THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES.

Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum, StabiÆ, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom of the middle ages.

But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage, on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[103] avails himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[104] who from them, judged him inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.

The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli, named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has reached our time.[105]

About 1325, Giotto was invited by King Robert to Naples, for the purpose of painting the church of S^ta. Chiara; he came and filled it with Gospel history, and apocalyptic mysteries, from inventions, said in the time of Vasari to have been formerly communicated to him by Dante. These works, because they darkened the church, were whitewashed in the beginning of the last century, with the exception of a Madonna called della Grazia, and some other sainted image, preserved by female piety. Giotto conducted other works in S^ta. Maria Coronata, and still others, which no longer exist in the Castle dell' Uovo. Maestro Simone, a Cremonese, according to some, but more probably a native of Naples, was the chosen partner of these works, and from so distinguished a choice, acquired some celebrity himself: from the resemblance of his style to Tesauro and to Giotto, he might have been the pupil of either, and was perhaps of both. Certain it is, that after the departure of Giotto, he received from Robert and Queen Sancia, many important commissions for various churches, and especially that of S. Lorenzo; there he painted Robert receiving the crown from his brother Lewis, Bishop of Toulouse, but died before he could finish the compartment of the chapel dedicated to that prelate after his demise and canonization. Though confessedly inferior in invention, character, and suavity of tone, he has nearly reached Giotto in some of his works: such as the dead Christ supported by his mother, in the church dell' Incoronata, and the Madonna with the Infant, on a gold-ground, now in the convent of the church della Croce, supposed by some to have been painted in oil.[106]

Simone had a son, Francesco di Simone, who died in 1360. His works are not numerous, but what has reached our days in the Capitolo di S. Lorenzo, is distinguished by an air of superior dignity and grace. Two other pupils of Simone, Gennaro di Cola and Stefanone, a similarity of manner associated in several public works, such as the chapel of S. Lewis, begun by Simone, and what still exists in S. Giovanni da Carbonara of subjects relative to our Lady. They are similar, however, without monotony. Gennaro, impressed by the difficulties of his art, and bent to overcome each obstacle by labour, appears precise, studied, and hard. Stefanone, guided by a spirit which in better days might have been called genius, boldly executed what he had conceived with warmth.

The pretended improvements of Colantonio del Fiore, (born 1352, died 1444,) a pupil of Francesco, neither appear to have been considerable enough in themselves, nor sufficiently authenticated, to place him at the head of a new epoch in style. Those barbarous relics of the middle ages, that meagerness of contour, dryness of colour, and want of perspective, which he is said to have abolished, had in a great measure vanished before, at the glance of Giotto. The gold grounds continued after both;[107] and if in enumerating some of his works his encomiast is in doubt whether they may not rather belong to M. Simone, what is it but a tacit confession, that the art had made no considerable progress during the course of a century?

The life of Colantonio grasped nearly the half of two centuries, and the refinements for which he has been extolled must be looked for in those of his works, on whose authenticity there is no hesitation, produced on the verge of life. Such is the Madonna, &c. in S^ta. Maria Nuova, a compound of harmonious hues, though painted on a gold ground; and still more in S. Lorenzo, Saint Jerome drawing a thorn from the lion's foot, the date 1436, a picture full of truth, in high esteem with foreigners, and for its better preservation removed by the fathers of the convent from the church itself to the sacristy. He had a scholar in Angiolo Franco, who has obtained the praise of Marco di Siena, for having invigorated the most successful imitation of Giotto by the tone and chiaroscuro of his master.

But a name of far greater importance to art is that of Antonio Solario, commonly called Lo Zingaro, the reputed son-in-law of Colantonio. His story, still more romantic than that which in Quintin Metsis transformed a blacksmith to a painter, tells that Solario, bred to the forge, became enamoured of a daughter of Colantonio, forsook the anvil, and by successful submission to a ten years' trial of painting, and the mediation of a queen, obtained the idol of his soul. Let those who told the tale vouch for its truth: what is less disputable, and interests this history more, are his travels from Naples to Bologna, where for several years he studied under Lippo Dalmasio, and from thence over Italy, to become acquainted with the principles of other masters; those of Vivarini at Venice; of Bicci at Florence; of Galasso at Ferrara; of Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano at Rome. These two, it is believed that he assisted, and Luca Giordano asserted that some heads in their pictures at the Lateran bore the legitimate marks of Solario's pencil. In heads he excelled; he inspired them, according to Marco da Siena, with the air of life. In perspective, if the times be weighed, his skill was considerable; in composition not contemptible. There is variety in his scenery; and if his dresses be not drapery, they are at least naturally folded. In the design of the extremities he was less happy; his attitudes often border on caricature, as his colour on crudeness. On his return to Naples, nine years after his departure, applauded by Colantonio and the public, he enjoyed the patronage of King Alfonso. His greatest work is the Life of S. Benedetto, in the compartments of the cloister of S. Severino,—frescoes filled with an incredible variety of objects. Other churches possess some altarpieces by him: he left many portraits and some very attractive Madonnas; but in the Dead Christ of S. Domenico Maggiore, and the S. Vincent of S. Pier Martire, including some stories of that Saint's life, he is said to have excelled himself. Zingaro reared a school, which with more or less felicity disseminated his principles for nearly half a century, and retained his name. Of its pupils, Niccola di Vito, long forgot in his works, is barely remembered as a buffoon; Simone Papa and Angiotillo di Roccadirame, scarcely emerged to mediocrity; Pietro and Ippolito (Polito) del Donzello deserve less transient attention. Sons-in-law of Angiolo Franco, and pupils of Giuliano da Majano in architecture, they were, according to Vasari,[108] employed by him to decorate with paintings the fabric of Poggio Reale, which he had constructed for King Alfonso, where, continuing to operate under his son and successor Ferdinand, they represented the story of the Conspiracy formed in against him, a work celebrated by Jacopo Sannazaro.[109] Ippolito, alone or with his brother, filled the refectory of S^ta. Maria Nuova with a number of subjects for the same prince, and then retired to Florence, where, not long after, he died. Piero remained at Naples distinguished and followed. Their style is that of their master, but with more suavity of colour. The first successful imitation of friezes, trophies, and storied basso-relievoes in chiaroscuro, may with probability be dated from them. That Pietro excelled in portraits, is evident from some animated heads saved among the ruins of certain frescoes of his on a wall of the Palace Matalona. Both were, however, surpassed in tone, and force of light and shade, and mellowness of outline, by Silvestro de Buoni, their pupil, whose pictures, scattered over the temples of Naples, have been enumerated by Dominici. Silvestro himself yields to Tesauro of questionable name,[110] whose works approach much nearer to the succeeding epoch than the united labours of his predecessors in vigour of invention, in judgment, propriety of attitude, truth of expression, and general harmony of the whole, with a relief beyond what seems credible in an artist unacquainted with other schools and other works than those of his native place. Such was his power of execution, that it challenged the wonder of Luca Giordano in the vigour of his career, when he contemplated the ceiling of San Giovanni de' Pappacodi, where Tesauro had painted the Seven Sacraments. They have been minutely described, and the portraits of Alfonso II. and of Ippolita Sforza, whom he is said to have represented, for the work itself is no more, in the Sacrament of Matrimony, afford some light as to the time in which it was painted. Another of his works, equally praised, in the Chapel Tocco of the Episcopal church, which represented a series of subjects from the life of Saint Asprenas, perished under the hands of one of Solimena's pupils. He was the father or uncle of Raimo Epifanio Tesauro, a considerable

