Part 2

A few records of the prices paid for Luini's work exist among the documents belonging to churches and religious houses, and while they justify a belief that at the time he came to Milan Luini had achieved some measure of distinction in his calling, they seem to prove that he was hardly regarded as a great painter. The prices paid to him are ridiculously small, no more than a living wage, but he had the reputation of being a reliable and painstaking artist and he would seem to have been content with a small reward for work that appealed to him. His early commissions executed in and around Milan when he first came from Luini were numerous and consisted very largely of frescoes which are the work of a young man who has not yet freed his own individuality from the influence of his elders. One of the most charming works associated with this period is the "Burial of St. Catherine," which is reproduced in these pages. The composition is simple enough, the handling does not touch the summit of the painter's later achievements, but the sentiment of the picture is quite delightful. St. Catherine is conceived in a spirit of deepest reverence and devotion, but the angels are just Lombardy peasant girls born to labour in the fields and now decorated with wings in honour of a great occasion. And yet the man who could paint this fresco and could show so unmistakably his own simple faith in the story it sets out, was a poet as well as a painter even though he had never written a line, while the treatment of his other contemporary frescoes and the fine feeling for appropriate colour suggest a great future for the artist who had not yet reached middle age. We see that Luini devoted his brush to mythological and sacred subjects, touching sacred history with a reverent hand, shutting his eyes to all that was painful, expressing all that was pitiful or calculated to strengthen the hold of religion upon the mass in fashion destined to appeal though in changing fashion for at least four centuries. Where the works have failed to triumph as expressions of a living faith they have charmed agnostics as an expression of enduring beauty.

From Milan Luini seems to have gone to Monza, a city a few miles away from the capital of Lombardy where the rulers of united Italy come after their coronation to receive the iron crown that has been worn by the kings of Lombardy for nearly a thousand years. This is the city in which the late King Umberto, that brave and good man, was foully murdered by an anarchist. To-day one reaches Monza by the help of a steam-tram that blunders heavily enough over the wide flat Lombardy plain. The Milanese go to Monza for the sake of an outing, but most of the tourists who throng the city stay away, and it is possible to spend a few pleasant hours in the cathedral and churches with never a flutter of red-covered guide book to distract one's attention from the matters to which the hasty tourist is blind. Here Luini painted frescoes, and it is known that he stayed for a long time at the house of one of the strong men of Monza and painted a large number of frescoes there. To-day the fortress, if it was one, has become a farmhouse, and the frescoes, more than a dozen in all, have been taken away to the Royal Palace in Milan. Dr. Williamson in his interesting volume to which the student of Luini must be deeply indebted, says that there is one left at the Casa Pelucca. The writer in the course of two days spent in Monza was unfortunate enough to overlook it.

It has been stated that the facts relating to Luini's life are few and far between. Fiction on the other hand is plentiful, and there is a story that Luini, shortly after his arrival in Milan, was held responsible by the populace for the death of a priest who fell from a hastily erected scaffolding in the church of San Giorgio where the artist was working. The rest of the legend follows familiar lines that would serve the life story of any leading artist of the time, seeing that they all painted altar-pieces and used scaffolding. He is said to have fled to Monza, to have been received by the chief of the Pelucca family, to have paid for his protection with the frescoes that have now been brought from Monza to the Brera, to have fallen violently in love with the beautiful daughter of the house, to have engaged in heroic contests against great odds on her behalf, and so on, _ad absurdum_. If we look at the portraits the painter is said to have made of himself and to have placed in pictures at Saronna and elsewhere we shall see that Luini was hardly the type of man to have engaged in the idle pursuits of chivalry in the intervals of the work to which his life was given. We have the head of a man of thought not that of a man of action, and all the character of the face gives the lie to the suggestions of the storytellers. It is clear, however, that the painter made a long stay in Monza and when he came back to Milan he worked for the churches of St. Maurizio, Santa Maria della Pace, Santa Maria di Brera, and St. Ambrosia.

