Читать книгу The History of Italian Painting - Luigi Lanzi - Страница 16

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Vinci, Bonarruoti, and other celebrated artists, form the most flourishing era of this School.

Nations have their virtues and their vices; and it is the duty of the historian to give them credit for the one, and to confess the other. Thus it is with the Schools of Painting; no one of which is so perfect as to leave us nothing more to desire; no one so faulty that it has not much in it to commend. The Florentine school (I do not speak of its greatest masters, but of the general practice of the others) had no great merit in colouring, from which Mengs was induced to denominate it a melancholy school; nor did it excel in its drapery, from which arose the saying, that the drapery of figures appeared to be fashioned with economy in Florence.

It did not shine in power of relief, a study not generally cultivated till the last century, nor did it exhibit much beauty, because, long destitute of fine Grecian statues, Florence was late in possessing the Venus: and only through the attention of the Grand Duke Leopold, has been enriched by the Apollo, the group of Niobe, and other choice specimens. From these circumstances this school aimed only at a fidelity of representation that resembles the works of those who copied exactly from nature, and in general made a judicious selection of its objects. It could not boast of superior grouping in the composition of a picture, and it was more inclined to erase a superfluous figure, than to add one unnecessarily to the rest. In grace, in design, and in historic accuracy, it excels most other schools; chiefly resulting from the great learning that always adorned this city, and invariably gave a bias to the erudition of her artists.

Design forms the peculiar excellence of this school, and its hereditary patrimony, to which the national characteristic of minute correctness has greatly contributed; and it may justly be observed, that this people has excelled others no less in the symmetrical delineation of the figure, than in purity of idiom. It may also boast of having produced a great many excellent painters in fresco; an art so superior to that of painting in oil, that Bonarruoti looked on the latter as mere sport, when compared with the former, as it necessarily requires great dexterity, and the talent of executing well and with rapidity, very difficult attainments in any profession. This school had but few engravers on copper, from which circumstance, though abounding in historians,[128] and rich in paintings, it has not a sufficient number of prints to make it known in proportion to its merit; a defect which the Etruria Pittrice has in some measure supplied. Finally, the reader may indulge in this very just reflection, that the Florentine school first taught the method of proceeding scientifically, and according to general rules. Some other schools have originated in an attentive consideration of natural effects; by mechanically imitating, if we may be allowed the expression, the external appearances of objects. But Vinci and Bonarruoti, the two great luminaries of this school, like true philosophers pointed out the immutable objects and established laws of nature, thence deducing rules which their successors, both at home and abroad, have followed with great benefit to the art. The former has left a Treatise on Painting, and the public were induced to look for the publication of the precepts of the latter, which have however never yet been produced;[129] and we obtain some idea of his maxims only from Vasari, and other writers. About this time also flourished Fra Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto, Rosso, the young Ghirlandaio, and other artists, whom we shall name in the sequel of this grand epoch, which unfortunately was of short duration. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when Michelangiolo, who survived the other great artists, was still living, a less auspicious era began; but we must proceed with this epoch.

Lionardo da Vinci, so called from a castle in lower Valdarno, was the natural son of one Pietro, notary to the Florentine republic, and was born in 1452.[130] He was endowed by nature with a genius uncommonly elevated and penetrating, eager after discovery, and diligent in the pursuit; not only in what related to the three arts dependant on design, but in mathematics, in mechanics, in hydrostatics, in music, in poetry, and also in the accomplishments of horsemanship, fencing, and dancing. He was so perfect in all these, that when he performed any one, the beholder was ready to imagine that it must have been his sole study. To such vigour of intellect he joined an elegance of features and of manners, that graced the virtues of his mind. He was affable with strangers, with citizens, with private individuals, and with princes, among whom he long lived on a footing of familiarity and friendship. On this account, says Vasari, it cost him no effort always to behave and to live like a man of high birth.

Verrocchio taught him painting; and as we have said, while still a youth, he surpassed his master. He retained traces of his early education through his whole life. Like Verrocchio, he designed more readily than he painted; he assiduously cultivated mathematics; in his design and in his countenances, he prized elegance and vivacity of expression, more than dignity and fulness of contour; he was very careful in drawing his horses, and in representing the skirmishes of soldiers; and was more solicitous to improve the art than to multiply his pictures. He was an excellent statuary, as is demonstrated by his S. Tommaso in Orsanmichele at Florence, and by the horse in the church of S. John and S. Paul at Venice. Vinci not only modelled in a superior manner the three statues cast in bronze by Rustici, for the church of S. John at Florence, and the colossal horse at Milan, but assisted by this art, he gave that perfect relief and roundness, in which painting was then wanting. He likewise imparted to it symmetry, grace, and spirit; and these and his other merits gave him the title of the father of modern painting,[131] though some of his works, as was observed by Mariette, participate, in some degree, in the meanness of the old school.

He had two styles, the one abounded in shadow, which gives admirable brilliancy to the contrasting lights; the other was more quiet, and managed by means of middle tints. In each style, the grace of his design, the expression of the mental affections, and the delicacy of his pencil, are unrivalled. Every thing is lively in his paintings, the foreground, the landscape, the adventitious ornaments of necklaces, flowers, and architecture; but this gaiety is more apparent in the heads. In these he purposely repeats the same idea, and gives them a smile which delights the mind of a spectator. He did not, however, consider his pictures as complete, but from a singular timidity,[132] often left them imperfect, as I shall more fully state under the Milanese school. There he will appear with the dignity of a consummate master, and a portion of his fame must at present suffice for his native school.

The life of Lionardo may be divided into four periods, the first of which includes the time he remained at Florence, while still a young man. To this era may be referred, not only the Medusa of the royal gallery, and the few pieces mentioned by Vasari; but some others also, less powerful in the shadows, and less diversified in the folds of the drapery, and which present some heads more delicate than select, and apparently derived from the school of Verrocchio. Such is the Magdalen of the Pitti palace at Florence, and that of the Aldobrandini palace at Rome; some Madonnas and Holy Families which are in several collections, as in the Giustiniani and Borghese galleries; and some heads of the Redeemer and of the Baptist, which are to be seen in various places; although it is often reasonable to suspend our judgment in regard to the genuineness of such pieces, on account of the great number of Lionardo's imitators. The child, laid in a bed richly ornamented, enveloped in its clothes, and adorned with a necklace, which is in the house of his excellency the Gonfaloniere of Bologna, is of a different class, and of undoubted originality.

After this first period, Lionardo was brought to Milan by Lodovico Sforza, "whom he highly gratified by his performance on the lyre; a curious and new instrument, almost entirely of silver," which Lionardo carried with him, and had constructed with his own hands. All the musicians there assembled were vanquished, and the whole city being struck with admiration of his extemporaneous poetry, and his eloquence, he was retained by the prince, and remained there till 1499, engaged in abstruse studies, and in mechanical and hydrostatical labours for the service of the state. During this time he painted little, except the celebrated Last Supper; but by superintending an academy of the fine arts, he left a degree of refinement in Milan, which was so productive of illustrious pupils, that this period may be reckoned the most glorious era of his life.

After the misfortunes of Lodovico Sforza, he returned to Florence, where having remained thirteen years, he went to Rome at the time his patron Leo X. ascended the papal chair; but his stay there was short. Some of his best works at Florence may be referred to this period; among which number we may reckon the celebrated portrait of Mona Lisa, which was the labour of four years, and yet was left unfinished; the Cartoon of S. Anna, prepared for a picture in the church of the Servi, which was never executed in colours; the cartoon of the battle of Niccolo Piccinino, intended to dispute the palm of excellence with Michelangiolo in the council chamber at Florence,[133] but like the other, never executed by Vinci, after failing in an attempt to paint it in a new method in oil on the wall. He probably employed another method in painting the Madonna with the child in her arms, in the monastery of S. Onofrio, of Rome, a picture in the style of Raffaello, but which is now peeling off the walls in many places. There are some other fine pieces, which if we may be allowed to hazard a conjecture, might be with propriety assigned to this period, in which Lionardo, having attained his highest skill, and unoccupied by other pursuits, painted in his best manner. Such is the specimen that was preserved at Mantua, but which was stolen, and concealed during the sack of the city; after many vicissitudes, however, it was sold for a high price to the imperial court of Russia. The subject is a Holy Family; in the back-ground is seen a woman of a very beautiful and majestic countenance standing in an upright position. It bears the cipher of Lionardo, consisting of a D interlaced with an L and a V, as it is seen in the picture of the Signori Sanvitali, at Parma. The Consigliere Pagave, who left a memorandum of it in his MSS. was the first to observe and to recognise it, upon its being brought to Milan in 1775, where it was also kept concealed. The same judicious critic in painting has conjectured that this production was executed in Rome, for one of the princesses of Mantua, or rather for the sister-in-law of Leo X.; inasmuch as it displayed a decided emulation of Raphael's manner, at that time highly extolled in Rome. Such a conjecture might receive support from his picture of a Madonna, which ornaments San Onofrio, also in the Raphael manner; and in order that this picture, and that of Mantua just mentioned, might not be confounded by posterity with the works of Raffaello, Lionardo, according to Signor Pagave, took care to affix the cipher of his name. Indeed, this is not at all improbable: both writers and painters are impelled by their natural genius to adopt a peculiar style; and whoever will compare the portraits that remain, expressive of the elevated, touching, penetrating, and beautiful spirit, incessantly bent upon acquiring something still more exquisite in art, which inspired these two prodigies, will find little difficulty in believing that both produced works, which owing to a similarity of natural taste, selection and admiration of the same object, might be mistaken for specimens of the same hand. Of this number is his own portrait, at an age which corresponds with this period, in the ducal gallery, a head that surpasses every other in that room for energy of expression; also another head, which is in a different cabinet, and is called a portrait of Raffaello; together with the half-length figure of a young nun so much commended by Bottari, and which he points out as one of the greatest treasures in the splendid mansion of the Marchese Niccolini. In the same rank we may include the much admired specimens in the possession of some of the noble families at Rome; as the picture of Christ disputing in the Temple, and the supposed portrait of queen Giovanna, ornamented with fine architecture, in the Doria palace; the Vanity and Modesty in the Barberini palace, the tints of which no pencil has been able to imitate; the Madonna of the Albani Palace, that appears to be requesting the lily which the infant Jesus holds in his hand, while he draws back, as if unwilling to part with it; a picture of exquisite grace, and preferred by Mengs to every other painting contained in that fine collection. It would, however, be presumptuous to assign a date to every picture of an artist who became early a distinguished painter, and who frequently discontinued a work before it was completed.

When this celebrated artist had attained his sixty-third year, he appears to have renounced the art for ever. Francis I. who saw his Last Supper at Milan, about the year 1515, attempted to saw it from the wall, that it might be transported to France; and not succeeding in his project, was desirous of possessing the artist, though now an old man. He invited Vinci to his court, and the artist felt little regret at leaving Florence, where, since his return, he found in the young Bonarruoti a rival that had already contended with him, and was even employed in preference to Vinci both in Florence and in Rome; because the former gave them works, if we may credit Vasari, while the latter amused them with words.[134] It is known that they had a quarrel; and Lionardo consulting his repose, which their emulation embittered, passed over into France, where, before he had employed his pencil, he expired in the arms of Francis I., in the year 1519.

