Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3

uralism-Roman Inspiration-Triumph of Julius C?sar-Bas-reliefs-Luca Signorelli-The

Pietistic Style-His Formalism-The Psychological Problem of his Life-Perugino's Pupils-Pinturicchio-At Spello and Siena-Francia-Fra Bartolommeo-T

progressive, and so varied as that of Italian art. All that the historian can hope to do, is to strike a mean between his reckoning of years and his more subtle calculations based on the emergence of decisive genius in special men. An instance of such compromise is afforded by Lionardo da Vinci, who belongs, as far as da

second. Within the former falls the best work of Mantegna, Perugino, Francia, the Bellini, Signorelli, Fra Bartolommeo. To the latter we may reckon Michael Angelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, and Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da Vinci, though belonging chronologically to the former epoch, ranks first among the masters of the lat

so perfect but that they still make some demand upon interpretative sympathy in the student. There is, besides, a sense of reserved strength in their work. We feel that their motives have not been developed to the utmost, that their in

d with facile and unfettered exercise of power. The hand obedient to the brain is now so expert that nothing further is left to be desired in the expression of the artist's thought.[197] The student can only h

in a true sense to be called its children. Their common object is art regarded as an independent function, and relieved from the bondage of technical impediments. In their work the liberty of the modern mind finds its first and noblest expression. They deal with familiar and time-honoured Christian motives reverently; but

and drawings collected by Squarcione for his Paduan school, the young Mantegna found congenial exercise for his peculiar gifts.[198] His early frescoes in the Eremitani at Padua look as though they had been painted from statues or clay models, carefully selected for the grandeur of their forms, the nobility of their attitudes, and the complicated beauty of their drapery. The figures, arranged on different planes, are perfect in their perspective; the action is indicated by appro

objects. Transitory movements of the body are noted and transcribed with merciless precision; an Italian hill-side, with its olive trees and winding ways and crown of turrets, forms the background of one scene; in another the drama is localised amid Renaissance architecture of the costliest style. Rustic types have been selected for the soldiers, and commonplace details, down to a patched jerkin or a broken shoe, bear witness to the patience and the observation of the mas

and Roman antiquities.[200] He was, moreover, the friend of students, eagerly absorbing the knowledge brought to light by Ciriac of Ancona, Flavio Biondo, and other antiquaries; and so completely did he assimilate the materials of scholarshi

and stately in movement, but glowing with the spirit of revived antiquity. The processional pomp of legionaries bowed beneath their trophied arms, the monumental majesty of robed citizens, the gravity of stoled and veiled priests, the beauty of young slaves, and all the paraphernalia of spoils and wreaths and elephants and ensigns are m

mpet to the din of cymbals; negroes feed the flaming candelabra with scattered frankincense; the white oxen of Clitumnus are loaded with gaudy flowers, and the dancing maidens are dishevelled M?nads. But the rhythmic procession of Mantegna, modulated to the sound of flutes and soft recorders, carries our imagination back to the best

he lines are graven on our memory. When this marble master chose to be tragic, his intensity was terrible. The designs for a dead Christ carried to the tomb among the weeping Maries, concentrate within the briefest space the utmost agony; it is as though the very ecstasy of g

ted authority, Lodovico had early learned to estimate the real advantages of culture. It was now his object to render his capital no less illustrious by art than by the residence of learned men. With this view he offered Mantegna a salary of fifteen ducats a month, together with lodging, corn, and fuel-provided the painter would place his talents at his service. Mantegna accepted the invitation; but numerous engagements prevented him from transferring his household from Pa

ere of the Vatican, and wished the greatest painter of the day to decorate it. Therefore he wrote to Francesco, Marquis of Mantua, requesting that he might avail himself of Mantegna's skill. Francesco, though unwilling to part with his painter in ordinary, thought it unadvisable to disappoint the Pope. Accordingly he dubbed Mantegna knight, and sent h

estate had been involved in debt; and after his decease, his sons were forced to sell the pictures in his studio for the payment of pressing creditors. He was buried in Alberti's church of S. Andrea at Mantua, in a chapel decorated at his own expense. Over the grave was placed a bronze bust, most noble in modelling and perfect in execution. The broad forehead with its deeply cloven furrows, the stern and piercing eyes, the large lips compressed with nervous energy, the mas

