Lorenzo Lotto.PORTRAIT OF LAURA DI POLA.Brera.(Photo, Anderson.)
The painter who was thus able to unveil personality had evidently a mind that was aware of itself, that looked forward to a wider civilisation and a more earnest and intimate religion. His life seems to have been one of some sadness, and crowned with only moderate success. He speaks of himself as “advanced in years, without loving care of any kind, and of a troubled mind.” His will shows that his worldly possessions were few and poor, and that he had no heir closer than a nephew; but he leaves some of his cartoons as a dowry to “two girls of quiet nature, healthy in mind and body, and likely to make thrifty housekeepers,” on their marriage to “two well-recommended young men,” about to become painters. His sensitive and introspective temperament led him to prefer the retirement and the quiet beauty of Loreto to the brilliant society of which he was made free in Venice. “His spirit,” says Mr. Berenson, “ismore like our own than is perhaps that of any other Italian painter, and it has all the appeal and fascination of a kindred soul in another age.”
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Palma Vecchio.
Bergamo.Lochis: Madonna and Saints (L.).Cambridge.Fitzwilliam Museum: Venus (L.).Dresden.Madonna; SS. John, Catherine; Three Sisters; Holy Family; Meeting of Jacob and Rachel (L.).London.Hampton Court: Santa Conversazione; Portrait of a Poet.Milan.Brera: SS. Helen, Constantine, Roch, and Sebastian; Adoration of Magi (L.), finished by Cariani.Naples.Santa Conversazione with Donors.Paris.Adoration of Shepherds.Rome.Villa Borghese: Lucrece (L.); Madonna with Saints and Donor.Capitol: Christ and Woman taken in Adultery.Palazzo Colonna: Madonna, S. Peter, and Donor.Venice.Academy: St. Peter enthroned and six Saints; Assumption.Giovanelli: Sposalizio (L.).S. Maria Formosa: Altarpiece.Vienna.Santa Conversazione; Violante (L.); Five Portraits of Women.
Lorenzo Lotto.
Ancona.Assumption, 1550; Madonna with Saints (L.).Asolo.Madonna in Glory, 1506.Bergamo.Carrara: Marriage of S. Catherine; Predelle.Lochis: Holy Family and S. Catherine; Predelle; Portrait.S. Bartolommeo: Altarpiece, 1516.S. Alessandro in Colonna: Pietà.S. Bernardino: Altarpiece.S. Spirito: Altarpiece.Berlin.Christ taking leave of His Mother; Portraits.Brescia.Nativity.Cingoli.S. Domenico: Madonna and Saints and fifteen Small Scenes.Florence.Uffizi: Holy Family.London.Hampton Court: Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527; Portrait (E.); Portraits of Agostino and Niccolo della Torre, 1515; Family Group; Portrait of Prothonotary Giuliano.Bridgewater House: Madonna and Saints (E.).Loreto.Palazzo Apostolico: Saints; Nativity; S. Michael and Lucifer (L.); Presentation (L.); Baptism (L.); Adoration of Magi (L.).Recanati.Municipio: Altarpiece, 1508; Transfiguration (E.).S. Maria Sopra Mercanti: Annunciation.Rome.Villa Borghese: Madonna with S. Onofrio and a Bishop, 1508.Rospigliosi: Love and Chastity.Venice.Carmine: S. Nicholas in Glory, 1529.S. Giacomo dall’ Orio: Madonna with Saints, 1546.SS. Giovanni e Paolo: S. Antonino bestowing Alms, 1542.Vienna.Santa Conversazione, etc.
SEBASTIAN DEL PIOMBO
It was very natural that Rome should wish for works of the masters of the new Venetian School, but the first-rate men were fully employed at home. All the efforts made to secure Titian failed till nearly the end of his career. On the other hand, Venice was full of less famous masters following in Giorgione’s steps. When Sebastian Luciani was a young man, Giorgione was paramount there, and no one could have foretold that his life would be of such short duration. It was to be expected, therefore, that a painter who consulted his own interests should leave the city where he was overshadowed by a great genius and go farther afield. The influence of the Guilds was withdrawn in the sixteenth century, so that it was a simpler matter for painters to transfer their talents, and painting was beginning to appeal strongly to thedilettanti, who rivalled one another in their offers.
