splendor. The effect, carefully prepared to isolate the face from the surrounding shadow, acquires an intensity of refinement. The contrast between the dark background and the phosphorescent dress is repeated in that between the dark blue material of the dress and in the high lights of this; the icy brilliance of the collar cuts into the softness of the fur with unexpected suddenness; and the ivory of the flesh contrasts sharply with the delicate softness of tone.

“The highest pictorial and decorative value in the art of Pisanello as a colorist is reached in this Mackay portrait, which represents, moreover, one of the most acute character-readings of the penetrating eye of the medallist. The proud carriage accentuated by the rigid cut of the high velvet collar; the clear-cut outlines of the profile; the ram’s horn head-dress; the splendid cap; the well-defined lips, from which one expects to hear the sibilant breath issue; above all, the keen glance directed downwards under the heavy-veiled eyelids render this a picture of frigid haughtiness. The fine lines of the mouth and the narrow opening of the eyes are executed with an extraordinary penetrating observation and the contour of the face is drawn with a delicacy that does all honor to this great master of the silhouette.

“The lines of the face are in complete harmony with the contours of the whole figure. The curves repeat themselves in the fantastic coiffure, in the fur border of the collar, in the lines of the arm and in the chains hanging from the shoulders. And, contrarily, these general sweeping curves of coiffure and costume lead up to the finely concentrated line of the profile which stands out sharply against a black background, as in Pisanello’s painting of Saint Eustace, in London (National Gallery). The artist has understood perfectly the value of contrast between the plastic and the decorative elements. The flat planes of the delicate ivory-like face are emphasized by the sculpturesque coiffure with its gold ornaments; and just where we would naturally look for an accentuation of the physical attributes—on the bust and arms—the artist has, through the broad curves of the chains and the spacing of the patterns of the dress, emphasized the decorative design. Finally, the color of this most decorative masterpiece is of the greatest charm. There are tiny lines recalling the delicate technique of a piece of Satsuma-ware on the surface of the ivory-tinted face that rises from a white collar resting on grey fur while a delightful blue predominates in the coiffure and the costume, which is enhanced with yellow and gold ornaments.

“The dress itself is of no little charm and belongs to a period when costume and figure were attuned to a harmonious whole as has seldom happened in the history of costume design. By plucking out the hair from her forehead and eyebrows this young woman has created a high-domed brow for herself and further emphasized the up-sweeping lines by high-arched eyebrows applied with cosmetic. What a burden that towering coiffure must have been and how uncomfortable the high collar and the girdle drawn tight beneath the breast! Nevertheless she suffers these discomforts in the name of fashion with dignity and equanimity.”

Pisanello (whose real name was Antonio Pisano), born about 1397 (some authorities say 1380 and some 1385), was a renowned painter of portraits and religious pictures of highly decorative character as well as a famous medallist. Pisanello was a follower of Altichiero and was also greatly influenced by Gentile da Fabriano. Of his early life little or nothing is known; but the rest of his days he spent wandering throughout Italy, now in Mantua, now in Verona, now in Venice, now in Rome, now in Naples, and now in Ferrara, cutting medals and painting portraits of distinguished personages. In 1439 he was in Mantua as an intimate friend of the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, whom he followed at the capture of Verona. Therefore he had to come under the Tribunal of the Council of Ten at Venice in 1442. Pisanello’s career coincides almost precisely in date with Fra Angelico, Donatello, Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi. As a medallist Pisanello was unexcelled. In his paintings he shows the spirit of a miniaturist rather than that of a mural decorator. He shares with Gentile da Fabriano the charming quality of chivalric grace and attention to interesting detail. Pisanello must have been especially fond of animals, as his rarely beautiful drawings of them preserved in various galleries would seem to prove; and, moreover, he was fond of introducing them into his pictures. In the Vision of Saint Eustace, for instance (National Gallery, London), in addition to the stag bearing the cross upon his horns, there are various animals and birds as well as the fine horse with its gay trappings, on which the handsome Eustace is mounted.

“Altichiero had scarcely ceased covering wall-spaces with pomp and circumstance of Mediæval life,” writes Berenson, “when the task was taken up by his better-known Renaissance follower, Vittorio Pisanello. The larger part of this artist’s work, in fact all his decoration of great houses and public palaces, has perished. Even now, after earnest efforts to gather together the strewn limbs of his art, only six paintings of his can be discovered: two frescoes, two sacred subjects, and two portraits. His renown as a painter has, therefore, been eclipsed by his fame as a medallist. And, in truth, never, since the days when Greek craftsmen modelled coins for proud city states, has there been such a moulder of subtle reliefs in miniature. Yet Pisanello himself never signed his name without the addition of the word Pictor and it was as a painter that he received the stipends of princes and the adulation of poets.

“Although he was much more modern than his master, there was nothing in his paintings to startle princes and poets, or even less distinguished persons, whose education in art consisted then, no doubt, as it does now, in confirming a fondness for the kind of picture to which their eyes had grown accustomed during childhood and youth. Pisanello, although counting as one of the great geniuses of the Renaissance, by no means broke with the past. He went, it is true, as far beyond Altichiero as Altichiero had gone from his immediate precursors, but he betrays no essential difference of intention or spirit. In him art-evolution produced a painter most happily fitted to hold up an idealizing mirror to a parallel product of social evolution, the sunset of Chivalry. No wonder that he was employed along with the kindred Gentile da Fabriano by the rich and noble and that he was chosen to continue the courtly Umbrian’s tasks.”

Adoration of the Shepherds

Andrea Mantegna	Collection of
(1431–1506).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

It is more than likely this is the picture described in 1586 as “Presepe” (manger) in the Este Palace, Ferrara. At all events it is an early work.

The Virgin surrounded by cherubs is kneeling in adoration before the Holy Child, who is asleep on the bottom of her gown. Near her St. Joseph is seated, fast asleep. On the right two Shepherds are approaching and, behind them, a Man and a Woman are crossing a bridge. High up on the rocks, on the right, two Angels are watching over the scene. Behind the simple wooden building, which shelters the group, stretches a landscape.

The panel transferred to canvas (15 × 21½ inches), was formerly in the Collection of Mr. C. A. Rouse-Boughton-Knight of Downton Castle, Ludlow, Herefordshire, England.

Andrea Mantegna was born in Vicenza in 1431. He was inscribed in the Guild at Padua as pupil and adopted son of Squarcione (see page 97) in 1441 and made the most extraordinary progress in his studies, perfectly fascinated with “the antique”. “At a little more than ten years of age,” Berenson writes, “Mantegna was adopted by a contractor named Squarcione. How much of a painter Squarcione was, we do not know, but we do know that he undertook designing and painting to be executed by people in his employ. He was also a dealer in antiquities and his shop was frequented by the distinguished people who passed through Padua, and by the Humanists teaching in the famous University. It happened to be a moment when in Italy Antiquity was a religion, nay, more, a mystical passion, causing wise men to brood over fragments of Roman statuary as if they were sacred relics, and to yearn for ecstatic union with the glorified past. To complete the spell, this glorified past happened to be the past of their own country.”

