PLATE VIII.—BURIAL OF ST. CATHERINE(In the Brera, Milan)This is one of the frescoes painted by Luini for the Casa Pelucca and transferred to Milan in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It will be seen that although the three angels bearing the Saint to her grave are obviously peasant girls from the plains of Lombardy winged for the occasion, the artist has handled his subject with faith and reverence. The fresco is better preserved than others from the same house.PLATE VIII.—BURIAL OF ST. CATHERINE
(In the Brera, Milan)
This is one of the frescoes painted by Luini for the Casa Pelucca and transferred to Milan in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It will be seen that although the three angels bearing the Saint to her grave are obviously peasant girls from the plains of Lombardy winged for the occasion, the artist has handled his subject with faith and reverence. The fresco is better preserved than others from the same house.
The subjects of the pictures in Saronno’s Sanctuary are all biblical. We have an Adoration of the Magi, showing the same muddled composition that detracts from the other merits of the artist’s work; a beautiful Presentation in the Temple in which the composition is a great deal better; and a perfectly delightful Nativity. There is a Christ is Disputing with the Doctors, and this is the picture in which we find the head that is said to be a portrait of the painter himself. Two female saints figure in another picture, and Luini’s favourites St. Roque and St. Sebastian are not forgotten. Certainly if the monks obtained all that work at the price of the painter’s safety they were very fortunate in his choice of sanctuary.
Como is, of course, a more important town with large industries and importantfactories, and one of the finest cathedrals in northern Italy. For the interior Luini painted another Adoration of the Magi and another of his favourite Nativities. It is not easy to speak about the conditions under which this work was done, and the inhabitants have so many more profitable matters to attend to that they do not seem to trouble themselves about the history of the painter who helped to make their beautiful cathedral still more beautiful.
Legnano, with its memories of Frederick Barbarossa, is within twenty miles of Milan, and for the Church of San Magno Luini painted one of his finest altar-pieces. It is in seven divisions and has earned as much critical admiration as any work from the master’s brush.
Lugano is of course in Switzerland, well across the Italian border. It is a popularplace enough to-day, and so far as we can tell, it was the city in which Luini painted his last pictures. He must have left Milan about 1528 or 1529, and he would seem to have gone there to execute commissions, for in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angioli we find some of his latest and finest work. The Crucifixion and the Passion, on the wall of the screen, contains several hundred figures arranged in lines in most archaic fashion. At first sight the work appears as a mere mass of figures without any central point in the composition, and with very little relief for the eye of the spectator who may come to the church surfeited with the bewildering riches of many Italian galleries. But for those who will take the trouble to study the details of this fine work there is very much to admire. In the scene of the picture Christis seen on the cross surrounded by angels. On his right hand the penitent thief on the cross is guarded by an angel, while on the left the impenitent one is watched by a devil with a curly tail and spiked wings. Below in perfectly bewildering fashion are many figures that may be recognised with little effort—Mary Magdalen, the Madonna, Joseph of Arimathæa, Roman soldiers, some of the general public—a confused crowd. The whole picture is supported by figures of San Sebastian and St. Roque seen on either side of the arch. Stories from the life of Christ are depicted in the upper parts of the picture, all are painted with the skill of a great artist and the fervour of a devotee, but the arrangement is hopelessly confused. Luini also painted a “Last Supper” for this church and a “Madonna with the Infant Christ and St. John.” Thisis signed “Bernardino Luini, anno 1530.” From 1530 until 1533 the career of the artist cannot be traced, but in 1533 he was in Lugano again, and after that year he passes altogether from our sight. Stray writers mention his name, some venture to carry the date of his life into the ’forties, but we have no proof save their word, no work to record the later years, and all our conjecture is vain. It must suffice for us that Luini’s life as far as his art was concerned ends for us with the year 1533. If he lived and worked after that date the facts relating to the following years and the work done in the latter days are left for future students to discover. It is well to remember that the Saronno portrait makes the painter look much older than he is supposed to have been.
To his contemporaries it is clear thatLuini was a man of small importance. His best work is seen outside the radius of the great Art centres of Italy, and it was only when he attracted the attention of great critics and sound judges like Morelli, John Ruskin, and John Addington Symonds that the lovers of beautiful pictures began to go out of their way to find his best work in the little towns whose churchmen were his patrons. So many of the lesser men had all his faults—that is to say, lack of perspective and inability to compose a big picture—that he was classed with them by those critics whose special gift lies in the discovery of faults. The qualities that make the most enduring appeal to us to-day were those that were least likely to make a strong impression upon the strenuous age of physical force in which he lived. When great conquerors and men who had accomplished all that force could achieve felt themselves at liberty to turn to prolonged consideration of the other sides of life they employed other masters. Then as now there were fashions in painters. The men for whom Luini strove were of comparatively small importance. A conqueror could have gathered up in the hollow of his hand all the cities, Milan excepted, in which Luini worked throughout his well-spent life, and in the stress and strife of the later years when great pictures did change hands from time to time by conquest, Luini’s panel pictures in the little cities of his labours passed quite unnoticed, while even if the frescoes were admired it was not easy to move them. When at last his undoubted merits began to attract attention of connoisseurs, these connoisseurs were wondering why Leonardo da Vinci had left such a smallnumber of pictures. They found work that bore a great resemblance to Leonardo and they promptly claimed that they had discovered the lost masterpieces. Consequently Leonardo received the credit that was due to the man who may have worked in his Milanese school and was undoubtedly under his influence for a time. And many of the beautiful panel pictures that show Luini at his best were attributed to Leonardo until nineteenth-century criticism proved competent enough to render praise where it was due, and to say definitely and with firm conviction that the unknown painter from Luino, who lived sometime between 1470 and 1540, was the true author.
If, in dealing with the life of Bernardino Luini, we are forced to content ourselves with meagre scraps of biography and little details that would have no importance at all in dealing with a life that was traceable from early days to its conclusion, it is well to remember that the most important part of the great artist is his work. Beethoven’s nine symphonies, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the landscapes of Corot, the portraits of Velazquez, and the carving of Grinling Gibbons are not more precious to us because we know something of the life of the men who did the work. Nor are the “Iliad” and the fragments that remain of the works of the great Greek sculptors less to us because a shadowy tradition is all that surrounds the lives of the men who gave immortal work to the world. We must remember that it is as difficult to deal with art in terms of literature as it is to express the subtle charm of music in words. Had Luini’s years boasted or regretted a series of gossiping newspapers we should have gathered arich harvest of fact, but the facts would have left the painter where he is. There is enough of Luini left in Milan and the smaller places we have named to tell us what the man was and the spirit in which he worked, and while we will welcome the new-comer who can add to our scanty store of authenticated facts we can hardly expect that they will deepen our admiration of work that for all its shortcomings must be remembered when we turn to ponder the greatest achievements of Italian Art. It forms “a magic speculum, much gone to rust, indeed, yet in fragments still clear; wherein the marvellous image of his existence does still shadow itself, though fitfully, and as with an intermittent light.”
The plates are printed byBemrose Dalziel, Ltd., WatfordThe text at theBallantyne Press, Edinburgh