Though his style is highly worthy of imitation, it was less followed in Florence than in Milan; nor is this surprising. Vinci left at Florence no picture in public; he there taught no pupil; and it appears that he retained Salai, whom I shall notice among the Milanese artists, in the station of a dependant, during his residence at Florence. In Florence we meet with pictures in the possession of private individuals, that seem the work of Vinci; and sometimes the dealers extol them as his, gravely adding that they cost a large sum. Such pieces are probably the productions of Salai, or of other imitators of Lionardo, who availed themselves of his cartoons, his drawings, or his few paintings. We are informed that Lorenzo di Credi, whose family name was Sciarpelloni, made use of them more than any other Florentine. Educated, as well as Vinci, in the school of Verrocchio, he followed rules nearly similar; he was patient, and aimed at the same object; but he approached less closely to the softness of the moderns. He copied, with such precision, a picture by Lionardo, which was sent to Spain, that the copy was not distinguishable from the original. Private houses contain many of his circular Holy Families, of which the invention and gracefulness remind us of Lionardo. I possess one which represents the Virgin sitting with Christ in her arms, and at her side the young S. John, to whom she turns as if to lay hold of him, at which the child seems timid, and draws back: it is in a lovely manner; but the style is not well suited to such a subject. Some of Credi's pictures, which Bottari did not meet with in public places, are now exhibited; as the Magdalen with S. Nicholas and S. Julian, adduced by Vasari as an example of a picturesque and highly finished style. His Christ in the manger may be also seen at S. Chiara; and it is one of his finest pictures, for the beauty of the faces, the vigour of expression, the finish of the back-ground, and the good colouring of the whole. Both in this, and in his other original pictures, we may discern some imitation of Vinci, and of Pietro Perugino, another friend of Credi: he possesses, however, some originality, which his scholar, Giovanni Antonio Sogliani, successfully imitated and improved.

This artist lived twenty-four years with Lorenzo; and in imitation of his model was contented to paint less than his contemporaries, that he might do it better. He likewise attempted to imitate Porta; but his natural disposition led him rather to follow the simple grace of his instructor, than the sublimity of this master. Few of this school can compare with him for the natural appearance he gave the naked as well as the clothed figure, or for the conception of "handsome, good-natured, sweet, and graceful features."[135] Like Lionardo, he possessed the rare talent of representing images of virtue by the faces of his saints, and of vice by those of his wicked characters. This is exemplified in his Cain and Abel, in the cathedral of Pisa, where he has introduced a landscape, that of itself would do honour to any painter. With equal felicity in the figure and the back-ground, he painted the crucifixion of S. Arcadius, which was brought from another church to that of S. Lorenzo at Florence, where it still remains. He entered into competition with Perino del Vaga, with Mecherino, and Andrea del Sarto, at Pisa, where he was noted for his dilatoriness, but admired for that happy simplicity and elegance which he always preserved. Some have praised a few of his pictures as inclining to the manner of Raffaello, a commendation also bestowed on Luini, and other followers of Lionardo. He had pupils who afterwards followed other masters: but a Zanobi di Poggino, who painted many pictures for Florence, which are now unknown, appears to have had no other master.

One of the best imitators of Vinci, almost equal to Luini himself, may be recognized in the sacristy of S. Stephen, at Bologna, in which there is a S. John in the Desert, with the inscription Jul. Flor. If this be read Julius Florentinus, the artist is unknown; but perhaps we should read Julianus, and ascribe it to Bugiardini. We are informed by Vasari that he was at Bologna, and that he painted a Madonna between two Saints, for the church of S. Francis; where it still is, and approaches the style of Lionardo fully as much as any other manner. Both pictures, on comparing the style, seem the work of the same artist; and to this artist also belongs a Nativity, in the cloister of the canons of S. Salvatore; and various pictures that may be found in some private houses with a similar epigraph. If we embrace the opinion of Vasari, we must consider Giuliano as a feeble painter, but uncommonly careful, and consequently slow. We should rather suppose him the imitator of any other artist than of Vinci; for he is described as the fellow student of Bonarruoti, the assistant of Albertinelli, and the colourist of some works of Fra Bartolommeo. One can readily perceive that Vasari was wrong, as in many other instances, in his slight estimation of this artist, on which account he has not paid a due attention to his works or to his style. He has represented this man as amiable in disposition, as a picture of contented poverty, as also an unbounded admirer of his Madonnas, and very profuse in his own commendations; qualities which rendered him highly amusing even to Michelangiolo. Intent on amusing his reader with the character of the man, he has not perhaps sufficiently rated the merits of the artist. This is proved by the little respect with which he mentions the martyrdom of S. Catherine in S. Maria Novella, which Bottari has called "a work worthy of admiration," not only for the figures of the soldiers, which, as Giuliano found himself unequal to the performance, were outlined with charcoal by Michelangiolo, and afterwards painted by Giuliano; but for the other parts of the story. The truth seems to be, that he had not much invention, and did not adhere to one style; but now and then borrowed a thought; as in the Nativity already noticed, where one may recognize the style of Fra Bartolommeo. On considering each figure separately, he appears on the whole happy in his imitations, especially in Bologna, where the S. John is held in the highest esteem. In Florence he painted many Madonnas and Holy Families, which, with the aid of the Bolognese pictures, may perhaps be recognized as his by their clearness, the masculine and somewhat heavy proportions, and the mouths sometimes expressive of melancholy; although the subject did not properly call for it. One of these is to be seen in the collection of the noble family Orlandini.

Michelangiolo Bonarruoti, of whom memoirs were published by two of his disciples while he was still living,[136] was born twenty-three years after Lionardo da Vinci. Like him he was endowed with a ready wit, and consummate eloquence. His bon mots rival those of the Grecian painters, which are recorded by Dati, and he is even esteemed the most witty and lively of his race. He possessed not the polish and elegance of Vinci, but his genius was more vast and daring. Hence he attained the three sister arts in an eminent degree, and has left specimens in painting, sculpture, and architecture, sufficient to immortalize three different artists. Like Vinci he gave proofs of talent in his boyish years, that compelled his master to confess his own inferiority. This master was Domenico Ghirlandaio, who sent his own brother Benedetto to paint in France, from jealousy of his preeminence; and, perhaps, fearing the wonderful powers of Bonarruoti, turned his attention to sculpture. Lorenzo the Magnificent, desirous of encouraging the statuary art, which was on the decline in his country, had collected in his gardens, adjacent to the monastery of S. Mark, many antique marbles; and committing the care of them to Bertoldo, a scholar of Donatello, he requested of Ghirlandaio some young man to be there educated as a sculptor; and this artist sent him Michelangiolo. This transaction was disliked by his father, Lodovico, in whose mind the art appeared degrading to his high birth; but he had no reason to repent it. On obtaining his object, Lorenzo not only added to the fortune of Lodovico, but retained Michelangiolo in his house, rather as a relation than a dependant, placing him at the same table with his own sons, with Poliziano, and other learned men who then graced his residence. During the four years that he remained there he laid the foundation of all his acquirements; he especially studied poetry, and thus was enabled to rival Vinci in his Sonnets, and to relish Dante, a bard of a sublimity beyond the reach of vulgar souls.[137] Bonarruoti studied design in the chapel of Masaccio, he copied the antiques in the garden of Lorenzo, and attended to anatomy, a science, to which he is said to have dedicated twelve years, with great injury to his health, and which determined his style, his practice, and his glory.[138] To this study he owed that style from which he obtained the name of the Dante of the art. As this poet made choice of materials very difficult to be reduced to verse, and from an abstruse subject extracted the praise of sublimity and grandeur, in like manner Michelangiolo explored the untrodden path of design, and in pursuing it, displayed powers of execution at once scientific and magnificent. In his works, man assumes that form which, according to Quintilian,[139] Zeuxis delighted to represent; nervous, muscular, and robust: his foreshortenings, and his attitudes are most daring; his expression full of vivacity and energy. The poet and the painter have other points of resemblance; a display of knowledge, from which Dante appears sometimes to critics, a declaimer rather than a poet, Bonarruoti, an anatomist rather than a painter; a neglect of elegance, from which the first often, and, if we subscribe to the opinions of the Caracci and of Mengs, the second sometimes, degenerated into harshness.[140] On points like these, which depend wholly on taste, I shall not decide, but content myself with warning the reader that such comparisons should not be pushed too far: for this poet, from his desire of surmounting difficulties in conception and versification, has sometimes so deviated from the usual path, that he cannot always be proposed as a model for imitation: but every design of Michelangiolo, every sketch, as well as his more finished works, may be regarded as a model in art; if in Dante we trace marks of labour, in Michelangiolo every thing exhibits nature and facility.[141] It was one of his observations, that the compasses ought to lie in the eyes; a principle apparently drawn from Diodorus Siculus, where he asserts that the Egyptians had the rules of measurement in their hands; the Greeks in their eyes.[142] Nor is such eulogy inapplicable to our artist; who, whether he handled his pen, his chisel, or a piece of charcoal, even in sport, still displayed infallible skill in every part of his design.

Bonarruoti was extolled to the skies by Ariosto for his painting, as well as for his sculpture;[143] but Condivi and others prefer his chisel to his pencil; and he undoubtedly exercised it more professedly and with greater reputation. His Moses on the tomb of Julius II. in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, his Christ in the Minerva, his Piety in S. Pietro Vaticano, and the statues in the church of S. Lorenzo at Florence, and in the ducal palaces, must be acknowledged to be the finest specimens of sculpture, in themselves forming schools of the revived art. I will not extol them so highly as Vasari does the colossal David, placed near the Palazzo Vecchio, when he says "that it bore away the palm from every statue, modern or ancient, either Grecian or Roman;" nor shall I follow his annotator, Bottari, in whose judgment Bonarruoti has greatly surpassed the Greeks, who are not so successful in statues larger than the life. I have heard competent judges remark, that we do an injury to the Grecian masters, not only by preferring any modern to them, but even by comparing them; but my pen ought not to wander too far from the canvass and from colouring.

The few remaining drawings of Michelangiolo demonstrate how little he painted. Conscious of his superiority in sculpture, he seems to have dreaded appearing as a second or a third-rate painter. The majority of his compositions that have reached our time, like those of Vinci, are mere outlines; and therefore, though many cabinets are rich in his drawings, none can boast the possession of his paintings. The cartoon of the battle of Pisa, prepared for a competition with Vinci in the saloon of the public palace at Florence, is said to have been a wonderful production in this species of art. Mariette supposes, in the letter above quoted, that the example of Vinci paved the way for this great undertaking, which he confesses surpassed the original. Michelangiolo did not rest satisfied with representing the Florentines cased in armour, and mingling with their enemies; but choosing the moment of the attack upon their van, while bathing in the river Arno, he seized the opportunity of representing many naked figures, as they rushed to arms from the water; by which he was enabled to introduce a prodigious variety of foreshortenings, attitudes the most energetic, in a word, the highest perfection of his peculiar excellences. Cellini observes in the thirteenth chapter of his life, that when Michelangiolo "painted the chapel of Pope Julius, he reached not half that dignity;" and Vasari adds, that "all the artists who studied and designed after this cartoon, became eminent;" among these he reckons the best Florentine artists of the second epoch, from the time of Frate, and to them he joined Raffaello d'Urbino. This is a point of critical disquisition not yet sufficiently cleared up, though much has been written both for and against the opinion of Vasari. I am not of the number of those who suppose that the labours of Bonarruoti had no influence on the style of Raffaello, because it appears dissimilar. It would seem to me an act of injustice to this divine genius, to imagine that profiting as he did by the finest productions of the art, he neglected those sources of information. I therefore firmly believe, that Raffaello likewise studied Michelangiolo, which he himself appears to acknowledge, as I shall afterwards relate. I cannot, however, grant to Vasari that he saw this cartoon on his first short visit to Florence.[144]

This cartoon has perished, and report accuses Baccio Bandinelli of tearing it in pieces, either that others might not derive advantage from viewing it, or because from partiality to Vinci, and hatred to Bonarruoti, he wished to remove a subject of comparison, that might exalt the reputation of the latter above that of Lionardo. This circumstance is not authenticated, nor are we much interested in the supposed criminal, who though eminent as a designer and a sculptor, painted a very few pieces, that may almost all be reduced to an Ebriety of Noah, and the Imprisonment of the Fathers of the Church. Baccio soon renounced the pencil, and Michelangiolo appears to have done the same, for he was called to Rome by Julius II. as a sculptor, and when the Pope, about 1508, asked him to paint the ceiling of the chapel, he declined it, and wished to transfer the commission to Raffaello.