Another influence was Donatello, who was working in Padua in 1750 and after; and still another was Jacopo Bellini. After his marriage to Bellini’s daughter and his break with Squarcione, Mantegna went to Venice to have his contract with Squarcione cancelled in the Law Courts; and, returning to Padua, he continued his work on important frescoes. In 1460 Mantegna removed to the Court of Mantua at the invitation of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga and in addition to his painting he designed for pageants and festivals, and decorated villas and palaces, just as Leonardo da Vinci was destined to do a few years later for another Lodovico,—“Il Moro,” Regent and, later, Duke of Milan. Mantegna also at this period designed for goldsmiths. When Francesco Gonzaga succeeded his father, Mantegna remained at the Court of Mantua and became the supreme arbiter of the taste of the day. For Francesco’s wife, Isabella d’Este (sister of “Il Moro’s” wife, Beatrice d’Este) and for her mother, the Duchess of Ferrara, Mantegna painted some of his most famous pictures, such as the Triumph of Cæsar (now at Hampton Court Palace) and the Madonna and Child with Singing Cherubs (now in the Brera). On leaving for Rome in 1788 Mantegna was knighted. In Rome he decorated the Belvedere Chapel for Pope Innocent VIII. To his last period belong delicate and lovely mythological pieces, including the Parnassus (now in the Louvre) and the strong and decorative painting of Judith with the Head of Holofernes (now in the Widener Collection).

When Mantegna died in 1506, Lorenzo da Pavia (see page 95) wrote to Isabella d’Este: “The death of our Master Andrea causes me great sorrow, for in him a second Apelles has passed away; I do believe that the Lord God wishes to employ him for the creation of some beautiful work. I can never hope to meet a finer draughtsman nor a more original artist.”

Padua, Mantua, Venice,—all felt Mantegna’s influence.

Virgin and Child With the Infant St. John and Angel

Francia	Collection of
(1450?–1517).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

This picture came from the Collection of the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtales of Paris and shows the Virgin seated and holding the nude Infant Jesus on her right knee. She is wearing a crimson dress edged with gold embroidery and a blue mantle, also edged with gold embroidery, which is drawn over her head. Beneath this a white gauze veil covers her hair. The Holy Child has raised His right hand in benediction while in His left he holds a blue ball. The Angel on the right wears a rose-colored tunic and yellow mantle and is adorned with jewels. By his side and with one foot on a balustrade stands the Infant St. John, dressed in blue and carrying a slender cross over his left shoulder.

Of this panel (23½ × 19¾ inches), painted in oil, Berenson says: “If this most famous of the Bolognese artists ever painted a more delightful picture than the present one, it remains unknown to me. Perhaps its only rival in my affections would be the Munich picture of the Virgin in the Rose Garden where, however, it is not the faces but the pale roses against the flat green that give the work its special charm.”

Francesco Raibolini, who took the name Francia from a master-goldsmith to whom he was apprenticed, was born in Bologna in 1450, the son of a carpenter. He spent his early years working in metals and settings for jewels and became very expert in niello, gold and silver enamels, and designs for jewelry. He also acquired a reputation for his coins and medals, so much so indeed that Giovanni Bentivoglio II, who became his patron, appointed him his master of the mint. Moreover, in 1511 Francia was elected one of the Golfalonieri of the people; in 1512 re-elected to the mastership of the Goldsmith’s Guild; and in 1514 he became “Master of the Four Arts.” It is thought that he began to paint about 1483, when Lorenzo Costa came to Bologna and formed a friendship with Francia. Be this as it may, he worked with Costa on an altar-piece for the Church of the Misericordia and the influence of Costa is apparent in much of his work. Francia also painted with Costa in 1505–1507 the series of frescoes in the Chapel of St. Cecilia and the Madonna del Terremoto in the Palazzo Communale, Bologna. Francia painted Madonnas all his life; and in addition to these religious pictures, he painted a number of splendid portraits. He died in Bologna in 1517. One of his pupils was Timoteo Viti, who in turn was Raphael’s early teacher and imparted to him some of Francia’s quality, particularly in the general appearance of the Madonna and the full rounded contours of the figures. About 1500 Francia began to develop his own personal style.

Portrait of a Lady

Bernardino Luini	Collection of
(1475?–1531–2).	Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.

The first thing we notice in this picture is a very peculiar head-dress—large and round and fleecy.

The figure is half-length, life-size, and faces us so that we gain a very good idea of the unknown lady, so boldly set forth from the background of a green curtain. She wears a dark-grey dress, a white embroidered chemisette and a jewelled cross hanging from a gold chain which she is fingering lightly. In her right hand is a pet marten. The hands, it should be noted, are beautifully drawn. This, an oil painting on panel (29 × 21½), came from the Benson Collection, having been previously in the Collection of Mr. F. R. Leyland.

Bernardino Luini was born at Luini, near the Lago Maggiore about 1475, and died in Milan in 1531 or 1532. Luini worked chiefly in the vicinity of Milan and painted a great many frescoes. He is said to have been a pupil of Borgognone; but whether that be true or not, most certainly Leonardo da Vinci was his real master. It was assuredly from the painter of the Mona Lisa that Luini learned how to paint a charming woman with refined features breaking into a radiant and enchanting smile. Luini painted many notable religious pictures, including admirable Madonnas, but his loveliest work is the portrait of a Milanese lady known as The Columbine, in The Hermitage Gallery, gazing at the flower she is holding in her hand, from which the picture takes its name.

“Luini’s female creations are so exquisite that for a long time people supposed that Leonardo alone was capable of conceiving them,” writes Marcel Reymond, “and permanently recording their loveliness; but now this injustice has come to an end and Luini’s art appears before us with sharply determined characteristics that prevent us from confounding it with Leonardo’s art; first of all, from the point of view of technique, it must be remembered that Leonardo works like a master born about 1450 and Luini like one born after 1470. With Luini the workmanship is less precise than with Leonardo, while the stroke is less restrained and the modelling freer.”

Titian’s Schoolmaster

Giambattista Moroni	Collection of
(1520–5–1578).	Mr. Joseph E. Widener.

In the National Gallery, London, there is a striking portrait of a Tailor—known as the Tagliapanni—standing behind his board, at half-length, with shears in his right hand and a piece of cloth in his left, looking inquiringly at the spectator. It is forceful, attractive, commands attention, and lives in the memory of all who have looked upon it. Moroni’s Tailor is one of the great portraits of the world. The merest glance at the picture represented here would tell you that it is by the same hand. The means of producing a striking effect are even simpler than in the London portrait.

The title is entirely fanciful, but it accords well with the subject, a pleasant, genial man with an intellectual countenance. He seems to be about sixty years of age and is dressed in black with white linen collar and a black cap. His beard is grey. He is sitting sideways in a chair that is often described to-day (and for no reason whatever) as a “Savonarola Chair,” resting his left arm on the arm of the chair and holding a book in his right. It would appear that he has just been interrupted in his reading—pleasantly, too, it would seem—and is keeping the page he has left off reading with one finger between the leaves. The hands are marvellously drawn and painted, as is also the ring on the left hand. Van Dyck admired this picture so much that he made a sketch of it in his Italian sketch-book (which is now at Chatsworth).

This portrait in oils on canvas (38 × 29½ inches) was long in the Borghese Gallery at Rome, and then at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century it was purchased by the Marquis of Stafford. From the Duke of Northumberland’s Collection, Stafford House, it passed to the present owner.

Moroni’s great fame, even in his own day, was as a portrait-painter; and it is said that when people from Bergamo and its vicinity went to Titian to have their portraits painted, he told them to go home and sit to their own countryman. Moroni was a pupil of Moretto at Brescia, was influenced by Lotto and Titian, and he, in his turn, influenced Van Dyck.

Moroni was born at Bondo in Bergamo between 1520 and 1525 and died at Bergamo in 1578.

