Part 8

The works of Giorgione were, for the chief part, executed in fresco, upon the facades of the houses, more particularly in Venice, where there now remains scarcely a relic of them, as if to remind us only of what have perished. Many of his pictures, on the other hand, both there and in other places, painted in oil and preserved in private houses, are found in excellent condition; the cause of which is attributed to the strong mixture of the colours, and to the full and liberal use of his pencil. In particular we meet with portraits, remarkable for the soul of their expression, for the air of their heads, the novelty of the garments, of the hair, of the plumes, and of the arms, no less than for the lively imitation of the living flesh, in which, however warm and sanguine are the tints which he applied, he adds to them so much grace, that in spite of thousands of imitators, he still stands alone. In analyzing some of these tints, Ridolfi discovered that they bore little resemblance to those used by the ancient Greeks, and quite distinct from those tawny, brown, and azure colours, since introduced at the expense of the more natural. Such of his pictures as are composed in the style of his Dead Christ, in the Monte di Pieta at Trevigi, the S. Omobono at the Scuola de' Sarti, in Venice, or the Tempest stilled by the Saint, at that of S. Marco, in which among other figures are those of three rowers drawn naked, excellent both in their design and their attitudes; such are the rarest triumphs of his art. The city of Milan possesses two of an oblong shape, in which several of the figures extend beyond the proportions of Poussin, and may be pronounced rather full than beautiful. One of these is to be viewed at the Ambrosiana, the other in the archepiscopal palace; esteemed by some the happiest effort of Giorgione that now survives. It represents the child Moses just rescued from the Nile, and presented to the daughter of Pharaoh. Very few colours, but well harmonized and distributed, and finely broken with the shades, produce a sort of austere union, if I may be allowed the expression, and may be assimilated to a piece of music composed of few notes, but skilfully adapted, and delightful beyond any more noisy combination of sounds.

Giorgione died at the early age of thirty-four, in 1511. Thus his productions, rather than the pupils he educated, remained to instruct the Venetians. Vasari, however, mentions several who have been contested by other writers. A Pietro Luzzo is recorded by Ridolfi;--a native of Feltre, called Zarato, or Zarotto,--who after being a pupil became a rival of Giorgione, and seduced from his house a woman, to whom he was passionately attached, at whose loss it has been asserted by some that the disappointed artist died in despair. By others, on the contrary, he is said to have died of a disease contracted during his intercourse with the same lady. This Zarato, as we read in a MS. history of Feltre, and in a MS. upon the pictures of Udine, is the same whom Vasari entitles, _Morto da Feltro_; and adds, that he went when young to Rome, and subsequently flourished in Florence and elsewhere, distinguished for his skill in grotesques; of which more hereafter. Going afterwards to Venice, he is known to have assisted Giorgione in the paintings he made for the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, about the year 1505; and, lastly, having remained some time at his native place, he embraced a military life, obtaining the rank of captain. Proceeding to Zara, he fell in battle near that place in his forty-fifth year; at least such is the account of Vasari. From the mention of his native place of Feltre, his assisting Giorgione in his works, and his surnames of _Zarato_ and _Morto_, I think there is some degree of probability in the assertion contained in these MSS. though the dates attaching to the life of Morto in Vasari, will not countenance the supposition of Ridolfi, of his being the pupil of Giorgione, a man considerably younger than himself; so that I should conjecture that Ridolfi may have denominated him a scholar of Giorgione, because, when already of a mature age, he painted under him as his assistant. Notwithstanding the assertion of Vasari, he had a tolerable genius for figures, and in the history already cited, written by Cambrucci, and in possession of the bishop of Feltre, a picture of our Lady between saints Francesco and Antonio, placed at S. Spirito, and another at Villabruna, besides a figure of Curtius on horseback, upon a house at Teggie, are attributed to his hand. We gather from the same history that another Luzzi, by name Lorenzo, a contemporary and perhaps friend of Pietro, painted very skilfully in fresco, at the church of S. Stefano; and that he was equally successful in oils, he himself assures us in his altarpiece of the proto-martyr S. Stefano, conspicuous for correctness of design, beauty of forms, force of tints, and bearing his name and the date of 1511.