He was, however, constrained to undertake it, and, unaccustomed to work in fresco, he invited some of the best painters in this branch from Florence,[145] that they might assist, or rather that they might instruct him. When he had acquired what he deemed necessary, he effaced their labours entirely, and set about the work without an assistant. When the task was about half finished, he exhibited it for a little time to the public. He then applied himself to the other part, but proceeding more slowly than the impatience of the pontiff could endure, he was compelled by threats to use quicker despatch, and without assistance finished the greater part, then incomplete, in twenty months. I have said that he was unaided, for such was the delicacy of his taste, that no artist could please him; and as in sculpture, every piercer, file, and chisel, which he used, was the work of his own hands, so in painting, "he prepared his own colours, and did not commit the mixing and other necessary manipulations to mechanics or to boys."[146] Here may be seen those grand and finely varied figures of the Prophets and the Sybils, the style of which is pronounced by Lomazzo, an impartial judge, because an artist of a different school, "to be the finest in the world."[147] There, indeed, the dignity of the aspects, the solemn majesty of the eyes, a certain wild and uncommon casting of the drapery, and the attitudes, whether representing rest or motion, announce an order of beings who hold converse with the Deity, and whose mouths utter what he inspires. Amid this display of genius, the figure most admired by Vasari is that of Isaiah, "who, absorbed in meditation, places his right hand in a book, to denote where he had been reading; and with his left elbow on the book, and his cheek resting on that hand, he turns round his head, without moving the rest of his body, on being called by one of the children that are behind him; a figure which, if attentively studied, might fully teach the precepts of a master." No less science is displayed in his pictures of the Creation of the World, of the Deluge, of Judith, and in the other compartments of that vast ceiling. All is varied and fanciful in the garments, the foreshortenings, and the attitudes: all is novel in the composition and the designs. He that contemplates the pictures of Sandro and his associates on the walls, and then, raising his eyes to the ceiling, beholds Michelangiolo "soaring like an eagle above them all," can hardly believe that a man, not exercised in painting, in what may be considered as his first essay, should so nearly approach the greatest masters of antiquity, and thus open a new career to modern artists.

In the succeeding pontificates, Michelangiolo, always occupied in sculpture and architecture, almost wholly abandoned painting, till he was induced by Paul III. to resume the pencil. Clement VII. had conceived the design of employing him in the Sistine Chapel on two other grand historical pictures; the Fall of the Angels, over the gate, and the Last Judgment, in the opposite façade, over the altar. Michelangiolo had composed designs for the Last Judgment, and Paul III. being aware of this, commanded, or rather entreated him, to commence the work; for he went to the house of Michelangiolo, accompanied by ten Cardinals, an honour, except in this instance, unknown in the annals of the art. On the suggestion of F. Sebastiano del Piombo, he was desirous that the picture should be painted in oil; but this he could not procure, for Michelangiolo replied, that he would not undertake it except in fresco, and that oil painting was employment only fit for women, or idlers of mean capacity. He caused the plaister prepared by Frate to be thrown down, and substituting a rough-cast suited to his purpose, he completed the work in eight years, and exhibited it in 1541. If in the ceiling of the chapel he could not fully satisfy himself, and was unable to retouch it as he wished to do after it was dry, in this immense painting he had an opportunity of fulfilling his intentions, and of demonstrating to the full the powers of his genius. He peopled this space, and disposed innumerable figures awakened by the sound of the last trumpet; bands of angels and of devils, of elected and condemned souls: some of them rising from the tomb, others standing on the earth; some flying to the regions of bliss, while others are dragged down to punishment.

Bottari observes[148] that there have been some who affected to depreciate this picture, on comparing it with the works of other artists, by remarking how much he might have added to the expression, to the colouring, or to the beauty of the contours: but Lomazzo, Felibien,[149] and several others, have not failed on that account to acknowledge him supreme in that peculiar branch of the profession, at which he aimed in all his works, and especially in this of his Last Judgment. The subject itself appeared rather created than selected by him. To a genius so comprehensive, and so skilled in drawing the human figure, no subject could be better adapted than the Resurrection; to an artist who delighted in the awful, no story more suitable than the day of supernal terrors. He saw Raffaello pre-eminent in every other department of the art: he foresaw that in this alone could he expect to be triumphant; and, perhaps, he indulged the hope also that posterity would adjudge the palm to him who excelled all others in the most arduous walk of art. Vasari, his confidant, and the participator of his thoughts, seems to hint at something of this sort in two passages in his Life of Michelangiolo.[150] He informs us, "that applying himself to the human figure, the great object of art, he neglected the attractions of colouring, all sporting of the pencil, and fantastic novelty:" and again, "neither landscapes, trees, nor houses, are to be seen in it, and we even look in vain for some degree of variety and ornament, which are never attempted, probably because he disdained to submit his towering genius to such objects." I cannot suppose in Michelangiolo such arrogance, nor such negligence of his own improvement in an art which embraces every object in nature, that he would limit himself to the naked figure, which is a single branch, and to one only character, his own sublime and awful manner. I rather imagine, that discovering his strength in this style, he did not attempt any other. There he proceeded as in his peculiar province, and, what one cannot wholly commend, he observed no limits, and wished for no control. This Last Judgment was filled with such a profusion of nudity, that it was in great danger of being destroyed: from a regard to the decency of the sanctuary, Paul IV. proposed to white-wash it, and was hardly appeased with the correction of its most glaring indelicacies, by some drapery introduced here and there by Daniel da Volterra, on whom the facetious Romans, from this circumstance, conferred the nick-name of the Breeches-maker.[151]

Other corrections have been proposed in it by different critics, both with regard to the costume and the conception. The artist has been censured for confounding sacred with profane history; for introducing the angels of Revelation with the Stygian ferryman; Christ sitting in judgment, and Minos, who assigns his proper station to each of the damned. To this profanity he added satire, by pourtraying in Minos the features of a master of the ceremonies, who, in the hearing of the Pope, had pronounced this picture more suitable for a bagnio than a church;[152] but Bonarruoti did not set the example in such composition. Scannelli has expressed a wish that there had been greater variety in the proportion, and muscularity according to the diversity of age;[153] although, by an evident anachronism, this criticism is attributed to Vinci, who died in 1519. Albani, as quoted by Malvasia,[154] says, that "had Michelangiolo contemplated Raffaello, he might have learned to dispose the crowd that surround the judgment-seat of Christ in a superior manner;" but here I am uncertain whether he blames the composition or the perspective.[155] I can discover, however, an anachronism in his imagining the Last Judgment an earlier work than it really is by many years; as if it had been executed before Raffaello came to Rome.

I find that Albani rendered justice to the merit of Michelangiolo; he reckoned not three great masters in painting only, as is now commonly done; but he added a fourth, and thought that Bonarruoti surpassed Raffaello, Tiziano, and Coreggio, "in form and in grandeur."[156] We may here observe, that when Michelangiolo was so inclined, he could obtain distinction for those endowments in which the others excelled. It is a vulgar error to suppose that he had no idea of grace and beauty; the Eve of the Sistine Chapel turns to thank her maker, on her creation, with an attitude so fine and lovely, that it would do honour to the school of Raffaello. Annibale Caracci admired this, and many other naked figures in this grand ceiling, so highly, that he proposed them to himself as models in the art, and according to Bellori,[157] preferred them to those of the Last Judgment, that appeared to him too anatomical. In chiaroscuro Michelangiolo had not the skill and delicacy of Coreggio; but the paintings of the Vatican have a force and relief much commended by Renfesthein, an eminent connoisseur, who, on passing from the Sistine Chapel to the Farnesian gallery, remarked how greatly in this respect the Caracci themselves were eclipsed by Bonarruoti. Dolce speaks less favourably of his colouring,[158] for this author was captivated by Tiziano and the Venetian school: no one, however, can deny that the colouring of Michelangiolo in this chapel is admirably adapted to the design,[159] and the same, also, would have been the case with his two pictures in the Pauline Chapel, the Crucifixion of S. Peter and the Conversion of S. Paul, but they have sustained great injury from time.

None of his paintings are to be seen in public, except in those two chapels; and those described as his in collections, are almost all the works of other hands. During his residence at Florence he painted an exquisite Leda for Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara, to whom however it was not sold. Michelangiolo, offended at the manner in which it was demanded by one of the courtiers of that prince, refused to let him have it: but made a present of it to his pupil, Antonio Mini, who carried it to France. Vasari describes it as "a grand picture, painted in distemper, that seemed as if breathed on the canvass;" and Mariette affirms, in his notes on Condivi, that he saw the picture in a damaged state, and that it appeared as if Michelangiolo had there forgot his usual style, and "approached the tone of Tiziano." This expression inclines one to suspect that he is describing a copy taken in oil by some able painter; especially as D'Argenville informs us that this painting was burnt in the reign of Louis XIII. It is said there is also one of his pictures, representing the Virgin and the Divine Infant, in an upright position, standing near the cradle upon a rock, a figure drawn of the size of nature, formerly in possession of the noble house of Mocci (Mozzi) at Florence; and afterwards transferred to the cathedral of Burgos, where it still remains.[160] Michelangiolo executed likewise a circular Holy Family, with some naked figures in the distance, for Agnol Doni. It is now in the tribune of the Florentine gallery, in a high state of preservation. It is praised by Richardson and some others for the vigour of its tints, and is painted in distemper. Placed among the works of the greatest masters of every school that vie with each other in this theatre of art, it appears the most scientific, but the least pleasing picture: its author seems the most powerful designer, but the feeblest colourist among them all. In it aerial perspective is neglected, inasmuch as the figures are not indistinct in proportion to their diminution, a fault not uncommon in that age. I cannot so readily decide whether his style appears in certain pictures that are described as his in several collections in Florence, Rome, and Bologna, as well as in the catalogue of the imperial gallery at Vienna, and in the royal collections in Spain, that represent the subjects of the Crucifixion,[161] the Pietà,[162] the Infant Jesus asleep, and the Prayer in the Garden. They resemble the design of Michelangiolo, but their execution betrays another pencil. This is rendered probable by the silence of Vasari; their high finish seems incredible in an artist, who, even in sculpture, very rarely attempted it; and our scepticism is confirmed by the opinion of Mengs, and other competent judges, whom I have consulted to elucidate this point. Some of them, in which the distribution of the tints was perhaps originally made under his inspection, resemble his style. These may have been copied by Fiamminghi, as the tints of some of them indicate, or by other Italian artists of the various schools, since they differ so much in their mode of colouring. Some copies may be the work of the scholars of Michelangiolo, though Vasari informs us they were all but feeble artists. He gives us the names of those who dwelt in his house; Pietro Urbano of Pistoia, a man of genius, but very indolent; Antonio Mini of Florence, and Ascanio Condivi da Ripatransone, both eager in their profession, but of little talent, and therefore the authors of no work worthy of record. The people of Ferrara include their countryman Filippi in this school, an artist unknown to Vasari, but worthy of notice. Lomazzi mentions Marco da Pino as one of the number. To these Palomino adds Castelli of Bergamo, (whose master, while he was in Rome, is not noticed by any of our writers) and Gaspar Bacerra, of Andalusia, a celebrated Spanish painter. We may likewise add Alonzo Berrugese, who is reckoned by Vasari only among those that studied the cartoon of Michelangiolo, at Florence, with Francia, and other strangers, who were not among his disciples. In the history of Spanish painting, there is mentioned by all the writers a Roman, of the name of Matteo Perez d'Alessio, or d'Alessi. They recount that he lived many years at Seville, and produced many works there, among which his S. Cristoforo, in the cathedral, which cost 4,000 crowns, is by far the grandest. They add, that Luigi Vargas, a very able disciple of Perino del Vaga, having returned from Rome, Alessi was glad to leave the field open to him, and to return into Italy; where Preziado finds him. Indeed he rather finds him at Rome, and at the Sistine Chapel, where two histories, painted "opposite to the Last Judgment of his master," are ascribed to him; these however are the production of Matteo da Leccio, who aimed at imitating Michelangiolo and Salviati; but he is only despised by Taia, and by every one who has a grain of sense. He executed this work in the time of Gregory XIII.; and neither he nor the supposititious Alessio,[163] an imaginary name, had any connexion with Michelangiolo. The rest we refer to the note, in order to proceed without delay to names which may boast a better title to such a connexion.

