"Mighty and potent Lords and beloved Brethren;"I have here in my service Francesco di Giorgio, your fellow-citizen and my most favourite architect, who desires to be placed in your magnificent magistracy, as the ambition of his genius, excellence, prudence, and worth. I therefore pray your Highnesses that you will be pleased to elect him thereto, and to admit him into the number of your public men, which I shall regard as a special boon, as will be more fully stated to you on my behalf by your mighty ambassador. And your Lordships may be assured that were I not convinced that only good, faithful, and useful service is to be looked for from him, I should not propose him, nor intercede in his favour. And nothing more gratifying could I ever receive from your Lordships, to whom I offer and commend myself."From Durante, the 26th July, 1480."Federicus Dux Urbini ac Durantis Comes,et Regius Capit. Gener., et S. Ro. Ecclesie Gonfalonierus."[160]
"Mighty and potent Lords and beloved Brethren;
"I have here in my service Francesco di Giorgio, your fellow-citizen and my most favourite architect, who desires to be placed in your magnificent magistracy, as the ambition of his genius, excellence, prudence, and worth. I therefore pray your Highnesses that you will be pleased to elect him thereto, and to admit him into the number of your public men, which I shall regard as a special boon, as will be more fully stated to you on my behalf by your mighty ambassador. And your Lordships may be assured that were I not convinced that only good, faithful, and useful service is to be looked for from him, I should not propose him, nor intercede in his favour. And nothing more gratifying could I ever receive from your Lordships, to whom I offer and commend myself.
"From Durante, the 26th July, 1480.
"Federicus Dux Urbini ac Durantis Comes,et Regius Capit. Gener., et S. Ro. Ecclesie Gonfalonierus."[160]
Although this request was unsuccessful, so well was Francesco appreciated at home, that on several occasions Duke Guidobaldo vainly applied to the magistracy for his services. Yet he was frequently employed in the duchy from 1484 to 1489, the palace at Gubbio affording him partial employment. His military reputation being now widely spread, he had commissions from various princes, especially the sovereigns of Milan and Naples; but through these labours we need not follow him. The time of his death is not known; he, however, outlived most of the fortresses he had raised for Federigo, which were dismantled by orderof his son, on abandoning his state in 1502, a policy suggested by confident reliance on his subjects' attachment, as the best guarantee of his eventual restoration. Francesco's MSS., dispersed in various libraries, are described in Promis's first volume. One of them, on architecture, transcribed for Guidobaldo II., was presented by him to Emanuel Filibert, Duke of Savoy, in 1568, and now ornaments the Royal Library at Turin. The invention of that variety of bastion called in Italybaluardo, and in Germanybollwerk, has been claimed for several engineers, among whom are three names belonging to Urbino,—Duke Francesco Maria I., Centogatti the painter, and Commandino the mathematician. Promis, in the second volume of his work already quoted, disposes of all these pretensions in favour of Francesco di Giorgio. His learned discussion may be allowed to decide this point, to which little interest now attaches, as well as the question of explosive mines for the destruction of military defences. Such an application of gunpowder had already been partially resorted to, but the Sienese engineer first established its importance and methodised its application.
Giovanni Sanzi of Urbino—His son the immortal Raffaele—Early influences on his mind—Paints at Perugia, Città di Castello, Siena, and Florence—His visits to Urbino, and works there.
Giovanni Sanzi of Urbino—His son the immortal Raffaele—Early influences on his mind—Paints at Perugia, Città di Castello, Siena, and Florence—His visits to Urbino, and works there.
WITHGiovanni Sanzi[*161]we have already made acquaintance as an epic poet. The patient labour of the Abbé Pungeleoni, and the critical acumen of Passavant, have amply refuted Malvasia's spiteful, and Lanzi's careless but often quoted assertions, that the father of Raffaele was an obscure potter, or, at best, an indifferent artist, from whom his son could learn little.[162]Those only who have traced out his pictures in the remote townships and villages of his native duchy, and who estimate his works by coeval productions, can appreciate his real merits. Giovanni Sanzi was of a humble family in the village of Colbordolo, a few miles east of Urbino, for whose fictitious ancestry of artists there has been substituted by his painstaking but most puzzle-headed eulogist, a pedigree of peasantry from the middle of the fourteenth century. The son of one Sante, he assumed the patronymic Santi or Sanzi, which was subsequently euphonised by Bembo for his son into Sanzio. His grandfather Peruzuolo, afterhis losses by the Malatesta forays already alluded to,[163]had sold the petty holdings he possessed at Colbordolo, and removed his family to Urbino, where Sante became a retail dealer in various wares, and where he seems to have died in easy circumstances in 1485, nine years before his son. The inquiries of Pungeleoni have failed to ascertain the time of Giovanni's birth, but it was probably to these losses that the poet thus touchingly alludes, in his dedication,[164]as the impulse under which he became a painter:—"It would be tedious to relate the many straits and headlong precipices through which I have steered my life since fate devoured in flames my paternal nest, wherein was consumed all our substance; but arriving at the age when perhaps inclination would have led me to some more useful exercise of talent, of the many lines by which I might have gained a living, I devoted myself to the marvellous art of painting, which indeed (in addition to the round of domestic cares, of all human concerns the most ceaseless torment) imposes a burden heavy even to the shoulders of Atlas, and in which distinguished profession I blush not to be enrolled." Neither are we enabled to throw any light upon the lessons to which Giovanni resorted for instruction in the calling which he thus, at some sacrifice of material interests, had adopted. The catalogue of contemporary artificers introduced into his Chronicle, including all that was eminent from Gentile da Fabriano to Leonardo da Vinci, shows a most extensive acquaintance with their respective styles, as well as their names.