Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
was this lyrist of luxurious ecstasy. In his work there was nothing worldly; that divides him from the Venetians, whose sensuousness he shared: nothing scientific; that distinguishes him from Da Vinci, the magic of whose chiaroscuro he comprehended: nothing contemplative; that separates him from Michael Angelo, the audacity of whose design in dealing with forced attitudes he rivalled, without apparently having enjoyed the opportunity of studying his works. The cheerfulness of Raphael, the wizardry of Lionardo, and the boldness of Michael Angelo, met in him to form a new style, the originality of which is indisputable, and which takes us captive—not by intellectual power, but by the impulse of emotion. Of his artistic education we know nothing; and when we call him the Ariel of painting, this means that we are compelled to think of him as an elemental spirit, whose bidding the air and the light and the hues of the morning obey.
Correggio created a world of beautiful human beings, the whole condition of whose existence is an innocent and radiant wantonness.[263] Over the domain of tragedy he had no sway; nor could he deal with subjects demanding pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints the three Fates for instance like young and joyous Bacchantes; if we placed rose-garlands and thyrsi in their hands instead of the distaff and the thread of human destinies, they might figure upon the panels of a banquet-chamber in Pompeii. Nor, again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of composition which seeks the highest beauty of design in architectural harmony supreme above the melodies of gracefulness in detail. He was essentially a lyrical as distinguished from an epical or dramatic poet. The unity of his work is derived from the effect of light and atmosphere, the inbreathed soul of tremulous and throbbing life, which bathes and liquefies the whole. It was enough for him to produce a gleeful symphony by the play of light and colour, by the animation of his figures, and by the intoxicating beauty of his forms. His angels are genii disimprisoned from the chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic Paradise, elemental sprites of nature wantoning in Eden in her prime. They belong to the generation of the fauns. Like fauns, they combine a certain wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy, a delight in rapid motion as they revel amid clouds and flowers, with the permanent and all-pervading sweetness of the painter's style. Correggio's sensibility to light and colour—that quality which makes him unique among painters—was on a par with his feeling for form. Brightness and darkness are woven together on his figures like an impalpable veil, aërial and transparent, enhancing the palpitations of voluptuous movement which he loved. His colouring does not glow or burn; blithesome and delicate, it seems exactly such a beauty-bloom as sense requires for its satiety. That cord of jocund colour which may fitly be combined with the smiles of daylight, the clear blues found in laughing eyes, the pinks that tinge the cheeks of early youth, and the warm yet silvery tones of healthy flesh, mingle, as in a pearl-shell, on his pictures. Within his own magic circle Correggio reigns supreme; no other artist having blent the witcheries of colouring, chiaroscuro, and wanton loveliness of form, into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous charm. To feel his influence, and at the same moment to be the subject of strong passion, or intense desire, or heroic resolve, or profound contemplation, or pensive melancholy, is impossible. The Northern traveller, standing beneath his master-works in Parma, may hear from each of those radiant and laughing faces what the young Italian said to Goethe: Perchè pensa? pensando s' invecchia.
Michael Angelo is the prophet or seer of the Renaissance. It would be impossible to imagine a stronger contrast than that which distinguishes his art from Correggio's, or lives more different in all their details, than those which he and Raphael or Lionardo lived respectively. During the eighty-nine years of his earthly pilgrimage he saw Italy enslaved and Florence extinguished; it was his exceeding bitter fate to watch the rapid decay of the arts and to witness the triumph of sacerdotal despotism over liberal thought. To none of these things was he indifferent; and the sorrow they wrought in his soul, found expression in his painting.[264] Michael Angelo was not framed by nature to fascinate like Lionardo or to charm like Raphael. His manners were severe and simple. When he spoke, his words were brief and pungent. When he wrote, whether in poetry or prose, he used the fewest phrases to express the most condensed meaning. When asked why he had not married, he replied that the wife he had—his art—cost him already too much trouble. He entertained few friends, and shunned society. Brooding over the sermons of Savonarola, the text of the Bible, the discourses of Plato, and the poems of Dante, he made his spirit strong in solitude by the companionship with everlasting thoughts. Therefore, when he was called to paint the Sistine Chapel, he uttered through painting the weightiest prophecy the world has ever seen expressed in plastic form. His theme is nothing less than the burden of the prophets and the Sibyls who preached