Part 6

By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence had become the æsthetic capital of Italy, and painters innumerable were plying their trade within her walls. As they worked in close contact and unconsciously reflected the influences which beset them on every side, it becomes increasingly difficult to assign to any given artist the execution of certain works. The task becomes even more difficult, and indeed thankless, when one is brought face to face with such a composite picture as the _Madonna and Child, St. Jerome and St. Zenobius_ (No. 1114), which is officially ascribed to Albertinelli (1474-1515). The leading authority on Italian art has given it as his opinion that this large canvas, which is inscribed:

MARIOCTI DEBERTINELLIS OPUS Ā. D̄. M̊. DVI,

was “begun by Filippino Lippi, who laid in the St. Jerome, while Albertinelli was assisted by Bugiardini in the execution of the rest, especially in the child and landscape.” Albertinelli was the intimate friend of Fra Bartolommeo, whose partner he eventually became. When it is remembered that Albertinelli worked in the studio of Cosimo Rosselli with Piero di Cosimo, who was the master of Fra Bartolommeo and had some influence on Filippino Lippi, it will be recognised that it is only the discerning critic of wide experience and consummate _flair_ that can detect the hand of various painters in a composite picture of this kind, as Mr. Berenson has done.

The _Christ appearing to the Magdalene_ (No. 1115), which passes officially as the work of Albertinelli, was most probably an early picture by Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517), who, having like Botticelli come under the spell of Savonarola, took the vows of a Dominican in July 1500, and temporarily relinquished the professional activity of a painter. The Frate took up his brush again and, while working between 1509 and 1512 as the partner of Albertinelli, achieved the large and imposing _Holy Family, with St. Peter, St. Vincent, St. Stephen, and St. Catherine of Siena on the left, and St. Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Bartholomew on the right_ (No. 1154). It is signed on the base of the throne, in characteristic manner:

ORATE PRO PICTORE MDXI BARTHOLOME FLOREN̄. OR. PRAE.

Four years later he also completed his Annunciation (No. 1153), which is inscribed:

_F. Bartᵒ_ Florenˢ orⁱˢ pre. _1515._

The introduction of St. Paul, St. John the Baptist, and St. Margaret on the left, and St. Mary Magdalene and St. Francis on the right, tends to destroy the full significance of the principal theme. Fra Bartolommeo’s pictures helped to emancipate Raphael from the mannerisms he had acquired from Perugino; they mark a late period in the Renaissance art of Florence. He lived until 1517, when Florentine painting was on the verge of a fast approaching decadence.

Equally influential in the art of this period was Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), whose tendency to over-ornamentation became more advanced in his later years. In his fascinating pictures spiritual significance is at times sacrificed to a love of mere display, the baroque flutterings of his draperies and the air of affectation that he sometimes imparted to his figures. The Louvre exhibits no example of the art of Filippino which in its latest phase shows the early, although unmistakable, signs of decline.

ANDREA DEL SARTO

The highly technical skill and mellow colouring of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531) have long been known in France, where he was invited by François I. For that monarch he executed the _Charity_ (No. 1514), which, having been transferred from panel to canvas by Picault in 1750 when the process was little understood, suffered accordingly. In its present state we can get little idea of the former brilliance of the picture which secured to the “faultily faultless painter” in 1518—the year he arrived in France—a very considerable income. It is inscribed:

ANDREAS SARTUS FLORENTINTUS ME PINXIT MDXVIII.

A _Holy Family_ (No 1515), by the same facile painter, has been said by some to portray in the features of the Virgin those of his own infamous wife Lucrezia del Fede. It has been enlarged, and has suffered in the operation. Less authentic are the _Holy Family_ (No. 1516), which is said to bear the inscription:

ANDREA DEL SARTO FLORENTINO FACIEBAT

followed by a monogram, and a lunette of the _Annunciation_ (No. 1517). The _Portrait of Andrea Fausti_, which is given in the Catalogue under the name of Sarto, and described as being the work of a pupil, is held by some critics to have been painted by Franciabigio (1482-1525), who came under the influence of Andrea.