Venetian

“It is evident,” wrote Taine, “that, while following a path of its own, Venetian Painting developed as in the rest of Italy. It issued here, as elsewhere, from missals and mosaics and was at first in sympathy with purely Christian emotion; then, by degrees, the feeling for beautiful human life introduced into the altar-frames vigorous and healthy bodies taken from contemporary types; and we wonder at the placid, expressions and religious physiognomies on the blooming faces in which the youthful blood circulates and sustains innate temperament. This is the confluence of two spirits and two ages: one, the Christian, which is fading away; the other, the Pagan, which is in the ascendant. In Venetian Art special traits are distinguished. The people are more closely copied from life and are less transformed by Classic or mystic sentiment, not so pure as at Perugia, not so noble as at Florence: they are addressed more to the senses than to the mind or the heart; they are more quickly recognized as men and give greater pleasure to the eye. Strong and lively tones color their muscles and their faces; living flesh is soft on their shoulders and on the thighs of little children; clear landscapes open into the distance to make the deeper tints of the figure stand out; saints gather around the Virgin in a variety of attitudes unknown to the other Primitive Schools with their uniform processions. At the height of its fervor and faith the national spirit, fond of diversity and joy, allows a smile to escape.”

Venice was slow in abandoning Byzantine tradition. Changes begin to be apparent in the Fourteenth Century. Walter Pater notes: “The beginnings of Venetian Painting link themselves to the last, stiff, half-barbaric splendors of Byzantine decoration and are but the introduction into the crust of marble and gold on the walls of the Duomo of Murano, or of St. Mark’s, of a little more of human expression. And throughout the course of its later development, always subordinate to architectural effect, the work of the Venetian School never escaped from the influence of its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore, unperplexed by naturalism, religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no Giotto, no Fra Angelico, no Botticelli. Except from the stress of thought or sentiment, which taxed so severely the resources of the generations of Florentine artists, those earlier Venetian painters, down to Carpaccio and the Bellini, seem never for a moment to have been tempted even to lose sight of the scope of their art in its strictness, or to forget that painting must be before all things decorative, a thing for the eye, a space of color on the wall, only more dexterously blent than the marking of its precious stone, or the chance interchange of sun and shade upon it—this to begin and end with—whatever higher matter of thought, or poetry, or religious reverie, might play its part therein, between.”

During the Fifteenth Century Venice began to be influenced by painters from other cities, particularly by Gentile da Fabriano (see page 74) and Pisanello (see page 99), who were sent for to decorate the Doge’s Palace. Gentile da Fabriano represented all the latest “modernistic” ideas of his day. Among the Venetians who were most profoundly influenced by him was Jacopo Bellini (who later went to Padua). Jacopo, in spite of his contact with Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna (who married his daughter), remained “Gothic” in essentials. Jacopo Bellini had one of the largest bottegas in Venice; and this bottega was continued by his gifted sons, Giovanni and Gentile.

Jacopo was a talented painter who had worked in Florence as well as Padua, but who really belongs to Venice.

The great rivals of the Bellini painters were the Vivarini on the Island of Murano. The Vivarini, the first of whom was Antonio da Murano (active 1440–1476 or 1484), who played a great part in the development of the Venetian School and whose work consisted of enormous altar-pieces of many compartments set in Gothic framework of very ornate character and profusely adorned with gold; Bartolommeo Vivarini, Antonio’s younger brother (1431?–1499?), in whose work the influence of the Paduan School of Squarcione is marked and also that of Antonello da Messina; and Antonio’s son, Alvise Vivarini (1447–1504), a pupil of his father and uncle, who was working in 1474 with Giovanni Bellini in the Scuola di San Girolamo in Venice and whose portraits show the influence of Antonello da Messina.

Carlo Crivelli (1430?–1493?), if not a Venetian by birth, which is most probable, is classed as belonging to the Venetian School. Crivelli was a fellow-pupil of Bartolommeo Vivarini under Antonio da Murano (Vivarini), and Squarcione. Like Mantegna, Crivelli kept to tempera painting; Crivelli stands alone for his wonderful decorative qualities (see page 125 and page 128).

Antonello da Messina (1430–1479) was a contemporary of Crivelli and is particularly distinguished for introducing into Italy the Flemish system of painting with oils. In his pictures the influence of the Bellini is apparent (see page 124).

Giovanni Bellini (1428–30–1516), one of the greatest painters of the Fifteenth Century, was trained by his father, Jacopo Bellini. Next he followed in the footsteps of Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna; but he changed his style, as well as his technique, gradually abandoning tempera for the new practice in oils, which he was one of the first to master. In some respects Giovanni Bellini was influenced by his own pupil, Giorgione (see page 118). Gentile Bellini (1426–9–1507), was named, it is interesting to note, for Gentile da Fabriano, his father’s master and friend. Gentile, trained by his father, Jacopo, was called upon to paint the organ-shutters at St. Mark’s with colossal figures of St. Mark, St. Theodore, St. Jerome, and St. Francis; was knighted by Frederic III in 1469; and was employed to restore the frescoes of Gentile da Fabriano in the Hall of the Grand Council in the Doge’s Palace, a commission which carried with it the honor of painting the portrait of every new Doge. Sent for by the Sultan of Constantinople, Mohammed II, to paint his portrait, Gentile sailed for Constantinople in 1479 and returned in 1480 with the title of Bey. Gentile then joined his brother, Giovanni, who was working on the Fabriano frescoes. The Bellini brothers also painted on canvas a series of pictures portraying the legend of Frederic Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III, which perished in the fire of 1577. Gentile’s Procession of Corpus Christi of 1496 has been pronounced “the most important extant work of the Venetian School previous to the advent of Titian.”

The bottegas of the Bellini and Vivarini naturally produced a host of able painters, among whom were Marco Basaiti (active 1500–1521); Lazzaro Bastiani (active 1449–1512); Cima da Conegliano (1460?–1517?); and Jacopo Bassano (1510?–1592). Vittore Carpaccio (1450?–1526?), was a follower of Gentile Bellini; and the stories he told in paint, such as the series depicting the Life of Saint Ursula, belong to the great works of Venice.

Giorgione (1477–1510) is the next important name. Little or nothing is known of his life, except that he was born of humble parents at Castelfranco. By 1500 his reputation was established, for he was then painting important works. Among these was a picture for the Hall of Audience in the Doge’s Palace and some fresco decorations for the exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the bank of the German merchants in Venice. Giorgione was a pupil and follower of the Bellini and had much influence upon Giovanni Bellini. Giorgione died of the Plague in his thirty-fourth year. Giorgione stands alone for his romantic and lyrical qualities and for his penetrating charm. He is notable, too, for having introduced music into his pictures, or rather persons who are playing upon instruments.

Apart from his delightful qualities Giorgione is of the greatest importance in the evolution of painting. Walter Pater writes: “Giorgione is the inventor of genre, of those easily movable pictures which serve for uses, neither of devotion nor of allegorical, or historical teaching—little groups of real men and women, amid congruous furniture or landscape—morsels of actual life, conversation, or music, or play, refined upon or idealized, till they come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more cunningly blent color, obediently filling their place, hitherto, in a mere architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he frames them by the hands of some skillful carver, so that people may move them readily and take with them where they go, like a poem in manuscript, or a musical instrument, to be used, at will, as a means of self-education, stimulus or solace, coming like an animated presence, into one’s cabinet, to enrich the air as with some choice aroma, and, like persons, live with us, for a day or a lifetime. Of all art like this, art which has played so large a part in men’s culture since that time, Giorgione is the initiator.”

Titian, or rather Tiziano Vecello (1477?–1576), fellow-pupil of Giorgione, of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and assistant to Giorgione in decorating the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (which established a new era in Italian painting), was the leading painter of his day (see page 140).

Bartolommeo Veneto, of Veneziano (1480–1555), pupil of Giovanni Bellini, became a famous portrait-painter. (See page 148.)