the coming of a light upon the world, and the condemnation of the world which had rejected it, by an inexorable judge. Michelet says, not without truth, that the spirit of Savonarola lives again in these frescoes. The procession of the four-and-twenty elders, arraigned before the people of Brescia to accuse Italy of sin—the voice that cried to Florence, "Behold the sword of the Lord, and that swiftly! Behold I, even I, do bring a deluge on the earth!" are both seen and heard here very plainly. But there is more than Savonarola in this prophecy of Michael Angelo's. It contains the stern spirit of Dante, aflame with patriotism, passionate for justice. It embodies the philosophy of Plato. The creative God, who divides light from darkness, who draws Adam from the clay and calls forth new-born Eve in awful beauty, is the Demiurgus of the Greek. Again, it carries the indignation of Isaiah, the wild denunciations of Ezekiel, the monotonous refrain of Jeremiah—"Ah, Lord, Lord!" The classic Sibyls intone their mystic hymns; the Delphic on her tripod of inspiration, the Erythræan bending over her scrolls, the withered witch of Cumæ, the parched prophetess of Libya—all seem to cry, "Repent, repent! for the kingdom of the spirit is at hand! Repent and awake, for the judgment of the world approaches!" And above these voices we hear a most tremendous wail: "The nations have come to the birth; but there is not strength to bring forth." That is the utterance of the Renaissance, as it had appeared in Italy. She who was first among the nations was now last; bound and bleeding, she lay prostrate at the temple-gate she had unlocked. To Michael Angelo was given for his portion—not the alluring mysteries of the new age, not the joy of the renascent world, not the petulant and pulsing rapture of youth: these had been divided between Lionardo, Raphael, and Correggio—but the bitter burden of the sense that the awakening to life is in itself a pain, that the revelation of the liberated soul is itself judgment, that a light is shining, and that the world will not comprehend it. Pregnant as are the paintings of Michael Angelo with religious import, they are no longer Catholic in the sense in which the frescoes of the Lorenzetti and Orcagna and Giotto are Catholic. He went beyond the ecclesiastical standing ground and reached one where philosophy includes the Christian faith. Thus the true spirit of the Renaissance was embodied in his work of art.
Among the multitudes of figures covering the wall above the altar in the Sistine Chapel there is one that might well stand for a symbol of the Renaissance. It is a woman of gigantic stature in the act of toiling upwards from the tomb. Grave clothes impede the motion of her body: they shroud her eyes and gather round her chest. Part only of her face and throat is visible, where may be read a look of blank bewilderment and stupefaction, a struggle with death's slumber in obedience to some inner impulse. Yet she is rising slowly, half awake, and scarcely conscious, to await a doom still undetermined. Thus Michael Angelo interpreted the meaning of his age.
FOOTNOTES:
"La man che ubbedisce all' intelletto" is a phrase pregnant with meaning, used by Michael Angelo in one of his sonnets. See Guasti, Le Rime di Michael Angelo, p. 173. Michael Angelo's blunt criticism of Perugino, that he was goffo, a fool in art, and his rude speech to Francia's handsome son, that his father made better forms by night than day, sufficiently indicate the different aims pursued by the painters of the two periods distinguished above.
Though Mantegna seems to have owed all his training to Padua, it is impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque—one among the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan impresario of third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest. His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating from the meagre means of study within his reach those elements which enabled him to divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt its reproduction. In order to facilitate the explanation of the problem offered by his early command of style, it has been suggested with great show of reason that he received a strong impression from the work executed in bas-relief by Donatello for the church of S. Antonio at Padua. Thus Florentine influences helped to form even the original genius of this greatest of the Lombard masters.
Vasari, vol. v. p. 163, may be consulted with regard to Mantegna's preference for the ideal of statuary when compared with natural beauty, as the model for a painter.
See Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History of Painting in North Italy, vol. i. p. 334, for an account of his antiquarian researches in company with Felice Feliciano. His museum was so famous that in 1483 Lorenzo de' Medici, passing through Mantua from Venice, thought it worthy of a visit. In his old age Mantegna fell into pecuniary difficulties, and had to part with his collection. The forced sale of its chief ornament, a bust of Faustina, is said to have broken his heart. Ib. p. 415.
Painted on canvas in tempera for the Marquis of Mantua, before 1488, looted by the Germans in 1630, sold to Charles I., resold by the Commonwealth, bought back by Charles II., and now exposed, much spoiled by time and change, but more by villainous re-painting, on the walls of Hampton Court.