In Milan he found a great patron, no less a man than Giovanni Bentivoglio who had been driven from his rule over Bologna by the "Terrible Pontiff" Julius II., that life-long opponent and bitter enemy of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. Alessandro Bentivoglio, the son of the ruined Giovanni, married Ippolita Sforza, daughter of one of the house that had done so much to rule Rome until Pope Alexander VI. broke its power. Alessandro Bentivoglio commissioned Luini to paint altar-pieces in St. Maurizio where his father was buried, and the painter included in his work a portrait of Ippolita Sforza with three female saints. He did much other work in this church; some of it has faded almost beyond recognition.

At the same time there is no need to think that we have recovered the last work of Luini or indeed of the great masters even in the churches of Italy. Only a few months ago the writer was in a small Italian church that had suffered a few years ago from disastrous floods. The water unable to find no outlet had risen for a time almost to the top of the supporting columns. The smooth wall above was plastered, and when the waters had subsided it was found that the plaster had become so damaged that it was necessary to remove it. Happily the work was done carefully, for under the whitewash some excellent frescoes were discovered. They would seem to have profited by their covering for as much as has been uncovered is rich and well preserved. It may be that in days when the State of Italy was seriously disturbed, and Napoleon, greatest of highwaymen and conquerors, after being crowned in Milan with the famous Monza crown, was laying his hand on all that seemed worth carrying away, some one in authority thought of this simple method of concealment, and obtained expert advice that enabled the frescoes to be covered without serious damage. Under similar conditions we may yet discover some of the earlier work of Luini, because it is clear that the years in which his reputation was in the making must have been full of achievement of which the greater part has now been lost. He could hardly have been less than thirty years of age when he came to Milan with a reputation sufficient to gain commissions for work in churches; that reputation must have taken years to acquire, and must have been associated with very definite accomplishment. The lack of all record was essentially the misfortune that beset men who were not very high in the esteem of their contemporaries. A painter like Luini would have executed a great many pictures for people who could not pay very well, and had no great gallery or well-built church to harbour the work, and in the course of time the work would tend inevitably to disappear before the devouring candle-smoke, or to be carried away by unscrupulous purchasers who chanced to be better equipped with taste than conscience. On the other hand, painters who led the various movements of their time would be honoured by successive generations and their work would be stored in the best and safest places. To be sure, fire was never a respecter of palaces or persons, and the flames have consumed more work than a collection of the finest Renaissance pictures in existence could show, but even then the odds seem to be in favour of the bigger men because special efforts would be made to save their paintings while those of lesser men would be left with few regrets to take their chance.

When Luini was engaged to work in the Church of St. Maurizio there was a fair chance that his altar-pieces and frescoes would be well looked after, but when he worked for a small provincial family like the Pelucca the house sank with the family fortunes till at last it became a farm, and in the early years of the nineteenth century the frescoes were taken from the walls with as much care as was deemed advisable. Doubtless Luini worked for many men whose worldly position was not as considerable as that of the Pelucca family, and that work may have disappeared altogether. The painter, as we have seen, did not enjoy the patronage of many great men before Alessandro Bentivoglio, and large institutions were not numbered among his early clients. But he was not altogether without valuable patronage in the latter days, and in the early 'twenties of the sixteenth century the influential Brotherhood of the Holy Crown, one of the leading charitable institutions of Milan, would seem to have given him some official connection with their institution; a recognised position without fixed salary. For them he painted the magnificent frescoes now in the Ambrosian Library. The great work there was divided by the artist into three parts separated by pillars. In the centre Luini has depicted the crowning with thorns, Christ being seated upon a throne while thorns are being put upon His head; His arms are crossed; His expression one of supreme resignation. Above Him little angels look down or point to a cartouche on which is written "Caput Regis Gloriæ Spinis Coranatur." In the left hand division of the fresco and on the right, the fore-ground is filled with kneeling figures whose heads are supposed to be portraits of the most prominent members of the Society. Clearly they are all men who have achieved some measure of honour and distinction. Above the kneeling figures on the left hand side St. John is pointing out the tragedy of the central picture to the Virgin Mary, while on the right hand side a man in armour and another who is seen faintly behind him call the attention of a third to what is happening. A crown of thorns hangs above the right and the left hand compartment and there is a landscape for background. It is recorded that this work took about six months, and was finished in March 1522 at a cost to the Society of 115 soldi. So Luini's work looks down to-day upon a part of the great Ambrosian Library, and it may well be that the library itself will yield to patient investigation some record, however simple, of the painter's life, sufficient perhaps to enable us to readjust our mental focus and see his lovable figure more clearly.

