WE commonly speak of ancient art, but of modern artists. Straws indicate which way the wind blows, and superficial habits may indicate changes of thought and feeling which lie far deeper. Interest has now become centred in the development of individual varieties rather than typical forms, whereas, as we have seen, it is the latter character that distinguishes the art of the ancients. In the great monumental works of the Asiatic nations of antiquity names of individual artists are lost, and in the art of Egypt and Assyria and Persia they are of little consequence, since certain prevailing types and methods were adhered to; and most of their work, as in their mural sculptures, while distinct in racial character, might almost have been executed by the same hand—Egyptian, Assyrian, or Persian, as the case may be. Tennyson's lines regarding nature might be here applied to art;

With the intellectual activity of Greece and the development of her power as a state, the archaic and purely typical period in her arts, while possessing wonderful harmony and unity, led to individual development of artists, and, assisted no doubt by the increase of writing and record, famous names are handed down: such as Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, and Phidias, its sculptor, whose name characterizes the finest period of Greek art.

The ancient myth of DÆdalus seems to show that art was always a power among the ancient Greeks, and DÆdalus, who seems to occupy an analogous position in southern mythology to that of Wayland Smith in the north, may have represented, or his name and fame covered, whole generations of artists and cunning craftsmen; following the tendency, still noticeable, by which great reputations absorb smaller ones, and in the course of time have attributed to them works not really belonging to them at all. The name becomes a convenient symbol for a whole period, school, or group of workmen.

One can understand in primitive times how important the artist-craftsmen must have been: the fashioner of weapons, the one learned in the mysteries of smelting metal, of working iron, bronze, brass and copper, gold and silver, and having the power of making things of beauty out of these, which became the revered or coveted treasures of temples and kings' houses.

The old stories of the early Greek painters Apelles and Protogenes show, too, at once the tendency towards myth-making, and the old love of talk about art, as well as the old and dearly-clung-to popular theory that the beauty of painting is measured by its illusive power; so that the realistic grapes of Apelles, which only deceived the birds, were supposed to be outdone by the naturalistic curtain of Protogenes, which took in the critics. This tradition seems still to linger in the minds of our scene-painters when they present us with those wonderful (and sometimes fearful) drop curtains of satin, festooned with tassels and cords of undreamed-of sumptuousness and mysterious mechanism.

The names and works of Praxiteles and of Myron are well known to students of antique sculpture, and these are but stars of greater magnitude among a host of others less distinguished, or less centralized in universal fame. Yet we only know the Venus of Melos from the island where she was discovered.

We know that the Greek vase painters frequently signed their designs, and this has considerably helped the historic criticism and classification of that interesting and beautiful province of Greek design, such as has been so ably done in the works of Miss Jane E. Harrison.

In the Byzantine and early mediÆval period we again see a great development of typical symbolical and profoundly impressive art in architecture and decoration, but again names and individual artists are largely lost. We do not know, for instance, who were the designers of the splendid mosaics at Ravenna.

With the dawn of painting in Italy, however, in the thirteenth century arose a personal and individualized type of art in which names became of immense interest. This was no doubt fostered by the rivalry of the cities, each independent, under its own government; each municipality proud and anxious to vie in the splendour and beauty of art with its neighbouring municipality. This led to a wholesome emulation among artists and very fine results, since there were abundant opportunities in the great public monuments, council chambers, and churches for the highest exercise of the architect, the painter, and craftsman's art.

The ancient system of the master craftsman working with his pupils in his shop or studio prevailed. A man might learn the craft of painting from the beginning, the grinding of colours, the laying of grounds, the mixing of tints, drawing out cartoons, enlarging designs for wall-painting, the painting of ornamental framework, and decorative detail, and gesso work enrichment, and gilding, miniature painting and the decoration of books, altar-pieces, signs and shrines; perhaps embroidery and textile patterns, banners, the furniture of shows and pageants—all these might be carried on, perhaps under one master. The term painter was not then specialized to mean either house-painter or easel-picture painter. An apprentice might thoroughly and practically learn his trade in the ordinary sense of the word, but it would depend upon his personal capacity and quality whether he would become a master, whether his name would be inscribed on the scroll of fame to be a landmark for future historians of art.