Only one work of Sebastian’s is known belongingto this earlier time in Venice. It is the “S. Chrysostom enthroned,” in S. Giovanni Crisostomo, and its majesty and rich colouring, and more especially the splendid group of women on the left, so proud and soft in their Venetian beauty, make us wonder if Sebastian might not have risen to greater heights if he had remained in his natural environment. He responded to the call to Rome of Agostino Chigi, the greatpainter, art collector, and patron, the friend of Leo X. Chigi had just completed the Farnesina Villa, and Sebastian was employed till 1512 on its decoration, and at once came under the influence of Michelangelo. The “Pietà” at Viterbo shows that influence very strongly; in fact, Vasari says that Michelangelo himself drew the cartoon for the figure of Christ, which would account for its extraordinary beauty. Sebastian embarked on a close intimacy with the Florentine painter, and, according to Vasari, the great canvas of the “Raising of Lazarus,” in the National Gallery, was executed under the orders and in part from the designs of Michelangelo. This colossal work was looked on as one of the most important creations of the sixteenth century, but there is little to make us wish to change it for the altarpiece of S. Crisostomo. The desire for scientific drawing and the search after composition have produced a laboured effect; the female figures are cast in a masculine mould, and it lacks both the severe beauty of the Tuscan School andthe emotional charm of Sebastian’s native style. We cannot, however, avoid conjecturing if in the figure of Lazarus himself we have not a conception of the great Florentine. It is so easy in pose, so splendid in its, perhaps excessive, length of limb, that our thoughts turn involuntarily to theIgnudiin the Sixtine Chapel. The picture has been dulled and injured by repainting, but the distance still has the sombre depth of the Venetians. All through Sebastian’s career he seeks for form and composition, but, great painter as he undoubtedly is, he is great because he possesses that inborn feeling for harmony of colour. This is what we value in him, and he excels in so far as he follows his Venetian instincts.
The death of Raphael improved Sebastian’s position in Rome, and though Leo X. never liked or employed him, he did not lack commissions. The “Fornarina” in the Uffizi, with the laurel-wreathed head and leopard-skin mantle, still reveals him as the Venetian, and it is curious that any critic should ever have assigned its rich, voluptuous tone and its coarse type to Raphael. Sebastian obtained commissions for decorating S. Maria del Popolo in oils and S. Pietro in Montorio in fresco, but in the latter medium, though he is ambitious of acquiring the force of Michelangelo, he lacks the Tuscan ease of hand. Colour, for which he possessed so true an aptitude, the deep, fusedcolour of Giorgione, is set aside by him; his tints become strong and crude, his surfaces grow hard and polished, and he thinks, above all, of bold action, of drawing and modelling. The Venetian genius for portraiture remains, and he has left such fine examples as the “Andrea Doria” of the Vatican, or the “Portrait of a Man in the Pitti,” a masterly picture both in drawing and execution, with grand draperies, a fur pelisse, and damask doublet with crimson sleeves. In the National Gallery we possess his own portrait by himself, in company with Cardinal de Medici. The faces are well contrasted, and we judge from Sebastian’s that his biographer describes him justly, as fat, indolent, and given to self-indulgence, but genial and fond of good company.
After an absence of twenty years he returned to Venice. There he came in contact with Titian and Pordenone, and struck up a friendship with Aretino, who became his great ally and admirer. The sack of Rome had driven him forth, but in 1529, when the city was beginning partially to recover from that time of horror, he returned, and was cordially welcomed by Clement VII., and admitted into the innermost ecclesiastical circles. The Piombo, a well-paid, sinecure office of the Papal court, was bestowed on him, and his remaining years were spent in Rome. He was very anxious to collaborate with Michelangelo, and the great painter seems to have been quite inclined to the arrangement.The “Last Judgment,” in the Sixtine Chapel, was suggested, and Sebastian had the melancholy task of taking down Perugino’s masterpieces; but he wished to reset the walls for oils, and Michelangelo stipulated for fresco, saying that oils were only fit for women, so that no agreement was arrived at.
Sebastian’s mode of work was slow, and he employed no assistants. He seems to have been inordinately lazy, fond of leisure and good living, and his character shows in his work, which, with a few exceptions, has something heavy and common about it, a want of keenness and fire, an absence of refinement and selection.
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Florence.Uffizi: Fornarina, 1512; Death of Adonis.Pitti: Martyrdom of S. Agatha, 1520; Portrait (L.).London.Resurrection of Lazarus, 1519; Portraits.Naples.Holy Family; Portraits.Paris.Visitation, 1521.Rome.Portrait of Andrea Doria (L.).Farnesina: Frescoes, 1511.S. Pietro in Montorio. Frescoes.Treviso.S. Niccolo: Incredulity of S. Thomas (E.).Venice.Academy: Visitation (E.).S. Giovanni Chrisostomo: S. Chrysostom enthroned (E.).Viterbo.Pietà (L.).