eatest master of the sixteenth century, not only in his profound study of human anatomy, but also in his resolution to express high thought and tragic passion by pure form, discarding all the minor charms of painting. Trained in the severe school of Piero della Francesca, he early learned to draw from the nude with boldness and accuracy; and to this point, too much neglected by his predecessors, he devoted the full powers of his maturity. Anatomy he practised, according to the custom of those days, in the graveyard or beneath the gibbet. There is a drawing by him in the Louvre of a stalwart man carrying upon his back the corpse of a youth. Both are naked. The motive seems to have been taken from some lazar-house. Life-long study of perspective in its application to the drawing

aked, and with extraordinary constancy of soul, uttering no complaint and shedding no tear, he painted the portrait of his dead son, to the end that he might still be able, through the work of his own hand, to contemplate that which nature had given him, but which an adverse fortune had taken away." So passionate and ardent, so convinced of th

the main compositions. The painter has relied solely upon his power of imagining and delineating the human form in every attitude, and under the most various conditions. Darting like hawks or swallows through the air, huddling together to shun the outpoured vials of the wrath of God, writhing with demons on the floor of Hell, struggling into new life from the clinging clay, standing beneath the footstool of the Judge, floating with lute and viol on the winds of Paradise, kneeling in prayer, or clasping "inseparable hands with joy and bliss in overm

asks or sphinxes. They are crowded with naked men-drinking, dancing, leaning forward, twisting themselves into strange attitudes, and adapting their bodies to the several degrees of the framework. The same may be said of the arabesques around the portraits of the poets, where men, women, and children, some complete, some ending in foliage or in fish-tails, are lavished with a wild and terrible profusion. Hippogriffs and centaurs, sirens and dolphins, are here used as adjuncts to humanity. Amid this fantastic labyrinth of twisted forms we find medallions painted in chiaroscuro with subjects taken chiefly from Ovidian and Dantesque mythology. Here every attitude of men in combat and in motion has been studied from the nude, and multitudes of figures draped and undraped are compressed into the briefest compass. All but the human form is sternly eliminated; and the body itself is treated with a mastery and a boldness that prove Signorelli to have held its varied capabilities firmly in his brain. He could not have worked out all those postures from the living mode

d to suit the painter's predetermined harmony, whereas Signorelli rejoices in their pure untempered character[214]. These, then, form a second stage. Third in degree we find the type of highly idealised adolescence reserved by Signorelli for his angels. All his science and his sympathy with real life are here subordinated to poetic feeling. It is a mistake to say that these angels are the young men of Umbria whom he loved to paint in their striped jackets, with the addition of wings to their shoulders. The radiant beings who tune their citherns on the clouds of Paradise, or scatter roses for elect souls, could not live and breathe in the fiery atmosphere of sensuous passions to which the Baglioni were habituated. A grave and solemn sense of beauty animates these fair male beings, clothed in voluminous drapery, with youthful faces and still earnest eyes. Their melody, like that of Milton, is severe. Nor are Signorelli's angelic beings of one uniform type like the angels of Fra Angelico. The athletic cherubs of the "R

the effect of illustrative diagrams to his studies. Harmony of proportion and the magic of expression are sacrificed to energy emergent in a powerful physique. Redundant life, in sinewy limbs, in the proud carriage of the head upon the neck, in the sway of the trunk backward from the reins, the firmly planted calves and brawny thighs, the thick hair, broad shoulders, spare

l brown for the shading of flesh imparts a disagreeable heaviness to his best modelled forms; nor did he often attain in his oil pictures to that grave harmony we admire in his "Last Supper" at Cortona. The wor

newy devils, eager to do violence to Eurydice. Pluto himself drives his jarring car-wheels up through the lava-blocks and flames of Etna with a fury and a vehemence we seek in vain upon antique sarcophagi. Ceres, wandering through Sicily in search of her lost daughter, is a gaunt witch with dishevelled hair, raising frantic hands to tear her cheeks; while the snakes that draw her chariot are no grave symbols of the germinating corn, but greedy serpents ready to spit fire against the ravishers of Proserpine. Thus the tranquillity and self-restraint of Greek art yield to a passionate and trenchant realisation of the actual romance. The most