The romantic tales and episodes in the lives of painters which have come down to us are always interesting, and in Italy, being the centre of artistic life from the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth centuries, we find abundant lore of this sort.

That picturesque legend of Cimabue of Florence, first told by Lorenzo Ghiberti (who was born in 1378), for instance, finding the youthful Giotto as a shepherd boy, while riding in the valley of Vespignano, about fourteen miles from Florence, sketching the image of one of his flock upon a smooth fragment of slate with a pointed stone, and taking him to Florence as his pupil.

Cimabue is commonly supposed to have been the first to show a new departure in the direction of greater freedom and naturalness of treatment, the first whose work shows much individuality, and emerges from the somewhat set and prescribed traditions of the Byzantine school which characterizes the earliest Italian painting of the Christian period really influenced by the Greek church mosaic design, which may be considered almost as the swathing clothes of mediÆval painting in Italy.

His altar-piece for the church of Sta. Maria Novella was carried in procession through Florence to the church—a subject which has furnished a theme for Lord Leighton's well-known and fine decorative early work, too seldom seen.

Cimabue's portrait in the white embroidered costume with a hood, appears in a group with Giotto and other famous contemporaries, including Petrarch and Laura, in a fresco by Simone Memmi, a contemporary painter, on the wall of the chapel of the Cappella degli Spagnoli at Sta. Maria Novella.

But Giotto marks the real point of departure. Coming straight from outdoor life, from the simple country pursuits of a shepherd boy, it was significant that he should be the first to introduce a new spirit into art. Natural simplicity and directness, power of dramatic narrative painting, dignity and simplicity of style, and decorative beauty—these were some of the qualities with which Giotto enriched the field of early Italian art.

He became the friend of Dante, who pays him a tribute in the well-known lines in his poem "Il Purgatorio,"

And Giotto has left us an interesting portrait of the poet, on the wall of the Podesta, or council chamber of Florence, his first recorded work. Giotto was, in fact, a fellow pupil with Dante under the same master, Brunetto Latini, since Cimabue gave him all the cultivation of his time in books as well as art. The fame of Giotto as a painter spread all over Italy, and his services were required by the Church, and by rich and great persons.

There is a well-known story, which throws light upon his skill and certainty of hand, that once, when an emissary from Pope Boniface VIII. came to him for a specimen of his handiwork to show to his master, Giotto took a piece of paper and drew a circle in one stroke, without compasses.

The pope's emissary was disappointed at not getting a prettier picture, but it proved convincing, and the legend passed into a proverb which runs: Rounder than the O of Giotto—"PiÙ tondo che l' O di Giotto."

The frescoes of the Arena Chapel at Padua, representing the history of Christ and the Virgin in fifty square compartments, remain among Giotto's most famous works. The frescoes of the vaulted roof of the lower church at Assisi are also very fine.

"Here," says Mrs. Jameson, in "Early Italian Painters," "over the tomb of S. Francis, the painter represented the three vows of the order—Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience: and in the fourth compartment, the saint enthroned and glorified amidst the host of Heaven.

"The invention of the allegories under which Giotto has represented the vows of the saint—his marriage with Poverty—Chastity seated in her rocky fortress—and Obedience with the curb and yoke—is ascribed by tradition to Dante."

He was architect and sculptor as well as painter, and the design of the beautiful Campanile of the Duomo at Florence is due to him.

Cimabue and Giotto's contemporary, the sculptor Niccolo Pisano, was another distinguished artist of the early Italian revival. He is said to have been inspired by the study of antique sculpture. A certain sarcophagus (PhÆdra and Hippolytus) by its life and movement is supposed to have suggested the character which he sought in his work. The dramatic vitality which he infused into his figures was certainly extraordinary, as his famous pulpit at Pisa demonstrates. There was some danger of losing monumental dignity and repose, but it meant a return to nature and life after a long period of restraint and convention which had become dead.

The revival, therefore, was both salutary and necessary, though it is not unnatural that painters should have profited most by its effects, and that painting should have become the leading and popular art, because most immediate and familiar in its appeal and the width of its sympathy and range.