BONIFAZIO AND PARIS BORDONE
Some uncertainty has existed as to the identity of the different members of the family of Bonifazio. All the early historians agree in giving the name to one master only. Boschini, however, in 1777 discovered the register of the death of a second, and a third bearing the name was working twenty years later. Upon this Dr. Morelli came to the conclusion that we must recognise three, if not four, masters bearing the name of Bonifazio, but documents recently discovered by Professor Ludwig have in great measure destroyed Morelli’s conjectures. There may have been obscure painters bearing the name, but they were mere imitators, and it is doubtful if any were related to the family of de Pitatis.
Bonifazio Veronese is really the only one who counts. As Ridolfi says, he was born in Verona in the most beautiful moment of painting. He came to Venice at the age of eighteen, and became a pupil of Palma Vecchio, with whom his work has sometimes beenconfused. After Palma’s death Bonifazio continued in friendly relations with his old master’s family, and his niece married Palma’s nephew. Bonifazio himself married the daughter of a basket-maker, and appears to have had no children, for he and his wife by their wills bestowed their whole fortune on their nephews. Antonio Palma, who married Bonifazio’s niece, was a painter whose pictures have sometimes been attributed to the legendary third Bonifazio. Bonifazio’s life was passed peacefully in Venice. He received many important commissions from the Republic, and decorated the Palace of the Treasurers. His character and standing were high, and he was appointed, in company with Titian and Lotto, to administer a legacy which Vincenzo Catena had left to provide a yearly dower for five maidens. After a long life spent in steady work, Bonifazio withdrew to a little farm amidst orchards—fifteen acres of land in all—at San Zenone, near Asolo; but he still kept his house in San Marcuola, where he died. He was buried in S. Alvise in Venice.
A son of the plains and of Venetian stock, his work is always graceful and attractive, though inclined to be hot in colour. It has a very pronounced aristocratic character, and bears no trace of the rough, provincial strain of such men as Cariani or Pordenone. It is very fine and glowing in colour, but lacks vigour and energy in design. Nowhere do we getmore worldly magnificence or such frank worship of wealth as on Bonifazio’s joyous canvases. He represents Christian saints and Eastern kings alike, as gentlemen of princely rank. There is a note of purely secular art about his Adorations and Holy Families. In the “Adoration of the Magi,” in the Academy, the Madonna is a handsome, prosperous lady of Bonifazio’s acquaintance. The Child, so far from raising His hand in benediction, holds it out for the proffered cup. He does not, as usual, distinguish the eldest king, but singles out the cup held by the second, who, in a puffed velvet dress, is an evident portrait, probably that of the donor of the picture, who is in this way paid a courtier-like compliment. The third king is such a Moor as Bonifazio must often have seen embarking from his Eastern galley on the Riva dei Schiavoni. A servant in a peaked hood peers round the column to catch sight of what is going on. The groups of animals in the background are well rendered. In the “Rich Man’s Feast,” where Lazarus lies upon the step, we have another scene of wealthy and sumptuous Venetian society, an orgy of colour. And, again, in the “Finding of Moses” (Brera) he paints nobles playing the lute, making love and feasting, and lovely fair-haired women listening complacently. We are reminded of the way in which they lived: their one preoccupation the toilet, the delight ofappearing in public in the latest and most magnificent fashions. And in these paintings Bonifazio depicts the elaborate striped and brocaded gowns in which the beautiful Venetians arrayed themselves, made in the very fashions of the year, and their thick, fair hair is twisted and coiled in the precise mode of the moment. The deep-red velvet he introduces into nearly all his pictures is of a hue peculiar to himself. As Catena often brings in a little white lap-dog, so Bonifazio constantly has as an accessory a liver-and-white spaniel.
