Part 18

[Footnote 71: It has been stated in his defence, that had he clothed the whole of his figures with those tunics and ancient mantles, he would have become monotonous, and consequently uninteresting in his great history pieces. But I am of opinion, that whoever is familiar with ancient statues and bassi relievi, will find means of varying his compositions. The Cavalier Canova has recently produced two bassi relievi, on the condemnation of Socrates. The Greek vests are two, the tunic and pallium; yet these are finely varied, though there are a number of spectators.]

[Footnote 72: According to Ridolfi, however, he is said to have attained his twenty-sixth year; but certainly not more.]

[Footnote 73: Father Federici has, in the course of this year, 1803, brought to light another scholar of Paul, and afterwards of Carletto, born, like Parrasio, in Venice. He calls him Giacomo Lauro, and Giacomo da Trevigi, because, having established himself in that city, with his family, while still a youth, no one could distinguish him by any other patronymic than that of Trevigiano. Thus speak several anonymous contemporaries, from whose MSS. the reverend father has extracted no slight information relative to the pictures executed by Lauro in his new country. There he enjoyed the friendship of the fathers of San Domenico, for whose church he painted his celebrated picture of St. Rocco, in which he exhibited, with great tragic power, the terrific scourge of the plague. It is honourable to this artist, who died young, that this altarpiece, as well as his other pictures, both in oil and in fresco, have, until lately, been attributed either to Paul or to Carlo, or to some less celebrated hands, but always to good and experienced artists.]

[Footnote 74: See Boschini, Carta, p. 160. Zanetti, p. 494.]

[Footnote 75: A class of artists so called, from their excessive use of deep shades and dark colours. _Tr._]

[Footnote 76: There was an attempt to revive it, made in Florence. Roscoe, in his "Life of Lorenzo de' Medici," (vol. ii. p. 220, 6th ed.) relates, that, with Gherardo, Lorenzo associated Domenico Ghirlandajo to work in mosaic at the chapel of San Zenobio: but that this undertaking, so admirably begun, was interrupted by Lorenzo's death; insomuch that "his attempts," observes the historian, "were thus in a great degree frustrated." This honour appeared to be reserved for Venice.]

VENETIAN SCHOOL.

THIRD EPOCH.

_Innovations of the Mannerists of the Seventeenth Century. Corruption of Venetian Painting._

A sort of fatality seems to prevail in all human things, rendering their duration in the same state of short continuance; so that after attaining their highest elevation, we may assuredly at no distant period look for their decline. The glory of precedency, of whatever kind, will not long remain the boast of one place, or in possession of a single nation. It migrates from country to country; and the people that yesterday received laws from another, will tomorrow impose them. Those who today are the instructors of a nation, will tomorrow become ambitious of being admitted in the number of its disciples. Numerous examples might be adduced in support of this proposition, but it would be quite superfluous. For whoever is even slightly acquainted with civil or literary history, whoever has observed the passing events of the age in which we live, will easily furnish himself with proofs, without the aid of writers to direct him. We have already traced the same revolution of affairs in the art of painting, in the two schools of Rome and Florence, which, arriving at the zenith of their fame, fell into decay precisely at the period when that of Venice began to exalt itself. And we shall now perceive the decline of the latter, during the same age in which the Florentine began to revive, in which the school of Bologna acquired its highest degree of reputation; and what is still more surprising, seemed to rise by studying the models of the Venetian. So indeed it was: the Caracci were much devoted to Titian, to Giorgione, to Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto, and thence formed styles, and produced pupils that conferred honour upon the whole of the seventeenth century. The Venetians, too, studied the same examples, and derived from them a certain mannerism reprehensible enough in them, but much more so in their disciples. These, devoting themselves in their first studies to more classical artists, and attaining a certain practice both in design and colouring, next aimed at displaying upon a grand scale, figures, not so much taken from life, as from engravings and pictures, or from their own imaginations; and the more rapidly these were executed, the better did they suppose they had succeeded. I am inclined to believe, that the examples of Tintoretto proved, in this respect, more prejudicial than useful. Few were ambitious of emulating his profound knowledge, which in some measure serves to veil his defects; but his haste, his carelessness, and his grounds, they more willingly adopted; while his great name was advanced as a shield to cover their own faults. And the earliest of these, not yet unmindful of the maxims of a better age, did not rush blindly into all these errors and excesses; but by their superiority of spirit, and by their tints, maintained their ground better than the mannerists of the Roman and Florentine styles. But to these succeeded others, whose schools degenerated still more from the ancient rules of art. We advance this without meaning the least imputation upon really good artists, who flourished even during this period; for an age rarely occurs in which good sense becomes altogether extinct. Even during the barbarity of the dark ages, we meet with specimens of some marble busts of the Caesars, and some of their medals, which approach a better taste; and thus also in the age we are describing appeared geniuses, who either wholly, or in great measure, kept themselves free from the general infection; "et tenuere animum contra sua saecula rectum." _Propert._