Such were the masters that marked the first epoch of the Neapolitan school; neither inconsiderable in number, nor contemptible in progress, for a state nearly always perplexed by war: it derives, however, its greatest lustre from having produced within the state the memorable artist whose resolution and perseverance made Italy mistress of the new-discovered method in oil-painting, and changed the face of art.[111]

Antoniello, a Messinese, of the Antonj family, universally known by the name of Antoniello da Messina, educated, according to Vasari, to the art at Rome, returned from that place to Sicily, and after some successful practice at Palermo and Messina, sailed to Naples, where he saw an historical picture painted in oil by John ab Eyk, which had been presented or disposed of to king Alfonso, by some Florentine traders. Charmed by the method, Antoniello forgot every other concern, passed into Flanders, and by close attendance, and some presents of Italian designs, captivated the heart of the old painter, who made him completely master of the secret, and soon after died. Antoniello then left Flanders, and after some months spent at Messina, repaired to Venice, where he practised with general admiration of his new method; communicated it to Domenico there, and he at Florence to the felon Castagna, till by gradual progress it embraced all Italy. What remains to be related of Antoniello, is reserved for the history of the Venetian school, to which by residence and practice he properly belongs, and which alone carried his new discovered method to the height it was capable of.

The second epoch of Neapolitan art was auspicious. P. Perugino had painted for the Cathedral an Assumption of the Virgin, now lost, a work which led to a better taste. Already, Amato, as we observed, had abandoned the manner of Zingaro to follow Pietro, though his style had still too much of the former to form more than the connecting link between the two epochs; when Raffaello and his school came into vogue, Naples was the first of exterior towns to profit by them, and they, about the middle of the century, were followed by some adherents of Michael Angiolo; nor till near 1600, was any attention paid to other masters, if we except Tiziano.

The new series begins with Andrea Sabbatini[112] of Salerno. Smitten with the style of P. Perugino, Andrea set out for Perugia, to enter his school; but hearing some painters at an inn on the road talk of Raffaello and the Vatican, he altered his mind and route, and went to Rome. Though not long under the guidance of Sanzio, being by the death of his father, 1513, obliged to return to Naples, he returned another man. He is said to have painted with Raffaello at the Pace and in the Vatican. A good copyist, and what is rare, a better imitator, if he did not soar with Giulio, he kept pace with the best of that school, and excelled some in correctness, and a style equally remote from affectation and manner, with depth of chiaroscuro, breadth of drapery, and a colour which has defied time. His works in oil and fresco, scattered over the metropolis and the kingdom at large, have been celebrated as miracles of art, though now either lost or greatly impaired.

Of his scholars all persevered not in his manner: thus Cesare Turco, as commendable in oil as unsuccessful in fresco, drew nearer to P. Perugino. More of Andrea was retained by Francesco Santafede, the father and master of Fabrizio,—painters whom few of that school equal in colour, and so uniform that their works can only be discriminated by the superior tinge and chiaroscuro of the father. But the scholar who most resembled Andrea was one Paolillo, whose works, nearly all ascribed to his master, till restored to their real author by Dominici, leave little doubt of his right to the first honours of that school, had his career not been intercepted by a violent death, occasioned by intrigue. Polidoro Caldara, of Caravaggio, escaped to Naples in 1527, from the sack of Rome, but not, as Vasari with less information than credulity relates, to starve. Received in the house of Andrea, formerly his fellow scholar, he soon acquired acquaintance, commissions, and even formed pupils before his departure for Sicily. He had been celebrated for his chiaroscuros at Rome: at Naples and Messina he attempted colour. The shadowy and pallid specimens he has left, leave a doubt whether he would ever have arrived at a degree of strength or brilliancy worthy of invention and style, though he has been praised with enthusiasm by Vasari for the colour of the Christ led to Calvary, a numerous composition, and the last before his assassination at Messina.

Gian Bernardo Lama left the school of Amato to attach himself to Polidoro, whom he more than once imitated with sufficient success to incur the suspicion of having been assisted by the master: he had, however, more sweetness than energy, and, in the sequel, was noted for his opposition to the vigorous inroads of the Tuscan style and the prevalence of Marco di Pino.

There are who class with the scholars of Polidoro, Marco Cardisco, called Marco Gio. Francesco Penni, called "Perino del Vaga, at Rome, instructed, and was assisted by, two Neapolitans, Another, less pompous, but more effectual follower of Michael Angiolo, was Marco da Pino, or Marco da Siena: the date[115] of his arrival at Naples ought probably to be placed after 1560. He was well received, presented with the freedom of the city, and deserved the courtesy by the amenity of his manners and sincerity of character. With the reputation of the first artist, Marco was employed in the most conspicuous churches of the city and the state. Though he sometimes repeated his inventions, he approached Michael Angiolo nearer than any other Tuscan, because he affected less to do it. His forms are appealed to by Lomazzo as instances of just proportion, and, in keeping and aËrial perspective, he is ranked with Lionardo and Robusti. As his design is less charged, so is his colour more vigorous and glowing than the usual tinge of the Tuscan School: sometimes, however, he is unequal, trusts to practice, and deviates into manner. He was an able architect, and of the good writers on that art.

Of many pupils reared in his school, none was comparable to Gio. Angiolo Criscuolo, brother of G. Filippo. Though bred a notary, he had practised miniature from his youth; emulation with his brother prompted him to attempt larger proportions; and, under the tuition of Marco, he became a good imitator of his style.[116]

To dwell circumstantially on the crowd of artists that fill the biographic pages of this period, humiliating as mere nomenclature may appear, is below the dignity of an art, which, like poetry, admits not of mediocrity. Reputation during life, the partiality of friends and countrymen, some single work which escaped to excellence from the insignificant productions of a long career, are but equivocal claims on the homage of posterity: and more legitimate ones in oil or fresco, have neither Silvestro Bruno, Simone del Papa, the younger Amato, Mazzolini, Cola dell' Amatrice, Pompeo dell' Aquila, Giuseppe Valeriani, Marco Mazzaroppi, Gio. Pietro Russo, Pietro Negrone of Calabria, nor the Sicilian Gio. Borghese. Pirro Ligorio, the favourite architect of Pio IV. in Rome, and the engineer of Alphonso II. at Ferrara, owes the preservation of his name more to his Augean collections of antiquarian lumber and the intrigues by which he perplexed the last years of M. Angiolo, than to the flimsy exertions of his pencil.

Matteo da LeccÈ, of obscure education, displayed in Rome a perverse attachment to the manner of M. Angiolo by the usual conglobation of muscles and extravagance of action. He worked chiefly in fresco, and with a relief, which, in the phrase of Baglioni, makes some of his figures burst from the wall. Though many Florentines were then at Rome, he alone appeared capable of completing the plan of Buonarroti, in the Sistina, by facing the Last Judgement with the Fall of the Rebel Angels. Matteo girt himself boldly for the work, and left it a lamentable proof of the ridicule that must attend the presumption of a mere craftsman to ally himself with a man of genius. He worked likewise in Malta and in Spain, and, passing from thence to the Indies, became a thriving trader, till duped by the rage of digging for treasures, he dissipated his wealth, and died of penury and grief.