Tintoretto, the magnificent Venetian, was nicknamed “Il Furioso,” because of his great technical powers that include astonishing display of foreshortening and many curious effects in light and color, as well as in form. Ruskin says Tintoretto (or Tintoret, call him as you please) made “figures lovely in themselves, content that they should deserve not demand, your attention.”

Playing with a full orchestra of color and understanding how to produce the most luminous effects of light, the great Venetian filled Venice with marvellous pictures. Tintoretto was equal to the immense work he undertook and his noble brush never left anything that was unworthy of it. Tintoretto, whose real name was Jacopo Robusti (1518–1594), was apprenticed to Titian and was influenced by Titian, Palma Vecchio, Michelangelo, and Parmigiano (of the School of Palma and follower of Correggio).

“There is one only—the last and greatest of the Venetians of the Renaissance—who could sound all the notes of tragedy and pathos as well as notes of joy. Tintoretto, the supreme Venetian, the greatest exponent of the essential spirit of Venice, is the son of a wider kingdom than hers and of a greater age than the Renaissance. Unsurpassed as a designer and colorist, he is endowed throughout with the peculiar gifts of Venice; but during those years of passionate study, in which he was winning here and there the secrets of his art, hungry for knowledge, careless of gain, and bargaining only for material in which to realize his conceptions,—during those years in which he lived alone in continual meditation on some fresh labor, he was probing the deep and passionate things of humanity as no Venetian artist had ever probed them before. The streets and churches of the city seem to echo still to the steps of this genius at once so robust, so tender, so profound, and so joyous.”15

Paolo Veronese, or rather Paolo Caliari (1528–1588), a native of Verona, whence his name, is one of the most delightful of painters. J. Buisson considers Veronese of all the painters of Italy “the one whose work best serves to particularize the art of painting” and this able French critic goes on to say that “Veronese painted the Venetian Beautiful as the Greeks sculptured the Hellenic Beautiful” and that “Paul Veronese is of all the colorists, without a single exception, the one who has most unity. He is the most ethereal of the colorists. He is the painter of the air, both out-of-doors and in-doors. His values are impeccable and his shadows are at once transparent and full of color, without any artifice, such as Rubens’s exaggerated reflections, or the excessive sacrifices, which in Rembrandt are almost equivalent to a monotone in those parts that are lacking in light. His lights are broad and steady although modelled without any gleams, but of so shining a quality that they are positively radiant. Happy artist! He had the eye of the most perfect colorist ever known, able to perceive at the same time the different qualities of light and color and their variations in intensity and values and he possessed the gift to reveal them with marvellous art to ordinary mortals. Optics applied to his pictures show no law that he did not know and practice. Moreover, around his perfect visions of color are grouped other qualities, such as imagination, taste, rhythm, elegance, nobility, and magnificence in decoration. His hand is the equal of his eye. The rapidity of his brush may be compared only to that of Velasquez and to that of Rubens.”

This great period, Taine sums up as follows:

“The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian Art, the more we feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great, toga-draped, old men with the bald foreheads are the Patrician Kings of the Archipelago, Moorish Sultans, who, trailing their silken simars, received tribute and ordered executions. The superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and jewelled, are Empress-daughters of the Republic, like that Caterina Cornaro from whom Venice received Cyprus. There are the muscles of fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and the wind, have dashed against the athletic bodies of Janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with precious stones—all the magnificence of Asia is mingled on their bodies with the floating draperies of Classic times and the nudities of Pagan tradition.”

Sebastian del Piombo (1485?–1547), pupil of Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione, preferred oil to fresco and this led to a famous quarrel between him and Michelangelo. Palma Vecchio (1480–1528), standing first in the second rank of Bellini-Giorgione followers, is another important painter. Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556), pupil of Alvise Vivarini, painted with Raphael in the Vatican in 1508–9 and naturally fell under Raphael’s spell. Lotto spent much time in Bergamo; was touched by Correggio’s spirit; and, after 1529, was affected by Titian.

Paris Bordone (1500–1571), a gorgeous colorist, pupil and follower of Giorgione and Titian (and slightly touched by Palma Vecchio), was famous for his portraits, mythological pictures, and for that masterpiece entitled The Fisherman Presenting the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge (now in the Accademia at Venice).

“These Venetian artists of the Renaissance,” says d’Annunzio, “create in a medium that is itself a joyous mystery—in color, the ornament of the world, in color which seems to be the striving of the spirit to become light. And the entirely new musical understanding they have of color acts in such a way that their creation transcends the narrow limits of the symbols it represents and assumes the lofty, revealing faculty of an infinite harmony.”

To the Eighteenth Century belongs Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1769), famous as a designer and colorist, influenced by Veronese, and a decorator of palaces and villas in Venice, Genoa, Milan, Würzburg, and Madrid, where he died. Tiepolo married Guardi’s sister in 1715.

Canaletto, or Giovanni Antonio da Canale (1697–1768), son of Bernardo da Canale, a scene-painter, is famous for his views of Venice and for being the teacher of Guardi.

Francesco Guardi (1712–1793), a native Venetian, but of Austrian stock, a follower of his master Canaletto, was also celebrated for his Venetian views (see page 153).

“Venice herself” writes Berenson, “had not grown less beautiful in her decline. Indeed, the building which occupies the very centre of the picture Venice leaves in the mind—the Salute—was not built until the Seventeenth Century. This was the picture that the Venetian himself loved to have painted for him and that the stranger wanted to carry away. Canale painted Venice with a feeling for space and atmosphere, with a mastery over the delicate effects of mist peculiar to the city, that make his view of the Salute, the Grand Canal, and the Piazzetta still seem more like Venice than all the pictures that have been painted since. Later in the century Canale was followed by Guardi, who executed smaller views with more of an eye for the picturesque, and for what may be called instantaneous effects, thus anticipating both the Romantic and the Impressionist painters of our own century.”

To the Eighteenth Century also belongs Pietro Longhi (1702–1785?), influenced by Guardi, but called “The Goldini of painters,” because of his bright comedies of manners, somewhat in the genre of Watteau, Pater, and Lancret.

“Longhi painted for the picture-loving Venetians,” says Berenson, “their own lives in all their ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. In the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. There is no tragic note anywhere. Everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. A tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading cheerfulness, distinguishes Longhi’s pictures from the works of Hogarth, at once so brutal and so full of presage of change.”

Madonna and Child

Antonello da Messina	Collection of
(1430–1479).	Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.

The Virgin, slightly under life-size, stands behind a stone parapet, three-quarter face to left, apparently in a reverie with half-closed eyelids. She wears a red and gold brocade gown and a blue mantle carried up over her head and falling in a straight line, but for one small plait, to her left arm. The Holy Child is seated upon a green cushion on the parapet and is wrapped in a brick-red shawl. With His left arm around His mother’s neck and right hand in her bosom, He gazes straight ahead. The flesh-tones are pale with clear, light-brown shadows and the rose-leaf lips and cylindrical fingers with filbert-shaped nails are to be noticed and admired.

This oil painting on panel (23 × 16 inches), comes from the Benson Collection. Antonello da Messina, also known as Antonello di Giovanni degli Antoni, holds a very important place in the development of Painting, because it is owing to him that the Flemish system of painting in oil was adopted in Italy, although Italian painters had been previously acquainted with the process, for they knew the works of the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden. It is supposed that Antonello, who was born in Messina in 1430, visited Flanders. It is certain, however, that Antonello was travelling in Italy in 1457–1460 and he may have met Roger van der Weyden, who visited Italy in 1450. Antonello da Messina was certainly in Venice in 1475–1476. He died in 1479, leaving a son, Jacobello, or Jacopo degli Antoni, and a nephew, Antonello di Saliba, both of whom were painters. It seems that Antonello da Messina and the Bellini exchanged many ideas and were of great mutual benefit. It is supposed that Antonello da Messina encouraged Giovanni Bellini to try painting in oils. St. Jerome in his Study in the National Gallery, London, shows the new character that Antonello brought into the Italian painting of his day.