Many other figures and historic compositions were designed by Michelangiolo, and painted at Rome by F. Sebastiano del Piombo, an excellent colourist of the Venetian school. The Pietà in the church of S. Francis of Viterbo,[164] the Flagellation, and Transfiguration, with some other pieces at S. Pietro in Montorio, are of this number. Two Annunciations, designed by Bonarruoti, were coloured for altar-pieces by Marcello Venusti of Mantua, a scholar of Perino, who adopted the style of Michelangiolo, without apparent affectation. The one was put up in the church of S. Giovanni Laterano, the other in the Della Pace. He is said to have painted also some cabinet pictures after designs of Bonarruoti; as the Limbo,[165] in the Colonna palace; the Christ going to Mount Calvary, and some other pieces in the Borghese; also the celebrated copy of the Last Judgment, which he painted for Cardinal Farnese, that still exists in Naples. Although a good designer, and the author of many pieces described by Baglione, he obtained greater celebrity by clothing the inventions of Michelangiolo in exquisite beauty, especially in small pictures, of which, Vasari says, he executed a great many. This writer, and Orlandi following him, have erroneously named him Raffaello, not Marcello. Batista Franco coloured the Rape of Ganymede, after a design of Bonarruoti, which was also done by the artist who painted the small picture which D'Argenville describes in France; and another on a larger scale, to be seen at Rome in the possession of the Colonna family: it was also painted in oil by Giulio Clovio. Pontormo employed himself in a similar manner at Florence, on the design of Venus and Cupid; and on the cartoon of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen, a work which was re-executed by him for Città di Castello, Bonarruoti having said, that none could perform it better. Francesco Salviati painted another of his designs, and Bugiardini, as we have already noticed, executed some figures designed by him. Such is the information transmitted to us by Vasari; and he would have been justly reprehensible if he had written with such minuteness on the drawings of Michelangiolo, and of those employed to finish them, and had neglected to inform us as to those pieces which Michelangiolo himself executed. Hence it is not easy to avoid scepticism on the genuineness of the Annunciation, the Flagellation, or any other oil painting ascribed to Bonarruoti by Bottari, D'Argenville, or the describers of collections. We have noticed his aversion to this method of painting. We are informed that during his lifetime he employed others in this branch; and we know that after his death artists availed themselves of his designs; as Sabbatini did in a Pietà for the sacristy of the Church of S. Peter, a work copied by some other artist for the Madonna de' Monti, and some others made known to us by Baglione. Can we then hesitate as to the originality of any picture, if we give credit to the oil paintings of Michelangiolo? The portraits of Bonarruoti ascribed to his own hand, are also, in my opinion, supposititious. Vasari knew of no likeness of him except the figure cast in bronze by Ricciarelli, and two portraits, the one painted by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte. From these are derived the very old and well known portraits, preserved in the ducal gallery, in the collection of the Capitol, in the Caprara palace at Bologna, and that in the possession of Cardinal Zelada at Rome.

Franco, Marco da Siena, Tibaldi, and other foreign artists, who have imitated Michelangiolo, shall be noticed under their respective schools. The Florentine school abounded in them, and these we shall consider all together in the succeeding epoch. I shall here only notice two, who lived on intimate habits with him, who executed works under his own eye, and for a long time received directions from his own lips; circumstances which cannot be said of Vasari, of Salviati, nor of any other able artist of his school. One of these was Francesco Granacci of Florence, characterized by Vasari as an excellent artist, who derived much of his merit from his early intimacy with Michelangiolo. He was the fellow student of the latter, under Domenico Ghirlandaio, and also in the garden of Lorenzo; and from his precepts, and by studying his cartoon, he enlarged his own manner, and approached near the modern style. After the death of his master, he remained with the brothers of that artist, to complete some of the works of the deceased, and was employed in painting some Holy Families, and cabinet pictures, in distemper, which might easily pass under another name, as they resemble the best productions of that school. In his new style he never entirely abandoned the simplicity of the old manner; but there is a specimen in the church of S. Jacopo without-the-walls, more studied in design, and more determined in the colouring. In this picture S. Zanobi and S. Francis appear near our Lady under a lofty canopy; a subject then familiar in every school. His style seems more matured in an Assumption which was in S. Pier Maggiore, a church now suppressed: here he inserted, between two other figures, a S. Thomas, wholly in the manner of Michelangiolo. Few other considerable paintings can be ascribed to this artist, who was left in easy circumstances by his father, and painted rather as a commendable amusement than from necessity.

Ricciarelli, usually known in history by the name of Daniele di Volterra, enjoys a greater name, and is generally described as the most successful follower of Michelangiolo. Educated in Siena, according to report, by Peruzzi and Razzi, he became the assistant of Perino del Vaga, and acquired an astonishing talent for imitating Bonarruoti, who greatly esteemed him, appointed him his substitute in the labours of the Vatican, brought him into notice, and assisted and enriched him with designs. It is known that Michelangiolo was often with Daniele when he painted in the Farnese palace, and it is said that Bonarruoti, during his absence, "O vero o falso che la fama suoni," mounted the scaffold, and sketched with charcoal a colossal head that is still seen there. Volterra let it remain, that posterity might judge of the powers of Bonarruoti, who without pre-meditation and in mere jest, had finished a work in such proportion, and so perfect. Nor did Daniele execute, without the assistance of Michelangiolo, the wonderful Descent from the Cross in the Trinità de' Monti, which, together with the Transfiguration by Raffaello, and the S. Girolamo of Domenichino, may be reckoned among the finest paintings in Rome.[166] We seem to behold the mournful spectacle, and the Redeemer sinking with the natural relaxation of a dead body in descending: the pious men engaged in various offices, and thrown in different and contrasted attitudes, appear assiduously occupied with the sacred remains which they seem to venerate; the mother of Jesus having fainted between the sorrowing women, the beloved disciple extends his arms and bends over her. There is a truth in the naked figures that seems perfect nature; a colouring in the faces and the whole piece that suits the subject, and is more determined than delicate; a relief, a harmony, and, in a word, a skill that might do honour to the hand of Michelangiolo himself, had the picture been inscribed with his name. To this the artist, I believe, alluded, when he painted Bonarruoti with a mirror near it; as if in this picture he might behold a reflection of himself. Volterra painted some other Crucifixions in the Orsini Chapel, where he was employed for seven years; but they are inferior to that described above. He employed his pupils in another chapel of that church, (Michele Alberti, according to the Guide to Rome, and Gio. Paolo Rossetti,) and supplied them with designs; one of which he himself executed in a picture, with figures of a moderate size. The subject is the Murder of the Innocents, and it is now deposited in the Tribune of the Royal Gallery of Florence; an honour that speaks more for it than my eulogy. The Grand Duke Leopold purchased it at a high price from a church in Volterra, where there is now no other public specimen of this master. The Ricciarelli family possess a fine Elijah, as an inheritance and memorial of this great man; and a beautiful fresco remains in a study in the house of the Dottor Mazzoni, relating to which we may refer the reader to the excellent historiographer of Volterra, (tom. i. p. 177).

There was a youth of Florence, named Baccio della Porta, because his study was near a gate of that city; but having become a Dominican, he obtained that of Fra Bartolommeo di S. Marco, from the convent where he resided, or, more shortly, that of Frate. Whilst he studied under Rosselli, he became enamoured of the grand chiaro-scuro of Vinci, and emulated him assiduously. We read that his friend Albertinelli studied modelling, and copied ancient basso-relievos, from a desire of obtaining correctness in his shadows; and we may conjecture the same of Baccio, although Vasari is silent on this head. The Prince has a Nativity and Circumcision of Christ in his early manner; most graceful little pictures, resembling miniatures. About this period he also painted his own portrait in the lay habit, a full-length figure, most skilfully inclosed in a small space, and now in the splendid collection of the Signori Montecatini at Lucca. He entered the cloister in 1500, at the age of thirty-one, and for four years never handled the pencil. The execution of Savonarola, whom he knew and respected, preyed upon his mind; and, like Botticelli and Credi, he gave up the art. When he again resumed it, he seems to have advanced daily in improvement, during the last thirteen or fourteen years of his life; so that his earlier productions, though very beautiful, are inferior to his last. His improvement was accelerated by Raffaello, who came to Florence to pursue his studies in 1504, contracted a friendship for him, and was at the same time his scholar in colouring, and his master in perspective.[167] Having gone to Rome some years after, to see the works of Bonarruoti and Raffaello, if I am not deceived, he greatly elevated his style; but his manner was at all times more conformable to that of his friend than of his fellow citizen, uniting dignity with grace in his heads and in his general design. The picture in the Pitti palace is a proof of this, which Pietro da Cortona imagined to be the work of Raffaello, though Frate had painted it before he went to Rome. In that place he appeared with diminished lustre, says the historian, in the presence of those two great luminaries of the art, and speedily returned to Florence; a circumstance which also happened to Andrea del Sarto, to Rosso, and to other truly eminent masters, whose modesty was equal to the confidence of innumerable artists of mediocrity, who frequently enjoyed at Rome much ill placed patronage. Frate left there two figures of the Chief Apostles, that are preserved in the Quirinal palace; the S. Peter, which was not finished, had its last touches from the hand of Raffaello. One of his pictures is also in the Vatican palace, where it was deposited by Pius VI., with many other choice paintings. A Holy Family exists in the Corsini collection by the same hand, and is perhaps his finest and most graceful performance.

His most finished productions are in Tuscany, which boasts various altar-pieces, and all of them very valuable. Their composition is in the usual style of the age, which may be observed in the production of every school, not even excepting Raffaello, and which continued in the Florentine until the time of Pontormo; viz. a Madonna seated, with an infant Jesus, and accompanied by saints. But in this hackneyed subject, Frate distinguished himself by grand architecture, by magnificent flights of steps, and by the skilful grouping of his saints and cherubims. He introduces them, one while seated in concert, another time poised on their wings to minister to their king and queen; of whom some support the drapery, others have charge of the pavilion, a rich and happily conceived ornament, which he readily connected with such thrones, even in cabinet pictures. He departed from this mode of composition in a picture that he left at S. Romano of Lucca, called Madonna della Misericordia, who sits in an attitude full of grace, amid a crowd of devotees, shielding them with her mantle from the wrath of heaven. His rivals occasioned the production of two more altar-pieces: according to the example of other eminent men, he answered their sneers by his classic performances; a retort the most galling to the invidious. They had stigmatized him as unequal to large proportions; and he filled a large piece with a single figure of S. Mark, which is admired as a prodigy of art in the ducal gallery, and is described by a learned foreigner as a Grecian statue transformed into a picture. He was accused of being ignorant of the anatomy of the human figure; and to refute this calumny he introduced a naked S. Sebastian in another picture, which was so perfect in drawing and in colouring, that "it received the unbounded applause of artists;" but becoming too much the admiration of the female devotees of that church, it was first removed by the fathers into a private room, and was afterwards sold, and sent into France.