It may be urged that for those of us who are content to see with the spiritual eye Luini is expressed more eloquently by his work, and particularly by this great picture in the Ambrosian Library, than he could hope to be by the combined efforts of half-a-dozen critics, each with his own special point of view and his properly profound contempt for the views of others. The painter's low tones and subtle harmonies, his pure but limited vision, speak to us of a gentle, refined, and delicate nature, of an achievement that stopped short of cleverness and consequently limited him to the quieter byways of artistic life, while those whose inspiration was less, and whose gifts were more, moved with much pomp and circumstance before admiring contemporaries. The refined mind, the sensitive soul, shrank from depicting the tragedy of the Crown of Thorns in the realistic fashion that would have proved acceptable to so many other artists. Luini forgets the blood and the spikes, he almost forgets the physical pain, and gives us the Man of Sorrows who has forgiven His tormentors because "they know not what they do."

Continental galleries show us many treatments of the same familiar theme, they have none to show that can vie with this in a combination of strength and delicacy that sets out an immortal story while avoiding the brutal realism to which so many other artists have succumbed. We may suppose that the objects of the Society roused Luini's sympathy to an extent that made it easy for him to accept the somewhat paltry remuneration with which the Brotherhood of the Holy Crown rewarded him, and so the picture makes its own appeal on the painter's behalf, and tells a story of his claims upon our regard. A man may lie, in fact it may be suggested on the strength of the Psalmist's statement that most men do, but an artist's life work tells his story in spite of himself, and if he labour with pen or brush his truest biography will be seen in what he leaves behind him. It is not possible to play a part throughout all the vicissitudes of a long career, and no man could have given us the pictures that Luini has left unless he chanced to be a choice and rare spirit. We may remember here and now that the time was richer in violent contrasts than any of its successors, the most deplorable excesses on the one hand, the most rigid virtues on the other, seem to have been the special product of the Renaissance. While there were men who practised every vice under the sun there were others who sought to arrest Divine Retribution by the pursuit of all the virtues, and while the progress of the years has to a certain extent made men neutral tinted in character, the season of the Renaissance was one of violent contrasts. On behalf of the section that went in pursuit of righteousness let it be remembered that heaven and the saints were not matters for speculation, they were certainties. Every man knew that God was in heaven, and that if the workers of iniquity flourished, it was that they might be destroyed for ever. Every man knew that the saints still exerted their supernatural powers and would come down to earth if need be to protect a devotee. Satan, on the other hand, went armed about the earth seeking whom he might devour, and hell was as firmly fixed as heaven. In order to understand Luini, his life and times, these facts must be borne in mind. The greater the unrest in the cities the more the public attention would be turned to statesmen and warriors, and when the personalities of artists began to be considered, those who lived and thrived in the entourage of popes and rulers monopolised the attention. Hundreds of men were at work earning a fair living and some local repute, it was left to foreign favour to set a seal upon success. Had Luini chanced to be invited to Venice or to Rome he would have been honoured throughout Lombardy; but a painter like a prophet is often without honour in his own country. Luini's gifts were of a more quiet and domestic order than those of his great contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, for example, were more than painters, and perhaps it was only in Venice that painting stood by itself and managed to thrive alone. Luini would have come into his kingdom while he lived had Venice been his birthplace. The genius of the Florentine school sought to express itself in half-a-dozen different ways, no triumph in one department of work could satisfy men whose longing for self-expression was insatiable. In those days it was possible for a man to make himself master of all knowledge, literally he could discourse _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_. And this diffusion of interests was fatal to many a genius that might have moved to amazing triumph along one road.