Vasari speaks of Paris Bordone as the artist who most successfully imitated Titian. He was the son of well-to-do tradespeople in Treviso, and received a good education in music and letters, before being sent off to Venice and placed in Titian’s studio. Bordone does not seem to have been on very friendly terms with Titian. He was dissatisfied with his teaching, and Titian played him an ill turn in wresting from him a commission to paint an altarpiece which had been entrusted to him when he was only eighteen. He was, above all, in love with the manner of the dead Giorgione, and it was upon this master that he aspired to form his style. His masterpiece, in the Academy, was painted for the Confraternity of St. Mark, and made his reputation. The legend it represents may be given in a few words:
In the days of Doge Gradenigo, one February,there arose a fearful storm in Venice. During the height of the tempest, three men accosted a poor old fisherman, who was lying in his decayed old boat by the Piazza, and begged that he would row them to S. Niccolo del Lido, where they had urgent business. After some demur they persuaded him to take the oars, and in spite of the hurricane, the voyage was accomplished. On reaching the shore they pointed out to him a great ship, the crew of which he perceived to consist of a band of demons, who were stirring up the waves and making a great hubbub. The three passengers laid their commands on them to desist, when immediately they sailed away and there was a calm. The passengers then made the oarsman row them, one to S. Niccolo, one to S. Giorgio, and the third was rowed back to the Piazza. The fisherman timidly asked for his fare, and the third passenger desired him to go to the Doge and ask for payment, telling him that by that night’s work a great disaster had been averted from the city. The fisherman replied that he should not be believed, but would be imprisoned as a liar. Then the passenger drew a ring from his finger. “Show him this for a sign,” he said, “and know that one of those you have this night rowed is S. Niccolas, the other is S. George, and I am S. Mark the Evangelist, Protector of the Venetian Republic.” He then disappeared. The next day the fisherman presented the ring,and was assigned a provision for life from the Senate.
There has, perhaps, never been a richer and more beautiful subject-picture painted than this glowing canvas, or one which brings more vividly before us the magnificence of the pageants which made such a part of Venetian life in the golden age of painting. It is all strength and splendour, and escapes the hectic colour and weaker type which appear in Bordone’s “Last Supper” and some of his other works. In 1538 he went to France and entered the service of Francis II., painting for him many portraits of ladies, besides works for the Cardinals of Guise and of Lorraine. The King of Poland sent to him for a “Jupiter and Antiope.” At Augsburg he was paid 3000 crowns for work done for the great Fugger family.
No one gives us so closely as Bordone the type of woman who at this time was most admired in Venice. The Venetian ideal was golden haired, with full lips, fair, rosy cheeks, large limbed and ample, with “abundant flanks and snow-white breast.” A type glowing with health and instinct with life, but, to say the truth, rather dull, without deep passions, and with no look that reveals profound emotions or the struggle of a soul. From what we see of Bordone’s female portraits and from some of the mythological compositions he has left, he might have been among the most sensually minded of men. His beautiful courtesan, in the National Gallery, is an almost over-realisticpresentment of a woman who has just parted from her lover. His women, with their carnation cheeks and expressionless faces, are like beautiful animals; but, as a matter of fact, their painter was sober and temperate in his life, very industrious, and devoted to his widowed mother. About 1536 he married the daughter of a Venetian citizen, and had a son, who became one of the many insignificant painters of the end of the sixteenth century. Most of his days were divided between his little Villa of Lovadina in the district of Belluno, and his modest home in the Corte dell’ Cavallo near the Misericordia. “He lives comfortably in his quiet house,” writes Vasari, who certainly knew Bordone in Venice, “working only at the request of princes, or his friends, avoiding all rivalry and those vain ambitions which do but disturb the repose of man, and seeking to avert any ruffling of the serene tranquillity of his life, which he is accustomed to preserve simple and upright.”
Many of his pictures show an intense love of country solitudes. His poetic backgrounds, lonely mountains, leafy woods, and sparkling water are in curious contrast to the sumptuous groups in the foreground.
His “Three Heads,” in the Brera, is a superb piece of painting and an interesting characterisation. The woman is ripe, sensual, and calculating, feeling with her fingers for the gold chain, a mere golden-fleshed, rose-flushed hireling, solidand prosaic. The go-between is dimly seen in the background, but the face of the suitor is a strange, ironic study: past youth, worn, joyless, and bitter, taking his pleasure mechanically and with cynical detachment. The “Storm calmed by S. Mark” (Academy) was, in Mr. Berenson’s opinion, begun by Giorgione.
Rich, brilliant, and essentially Venetian as is the work of these two painters, it does not reach the highest level. It falls short of grandeur, and has that worldly tone that borders on vulgarity. As we study it we feel that it marks the point to which Venetian art might have attained, the flood-mark it might have touched, if it had lacked the advent of the three or four great spirits, who, appearing about the same time, bore it up to sublimer heights and developed a more distinguished range of qualities. Bonifazio and Bordone lack the grandeur and sweetness of Titian, the brilliant touch and imaginative genius of Tintoretto, the matchless feeling for colour, design, and decoration of Veronese, but they continue Venetian painting on logical lines, and they form a superb foundation for the highest.