To sum up all, he knew how to excel at pleasure, in every department of painting. His design is most chaste, and his youthful faces are more full and fleshy than was usual with Raffaello; and according to Algarotti, they are but little elevated above the standard of ordinary men, and approach to vulgarity. His tints at one period abounded with shadows produced by lamp black or ivory black, which impairs the value of some of his pictures; but he gradually acquired a better manner, and, as we have related, was able to instruct Raffaello. In firmness and clearness he yields not to the best of the school of Lombardy. He was the inventor of a new method of casting draperies; having taught the use of the wooden figure, with moveable joints, that serves admirably for the study of the folds of drapery. None of his school painted them more varied and natural, with more breadth, or better adapted to the limbs. His works are to be seen in several private collections in Florence; but they are rare beyond the precincts of that city: they are there eagerly sought after by foreigners, but are very rarely to be sold. One of his Madonnas was procured within these few years by his Excellency the Major-Domo of the ducal household, whose collection may be reckoned another Florentine Gallery in miniature, consisting of about thirty pictures of the best masters of different schools. The Fathers of S. Mark have a considerable number of his paintings in their private chapel, and among these is a S. Vincenzo, said by Bottari to resemble a work of Tiziano or Giorgione. His best and rarest performances are in the possession of the Prince, in whose collection the last work of Fra Bartolommeo remains, a large picture in chiaroscuro, representing the patron saints of the city surrounding the Virgin Mary. The Gonfalonier Soderini intended this piece for the Hall of the Council of State; but it was left only as a design at the death of its author, in 1517, like the projected works of Vinci and Bonarruoti. It would seem as if some fatality attended the decoration of this building, which ought to have employed the pencil of the greatest native artists. Among this number Frate must undoubtedly be included; and Richardson remarks, that had he possessed the happy combinations of Raffaello, he, perhaps, would not have been second to that master.[168] The last mentioned production, though imperfect, is looked upon as a model in the art. The method of this artist was first to draw the figure naked, then to drape it, and to form a chiaroscuro, sometimes in oils, that marked the distribution of the light and shadow, which constituted his great study, and the soul of his pictures. This large picture demonstrates such preparatives; and it has as high a value in painting, as the antique plaster models have in sculpture, in which Winckelmann discovers the stamp of genius and compass of design better than in sculptured marbles.

Mariotto Albertinelli, the fellow student and friend of Baccio, the sharer of his labours and his concerns, emulated his first style, and approaches to his second in some of his works; but they may be compared to two streams springing from the same source; the one to become a brook, the other a mighty river. Some pictures in Florence are supposed to be their joint performances; and the Marquis Acciaiuoli possesses a picture of the Assumption, in the upper part of which are the Apostles, by Baccio, and the lower is deemed the work of Mariotto. He is somewhat dry in several of his pictures, as in the S. Silvestro, in Monte Cavallo at Rome; where he also painted a S. Domenick, and a S. Catharine of Siena, near the throne of the Virgin Mary. He should likewise be known at Florence. He executed two pictures for the church of S. Giuliano, remarkable for the force of colouring, and the many imitations of the style of Frate. The best of all and the nearest to his model is the Visitation, transferred from the Congregazione de' Preti to the Ducal gallery, and even to its most honoured place, the Tribune. Albertinelli obtained great credit by his two pupils, Franciabigio and Innocenzio da Imola, of whom I shall speak in the proper place as ornaments of their school. I find Visino praised beyond them both: he painted but little in Florence, and that in private; but he was much employed in Hungary.

Benedetto Cianfanini, Gabriele Rustici, and Cecchin del Frate, who inherited his master's name, were the scholars of Fra Bartolommeo in his best time; but they are no longer known by any undoubted works. Fra Paolo da Pistoia, his colleague, who was honoured in his own country with a medal, which I have seen, with those of many eminent men of Pistoia, in the possession of the Sign. Dottor Visoni, obtained the richest inheritance in all the studies of Baccio; and from his designs this artist painted many pictures at Pistoia, one of which may be seen in the parochial church of S. Paul, over the great altar. Those designs were afterwards carried to Florence, and in the time of Vasari there was a collection of them at the Dominican convent of S. Catharine, in the hands of Sister Plautella Nelli. The noble family of this lady possesses a Crucifixion painted by her, in which there is a multitude of small figures most highly finished. She seems on the whole a good imitation of Frate; but she also followed other styles, as may be seen in her convent. A Descent from the Cross is there shewn, said to be the design of Andrea del Sarto, but the execution is by her; and likewise an Epiphany, entirely her own, in which the landscape would do honour to the modern, but the figures savour of the old school.

Andrea Vannucchi, called Andrea del Sarto, from the occupation of his father, is commended by Vasari as the first artist of this school, "for being the most faultless painter of the Florentines, for perfectly understanding the principles of chiaroscuro, for representing the indistinctness of objects in shadow, and for painting with a sweetness truly natural: he, moreover, taught how to give a perfect union to frescos, and in a great measure obviated the necessity of retouching them when dry, a circumstance which gives all his works the appearance of having been finished in one day." He is censured by Baldinucci, as barren in invention; and undoubtedly he wanted that elevation of conception, which constitutes the epic in painting as well as in poetry. Deficient in this talent, Andrea is said to have been modest, elegant, and endued with sensibility; and it appears that he impressed this character on nature wherever he employed his pencil. The portico of the Nunziata, transformed by him into a gallery of inestimable value, is the fittest place to judge of this. Those chaste outlines that procured him the surname of Andrea the Faultless, those conceptions of graceful countenances, whose smiles remind us of the simplicity and grace of Correggio,[169] that appropriate architecture, those draperies, adapted to every condition, and cast with ease, those popular expressions of curiosity, of astonishment, of confidence, of compassion, and of joy, that never transgress the bounds of decorum, which are understood at first sight, and gently affect the mind without agitating it, are charms that are more readily felt than expressed. He who feels what Tubules is in poetry, may conceive what Andrea is in painting.

This artist demonstrates the ascendancy of native genius over precept. When a boy he was put under the tuition of Giovanni Barile, a good carver in wood, employed on the ceilings and doors of the Vatican, after the designs of Raffaello, but a painter of no celebrity. While still a youth, he was consigned to Pier di Cosimo, a practical colourist, but by no means skilled in drawing or in composition: hence the taste of Andrea in these arts was formed on the cartoons of Vinci and Bonarruoti; and, as many circumstances indicate, on the frescos of Masaccio and of Ghirlandaio, in which the subjects were more suited to his mild disposition. He went to Rome, but I know not in what year; that he was there, appears not to me to admit of dispute, as in the case of Correggio. I do not argue this from his style approaching near to that of Raffaello, as it appeared also to Lomazzo and other writers, though with less of ideal beauty. Raffaello and Andrea had studied the same originals at Florence; and nature might have given them corresponding ideas for the selection of the beautiful. I ground my opinion entirely on Vasari. He informs us, that Andrea was at Rome, that seeing the works of the scholars of Raffaello, timidity induced him to despair of equalling them, and to return speedily to Florence. If we credit so many other stories of the pusillanimity of Andrea, why should we reject this? or what faith shall we give to Vasari, if he was erroneous in a circumstance relating to one who was his master, and which was written in Florence soon after the death of Andrea, while his scholars, his friends, and even his wife, were still living, an assertion, too, uncontradicted in the second edition, in which Vasari retracted so much of what he had affirmed in the first?

His improvement and his progress from one perfection in art to another was thus not sudden, as has happened to some other artists; but was gradually acquired during many years residence at Florence. There, "by reflecting on what he had seen, he attained such eminence that his works have been esteemed, and admired, and even more imitated after his death, than in his lifetime:" so says the historian. This implies that he improved at Rome; chiefly, however, by his own genius, which led him, as it were, by the hand, from one step to another, as may be observed in the Compagnia dello Scalzo, and in the convent of the Servi, where some of his pictures, executed at different periods, are to be seen. At the Scalzo, he painted some stories from the life of S. John in chiaroscuro, the cartoons for which are in the Rinuccini palace: in this work we may notice some palpable imitations, and even some figures borrowed from Albert Durer. We may trace his early style in the Baptism of Christ; his subsequent progress, in some other pictures, as in the Visitation, painted some years after; and his greatest excellence and broadest manner in others, especially in the Birth of the Baptist. In like manner, the pictures from the life of S. Filippo Benizi, in the lesser cloister of the Servi, are very beautiful productions, though they are among the first efforts of Andrea's genius. The Epiphany of our Saviour, and the Birth of the Virgin in the same place, are more finished works; but his finest piece is that Holy Family in Repose, which is usually called Madonna del Sacco, from the sack of grain on which S. Joseph leans, than which few pictures are more celebrated in the history of the art. It has frequently been engraved; but after two centuries and a half, it has at length employed an engraver worthy of it in Morghen, who has recently executed it, and also a similar composition after Raffaello. Both prints are in the best collections; and to those who have not seen either Rome or Florence, Andrea appears rather a rival than an inferior to the prince of painters. On examining this picture narrowly, it affords endless scope for observation: it is finished as if intended for a cabinet; every hair is distinguished, every middle tint is lowered with consummate art, every outline marked with admirable variety and grace: and amid all this diligence a facility is conspicuous, that makes the whole appear natural and unconstrained.

In the ducal palace at Poggio a Caiano, there is a fresco picture of Cæsar, seated in a hall, ornamented with statues, on a lofty seat, to whom a great variety of exotic birds and wild animals are presented as the tribute of his victories; a work of itself sufficient to mark Andrea as a painter eminent in perspective, in a knowledge of the antique, and in every excellence of painting. The order for ornamenting that palace came from Leo X.; and Andrea, who had there to contend with Franciabigio and Pontormo, exerted all his energy to please that encourager of art, and to surpass his competitors. The other artists seem to have been discouraged, and did not proceed: some years after Alessandro Allori put a finishing hand to the hall. The royal palace possesses a treasure in the oil pictures of Andrea. Independent of the S. Francis, the Assumption, and other pictures, collected by the family of the Medici, the Grand Duke Leopold purchased a very fine Pietà from the nuns of Lugo, and placed it in the Tribune as an honour to the school. The introduction of S. Peter and S. Paul in that piece, contrary to historical facts, is not the error of the painter who represented them so admirably, but of those who commissioned the picture. Critics have remarked a slight defect in the dead Christ, which they think sustains itself more, and has a greater fulness of the veins, than is suitable to a dead body: but this is immaterial in a picture the other parts of which are designed, coloured, and composed, so as to excite astonishment. A Last Supper, if it were not confined to the cloisters of the monastery of S. Salvi, would, perhaps, be equally admired. The soldiers who besieged Florence in 1529, and destroyed the suburbs of the city, undoubtedly admired it: after demolishing the belfry, the church, and part of the monastery, they were astonished on beholding this Last Supper, and had not resolution to destroy it; imitating that Demetrius who, at the siege of Rhodes, is said to have respected nothing but a picture by Protegenes.[170]

Andrea painted a great deal; and on this account is well known beyond the limits of his own country. Perhaps his best performance in the hands of strangers is a picture translated to a palace in Genoa from the church of the Domenicans of Sarzana, who possess several others, very beautiful. It is composed in the manner of F. Bartolommeo; and besides the Saints distributed around the Virgin, or on the steps, four of whom are standing and two on their knees, there are two large figures in the foreground that seem to start from the lower part of the picture, and are seen as high as the knee. I am aware that this disposition of the figures displeases the critics; yet it gives variety in the position of so many figures, and introduces a great distance between the nearest and most remote, by which the space seems augmented, and every figure produces effect. The best collections are not deficient in his Holy Families. The Marquis Rinuccini, at Florence, possesses two; and some of the illustrious Romans have even a greater number; but all different, except that the features of the Virgin, which Andrea usually copied from his wife, have always some resemblance. Many others may be seen in Rome and in Florence, and not a few in Lombardy, besides those noticed in the catalogues of foreign nations.

So much genius merited success: and yet if one was to write a book on the misfortunes of painters, as has already been done on those of authors, nothing would awaken more compassion than the lot of Andrea. The poverty of Correggio is exaggerated, or perhaps untrue; the misery of Domenichino had a termination; the Caracci were ill rewarded, but lived in easy circumstances. Andrea, from his marriage with Lucrezia del Fede until his death, was almost always pressed with griefs. In his first edition, Vasari says, that he was despised by his friends, and abandoned by his employers, from the time of his marriage with this woman; that, the slave of her will, he left his father and mother to starve; that through her arrogance and violence none of the scholars of Andrea could continue long with him; and this must have happened to Vasari himself. In the second edition he omitted this censure, either because he repented of it, or was appeased; but did not, however, conceal that she was a perpetual source of misfortune to her husband. He there repeated that Andrea was invited to the French court by Francis I. where, caressed and rewarded, he might have excited the envy of every artist; but influenced by the womanish complaints of Lucrezia, he returned to Florence; and remained in his own country, in violation of his faith solemnly pledged to that monarch. He afterwards repented and was anxious to regain his former situation; but his efforts were ineffectual. He dragged out a miserable existence, amid jealousy and domestic wretchedness, until, infected with the plague, and abandoned by his wife and every other individual, he died, in 1530, in the forty-second year of his age, and had a very mean funeral.