The insignificant _Portrait of a Young Man_ (No. 1506), which since 1709 has passed under the quite fictitious title of the _Portrait of Raphael_, and is indeed still catalogued under his name, is an ill drawn and badly coloured production. It seems to issue from the influences we have just outlined. Morelli regarded it as the work of Bacchiacca (1494-1557), who churned up reminiscences of Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, and Perugino. Mr. Berenson has tentatively assigned it to Sogliani, who imitated Albertinelli and many other Florentines.

An unattributed Florentine _Portrait of a Young Man_ (No. 1644), which has been enlarged about three inches all round, had at one time or another been ascribed without much discrimination to Raphael, Giorgione, Sebastiano del Piombo, Francesco Francia, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and Franciabigio! It is apparently from the hand of Giuliano Bugiardini (1475-1554), a mediocre artist who endeavoured to appropriate all the conflicting influences that he came under. It has long been hung to the left of Raphael’s _La Belle Jardinière_.

A Florentine painter of no great accomplishment or originality in the first half of the sixteenth century was Jacopo da Pontormo (1494-1557), who painted the _Portrait of an Engraver of Precious Stones_ (No. 1241) and the large _Holy Family_ (No. 1240). The _Visitation_ (No. 1242) is a copy by a pupil of his fresco in the Annunziata, Florence. By another pupil, Agnolo Bronzino (1502-1572), are the _Christ and the Magdalene_ (No. 1183), not now exhibited, and the _Portrait of a Sculptor_ (No. 1184); the _Holy Family_ (No. 1183A or No. 1183B) which was formerly in the Vandeuil collection is only a copy. Giovanni Battista Rosso (1496-1541), who is called Rosso Fiorentino to distinguish him from Francesco Rosso (Il Salviati), came to work at the French Court about 1530; he painted a _Pietà_ (No. 1485), and a _Challenge of the Pierides_ (No. 1486), which are hung among the French pictures. _The Portrait of a Musician_ (No. 1608), by Paolo Zacchia; the _Madonna, St. John and St. Stephen_ (No. 1133), by Michelangelo Anselmi; the _David overcoming Goliath_ (No. 1462), a repulsive production painted by Daniele da Volterra (Ricciarelli) on both sides of a large piece of slate; a _Flight into Egypt_ (No. 1209), by Lodovico Cardi (Il Cigoli), and Matteo Rosselli’s _Triumph of David_ (No. 1483), are unworthy of comment. They show unmistakably the characteristics of the Decadence in full operation.

THE LATER SIENESE SCHOOL

We have already sketched the earliest period of the art of Siena, and seen how for a brief space of time it dominated that of Tuscany. The greater precision of the Florentine technique, and the wider mental outlook of its artists in the fifteenth century, placed it in the van before long.

Sano di Pietro (1406-1481), a pupil of Sassetta, undoubtedly painted the five small characteristic panels (No. 1128-32), which illustrate scenes from the _Life of St. Jerome_, and at one time formed the predella of a large altarpiece. St. Jerome, with others of his order who run away, kneels under a portico of the monastery he founded at Bethlehem, and is extracting a thorn from the lion’s paw. According to the legend, the lion was afterwards placed in charge of an ass which the monks employed to carry wood; we see here that while the lion was asleep in the heat of the day under a clump of trees, the ass was stolen by merchants. St. Jerome naturally believed that the ass had not been carried off by a passing caravan, but eaten by the lion, who subsequently saw his old friend the ass in the possession of the same merchants that chanced to pass that way again. The lion is here seen (No. 1130) in the act of compelling, one might almost say pushing, the ass and the other beasts of burden laden with provisions back into the monastery, while the merchants flee away in terror.

The Louvre does not contain any work by Vecchietta (1412-1480), who was architect as well as painter. A _Birth of the Virgin_ (No. 1660), catalogued as being by an unknown Florentine artist, is most probably from the hand of Matteo di Giovanni (1435?-1495), who was most likely at one time a pupil of Vecchietta. Another of the latter’s pupils, Francesco di Giorgio (1439-1502), perhaps executed the panel of the _Rape of Europa_ (No. 1640A or No. 1640 _Bis_), which the cataloguer relegates to the lengthy list of unattributed Florentine works.