Madonna and Child

Carlo Crivelli	Collection of
(1430?–1493?).	Mr. A. W. Erickson.

Before analysing this delightful picture, let us read an appreciation of a most fascinating and not too well-understood painter by Cosmo Monkhouse: “Carlo Crivelli is a Venetian artist of whom we know little but what can be gathered from pictures. He is supposed to have been born about 1430 and his dated works range from 1468 to 1493. He was a Venetian by birth and from his mode it would appear certain that he studied under Squarcione at Padua and probably also under Vivarini at Venice. But he perfected a style and one marked by so many peculiarities that despite all affinities which may be traced with other masters he stands out clear and distinct by himself.

“In the first place, he is unique as a colorist. He belongs, indeed, to the old mosaic and illumination school of color, not to the school of ‘great schemes,’ in which the masses are blent into one great harmony. The masses, or patches, of color are isolated and produce a pleasant variegation without fusion. His color is thin, also, as of a superficial tinting, not affecting the substance. His flesh is hard and opaque, his flowers leathery, his fruit, though finely drawn and beautifully colored, of a stony texture, his draperies anything but soft. It is only in hard smooth things, like pottery and glass, that you get the true consistency as well as the true color. Yet his color is exquisite of its kind, brilliant and transparent like enamel, and the different tints in themselves are lovely and varied. Such reds and greens and lilacs and salmon-pinks and a hundred other combinations of the primaries are scarcely to be matched in the work of any other artist. Nor has anyone been more skillful in the use of gold in connection with color.

“There is scarcely any need to call attention to Crivelli’s special gift as a designer of decoration. Almost every square inch of his canvas attests the inexhaustible richness of his invention—an invention fed no doubt from the rich products of Oriental looms of which Venice was the emporium.

“Crivelli wrought only for the Church and appears to have spent most of his life at Ascoli, but neither restriction of subject and feeling, nor provincial residence, could fetter his genius. There is, indeed, no artist of more striking individuality than Carlo Crivelli, no one who had more complete mastery over his means of expression, or attained more nearly to his ideal. This ideal was not the ‘beau ideal’—that is to say, the perfection of physical beauty—it was an ideal of character, the embodiment of the essential qualities of his subject. One cannot help regarding Crivelli as a man of knowledge and intellect, of charming manners, refined almost to fastidiousness, delighting in all things dainty and beautiful, a lover of animals and of his kind.”

This picture, an oil painting on panel (38 × 17 inches), came from the Benson Collection, having been previously in the Collection of Mr. G. H. Marland (sold in 1863), and in the Collection of Mr. William Graham (sold in 1886). The Virgin, a small full-length figure, is seated on a red and white marble throne, wearing a pale-red robe and a gold brocade mantle lined with green carried up over the head, which is adorned with a white veil. The Holy Child, standing on her lap, has on a gold dress and a white sash. Behind these two figures there is a hanging of pale-red, watered silk and behind the throne again there is a gold hanging with the pomegranate pattern. The Holy Child turns to the right in the act of blessing. On the step of the throne, which has a conspicuous crack, two pears16 are lying; and they have attracted a fly. The step is inscribed: “Carolvs Crivellvs Venetvs Pinsit, 1472.”

“The effect is archaic and almost Byzantine,” G. McNeil Rushforth writes in his Carlo Crivelli (London, 1900), “but its merits are very great.” “Though on a comparatively small scale the decorative effect is superb. The Child’s head is heavy and inferior to that of the Virgin, but the action is lively and realistic. The great charm, however, of the picture is the Virgin. Her features are not beautiful and the drawing of the hands might be criticized. But if ever grace and dignity were conceived and executed by Crivelli, they are here. Preëminently does this Virgin possess all that we understand by distinction. Taken separately, the turn of the head and the action of the fingers might be called affected. But they do not offend as parts of the whole, so perfectly has the artist defined the ideal that was before his mind. A curious feature in the picture is the treatment of the drapery. The folds of the brocaded mantle are more elaborate than anything which Crivelli had yet attempted, and they are expressed by clear-cut lines without any shadow.”

Madonna and Child

Carlo Crivelli	Collection of
(1430?–1493?).	Mr. Philip Lehman.

This beautiful picture belongs to Crivelli’s greatest period, when the artist had reached the height of his powers, had attained perfect command of the problems of composition, and had gained the technique to represent those materials he delighted in,—such as brocades, marbles, and garlands of fruit, which he always combined with such decorative beauty. Roger Fry says of this picture: “It has, in a supreme degree, the delicacy and the almost metallic incisiveness of Crivelli’s contour as well as the firmness and brilliance of his painting. The Madonna supporting the Child upon her right arm, is seated in one of those sumptuous Renaissance thrones, which Crivelli loved to elaborate with every conceivable ingenuity of invention. Though the forms are intended to be Classic, it is evident from the proportions of the mouldings and something in the character of the detail that Crivelli is still essentially an old Venetian artist, one who uses Classical conventions with a Gothic exuberance.

“This is a work of Crivelli’s prime. Indeed, it would be hard to name another design in which he shows quite such mastery as he does here. There is hardly another work in which the sequence of lines is so suave, its flow so uninterrupted, or in which the movements of the figures harmonize so perfectly. It is already almost a cinque-cento work as regards the amplitude of its forms and the breadth of its divisions. One notes, for instance, that the fruits hanging on the throne are even more enlarged and more massed than usual, so that the quantities of relief support and carry out the relief of the figures in a remarkable manner. Much of the earlier intensity of feeling has undoubtedly gone. This has none of the strange, brooding pathos of the early Madonnas, nor has it the sharp individual accent of their faces. The works with which it appears to be most akin are the Vatican Madonna and the Triptych in the Brera, both of 1482.”

The Virgin and Child With St. Lucy, St. Catherine, St. Peter and St. John the Baptist

Giovanni Bellini	Collection of
(1428–30–1516).	Mr. Jules S. Bache.

This is the type of group picture known as a “Holy Conversation” and represents the Virgin and Child with Saints. It seems to have been painted when Bellini was between seventy-two and seventy-seven years of age and between the years 1500 and 1505.

The figures are three-quarter length and under life-size and the picture, which is an oil painting on canvas, measures 38 × 60 inches. The Virgin is seated in the centre with a dark-grey curtain behind her and a marble balustrade in front of her. She wears a rose-colored tunic and a blue mantle lined with a changeable green and yellow silk. The Holy Child leans back against her right arm. On her right stands St. Catherine with a rope of pearls twisted in her hair and St. Lucy, on her left, wearing a myrtle wreath and holding a tall standing-cup of Venetian glass. St. John the Baptist, wearing a green mantle, stands on the right, looking downward with bended head; and St. Peter, in orange-brown cloak with book and key, stands on the left. A very decorative effect is derived from the palm-branches, which curve upwards into the top corners of the picture. A range of distant hills appears in the background and on the cartellino on the balustrade is the signature in script, “Ioannes Bellinus.”

Authority for dating the picture is derived from the fact that the features of St. Lucy reappear in the San Zaccaria altar-piece, which is dated 1505, and the features of St. John the Baptist occur in the Baptism of Christ in Santa Corona, Vicenza, supposed to have been begun in 1500.

The picture came from the Benson Collection, having been formerly in the Wynn Ellis Collection and in the Collection of Mr. William Graham.