After the middle of the sixteenth century, the flame-like rapidity of Tintoretto's style at Venice, and soon after, the powerful contrast of Caravaggio's method at Rome, and the eclectic system of the Carracci, at Bologna, spread general emulation over Italy, and divided Naples into three parties, of nearly equal strength, led by Corenzio, Ribera, and Caracciolo, differing from each other, but ready to unite against all foreign competition. During their flourish, Guido, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Artemisia Gentileschi were at Naples, and formed some pupils;—a period as enviable in the number of excellent artists and the progressive powers of execution, as disgraceful for the dark manoeuvres and the vile intrigues that fill it—intrigues and manoeuvres too closely interwoven with the history of Neapolitan art, and, unfortunately, too well attested, merely to be dismissed with silence and contempt.

Belisario Corenzio,[117] an AchÆan Greek, after passing five years in the school of Tintoretto, fixed his abode at Naples about 1590. A native stream of ideas and unparalleled celerity of hand placed him, perhaps, on a level with his master in the dispatch of a prodigious number, even of most extensive works; but his rage was too ungovernable often to admit of more distinguished comparisons with Robusti; though few excelled him in design, and his works abound in conceptions, attitudes, and airs of heads confessedly inimitable to the Venetians themselves. The work in which he has best succeeded as an imitator of Tintoretto, is the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd by the Saviour, in the Refectory of the Benedictines, a huge performance, but, under his hands, a task of forty days. Though generally too much of a mannerist to sacrifice the readiest to the best, he still preserves a character of his own, an air of originality, in glories especially, which he embosomed in darkness and clouds pregnant with showers. With a decided turn for works of large dimension in fresco, which seldom allowed him to submit to the finish of oil colour, he contrived to please by various compositions of sacred history, in small proportions, and is even said to have enlivened the perspectives of the Frenchman Desiderio with diminutive figures admirably toned and adapted to the scenery.

The native country of Giuseppe Ribera[118] was a subject of dispute between the Spaniards and Neapolitans, till the production of an extract from the baptismal register of Xativa (The studies he had pursued enabled him to go beyond Caravaggio in invention, mellowness, and design: the grand Deposition from the Cross at the Certosa proves the success of his emulation, a work, by the verdict of Giordano, alone sufficient to form a painter: the Martyrdom of S. Gennaro in the royal chapel, and the S. Jerome of the TrinitÀ, excel his usual style, and possess Titianesque beauties. S. Jerome was among his darling subjects; S. Jerome he painted, he etched in numerous repetition, in whole-length and in half figures. He delighted in the representation of hermits, anchorets, apostles, prophets, perhaps less to impress the mind with gravity of character and the venerable looks of age, than to strike the eye with the imitation of incidental deformities attendant on decrepitude, and the picturesque display of bone, veins, and tendons athwart emaciated muscle. A shrivelled arm, a dropsied leg, were to Ribera what a breast-plate and a gaberdine were to Rembrandt. As in objects of imitation he courted meagreness or excrescence, so in the choice of historic subjects he preferred to the terrors of ebullient passions, features of horror or loathsomeness, the spasms of Ixion, St. Bartholomew under the butcher's knife. Nor are the few ideas of gaiety by which he endeavoured to soothe his exasperated fancy, less disgusting: Bacchus and his attendants are grinning Lazaroni or bloated wine-sacks; brutality under his hand distorts the feature of mirth.

Giambatista Caracciolo,[119] first attached to Franc. Imparato, then to Caravaggio, grew to manhood before he had produced any work of consequence: roused afterward by the fame and the impression made on his mind by some picture of Annibale, he went to Rome, and by a pertinacious study of the Farnese Gallery became one of the best imitators of that style. This was the basis of his fame on his return to Naples, and by this, whenever provoked to competition, he maintained it: such are the Madonna of S. Anna de' Lombardi; S. Carlo, in the church of S. Agnello; and the Christ under the Cross, at the Incurabili. The rest of his performances, by their strength of chiaroscuro, betray the school of Caravaggio. From so considerate and finished an artist, haste and flimsiness were not to be feared, and yet there exist productions of his so feeble that his biographer[120] is reduced to account for them from the artist's wish of retaliating by paltry work for paltrier prices; or from suffering them to be finished by Mercurio d'Aversa, no very estimable pupil.

Such were the three leaders of that cabal which for some years persecuted every stranger of eminence in the art who freely came, or was invited to come, to Naples. Reputation, fiction, violence, had raised Belisario to the tyranny of fresco; the most lucrative commissions he considered as due to himself, the rest he distributed among his dependants, the greater number of whom possessed little merit. Massimo Santafede, though independent of him, remained neuter, afraid to interfere with a man who, to obtain his purpose, would stop at neither fraud nor crime; a proof of which he is said to have given, in administering poison to the gentlest and best of his pupils, Luigi Roderigo, whose growing powers he envied.

To maintain his primacy in fresco, the exclusion of every stranger who excelled in that branch became, of course, his principal object. Annibale Caracci arrived at Naples in 1609, to paint the churches "Dispirited by the violence of these manoeuvres, the deputies began to give way to the cabal of the monopolists, allotting the frescoes to Correnzio and Caracciolo, and flattering Spagnoletto with the hope of being intrusted with the altar-pieces; when all at once, repenting of their agreement, they ordered the two fresco painters to throw up their work, and transferred the whole of the chapel to Domenichino, at the splendid price of a hundred ducats for every entire, fifty for each half figure, and twenty-five for every head.[121] They likewise took measures for his personal safety, by obtaining the Viceroy's protection, but in vain. The faction, not content with crying him down as a cold insipid painter and discrediting him with those who see with their ears and fill every place, alarmed him with anonymous letters, threw down what he had painted, mixed ashes with his materials to crack the ground he had prepared, and, by a stroke of the most refined malice, persuaded the Viceroy to give him a commission of some pictures for the Court of Spain. These, when little more than dead-coloured, they carried from his study to court, where Ribera superciliously ordered what alterations he thought proper, and then, without allowing him leisure to terminate the whole, dispatched them to Spain. The insolence of the rival, the complaints of the deputies on the successive interruptions of their work, and hence the suspicion of mischief, induced Domenichino at last secretly to depart for Rome, in hopes of being able from thence to bring his affairs into a better train,—and not without success; the rumours of his flight subsided, new measures for his safety were taken, he returned to Naples, and, without more interruption, completed the greater part of the frescoes, and considerably advanced the altar-pieces.

Here death surprised him, accelerated, as some have suspected, by poison, certainly by repeated causes of disgust from his relations, competitors, and, above all, the arrival of his old adversary Lanfranco. He succeeded to Domenichino in the remaining fresco, Spagnoletto in one of the oil pictures, and Stanzioni in another. Caracciolo was dead; Belisario, excluded by age from sharing in the spoil, soon after was destroyed by a ruinous fall from a scaffold. Nor had Ribera, if the prevailing fame be true,[122] a desirable end; dishonoured in his daughter, gnawed by remorse for the vile persecutions in which he had shared, odious to himself, and sick of light, he escaped to sea, and none tells where he perished.

Opposed at its onset by these three, the School of Bologna triumphed after their demise, and Naples was divided into its imitators; for the mannered style of Cesari, which approached that of Belisario, terminated with Luigi Roderigo, and his relative Gian Bernardino.