From these influences spring Girolamo di Benvenuto (1470-1524), whose _Judgment of Paris_ (No. 1668) passes in the Catalogue as a late fifteenth century Bolognese picture. Bernardino Fungai (1460-1516), who trod in the steps of Giovanni di Paolo, Francesco di Giorgio, and the Umbrian artist Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and yet evinced no real signs of development from within, is unrepresented in this collection.

This rapid survey of the School of Siena shows that it is not well exemplified in the Louvre. The third-rate painters, Pacchiarotto (1474-1540) and Beccafumi (1486-1551), will not detain us. Another accomplished late Sienese eclectic, Girolamo del Pacchia (1477-1535?), has been credited with a _Crucifixion_ (No. 1642), but not by the official cataloguer. Sodoma (1477-1551) also worked in Siena. Towards the year 1501 other artists of the various schools of Central Italy, including Pinturicchio, Signorelli, and Perugino, visited the city, their advent bringing about an artistic revolution. Before long the religious fervour, the delicate ornamentation, the gesso-embellishment, the drawing in the flat, and the miniature-like delicacy of an earlier age became extinct. The artistic glory of Siena was dimmed, and rapidly passed into a period of decadence.

Among the last Sienese artists of any distinction were Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), an architect and painter, and Matteo Balducci (fl. 1509-1553), to whom we may perhaps ascribe the _Judgment of Solomon_ (No. 1571) and the _Judgment of Daniel_ (No. 1572). In any case these pictures belong to the Umbro-Sienese period of Central Italian art; they are officially regarded as being by Perugino himself. When all originality had passed out of Sienese painting, Francesco Vanni (1563?-1609) produced his _Repose on the Flight into Egypt_ (No. 1561) and the _Martyrdom of St. Irene_ (No. 1562).

THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

At the head of the various local centres of painting which form the school of Umbria we must place Alegretto Nuzi (died 1385), whose works are very rarely met with in museums north of Italy. He inherited the best Giottesque traditions, and became the teacher of Gentile da Fabriano (1360?-1428), an early master whose influence was more far-reaching and inspiring than we can to-day trace in any detail. The Louvre has the good fortune to contain a precious little predella panel of the _Presentation in the Temple_ (No. 1278), which is very decorative and exhibits a strongly marked appreciation of architecture. It is the only separated panel from the predella of Gentile’s large and magnificent altarpiece of the _Adoration of the Magi_, of 1423, which was seized by Napoleon but was returned in 1815. It is now in the Accademia at Florence.

The _Miracle of St. Nicholas giving a Dowry to the Three Daughters of a Nobleman_ (No. 1659), which is officially classed among the unattributable works of the Florentine school, is now considered to be by Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, while the _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1300A or 1300B) which is officially ascribed to Piero dei Franceschi, the leading painter of his generation in the school of Umbria, must, as we have seen, be given to Alessio Baldovinetti of the Florentine school.

Again, the three-panel picture (No. 1415) which is credited to Pesellino of Florence is in reality from the hand of the Umbrian artist Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440-1521). The collection is not rich in the works of the earliest painters of this school, but the _Birth of the Virgin_ (No. 1525), a detached panel from a lost or unidentified altarpiece by Luca Signorelli (1441-1523), gives us some idea of the great power of this influential master, whose knowledge of composition and anatomy is best seen in his frescoes at Orvieto. Signorelli’s sense of complicated movement and crowded action mark an epoch in the art of Umbria. The _Fragment of a Large Picture_ (No. 1527) seems to be imbued with his spirit, but the large _Adoration of the Magi_ (No. 1526) which comes from Città di Castello, and a _Madonna and Child with St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Catherine, and other Saints_ (No. 1528), contain none of the vigorous originality of that master from whom even Michelangelo did not disdain to borrow on occasion. Three predella panels (No. 1120) have been dismembered from a large altarpiece by Niccolò da Foligno, and were originally painted for a side altar in the Church of S. Niccolò at Foligno. In the art of this over-emotional Umbrian, what is meant for deep religious feeling is by exaggeration almost transformed into grimacing passion.