est touch, confining himself to the processional pageantry of bas-relief. Yet, were this comparison to be instituted, we could hardly refrain from carrying it much further. Each great master of the Renaissance had his own relation to classical mythology. The mystic sympathies of "Leda and the Swan," as imaged severally by Lionardo and Michael Angelo; Correggio's romantic handling of the myths of "Dana?" and "Io;" Titian'

fizzi Gallery contains a circular "Madonna" by his hand, with a row of naked men for background-the forerunner of Michael Angelo's famous "Holy Family." So far had art for art's sake already encroached upon the ecclesiastical domain. To discuss Signorelli's meri

her of Giorgio Vasari. In his biography of Signorelli, Vasari relates how, when he was himself a boy of eight, his illustrious cousin visited the house of the Vasari family at Arezzo; and hearing from little Giorgio's grammar-master that he spent his time in drawing figures, Luca turned to the child's father and said, "Antonio, since Giorgio takes after his family, you must by all means have him taught; for even though he should pay attention to literature as well, drawing cannot fail to be a source of utility, honour, and recreation to him, as it i

s, his sexless S. Sebastians and immaculate S. Michaels, display the perfection of art able by colour and by form to achieve within a narrow range what it desires. What this artist seems to have aimed at, was to create for the soul amid the pomps and passions of this world a resting-place of contemplation tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings. No pain comes near the folk of his celestial city; no longing poisons their repose; they are not weary, and the wicked trouble them no more. Their cheerfulness is no less perfect than their serenity; like the shade

at Munich and the "Pietà" in the Pitti Gallery are familiar to all travelled students of Italian painting. These masterpieces belong to Perugino's best period, when his inspiration was fresh, and his enthusiasm for artistic excellence was still unimpaired; and wh

ian palaces and convents. Thenceforward he painted but little else; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he was obliged to treat the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted the same manner[220]. Leonidas, the lionhearted Spartan, and Cato, the austere Roman, who preferred liberty to life, bend their mild heads like flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction of the Eterno Padre, conceived as a benevolent old man for a conventional paint

ence did he derive the sentiment of masterpieces, for piety only equalled by those of Fra Angelico, either in his own nature or in the society of a city torn to pieces by the factions of the Baglioni? How, again, was it possible for an artist who at times touched beauty so ideal, to be contented with the stencilling by his pupils of conventional figures on canvases to which he gave his name? Taking these questions separately, we might reply that "there is no art to find the mind's construction in the face;" that painting in the sixteenth century was a trade regulated by the demand for particular wares; that men can live among ruffians without sha

d a bottega; and by the exercise of his trade as a master-painter, he realised enough money to buy substantial estates in those cities, as well as in his birthplace.[223] In all the greatest artworks of the age he took his part. Thus we find him painting in the Sistine Chapel between 1484 and 1486, treating with the commune of Orvieto for the completion of the chapel of S. Brizio in 1489, joining in the debate upon the fa?ade of S. Maria del Fiore in 1491, giving his opinion upon the erection of Michael Angelo's "David" at Florence in 1504, and competing with Signorelli, Pinturicchio, and Bazzi for the decoration of the Stanze of the Vatican in 1508. The rising of brighter stars above the horizon during his lifetime somewhat dimmed his fame, and caused him much disquie

nt so much that was congenial to his early instincts. What, for example, might have befallen him if he had worked with Signorelli, it is difficult to imagine; for while nothing is more obvious on the one hand than Raphael's originality, his strong assimilative bias is scarcely less remarkable. The time has not yet come to speak of Raphael; nor will space suffice for detailed observations on his fellow-students in the workshop at Perugia. The place occupied by

ent of Renaissance life. His wall-paintings in the library of the cathedral of Siena are so well preserved that we need not seek elsewhere for better specimens of the decorative art most highly prized in the first years of the sixteenth century[225]. These frescoes have a richness of effect and a vivacity of natural action, which, in spite of their superficiality, render them highly charming. The life of ?neas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II., is h