[165]Mantegna is one of them whom he specially extols; there is, however, no similarity between their productions. Yet, though we know nothing of Sanzi's artistic education, the works which Nelli, Gentile da Fabriano, and Piero della Francesca left in Urbino must have influenced his early impressions; and it is singularthat nothing is said by them of these, and others who painted in the duchy, beyond the passing notice bestowed with little discrimination on all his contemporaries. The marked exclusion from this list of Justus of Ghent is plausibly conjectured by Passavant to indicate a professional jealousy of one who treasured as his secret the so-called oil painting brought by him from Flanders, and certainly never attained by Giovanni. Sanzi's manner partakes generally of the Umbrian character,—grave, reflective, self-possessed, without aiming at dramatic effect or artificial embellishment, yet not deficient in variety, or graceful expression. More severe than Perugino, he approaches the serious figures of Melozzo da Forlì, but subdues their naturalism by an infusion of devotional sincerity and simple feeling. He is partial to slender forms and delicately drawn feet and hands, but the contours are dark and hard, the flesh-tints dull and heavy, tending to cold gray in the shadows, and generally deficient in middle tints and reflections. His female faces are oval, often of a dusky complexion, and their foreheads singularly full. In the nude, he was in advance of his age, and in landscape he attained great proficiency. Pungileone enumerates about twenty of his pictures, many of them still in their original sites, and exhibiting considerable inequality of merit. But hiscapo-d'opera, and one of the most important monuments of Umbrian art, is the fresco in the Tiranni chapel, at S. Domenico of Cagli. In the recess over the altar is the Madonna, enthroned between two angels, in one of whom is understood to be portrayed the young Raffaele, then a child of eight or nine years old. At the sides stand Saints Peter, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and John Baptist. On the lunette above, Christ has just emerged from his tomb in the mountain rock: a glorious Deity, the conqueror of death, he bears in his left hand the banner of salvation, while his right is raised to bless a redeemedworld, and scattered around lie six guards asleep, foreshortened in various and difficult attitudes. The vaulted roof displays a choir of angelic children, sounding their instruments and chanting songs of glory to the Saviour, who occupies its centre, holding the book of life: and on the external angles are small medallions of the Annunciation. There is, perhaps, no contemporary painting superior to this in grandeur of composition and stately pose of the figures; nor is it less admirable for novelty of composition and variety and ease of movement. The design is at once correct and flowing, and the expression, though fervid, oversteps not truth and nature. Passavant well observes that the breadth, vigour, and dexterous treatment of this painting proved its author to have been well practised in fresco, although but one other such work of his has escaped destruction or whitewash. In his house at Urbino, there is a small mural painting, removed many years since from the ground-floor to the first story, which tradition fondly claims as a boyish production of Raffaele, but which Passavant ascribes to Sanzi, conjecturing it to represent his wife and child. It is impossible to pronounce a satisfactory judgment as to the master, from the load of over-painting in oil. Though called a Madonna and Child, it seems rather a gentle mother, who, having hushed her babe to sleep upon her knee, reads from the breviary on a stand by her seat, and the composition and attitudes present a charming naïveté and natural expression. Connoisseurs agree in rejecting its claims as a work of Raffaele; nor does it quite resemble his father's usual type, though it is difficult to substitute any more plausible theory for the conclusion of Passavant. The reader may form his own judgment from the accompanying outline, bearing in mind that much of the drapery belongs to the pencil of a merciless restorer.
RaphaelRafaello Sanzi di Anni Sei nato il dì 6 apr. 1483 Sanzi Padre dipinseGio. Sanzi pinx.L. Ceroni sculp.RAPHAEL, AGED SIX YEARSFrom a picture once in the possession of James Dennistoun
Raphael
Rafaello Sanzi di Anni Sei nato il dì 6 apr. 1483 Sanzi Padre dipinse
Gio. Sanzi pinx.L. Ceroni sculp.
RAPHAEL, AGED SIX YEARS
From a picture once in the possession of James Dennistoun
Such was the father to whom there was born at Urbino,on the 6th of April, 1483,[*166]a sonRaffaele[167]; the superiority of whose qualities to those of preceding artists, and to ordinary men, has been acknowledged in several languages by the epithet "divine." Although ever the object of pride and popularity to all Italy, the incidents of his life have, until of late years, been comparatively neglected, and more ample justice has been rendered to his fame by ultramontane than by native biographers. Vasari's narrative, though compiled with more than his usual pains, and lavish in laudatory epithets, is far from satisfactory. Its author was the partial historian of a rival school, the favourite pupil of its jealous head. As a Florentine, moreover, he was bound by Italian usage to keep in shadow the merits of all "foreign" competitors and teachers. Raffaele he never saw, whose best pupils had left Rome ere Vasari visited the eternal city: with his Apennine home, its records and memorials, the latter had probably no personal acquaintance. While, therefore, we own our obligations to the writer of Arezzo for many important facts and valuable criticisms, we feel surprised that during above two centuries no attempt was made to supplement his obvious deficiencies.