At the head of those who adopted Caracciesque principles with success, may be placed Massimo Stanzioni[123] a scholar of Caracciolo, and, as he himself asserts, of Lanfranco in fresco, in portrait of Santafede. At Rome he strove to embody the forms of Annibale with the tints of Guido. Thus equipped, he braved the foremost talents at Naples, and opposed at the Certosa a Dead Christ among the Maries to Spagnoletto, who, to escape comparisons, persuaded the friars to have the picture of his rival washed to recover its somewhat darkened tone, and with a corrosive liquor so defaced it, that Stanzioni, declaring so black a fraud ought to remain an object of public indignation, refused to retouch it; he left, however, other specimens of his powers at that repository of rival talents, and above all the masterpiece of S. Bruno. The ceilings of Gesu Nuovo and of S. Paolo give him a distinguished rank among fresco painters. His gallery pictures, though not rare at Naples, are seldom met with elsewhere. Whilst single, he sought and aimed at excellence, and courted the art for its own sake; after his marriage, with a woman of fashion, gain became necessary to maintain her in a state of splendour, and he sunk by degrees to mediocrity.

The School of Massimo is celebrated for the number and excellence of its pupils, but the two who promised most, Muzio Rossi and Antonio de Bellis, perished in the bloom of life. The first, who had entered the School of Guido at Bologna, was at the age of eighteen thought worthy to face at the Certosa men of the first ability, and shrinks from no comparison, but scarcely survived his work. The second, whose style is nearly balanced between Guido and Guercino, began at the church of S. Carlo various pictures from the life of that Saint, which he lived not to finish.

Francesco di Rosa, called Pacicco, another pupil of that school, gave himself up to the imitation of Guido, by Massimo's own advice. Pacicco is one of the few artists mentioned by Paolo de Matteio in a MS. which admits no name of mediocrity. His forms, his colour, the elegance of his extremities, the grace and dignity of his characters, are equally commended. He had models of beauty in three nieces, one of whom, Aniella di Rosa, in charms, talents, and manner of death has been compared to Elizabeth Sirani: poison, administered by the malignity of strangers, swept the Bolognese—a dagger and a husband's jealousy, the Neapolitan: he was Agostin Beltrano, her fellow pupil, and frequent partner of her works.

The remaining scholars of this school, Paul Domenico Finoglia, Giacinto de' Popoli, and Giuseppe Marullo, all three of Orta,—Andrea Malinconico, and Bernardo Cavallino, were, if we except the last, with more or less felicity, imitators of their master. Cavallino, more original, is said to have provoked the jealousy of Massimo, who advised him to paint in small: this ought to be admitted with hesitation, for it is difficult to believe, that he who feels himself made for the grand, could be persuaded to waste his life on trifles.

Another convert to the Caracci School, was Andrea Vaccaro,[124] the friend and competitor of Massimo, a man made for imitation, says Lanzi, and says too much; for, if he had no equal in that of Caravaggio, he was, when imitating Guido, inferior to Massimo: nor did he, till after the demise of Stanzioni, acquire that supremacy at Naples which remained undisputed till the arrival of Giordano, young, vigorous, and fraught with the novel style of Pietro Beretini. Both concurred for the great altar-piece of S^ta. Maria del Pianto, both presented their sketches, and Vaccaro obtained preference by the verdict of Pietro da Cortona himself, who declared him equally superior in experience and correctness of style to his own scholar; but, when contending with Giordano in fresco, to which he had not been trained by early practice, Vaccaro lost the honours he had gained. The best of his school was Giacomo Farelli, whom Luca found no contemptible antagonist: had he been content to follow the style of his master, without aspiring at that of Domenichino, for which he was unfit, he might have deserved the historian's notice for more than one picture.

On the School of Domenichino, the Sicilians, Pietro, Giacomo, and Teresa del Po, cannot confer much honour. The father had more theory than practice, the son less evidence than ostentation, the daughter shone in miniature. Nearer to the master, both in style and temper, was Francesco di Maria: correct, slow, irresolute, author of few but eminent works, especially the subjects relative to S. Lawrence, at the Conventuals of Naples. He excelled in portraits, one of which, exhibited at Rome with one of Vandyk and another by Rubens, was, by Poussin, Cortona, and Sacchi, preferred to both. He often has been mistaken for his master, and commands high prices: the want of grace alone betrays him—of grace Nature had not been liberal to Francesco. Hence he became the proverb of Giordano, "that sickening over bone and muscle, he rendered beauty tame." He, in retort, held up Giordano's style as heresy in art, a flowery medley of incoherent charms.

Though the reputed master, Lanfranco was not the model of Massimo; his principal imitator was Giambatista Benaschi, or Bernaschi, numbered with Roman artists by Orlandi, but who fixed his residence at Naples, and opened a numerous school; a decided machinist, but with a grasp of fancy which never suffered him to repeat a figure in the same attitude. His points of sight from below upward, are correct, and his foreshortenings dextrously contrived. None ever approached a master nearer, and forsook him with less success.

Guercino never saw Naples, but Mattia Preti,[125] commonly called Calabrese, smit with his novel style, went to study it at Cento; not indeed exclusively, for no Italian school escaped the attention of Preti. Unpractised in colour to his twenty-sixth year, he attended solely to design, less to form beauty or trace characters of delicacy, than to express robust and energetic ones: in such he often succeeded, but sometimes sunk to heaviness. His colour resembled his line, not soft and airy, but dense, cut into masses of After this survey of the Bolognese School at Naples, the native one of Ribera claims attention. None ever swore more implicitly to a master's dictates: the energy of his style absorbed their eye, the atrocity of his character too often debauched their hearts. Inferiority alone discriminates the works of Giovanni Do and Bartolommeo Passante from those of Spagnoletto; though, in the advance of life, the first attempted to tinge with less vulgarity, and the second now and then affected a more select outline. Francesco Fracanzani had a certain grandeur of execution and bloom of colour: his "Transito," or Death of St. Joseph, at the Pellegrini, is among the first pictures of the city. But, by the pressure of poverty, he first became a dauber, then a criminal, and received sentence of death, which respect for his profession, from the public ignominy of the halter, mitigated to secret execution by poison.

Aniello Falcone[126] and Salvator Rosa, who is to be mentioned more at large elsewhere, are the greatest boast of this school, though Rosa frequented it for a short time only, and chiefly profited by the instruction of Falcone. The strength of Falcone lay in battles, which he painted in all dimensions, from the Sacred books, history, or poems. Countenance, arms, dresses were in unison with the national character of the combatants. His expression was vivid, the figures and movements of his horses select and natural, and his tactics correct, though he had neither served in, nor seen a battle. He drew with precision, everywhere consulted the life, and laid his colour on with equal strength and finish. That he instructed Borgognone is not probable. Baldinucci, who published the Memoirs of that Jesuit, is silent on that head; but they knew and esteemed each other. He had a numerous set of scholars, and with them, and the assistance of some other painters, contrived to revenge the murder of some relative and of a pupil assassinated by the presidial Spaniards: for, at the revolutionary hubbub of Maso Aniello, he and his gang formed themselves into a troop, which they called "the Company of Death," and, protected by Ribera, who palliated their proceedings at court, spread horrid massacre, till, scared by the return of order, this band of homicides dispersed, and sought their safety in flight. Falcone himself retired for some years to France, which has many of his works; the rest escaped to Rome, or sought the usual asylums of revenge and murder.