. This again is true of Francesco Raibolini, surnamed Francia from his master in the goldsmith's craft. Francia is known to Englishmen as one of the most sincerely pious of Christian painters by his incomparable picture of the "Dead Christ" in our National Gallery. The spirituality that renders Fra Angelico unintelligible to minds less ecstatically tempered than his own, is not found in such excess in Francia, nor does his work suffer from the insipidity of Perugino's affectation. Deep religious feeling is combined with physical beauty of the pu

nd the golden age[227]. By chronological reckoning he is nearly a quarter of a century later than Lionardo da Vinci, and is the exact contemporary of Michael Angelo. As an artist, he has thoroughly outgrown the quattrocento style, and falls short only by a little

int lives. Baccio was gentle, timid, yielding, and industrious. Mariotto was wilful, obstinate, inconsequent, and flighty, Baccio fell under the influence of Savonarola, professed himself a piagnone, and took the cowl of the Dominicans[228]. Mariotto was a partisan of the Medici, an uproarious pallesco, and a loose liver, who eventually deserted the art of painting for the calling of an innkeeper. Yet so sweet was the temper of the Frate, and so firm was the bond of friendship established in boyhood between this ill-ass

influenced the style of Raphael, will be afterwards discussed. As a colourist, Fra Bartolommeo was equal to the best of his contemporaries, and superior to any of his rivals in the school of Florence. Few painters of any age have combined harmony of tone so perfectly with brilliance and richness. It is a real joy to contemplate the pure and splendid folds of the white drapery he loved to place in the foreground of his altar-pieces. Solidity and sincerity distinguish his work in every detail, while his feeling is remarkable for elevation and sobriety. All that he lacks, is the boldness of imagination, the depth of passion, and the power of thought, that are indispensable to genius of the highest order. Gifted with a sympathetic and a pliant, rather than a creative and self-sustained nature, he was sensitive to every influ

d it to take its place in the hall of the Consiglio Grande, where Michael Angelo and Lionardo gained their earliest laurels. Before it could be finished, the Republic perished.[232] "That," says Rio, "is the reason why he left but an imperfect work-for those at least who are only struck by what is wanting in it. Others will at first regard it with the interest attaching to unfinished poems, interrupted by the jailer's call or by the stern voice of the executioner. Then they will study it in all its details, in order to appreciate its beauties; and that appreciation will be the more perfect in proportion as a man is the more fully penetrated with its dominant idea, and with the attendant circumstances that bring this home to him

Savonarola has sometimes been described as an iconoclast, obstinately hostile to the fine arts. This is by no means a true account of the crusade he carried on against the pagan sensuality of his contemporaries. He desired that art should remain the submissive handmaid of the Church and the willing servant of pure morality. While he denounced the heathenism of the style in vogue at Florence, and forbade the study of the nude, he strove to encourage religious painting, and established a school for its exercise in the cloister of S. Marco. It was in t

r and characteristic flowers of art the world has ever known, would then have bloomed in Florence. The mantle of Savonarola, however, if it fell upon any painter, fell on Michael Angelo, and we must seek an echo of the friar's thunders in the Sistine Chapel. Fra Bartolommeo was too tender and too timid. The sublimities of tragic passion lay beyond his scope. Though I have ventured to call him the painter of adoration, h

liar quality of mind, the fulness of the Renaissance, in its power and freedom, was revealed. They entered the inner shrine, where dwelt the spirit of their age, and bore to the world without the message each of them had heard. In their work posterity still may read the meaning of that epoch, differently rendered according to the difference of gifts in each consummate artist, but comprehended in its unity by study of the four together. Lionardo is the wizard or diviner; to him the Renaissance offers her mystery and lends her magic. Raphael is the Phoebean singer; to him the Renaissance reveals her joy and dowers him with her gift of melody. Correggio is the Ariel or Faun; he has surprised laughter upon the face of the universe, and he paints this laughter in ever-varying movement. Michael Angelo is the prophet

words were fain to answer "Yes" or "No" as he thought fit. This child of grace and persuasion was a wonderful musician. The Duke of Milan sent for him to play upon his lute and improvise Italian canzoni. The lute he carried was of silver, fashioned like a horse's head, and tuned according to acoustic laws discovered by

nvestigations; at most he sought to use them for purposes of practical utility.[237] Even in childhood he is said to have perplexed his teachers by propounding arithmetical problems. In his maturity he carried anatomy further than Delia Torre; he invented machinery for water-mills and aqueducts; he devised engines of war, discovered the secret of conical rifle-bullets, adapted paddle-wheels to boats, projected new systems of siege artillery, investigated the principles of optics, designed buildings,