RaphaelAndersonRAPHAELAfter the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Raphael
Anderson
RAPHAEL
After the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Another meagre life of Raffaele, composed soon after his death, and upon which Vasari seems to have drawn largely, was published by Comolli in 1790, from an anonymous MS.
It may be well to preface these observations by borrowing a passage of equal aptness and eloquence from an able review of Passavant's work.[168]
"We may doubt whether in the whole range of modern history, or within the compass of modern Europe, one moment or one spot could be found more singularly propitious than those which glory in Raffaele's birth. He was happy in his parentage and in his patrons, in his master and in his pupils, in his friends and in his rivals: the first misfortune of his life was its rapid and untimely close. He was late enough to profit by the example, early enough to feel the living influence of four of the greatest masters of his art, of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Giorgione, and Fra Bartolomeo. The art of painting in oil had been introduced into Italy barely half a century before his birth; its technical difficulties were already mastered, but it still awaited a master's hand to develop its latent capabilities. His short life included the Augustan age of papal Rome, the age of its splendour and magnificence, if not of its power, and he died almost before the far-off sound of the rising storm had broken the religious calm, or foretold the coming miseries of Italy. The two pontiffs whom he served out-shone the most illustrious of their predecessors in their luxurious tastes and lavish patronage of the fine arts; and these arts still served the Church, not only with the grateful zeal of favouredchildren, but with the earnest devotion of undoubting faith.... In the age of Raffaele, while the rich and often graceful legends of the Catholic mythology still retained their ancient hold on the popular belief, the growing taste among the learned of the day for the literature and philosophy of ancient Greece had done much, by softening their early rudeness ere it chilled their early feeling, to mould them to the higher purposes of art. Christian art too, relinquishing at last her long attachment to traditional types and conventional treatment, was willing to exchange a fruitless opposition to the graces and beauties of ancient art, for a bold attempt to enlist them in her service."
In truth, when we examine the character and the times of those men who have left the stamp of their genius most deeply on the mind or destinies of mankind, we generally find a providential adaptation of the one to the other. So was it with the greatest masters of art. Had Michael Angelo appeared a century sooner, he would have found the public unprepared, by a gradual advance of naturalism, for the revolution which he was destined to bring about. They would have seen in him the terrible, without perceiving how much truth accompanied it. Deprived of the sympathy and encouragement which no wayward spirit ever more demanded, he would have failed to achieve the marvellous, and might have perhaps scarcely risen above the monstrous. Leonardo da Vinci could, in any epoch, have given sweet or intellectual qualities to beautifully moulded features, but instead of enlightening the world upon the theory and practice of his art, and developing the infant powers of mathematical engineering, he might in an earlier age have been an alchymist, in a later one the improver of spinning-jennies. Titian, who would have been cramped by the lessons of a Crivelli, grew to manhood ere the league of Cambray had curbed the golden coursers of St. Mark's; and thus he formedhis beau-ideal of noble bearing ere the subjects for his pencil had ceased to be the arbiters of Italy, the merchant-princes of the world. A mind such as Raffaele's, would in all circumstances have found or created materials of beauty. He might have been the purest of devotional painters in the days of Giotto, a reformer of corrupted taste in those of Bernini; but, placed on the confines of the old manner and the new, it was his proud distinction to perfect them both.
Our antecedent remarks on the Umbrian masters have afforded us data for ascertaining the state of painting in the duchy at the advent of Raffaele. There were, indeed, few pictures within its bounds upon which the youthful aspirant might form an exalted style, but in his father he possessed an instructor competent to point out all that was worthy of study among contemporary limners, as well as to initiate him in the mechanism of his profession.[169]Too early was he deprived of this advantage,[*170]but not before he had been the companion of his parent's labours. Whilst we refuse to even his precocious genius the credit of working upon the fresco at Cagli,[171]the introduction of his portrait into it proves that he witnessed its progress. It was perhaps on similar opportunities that he imbibed, before the beautiful Madonnas of Romita and Forano, those purely devotional inspirations which are believed to have influenced his earlier and happier creations.[172]
With a mind thus prepared, and with the encouraging example of the Feltrian court, where talent and genius were sure passports to patronage and distinction, he was sent to study at Perugia soon after his father's death. This bereavement, which clouded his domestic peace not less than his artistic prospects, occurred in 1494, and was immediately followed by the loss of his maternal grandfather and grandmother, leaving him in the hands of a selfish and litigious stepmother. At this juncture, his guardian and paternal uncle Bartolomeo judiciously selected as a master for him Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino,[*173]the tender melancholy of whose candid and unimpassioned countenances contradict Vasari's wanton libels on his fair name, not less than a motto on his self-limned portrait, first noted by Mr. Ruskin, which indicates his belief that the fear of God is the foundation of artistic excellence.[*174]Whatever difference of opinion regarding the merits of that painter may have originated in the occasional inequality of the works attributed to him, no contemporary sent forth more scholars of excellence, or so faithfully maintained the integrity of Christian sentiment against ever increasing innovations. Unfortunately we are possessed of no authentic particulars regarding the interval which young Sanzio spent in a studio so congenial to his nature, or the paintings in which he had a hand; and thus those years most important to the formation of his character and style are a blank in his biography.[*175]At Perugia and elsewhere there are a few devotional pictures ascribed to him, by tradition or as signed with his initials; but even were their authenticity less doubtful, their insignificance and entire conformity to the type of Perugino would almost remove them fromcriticism. The admitted fact that Pinturicchio, a man of high genius, and about thirty years his senior, had recourse to the beardless Raffaele for designs, when employed to paint the cathedral-library at Siena, establishes thus early the two leading features of his after life, supereminent ability and conciliatory manners; and two of these drawings remain to prove how superior were the conceptions of the boy, to the execution of his matured comrade, excellent as that beyond all question is. He probably attended Perugino to Fano in 1497, when painting those lovely altar-pieces in S. Maria Nuova, which yield to no other production of his placid and expressive pencil, although we can scarcely accept a tradition which ascribes to the pupil some Madonna groups in the predella, upon the ground of their excelling his master's capacity.