The most distinguished disciple of the school of Giorgione is Sebastiano, a Venetian, commonly called, from the habit and office he afterwards assumed at Rome, Fra Sebastiano del Piombo. Having left Gian Bellini, he attached himself to Giorgione, and in the tone of his colours, and the fulness of his forms, imitated him better than any other artist. An altarpiece in S. Gio. Crisostomo, from his hand, was by some mistaken for the work of his master; so strikingly does it abound with his manner. It may be presumed, indeed, that he was assisted in the design; Sebastiano being known to possess no surprising richness of invention,--slow in the composition of most of his figures; irresolute; eager to undertake, but difficult to commence, and most difficult in the completion. Hence we rarely meet with any of his histories or his altarpieces comparable to the Nativity of the Virgin, at S. Agostino, in Perugia, or the _Flagellazione_ at the Osservanti of Viterbo, which is esteemed the best picture in the city. Pictures for private rooms, and portraits, he painted in great number, and with comparative ease; and we no where meet with more beautiful hands, more rosy flesh tints, or more novel accessaries than in these. Thus, in taking the portrait of Pietro Aretino, he distinguished five different tints of black in his dress; imitating with exactness those of the velvet, of the satin, and so of the rest. Being invited to Rome by Agostino Chigi, and there esteemed as one of the first colourists of his time, he painted in competition with Peruzzi, and with Raffaello himself; and the rival labours of all three are still preserved in a hall of the Farnesina, at that period the house of the Chigi.

Sebastiano became aware, that in such a competition, his own design would not appear to much advantage in Rome, and he improved it. But occasionally he fell into some harshness of manner, owing to the difficulties he there encountered. Yet, in several of his works, he was assisted by Michelangiolo, from whose design he painted that _Pieta_, placed at the Conventuali of Viterbo, and the Transfiguration, with the other pieces which he produced, during six years, for S. Pietro in Montorio, at Rome. It is stated by Vasari, that Michelangiolo united with him, in order to oppose the too favourable opinion entertained by the Romans, of Raffaello. He adds, that on the death of the latter, Sebastiano was universally esteemed the first artist of his time, upheld by the favour of Michelangiolo; Giulio Romano, and the rest of the rival school, being all inferior to him. I am almost at a loss how to judge of a fact, which, if discredited, seems to cast an imputation upon the historian, and, if received, reflects very little credit upon Buonarotti; and the reader will do best, perhaps, to decide for himself. The name of Sebastiano must also be added to the list of inventors, for his new method of oil painting upon stone, upon which plan he executed the _Flagellazione_, for S. Pietro in Montorio, a work as much defaced by time as the others which he made in fresco remain at the same place entire. He coloured also upon stone several pictures for private houses, a practice highly esteemed at its earlier period, but which was soon abandoned owing to the difficulty of carriage. Upon this plan, or some other resembling it, we find several pictures of the sixteenth century executed, and which, at this period, are esteemed in museums real antiques.[42]

Among the disciples of the School of Giorgione, were, likewise, Gio. da Udine and Francesco Torbido, a Veronese, who has been surnamed _il Moro_, and both were distinguished practisers of his tints. In regard to Giovanni, afterwards a pupil of Raffaello, we have written, and we shall again write elsewhere. Moro remained but little with Giorgione, a much longer while with Liberale. Of this last he imitated very truly both the diligence and the design, in the former even surpassing him; always a severe critic upon himself, and slow in completing his undertakings. We rarely meet with him in altarpieces, still more rarely in collections of paintings, for which he was often employed in sacred subjects and in portraits; deficient in nothing, except, perhaps, we could wish to see somewhat greater freedom of hand. In the dome of Verona, he painted several histories in fresco, among which is the Assumption of the Virgin, truly admirable; but the designs are not his, Giulio Romano having prepared the cartoons. His style of execution, however, is clearly enough perceived, which, in respect to colouring and to chiaroscuro, discovers him to be an artist, as Vasari has recorded, "as careful in regard to his use of colours, as any other who flourished at the same period."

The other names that here follow, are included, according to history, in the train of Giorgione, not as his pupils, but his imitators. Yet all exhibit traces of Bellini, because the Venetian manner, up to the time of Tintoretto, did not so much aim at inventing new things, as at perfecting such as had already been discovered; not so desirous of relinquishing the taste of the Bellini, as of modernizing it upon the model of Titian and Giorgione. Hence it arose, that a people of painters were formed in a taste extremely uniform; and the exaggerated observation, "that whoever had cultivated an acquaintance with one Venetian artist of that age, knew them all," seemed to have some ground in truth. But still, as I have said, it is exaggeration, as there is certainly much diversity of style and merit when compared with one another. Among the leading disciples of Giorgione are to be ranked three, who belong to the city or territory of Bergamo, and these are Lotto, as is most generally supposed, Palma, and Cariani. They resemble their master most frequently in fulness, but in the mixture and selection of colours they often appear of the school of Lombardy. More particularly in Cariani there is apparent a certain superficies, like that of wax, equally diffused over the canvass, which shines so as to enliven the eye; and when seen at a distance, with but little light, appears in full relief, a result which others have also noticed in the works of Coreggio.