The date of Giovanni Bellini’s birth is not known. He was working with his brother, Gentile, in his father’s studio in Padua and was painting in Venice in 1464, where he produced two pictures for the Scuola di San Girolamo. In 1475 he met Antonello da Messina, who came to Venice, and seems to have adopted then his method of painting in oil. In 1479, when Gentile Bellini went to Constantinople, Giovanni was appointed to carry on his work in the Doge’s Palace; and when Gentile returned the two brothers worked together. Giovanni was essentially a religious painter and his Madonnas stand among the finest ever created. Most of his portraits are lost; but one, the Doge Loredano (in the National Gallery, London), ranks as one of the finest of all known portraits. This dates from 1501, painted when Giovanni was over eighty! Giovanni died in 1516.

The Virgin and Child

Giovanni Bellini	Collection of
(1428–30–1516).	Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady.

The Madonna at half-length turned towards the left, supports the Holy Child with both arms as He reclines in her lap against her right knee, which is raised. She is dressed in a blue mantle arranged to form a hood, with embroidered border. A graceful white veil, also embroidered, covers the head and falls below the neck.

The Holy Child gazes upward into his mother’s face and she, with eyes slightly veiled by drooping lids, looks tenderly downward towards him. The background is hilly, with a castle on the left. The picture, oil on a panel (28¾ × 23¾) is signed “Joannes Bellinus.”

This Bellini Madonna comes from the Collection of the Grand Dukes of Oldenburg, Oldenburg Castle, near Bremen, Germany, and was also formerly in the Collection of Count Montija in Madrid. Much has been written about Bellini’s Madonnas. They differ greatly from those painted by the Florentines; and the following sympathetic note tells us why:

“If we turn to the religious art of Venice, we shall be struck by a lack of anything like mystic rapture, or absorption in the sufferings of Christ. We have but two examples in Venice of Bellini’s portrayal of the facts of Christ’s mature life, but he has treated the theme of the Madonna and Child with a unique profundity. The mystery of life seems to be shadowed in the face of the Madonna; his saints and apostles, so striking in their individuality, so virile in their piety, have a significance beyond their perfect act of worship. No Venetian religious painter before Tintoretto equalled Bellini in solemnity and depth of conception; but in all we find the same pervading calm, the same absence of tumult, or the disturbing elements of pain or agony.”17 Is it not the quietness of Bellini’s Madonnas that give them their peculiar charm?

Madonna and Child

Giovanni Bellini	Collection of
(1428–30–1516).	Mr. Philip Lehman.

This picture came from the Collection of Prince Potenziani, of Rieti, Italy, and represents the Virgin standing behind a parapet and supporting the Holy Child who is standing upon it. Her mantle and tunic are decorated with a border of embroidery and over the mantle falls her heavy white veil which might be described as a hood, showing a little of her wavy hair. The face of the Virgin is a perfect oval, her eyes are set far apart, her nose is long and aquiline, and her mouth a little discontented. Her arm and wrist are beautifully modelled and so is the thumb of her right hand. This hand is noticeably wide. The left hand does not seem to match the right; it is coarser. The Holy Child is leaning against His mother’s left shoulder and looking out of the picture. He wears a little tunic over a white shirt with sleeves and a wide, blue sash with a striped pattern. A close-fitting cap is tied with ribbons under His chin. His right hand is lifted in blessing and His left is clasping the fingers of His mother’s right hand. On the right of the parapet a crystal ball is lying and on the left a capsicum-pod, and behind the Madonna’s head hangs a heavy swag of capsicum. The landscape in the background is noticeably fine. On the left, a road winds through trees to the gates of a city with high Gothic towers; on the right, a river flows past hills crowned with castles. Clouds fill the sky. The nimbi are quite unusual. This is evidently an early work and not a little of Mantegna’s influence is apparent in it.

The Feast of the Gods

(Il Baccanale.)

Giovanni Bellini	Collection of
(1428–30–1516).	Mr. Joseph E. Widener.

“In the year 1514”—this is Vasari’s narrative—“Duke Alfonso of Ferrara had caused a little chamber to be decorated and had commissioned Dosso, the painter of Ferrara, to execute in certain compartments stories of Æneas, Mars, and Venus and, in a grotto, Vulcan with two smiths at the forge; and he desired that there should also be there pictures by the hand of Gian Bellini. Bellini painted on another wall a vat of red wine with some Bacchanale around it and Satyrs, musicians and other men and women all drunk with wine, and near them a nude and very beautiful Silenus riding on his ass, with figures about him that have their hands full of fruits and grapes; which work was in truth executed and colored with great diligence, inasmuch that it is one of the most beautiful pictures that Gian Bellini ever painted, although in the manner of the draperies there is a certain sharpness after the German manner (nothing, indeed, of any account) because he imitated a picture by the Fleming,18 Albrecht Dürer, which had been brought in those days to Venice and placed in the Church of S. Bartolommeo, a rare work and full of most beautiful figures painted in oils. On that vat Gian Bellini wrote these words: ‘Joannes Bellinus Venetus P. 1514.’ That work he was not able to finish completely, because he was old, and Tiziano, as the most excellent of all the others, was sent for to the end that he might finish it.”

Titian’s work is to be found in the landscape-background,—which is an exact view of Titian’s own Cadore. This landscape, with its valley and rocky hill surmounted by a castle with towers, bathed in warm, luminous light, was the finest that had ever been painted up to that time. Bellini only lived two years after painting The Feast of the Gods. In 1515 he painted the so-called Venus of the Belvedere and he died in the following year.

“So easy is the passage from Bellini’s art to Titian’s, that the transition creates no contrast. The tone throughout is harmonized, and the art of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries meets and mingles in perfect fellowship,” Crowe and Cavalcaselle note.

This picture, an oil painting on canvas (67 × 74 inches) came from the Collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, England, having been previously in the Collection of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini and in that of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, Rome.

These two villas, upon whose walls The Feast of the Gods hung for so many years, are very celebrated. The Villa Aldobrandini is one of the most notable residences near Rome. It is situated on the slope of a mountain overlooking Frascati and was built by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, who entrusted its decoration to the most eminent artists of his day, such as Jacopo della Porta, Domenichino, Giuseppe Gesari, and Giovanni Fontana. Here, too, were gathered the most precious relics of ancient art, while the gardens, adorned with vases, statues, colonnades, and sparkling fountains, made the exterior a place of marvellous beauty and charm. The view of mountains and sea suggested the name of Belvedere. The Villa belongs to-day to the Borghese family, who inherited it from the Aldobrandini.

The Villa Ludovisi, frequently called the Piombino Palace, is situated on the site of the ancient gardens of Sallust. This palace was erected in 1622 by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV, who selected Domenichino for his architect and the famous Le Nôtre for his landscape-gardener. The property passed by inheritance to the Princess of Piombino (Buonocampagni-Ludovisi).

Art-lovers know the name in connection with the colossal and magnificent head of the Juno Ludovisi (Fifth Century, B. C.); and it will be remembered that the Juno Ludovisi and other antiques from the Villa Ludovisi formed the Museo Buonocompagni.

The Virgin and Child

Titian	Collection of
(1477?–1576).	Mr. Jules S. Bache.

The Virgin, in profile, seated on a stone seat, has auburn hair—“Titian hair”—which is relieved against a dark-green curtain. Her robe is pale rose-color with slashes of white and her mantle of cobalt blue like the landscape, “which resembles the sea at midday.” She also wears a white veil. She is looking with great tenderness at the Holy Child, lying at full length on her lap and smiling at her.

The composition is most beautiful and the introduction of the trees gives perpendicular lines which contrast delightfully with the general horizontal effects.