PERUGINO

Niccolò’s most illustrious contemporary in this school was Pietro Perugino (1446-1523). Over fifty of the religious pictures of this influential and accomplished master were carried off from Central Italy by Napoleon. He is well represented in this Gallery. The contemplative and deeply impressive pictures of his less mannered style are among the best pictures which Umbria has given us, but there is a tendency, notably towards the end of his career, to repeat his compositions, only altering the attitude of a single figure, and so exhibiting a marked lack of originality. His early _Holy Family with St. Rose and St. Catherine_ (No. 1564), painted about 1491, is a little cramped; the tondo hardly provides sufficient space to contain the rather stiff figures, and the treatment is unpleasantly conventional. It also recalls the art of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The _St. Sebastian_ (No. 1566A, Plate VI.), which is inscribed:

SAGITTÆ TVÆ INFIXÆ SVNT MICHI,

is a favourite subject with this master, who painted it at least eight times on a large scale, as well as in a miniature now lent to the National Gallery by Mr. H. Yates Thompson. The _Holy Family with St. Catherine_ (No. 1565) is said to bear the characteristic signature:

PETRUS PERVSINUS PINXIT.

The _Combat of Love and Chastity_ (No. 1567) was commissioned by Isabella d’Este, Duchess of Mantua, in 1505, and removed at the sack of that city in 1630 to the Château of Richelieu, where it remained down to the Revolution. The _St. Paul_ (No. 1566) is a very late and not very attractive work. In his best pictures Perugino loved to paint a purist landscape with its buoyant spaciousness of view, but too frequently his figures are insufficiently dramatic and have a tendency towards sentimentality. A very late _St. Sebastian_ (No. 1668A), which is on a much smaller scale than the subject of our illustration (Plate VI.), is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Umbrian painter. The _Apollo and Marsyas_ (No. 1509), which was purchased at Christie’s in 1850 for £70 by Morris Moore, with an ascription to Mantegna, was in 1883 sold to the Louvre for £8000. It long hung in the Salon Carré as a Raphael, but is now only attributed to him by the cataloguer. This gem of Umbrian art has successively been ascribed by critics to Pintoricchio, Timoteo Viti, Francesco Francia, and others, but is to-day generally regarded as a very fine example of the art of Perugino. Two pictures (No. 1573 and No. 1573A) of the _Madonna and Child_ are by unidentifiable pupils of Perugino.

One of the most recent acquisitions is a _Madonna_ by Antoniazzo Romano (1440?-1508), the gift of M. Lucien Delamarre. The art of Pintoricchio (1454-1513) is shown in the _Madonna and Child with St. Gregory and another Saint_ (No. 1417), while Lo Spagna (1475?-1528?), a pupil of Perugino, is represented by a _Nativity_ (No. 1539), a _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1540), and by three small pictures illustrating the _Dead Christ, the Virgin, and St. John_ (No. 1568), _St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata_ (No. 1569), and _St. Jerome in the Desert_ (No. 1570).

A mediocre pupil of Perugino and Pintoricchio, Giannicola Manni (fl. 1493-1544), is doubtless responsible for the _Baptism of Christ_ (No. 1369), the _Assumption_ (No. 1370), the _Adoration of the Magi_ (No. 1371), and the _Holy Family_ (1372) which pass under his name. The last-mentioned panel was attributed by Villot, apparently without much reason, to L’Ingegno.

RAPHAEL

The majority of the thirteen pictures which in the Louvre are unreservedly catalogued under the great name of Raphael (1483-1520) certainly belong to his third or Roman period, and in many of them he obviously received a large amount of assistance from his pupil, Giulio Romano. It is this fact, no doubt, which has led the compiler of the Catalogue to place the “Divine Urbinate” in the Roman school. It will, however, be readily admitted that such a classification is both arbitrary and misleading.