MadonnaAlinariMADONNA AND CHILDAfter the picture by Giovanni Santi, in the Pinacoteca of Urbino
Madonna
Alinari
MADONNA AND CHILD
After the picture by Giovanni Santi, in the Pinacoteca of Urbino
Raffaele is supposed to have returned in 1499 to a home where he found few attractions. The moment was unpropitious for attracting the ducal patronage. Guidobaldo had retired from the Bibbiena campaign invalided and dispirited; the descent of French armies upon Italy banished from his thoughts the congenial pursuits of peace, and he repaired to Venice to take part in the coming strife. There was little inducement for the young Sanzio to establish himself at the board of an ungracious stepmother, so he set forth to try his fortunes at the neighbouring capital of Vitelli, and Città di Castello was enriched by the first works undertaken on his own account. One of these, S. Nicolò di Tolentino crowned by the Madonna, has disappeared in the rapine of the French revolutionary invasion; but another altar-picture of the Crucifixion, lately obtained from the Fesch Gallery by Lord Ward, enables us to appreciate this artist's extraordinary promise. But for the nameRaphael Urbinas, this would probably be ranked with the works of Perugino in which he was assisted by his pupil; and such as best know the paintings of that master at his happiestmoment, can most appreciate the compliment of classing with them the unaided though imitative efforts of a lad of seventeen. The Sposalizio of the Madonna, abstracted from Città di Castello by the French, and now at Milan, is of four years later date, being marked 1504; but it was little more than a repetition of a similar work of his master, which, during the same havoc, was carried across the Alps, and remains at Caen in Normandy.[*176]The only specimen of his pencil still in the city which was the cradle of his fame, is a processional standard of theconfraternita de' giustiziatiin Trinity Church, representing on its two sides the Trinity with Christ on the Cross, and the Creation of Eve.[*177]Though a mere wreck, it shows a novelty of composition and a delicacy of execution already distinguishing him from the manner of Perugino.
The fame of these maiden efforts spread along the valley of the Tiber, and the novice was soon recalled to Perugia, to paint for the Oddi family an altar-piece of the Coronation of the Madonna, now with its predella in the Vatican Gallery. In rich and varied composition, it excels all antecedent representations of this favourite Umbrian theme, and establishes a decided advance beyond the standard of beauty adopted by Perugino. Now, too, he began his wonderful series of small devotional pictures, embodying the Madonna in conceptions of beauty which none other but the sainted limner of Fiesole has ever approached. On this his first emancipation from Umbria, he became acquainted with the classicism and naturalism then revolutionising art. At Siena, his perception of beauty was gratified by an exquisite Grecian statuary group of the Graces, which he transferred to his tablets, and afterwards reproducedin a picture. Tempted by the proximity of Florence, he seems to have then glanced at, rather than examined, those new elements which Masaccio and Verocchio had introduced, and which a host of able masters were enthusiastically developing.[178]
Ecce HomoAlinariECCE HOMOFrom the picture by Giovanni Santi in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
Ecce Homo
Alinari
ECCE HOMO
From the picture by Giovanni Santi in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
The miserable state of his native duchy, as well as his many professional engagements, fully accounts for his prolonged absence from it; but a better state of things was now restored, of which he hastened to avail himself. He reached Urbino in 1504, before midsummer of which year, the Duke had returned to enjoy a tranquil home, for the first time during above two years. The visit was well timed, and fraught with important results to the young painter, for, besides sharing his sovereign's patronage, he became known to his sister, widow of the Lord Prefect, and to her son, who was about that time formally adopted as the future Lord of Urbino. The accession of Julius II., uncle to this youth, and his partiality to art, opened up a wide field of promise to one thus favourably introduced to the Pope's nearest relatives. But these dazzling prospects, and the charms of a cultivated court, were postponed to that professional improvement for which he thirsted; and, after executing some minor commissions for Guidobaldo, the young Sanzio hastened back to the banks of the Arno, where the muse of painting was rewarding the worship of her ardent and talented votaries with revelations of high art rarely before or since vouchsafed. The favour he had already earned from the Prefectress is testified by the following recommendation, which he received from her on setting out.