The name of Lorenzo Lotto is recorded by Vasari and elsewhere, in which accounts his country is considered as consisting of the entire state, as he himself, indeed, affixed to his picture of S. Cristoforo di Loreto, _Laurentius Lottus Pictor Venetus_.[43] The late annotator of Vasari, observing the grace of countenance and the turn of the eyes remarkable in his pictures, supposed him to be a disciple of Vinci, an opinion that might be supported by the authority of Lomazzo, who mentions the names of Cesare da Sesto and Lorenzo Lotto together, both being imitators, in the distribution of their lights, of da Vinci. Lotto most likely profited by his vicinity to Milan, in order to cultivate an acquaintance with, and to imitate Vinci in many points; though I am not, therefore, inclined to discredit the account which gives him for a pupil to Bellini, and a rival to Castelfranco. But the style of the disciples of Lionardo, so uniform in Luini and in the other Milanese, is very slightly perceptible in the productions of Lotto. His manner is, in truth, wholly Venetian, bold in its colours, luxurious in its draperies, and like Giorgione, of a deep red in the fleshy parts. His hand, however, is less bold and free than that of the latter, whose loftier character he is fond of tempering with the play, as it were, of his middle tints; selecting, at the same time, lighter forms, to whose heads he gives a character more placid and a beauty more ideal. In the background of his pictures he often retains a peculiar clear or azure colour, which if it do not harmonize so much with the figures, confers distinctness on each individual, and presents them in a very lively manner to the eye. His pictures of S. Antonino, at the Dominicans in Venice, and of S. Niccolo, at the Carmine, which design he repeated in the S. Vincenzio of the Dominicans at Recanati, are compositions extremely novel and original. In his others he varies little from the usual style; that of a Madonna seated on a throne, surrounded with saints, with cherubs in the air, or upon the steps. Yet these he relieves by the novelty of perspective, or by attitudes, or contrasted views. Thus in his specimen of the S. Bartolommeo, at Bergamo, entitled by Ridolfi wonderful, he bestows upon the Virgin and the infant Jesus such finely diversified and contrasted motions, that they seem as if conversing with the holy bystanders, the one on the right and the other on the left hand. And in that of S. Spirito, sparkling as it were with graces, we meet with a figure of S. John the Baptist, drawn as a child, standing at the foot of the throne, in the act of embracing a lamb, and expressing so natural and lively a joy, at once so simple and innocent, with a smile so beautiful, that we can hardly believe while we gaze upon it, that Raffaello or Correggio could have gone beyond it.

Such masterpieces as these, with others that are to be seen at Bergamo, in churches and private collections, place him almost on a level with the first luminaries of the art. If Vasari did not fairly appreciate his merits, it arose only from his having viewed several of his less studied and less noble pieces. And it is true that he has not always exhibited the same degree of excellence, or force of design. The period in which he chiefly flourished may be computed from the year 1513, when he was selected, among many professors of reputation, to adorn the altar for the church of the Dominicans at Bergamo; and, perhaps, the decline of his powers ought to be dated from 1546, an epoch inscribed upon his picture of San Jacopo dell'Orio, in Venice. He was employed also at Ancona, and in particular at the church of S. Dominico, at Recanati, where, interspersed among pieces of superior power, more especially in his smaller pictures, we detect some incorrectness in his extremities, and stiffness of composition, resembling that of Gian Bellini; whether, as it is conjectured by Vasari, they were among the earliest, or more probably among some of his latest efforts. For it is well known, that when far advanced in years, he was accustomed to retire to Loreto, a little way from Recanati, and that engaged in continual supplication to the Virgin, in order that she might guide him into a better method, he there closed the period of his days in tranquillity.