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Bonifazio Veronese.
Dresden.Finding of Moses.Florence.Pitti: Madonna; S. Elizabeth and Donor (E.); Rest in Flight into Egypt; Finding of Moses.Hampton Court.Santa Conversazione.London.Santa Conversazione (E.).Milan.Brera: Finding of Moses.Paris.Santa Conversazione.Rome.Villa Borghese: Mother of Zebedee’s Children; Return of the Prodigal Son.Colonna: Holy Family with Saints.Venice.Academy: Rich Man’s Feast; Massacre of Innocents; Judgment of Solomon, 1533; Adoration of Kings.Giovanelli: Santa Conversazione.Vienna.Santa Conversazione; Triumph of Love; Triumph of Chastity; Salome.
Paris Bordone.
Bergamo.Lochis: Vintage Scenes.Berlin.Portrait of Man in Black; Chess Players; Madonna and four Saints.Dresden.Apollo and Marsyas; Diana; Holy Family.Florence.Pitti: Portrait of Woman.Genoa.Brignole Sale: Portraits of Men; Santa Conversazione.Hampton Court.Madonna and Donors.London.Daphnis and Chloe; Portrait of Lady.Bridgewater House: Holy Family.Milan.Brera: Descent of Holy Spirit; Baptism; S. Dominio presented to the Saviour by Virgin; Madonna and Saints; Venal Love.S. Maria pr. Celso: Madonna and S. Jerome.Munich.Portrait; Man counting Jewels.Paris.Portraits.Rome.Colonna: Holy Family and Saints.Treviso.Madonna and Saints.Duomo: Adoration of Shepherds; Madonna and Saints.Venice.Academy: Fisherman and Doge; Paradise; Storm calmed by S. Mark.Palazzo Ducale Chapel: Dead Christ.Giovanelli: Madonna and Saints.S. Giovanni in Bragora; Last Supper.Vienna.Allegorical Pictures; Lady at Toilet; Young Woman.
PAINTERS OF THE VENETIAN PROVINCES
It has become usual to include in the Venetian School those artists from the subject provinces on the mainland, who came down to try their luck at the fountain-head and to receive its hallmark on their talent. The Friulan cities, Udine, Serravalle, and small neighbouring towns, had their own primitive schools and their scores of humble craftsmen. Their art wavered for some time in its expression between the German taste, which came so close to their gates, and the Italian, which was more truly their element.
Up to 1499 Friuli was invaded seven times in thirty years by the Turks. They poured in large numbers over the Bosnian borders, crossed the Isonzo and the Tagliamenta, and massacred and carried off the inhabitants. These terrible periods are marked by the cessation of work in the provinces, but hope always revived again. The break caused by such a visitation can be distinctly traced in the Church of S. Antonino, at the little town of San Daniele. Martino daUdine obtained the epithet of Pellegrino da San Daniele in 1494 when he returned from an early visit to Venice, where he had been apprenticed to Cima. He was appointed to decorate S. Antonino. His early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the Turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. In the meantime, Pellegrino’s years had been spent partly in Venice and partly, perhaps, in Ferrara, for the reason Raphael gave for refusing to paint a “Bacchus” for the Duke, was that the subject had already been painted by Pellegrino da San Daniele. When Pellegrino resumed his work, it demonstrated that he had studied the modern Venetians and had come under a finer, deeper influence. A St. George in armour suggests Giorgione’s S. Liberale at Castelfranco; he specially shows an affinity with Pordenone, who was his pupil and who was to become a better painter than his old master. As Pellegrino goes on he improves consistently, and adopts the method, so peculiarly Venetian, of sacrificing form to a scheme of chiaroscuro. He even, to some extent, succeeds in his difficult task of applying to wall painting the system which the Venetians used almost exclusively for easel pictures. He was an ambitious, daring painter, and some ofhis church standards were for long attributed to Giorgione. The church of San Antonino remains his chief monument; but for all his travels Pellegrino remains provincial in type, is unlucky in his selection, cares little for precision of form, and trusts to colour for effect.