An oil painting in the National Gallery.
The so-called "Triumph of Scipio" in the National Gallery seems to me in every respect feebler than the Hampton Court Cartoons.
The "Madonna della Vittoria," now in the Louvre Gallery, was painted to commemorate the achievements of Francesco Gonzaga in the battle of Fornovo. That Francesco, General of the Venetian troops, should have claimed that action, the eternal disgrace of Italian soldiery, for a victory, is one of the strongest signs of the depth to which the sense of military honour had sunk in Italy. But though the occasion of its painting was so mean, the impression made by this picture is too powerful to be described. It is in every detail grandiose: masculine energy being combined with incomparable grace, religious feeling with athletic dignity, and luxuriance of ornamentation with severe gravity of composition. It is worth comparing this portrait of Francesco Gonzaga with his bronze medal, just as Piero della Francesco's picture of Sigismondo Malatesta should be compared with Pisanello's medallion.
Vol. II., Revival of Learning, p. 212.
Nothing is known about Mantegna's stay in Florence. He went to meet the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Bologna. This Cardinal, a great amateur of music and connoisseur in relics of antiquity, came to Mantua in August, 1472, where the "Orfeo" of Messer Angelo Poliziano was produced for his amusement.
That he could conceive a stern and tragic subject, with all the passion it required, is, however, proved not only by the frescoes at Orvieto, but also by the powerful oil-painting of the "Crucifixion" at Borgo San Sepolcro.
This story has been used for verse in a way to heighten its romantic colouring. Such as the lines are, I subjoin them for the sake of their attempt to emphasize and illustrate Renaissance feeling:—
"Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli,
The morning star of Michael Angelo,
Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers,
Who died. That day the master at his easel
Wielded the liberal brush wherewith he painted
At Orvieto, on the Duomo's walls,
Stern forms of Death and Heaven and Hell and Judgment.
Then came they to him, cried: 'Thy son is dead,
Slain in a duel: but the bloom of life
Yet lingers round red lips and downy cheek.'
Luca spoke not, but listened. Next they bore
His dead son to the silent painting-room,
And left on tip toe son and sire alone.
Still Luca spoke and groaned not; but he raised
The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair,
Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed,
Naked and beautiful, where rosy curtains
Shed a soft glimmer of uncertain splendour
Life-like upon the marble limbs below.
Then Luca seized his palette: hour by hour
Silence was in the room; none durst approach:
Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly
A little maid peeped in and saw the painter
Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke,
Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas."
See the article on Orvieto in my Sketches in Italy and Greece.
The earlier frescoes of Fra Angelico, on the roof, depict Christ as Judge. But there is nothing in common with these works and Signorelli's.
This is the conjecture of Signor Luzi (Il Duomo di Orvieto, p. 168). He bases it upon the Dantesque subjects illustrated, and quotes from the "Inferno":—
"Omero poeta sovrano;
L' altro è Orazio satiro che viene,
Ovidio è il terzo, e l' ultimo Lucano."
Nothing is more marked or more deeply interesting than the influence exercised by Dante over Signorelli, an influence he shared with Giotto, Orcagna, Botticelli, Michael Angelo, the greatest imaginative painters of Central Italy.
The background to the circular "Madonna" in the Uffizzi, the "Flagellation of Christ" in the Academy at Florence and in the Brera at Milan, and the "Adam" at Cortona, belong to this grade.
We may add the pages in a predella representing the "Adoration of the Magi" in the Uffizzi.
Vasari mentions the portraits of Nicolo, Paolo, and Vitellozzo Vitelli, Gian Paolo, and Orazio Baglioni, among others, in the frescoes at Orvieto.
Painted for Lorenzo de' Medici. It is now in the Berlin Museum through the neglect of the National Gallery authorities to purchase it for England.
I must not omit to qualify Vasari's praise of Luca Signorelli, by reference to a letter recently published from the Archivio Buonarroti, Lettere a Diversi, p. 391. Michael Angelo there addresses the Captain of Cortona, and complains that in the first year of Leo's pontificate Luca came to him and by various representations obtained from him the sum of eighty Giulios, which he never repaid, although he made profession to have done so. Michael Angelo was ill at the time, and working with much difficulty on a statue of a bound captive for the tomb of Julius. Luca gave a specimen of his renowned courtesy by comforting the sculptor in these rather sanctimonious phrases: "Doubt not that angels will come from heaven, to support your arms and help you."