The two who approximated most nearly to the style of Andrea were Marco Antonio Francia Bigi, as he is named by Baldinucci, called also Franciabigio, or Francia, as Vasari denominates him, and Pontormo. Francia was the scholar of Albertinelli for a few months, and then appears to have formed himself on the best models of the school; and few are commended so highly by Vasari for a knowledge of anatomy, for perspective, for the daily habit of drawing the naked figure, and the exquisite finish of all his performances. One of his Annunciations was formerly in S. Pier Maggiore; the figures were small and highly finished, accompanied by good architecture, but not without a certain degree of dryness. Andrea, his friend, and the associate of his studies, helped him to a more elevated style. From a companion Francia became his enthusiastic follower; but, inferior in talents, he never attained the art of representing such sweetness of disposition, affection so true, and grace so natural. A semicircular piece of his, representing the Marriage of the Virgin, may be seen near the works of Andrea, in the cloister of the Nunziata, where we recognize him as a painter who sought to attain by labour what the other accomplished by genius. This work was never completed. Some of the monks having uncovered it before it was finished, the artist was so offended that he struck the work some blows with a hammer, in order to deface it; and though they prevented his accomplishing this, he never after could be prevailed on to complete it, and no other dared to undertake the task. He was a competitor with Andrea also in the Scalzo, where he executed two histories that are not much eclipsed by the pictures in their vicinity. He imitated his friend likewise at Poggio a Caiano, in a picture of the return of Cicero from exile: a work of merit, though never finished. It is the great glory of his pencil, that it was so often employed in contending with Andrea, in whom it awakened emulation and industry, from the fear of being surpassed.

Jacopo Carrucci, called Pontormo, from the place of his nativity, was a man of rare genius, whose early productions obtained the admiration of Raffaello and Michelangiolo. He got a few lessons from Vinci, and was afterwards under the care of Albertinelli, and Pier di Cosimo, but he finally became the pupil of Andrea. He excited the jealousy of this master, was induced by unhandsome treatment to withdraw from his school, and afterwards became not only the imitator of Andrea, but his rival in many undertakings. The Visitation in the cloister of the Servi, the picture of several saints at S. Michelino, the two pictures of the History of Joseph, represented in minute figures, in an apartment of the ducal gallery, shew that he trod without difficulty in the footsteps of his master, and that congeniality of talent led him into a similar path. I use the term similar; for he is not a copyist, like those who borrow heads or whole figures, but invariably retains a peculiar originality. I saw one of his Holy Families in the possession of the Marquis Cerbone Pucci, along with others by Baccio, by Rosso, and Andrea: the picture by Pontormo vied with them all; but yet was sufficiently characteristic.

He had a certain singularity of disposition, and readily abandoned one style to try a better; but he was often unsuccessful; as likewise happened to Nappi, of Milan; to Sacchi, of Rome; and to every other artist who has made this attempt, at an age too far advanced for a change of manner. The Carthusian Monastery at Florence has some of his works, from which connoisseurs have inferred the three styles attributed to him. The first is correct in design, vigorous in colouring, and approaches the manner of Andrea. In the second the drawing is good, but the colouring somewhat languid; and this style became the model for Bronzino and the artists of the succeeding epoch. The third is a close imitation of Albert Durer, not only in the composition but in the heads and draperies; a manner certainly unworthy of so promising an outset. It is difficult to find specimens of Pontormo in this style, except some histories of the Passion, which he servilely copied from the prints of Albert Durer, for the cloister of that monastery, where he trifled away several years. We might perhaps notice a fourth manner, if the Deluge and Last Judgment, on which he spent eleven years at S. Lorenzo, had still existed: but this his last performance, with the tacit consent of every artist, was whitewashed. Here he attempted to imitate Michelangiolo, and like him to afford a model of the anatomical style, which at this time began to be extolled at Florence above every other: but he taught us a different lesson, and only succeeded in demonstrating that an old man ought not to become the votary of fashion.

Andrea pursued the custom of Raffaello and other artists of that age, in conducting his works with the assistance of painters experienced in his style, whether they were friends or scholars; a remark not useless to those who may trace in his pictures the labours of another pencil. It is known that he gave Pontormo some pieces to finish, and that he retained one Jacone, and a Domenico Puligo; two individuals who possessed a natural turn for painting, ready and willing to try every species of imitation, and more desirous of recreation than of fame. The façade of the Buondelmonte Palace, at S. Trinità, by the former, was highly extolled. It was in chiaroscuro; the drawing, in which department he excelled, was very beautiful, and the whole conducted in the manner of Andrea. He also executed some oil pictures at Cortona, which are much commended by Vasari. Domenico Puligo was less skilled in design than in colouring: his tints were sweet, harmonious, and clear, but he apparently aimed at covering the outline, to relieve him from the necessity of perfect accuracy. By this mark he is sometimes recognized in Madonnas and in cabinet pictures, (his usual occupation) which having been perhaps designed by Andrea, at first sight pass for the work of that master. Domenico Conti was likewise very intimate with Andrea, was his scholar and the heir to his drawings; and that great artist was honoured with a tomb and epitaph designed by Conti, in the vicinity of his own immortal works in the Nunziata. Excepting this circumstance, Vasari notices nothing praiseworthy in Conti, and therefore I shall take no more notice of him. He gives a more favourable opinion of Pierfrancesco di Jacopo di Sandro, on account of his three pictures in the church of S. Spirito. He makes honourable mention of two other artists, who lived long in France, viz. Nannoccio and Andrea Squazzella, who always retained a similarity to the style of Andrea del Sarto. It is not our present business to notice those who abandoned it; for in this work it is my wish to keep sight rather of the different styles than of the masters.

The fine copies that so often pass for originals, in Florence and other places, are chiefly the work of the above mentioned artists; nor does it seem credible that Andrea copied so closely his own inventions, and reduced them with his own hand from the great scale to small dimensions. I have seen one of his Holy Families, in which S. Elizabeth appears, in ten or twelve collections; and other pictures in three or four private houses. I found the S. Lorenzo surrounded by other saints, at the Pitti Palace, in the Albani gallery; the Visitation, in the Giustiniani palace; the Birth of our Lady, in the convent of the Servi, in the possession of Sig. Pirri, at Rome: all these are beautiful little pictures, all on small panels, all of the old school, and all believed the work of Andrea. It seems to me not improbable that the best of these were at least painted in his studio, and retouched by him, a practice adopted by Tiziano, and even by Raffaello.

Rosso, who contended in the cloisters of the Nunziata, with the best masters, and who appears in his Assumption to have aimed at a work not so much superior in beauty as in size to the productions of the other artists, is among the greatest painters of his school. Endowed with a creative fancy, he disdained to follow any of his countrymen or strangers; and indeed one recognizes much originality in his style: his heads are more spirited, his head dresses and ornaments are more tasteful, his colouring more lively, his distribution of light and shade broader, and his pencilling more firm and free, than had been hitherto seen in Florence. He appears in short to have introduced into that school a peculiar spirit, that would have been unexceptionable, had it not been mingled with something of extravagance. Thus, in the Transfiguration at Città di Castello, instead of the Apostles he introduced a band of gypsies at the bottom of the picture. His picture in the Pitti palace, however, is far removed from any such fault. It exhibits various saints, grouped in so excellent a manner, that the chiaroscuro of one figure contributes to the relief of another; and it has such beautiful contrasts of colour and of light, such energy of drawing and of attitude, that it arrests attention by its originality. He likewise painted for the State: an unfinished Descent from the Cross may be seen in the oratory of S. Carlo, in Volterra; and another in the church of S. Chiara at Città S. Sepolcro; in the cathedral of which there are many old pictures. Its great merit consists in the principal group, and that twilight, or almost nocturnal tint, that gives a tone to the whole piece, sombre, true, and worthy of any Flemish artist. The works of this painter are very scarce in Italy; for he went to France into the employment of Francis I. during his best time, and superintended the ornamental painting and plaster work then going on at Fontainebleau. Whilst engaged in this work, he unhappily put an end to his existence by poison; and in the enlargement of the building many of his works were defaced by Primaticcio, who was a rival, but not a follower, as is pretended by Cellini.[171] Thirteen pictures, dedicated to the fame and actions of Francis I. have escaped, and are described by Abbé Guget, in his Memoir on the Royal Academy of France.[172] Among these is the remarkable one of Ignorance Banished by that monarch; a picture that has been three different times engraved. He was assisted in those works by several artists, amongst whom were three Florentine painters, Domenico del Barbieri, Bartolommeo Miniati, and Luca Penni, the brother of that Gianfrancesco, called Il Fattore in the school of Raffaello.

Ridolfo di Domenico Ghirlandaio lost his father in his infancy; but was so well initiated in the art, first by his paternal uncle Davide, and afterwards by Frate, that when Raffaello d'Urbino came to Florence, he became his admirer and his friend. On his departure from that city he left with him a Madonna, intended for Siena, that it might be completed by him; and having soon after gone to Rome, he invited him to assist in the decorations of the Vatican. Ridolfo declined this, unfortunately for his own name, which might thus have rivalled that of Giulio Romano. He undoubtedly possessed a facility, elegance, and vivacity of manner, to enable him to follow closely the style of his friend. That he was ambitious of imitating him, may be inferred from the pictures in his early manner, preserved in the church of S. Jacopo di Ripoli, and S. Girolamo, that bear some resemblance to the manner of Perugino, like the early productions of Raffaello. His taste is displayed to more advantage in two pictures, filled with many moderate sized figures, which were transferred from the Academy of Design to the Royal Gallery. They represent two stories of S. Zenobi, and perhaps approach nearer to the two pictures by Pinturicchio, in the cathedral of Siena, that were painted under the direction, and partly by the assistance of Raffaello, than to any other model; with this exception, that they retain more traces of the old school. We may remark, in the pictures of Ridolfo, some figures strikingly like those of Raffaello; and in the whole there appears a composition, an expression, and skill in improving nature to the standard of ideal beauty, apparently proceeding from principles conformable to the maxims of that great master. That he did not afterwards perfect them, is to be attributed to his not having seen the best productions of his friend, and to his study of the art having been retarded by his commercial pursuits.

On modernizing his manner, and by this means obtaining reputation, he aimed at nothing further; and continued to study painting rather as an amusement, than as a profession. He assembled round him artists of every description, and disdained not to impart advice to painters of ensigns, of furniture, or of scenes; still less to those who executed pictures for cabinets or churches. Many such who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century, are mentioned in history either as his pupils, or his companions. The following is a brief catalogue of them. Michele di Ridolfo assumed his name; because, on passing from the schools of Credi and Sogliani into that of Ridolfo, he was treated not so much as a companion as a son, till the death of Ghirlandaio. They painted many pictures conjointly, which always pass under their name; and of this number is the S. Anne of Città di Castello; an exquisite picture, both for elegance of design, and a peculiar fulness of colouring. Michele was particularly eminent in this department, which he diligently studied in his own works, and employed in his fresco pictures over several of the gates of the city; and he was selected by Vasari as the companion of his labours. Mariano da Pescia must have been much esteemed by Ridolfo; for when this master painted the frescos in the State Chapel of the Old Palace, a work which gained him high honour, he wished the smaller pieces to be painted by Mariano. There is a Holy Family in that place, in a firm but agreeable style: it is the only remaining production of this artist, who died young. He was of the Gratiadei family; a piece of information for which, with various others, I am indebted to the politeness of his fellow citizen Sig. Innocenzio Ansaldi, an able writer, both in poetry and prose, in whatever relates to the art. Carlo Portelli da Loro in Valdarno, proceeded from the same school. He painted much in the City, and sometimes with little harmony: yet the testimony of Vasari, and the picture of S. Romulus, which remains at the Santa, demonstrate his ability as an artist. Of Antonio del Ceraiuolo, little remains to commemorate the painter but the name. Mirabello da Salincorno, who was employed on the funeral obsequies of Bonarruoti, devoted himself to cabinet pictures; and an Annunciation, with his name, and the date of 1565, is said to be in the hands of the Baldovinetti family. It would be tiresome to follow Vasari, who, in several passages of his history, mentions artists now sunk into oblivion, that might have found a place here. I close the list with two illustrious names, Perino del Vaga, already noticed, but afterwards to be more frequently mentioned; and Toto del Nunziata, reckoned by the English the best of the Italian artists, who, in that century visited their island; though almost unknown among us.[173] He was the son of an obscure artist, but obtained celebrity; and Perino himself had not a more formidable rival in the school of Ridolfo.