For vivid dramatic intensity of conception and earnestness of purpose the work of Orcagna stands out among the early painters of Florence. Andrea Orcagna was the son of a goldsmith of Florence. The goldsmiths of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were in general excellent designers, and not unfrequently became painters, as in the instances of Francia, Ghirlandajo, Verrocchio, Andrea del Sarto. It was in his father's workshop that Andrea Orcagna first learned his art. He was born before 1310, and he painted at the Campo Santo in 1332. His famous work was the fresco still to be seen on the wall of the Campo Santo at Pisa—"The Triumph of Death." It presents us with certain contrasts of life and death, of pleasure and pain, of pomp and pride and poverty, the severe life of the holy man, the gay life of the pleasure seeker. There is a striking group of huntsmen reining in their horses at the sight of certain grim coffins containing great and pompous personages in various stages of decay. Grotesque fiends, too, are seen hustling wicked ones into a fiery pit. Thus does the early painter enforce the old moral. Thus does he paint the sharp contrasts of life and death, the short life and the merry one; the careless worldling and the rich and powerful finally levelled by death; while the higher spiritual life and the virtues of self-denial and sacrifice are suggested by the pious and primitive life of the monks.

Such subjects were favourites all through the Middle Ages, and it may be remembered that Petrarch about this time wrote his "Triumphs," one of which is named "The Triumph of Death."

A gentler spirit is seen in the art of Benozzo Gozzoli (born circa 1424), a pupil of Fra Angelico, full of a love for nature, of trees and flowers and animals, and of decorative beauty, a delight in beautiful walled cities, in ornate dresses, in fair fresh faces of youths and maidens. It is the joy of life without the shadow of death, as of the visions of a serene spirit that joins the hands of the old pagan life and the new Christian ideals and reconciles them in a world of beauty.

In the frescoes of the Riccardi Chapel at Florence, Benozzo pictures, with loving faithfulness, the Medici princes riding out to the hunt in splendid equipment, in a high upland and wooded country such as one may find around Florence. The subject was "The Adoration of the Magi," represented upon the side walls, "The Nativity" being painted over the altar. The procession of the kings with gifts is seen winding over the hills of the rich and varied landscape, interspersed with groups like the princes, in which Lorenzo the Magnificent appears, and portraits of the painter, his friends, and contemporaries.

The fresh youthful faces are full of the zest and pleasure of life. The horses curvet and prance in their proud trappings, and the hounds pursue the flying deer, as if for pleasant pastime.

He gives us those charming groups of kneeling angels also in the same chapel. Or he tells the story of the building of the tower of Babel, or of Noah, at Pisa, or of St. Augustine, at San Gimignano, with the same serenity and delight in subsidiary incident and ornament.

Another very distinct individuality in painting, reflecting the spirit of his time halfway between mediÆval feeling and the revived paganism and humanism of the classical Renascence, was Botticelli. He was a pupil of the painter-monk Fra Filippo Lippi, and worked at Florence about the middle of the fifteenth century. He was one of the painters summoned to Rome in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV. to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel. He is spoken of as "our friend Botticelli" in Leonardo da Vinci's treatise on painting; but until comparatively recently, as compared with more often sounded names in the trumpet of fame, the beauty of his work has been singularly neglected.

That now generally admired and most poetic and beautiful work, "An Allegory of Spring," in the Accademia at Florence, was, about five and twenty years ago, hung in an obscure position; but of late, and probably largely owing to English taste and criticism, it is now brought prominently forward and is constantly copied. The lady who is supposed to witness the masque stands in the centre in a grove of orange trees, the ground covered with flowers, among which is seen the fleur-de-luce of Florence; Zephyrus is clasping the earth, and from her mouth fall flowers; next to her Flora, or Spring, with a beautiful robe embroidered with flowers, bears roses in her lap and scatters them. Then there is a group of the "Three Graces" dancing, while Hermes, as the herald of Spring, leads the procession. The picture is supposed to have formed one of a set of four. The second panel called "Summer," and showing Venus rising in her shell from the sea, with a draped figure about to throw a robe over her as she reaches the grassy shore, is in the Uffizi Gallery. There is also a remarkable allegory, "Calumny," in the same gallery, while our own National Gallery contains a characteristic Madonna and Child with angels. Botticelli's Madonnas are always distinguished by a peculiar expression of wistful pathos and a feeling unlike those of any other painter. There is also a charming small Nativity with a ring of angels, besides the very splendid vision of heaven. Botticelli also made illustrations to Dante.