A numerous set of various but inferior artists, in power and pursuit, fills the remaining period of this epoch and the Neapolitan catalogues of art: the best of these issued from the desperate School of Falcone, to whose method they adhered in all their diverging branches. Of these Domenico Gargiuoli, nicknamed Micco Spadaro, a character as fierce as pliant, leads the van—no contemptible figurist in large, but of endless combination in groups of small proportion. The perspectives of Viviano Codagora, his sworn brother, receive an exclusive lustre from his figures. The battles of their fellow scholar, Carlo Coppola, might sometimes be mistaken for those of Falcone, had he given less fulness to his horses. Paolo Porpora left battles to paint quadrupeds, but chiefly and best, fish and sea-shells: in fruit and flowers he was far surpassed by Abraham Brueghel, who at that time had settled at Naples. Giuseppe Recco and Andrea Belvedere, from the same school, excelled in game and birds; and the last still more in flowers and fruit, so as to contest superiority in that branch with Giordano, asserting that no figurist could reach the polish, or give the finish required in minute objects. Luca maintained, that the more implies the less, and, composing a picture of game, fruit, and flowers, gave it such an air of illusion, that Andrea, shrinking from his presence crestfallen, retired among the literati of the day, of whom he was not the least.

After the middle of the seventeenth century, the revolutionary style of Luca Giordano[127] reversed every preceding principle, and, by the suavity of its ornamental magic, enchanted the public taste. A vast, resolute, creative, talent attended him from infancy: in his eighth year he is said to have painted, and not for the first time in fresco, two infant angels, for the church of S^ta. Maria La Nuova.[128] Struck with wonder, the Vice RÈ Duke Medina de Las Torres placed him with Ribera, whose principles he studied for some time, but, aspiring to a more ample theatre of art, escaped to Rome, followed by his father, Antonio, a weak artist, but an unceasing monitor, and the more relentless because he placed all his hopes on the rapid success of his son. To insure it, he did not, if we believe one writer, suffer Luca to intermit his labours by regular meals, but fed him whilst at work, as birds their callow young, perpetually chirping into his ear, Luca, dispatch![129]—Luca, dispatch! repeated his fellow-students, till the joke became nickname, by which he is oftener distinguished than by his own.

So brutal a method would have excited in a mind less vigorous nothing but weariness and despondency, but to the combining spirit of Luca gave with portentous velocity of hand the rudiments of that varied power, which, to a degree of deception, taught him to imitate the predominant air of every master's style in line and colour, which he was set or chose to copy,[130] and he had in nearly endless repetition, copied the best of what Rome possessed of its own, the Lombard, Venetian, and foreign schools, when he entered that of Pietro da Cortona, whose wide-extended and ostentatious plans met most congenially his own.

No single master's manner did he, however, exclusively adopt. His first works exhibit the pupil of Ribera, with evident aims at the energy of that style; his subsequent and best manner is marked by the beauties and the faults of Pietro da Cortona, the same contrast of composition, the same masses of light, with equal monotony of expression, which in female features was often supplied by his wife; a predilection for the ornamental splendour of Paolo Veronese distinguishes with less advantage a third class of his works—in this, stuffs are mixed with draperies, the tints are less vigorous, the chiaroscuro less decided, the execution heavier. It has been observed, that his works, when compared with the finished masterpieces of the classic schools, are little better than embryos, that he carried nothing to perfection, and that the delusive power alone, by which he united a number of jarring parts in one pleasing whole, can save him from sinking to the mediocrity which overwhelmed his imitators. But it ought likewise to be considered, what was the object of his exertions, and the end which he pursued;—they were, by conquering the eye, to become the favourite of the public, and he was made for both. Others see by degrees, arrange, reject, select;—into the fancy of Giordano, the subject with its parts showered at once; the picture stood complete before him. In colour, little solicitous about the dictates of art, or the real hues of Nature, he created an ideal and arbitrary tone, which represented the air of things without diving into their substance, and, content with absolute dominion over the eye, left it to others to inform the mind. If his method was compendiary; none ever knew better how to improve an accident to a beauty, and give to the random strokes of haste the look of deliberate practice. That he knew the laws of design, we know, but debauched by facility and the rage of gain, neglected the toil of correctness: hence likewise the superficial manner in which he often laid on his colours, diluted, unembodied, and unable to retain the fugitive imagery of his pencil.

Naples is full of Giordano—few, if any in so vast a metropolis, are the churches that want his hand. In that of the P.P. Girolamini, the Expulsion of the Venders is one of his most admired works; but the best of his frescoes, in which he seems to have concentrated his powers, are those in the treasury of the Certosa. The cupola of S. Brigida, rapidly painted in competition with Francesco di Maria, exhibits the first specimens of that flattering tone which baffled the learning of his rival, intoxicated the vulgar, and corrupted the growing taste. The admired picture of St. Xavier, of copious composition and the most seductive colour, was the work of one day and a half. Among the public and private paintings at Florence, the chapel Corsini and the gallery Riccardi are by the hand of Luca; nor was he unemployed by the Sovereign; and Cosmo III., in whose presence he invented and coloured a large composition with momentary velocity, declared him a painter formed for princes. He obtained the same praise from Charles II. of Spain, whom he served for thirteen years, but from the multitude of his works might be supposed to have served during a long life. There he continued the series of pictures begun by Cambiasi, in the church of the Escurial, on the most extensive plan, but inferior in style and execution to the frescoes of Buon-Ritiro. Of his oil pictures, that of the Nativity, for the Queen Mother, has shared unlimited praise, as combining with superior felicity of execution, a research and a depth of study seldom found in his other works.

Grown old, he returned to Naples, loaded with riches and honours, and soon after died, regretted as the first painter of his time.

Though Giordano did not propose his process as a model of imitation to his scholars, it may easily be guessed that his success made a deeper impression on them than his precepts, and that without previously submitting to the labours of his education, they attempted to snatch with the charms the profits of his manner. Hence a swarm of bold craftsmen and mannerists was let loose upon the public, who with gay mediocrity overwhelmed what yet was left of principles in art. Of these, his favourites were Aniello Rossi, and Matteo Pacelli, who accompanied him to Spain, returned well pensioned, and continued to live in obscure ease. Niccolo Rossi, Giuseppe Simonelli, Andrea Miglionico and Ramondo de Dominici, came nearer their master; and the Spaniard Franceschitto, as he had raised the hopes, might have excited the jealousy of Luca, had he not been intercepted by death. He left a specimen of his powers in the picture of S. Pasquale, at S^ta. Maria del Monte.

But the best of his pupils, and heir of his dispatch, was Paolo de' Matteis, a name that ranks with the foremost of that day, not unknown to France or Rome; his chief abode was, however, Naples, where his frescoes are spread over churches, galleries, halls and ceilings; if unequal to those of his master in merit, nearly always produced with equal speed. It was his unexampled vaunt to have painted the enormous Cupola del GesÙ Nuovo in sixty-six days, a boast which Solimene checked with the cool reply, that the work told its own tale without assistance: and yet it possesses beauties, especially in the parts that imitate Lanfranco, which excite wonder, considering the fury of execution. Nor, if he chose to work with previous study and with diligence, as in the church of the 'Francesco Solimene,[131] called "Of the public works that most distinguish Solimene, are the stories of the sacristy in S. Paolo Maggiore de' P.P. Teatini, nor less the pictures substituted for those of Giacomo del Po on the arches of the Chapels in the Church de' S.S. Apostoli. Specimens of his high finish may be seen in the Chapel of S. Filippo in the Church dell' Oratorio; he painted the principal altar-piece of the Nuns di "S. Gaudioso," and the four large histories in the choir of the church at Monte Cassino. Of private works, the gallery of Sanfelice is the most conspicuous at Naples; at Rome, some stories in the Albani and Colonna palaces; and at Macerata, in the Buonacorsi collection, among several mythologic subjects, the Death of Dido, a picture of large dimensions and striking effect. In the refectory of the Conventuals of Assisi, the Last Supper of our Lord, a polished performance, is by his hand.