The same transition in art was taking place in other provinces. Morto da Feltre, Pennacchi, and Girolamo da Treviso have all left work of a Giorgionesque type, and some painters who went far onward, began their career under such minor masters. Giovanni Antonio Licinio, who takes his name from his native town of Pordenone, in Friuli, was one of these. All the early part of his life was spent in painting frescoes in the small towns of the Friulan provinces. At first they bear signs of the tuition of Pellegrino, but it soon becomes evident that Pordenone has learned to imitate Giorgione and Palma. Quite early, however, one of his chief failings appears, and one which is all his own, the disparity in size between his various figures. The secondary personages, the Magi in a Nativity, the Saints standing round an altar, are larger and more athletic in build and often more animated in action than the principal actors in the scene. What pleased Pordenone’s contemporaries was his daring perspective and his instinctive feeling for movement. He carried out great schemes in the hill-towns, till at length his reputation, which had long been ripein his native province, reached Venice. In 1519 he was invited to Treviso to fresco the façade of a house for one of the Raviguino family. The painter, as payment, asked fifty scudi, and Titian was called in to adjudicate, but he admired the work so much that he hinted to Raviguino that he would be wise not to press him for a valuation. As a direct consequence of this piece of business, Pordenone was employed on the chapel at Treviso, in conjunction with Titian. At this time the Assumption and the Madonna of Casa Pesaro were just finished, and it is probable that Pordenone paid his first visit to Venice, hard by, and saw his great contemporary’s work. With his characteristic distaste for fresco, Titian undertook the altarpiece and painted the beautiful Annunciation which still holds its place, and Pordenone covered the dome with a foreshortened figure of the Eternal Father, surrounded by angels. Among the remaining frescoes in the Chapel, an Adoration of the Magi and a S. Liberale are from his brush. Fired by his success at Treviso, Pordenone offered his services to Mantua and Cremona, but the Mantovans, accustomed to the stately and restrained grace of Mantegna, would have nothing to say to what Crowe and Cavalcaselle call his “large and colossal fable-painting.” He pursued his way to Cremona, and that he studied Mantegna as he passed through Mantua is evident from the first figures he painted in the cathedral. In Cremonaevery one admired him, and all the artists set to work to imitate his energetic foreshortening, vehement movement and huge proportions.
Pordenone, with his love for fresco, was all his life an itinerant painter. In 1521 he was back at Udine and wandered from place to place, painting a vast distemper for the organ doors at S. Maria at Spilimbergo, the façade of the Church of Valeriano, an imposing series at Travesio, and in 1525, the “Story of the True Cross” at Casara. At the last place he threw aside much of his exaggeration, and, ruined and restored as the frescoes are, they remain among his most dignified achievements. He may be studied best of all at Piacenza, in the Church of the Madonna di Campagna, where he divides his subjects between sacred and pagan, so that we turn from a “Flight into Egypt” or a “Marriage of S. Catherine,” to the “Rape of Europa” or “Venus and Adonis.” At Piacenza he shows himself the great painter he undoubtedly is, having achieved some mastery over form, while his colour has the true Venetian quality and almost equals oils in its luscious tones and vivid hues, which he lowers and enriches by such enveloping shadows as only one whose spirit was in touch with the art of Giorgione would have understood how to use. Very complete records remain of Pordenone’s life, full details of a quarrel with his brother over property left by his father in 1533, and accounts of the painter’s negotiations toobtain a knighthood, which he fancied would place him more on a par with Titian when he went to live in Venice. The coveted honour was secured, but from this time he seems to have been very jealous of Titian and to have aimed continually at rivalling him. Pordenone was a punctual and rapid decorator, and on being given the ceiling of the Sala di San Finio to decorate in the summer of 1536, he finished the whole by March 1538. We have seen how Titian annoyed the Signoria by his delays, how anxious they were to transfer his commission to Pordenone, and what a narrow escape the Venetian had of losing his Broker’s patent. Pordenone was engaged by the nuns of Murano to paint an Annunciation, after they had rejected one by Titian on account of its price, and though it seems hardly possible that any one could have compared the two men, yet no doubt the pleasure of getting an altarpiece quickly and punctually and for a moderate sum, often outweighed the honour of the possible painting by the great Titian.
No one has left so few easel-paintings as Pordenone; fresco was so much better suited to his particular style. The canvas of the “Madonna of Mercy” in the Venice Academy, was painted about 1525 for a member of the house of Ottobono, and introduces seven members of the family. It is very free from his colossal, exaggerated manner; the attendant saints arestudied from nature, and in his journals the painter mentions that the St. Roch is a portrait of himself. The “S. Lorenzo enthroned,” in the same gallery, shows both his virtues and failings. The saints have his enormous proportions. The Baptist is twisting round, to display the foreshortening which Pordenone particularly affects. The gestures are empty and inexpressive, but the colour is broad and fluid; there is a large sense of decoration in the composition, and something simple and austere about the figure of S. Lorenzo. As is so often the case with Pordenone, the principal actor of the scene is smaller and more sincerely imagined than the attendant personages, who are crowded into the foreground, where they are used to display the master’s skill.