This glorious epoch was not deficient in good landscape painters; although the art of landscape painting without figures was not yet in great repute. Vasari highly praises in this line one Antonio di Donnino Mazzieri, a scholar of Franciabigio, a bold designer, and a man of great invention in representing horses, and in landscape.

The grotesque came into fashion through the efforts of Morto da Feltro, and Giovanni da Udine. Both artists were settled at Florence, and there painted; especially the second, who decorated the palace of the Medicean family, and the chapel in the church of S. Lorenzo. Andrea, called di Cosimo, because he was the scholar of Rosselli, learnt this art from Morto,[174] and he obtained the surname of Feltrini, or perhaps Feltrino, from his best known master. He exercised the invention not only on walls but on furniture, on banners and festive decorations: abounding in fancy, he was the leader of a taste originating with him, and much imitated in Florence. His ornaments were more copious and rich than those of the ancients; were united in a different manner, and his figures were admirably adapted to them. Mariotto and Raffaello Mettidoro were his associates; but no artist was more employed than he in designing foliage for brocades on cloth, or in ornamental painting. Pier di Cosimo, and Bachiacca, or Bachicca, were very eminent in the grotesque; of whom, with others who began the study about the end of the first Epoch, I have already treated, among the old masters: but none of them modernized more than the latter, who was usually employed on small subjects, particularly on the furniture of private houses, and on small pictures, many of which were sent to England. About the time of his decease he was employed by the Duke Cosmo. He drew most elegant small historical designs for tapestry and beds, which were executed by his brother Antonio, an embroiderer whom Varchi commends; and by Gio. Rossi, and Niccolo Fiamminghi, who introduced the art of tapestry weaving into Florence.[175] His best work was a cabinet, which he ornamented divinely, says Vasari, with flowers and birds in oil colours.

Perspective was not cultivated in Italy during the 15th century, except so far as subservient to historical painting, and in this department the Venetian and Lombard masters were no less eminent than those of Florence or of Rome. After this period, artists began to represent arches, colonnades, porticos, and every other kind of architecture, in pictures appropriated to such subjects, to the great ornament of the theatres, and of religious and convivial festivities. One of the first who devoted himself to this study was Bastiano di Sangallo, the nephew of Giuliano, and of Antonio, and the brother of another Antonio, all of whom were eminent in architecture. He got the surname of Aristotile, from his disquisitions on anatomy, or on perspective, accompanied by a certain philosophic authority and ingenuity. He acquired the principles of his art from Pietro Perugino, but he soon abandoned his school, to adopt a more modern style. He exercised himself for several years in painting figures; he copied some subjects after his friends Michelangiolo and Raffaello; and aided by the advice of Andrea and Ridolfo, he produced not a few Madonnas and other pictures of his own composition: but not possessing invention in an eminent degree he latterly dedicated his attention wholly to perspective, in which he was initiated by Bramante; and exercised it during this epoch, when Florence abounded with grand funeral obsequies, and public festivities. Of these, the most memorable were those instituted on the election of Leo X. in 1513, and on his visit to Florence in 1515. He had in his train Michelangiolo, Raffaello, and other professors of the art, to deliberate concerning the façade of the church of S. Lorenzo, and other works which he meditated. His court added pomp to every spectacle; and Florence became, as it were, a new city. Arches were erected in the streets by Granacci and Rosso; temples or new façades were designed by Antonio da San Gallo, and Jacopo Sansovino; chiaroscuros were prepared by Andrea del Sarto; grotesques by Feltrino; basso-relievos, statues, and colossal figures, by Sansovino above mentioned, by Rustici, and Bandinelli; Ghirlandaio, Pontormo, Franciabigio, and Ubertini, adorned with exquisite taste the residence of the pontiff. I say nothing of the meaner artists, although in another age even these would not have been classed with the vulgar herd, but have obtained distinction: I shall content myself with observing that this emulation of genius, this display of the fine arts, in short this auspicious period, sufficed to confer on Florence the lasting appellation of another Athens; on Leo the name of another Pericles or Augustus.

Spectacles of this sort became afterwards more common to the citizens; for the Medici, on commencing their domination over a people whom they feared, affected popularity, like the Roman Cæsars, by promoting public hilarity. Hence, not only on extraordinary occasions, such as the elevation of Clement VII. to the papal chair, of Alexander, and of Cosmo to the chief magistracy of their country, on the marriage of the latter, on that of Giuliano and of Lorenzo de' Medici, and on the arrival of Charles V.; not only on such occasions, but frequently at other times, they instituted tournaments, masquerades, and representations, of which the decorations were magnificent, such as cars, robes, and scenery. In this improved state of every thing conducive to exquisite embellishment, industry became excited, and the number of painters and ornamental artists increased. Aristotile, to return to him, was always much employed; his perspectives were in great request in public places; his scenes in the theatre: the populace, unaccustomed to those ocular deceptions, were astonished; and it seemed to them as if they could ascend the steps, enter the edifices, and approach the balconies and windows in the pictures. The long life of Aristotile, coeval with the best epoch of painting, permitted him to serve the ruling family and his country, until his old age, when Salviati and Bronzino began to be preferred to him. He died in 1551.

While the city of Florence acquired so much glory by the genius of her artists, the other parts of the state afforded materials for future history, chiefly through the assistance of the Roman school. This happened more especially after 1527, when the sack of Rome dispersed the school of Raffaello and its young branches. Giulio Romano trained Benedetto Pagni at Pescia, who ought to be noticed among the assistants of his master at Mantua. If we credit some late writers, his native place possesses many of his works: but I acquiesce in the opinion of Sig. Ansaldi, in refusing to admit any of them as genuine, except the façade of the habitation of the Pagni family, now injured by time, and the picture of the Marriage of Cana in the Collegiate church, which is not his best production. Pistoia is indebted to Gio. Francesco Penni, or perhaps to Fattore, for a respectable scholar: this was Lionardo, an artist much employed in Naples and in Rome, where he was named Il Pistoia. I find him surnamed Malatesta by some, Guelfo by others; but I suspect that his true family name is to be collected from an inscription on an Annunciation in the little chapel of the canons of Lucca, which runs thus, Leonardus Gratia Pistoriensis. I am indebted to Sig. T. F. Bernardi above mentioned for this fact: and the picture is worthy of a descendant of Raffaello. I do not know that there is a single trace of Lionardo remaining in his native place: at the village of Guidi, in the diocese of Pistoia, one of his pictures is to be seen in the church of S. Peter, where the titular, and three other saints, stand around the throne of the Virgin.[176] Sebastiano Vini came from Verona, in I know not what year of the 16th century, and was enrolled among the citizens of Pistoia. His reputation and his pictures did honour to the country that adopted him. He left many works both in oil and fresco; but his most extraordinary production was in the suppressed church of S. Desiderio. The façade over the great altar was storied with the crucifixion of the ten thousand martyrs, a work abounding in figures and invention. I have noticed the younger Zacchia of Lucca, who belongs to this epoch, in the preceding one, that I might not separate the father and the son. I am unable to find any other artists sufficiently worthy of record in this district of Tuscany.

On the opposite side of it we may turn our eyes to Cortona, and notice two good artists. The one was Francesco Signorelli, the nephew of Luca, who, though unnoticed by Vasari, shows himself a painter worthy of praise, by a circular picture of the patron saints of the city, which was executed for the council hall, in 1320; after which period he lived at least forty years. The other was Tommaso Paparello, or Papacello, both which names are given him by Vasari, when writing of his two masters, Caporali and Giulio Romano. He assisted them both, but I can discover no trace of any work wholly his own.

Borgo, afterwards named Città San Sepolcro, could then boast its Raffaello, commonly called Raffaellino dal Colle, born at a small place a few miles from Borgo. He is reckoned among the disciples of Raffaello; but rather belongs to the school of Giulio, whose pupil, dependant, or assistant in his labours at Rome, and in the Te at Mantua, he is considered by Vasari. It is singular that he did not write a separate life of this artist; but assigns him scanty praise in a few scattered anecdotes. His merit is but little known to the public, as he painted for the most part in his native place, or the neighbouring cities; and I am able to add to the catalogue of his pictures from having seen them. He has two pictures at Città San Sepolcro, his only works specified by Vasari. One represents the resurrection of our Saviour, who, full of majesty, regards the soldiers around the sepulchre with an air of displeasure, which fills them with terror. This very spirited picture is in the Church of S. Rocco, and is repeated in the cathedral. The other, which is in the Osservanti of S. Francis, represents the Assumption of the Virgin; a piece agreeable both in colouring and design, but its value is diminished by a figure I am unable to explain, drawn at one side of it by another hand. The same subject is treated in the church of the Conventual friars, at Città di Castello, where great beauty is joined to the highest possible finish, but it loses something of its effect by standing opposite to a fine picture by Vasari, which throws it strongly into the shade. An entombing of Christ by Raffaellino, is in the Servi; a very beautiful picture, but the colouring is less firm; and there is another of his works at S. Angelo with S. Michael, and S. Sebastian, who humbly presents an arrow, a type of his martyrdom, to the infant Jesus and the Virgin. In this the composition is simple but graceful in every part. A picture of our Lady, with S. Sebastian, S. Rocco, and a canonized bishop, painted in a similar style, is to be seen in the church of S. Francis of Cagli; in it the figures and the landscape much resemble the manner of Raffaello. His Apostles in the sacristy of the cathedral of Urbino are noble figures, draped in a grand style, in small oblong pictures, firmly coloured. The Olivet monks of Gubbio have in one of their chapels a Nativity by Raffaellino, and two pieces from the history of S. Benedict, painted in fresco, in which he was, I believe, assisted by his scholars. The former is certainly superior to the two last, although he has introduced in them real portraits, finely conceived architecture, and added a figure of Virtue in the upper part, that seems a sister of the Sybils of Raffaello. He also painted, in the castle of Perugia, and in the Imperiale of Pesaro, a villa of the duke of Urbino, to whom he afforded more satisfaction than the two Dossi. After having assisted Raffaello and Giulio, he disdained not to paint after the designs of less eminent artists. On the arrival of Charles V. at Florence, in 1536, he assisted Vasari, who was one of the decorators; and he painted cartoons after the designs of Bronzino, for the tapestry of Cosmo I.; after which period I do not find him mentioned. Another instance of his diffidence is the following: on the arrival of Rosso at San Sepolcro, Raffaellino, out of respect to that artist, gave up to him an order for a picture which he was to have executed; a rare instance among painters, who are in the habit of using kindly those artists only, who come merely to see a city, and immediately leave it. He kept a school at San Sepolcro, whence proceeded Gherardi, Vecchi, and other artists, some of whom, perhaps, surpassed him in genius; but they did not equal him in grace, nor in high finish.