Of that most numerous band of pupils whom he let loose upon the public, the most celebrated was, no doubt, Sebastiano Conca, a native of Gaeta, generally classed with the Roman school, for Rome became his residence and the theatre of his talent. After having served a pupilage of sixteen years under Solimene, and persevered in the practice of that style for several years at Rome, he ominously proved the futility of attempting at an advanced period to escape from the tyranny of early habits. At forty he dared to leave his brushes, became once more a student, and spent five years in drawing after the antique and the masters of design: but his hand and eye, debauched by manner, refused to obey his mind, till, wearied by hopeless fatigue, he followed the advice of the sculptor Le Gros, and returned to his former practice, though not without considerable improvements, and nearer to Pietro da Cortona than to his master. Conca had fertile brains, a rapid pencil, and a colour which at first sight fascinated every eye by its splendour, contrast, and the delicacy of its flesh-tints. His dispatch in fresco and in oil was equal to his employment, and there is scarcely a collection of any consequence without its Conca. He was courted by sovereigns and princes, and Pope Clement XI. ennobled him at a full assembly of the academicians of St. Luke. He was assisted in his labours by his brother Giovanni, a man of similar taste, but less power, and an excellent copyist. The maxims of Conca are considered[133] as having completed the ruin of art; but every school had its own canker, and his influence did not extend to all. Without deviating into a catalogue of mediocrity, it may be sufficient to name three of his principal scholars, Gaetano Lapis of Cagli, Salvator Monosilio, a Messinese, and Gaspero Serenari, a Palermitan. Lapis had too much originality of conception and too much solidity of taste to adopt the flowery style of his master. The public works he left at home, and the Birth of Venus in a ceiling of the Borghese Palace, as correct as graceful, deserved and would have attained more celebrity, had not self-contempt and diffidence intercepted the fortune which his talent might have commanded. The two Sicilians, complete machinists, shared with the imitation the success of their master.

Next to Conca, the most successful pupil of Solimene was Francesco de Mura, surnamed Franceschiello, born at Naples and greatly employed in its churches and private galleries: the works, however, to which he owes most of his celebrity, were the frescoes painted in various apartments of the royal palace at Torino, in competition with Claudio Beaumont, who was then at the height of his vigour. Mura ornamented the ceiling of some rooms, chiefly filled with Flemish pictures, with subjects widely different, Olympic games, and actions of Achilles.

Corrado Giaquinto of Molfetta, may conclude what yet deserves to be recorded of this school. He too left Naples, came to Rome, and attached himself to Conca, whose maxims he made nearly all his own; as resolute, as easy, but less correct. Rome, Macerata, and other parts of the Roman state, are acquainted with his works. He painted in Piemont, was employed by Charles III. in Spain, appointed Director of the Academy of S. Fernando, pleased and continued to please the greater part of the public, even after the arrival of A.R. Mengs.

THE SCHOOL OF VENICE.

The conquests, commerce and possessions of Venice in the Levant, and thence its uninterrupted intercourse with the Greeks, give probability to the conjecture, that Venetian art drew its origin from the same source, and that the first institution of a company, or, as it is there called, a School (In various cities of the Venetian State we meet with vestiges of art anterior in date[135] to the relics of painting and mosaic in the metropolis, which prove that it survived the general wreck of society here, as in other parts of Italy. Of the oldest Venetian monuments, Zanetti has given a detailed account, with shrewd critical conjectures on their chronology; though all attempts to discriminate the nearly imperceptible progress of art in a mass of works equally marked by dull servility, must prove little better than nugatory; for it does not appear that Theophilus of Byzantium, who publicly taught the art at Venice about 1200, or his Scholar Gelasio[136], had availed themselves of the improvements made in form, twenty years before, by Joachim the Abbot, in a picture of Christ. Nor can the notice of Vasari, who informs us that Andrea Tafi repaired to Venice to profit by the instructions of Apollonios in mosaic, prove more than that, from the rivalship of Greek mechanics, that branch of art was handled with greater dexterity there than at Florence, to which place he was, on his return, accompanied by Apollonios. The same torpor of mind continued to characterise the succeeding artists till the first years of the fourteenth century, and the appearance of Giotto, who, on his return from Avignon 1316, by his labours at Padua, Verona, and elsewhere in the state, threw the first effectual seeds of art, and gave the first impulse to Venetian energy and emulation[137] by superior example.

He was succeeded by Giusto, surnamed of Padova, from residence and city rights, but else a Florentine and of the Menabuoi. To Padovano, Vasari ascribes the vast work of the church of St. John the Baptist; incidents of whose life were expressed on the altar-piece. The walls Giusto spread with gospel history and mysteries of the Apocalypse, and on the Cupola a glory filled with a consistory of saints in various attire: simple ideas, but executed with incredible felicity and diligence. The names 'Joannes & Antonius de Padova,' formerly placed over one of the doors, as an ancient MS. pretends, related probably to some companions of Giusto, fellow pupils of Giotto, and show the unmixed prevalence of his style, to which Florence itself had not adhered with more scrupulous submission, beyond the middle of the century, and the less bigoted imitation of Guarsiento, a Padovan of great name at that period, and the leader of Ridolfi's history. He received commissions of importance from the Venetian senate, and the remains of his labours in fresco and on panel at Bassano and at the Eremitani of Padova, confirm the judgment of Zanetti, that he had invention, spirit, and taste, and without those remnants of Greek barbarity which that critic pretends to discover in his style.

Of a style still less dependant on the principles of Giotto, are the relicks of those artists whom Lanzi is willing to consider as the precursors of the legitimate Venetian schools, and whose origin he dates in the professors of miniature and missal-painting, many contemporary, many anterior to Giotto. The most conspicuous is Niccolo Semitecolo, undoubtedly a Venetian, if the inscription on a picture on panel in the Capitular Library at Padova be genuine, viz., Nicoleto Semitecolo da Venezia, 1367. It represents a PietÀ, with some stories of S. Sebastian, in no contemptible style: the nudities are well painted, the proportions, though somewhat too long, are not inelegant, and what adds most to its value as a monument of national style, it bears no resemblance to that of Giotto, which, though it be inferior in design, it equals in colour. Indeed the silence of Baldinucci, who annexes no Venetian branch to his Tuscan pedigree of Art, gives probability to the presumption, that a native school existed in the Adriatic long before Cimabue.