a" on the easel not quite finished, the portrait of a subtle, shadowy, uncertain smile. This smile, this enigmatic revelation of a movement in the soul, this seductive ripple on the surface of the human personality, was to Liona

some of them his fancy seems to be imprisoned in the labyrinths of hair; in others the eyes deep with feeling or hard with gemlike brilliancy have caught it, or the lips that tell and hide so much, or the nostrils quivering with momentary emotion. Beauty, inexpressive of inner meaning, must, we conceive, have had but slight attraction for him. We do not find that he drew "a fair naked body" for the sake of its carnal charm; his hasty studies of the nude are often faulty, mere memoranda of attitude and gestu

nd clowns. It was not that he loved the horrible for its own sake; but he was determined to seize character, to command the gamut of human physiognomy from ideal beauty down to forms bestialised by vice and disease. T

to brood; and to this fascination of a sphinx-like charm we owe some of his most exquisite drawings. Lionardo more than any other artist who has ever lived (except perhaps his great predecessor Leo Battista Alberti) felt the primal sympathies that bind men to the earth, their mother, and to living things, their brethren.[241] Therefore the borderland between humanity and nature allured him with a spell half ?sthetic and half scientific. In the dawn of Hellas this sympathetic apprehension of the world around him would have made him a supreme mythopoet. In the dawn of the modern world curiosity claimed the lion's share of his genius: nor can it be

d. At the same time his deep feeling for all things that have life, gave him new power in the delineation of external nature. The branching of flower-stems, the outlines of fig-leaves, the attitudes of beasts and birds in motion, the arching of the fan-palm, were rendered by him with the same consummate skill as the dimple on a cheek or the fine curves of a young man's lips.[242] Wherever he perceived a difficulty, he approached and conquered it. Love, which is the soul of art-Love, the bondslave of Beauty and the son of Poverty by Craft-led him to these triumphs. He used to buy caged birds in the marketplace that he might let them loose.

ad. This strange beast lived in a cage, where Lionardo tamed it; but no one, says Vasari, dared so much as to look at it.[245] On quaint puzzles and perplexing schemes he mused a good part of his life away. At one time he was for making wings to fly with; at another he invented ropes that should uncoil, strand by strand; again, he devised a system of f

his fresco, and for weeks never came near it; how the monks of the Annunziata at Florence were cheated out of their painting, for which elaborate designs had yet been made; how Leo X., seeing him mix oils with varnish to make a new medium, exclaimed, "Alas! this man will do nothing; he thinks of the end before he makes a beginning." A good answer to account for the delay was always ready on the painter's lips, as that the man of genius works most when his hands are idlest; Judas, sought in vain through all the thieves' resorts in Milan, is not found; I cannot hope to see the face of Christ except in Paradise. Again, when an equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza had been modelled in all its parts, another model was begun because Da Vinci would fain show the warrior triumphing over a fallen foe.[249] The first motive seemed to him tame; the second was unrealisable in bronze. "I can do anything possible to man," he wrote to Lodovico Sforza, "and as well as any living artist either in sculpture or painting." But he would do nothing as taskwork, and his creative brain loved better to invent than to execute.[250] "Of a truth," continues his biographer, "there is good

eak the calm of the event by a dramatic action. The school of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Ghirlandajo, Perugino, even Signorelli, remained within the sphere of symbolical suggestion; and their work gained in dignity what it lost in intensity. Lionardo combined both. He undertook to paint a moment, to delineate the effect of a single word upon twelve men seated at a table, and to do this without sacrificing the tranquillity demanded by ideal art, and without impairing the divine majesty of Him from whose lips that word has fallen. The time has long gone by for detailed criticism or description of a painting known to everybody. It is enough to observe that the ideal representation of a dramatic moment, the life breathed into each part of the compo

or hindrance, exercising from his boyhood till his early death an unimpeded energy of pure productiveness. Like Mozart, to whom he bears in many respects a remarkable resemblance, Raphael was gifted with inexhaustible fertility and with unwearied industry. Like Mozart, again, he had a nature which converted everything to beauty. Thought, passion, emotion, became in his art living melody. We almost forget his strength in a