Pordenone died suddenly at Ferrara, where he had been summoned by its Duke to undertake one of his great schemes of decoration. He was said to have been poisoned, but though he had jealous rivals there seems no proof of the truth of the assertion, which was one very commonly made in those days. He is interesting as being the only distinguished member of the Venetian School whose frescoes have come down to us in any number, and as being the only one of the later masters with whom it was the chosen medium.
His kinsman, Bernardino Licinio, is represented in the National Gallery by a half-lengthof a young man in black, and at Hampton Court by a large family group and by another of three persons gathered round a spinet. His masterpiece is a Madonna and Saints in the Frari, which shows the influence of Palma. His flesh tints, striving to be rich, have a hot, red look, but his works have been constantly confounded with those of Giorgione and Paris Bordone.
A long list might be given of minor artists who were industriously turning out work on similar lines to one or other of these masters: Calderari, who imitates Paris Bordone as well as Pordenone; Pomponio Amalteo, Pordenone’s son-in-law, a spirited painter in fresco; Florigerio, who practised at Udine and Padua, and of whom an altarpiece remains in the Academy; Giovanni Battista Grassi, who helped Vasari to compile his notices of Friulan art, and many others only known by name.
At the close of the fifteenth century the revulsion against Paduan art extended as far as Brescia, and Girolamo Romanino was one of the first to acquire the trick of Venetian painting. He probably studied for a time under Friulan painters. Pellegrino is thought to have been at Brescia or Bergamo during the Friulan disturbances of 1506-12, and about 1510 Romanino emerges, a skilled artist in Pellegrino’s Palmesque manner. His works at this time are dark and glowing, full of warm light and deep shadow; the scene is often laid underarches, after the manner of the Vivarini and Cima; a gorgeous scheme of accessory is framed in noble architecture.
Brescia was an opulent city, second only to Milan among the towns of northern Italy, and Romanino obtained plenty of patronage; but in 1511 the city fell a prey to the horrors of war, was taken and lost by Venice, and in 1512 was sacked by the French. Romanino fled to Padua, where he found a home among the Benedictines of S. Giustina. Here he was soon well employed on an altarpiece with life-size figures for the high altar, and a “Last Supper” for the refectory. It is also surmised that he helped in the series for the Scuola del Santo, for several of which Titian in 1511 had signed a receipt, and the “Death of St. Anthony” is pointed out as showing the Brescian characteristics of fine colour, but poor drawing.
Romanino returned to Brescia when the Venetians recovered it in 1516, but before doing so he went to Cremona and painted four subjects, which are among his most effective, in the choir of the Duomo.
He is not so daring a painter as Pordenone, from whom he sometimes borrows ideas, but he is quite a convert to the modern style of the day, setting his groups in large spaces and using the slashed doublets, the long hose, and plumed headgear which Giorgione had found so picturesque. Romanino is often verypoor and empty, and fails most in selection and expression at the moments when he most needs to be great, but he is successful in the golden style he adopted after his closer contact with the Venetians, and his draperies and flesh tints are extremely brilliant. He is, indeed, inclined to be gaudy and careless in execution, and even the fine “Nativity” in the National Gallery gives the impression that size is more regarded than thought and feeling.
Moretto is perhaps the only painter from the mainland who, coming within the charmed circle of Venetian art and betraying the study of Palma and Titian and the influence of Pordenone, still keeps his own gamut of colour, and as he goes on, gets consistently cooler and more silvery in his tones. He can only be fully studied in Brescia itself, where literally dozens of altarpieces and wall-paintings show him in every phase. His first connection was probably with Romanino, but he reminds us at one time of Titian by his serious realism, and finished, careful painting, at another of Raphael, by the grace and sentiment of his heads, and as time goes on he foreshadows the style of Veronese. In the “Feast in the House of Simon” in the organ-loft of the Church of the Pietà in Venice, the very name prepares us for the airy, colonnaded building, with vistas of blue sky and landscape, and the costly raiment and plenishing which might have been seen at any Venetian orBrescian banquet. In his portraits Moretto sometimes rivals Lotto. His personages are always dignified and expressive, with pale, high-bred faces, and exceedingly picturesque in dress and general arrangement. He loved to paint a great gentleman, like the Sciarra Martinengo in the National Gallery, and to endow him with an air of romantic interest.