Although he lived but thirty-seven years, Raphael gave to the world a vast amount of art treasure. Brought up in Urbino, where his father, Giovanni Santi, was poet as well as painter, he passed before he was fifteen under the direct influence of Timoteo Viti, who had worked at Bologna under Francesco Francia. Raphael became the pupil of Perugino at Perugia about 1500, and also worked as the assistant of Pintoricchio. His art being thus formed on the best Umbrian tradition, Raphael in October 1504 left Perugia for Florence, and it was only at that date that he began to acquire a distinctive style of his own. During his second or Florentine period he painted the _St. George and the Dragon_ (No. 1503), in which is seen the chivalrous knight mounted on a pure white steed; his lance is broken in his combat with the monster, and he is forced to use his sword, while the little Princess Cleodolinda flees in abject terror into the background. The very small panel of _St. Michael_ (No. 1502), which is a chessboard on the back, was painted for Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, and eventually passed into the collections of Cardinal Mazarin and Louis XIV. The _Madonna and Child_ which has come to be known as _La Belle Jardinière_ (No. 1496, Plate VII.) is rather later than the _Madonna del Gran’ Duca_ in the Pitti Palace, the _Cardellino Madonna_ in the Uffizi, and the _Ansidei Madonna_ in the National Gallery. It is one of the most famous of Raphael’s saintly and ideal Madonnas; the pose of the figures is easy, the treatment simple, the colour exquisite. The landscape background is poetic in feeling, and conveys the mood which makes this one of Raphael’s most pleasing creations. The thin feathery trees and the treatment of the Virgin’s hair are still Peruginesque, but the superiority of the pupil to the master is gradually making itself felt. The Infant Christ is standing on the right foot of His mother. Tradition says that Raphael entrusted to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio the task of painting in the blue of the Virgin’s garment. The drapery is apparently inscribed:

VRB. RAPHAELLO MDVII.

After working for four years in Florence, Raphael went in the summer of 1508 to Rome, where he achieved such a vast amount of work for Popes Julius II. and Leo X. His work was increased by his appointment, on the death of Bramante in 1514, as Architect of St. Peter’s and Inspector of Antiquities.

About 1515-16 Raphael delighted to paint the _Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione_ (No. 1505, Plate VIII.), who was his lifelong friend and adviser as well as the author of _Il Cortegiano_. This picture, which is eloquent testimony to Raphael’s skill as a portrait painter, was originally on wood, but it was long ago transferred to canvas, which has unfortunately abraded, the paint having peeled off the hands. After the death of Castiglione in Spain, this picture which he had taken with him passed into the possession of the Duke of Mantua, and thence into the collection of Charles I., where it seems to have been copied by Rubens. It subsequently became the property of a Dutch amateur named Van Asselen, and was copied by Rembrandt. Later, it was sold for 3500 florins to Don Alfonso Lopez, a collector at Amsterdam, and after figuring in the collection of Mazarin was acquired by Louis XIV.

The _Holy Family of Francis I._ (No. 1498) was commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici and presented to the Queen of François I. by Pope Leo X. It was originally painted on wood, and was forwarded to Lyons on April 19, 1518. During the reign of Louis XIV. it hung in the _grand appartement_ at Versailles, and having been placed near a fireplace had to be relined. It then had wings, but they were destroyed at the time of the Revolution. Although it is very ostentatiously signed

RAPHAEL VRBINAS PINGEBAT MDXVIII

on the edge of the robe of the kneeling Madonna, there can be no question that it was only designed by Raphael, the execution being wholly or in great part carried out by the master’s best pupil, Giulio Romano. In the _Sistine Madonna_ and such works as Raphael painted at this period entirely with his own hand we see that his technique had become masterly and his powers of composition had developed to the utmost. Compared with _La Belle Jardinière_ of a decade earlier, a greater knowledge of craftsmanship has been accompanied by a loss of purity and simplicity.