A fuller display of this native style, and its gradual approaches to the epoch of Giorgione and Tizian, were reserved for the fifteenth century: an island prepared what was to receive its finish at Venice. Andrea da Murano, who flourished about 1400, though still dry, formal, and vulgar, designs with considerable correctness, even the extremities, and what is more, makes his figures stand and act. There is still of him at Murano in S. Pier Martire, a picture, on the usual gold ground of the times, representing, among others, a Saint Sebastian, with a Torso, whose beauty made Zanetti suspect that it had been copied from some antique statue. It was he who formed to art the family of the Vivarini, his fellow-citizens, who in uninterrupted succession maintained the school of Murano for nearly a century, and filled Venice with their performances.

Of Luigi, the reputed founder of the family, no authentic notices remain. The only picture ascribed to him, in S. Giovanni and Paolo, has, with the inscription of his name and the date 1414, been retouched.[138] Nor does much more evidence attend the names of Giovanni and Antonio de' Vivarini, the first of which belonged probably to a German, the partner of Antonio,[139] who is not heard of after 1447, whilst Antonio, singly or in society with his brother Bartolommeo Vivarini, left works inscribed with his name as far as 1451.

Bartolommeo, probably considerably younger than Antonio, was trained to art in the principles before mentioned, till he made himself master of the new-discovered method of oil-painting, and towards the time of the two Bellini became an artist of considerable note. His first picture in oil bears the date of 1473; his last, at S. Giovanni in Bragora, on the authority of Boschini, that of 1498; it represents Christ risen from the grave, and is a picture comparable to the best productions of its time. He sometimes added A Linnel Vivarino to his name and date, allusive to his surname.

With him flourished Luigi, the last of the Vivarini, but the first in art. His relics still exist at Venice, Belluno, Trevigi, with their dates; the principal of these is in the school of St. Girolamo at Venice, where, in competition with Giovanni Bellini, whom he equals, and with Vittore Carpaccia, whom he surpasses, he represented the Saint caressing a Lion, and some monks who fly in terror at the sight. Composition, expression, colour, for felicity, energy, and mellowness, if not above every work of the times, surpass all else produced by the family of the Vivarini.

At the beginning of the century, Gentile da Fabriano, styled Magister Magistrorum, and mentioned in the Roman School, painted, in the public palace at Venice, a naval battle, now vanished, but then so highly valued that it procured him an annual provision, and the privilege of the Patrician dress. He raised disciples in the state: Jacopo Nerito, of Padova, subscribes himself a disciple of Gentile, in a picture at S. Michele of that place, and from the style of another in S. Bernardino, at Bassano, Lanzi surmises that Nasocchio di Bassano was his pupil or imitator. But what gives him most importance, is the origin of the great Venetian School under his auspices, and that Jacopo Bellini, the father of Gentile and Giovanni, owned him for his master. Jacopo is indeed more known by the dignity of his son's than his own works, at present either destroyed, in ruins, or unknown. What he painted in the church of St. Giovanni at Venice, and, about 1456, at the Santo of Padova, the chapel of the family Gattamelata, are works that exist in history only. One single picture, subscribed by his name, Lanzi mentions to have seen in a private collection, resembling the style of Squarcione, whom he seems to have followed in his maturer years.

A name then still more conspicuous, though now nearly obliterated, is that of Jacopo, or as he is styled Jacobello, or as he wrote himself, Jacometto del Fiore, whose father Francesco del Fiore, a leader of art in his day, was honoured with a monument and an epitaph in Latin verse at S. Giovanni and Paolo: of him it is doubtful whether any traces remain, but of the son, who greatly surpassed him, several performances still exist, from 1401 to 1436. Vasari has wantonly taxed him with having suspended all his figures, in the Greek manner, on the points of their feet: the truth is, that he was equalled by few of his contemporaries, for few like him dared to represent figures as large as life, and fewer understood to give them beauty, dignity, and that air of agility and ease, which his forms possess; nor would the lions in his picture of Justice at the Magistrato del Proprio, have shared the first praise, had not the principal figures, in subservience to the time, been loaded with tinsel ornament and golden glitter.

Two scholars of his are mentioned: Donato, superior to him in style, and Carlo Crivelli, of obscure fame, but deserving attention for the colour, union, grace, and expression, of the small histories in which he delighted.

The ardour of the capital for the art was emulated by every town of the state; all had their painters, but all did not submit to the principles of Venice and Murano. At Verona the obscure names of Aldighieri and Stefano Dazevio, were succeeded[140] by the vaunted one of Vittore Pisanello, of S. Vito: though accounts grossly vary on the date in which he flourished, and the school from which he sprang, that his education was Florentine is not improbable, but whoever his master, fame has ranked him with Masaccio as an improver of style. His works at Rome and Venice, in decay at the time of Vasari, are now no more; and fragments only remain of what he did at Verona. S. Eustachio caressing a Dog, and S. Giorgio sheathing his Sword and mounting his horse, figures extolled to the skies by Vasari, are, with the places which they occupied, destroyed: works which seem to have contained elements of truth and dignity in expression with novelty of invention, and of contrast, style, and foreshortening in design: a loss so much the more to be lamented, as the remains of his less considerable works at S. Firmo and Perugia, far from sanctioning the opinion which tradition has taught us to entertain of Pisano, are finished indeed with the minuteness of miniature, but are crude in colour, and drawn in lank and emaciated proportions. It appears from his works, that he understood the formation, had studied the expression, and attempted the most picturesque attitudes of animals. His name is well known to antiquaries, and to the curious in coins, as a medallist, and he has been celebrated as such by many eminent pens of his own and the subsequent century.[141]

From the crowd[142] of obscure contemporary artists, which the neighbouring Vicenza produced, the name of Marcello, or as Ridolfi calls him Gio. Battista Figolino, deserves to be distinguished: a man of original manner, whose companion, in variety of character, intelligence of keeping, landscape, perspective, ornament, and exquisite finish, will not easily be discovered at Venice, or elsewhere in the State, at that period; and were it certain that he was anterior to the two Bellini, sufficiently eminent to claim the honours of an epoch in the history of Art: in proof of which Vicenza may still produce his Epiphany in the church of S^t. Bartolommeo.

But the man who had the most extensive influence on Art, if not as the first artist, as the first and most frequented teacher, was Of Squarcione, more useful by precept than by example, little remains, and of that little, perhaps, not all his own. From the variety of manner observable in what is attributed to him, it may be suspected that he too often divided his commissions among his scholars; such as some stories of S^t. Francis, in a cloister of his church, and the miniatures of the Antifonario in the temple della Misericordia, attributed by the vulgar to Mantegna. Only one indisputably genuine, though retouched work of his, is mentioned by Lanzi; which, in various compartments, represents different saints, subscribed 'Francesco Squarcione,' and conspicuous for felicity of colour, expression, and perspective.

These outlines of the infancy of Venetian art show it little different from that of the other schools hitherto described; slowly emerging from barbarity, and still too much busied with the elements to think of elegance and ornament. Even then, indeed, canvass instead of panels was used by the Venetian painters; but their general vehicle was, a tempera, prepared water-colour: a method approaching the breadth of fresco, and friendly to the preservation of tints, which even now retain their virgin purity; but unfriendly to union and mellowness. It was reserved for the real epoch of oil-painting to develope the Venetian character, display its varieties, and to establish its peculiar prerogative.