It is clear that Bernardino Luini never travelled very far from his native country either physically or mentally. In the eyes of his contemporaries he was not a man of sufficient importance to receive commissions from the great art centres of Italy. This, of course, may be because he did not have the good fortune to attract the attention of the connoisseurs of his day, for we find that outside Milan, and the little town of Luino where he was born and whence he took his name, his work was done in comparatively small towns like Como, Legnano, Lugano, Ponte, and Saronno. Milan and Monza may be disregarded because we have already dealt with the work there. Saronno, which lies some fourteen miles north-west of Milan, is little more than a village to-day, and its chief claim upon the attention of the traveller is its excellent gingerbread for which it is famous throughout Lombardy. It has a celebrated church known as the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin and here one finds some very fine examples of our painter's frescoes. Some of the frescoes in the church are painted by Cesare del Magno others by Lanini, and the rest are from the hand of Bernardino Luini. Round these frescoes, which are of abiding beauty, and include fine studies of the great plague saint, St. Roque, and that very popular martyr St. Sebastian, many legends congregate. It is said that Luini having killed a man in a brawl fled from Milan to the Church of the Blessed Virgin in Monza to claim sanctuary at the hand of the monks. They gave him the refuge he demanded, and, says the legend, he paid for it with frescoes. This is little more than a variant of the story that he went to Monza under similar circumstances and obtained the protection of the Pelucca family on the same terms. In the absence of anything in the nature of reliable record this story has been able to pass, but against it one likes to put the tradition that one of the heads in the frescoes is that of Luini himself. We find that head so simple, so refined, and so old--the beard is long and the hair is scanty--and so serene in its expression that it is exceedingly difficult to believe that brawling could have entered into the artist's life.

The subjects of the pictures in Saronno's Sanctuary are all biblical. We have an Adoration of the Magi, showing the same muddled composition that detracts from the other merits of the artist's work; a beautiful Presentation in the Temple in which the composition is a great deal better; and a perfectly delightful Nativity. There is a Christ is Disputing with the Doctors, and this is the picture in which we find the head that is said to be a portrait of the painter himself. Two female saints figure in another picture, and Luini's favourites St. Roque and St. Sebastian are not forgotten. Certainly if the monks obtained all that work at the price of the painter's safety they were very fortunate in his choice of sanctuary.

Como is, of course, a more important town with large industries and important factories, and one of the finest cathedrals in northern Italy. For the interior Luini painted another Adoration of the Magi and another of his favourite Nativities. It is not easy to speak about the conditions under which this work was done, and the inhabitants have so many more profitable matters to attend to that they do not seem to trouble themselves about the history of the painter who helped to make their beautiful cathedral still more beautiful.

Legnano, with its memories of Frederick Barbarossa, is within twenty miles of Milan, and for the Church of San Magno Luini painted one of his finest altar-pieces. It is in seven divisions and has earned as much critical admiration as any work from the master's brush.

Lugano is of course in Switzerland, well across the Italian border. It is a popular place enough to-day, and so far as we can tell, it was the city in which Luini painted his last pictures. He must have left Milan about 1528 or 1529, and he would seem to have gone there to execute commissions, for in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angioli we find some of his latest and finest work. The Crucifixion and the Passion, on the wall of the screen, contains several hundred figures arranged in lines in most archaic fashion. At first sight the work appears as a mere mass of figures without any central point in the composition, and with very little relief for the eye of the spectator who may come to the church surfeited with the bewildering riches of many Italian galleries. But for those who will take the trouble to study the details of this fine work there is very much to admire. In the scene of the picture Christ is seen on the cross surrounded by angels. On his right hand the penitent thief on the cross is guarded by an angel, while on the left the impenitent one is watched by a devil with a curly tail and spiked wings. Below in perfectly bewildering fashion are many figures that may be recognised with little effort--Mary Magdalen, the Madonna, Joseph of Arimathæa, Roman soldiers, some of the general public--a confused crowd. The whole picture is supported by figures of San Sebastian and St. Roque seen on either side of the arch. Stories from the life of Christ are depicted in the upper parts of the picture, all are painted with the skill of a great artist and the fervour of a devotee, but the arrangement is hopelessly confused. Luini also painted a "Last Supper" for this church and a "Madonna with the Infant Christ and St. John." This is signed "Bernardino Luini, anno 1530." From 1530 until 1533 the career of the artist cannot be traced, but in 1533 he was in Lugano again, and after that year he passes altogether from our sight. Stray writers mention his name, some venture to carry the date of his life into the 'forties, but we have no proof save their word, no work to record the later years, and all our conjecture is vain. It must suffice for us that Luini's life as far as his art was concerned ends for us with the year 1533. If he lived and worked after that date the facts relating to the following years and the work done in the latter days are left for future students to discover. It is well to remember that the Saronno portrait makes the painter look much older than he is supposed to have been.