Jacopo Palma the younger, so called to distinguish him from the other Palma, his great uncle, was an artist who might equally be entitled the last of the good age, and the first of the bad. Born in 1544, after receiving the instructions of his father Antonio, a painter of a confined genius, he exercised himself in copying from Titian, and the best of the national artists. At the age of fifteen years he was taken under the patronage of the Duke of Urbino, and accompanied him to his capital. He afterwards spent eight years in Rome, where he laid a good foundation for his profession, by designing from the antique, copying Michelangiolo and Raffaello; and, in particular, by studying the chiaroscuros of Polidoro. This last was his great model, and next to him came Tintoretto; he being naturally inclined, like them, to animate his figures with a certain freedom of action, and a spirit peculiarly their own. On his return to Venice, he distinguished himself by several works, conducted with singular care and diligence; nor are there wanting professors who have bestowed on him a very high degree of praise, for displaying the excellent maxims of the Roman, united to what was best in the Venetian School. It is observed by Zanetti, that some of his productions were attributed by professors to the hand of Giuseppe del Salviati, whose merit, in point of design and solidity of style, has been already noticed. The whole of these are executed with peculiar facility, a dangerous gift both in painting and in poetry, which this artist possessed in a remarkable degree. Though he made the greatest exertions to bring himself into notice, he was little employed; the post was already occupied by men of consummate ability, by Tintoretto and Paul Veronese; and these monopolized all the most lucrative commissions. Palma, however, obtained the rank of third; chiefly by means of Vittoria, a distinguished sculptor and architect; whose opinion was adopted in the distribution of the labours even of artists themselves. Displeased at the little deference shewn him by Robusti and Paul, he began to encourage Palma, and to assist him also with his advice, so that he shortly acquired a name. We have related a similar instance in regard to Bernini, who brought forward Cortona against Sacchi, at Rome, besides several more, productive of the greatest detriment to the art. So true it is that the same passions prevail in every age, every where pursue the same track, and produce the same results.

Nor was it long before Palma, overwhelmed with commissions, remitted much of his former diligence. In progress of time, he became even yet more careless, until upon the death of his eldest rivals, including Corona, who in his latest works had begun to surpass him, free from competition he asserted unquestioned sway, and despatched his pieces rapidly. His pictures, indeed, might often be pronounced rough draughts, a title bestowed upon them in ridicule by the Cavalier d'Arpino. In order to prevail upon him to produce a piece worthy of his name, it became requisite, not only to allow him the full time he pleased, but the full price he chose to ask, without further reference, except to his own discretion, in which truly he did not greatly abound. Upon such terms he executed that fine picture of San Benedetto, at the church of SS. Cosmo and Damiano, for the noble family of Moro. It resembled many of those he had produced in his best days at Venice, and in particular that celebrated naval battle of Francesco Bembo, placed in the Palazzo Pubblico. Other valuable specimens are found scattered elsewhere, in part mentioned by Ridolfi, and in part unknown to him. Such are his Santa Apollonia, at Cremona, his San Ubaldo and his Nunziata, at Pesaro, and his Invenzione della Croce, at Urbino, a piece abounding in figures, and full of beauty, variety, and expression. His tints are fresh, sweet, and clear, less splendid than those of Paul, but more pleasing than in Tintoretto; and though scantily applied, they are more durable than those of certain foreign pictures more heavily laid on. In the animation of his figures he approaches the two preceding artists, particularly in his more studied works, as he has shewn in his Chastisement of the Serpents, a picture that seems embued with horror. In every other instance he has always sufficient art to please; and it is surprising how a man who led the way to the most corrupt period in Venice, as it has been observed of Vasari at Florence, and of Zuccaro at Rome, could thus exhibit so many attractions, both of nature and of art, calculated to feast the eye, and to fix the soul of the spectator. Both Guercino and Guido were sensible of the power of his pencil; and when examining one of his altarpieces, at the Cappucini, in Bologna, "What a pity," they exclaimed, "that the master of such a pencil should be no more." (Boschini, p. 383.)