enius. Lionardo was beautiful but stately, with firm lips and penetrating glance; he conquered by the magnetism of an incalculable personality. The loveliness of Raphael was fair and flexible, fascinating not by power or mystery, but by the winning charm of open-hearted sweetness. To this physical beauty, rather delicate than strong, he united spiritual graces of the most amiable nature. He was gentle, docile, modest, ready to oblige, free from jealousy, binding all men to him by his cheerful courtesy.[255] In morals he was pure. Indeed, judged by the l

rtolommeo. To the latter master, himself educated by the influence of Lionardo, Raphael owed more, perhaps, than to any other of his teachers. The method of combining figures in masses, needful to the general composition, while they preserve a subordinate completeness of their own, had been applied with almost mathematical precision by the Frate in his fresco at S. Maria Nuova.[256] It reappears in all Raphael's work subsequent to his first visit to Florence[257] (1504-1506). So great, indeed, is the resemblance of treatment between the two painters that we know not well which owed the other most. Many groups of women and children in the Stanze, for example-especially in the "Miracle of Bolsena" and the "Heliodorus"-seem almost identical with Fra Bartolommeo's "Madonna della Misericordia" at Lucca. Finally, when Raphael settled in Rome, he laid himself open to the influence of Michael

ifice of individuality. Inferior masters imitated him, and passed their pictures off upon posterity as Raphael's; but to mistake a genuine piece of his painting for the performance of another is almost impossible. Each success

e Fathers and the company of Saints. Parnassus and the allegory of the virtues front each other. The legend of Marsyas and the mythus of the Fall are companion pictures. A new catholicity, a new orthodoxy of the beautiful, appears. The Renaissance in all its breadth and liberality of judgment takes ideal form. Nor is there any sense of discord; for the genius of Raphael views both revelations, Christian and pagan, from a point of view of art above them. To his pure and unimpeded faculty the task of translating motives so diverse into mutually concordant shapes was easy. On the domed ceilings of the Loggie he painted sacred history in a series of exquisitely simple compositions, known as Raphael's Bible. The walls and pilasters were adorned with arabesques that anticipated the discovery of Pompeii, and surpassed the best of Roman frescoes in variet

that we wonder whether in his body lived again the soul of some accomplished sage. How, for example, did he appropriate the history of philosophy, set forth so luminously in the "School of Athens," that each head, each gesture, is the epitome of some system? Fabio Calvi may, indeed, have supplied him with serviceable notes on Greek philosophy. But to Raphael alone belongs the triumph of having personified the dry elements of learning in appropriate livin

t is, indeed, probable that all attempts at reflective analysis of this kind do injustice to the spontaneity of the painter's method. Yet, even supposing that the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" or the "School of Athens" were seen by him as in a vision, this presumption will increase our wonder at the imagination which could hold so rich a store of details ready for immediate use. That Raphael p

the same high style is successively applied to a pageant, an idyll, and a drama.[259] The rapture of Greek art in its most youthful moment has never been recaptured by a modern painter with more force and fire of fancy than in the "Galatea." The tenderness of Christian feeling has found no more exalted expression than in the multitudes of the Madonnas, one more lovely than another, like roses on a tree in June, from the maidenly "Mad

gs obscene or ugly. Like Apollo chasing the Eumenides from his Delphian shrine, Raphael will not suffer his eyes to fall on what is loathsome or horrific. Even sadness and sorrow, tragedy and death, take loveliness from him. And here it must be mentioned that he shunned stern and painful subjects. He painted no martyrdom, no "Last Judgment," and no "Crucifixion," if we except the little early picture belonging to Lord Dudley.[262] His men and women are either glorious with youth or dignified in hale old age. Touched by his innocent and earnest genius, mankind is once more

ut the gladness of Correggio was more sensuous than that of Raphael; his intellectual faculties were less developed; his rapture was more tumultuous and Bacchantic. Like Raphael, Correggio died young; but his brief life was spent in comparativ

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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,

ole. 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, a?rial and transparent, enhancing the palpitations of voluptuous movement which he loved. His colouring does not glow or burn; blithesome and del

he 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 Erythr?an bending over her scrolls, the withered