Tiziano, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, was born at Piave, the principal of Cadore on the Alpine verge of Friuli, 1477.[144] His education is said to have been learned, and Giov. Battista Egnazio is named as his master in Latin and Greek;[145] but his proficiency may be doubted, for if it be true that his irresistible bent to the art obliged the father to send him in his tenth year to the school of Giov. Bellini at Venice, he could be little more than an infant when he learnt the rudiments under Sebastiano Zuccati.[146]

At such an age, and under these masters, he acquired a power of copying the visible detail of the objects before him with that correctness of eye and fidelity of touch which distinguishes his imitation at every period of his art. Thus when, more adult, in emulation of Albert Durer, he painted at Ferrara[147] Christ to whom a Pharisee shows the tribute money, he out-stript in subtlety of touch even that hero of minuteness: the hair of the heads and hands may be counted, the pores of the skin discriminated, and the surrounding objects seen reflected in the pupils of the eyes; yet the effect of the whole is not impaired by this extreme finish: it increases it at a distance, which effaces the fac-similisms of Albert, and assists the beauties of imitation with which that work abounds to a degree seldom attained, and never excelled by the master himself, who has left it indeed as a single monument, for it has no companion, to attest his power of combining the extremes of finish and effect.

GIACOMO ROBUSTI, SURNAMED IL TINTORETTO.

1512-1594.

"It might almost be said that vice is the virtue of the Venetian school, because it rests its prerogative on despatch in execution, and therefore is proud of Tintoretto, who had no other merit."[148] Such, in speaking of the great genius before us, is the equally rash, ignorant, unphilosophic verdict of a man exclusively dubbed "The Philosophic Painter."

G. Robusti of Venice was the son of a dyer, who left him that byname as an heir-loom.[149] He entered the school of Tiziano when yet a boy; but he, soon discovering in the daring spirit of his nursling the symptoms of a genius which threatened future rivalship to his own powers, with that suspicious meanness which marks his character as an artist, after a short interval, ordered his head pupil, Girolamo Dante, to dismiss the boy; but as envy generally defeats its own designs, the uncourteous dismissal, instead of dispiriting, roused the energies of the heroic stripling, who, after some meditation on his future course, and comparing his master's superiority in colour with his defects in form, resolved to surpass him by an union of both: the method best suited to accomplish this he fancied to find in an intense study of Michael Angelo's style, and boldly announced his plan by writing on the door of his study, THE DESIGN OF M. ANGELO, AND THE COLOUR OF TIZIAN.

But neither form nor colour alone could satisfy his eye; the uninterrupted habit of nocturnal study discovered to him what Venice had not yet seen, not even in Giorgione, if we may form an opinion from what remains of him—the powers of that ideal chiaroscuro which gave motion to action, raised the charms of light, and balanced or invigorated effect by dark and lucid masses opposed to each other.

The first essays of this complicated system, in single figures, are probably the frescoes of the palace Gussoni;[150] and in numerous composition, the Last Judgement, and its counterpart, the Adoration of the Golden Calf, in the church of S^ta. Maria dell' Orfo.

It is evident that the spirit of Michael Angelo domineered over the fancy of Tintoretto in the arrangement of the Last Judgement, though not over its design; but grant some indulgence to that, and the storm in which the whole fluctuates, the awful division of light and darkness into enormous masses, the living motion of the agents, notwithstanding their frequent aberrations from their centre of gravity,[151] and the harmony that rules the whirlwind of that tremendous moment, must for ever place it among the most astonishing productions of art. Its sublimity as a whole triumphs even over the hypercriticisms of Vasari, who thus describes it:—"Tintoretto has painted the Last Judgement with an extravagant invention, which, indeed, has something awful and terrible, inasmuch as he has united in groups a multitudinous assemblage of figures of each sex and every age, interspersed with distant views of the blessed and condemned souls. You see likewise the boat of Charon, but in a manner as novel and uncommon as highly interesting. Had this fantastic conception been executed with a correct and regular design, had the painter estimated its individual parts with the attention which he bestowed on the whole, so expressive of the confusion and the tumult of that day, it would be the most admirable of pictures. Hence he who casts his eye only on the whole, remains astonished, whilst to him who examines the parts it appears to have been painted in jest."

In the Adoration of the Golden Calf, the counterpart in size of the Last Judgement, Tintoretto has given full reins to his invention; and here, as in the former, though their scanty width does not very amicably correspond with their height, which is fifty feet, he has filled the whole so dexterously that the dimension appears to be the result of the composition. Here too, as in the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, some short-sighted sophist may pretend to discover two separate subjects and a double action; for Moses receives the tables of the decalogue in the upper part, whilst the idolatrous ceremony occupies the lower; but the unity of the subject may be proved by the same argument which defended and justified the choice of Sanzio. Both actions are not only the offspring of the same moment, but so essentially relate to each other that, by omitting either, neither could with sufficient evidence have told the story. Who can pretend to assert, that the artist who has found the secret of representing together two inseparable moments of an event divided only by place, has impaired the unity of the subject?

Nowhere, however, does the genius of Tintoretto flash more irresistibly than in the Schools of S. Marco and S. Rocco, where the greater part of the former and almost the whole of the latter are his work, and exhibit in numerous specimens, and on the largest scale, every excellence and every fault that exalts or debases his pencil: equal sublimity and extravagance of conception; purity of style and ruthless manner; bravura of hand with mental dereliction; celestial or palpitating hues tacked to clayey, raw, or frigid masses; a despotism of chiaroscuro which sometimes exalts, sometimes eclipses, often absorbs subject and actors. Such is the catalogue of beauties and defects which characterize the Slave delivered by St. Marc; the Body of the Saint landed; the Visitation of the Virgin; the Massacre of the Innocents; Christ tempted in the Desert; the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd; the Resurrection of the Saviour; and though last, first, that prodigy which in itself sums up the whole of Tintoretto, and by its anomaly equals or surpasses the most legitimate offsprings of art, the Crucifixion.[152]

It is singular that the most finished and best preserved work of Tintoretto should be one which he had least time allowed him to terminate—the Apotheosis of S. Rocco in the principal ceiling-piece of the Schola, conceived, executed, and presented, instead of the sketch which he had been commissioned with the rest of the concurrent artists to produce for the examination of the fraternity: a work which equally strikes by loftiness of conception, a style of design as correct as bold, and a suavity of colour which entrances the eye. Though constructed on the principles of that That Tintoretto acquired, during his stay with or after his dismissal from the study of Tiziano's principles, the power of representing the surface and the texture of bodily substance with a truth bordering on illusion, is proved with more irresistible because more copious evidence, in the picture of the Angelic Salutation; though it cannot be denied that the admiration due to the magic touch of the paraphernalia is extorted at the expense of the essential parts: Gabriel and Maria are little more than foils of her husband's tools; for their display, the artist's caprice has turned the solemn approach of the awful messenger into boisterous irruption, the silent recess of the mysterious mother into a public dismantled shed, and herself into a vulgar female. Nowhere would the superiority of refined over vulgar art, of taste and judgment over unbridled fancy, have appeared more irresistibly than in the and so forcibly appears its magic effect to have influenced Tintoretto himself, ever ready to rush from one extreme to another, that he imitated it in the Annunciata of the Arimani Palace:[153] not without success, but far below the mannerless unambitious purity of tone that pervades the effusion of his master, and of which he himself gave a blazing proof in the Resurrection of the Saviour,—a work in which sublimity of conception, beauty and dignity of form, velocity and propriety of motion, irresistible flash, mellowness and freshness of colour, tones inspired by the subject, and magic chiaroscuro, less for "mastery strive," than relieve each other and entrance the absorbed eye.