Pietro, known as Perugino from the city of his adoption, was the son of Cristoforo Vannucci, of Città della Pieve. He was born in 1446, and died at Fontignano in 1522.
The triptych in the National Gallery.
They have been published by the Arundel Society.
These frescoes were begun in 1499. It may be mentioned that in this year, on the refusal of Perugino to decorate the Cappella di S. Brizio, the Orvietans entrusted that work to Signorelli.
Uffizzi and Sala del Cambio.
"Fu Pietro persona di assai poca religione, e non se gli potè mai far credere l'immortalità dell' anima: anzi, con parole, accomodate al suo cervello di porfido, ostinatissimamente ricusò ogni buona vita. Aveva ogni sua speranza ne' beni della fortuna, e per danari arebbe fatto ogni male contratto." Vasari, vol. vi. p. 50. The local tradition alluded to above relates to the difficulties raised by the Church against the Christian burial of Perugino: but if he died of plague, as it is believed (see C. and C., vol. iii. p. 244), these difficulties were probably caused by panic rather than belief in his impiety. For Gasparo Celio's note on Perugino's refusal to confess upon his death-bed, saying that he preferred to see how an impenitent soul would fare in the other world, the reader may consult Rio's L'Art Chrétien, vol. ii. p. 269. The record of Perugino's arming himself in Dec. 1486, together with a notorious assassin, Aulista di Angelo of Perugia, in order to waylay and beat a private enemy of his near S. Pietro Maggiore at Florence is quoted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 183.
"Guadagnò molte ricchezze; e in Fiorenza murò e comprò case; ed in Perugia ed a Castello della Pieve acquistò molti beni stahili." Vasari, vol. vi. p. 50.
"Goffo nell arte." See Vasari, vol. vi. p. 46. See too above, p. 196.
I select these for comment rather than the frescoes at Spello, beautiful as these are, because they have more interest in relation to the style of the Renaissance.
The "Assumption" in S. Frediano at Lucca should also be mentioned as one of Francia's masterpieces.
His father was a muleteer of Suffignano, who settled at Florence, in a house and garden near the gate of S. Piero Gattolino. He was born in 1475, and he died in 1517.
In S. Domenico at Prato in 1500. He afterwards resided in S. Marco at Florence.
May 23, 1498.
In addition to the pictures mentioned above, I may call attention to the adoring figure of S. Catherine of Siena, in three large paintings—now severally in the Pitti, at Lucca, and in the Louvre.
In the Uffizzi. As a composition, it is the Frate's masterpiece.
See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 487, for this consequence of the sack of Prato.
L'Art Chrétien, vol. ii. p. 515.
Two of our best portraits of Savonarola, the earlier inscribed "Hieronymi Ferrariensis a Deo Missi Prophetæ Effigies," the later treated to represent S. Peter Martyr, are from the hand of Fra Bartolommeo. See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 433.
See below, chapter vii.
This sonnet I have translated into English with such closeness to the original words as I found possible:—
He who can do not what he wills, should try
To will what he can do; for since 'tis vain
To will what can't be compassed, to abstain
From idle wishing is philosophy.
Lo, all our happiness and grief imply
Knowledge or not of will's ability:
They therefore can, who will what ought to be.
Nor wrest true reason from her seat awry.
Nor what a man can, should he always will:
Oft seemeth sweet what after is not so;
And what I wished, when had, hath cost a tear.
Then, reader of these lines, if thou wouldst still
Be helpful to thyself, to others dear,
Will to can alway what thou ought to do.
See the letter addressed by Lionardo to Lodovico Sforza enumerating his claims as a mechanician, military and civil engineer, architect, &c.c. It need scarcely be mentioned that he served Cesare Borgia and the Florentine Republic as an engineer, and that much of his time at Milan was spent in hydraulic works upon the Adda. It should be added here that Lionardo committed the results of his discoveries to writing; but he published very little, and that by no means the most precious portion of his thoughts. He founded at Milan an Academy of Arts and Sciences, if this name may be given to a reunion of artists, scholars, and men of the world, to whom it is probable that he communicated his researches in anatomy. The Treatise on Painting, which bears his name, is a compilation from notes and MSS. first printed in 1651.