"To the magnificent and lofty Lord, regarded with filial respect, the Lord Gonfaloniere of Justice of the distinguished republic of Florence.[179]"Magnificent and lofty Lord, respected as a father! The bearer hereof will be Raffaele, painter of Urbino, who, having a fine genius for his profession, has resolved to stay some time at Florence for study. And knowing his father to be very talented, and to possess my particular regard, and the son to be a judicious and amiable youth, I in every way love him greatly, and desire his attainment in good proficiency. I therefore recommend him to your Lordship, in the strongest manner possible, praying you, as you love me, that you will please to afford him every assistance and favour that he may chance to require; and whatever such aids and obligations he may receive from your Lordship, I shall esteem as bestowed on myself, and as meriting my special gratitude. I commend myself to your Lordship."From Urbino, 1st October, 1504."Joanna Feltria de Ruvere,Ducissa Soræ et Urbis Prefectissa."
"To the magnificent and lofty Lord, regarded with filial respect, the Lord Gonfaloniere of Justice of the distinguished republic of Florence.[179]
"Magnificent and lofty Lord, respected as a father! The bearer hereof will be Raffaele, painter of Urbino, who, having a fine genius for his profession, has resolved to stay some time at Florence for study. And knowing his father to be very talented, and to possess my particular regard, and the son to be a judicious and amiable youth, I in every way love him greatly, and desire his attainment in good proficiency. I therefore recommend him to your Lordship, in the strongest manner possible, praying you, as you love me, that you will please to afford him every assistance and favour that he may chance to require; and whatever such aids and obligations he may receive from your Lordship, I shall esteem as bestowed on myself, and as meriting my special gratitude. I commend myself to your Lordship.
"From Urbino, 1st October, 1504.
"Joanna Feltria de Ruvere,Ducissa Soræ et Urbis Prefectissa."
This letter probably obtained him more civility than substantial benefit; as his various Florentine works attributed to this period were commissioned by private parties. Among these was Taddeo Taddei, correspondent of Bembo, and a well known friend of letters, for whom he painted the Madonna del Cardellino and another Holy Family, and of whose hospitalities and many favours he expresses a deep sense, in recommending him to his uncle's good offices at Urbino, whither the Florentine probably repaired to visit its famed court. Other kindfriends and patrons were Lorenzo Nasi and Angelo Doni; but his chief object seems to have been the society and instructions of the best painters, which the acquaintance of his early master Perugino with Florence, as well as his own winning manners, must have facilitated. Leonardo da Vinci, whom Giovanni Sanzi couples with Perugino, as
"Two youths of equal years and equal love,"
was then at the height of his fame, and in direct competition with Michael Angelo, the eventual rival of Raffaele, whose energetic genius was already striding forward on his ambitious career. Fra Bartolomeo was adapting their new and advanced style to the devotional feeling which hung around his cloister in the frescoes of Beato Angelico. Domenico Ghirlandaio was dead, but his mantle had fallen on a son Ridolfo, whom the young Sanzio selected as his favourite associate, to the mutual advantage of both. In such companionship did Raffaele study the grand creations of preceding painters; borrowing from them, or from living artists, ideas and expedients which his fertile genius reproduced with original embellishments. The influence of Da Vinci may be distinctly detected on some of his Madonnas and portraits of this period,—that of the Dominican monk on others, and on his general colouring; but the fresco of the former at S. Onofrio, and many works of the latter, prove that they reciprocated the obligation, by freely adopting his design. Early prepossessions as yet kept him exempt from the contagion of mythological compositions; but in portraiture he found a new and interesting field, and several admirable heads, produced at Florence, attest his great success, as a naturalist of the most elevated caste.
SebastianAlinariS. SEBASTIANAfter the picture by Timoteo Viti in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
Sebastian
Alinari
S. SEBASTIAN
After the picture by Timoteo Viti in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
In an æsthetic view, the paintings and drawings executed by Raffaele at Florence are of infinite importance, but it would lead us much too far to examine the progressive development and naturalist tendencies which they display.We have not attempted to separate his various residences there from 1504 to 1508; for during these three years and a half, that city may be regarded as his head-quarters, varied by visits to Perugia, Bologna, and Urbino, which we shall now notice. In 1505, he was summoned to the first of these cities to execute three altar-pictures; one of which, at Blenheim, has been beautifully engraved by Gruner[*180]; another adorns the Museo Borbonico; the third, representing the coronation of the Madonna, is in the Vatican. Of the last commission some curious particulars are preserved. The nuns of Monte Luce having selected the young Sanzio, on the report of several citizens and reverend fathers, who had seen his performances, agreed to give him for the picture 120 golden ducats, and to another artist, Berto, 80 more for the carved framework and cornice, including three predella subjects; 30 ducats of the price being paid in advance. Raffaele's impatience to return to his studies soon carried him again to Florence, and a new contract for execution of the work was made in 1516; but death had removed both the abbess and the artist ere it was fulfilled, and ten years more elapsed before the picture was terminated by his pupils. The earliest attempt of Raffaele upon fresco, in the church of S. Severo, at Perugia, is dated 1505; its chief interest arises from being a first and incompleted idea of the grand composition which, originating with Orcagna and Fra Angelico, he developed in the Disputa of the Vatican Stanze. Two years later he revisited Perugia, to paint for the Baglioni one of his noblest and most elaborate altar-pictures, which, indeed, may be regarded as his first important dramatic composition. Its subject was the Entombment; the many extant sketches for which, prove the care exercised upon the cartoon, which he prepared at Florence. It is now the chef-d'œuvre of the Borghese Gallery, and its beautifully pure predellais preserved in the Vatican. The same subject was treated by Perugino, in, perhaps, the finest of his panel pictures, which now ornaments the Pitti Gallery.