Lionel Cust calls it a picture of great charm, as indeed it is, and says: “The Virgin leans tenderly over the Child lying upon her knees. This composition is treated in the same manner as the picture at Bergamo, the Virgin and Child with St. Bridgit and St. Ulphus, in the Prado at Madrid, and a few others. In all of these works the sentiment is that of Giorgione, even though the execution is of the hand of Titian; and one could not think of attaching another name than his to this picture and to that at Madrid. It will be noticed also that the two tree-trunks, so much in evidence at the back of the picture, constitute a leit-motiv, which Giorgione first employed and which Titian imitated.”

Herbert F. Cook in his Giorgione (London, 1907), gives this painting to Giorgione, sustaining the claim by the following: “The marble parapet is a feature in Giorgione’s work, but not in Titian’s. But the most convincing evidence to those who know the master lies in the composition, which forms an almost equilateral triangle, revealing Giorgione’s supreme sense of beauty in line. The splendid curves made by the drapery, the pose of the Child, so as to obtain the same unbroken sweep of line, reveal the painter of the Dresden Venus. The painting of the Child’s hand over the Madonna’s is precisely as in the Madrid picture, where, moreover, the pose of the Child is singularly alike. The folds of drapery on the sleeve recur in the same picture, the landscape with the small figure seated beneath the tree is such as can be found in any Giorgione background. The oval of the face and the delicacy of the features are thoroughly characteristic, as is the spirit of calm reverie and tender simplicity which Giorgione has breathed into his figures.”

Whether by Titian, or by Giorgione, or by both, the painting is a gem. If by Giorgione, it would be even more valuable, as this master is so rare.

The painting, oil on panel (18 × 22 inches), came from the Benson Collection and was formerly at Burghley House, Stamford, Northamptonshire, having been acquired in Italy between 1690 and 1700 by the Earl of Exeter.

Tiziano Vecellio was born about 1477 at Pieve di Cadore, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, and was taken to Venice at the age of ten and apprenticed to a mosaic-worker. After this he studied in Giovanni Bellini’s bottega, where he had for a fellow-pupil, Giorgione, with whom he was associated in decorating the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Titian visited Padua, Rome, and, in 1516, Ferrara. Commissions of all kinds followed rapidly and Titian became the most famous painter of his time. He lived in splendid style and his long life was filled with magnificent painting and magnificent results. Titian died of the Plague in 1576.

In his long life, crowned with every kind of success, Titian painted with superlative skill every sort of subject. Titian was one of the greatest masters the world has ever known.

“In attempting to picture Titian,” writes Taine, “we imagine a happy man, the happiest and the healthiest of his species, Heaven having bestowed upon him nothing but favors and felicities: the first among his rivals; visited in his house by the Kings of France and Poland; a favorite of the Emperor, of Philip II, of the Doges, of Pope Paul III, of all the Italian princes; created a knight and a count of the Empire; overwhelmed with orders; liberally paid, pensioned, and worthily enjoying his good fortune. He kept house in great state, dressed himself splendidly, and entertained at his table cardinals, lords, the greatest artists and the ablest writers of his day. Beauty, taste, cultivation, and talent play and reflect back upon him, as if from a mirror the brightness of his own genius. His brother, his son, Orazio, his two cousins, Cesare and Fabrizio, and his relative, Marco di Tiziano, were all excellent painters. His daughter, Lavinia, dressed as Flora, with a basket of fruit on her head, supplied him with a model of fresh complexion and ample form. His talent flows on like a great river in its bed, nothing disturbs its course, and its own increase is sufficient. Like Leonardo and Michelangelo, Titian sees nothing outside of his art.”

Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus

Titian	Collection of
(1477–1576).	Mr. John Ringling.

Proud and handsome this famous Queen and beauty looks down upon us from the centuries. She is wearing a dress of gold and green striped velvet with a pink camelia at her neck and one of those fashionable, tall, sugar-loaf head-dresses—called in France the hennin—with jewelled band around the rim and a floating veil. Very beautifully are her pearls painted; and, fastened by a chain to a bracelet on her left wrist, is a pet chameleon.

This portrait, oils on canvas (43 × 38 inches), came from the Ricardi Palace, Florence, and from the Collection of R. S. Holford, Esq., Dorchester House.

Caterina Cornaro, “La Reine de Chypre,” famous in song and story, was the daughter of Marco Cornaro, a noble Venetian and descendant of the Doge of the same name, and Florence, daughter of Niccolò Crispo, Duca dell’ Archipelago. Caterina was born in Venice in 1454, educated at the Convent of San Benedetto in Padua, and reared in all the wealth and elegance of the time. At an early age she was married to the King of Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Armenia (Jacques de Lusignan), who chose her from sixty-two of the most beautiful women of Venice. The Senate, having adopted Caterina Cornaro as a daughter of the Republic, gave her a dowry of a hundred thousand golden ducats and agreed to defend the Kingdom of Cyprus against all enemies.

The wedding took place by proxy in Venice in 1472 and was celebrated with great magnificence. The Doge, himself, Cristoforo Moro, called for the bride at her palace in the Bucentaur and accompanied her to the Venetian ship in which she embarked with a regal suite for her new home. After experiencing several accidents at sea, the beautiful Venetian lady arrived in Cyprus, where her rare beauty and charming manners captivated the entire population. Within two years her husband died and Caterina then reigned over Cyprus for fourteen years, subject, however, to the strict surveillance of Venice. At last, wearied by restrictions and intrigues, the Queen of Cyprus in 1489 returned to Venice with her beloved brother, Giorgio Cornaro, and made a solemn transfer of all her claims in Cyprus to the Doge.

Caterina then went to Frattalonga, situated at the foot of the Asolani mountains, to meet the Emperor Maximilian, who was on his way home from Milan to Vienna; and the place pleased her so much that she obtained from the Doge, Agostino Barbarigo, the investiture of Asolo and its district. A few months later—in October 1489—Caterina returned to Asolo with a suite of four thousand persons and established a Court in the Castle, where she lived for twenty-one years, protected by troops granted to her by the Republic of Venice. In this beautiful residence Caterina was said to have held three Courts—that of the Muses; that of Love; and that of her own, which was of great magnificence. The leading spirit there was the celebrated poet, Pietro Bembo, (in later years Cardinal Bembo), who wrote his famous dialogues of love, Gli Asolani, here in 1490, for the superb marriage festivities of one of Caterina’s maids-of-honor. Every illustrious personage of the period visited the Court at Asolo.

During the wars occasioned by the League of Cambrai (1508), Caterina returned for safety to Venice and died there in 1510, in the palace of her brother, Giorgio, who was then procurator of St. Mark’s.

Titian painted several other portraits of Caterina Cornaro, of which the one in the Uffizi is the most famous, representing the Queen of Cyprus with her golden crown studded with large pearls and an over-dress or coat of rich green brocade.

Giorgio Cornaro With Falcon

Titian	Collection of
(1489–1576).	Mr. A. W. Erickson.

We have here a famous Venetian statesman and general of the Sixteenth Century, beloved brother of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (see page 143), representing him probably in the habit he liked best of all—that of a sportsman with his pet falcon. Here he stands, three quarters to the right, in a slate-colored hunting coat with brown fur collar and with a black belt at the waist from which hangs a sword, bound with a crimson sash. His curly hair and beard are chestnut color and his eyes are very bright. His head is raised and he looks intently at his falcon perched upon his left gloved hand, with hood, bill and jacket attached, and with his right hand grasps the bird’s breast.