Jacopo Palma, commonly called _Palma Vecchio_, to distinguish him from his great-nephew Jacopo, was invariably considered the companion and rival of Lotto, until such time as Combe first confused the historical dates relating to him. By Ridolfi we are told that Palma employed himself in completing a picture left imperfect by Titian, at the period of his death in 1576. Upon this, and similar authorities, Combe takes occasion to postpone the birth of Palma, until 1540; adding to which the forty-eight years assigned him by Vasari, the time of his decease is placed in 1588. In such arrangement the critic seems neither to have paid attention to the style of Jacopo, still retaining some traces of the antique, nor to the authority of Ridolfi, who makes him the master of Bonifazio, any more than to Vasari's testimony, in the work published in 1568, declaring him to have died several years before that period in Venice. He does not even consider, what he might more easily have ascertained, that there was another Jacopo Palma, great-nephew of the elder, who, according to the authority of Boschini (p. 110), was a pupil of Titian's as long as the latter survived; and that Ridolfi, on this occasion, entitled him _Palma_, without the addition of _younger_, on account of its being so extremely unlikely that any would confound him with the elder Palma. Such, notwithstanding, was the case, and is, in fact, only a slight sample of the inaccuracies of the whole work. The same error has been repeated by too many authors, even among the Italians; and the most amusing of all is, that Palma the elder is said to have been born about the year 1540, while almost, in the same breath, the younger Palma is declared to have been born in 1544. So much must here suffice as to his age, proceeding in the next instance to his style.

Much attached to the method of Giorgione, he aimed at attaining his clearness of expression, and vivacity of colouring. In his celebrated picture of Saint Barbara, at S. Maria Formosa, one of his most powerful and characteristic productions, Jacopo more especially adopted him as his model. In some of his other pieces, he more nearly approaches Titian, a resemblance we are told by Ridolfi, consisting in the peculiar grace which he acquired from studying the earliest productions of that great master. Of this kind is the Supper of Christ, painted for Santa Maria _Mater Domini_, with the Virgin at San Stefano di Vicenza, executed with so much sweetness of expression as to be esteemed one of his happiest productions. There are many examples of both styles to be met with in the grand Carrara collection, as given in the list of Count Tassi, (p. 93). Finally, Zanetti is of opinion that in some others he displays a more original genius, as exemplified in the Epiphany of the island of Saint Helena, where he equally shines in the character of a naturalist who selects well, who carefully disposes his draperies, and who composes according to good rules. The distinguishing character then of his pieces is diligence, refinement, and a harmony of tints, so great as to leave no traces of the pencil; and it has been observed by one of his historians, that he long occupied himself in the production of each piece, and frequently retouched it. In the mixture of his colours, as well as other respects, he often resembles Lotto, and if he be less animated and sublime, he is, perhaps, generally speaking, more beautiful in the form of his heads, especially in those of boys and women. It is the opinion of some, that in several of his countenances he expressed the likeness of his daughter Violante, very nearly related to Titian, and a portrait of whom, by the hand of her father, was to be seen in the gallery of Sera, a Florentine gentleman, who purchased at Venice many rarities for the House of the Medici, as well as for himself, (Boschini, p. 368). A variety of pictures intended for private rooms, met with in different places in Italy, have also been attributed to the hand of Palma; besides portraits, one of which has been commended by Vasari as truly astonishing, from its beauty; and Madonnas, chiefly drawn along with other saints, on oblong canvass; a practice in common use by many artists of that age, some of whom we have already recounted, and others are yet to come. But the least informed among people of taste, being ignorant of their names, the moment they behold a picture between the dryness of Giovanni Bellini and the softness of Titian, pronounce it to be a Palma, and this, more particularly, where they find countenances well rounded and coloured, landscape exhibited with care, and roseate hues in the drapery, occurring more frequently than any of a more sanguine dye. In this way Palma is in the mouths of all, while other artists, also very numerous, are mentioned only in proportion as they have attached their own names to their productions. One of these, resembling Palma and Lotto, but slightly known beyond the precincts of Bergamo and some adjacent cities, is Giovanni Cariani, as to whom Vasari is altogether silent. One of his pieces, representing our Saviour, along with several saints, and dated 1514, I have myself seen at Milan, which appears to have been altogether formed upon the model of Giorgione. If I mistake not, it is a juvenile production, and when compared with some others, which I saw at Bergamo, very indifferent in its forms. The most excellent of any from his hand, is a Virgin, preserved at the Servi, with a group of beatified spirits, a choir of angels, and other angels at her feet, engaged in playing upon their harps in concert. It is an exceedingly graceful production, delightfully ornamented with landscape and figures in the distance; very tasteful in its tints, which are blended in a manner equal to the most studied specimens of the two artists of Bergamo, already mentioned; thus forming with them a triumvirate, calculated to reflect honour upon any country. It has been stated by Tassi, that the celebrated Zuccherelli never visited Bergamo, without returning to admire the beauties of this picture, pronouncing it one of the finest specimens of the art he had ever beheld, and the best which that city had to boast. Cariani was also no less distinguished as a portrait painter, as we gather from a piece belonging to the Counts Albani, containing various portraits of that noble family; and which, surrounded with specimens of the best colourists; would almost appear to be the only one deserving of peculiar admiration.