In observance of my plan of accompanying each master with his train of followers, I set out with Marco Boschini, a Venetian, who flourished during this same deterioration of a nobler age. He was a pupil to Palma, and has left some memorials of the different professors of the third epoch, not to be met with in any other work. Professing the art of engraving, rather than that of painting, he had, nevertheless, so much merit in the latter, as to approach the manner of Palma, in his picture of the Supper of our Lord, in the Sacristy of San Girolamo; as well as that of Tintoretto, as we gather from a few of his altarpieces in the territory of Padua, and his pictures for private ornament, remaining at Venice, at least as far as I can learn. He was the author of several works recorded in the preface to this work, the most remarkable of which is composed in Quartine, with the following title; and, by this production, he is perhaps best known: "The Chart of pictorial Navigation, a Dialogue between a Venetian senator (a dilettante) and a professor of painting, under the names of Ecelenza and Compare, divided into eight _venti_, or winds, with which the Venetian vessel is borne into the deep Sea of Painting, as its Absolute Mistress, to the confusion of such as do not understand the loadstone and the compass."

Thus, much in the same manner as we judge from the facade of the style of a whole edifice in the gothic taste, the reader may gather, from this very loaded title, the exact nature of Boschini's work. It is, indeed, written in the most verbose style of the Seicentisti; a mixture of unsound reasoning, strange allegory, tame allusions, frivolous conceits invented on every name, and phraseology that surpasses even that of Ciampoli and Melosio; for these at least wrote in the Italian dialect, whereas Boschini protests that he does not pretend to a _foreign idiom_, but to speak like the Venetian people. From this undistinguishing kind of nationality arises his malevolence against Vasari, and the methods of the foreign schools, as well as his exaggerated praise of the Venetian artists, whom he prefers, as we learn from his title page, to all the painters in the world, not merely as respects their manner of colouring, but in point of invention and design. What is worse, he makes no distinction between the fine old painters and the mannerists of his own times, and speaks as if the masters of the former age were still flourishing, and teaching in their schools, or as if the modern possessed the same powers and the same reputation; a gross equivocation into which the tiresome _Compare_, or gossip, is continually falling, and which his credulous Excellency as frequently commends.

If, however, in treating of Vasari, I in some measure excused his partialities, in consideration of the prejudices acquired by his education, which are afterwards with difficulty eradicated; I ought to make use of the same liberality in regard to Boschini, more especially as he possessed fewer opportunities of ridding himself of them, never having visited Rome or Florence, and giving his opinions upon foreign schools, from the hearsay relations of others. It is true that he cites in favour of the Venetians the opinion of many distinguished men; as that of Velasco, who protested to Salvator Rosa, that Raffaello was no longer a favourite with him after having seen Venice; or that of Rubens, who, after spending upwards of six years at Rome to little purpose, formed his style on the models of Titian. Albano likewise regretted that he had not commenced his studies in Venice, preferably to Rome; and Pier da Cortona having seen the works of the Venetian School, cancelled some of his labours, and ornamented afresh two chambers of the Palazzo Pitti, and one in the Casa Barberini. But these authorities, which he adduces along with others, taken chiefly from artists who preferred beauty of colouring to accuracy of design, do not prove much, and might be opposed by other authorities, even of great painters, more particularly English and French, who embraced a contrary opinion. Besides, the panegyrists thus cited by him, did not commend the modern so much as the ancient Venetian painters, so as by no means to possess the weight he would attribute to them. Moreover, in the present day, when so much has been written upon Italian painting, we shall not, on investigating what is to be admired and imitated, and what to be shunned or approved in the examples of the Venetians, appeal to the vain boastings of the sixteenth century, but to the critics of our own times. Still we do not mean to deny, but that the work in question, however strangely written, contains many valuable historical notices, and many pictorial precepts, particularly useful to such as cannot aspire to any thing beyond the character of mere naturalists, incapable of drawing a stroke that does not appear in their model, and content with portraying the dimensions of any kind of head or body, provided they be of the human shape, inventing with infinite difficulty, slow in resolving, and quite incapable of forming a grand history, more especially of battles, of flights, in short of any objects they never saw. This sect, which at that period boasted many followers, and which is not even yet extinct, is there ridiculed in a vein it is impossible to surpass, and would that the party proceeding to the opposite extreme of mannerism, at that time triumphant in Venice, had not met with equal applause! But how difficult is it to observe the golden mean! though the artists of Bologna will point out the way in due time. At present we must return to those of Venice.