A severer and more distinctly classically inspired genius, yet with a certain northern hardness, we find in Mantegna, who was born near Padua, in 1431. He came, it is said, of very poor and obscure parents, and, like his great predecessor Giotto, Mantegna was employed in keeping sheep. Little is known of his early life, but he is found later as one of the pupils of Francesco Squarcione, a painter of Padua, but more famous for his teaching, his school being at that time the most renowned in all Italy, his pupils numbering one hundred and thirty-seven. He was a great student of the antique, and travelled over Italy and Greece in search of remains of ancient art, obtaining casts or copies of such sculptures he could not purchase or remove, so that Mantegna had no doubt exceptional facilities for the study of classical sculpture, which had so marked an influence upon his design.

He seems, too, to have been an indefatigable worker, and drew with great diligence from the statues, busts, bas-reliefs, and architectural ornaments he found in the school of Squarcione. "At the age of seventeen Andrea painted his first great picture for the church of Santa Sofia in Padua (now lost), and at the age of nineteen assisted in painting the chapel of St. Christopher in the Eremitani—representing on the vault the four evangelists." He is said to have given to these sacred personages the air and attitude of Greek or Roman philosophers, the type in fact confirmed by Raphael and afterwards generally adopted by Renascence artists.

A curious change or blending of other elements and a different feeling in Mantegna's work, softening the somewhat cold and rigid classicism, seems to have been brought about by his association with the Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini, the father of the two greater Bellinis (Giovanni and Gentile), whose daughter Nicolosia he married about this time (1450). This marriage with the daughter of Squarcione's rival, as Bellini was considered, and Mantegna's friendship with him, seems to have offended Squarcione and caused an estrangement, and even the active enmity of his first master, and eventually led to his quitting Padua. He painted some frescoes at Verona, and was invited to Mantua by Ludovico Gonzaga, and finally he entered the service of that prince. He was invited to Rome by Pope Innocent VIII. to paint a chapel in the Belvedere of the Vatican, which was actually destroyed in the last century by Pius VI. to make room for his new museum. This was after the ruthless way of the popes, prodigal of painted walls, as when the beautiful early Renascence frescoes of Melozzo da Forli were removed to make room for Raphael's and Giulio Romano's frescoes in the Stanzi.

There is a story of the discretion of Mantegna, which, with a natural courtesy, seems to have distinguished him personally. While working for Pope Innocent VIII. it happened that the payments for the work were not made with desirable regularity; the pope, visiting the artist at his work one day, asked him the meaning of a certain female figure which he had introduced. Andrea replied that he was trying to represent Ingratitude. The pope, understanding him at once, replied: "If you would place Ingratitude in fitting company, you should place Patience at her side." Andrea took the hint and said no more. It is satisfactory to know that in the end the pope not only paid up, but was "munificent" besides.

Finally, Mantegna returned to Mantua, where he built himself a magnificent house painted inside and out by his own hand, and in which he lived in great esteem and honour until his death in 1506. He was buried in the church of his patron St. Andrew, where his monument in bronze and several of his pictures are still to be seen.

The famous frieze of "The Triumph of Julius CÆsar"—which is now in Hampton Court Palace, having been bought by King Charles I. from the Duke of Mantua—was first designed by Mantegna for the hall of the palace of San Sebastiano at Mantua, and commenced in 1488, before he went to Rome, he finishing it after his return in 1492. There are nine panels or compartments in this frieze: "They are painted in distemper on twilled linen, which has been stretched on frames, and originally placed against the wall with arabesque pilasters dividing the compartments."

Mr. Alfred Marks issued a set of photographs some years ago, but they are not very clear, There is a good set of Italian woodcuts in chiaroscuro of the designs, by Andrea Andreani, done while the frieze was in the palace at Mantua, which have been engraved in various ways at different times with very various results.