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

TNO

1

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 h

1

atness 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 s

1

Mantegna's preference for the ideal of statuary when c

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is 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 pecu

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0, sold to Charles I., resold by the Commonwealth, bought back by Charles II., and now exposed, m

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ng in the Nat

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ational Gallery seems to me in every respe

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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,

2

vival of Lea

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at Bologna. This Cardinal, a great amateur of music and connoisseur in relics of antiquity, came to

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required, is, however, proved not only by the frescoes at Orvieto, but al

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utiful, where

immer of uncer

on the marbl

ed his palette

the room; none

on, and noon to

peeped in and

d son with unerr

yed before the

2

rvieto in my Sketche

2

oof, depict Christ as Judge. But there is noth

2

Orvieto, p. 168). He bases it upon the Dantesque su

poeta s

Orazio sati

erzo, e l' ul

ed by Dante over Signorelli, an influence he shared with Giotto, Orcagna, Bo

2

Flagellation of Christ" in the Academy at Florence and in the

2

ella representing the "Adorati

2

and Vitellozzo Vitelli, Gian Paolo, and Orazio B

2

Berlin Museum through the neglect of the Nation

2

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 diffic

2

, was the son of Cristoforo Vannucci, of Città della Pi

2

in the Nati

2

ublished by the

2

this year, on the refusal of Perugino to decorate the Cappell

2

nd Sala d

2

es 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 i

2

prò case; ed in Perugia ed a Castello della Pieve a

2

Vasari, vol. vi. p. 46.

2

Spello, beautiful as these are, because they have mor

2

t Lucca should also be mentioned

2

Florence, in a house and garden near the gate of S. Pi

2

1500. He afterwards resid

2

23,

2

to the adoring figure of S. Catherine of Siena, in three large p

2

composition, it is th

2

pots, p. 487, for this cons

2

tien, vol.

2

sis a Deo Missi Prophet? Effigies," the later treated to represent S. Peter Martyr,

2

ow, cha

2

English with such closeness to the

not what he wi

e can do; for

an't be compas

wishing is

happiness an

r not of wi

can, who will w

e reason from

can, should h

weet what aft

ed, when had, h

these lines, if

o thyself, t

lway what tho

2

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

2

ion in the Royal Library at Windsor is no less rich. Among Lionardo's scientific drawings in the latter place ma

2

says of

tch from d

reflected

bees in the

see what th

these cre

real than

s of imm

2

de la Peinture en Italie

2

microcosm to be only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, as a painter, the same thought as Pi

2

acy and delicate execution: also to drawings of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush, and wood-spurge in the same collection. Th

2

ical studies of the hors

2

e character of the original we can guess by Rubens' transcript from Mantegna. (See above, p. 200.)

2

construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic claws. The bony, mus

2

blished by Gerli in his Disegni

2

supply further details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his contemporaries as a singular and most command

2

made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and throug

2

ketched 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 truncheo

2

s enchantées; mais sans l'exécution tout s'en va en rêve et en fu

2

evival of Learn

2

according to Fra

2

broke bread and gave it to His disciples. In that rare picture at Cor

2

al 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 m

2

ù dal genio della sua buona natura; la quale era si piena di gentilezza e si colma di carità, che e

2

ove, p

2

ino" in the Pitti, might be mentioned as experiments on Ra

2

ed in this vast workshop. The genius and the gentle nature of Raphael pen

2

er" in the Palazzo Bor

2

essions. It is a subtle observation of Rio that the banner, an inventio

2

ning, p. 316, for Raphael's l

2

si Gallery at Brescia, are both early works painted under Umbrian influence. The Borghese "Entombment," painted for Atalanta Baglioni, a pen-and-ink drawing of the "Pietà" in the Lou

2

refer to my Sketches in Italy, article "Parma."

2

g, are apt to pursue the former path exclusively. They demand serenity and simplicity. Perturbation and violence they denounce as blemishes. It does not occur to them that, though the phenomenon is certainly rare, it does occasionally happen that a man arises whose art is for him the language of his soul, and who lives in sympathetic relation to the sternest interests of his age. If such an artist be born when tranquil thought and serene emotions are impossible for one who feels the meaning of his times with depth, he must either paint and carve lies, or he must abandon the serenity that was b