From the left hand corner the head of a white, liver-spotted hound looks up. The background is dark. The painting, an oil on canvas (43 × 38 inches) was formerly in the Collections of the Carignan branch of the Royal House of Piedmont; Louis François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti; the Earl of Carlisle, Castle Howard, Yorkshire, England; and Dr. Edward Simon, Berlin. Crowe and Cavalcaselle in their Life and Times of Titian (London, 1881) say of this work: “Titian never produced a finer picture than which now adorns the gallery of Castle Howard. This beautiful work is modelled with all the richness of tone and smoothness of surface which distinguishes polished flesh. The attitude is natural, the complexion warm and embrowned by the sun; and every part is blended with the utmost finish without producing want of flexibility.”

Giorgio Cornaro succeeded his father, Marco Cornaro in 1479, he being about twenty-five. Italian historians are fond of attributing the Victory of Cadore to Giorgio Cornaro, who lived until 1527, having played an important part all his life in Venetian politics.

Maximilian Sforza, Duke of Milan

Bartolommeo Veneto	Collection of
(1480–1555).	Mr. Henry Goldman.

This portrait, oil on panel (30⅞ × 23¼ inches), was formerly in the Palazzo Sforza and later hung in the Casa Perego, Milan, until the entire Casa Perego Collection was bought in the early Nineteenth Century by Senator Crespi of Rome, in whose gallery it remained until the Crespi Collection was sold. It is doubly interesting as a work of art and as the representation of an important character in Italian history. Bernhard Berenson calls it “one of the most manly portraits and one of the most beautiful paintings of the Italian Renaissance.”

The half-length figure is seen almost full front, but the head is turned slightly to the left. All the Italian Renaissance seems to be expressed in this proud, distinguished person and in his rich dress, which consists of a coat of green velvet trimmed with bands of gold, a finely embroidered white shirt, black waistcoat with horizontal gold stripes and a rich fur collar, which he clasps with his right hand on the index finger of which is a handsome ring. His dark hair falls to the shoulders and is surmounted by a black velvet cap, on the side of which is a gold and enamelled medal showing an allegorical female figure with the date 1512, of the kind that all the fashionable gentlemen were wearing at that period. A red curtain falls behind the figure and on the wall hangs a picture in which are introduced figures from Dürer’s famous woodcut, The Knight and the Lansquenet. In front of the sitter is a narrow ledge, or balustrade, with a card in the centre, which originally carried the signature of Bartolommeo Veneto.

Maximilian Sforza was the son of Ludovico Sforza, “Il Moro,” Duke of Milan, the most illustrious prince of Italy, and Beatrice d’Este, one of the most fascinating and brilliant women of the Italian Renaissance. Maximilian was born on January 25, 1493, in the Castello of Milan, and was named Ercole out of compliment to his grandfather, Duke Ercole of Ferrara. He was brought up in the most brilliant of Courts and his education and training were of the very best. His mother was devoted to him and constantly mentions him in her letters. Ercole appears in the great altar-piece attributed to Zenale, now in the Brera, kneeling by the side of his father. The portrait of this little child must be a good one, for we see the same face grown older in the Veneto portrait before us. On the altar-piece, just mentioned, Ercole’s younger brother kneels by the side of Beatrice d’Este. It was during a visit of the Emperor Maximilian to Ludovico and his wife in 1496 that Ercole received his new name. The Emperor, again charmed by Beatrice, took great interest in her two sons and requested that the elder should be called Maximilian.

But the brilliant days passed and sorrows came. The beautiful, gifted mother died in January, 1497, and the French invaded Milan. Ludovico determined to seek safety in flight and sent his two sons to Germany under the care of his brother, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Cardinal Sanseverino, and their kinswoman, Camilla Sforza. “A truly piteous and heart-breaking sight it was,” wrote an eye-witness, “to see these poor children embrace their beloved father, whose face was wet with their tears.” Twenty mules laden with baggage and a large chariot drawn by eight horses and containing Ludovico’s precious jewels and 240,000 gold ducats followed in the train of the young princes. These young gentlemen never saw their father again, for “Il Moro” was captured, taken to Paris, and imprisoned in the castle of Loches, where he died in 1508.

An Italian writer, Marino Sanuto, exclaimed on the terrible fate of Ludovico: “Only think, reader, what grief and shame so great and glorious a lord, who had been held to be the wisest of monarchs and ablest of rulers, must have felt at losing so splendid a state in these few days, without a single stroke of the sword. Let those who are in high places take warning, considering the miserable fall of this lord, who was held by many to be the greatest prince in the world, and let them remember that when Fortune sets you on the top of her wheel, she may at any moment bring you to the ground.”

The rest of the story is well told in Mrs. Cartwright’s Beatrice d’Este (London, 1889):

“Meanwhile Beatrice’s sons grew up at Innsbrück, under the care of their cousin, the Empress Bianca. It was a melancholy life for these young princes, born in the purple and reared in all the luxury and culture of Milan. And when their cousin, Bianca, died in 1510, they lost their best friend. But a sudden and unexpected turn of the tide brought them once more to the front. That warlike pontiff, Julius II, who, as Cardinal della Rovere, had been one of the chief instruments in bringing the French into Italy, entered into a league with Maximilian to expel them and reinstate the son of the hated Moro on the throne of Milan. They succeeded so well that in 1512, four years after Ludovico’s death at Loches, young Maximilian Sforza entered Milan in triumph amidst the enthusiastic applause of the people. Once more he rode up to the gates of the Castello, where he was born, and took up his abode there as reigning duke. But his rule over Lombardy was short. A handsome, gentle youth, without either his father’s talents or his mother’s high spirit, Maximilian was destined to become a passive tool in the hands of stronger and more powerful men. His weakness and incapacity soon became apparent, and when, three years later, the new French King, Francis I, invaded the Milanese and defeated the Italian army at Marignano, the young duke signed an act of abdication and consented to spend the rest of his life in France. There he lived in honorable captivity, content with a pension allowed him by King Francis and with the promise of a Cardinal’s hat held out to him by the Pope, until he died in May, 1530.”

Bartolommeo Veneto (or Bartolommeo Veneziano), born in 1480, was a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, whose influence is apparent in Veneto’s early pictures. In 1506–1508 Veneto was painting for Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara and after that he was engaged at the Court of Milan, where he painted this portrait of Maximilian Sforza. The picture bears the date 1512, which was the year the young Duke returned to Milan.

Bartolommeo Veneto was famous for his portraits. He lived for sometime in Lombardy and, like all the painters of the time and place, fell under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. As the last trace of him appears on a portrait in the Uffizi, dated 1555, it is supposed that Veneto died in that year.

A Scene Along the Adriatic Coast

Francesco Guardi	Collection of
(1712–1793).	Mrs. Charles B. Alexander.

Guardi, a pupil of Canaletto, devoted himself to the study of his native city, Venice, where he was born in 1712 and where he painted steadily until his death in 1793. Guardi ranks with Canaletto and Turner as one of the three greatest painters of the “Dream City” as Charles Dickens called Venice. In Guardi’s long list of pictures we have a perfect history in paint of the “Queen of the Adriatic” during the Eighteenth Century. There are innumerable views of the Grand Canal; of both the exterior and the interior of San Marco; of San Giorgio, the Salute, San Zaccaria, and other churches; of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (the German banking-house); the Doges Palace; the Piazza and the Piazzetta; scenes on the outlying islands; views on the Lagoons; and pictures of processions of the Doges and of festivals of the church. The picture presented here shows a scene outside of Venice, but not far away; and it is a beautiful and characteristic work of Guardi, both as to composition and color. The painting came from the Collection of the Baron Maurice de Rothschild of Paris to its present owner, Mrs. Charles B. Alexander of New York.