The whole design is extremely rich and sumptuous, and full of the extraordinary designing power and command of inventive detail so characteristic of Mantegna.

"In the first compartment we have the opening of the procession: trumpets, incense burning, standards borne aloft by the victorious soldiers.

"In the second, the statues of the gods carried off from the temples of the enemy; battering rams, implements of war, heaps of glittering armour carried on men's shoulders, or borne aloft in chariots.

"In the third compartment, more splendid trophies of a similar kind; huge vases filled with gold coin, tripods, etc.

"In the fourth, more such trophies, with the oxen crowned with garlands for the sacrifice.

"In the fifth are four elephants adorned with rich garlands of fruits and flowers, bearing on their backs magnificent candelabra, and attended by beautiful youths.

"In the sixth are figures bearing vases, and others displaying the arms of the vanquished.

"The seventh shows us the unhappy captives, who, according to the barbarous Roman custom, were exhibited on these occasions to the scoffing and exulting populace. There is here a group of female captives of all ages, among them a dejected bride-like figure, a woman carrying her infant children, and a mother her little boy, who lifts up his foot as if he had hurt it.

"In the eighth we have a group of singers and musicians.

"In the ninth, and last, appears the Conqueror, Julius CÆsar, in a sumptuous chariot richly adorned with sculptures; he is surrounded by a crowd of figures, and among them is seen a youth bearing aloft a standard on which is inscribed the boastful words: 'Veni, vidi, vici'—'I came, I saw, I conquered.'"12

The care and science of the draughtsmanship is as noticeable as the richness of the design. The perspective being carefully given as of figures actually seen above the eye-line, and with all the sumptuousness and the mixed elements of the design there is a certain restraint and monumental severity which preserves its dignity.

Rubens, when at Mantua in 1606, was struck by the splendour of the work, and gave a Rubensesque rendering of one of the compartments, which is in the National Gallery; but it loses the peculiar dignity, serenity, and decorative character of Mantegna's work in the somewhat florid and bumptious style of the late Flemish master; but there is no doubt that Rubens entertained a real admiration for the work, and was instrumental in getting Charles I. to purchase it.

Among Mantegna's chief works may be named "La Madonna della Vittoria," now in the Louvre, painted as an altar-piece for the church built by the Marquis of Mantua, to commemorate his victory on the retreat of Charles VIII. from Italy; the Crucifixion, also in the Louvre, containing the artist's own portrait in the half-length figure of the soldier seen in front; the fine allegory of the Vices flying before Wisdom, Chastity, and Philosophy; and the beautiful Parnassus, which were painted for Isabella d'Este, and filled panels in a room in her palace at Mantua, as has recently been discovered. Mr. Armstrong has had a fine large scale model of one side of this room set up in the South Kensington Museum, to show the effect of the decorations complete of Mantegna's allegories (represented by copies). One must not forget either the wonderful Circumcision, at Florence, or, in our own National Gallery, the Virgin and Child enthroned.

Besides his paintings there exists a multitude of drawings, designs, and plates of his own engraving (an art which he took up when he was sixty years old). These include the fifth, sixth, and seventh compartments of his own "Triumph of Julius CÆsar."

Perhaps the greatest individual mind of the Italian Renascence was Leonardo da Vinci, who was so distinguished in so many different departments of thought and art; and while he summed up and passed beyond the philosophical and scientific knowledge of his age, and experimented in nearly all directions, and was at once architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, his fame still rests upon his achievements in painting, which are distinguished by a peculiar refinement, extreme finish, and intellectual and poetic quality. He was born at Vinci, from which he takes his name, near Florence—that Athens of the Middle Ages—in the lower Val d'Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father was an advocate, not rich, but able to give his son the advantage of the best instructors in the science and art of that period. He studied under Andrea Verrocchio (famous for his superb bronze equestrian statue of the Coleoni at Venice), himself uniting the arts of sculptor, chaser in metal, and painter. There is a story that Leonardo as a youth was set to paint an angel in a picture of Verrocchio, and so outdid his master that the latter never touched painting again.

