In the anterior court of the Church of the Santissima Annunziata, in Florence, there are five fairly well-preserved frescos by Andrea del Sarto (1488-1530). In the same court there are others painted by his pupils, and contemporary artists. The best of the five by Andrea is the “Death of St. Filippo,” where a young man is raised to life by the dead body of the saint. The colouring is very strong and luminous, and has the soft melting character of the various tones into each other, which distinguishes the work of this painter, more especially seen in his easel pictures. The next fresco in importance of this series is that which represents the miracles wrought by the robes of St. Filippo, where children are healed by touching his garments. The colouring of this painting is lively and fresh, and the effect of light and shade is a very important feature in the work. The backgrounds of these frescos, whether architectural or landscape, are at present exceedingly light in tone, which either means that these parts have faded or have been destroyed by cleaning. This causes the figures to look completely out of tone with the pale backgrounds.

The Brera Palace at Milan contains a great number of small and extremely interesting frescos, that have been removed from various churches and suppressed convents in the city and neighbourhood, among which are some very good examples of Bernardino Luini’s work (1470-1530?). Luini was the most famous scholar of Leonardo da Vinci, and was so greatly influenced by the latter that many pictures had for a long time been ascribed to his master. He was a most prolific and industrious artist, both in fresco and in easel pictures, and as a rule his work is full of grace and charm. The female figures and children painted by Luini are always characterized by their easy natural poses, and have a refined delicacy and sweetness of expression. His colouring, always rich and warm in tone, is chiefly distinguished by its freshness and purity; these qualities are best seen in his smaller frescos, now in the Brera galleries. In the entrance corridor there is an example of his fresco work, brought from the Church of St. Maria di Brera, in Milan. The subject is the “Virgin and Child,” with an angel and two other figures, St. Abate, and St. Barbara, and a boy with a lute. The colour and drawing of this example are extremely good, though the general composition is lacking in

cohesion and unity. The “Burial of St. Catherine” is also in the Brera. It is a small fresco brought from the Convent della Pelucca, and is one of the more successful works of Luini. Three finely designed angels are carrying the body of St. Catherine, below which is the tomb. The robes of the saint are red in colour, while those of the angel on the right are purple; the middle, green; and the angel to the left has yellow drapery. The best work, however, by Luini in the Brera is the beautiful fresco, in the Sala XVI, of the “Virgin and Child” with St. Martha, St. John, and a nun. In this work the landscape background is remarkably fresh and pure in colour, and is painted in a very naturalistic manner, the treatment of the trees, and details of the landscape reminding one forcibly of a picture by Constable. There are some fine passages of luminous and harmonious colouring in the draperies, the faces of the figures have a tenderness and purity of expression, and the whole work is a convincing example of the master at his best. Being on a level with the eye, and in a good light, one is enabled to see in this fresco that Luini’s method of painting consisted in his first modelling the forms in a solid impasto, and afterwards finishing his work, like the majority of Italian fresco painters, by shading transparently in finely hatched lines.

There are other examples of Luini’s fresco work in the Brera, consisting chiefly of heads and figures of boys. In the old Romanesque basilica church of St. Ambrogio at Milan, in the first chapel of the left aisle, is a fresco by him, the “Ecce Homo,” in a fairly good state of preservation, and in the sixth chapel of the right aisle is his work, the “Legend of St. George.” The Church of St. Maria della Grazie in the same city contains his fresco of the “Virgin Enthroned,” with saints around, the colour and composition of which are good, but an injurious dusty bloom has appeared on some portions of this fine work. Numerous examples of Luini’s fresco decorations may be seen in the Church of St. Maurizo (Monastero Maggiore), including the large “Crucifixion,” on the wall over the entrance to the choir. This great work contains nearly 140 figures, many of which are of singular beauty. At Saronno, not far from Milan, in the Church of the Santuario there are also some very important frescos by Luini, representing scenes in the history of the Virgin, the best of which is a very fine “Adoration of the Magi.”

Gaudenzio Ferrari (1484-1549) was another Milanese painter, though a native of Piedmont, but Milan and its neighbourhood was strictly speaking the centre of his labours. He was a follower of Leonardo da Vinci, although he had worked with Perugino, and later with Raffaelle. He painted numerous frescos in Milan, Saronno, and Varallo; most of them are characterized by life and animation of pose in the figures, and as a rule his works contain many figures of great merit and beauty,

showing fine qualities of freedom in the execution. But his work as a whole is unequal, owing to his tendency of allowing himself to be influenced by that of his contemporaries. The best of his frescos are those which are most Luinesque in style and character.

In the side entrance of the right aisle, in the Church of St. Ambrogio, in Milan, Ferrari has painted the frescos, “Christ bearing the Cross,” and the “Three Marys”; the latter, though darkened much, is in a good state of preservation, and is now under glass. At Saronno, in the Church of the Santuario, he has decorated the cupola with an assemblage of angels and winged boys, some of which are designed with great spirit, and are beautifully painted. Later work by Ferrari is the fresco decoration of the fourth chapel in the right aisle of St. Maria delle Grazie (1542), where he painted the powerful compositions of the Passion, namely, the “Crucifixion,” the “Scourging of Christ,” and “Christ Crowned with Thorns.” The figures are life-size, and are characterized by much animation, strong colouring, and great freedom of execution.

The works of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo in fresco painting which adorn the Stanze of the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, respectively, have been so much described, and are so well known to students, that any criticism which might be offered here would amount to an unstinted appreciation of their labours. It goes without saying that it is a very serious thing for the sake of Italian Art that so much of the finest work of these masters has either gone very dark and dirty, or, what is worse, has in places almost perished by the disintegration of the colours. The large fresco of the “School of Athens,” in the Stanze of the Vatican, probably the best work in fresco from the hand of Raffaelle, is now quite different from what it must have been when first it was painted. The composition of the figures and some portions of the original colours still remain, but all else must be entirely changed. Even where the original colour is still on the wall, such parts are extremely blackened by age and dirt, but the architectural background, the central flight of steps, and the foreground around and between the figures are, on the contrary, much lighter in tone than they must have been originally, and consequently all the shade and shadows, which formerly connected the masses of the figure groups together, have disappeared. The present extreme lightness of tone which surrounds the dark figures, unduly emphasizes the latter, and gives an unsatisfactory and very spotty appearance to the general composition, which is at variance with the early engravings and copies of this fresco. It is quite likely that the present aspect of this great work is due to the fact that the cleaners and restorers engaged on it from time to time have employed their cleansing energy on the background more than on the figures, and have cleaned off the dirt,

and paint as well, so leaving this portion in a clean-looking or light state; and if we bear in mind that the background work has in all probability been painted much more thinly, or with less impasto, than the figures, we can easily imagine that in the parts under notice there has always been less body of colour to be destroyed by the cleaners. It is also noticeable that where a blue or grey colour has been used in the draperies, the painting of such parts has badly perished, which suggests that either a vegetable or a copper-blue pigment has been used, instead of a cobalt or an ultramarine blue, or that these parts have been afterwards repainted in tempera. The other frescos in this room, the “Mount Parnassus,” and the “Prudence, Fortitude and Temperance,” are in a much better state than the “School of Athens.”

Michael Angelo’s great work in fresco, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, is still, fortunately, in a fairly good state, but the “Last Judgment,” on the altar wall, is very grimy, and in a much blackened state. One cannot help thinking that a good deal of the dirt could be removed from this work by a little judicious cleaning.

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