FornarinaAlinariMARGHERITA “LA FORNARINA”After the picture by Raphael called La Donna Velata in the Pitti Gallery, Florence
Fornarina
Alinari
MARGHERITA “LA FORNARINA”
After the picture by Raphael called La Donna Velata in the Pitti Gallery, Florence
We shall not discuss whether Raffaele's acquaintance with Francia was formed by correspondence, or during a visit to Bologna, but one letter addressed by him to that charming artist is preserved, referring to much previous intercourse, and to a friendly interchange of drawings, and of their respective portraits. Their works, at all events, were mutually well known to each other, partly no doubt through Timoteo Viti, the pupil of both. It is worthy of note that Sanzio, writing to this friend after quitting Florence, the hotbed of classicism and naturalism, commends his Madonnas as "unsurpassed in beauty, in devotion, or in execution," thus showing the comparative value he attached to these respective excellences, among which "truth to nature," the favourite test of Vasari and later critics, has no place; and it is only when he comes to speak of the artist's own portrait, that he lauds it as "most beautiful, and life-like even to deception." It was this common sentiment that linked these master-minds: Raffaele was in the main a devotional painter, Francia was almost exclusively so.
The year 1506 was momentous to Urbino. In the spring Guidobaldo returned, after a long absence from his capital, occasioned by pressing solicitations of his brother-in-law the Pope, that he would remain near him. The following autumn brought the Pontiff in person to visit his relation, at whose court his Holiness spent four days. During part of this year, Raffaele is supposed by Passavant to have resided in his native city, and possibly he may there have been presented to Julius; at all events he must have become known to several members of the polished circle at Urbino, whose acquaintance ere long proved useful and honourable to him at Rome, and who were able to forward his interests, both with that Popeand his successor. Such were Giuliano de' Medici, Castiglione, Bembo, and the Cardinal Bibbiena, while the high tone of intellect and taste, which prevailed in that select society, was calculated to improve as well as gratify his noble nature. Nor was his pencil idle in the Duke's service. Our information does not enable us absolutely to decide what of his Urbino works were produced on this occasion, and which of them are referable to his former visit, but we willingly adopt Passavant's classification of the pictures he is supposed to have painted for Guidobaldo, the first three being ascribed by that author to the year 1504.
1. Christ in the Garden, with three disciples sleeping in the distance, No. VIII. of Passavant's Engravings, a Peruginesque picture, "of miniature finish" as described by Vasari, before whose time it had passed to the Camaldolese Convent at Urbino, having been gifted by Duchess Leonora to two members of that fraternity at her son's baptism. Long subsequently, a prior of the Gabrielli is said to have alienated it to his own family; and in 1844 it was purchased from the Roman prince of that name by Mr. William Coninghame, at the sale of whose interesting collection in 1849, it was acquired by Mr. Fuller Maitland of Stansted in Essex.
2. and 3. Two small pictures which, unless commissioned asex votoofferings, belong rather to the class of romantic than devotional compositions. They represent St. George and St. Michael subduing their respective monsters, allegories of their triumphs over sin. The former of these is supposed to have been executed for Guidobaldo, and presented by him to the French King, by whom the latter was ordered as its companion. Both remain in the Louvre.
4. Another St. George slaying the Dragon with a lance, while the former one uses a sword. This picture, signed on the horse trappingsRaphello V., is of especialinterest to our countrymen, the Knight's knee being encircled by the Garter of England, as patron of that order: it was painted by the Duke's command in commemoration of his receiving this distinction; and in all probability was carried as a present to Henry VII. by Castiglione, in 1506, when he went to London as proxy at his master's installation. There it graced the palace of the Tudors and Stuarts until sold for £150 by the Commonwealth to Lord Pembroke. It was subsequently purchased by Catherine of Russia from the Crozat Collection, in which it is engraved.
FornarinaAndersonMARGHERITA LA FORNARINAAfter the spoiled picture by Raphael in the Galleria Barberini in Rome
Fornarina
Anderson
MARGHERITA LA FORNARINA
After the spoiled picture by Raphael in the Galleria Barberini in Rome
5. and 6. Two easel pictures of the Madonna, stated by Vasari to have been commissioned for the Duke of Urbino, are traced by Passavant to the Imperial Gallery at St. Petersburg, and to M. Nieuwenhuys of Brussels.
7. The portrait of Raffaele by himself, now in the Florence Gallery, is understood to have been executed at Urbino in 1506, whence it was carried to Rome by Federigo Zucchero, and placed in the academy of St. Luke, until obtained thence by the influence and gold of Cardinal Lorenzo de' Medici. Passavant considers that the hair and eyes have been darkened by restorations, and corrects a mistake of the Canonico Crespi, who has occasioned some confusion by mistaking an old copy of it still in the Albani Palace at Urbino for a fresco, and by writing to Bottari in 1760 as if he had there discovered an original likeness of Sanzio.[*181]
The Holy Family and St. John in the Ellesmere Collection, called the Madonna del Passeggio, is alleged to have been presented by a duke of Urbino to Philip II., and by him to the Emperor. Thence it is traced through Queen Christina to the Odescalchi and Orleans Galleries. Passavant appears to consider the Penshanger Madonna to have also been painted in the duchy. To the same period are ascribed missing portraits by Sanzio of Duke Guidobaldo I. and his Duchess, as well as of Bembo, Giuliano de' Medici, and others of their court.