A weird fantastic vein which appears in Leonardo's work, especially in his love for inventing grotesques, comes out in the tale of the fig tree. A peasant on his father's estate cut down an old fig tree and brought a section of the trunk to have something painted upon it for his cottage. Leonardo determined to do something terrible and striking—a beautiful horror which should rival the mythical Medusa's head (which he afterwards painted), and, aided by his natural history studies and the reptiles he collected, he produced a sort of monster or chimera which frightened his father into fits and was therefore considered too good for the peasant's cottage, and afterwards sold for much. The peasant was persuaded to give up his fig tree and put off with a wooden shield painted with a device of a hart transfixed with an arrow.

In a letter to the Duke of Milan, who had invited him to his court, he thus recites his qualifications as an artist: "I understand the different modes of sculpture in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta. In painting, also, I may esteem myself equal to anyone, let him be who he may."

Of his paintings the widest-known, through engravings, is "The Last Supper," which was painted on the wall of the refectory of the Dominican Convent of the Madonna delle Grazie at Milan, occupying two years, from 1496 to 1498—but the fresco has suffered by time and restoration, and but little of it is now left. There is a fine study of the head of Christ.

The picture of the Virgin of the Rocks and the portrait, Madonna Lisa del Gioconde, in the Louvre, show the quality of his painting—the characteristic subtlety of expression, mysteriousness, and very elaborate finish.

After his return to Florence began his rivalry with another gigantic artistic personality of that time of wonders—Michael Angelo, who was then, in the early years of the sixteenth century, about twenty-two years younger. The strong but jealous individuality of both, in spite of admiration for each other's genius, unfortunately stood in the way of friendship and co-operation. They remained rivals and competitors. They contended for the painting of the great Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, and both prepared cartoons. Leonardo chose for his subject the defeat of the Milanese by the Florentine army in 1440; Michael Angelo a party of Florentine soldiers surprised while bathing in the Arno. Leonardo's design was chosen, but he spent so much time in experimenting and in preparing the wall to receive oil-painting, which he preferred to fresco, that, changes of government happening, the scheme was finally abandoned, and both cartoons, though shown for several years, were finally lost, only a copy of Michael Angelo's remaining, and an engraving from it.

The experimental nature of Leonardo seems to have prevented his completing many works, while he was full of projects of all kinds, too many of which were never realized. The fine cartoon of the Virgin and St. Anna was never painted. This cartoon, or a good copy, is now in the possession of the Royal Academy.

In 1514 Leonardo was, like so many great Italian artists, invited to Rome by the pope (then Leo X.), but more in his character of philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist than as a painter. There he met Raphael, then at the height of his fame, engaged in painting the Stanzi of the Vatican. But Leonardo was ill-pleased on the whole with his Roman visit. The pope was said to have become dissatisfied with his speculative and dilatory habits. His old rival, Michael Angelo, was there, and finally he left and set out for Pavia, where Francis I. of France then held his Court. By him Leonardo was received with honour and favour, and went with him to France as principal Court painter, only, however, as it proved, to die there on May 2nd, 1516.

In the work of Leonardo's great rival, Michael Angelo, the art of the Italian Renascence may be said to have reached its culminating point, and after him decline sets in. It is as if the wonderful structure of inventive artistic genius had been piled by the life labours of generations to an ambitious and dangerous height, and at last had given way under the strain, or perhaps, like the sun-flower, the same force which raises the splendid rayed head and enables it to outface the sun, at last forces it earthwards again.

Michael Angelo Buonarotti was born at Settignano, near Florence, in the year 1474. His ambition, personal pride, and masterfulness of temper possibly may be traced to his progenitors—a once noble family. It was, too, against the prejudice of his father that he finally decided his career, becoming the apprentice of Ghirlandajo, It was in the days when Lorenzo the Magnificent ruled over Florence, and the young Michael Angelo became a student in the Academy, founded upon the strength of a collection of antique marbles, busts, statues, fragments in the palace and gardens of that prince. This alone would be sufficient to give a strong classical bias to his style.

Alinari Photo.]

BUST OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI (S. CROCE, FLORENCE).