Numerous other artists very nearly approached the style of Palma. Boschini enumerates six, whose manner so extremely resembles him, as to impose upon those who have not tact enough to detect the peculiar characteristics of each; (and in Palma there is a mixture of the Roman and Venetian,) consisting of the names of Corona, Vicentino, Peranda, Aliense, Malombra, and Pilotto. The same author extols them as illustrious painters; and truly, besides the splendour of their colouring, they composed upon a magnificent scale, emulating, for the most part, the fire and the striking contrasts that produced such an impression after the time of Titian, executing pictures every way deserving of a place in good collections.

Leonardo Corona, of Murano, who, from a copyist, succeeded in becoming a painter, was the rival of Palma, and nevertheless enjoyed the patronage of Vittoria; whether to keep alive the emulation of the former, or for some other reason, is uncertain. He sometimes prepared models in clay, to discover the best distributions of his chiaroscuro. By aid of these he painted his Annunciation, at SS. Giovanni and Paolo, a work very highly commended, as well as his picture at San Stefano, displaying a grandeur that arrests the eye, and reminds us more of Titian than any other model. In general, however, Corona exhibited more of Tintoretto, if not in his colouring, which in the present day appears to more advantage, at least in many other points. He produced a crucifixion so much in this artist's style, that Ridolfi has defended him with the utmost difficulty from the charge of theft. He availed himself likewise of the engravings of Flemish artists, particularly in the composition of his landscape. He did not long flourish; but left an excellent imitator of his style in Baldassare d'Anna, an artist of Flemish origin, who completed a few of his master's pieces. He also produced some original pieces for the Servi and other churches, which, though inferior to those of Corona in the selection of forms, yet surpass them in the softness, and sometimes in the force of their chiaroscuro.

Andrea Vicentino was, according to some writers, a Venetian, and pupil to Palma; not excelling in point of taste, he was nevertheless very skilful in the handling of his colours, and shewed great power of invention. Being employed in many labours, both within and without the boundaries of Venice, and even in depicting histories of the Republic, which still continue to adorn several halls in the Palazzo Grande, he was one of the most popular artists of his time. He rarely fails to exhibit in his works some perspective, or some figure borrowed, according to the custom of the plagiarists, from the best masters: including even Bassano, an artist of few ideas constantly repeated, and so far less easily pillaged with impunity. At the same time he bestows upon his plagiarisms a beauty of composition, and a general effect that does honour to his talents, applicable to every variety of subject. He could also employ a very delicate, tasteful, and effective pencil, when he chose to exert himself. In his grounds, however, he must have been less successful, many of his paintings being already much defaced. In collections, always more favourable to their duration than public places, we may find several in good preservation, and deserving of much commendation, as we gather from his Solomon Anointed on becoming king of Israel, preserved in the Royal Gallery at Florence. Marco Vicentino, son of Andrea, also acquired some celebrity by his imitations, and more by the name of his father.

Santo Peranda, a scholar of Corona and of Palma, and tolerably well versed in Roman design, having passed some time at Rome, aimed at a diversity of styles. His usual manner a good deal resembles that of Palma, while, in his large histories, which he produced at Venice and at Mirandola, he appears in a more poetical character of his own. Yet he was naturally of a more slow and reflective turn, and more studious of art, qualities that in the decline of age led him to adopt a very delicate and laboured manner. He was not ambitious of equalling his contemporaries in the abundance of his works; his aim was to surpass them in correctness; nor did he any where succeed better in his object than in his Christ taken from the Cross, painted for the church of San Procolo. Among his disciples, Matteo Ponzone, from Dalmatia, more particularly distinguished himself, assisting Peranda in his great works executed at Mirandola. In progress of time he formed an original style, which surpasses in softness that of his master, though not equal to it in point of elegance. He was fond of copying from the life, without attempting much to add to its dignity. His scholar, Gio. Carboncino, pursued his studies at Rome also, where we do not, however, find mention of him,[77] owing probably to his speedy return to Venice. Among the few pieces produced by him for churches, there is a Bto. Angelo, at the Carmini, which has been much commended by Melchiori, and a San Antonio, at La Pieta, mentioned by Guarienti. Two others, named Maffei, of Vicenza, and Zanimberti, of Brescia, will come under consideration in their respective states.