One of those who entered so closely into the spirit of the Venetian School that he may almost be included within it, is Savoldo. His pictures are rare, and no gallery can show more than one or two examples. The Louvre has a portrait by him of Gaston de Foix, long thought to be by Giorgione. His native town can only show one altarpiece, an “Adoration of Shepherds,” low in tone but intense in dusky shadow with fringes of light. He is grey and slaty in his shadows, and often rough and startling in effect, but at his best he produces very beautiful, rich, evening harmonies; and a letter from Aretino bears witness to the estimation in which he was held.
It is not easy to say if Brescia or Vicenza has most claim to Bartolommeo Montagna, the early master of Cima. Born of Brescian parents, he settled early in Vicenza, and he is by far the most distinguished of those Vicentine painters who drank at the Venetian fount. He must have gone early to Venice and worked with the Vivarini, for in his altarpiece in the Brera hehas the vaulted porticoes in which Bartolommeo and Alvise Vivarini delighted. His “Madonna enthroned” in the gallery at Vicenza has many points of contact with that of Alvise at Berlin. Among these are the four saints, the cupola, and the raised throne, and he is specially attracted by the groups of music-making angels; but Montagna has more moral greatness than Alvise, and his lines are stronger and more sinewy. He keeps faithful to the Alvisian feeling for calm and sweetness, but his personages have greater weight and gravity. He essays, too, a “Pietà” with saints, at Monte Berico, and shows both pathos and vehemence. He has evidently seen Bellini’s rendering, and attempts, if only with partial success, to contrast in the same way the indifference of death with the contemplation and anguish of the bereaved. Hard and angular as Montagna’s saints often are, they show power and austerity. His colour is brilliant and enamel-like; he does not arrive at the Venetian depth, yet his altarpieces are very grand, and once more we are struck by the greatness of even the secondary painters who drew their inspiration from Padua and Venice.
Among the other Vicentines, Giovanni Speranza and Giovanni Buonconsiglio were imbued with characteristics of Mantegna. Speranza, in one of his few remaining works, almost reproduces the beautiful “Assumption” by Pizzolo, Mantegna’s young fellow-student, inthe Chapel of the Eremitani. He employs Buonconsiglio as an assistant, and they imitate Montagna to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish between their works. Buonconsiglio’s “Pietà” in the Vicenza gallery, is reminiscent of Montagna’s at Monte Berico. The types are lean and bony, the features are almost as rugged as Dürer’s, the flesh earthy and greenish. About 1497 Buonconsiglio was studying oils with Antonello da Messina; he begins to reside in Venice, and a change comes over his manner. His colours show a brilliancy and depth acquired by studying Titian; and then, again, his bright tints remind us of Lotto. His name was on the register of the Venetian Guild as late as 1530.
After Pisanello’s achievement and his marked effect on early Venetian art, Veronese painting fell for a time to a very low ebb; but Mantegna’s influence was strongly felt here, and art revived in Liberale da Verona, Falconetto, Casoto, the Morone and Girolamo dai Libri, painters delightful in themselves, but having little connection with the school of Venice. Francesco Bonsignori, however, shook himself free from the narrow circle of Veronese art, where he had for a time followed Liberale, and grows more like the Vicentines, Montagna and Buonconsiglio. He is careful about his drawing, but his figures, like those of many of these provincial painters, are short, bony and vulgar, very unlike the slender, distinguished type of the great Paduan. Underthe name of Francesco da Verona, Bonsignori works in the new palace of the Gonzagas, and several pictures painted for Mantua are now scattered in different collections. At Verona he has left four fine altarpieces. He went early to Venice, where he became the pupil of the Vivarini. His faces grow soft and oval, and the very careful outlines suggest the influence of Bellini.
Girolamo Mocetto was journeyman to Giovanni Bellini; in fact, Vasari says that a “Dead Christ” in S. Francesco della Vigna, signed with Bellini’s name, is from Mocetto’s hand. His short, broad figures have something of Bartolommeo Vivarini’s character.
Francesco Torbido went to Venice to study with Giorgione, and we can trace his master’s manner of turning half tones into deep shades; but he does not really understand the Giorgionesque treatment, in which shade was always rich and deep, but never dark, dirty and impenetrable, nor in the lights can he produce the clear glow of Giorgione. Another Veronese, Cavazzola, has left a masterpiece upon which any painter might be happy to rest his reputation; the “Gattemalata with an Esquire” in the Uffizi, a picture noble in feeling and in execution, and one which owes a great deal to Venetian portrait-painters.
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Pordenone.