Though somewhat out of chronological order, we may here mention the portrait of a duke of Urbino, with those of Julius II., and a Magdalene, all said to have been from his easel, and to have belonged to the ducal family, particulars of which will be found in the list of Urbino pictures in the Appendix to our third volume. It, however, seems doubtful if he ever did portray either of his successive legitimate sovereigns; but a half-length of Lorenzo de' Medici, the usurping Duke, was purchased in Florence by the late M. Fabre about twenty-five years ago, and is now in the museum bequeathed by him to Montpellier. It is ascribed to Raffaele, and there is a good copy of it in the hall of Baroccio at the Uffizi of Florence. We have not connected any other works of his with Urbino, which, after the visit of 1506, he was not destined again to see.
Writing from Florence to his maternal uncle, on the 21st of April, 1508, he expresses his regrets for the recent death of Guidobaldo, in brief and somewhat common-place terms; and, passing to other matters, begs that the Duke's nephew and heir may be requested to recommend by letter his services to the Gonfaloniere, for employment on some frescoes then in contemplation at Florence. He desires that the favour may be asked in his own name, as essentially advantageous to his views, specially commending himself to the young Prefect as an old servant and follower. Yet it would seem that he had already made for himself a better title to such patronage, in a mural painting of the Last Supper in the refectory of S. Onofrio. The recent discovery of this precious work, after centuries of oblivion, restores to him the credit of his most important Tuscan production, and adds another to the many attractions of Florence.[*182]
Raffaele is called to Rome, and employed upon the Stanze—His frescoes there—His other works—Change in his manner—Compared with Michael Angelo—His death, character, and style.
Raffaele is called to Rome, and employed upon the Stanze—His frescoes there—His other works—Change in his manner—Compared with Michael Angelo—His death, character, and style.
THE letter alluded to at the close of ourpreceding chaptermay be regarded as the matured result of Raffaele's careful study of the Tuscan masters, and an index of his resolution to rival the admired cartoons which had recently placed Da Vinci and Buonarroti at the head of living artists. Another scene was, however, reserved for his triumphs. Julius II. had begun to construct the metropolitan church and palace of Christendom with an energy befitting his character and the undertaking. Michael Angelo and Bramante were already in his service, and he sought to enlist talent and genius from all quarters for this object. The friendly influence of the ducal family, the recommendations of Bramante, or his own extending fame, possibly an acquaintance formed with him at Urbino in 1506, may have suggested Raffaele as a worthy associate in the work. On the Pope's summons he abandoned his projects at Florence early in the autumn of 1508, and, leaving several pictures to be finished by his worthy follower Ridolfo Ghirlandaio,
The tower of Borgia, named from Alexander VI., was at that period the pontifical residence, and on its decoration the best artists had been successfully employed. The lower story was terminated under Alexander by Pinturicchio and his pupils; the upper had already engaged the hands of Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, and Perugino, but several of its compartments remained unpainted. One of these was assigned to Raffaele, and so gratifying was his success that the Pope, with headlong and unhappy haste, ordered all the finished frescoes of the upper suite to be demolished, and the four rooms of which it consisted to be delivered over to his unfettered discretion. This lamentable precipitancy effaced many works of inestimable importance to art, and condemned the noblest productions of pictorial genius to walls in every respect ill-adapted for their reception. The frescoes now occupying thesestanzeare to Italian painting what the Divina Commedia of Dante is to Italian poetry: the lovers of both, in despair of imitating their excellences, have expended their enthusiastic admiration in volumes of illustrative criticism. These compositions of Raffaele form a magnificent epic in which are strikingly interwoven the endowments of human intellect, the doctrines of Catholic faith, and the incidents of ecclesiastical history, all as conducing to the triumphs of the Christian church.
The four rooms may be regarded as four books, each subdivided into as many themes or cantos. In the Camera della Segnatura, the ceiling presents allegorical figures of Poetry, Jurisprudence, Philosophy, and Theology, with a large composition on the side walls corresponding to each. For Poetry we have Mount Parnassus, with Apollo and the Muses on its laurel-clustered summit, surrounded by the most famous bards and minstrels. Jurisprudence is a severely simple group, consisting of Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude, the virtues by which justice is promoted on earth; while the text-books of Roman and Canon law are issued by Justinian and Gregory IX., in subsidiary panels. Philosophy is embodied in the famous School of Athens, as it has been incorrectly named, where fifty figures, attending a scholastic disputation between Plato and Aristotle, include the noblest names of ancient science, the selection of whom displays extraordinary knowledge of the history of mind. Theology, generally called the Disputa del Sacramento, is divided into two scenes. Seated in the heavens amid an angelic choir, the Holy Trinity is surrounded by the Madonna, the Precursor, and a glorified assemblage of patriarchs, prophets, and warriors of the Old Testament; apostles, evangelists, and martyrs of the New Dispensation. Below, the fathers of the Church and its most eminent divines expound to an audience of distinguished personages the mysteries of faith, which are symbolised by the Eucharist exposed upon an elevated altar in token of man's redemption.