The folio volume of sketches in the Ambrosian Library at Milan contains designs for all these works. The collection in the Royal Library at Windsor is no less rich. Among Lionardo's scientific drawings in the latter place may be mentioned a series of maps illustrating the river system of Central Italy, with plans for improved drainage.
Shelley says of the poet:—
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy bloom;
Nor heed nor see what things they be,
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality.
See De Stendhal, Histoire de la Peinture en Italie, p. 143, for this story.
In the Treatise on Painting, da Vinci argues strongly against isolating man. He regarded the human being as in truth a microcosm to be only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, as a painter, the same thought as Pico. (See Vol. II., Revival of Learning, p. 35.) Therefore he urges the claims of landscape on the attention of artists.
I might refer in detail to four studies of bramble branches, leaves, and flowers and fruit, in the royal collection at Windsor, most wonderful for patient accuracy and delicate execution: also to drawings of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush, and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are as valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific character of each plant with greater precision would be impossible.
See the series of anatomical studies of the horse in the Royal Collection.
Engraved by Edelinck. The drawing has obvious Lionardesque qualities; but how far it may be from the character of the original we can guess by Rubens' transcript from Mantegna. (See above, p. 200.) De Stendhal says wittily of this work, "C'est Virgile traduit par Madame de Staël," op. cit. p. 162.
In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are anatomical drawings for the construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic claws. The bony, muscular, and venous structure of its legs and feet is accurately indicated.
See the drawings engraved and published by Gerli in his Disegni di Lionardo da Vinci, Milan, 1784.
Vasari is the chief source of these legends. Giraldi Lomazzo, the Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply further details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality. There is a touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is wanting in the legend of Piero di Cosimo.
Even Michael Angelo, meeting him in Florence, flung in his teeth that "he had made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and through shame left it as it was unfinished." See Arch. St. It., serie terza, xvi. 226.
In the Royal Collection at Windsor there is a whole series of studies for these two statues, together with drawings for the mould in which Lionardo intended to cast them. The second of the two is sketched with great variety of motive. The horse is rearing; the fallen enemy is vainly striving to defend himself; the victor in one drawing is reining in his steed, in another is waving a truncheon, in a third is brandishing his sword, in a fourth is holding the sword in act to thrust. The designs for the pedestals, sometimes treated as a tomb and sometimes as a fountain, are equally varied.
"Concevoir," said Balzac, "c'est jouir, c'est fumer des cigarettes enchantées; mais sans l'exécution tout s'en va en rêve et en fumée." Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, vol. ii. p. 353.
See Vol. II., Revival of Learning, p. 128, 129.
It was finished, according to Fra Paciolo, in 1498.
Signorelli, with his usual originality, chose the moment when Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples. In that rare picture at Cortona, we see not the betrayed chief but the founder of a new religion.
The Cenacolo alone will not enable the student to understand Lionardo. He must give his attention to the master's sketch books, those studies in chalk, in tempera, on thin canvas and paper, prepared for the stylus or the pen, which Vasari calls the final triumphs of designing, and of which, in spite of the loss of many of his books, the surviving specimens are very numerous. Some are easily accessible in Gerli, Chamberlaine, and the autotype reproductions. It is possible that a sympathetic student may get closer to the all-embracing and all-daring genius of the magician through these drawings than if he had before him an elaborate work in fresco or in oils. They express the many-sided, mobile, curious, and subtle genius of the man in its entirety.
"Raffaello, che era la gentilezza stessa ... restavano vinti dalla cortesia e dall' arte sua, ma più dal genio della sua buona natura; la quale era si piena di gentilezza e si colma di carità, che egli si vedeva che fino agli animali l'onoravano, non che gli uomini."—Vasari, vol. viii. pp. 6, 60.
See above, p. 223.
The "Holy Family" at Munich, and the "Madonna del Baldacchino" in the Pitti, might be mentioned as experiments on Raphael's part to perfect the Frate's scheme of composition.
See Vasari, vol. viii. p. 60, for a description of the concord that reigned in this vast workshop. The genius and the gentle nature of Raphael penetrated the whole group of artists, and seemed to give them a single soul.
The fresco of "Alexander" in the Palazzo Borghese is by an imitator.
The "Madonna di San Sisto" was painted for a banner to be borne in processions. It is a subtle observation of Rio that the banner, an invention of the Umbrian school, corresponds in painting to the hymn in poetry.
See Vol. II., Revival of Learning, p. 316, for Raphael's letter on this subject to Leo X.