The stanza called that of Heliodorus has on the roof four signal manifestations of himself by the Almighty to the patriarchs. The first mural compartment represents the holiest mystery of the Romish faith established in the Miracle of Bolsena, whereby a doubting priest was supernaturally convinced of the divine presence in transubstantiation. Opposite is the miraculous deliverance from prison of St. Peter, the founder of the Romish Church; and the two corresponding subjects illustrate the power committed to his successors for arresting the invasion of pagan force personified in Attila, and for cleansing from the temple of Christ its sacrilegious plunderers, with Heliodorus at their head.
Having thus illustrated the divine origin of man's chief faculties, and of ecclesiastical authority, Raffaele in the two remaining rooms exchanged allegory for historical delineation. That called the Stanza del Incendio shows us the Coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III., and the justification of that Pontiff on oath in presence of the same Emperor; the Victory of Leo IV. over the Saracensat Ostia, and his supernaturally staying a conflagration which threatened the basilicon of St. Peter,—a theme belonging rather to the category of the second room. The ceiling here, having been executed by Perugino, and reverently spared by Raffaele from the sweeping sentence of Julius, has no immediate bearing upon these subjects, though full of fervid feeling.
The last and largest of the suite is called the Hall of Constantine, whose religious history is there delineated in four leading scenes: his Baptism, by St. Silvester; his Vision of the Cross before Battle; his Victory over Maxentius at the Ponte Milvio; and his Donation of Rome and its temporalities to the successors of St. Peter. The roof, of posterior date and far inferior merit, has nothing to do with Raffaele's creations.
This meagre outline may indicate the leading theme of these the grandest compositions of modern art; but to form an idea of their difficulties, of the varied and profound knowledge they display, of the many noble episodes they embrace, and of all the interesting portraits they embody, demands no brief or light study, no ordinary learning or accomplishment. Nor is it easy to appreciate their technical merits or artistic beauties, vast as is their extent, with baffling and insufficient cross-lights, and a surface considerably impaired. Hence the general disappointment felt by casual and superficial visitors, and the superior gratification afforded by good engravings of the series. In these, and in the not less perfect tapestry-cartoons which it is the privilege of our country to possess, may be appreciated Raffaele's unity of composition, his symmetrical and unostentatious design, his full contours and flowing lines, and the earnest but unaffected sensibility which distinguishes his transcendent works.
That the whole sixteen mural paintings and two of the ceilings were designed by Raffaele is beyond question; the portions executed by himself, and those assigned tohis pupils, are matter of keen controversy, upon which we need not enter. It is, however, agreed that the Camera della Segnatura, and half that of Heliodorus, belong to the reign of Julius, whilst the Stanza del Incendio was painted under Leo X., when Sanzio's manifold employments and commissions obliged him to entrust too much to his scholars. Of the Sala di Costantino only two figures, painted in oil as an experiment, had been finished when premature death closed his career of glory. The price allowed for each fresco seems to have been about 1200 ducats of gold.[183]Theology, the earliest of the series, painted immediately on his arrival at Rome, has most of the freshness and devotional sentiment of his early genius and Umbrian education. It and the Philosophy are most pregnant with abstruse scholarship, drawn in part from the learned companionship of Duke Guidobaldo's court. The glowing and harmonious colouring of the Heliodorus, and Miracle of Bolsena fully equals any known production of Venetian art; and in the Incendio, the Heliodorus, and the Battle of Maxentius, we have the energy and vigour of Michael Angelo, without his exaggerations. In all may be seen the vast stride he had made from the timid Cenacolo at Florence, while his transition from Peruginesque hatching to a full and free streak, and a bold handling, is particularly traceable in the Disputa, which Passavant justly characterises as surpassing every antecedent effort of pictorial art.
The death of Julius II. in 1513, eventually proved nowise detrimental to Raffaele's advancement; for the new Pope not only followed out those decorations which he found in progress at the Vatican, but soon made new calls upon their artist, whose labours during the remaining seven years of his short span appear almost beyond belief. Of the Stanze, ten new subjects were composed, andseveral of them in part executed by him in that time, besides the architecture and all the elaborate decoration of the Loggie, the finished cartoons for twelve or thirteen large tapestries, the decorations of the Farnesina, Bibbiena, Lante, Madama, and Magliana villas, the frescoes of Sta. Maria della Pace, the Chigi Chapel in Sta. Maria del Popolo, a variety of altar and cabinet pictures, including his Madonnas of San Sisto and del Pesce, the Sta. Cecilia, and, last but most glorious of all, the Transfiguration; besides numerous portraits, and many drawings for the burin of Marcantonio. Add to this a journey to Florence in 1514, his architectural designs for several palaces there and at Rome, a general superintendence of the antiquities in and around the Eternal City, and the principal charge of the building of St. Peter's, at a yearly salary of 300 scudi.
The necessary results of thus over-taxing mind and body was prejudicial to the quality of the works, and to the constitution of their author. His paintings, left in a great measure to pupils, often showed a hurried and inferior execution, ill compensated by the broader treatment which he was forced to adopt. The metropolitan fabric, itself an ample occupation for the highest genius and constant industry of one man, languished under inadequate superintendence. The delicate frame of Raffaele, exhausted by mental fatigue, was incapable of resisting the first attack of disease.
But brief and utterly imperfect as this sketch has hitherto been, we must now greatly curtail it, and pass by many of his most glorious undertakings, to touch upon one or two general views.