About this time many artists flourished in Arezzo, but of these two only are praised by Vasari, who is not sparing in his commendations of the Florentines, as I have remarked, but deals them scantily to his own townsmen. Giovanni Antonio, the son of Matteo Lappoli, was the scholar of Pontormo, and the friend of Perino and of Rosso, with whom he lived in Tuscany, and whose style he emulated in Rome. He was more employed in painting for private houses than for churches. Guglielmo, surnamed Da Marcilla, by Vasari, a foreigner by birth, became a citizen of Arezzo from inclination and long residence; he was dear to the citizens, who afforded him the means of enjoying life, and grateful to the city, where he left most beautiful monuments of his genius. He had been a Dominican in his own country; he became a secular priest on arriving in Italy, and at Arezzo he was called the Prior. He was an excellent painter on glass, and on this account, was brought to Rome by one Claude, a Frenchman, to execute windows for Julius II.; but he also employed himself in fresco. He studied design in Italy, and so improved in that art, that his works at Rome seem designs of the fourteenth century, while the Aretine ones appear the work of a modern. He painted some ceilings and arches in the cathedral, with scriptural subjects in fresco. In design he followed Michelangiolo, as nearly as he could; but his colouring was not firm. His paintings on glass are quite in a different style; there, to very good drawing, and uncommon expression, he joined tints that partake of the emerald, the ruby, and of oriental sapphire, and which, when illuminated by the sun, exhibit all the brilliance of the rainbow. In Arezzo, there are so many windows of this glass at the cathedral, at S. Francis, and at many other churches, that they might excite the envy of much larger cities. They are so finely wrought with subjects from the New Testament, and other scriptural histories, that they seem to have reached the perfection of the art. The Vocation of S. Matthew, in a window of the cathedral, is highly praised by Vasari; it exhibits "perspectives of temples and flights of steps, figures so finely composed, landscapes so well executed, that one can hardly imagine they were glass, but something sent down from Heaven for the delight of mankind."

This place and period remind me, that before I pass on to another epoch, I ought to say a few words concerning the invention of painting on glass, which was anciently likewise styled Mosaic, because it was composed of pieces of different coloured glass, connected by lead, which represented the shadows. We may observe glass windows that emulate well composed pictures on canvass or on panel; and this art is treated of by Vasari in the thirty-second chapter of the introduction to his work. From the preface to the treatise De omni scientiâ artis pingendi, by Theophilus the Monk, I find that France was celebrated for this art beyond any other country;[177] and there the art seems to have been invariably cultivated, and brought by degrees to perfection. From the earliest ages of the revival of painting, the Italians wrought windows with different coloured glasses, as is remarked by P. Angeli in his description of the churches of Assisi, where the most ancient specimens are to be seen. In the church likewise of the Franciscan friars at Venice, we find that one Frater Theotonius, a German, worked in tapestry and glass windows, and was imitated by one Marco, a painter, who lived in the year 1335.[178] It may also be observed, that such windows over the altars supplied the place of sacred paintings in churches; Christian congregations, in lifting up their eyes, there sought the resemblance of what "they hoped some time to behold in the celestial paradise: che ancor lassù nel ciel vedere spera," and they often addressed their supplications to those images. In the fifteenth century Lorenzo Ghiberti, a man eminent in various arts, still further improved this, and ornamented the oval windows of the façade of the church of S. Francis, and of the cathedral of Florence with coloured glass. In a similar manner he finished all the oval apertures in the cupola of the cathedral, except that of the Assumption, executed by Donatello. The glass was manufactured at Florence, for which purpose one Domenico Livi, a native of Gambassi, in the principality of Volterra, who had learnt and practised the art at Lubec, was invited to that place, as is proved by Baldinucci in his correction of Vasari.[179] From this school apparently came Goro, and Bernardo di Francesco, with that train of Ingesuati, whose workmanship, exhibited at S. Lorenzo and elsewhere, has been much commended by the Florentine historians. (See Moreni, part vi. p. 41.) This art afterwards flourished at Arezzo, where it was introduced by Parri Spinelli, a scholar of Ghiberti. About the same time flourished in Perugia P. D. Francesco, a monk of Cassino, not merely a painter in glass, but a master in that city; and some conjecture that Vannucci profited by his school, though a comparison of dates does not much favour such a supposition. This art also flourished in Venice, about 1473, where one window was executed after the design of Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the church of S. John and S. Paul, and another was erected at Murano; but the art of painting glass could not be unknown at this last place, where it originated.

It is true, that in process of time the Florentine and Venetian glass appeared to be not sufficiently transparent for such purposes; and that a preference was given to that of France and of England, the clearness and transparency of which was better adapted for receiving the colours, without too much obscuring the light. It had this other advantage, that the colours were burnt in the glass, in the manner described by Vasari, instead of being laid on with gums or other vehicles; hence they had greater brilliancy, and were more capable of resisting the injuries of time. This was a Flemish, or rather a French invention, and the Italians unquestionably received it from France. Bramante invited from that country the two artists above mentioned, who, besides the windows of the Vatican palace, that were wrought with colours burnt into the glass, and destroyed in the sack of Rome, in the time of Clement VII. ornamented two in the church of S. Maria del Popolo, with those scriptural histories that yet remain perfectly brilliant in colour, after the lapse of three centuries. Soon after this Claude died at Rome. William survived him many years, and from that time continued to reside in Arezzo. He there was engaged in the service of the capital, where one of his painted glass windows is preserved in the Capponi chapel, at the church of S. Felicità; and he taught the art to Pastorino of Siena, who exercised it very skilfully in the state saloon of the Vatican, after the designs of Vaga, and in the cathedral of Siena. This artist is reckoned the best scholar of his master. Maso Porro, Michelagnolo Urbani, both natives of Cortona, and Batista Borro of Arezzo, were trained in the same school, and were afterwards employed in Tuscany and elsewhere. In ornamenting the old palace, Vasari availed himself of the assistance of two Flemish artists, Walter and George, who wrought after his designs. Celebrated equal to any artist is Valerio Profondavalle of Louvain, who settled at Milan after the middle of the sixteenth century, a man of fertile invention, and a pleasing colourist in fresco painting, but chiefly eminent in painting on glass, as we are informed by Lomazzo. Orlandi celebrates Gerardo Ornerio Frisio, and his windows executed about 1575, in the church of S. Peter at Bologna. This art afterwards declined, when custom, the arbiter of arts, by excluding it from palaces and churches, caused it gradually to be forgotten.

Another method of painting on glass, or rather on crystal, was much in fashion in the last century, and was employed for ornamenting mirrors, caskets, and other furniture of the chambers of the great. Maratta and his contemporaries on crystal for such works in the same style that they employed in painting on canvass; and above all Giordano, who taught it to several pupils. Among these, the best was Carlo Garofalo, who was invited to the court of Charles II. of Spain, to practise this species of painting,[180] the era of which does not embrace a great number of years.

[128] Although Vasari, Borghini, and Baldinucci, have also treated of other schools, they have chiefly illustrated that of Florence, with which they were best acquainted. To them succeeded the respectable authors of the Florentine Museum, and of the Series of the most celebrated Painters, containing choice anecdotes of those masters, which are now republished, and accompanied by a print from the work of each painter, in the Etruria Pittrice of the learned Sig. Ab. Lastri. Other anecdotes are to be found in the work of P. Richa On the Churches of Florence, and in Sig. Cambiagi's Guide to that City. Pisa too, has its Guide by the Cav. Titi; to which has succeeded the much larger work of Sig. da Morrona, above noticed. Siena has one by Sig. Pecci, Volterra another by Ab. Giachi, and Pescia and Valdinievole by the Ab. Ansaldi. Sig. Francesco Bernardi, an excellent connoisseur in the fine arts, prepared a guide to Lucca after Marchiò; it remains inedited since his death, together with his anecdotes of the painters, sculptors, and architects of his native country. Meanwhile the Diario of Mons. Mansi affords considerable information.

[129] Condivi promised to publish them, but this was never performed. See Bottari's notes on the life of Michelangiolo, p. 152, in Florent. edit. 1772.

[130] See the fine eulogy on him by Sig. Durazzini, among his Panegyrics on illustrious Tuscans, where he corrects Vasari, his annotators and others, who have fixed the birth of Lionardo before this year. Tom. iii. n. 25.

[131] See Sig. Piacenza, in his edition of Baldinucci, t. ii. p. 252. He has dedicated a long appendix to Vinci, in which he has collected all the anecdotes scattered through Vasari, Lomazzo, Borghini, Mariette, and other modern authors.

[132] "Leonardo seems to have trembled whenever he sat down to paint, and therefore never finished any of the pictures he began; for by meditation on the perfection of art, he perceived faults in what to others appeared admirable." Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della pittura, page 114.

[133] Both have perished, after serving as models to the best painters of that age, and even to Andrea del Sarto. See what has been written by Vasari, and by M. Mariette, in the long letter concerning Vinci, which is inserted in tom. ii. of Lett. Pittoriche.

[134] It was on account of the same procrastinating disposition that Leo X. withdrew the patronage he had conferred on him, and which he was accustomed to bestow upon all men of genius.

[135] Vasari.

[136] Vasari, who published a life of him in 1550, and enlarged it in another edition; and Ascanio Condivi da Ripatransone, who printed one in 1553, ten years before the death of Bonarruoti.

[137] He was very partial to this poet; whose flights of fancy he embodied in pen-drawings in a book, which, unfortunately for the art, has perished; and to whose memory he wished to sculpture a magnificent monument, as appears from a petition to Leo X. In it the Medicean Academy requests the bones of the divine poet; and among the subscribers we read the name of Michelangiolo, and also his offer. Gori Illustraz. alla vita del Condivi, p. 112.

[138] He projected a tract on "All the movements of the human body, on its external appearances, and on the bones, with an ingenious theory, the fruit of his long study." Condivi, p. 117.

[139] "Zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id amplius et augustius ratus; atque ut existimant Homerum secutus, cui validissima quæque forma etiam in fœminis placet." Inst. Orat. lib. xii. c. 10.

[140] None however of these great men presumed to despise Michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of Christ, in the Minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the Arte di Vedere. Mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. Juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (See Satire iii. v. 100.)

——"rides? majore cachinno Concutitur; flet si lacrymam conspexit amici, Nee dolet: igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas Accipit endromidem; si dixeris: æstuo, sudat."

[141] Bottari confesses "that he shews somewhat of mannerism, but concealed with such skill that it is not perceptible;" an art which very few of his imitators possess.

[142] See Winckelmann in his "Gems of Baron Stochs," where he records and comments upon the text of the historian, p. 316.

[143]

"Duo Dossi e quel che a par sculpe e colora Michel più che mortal Angiol divino." Orl. Fur. Cant. xxxiii. 2.

[144] Raffaello came to Florence towards the end of 1504. (Lett. Pitt. tom. i. p. 2.) In this year Michelangiolo was called to Rome, and left his cartoon imperfect. Having afterwards fled from Rome, through dread of Julius II., he completed it in three months, in the year 1506. Compare the Brief of Julius, in which he recals Michelangiolo (Lett. Pitt. tom. iii. p. 320), with the relation of Vasari (tom. vi. Ed. Fiorent. p. 191). During the time that Michelangiolo laboured at this work, "he was unwilling to shew it to any person (p. 182); and when it was finished it was carried to the hall of the Pope," and was there studied (p. 184). Raffaello had then returned to Florence, and this work might open the way to his new style, which, as a learned Englishman expresses it, is intermediate between that of Michelangiolo and of Perugino.

[145] He chose the companions of those who had painted in the Sistine, Jacopo di Sandro (Botticelli), Agnolo di Donnino, a great friend of Rosselli, and the elder Indaco, a pupil of Ghirlandaio, who were but feeble artists. Bugiardini, Gianacci and Aristotile di S. Gallo, of whom we shall take further notice in the proper place, were there also.

[146] Varchio, in his Funeral Oration, p. 15.

[147] Idea del Tempio della Pittura, p. 47. Ed. Bologn.

[148] Tom. vi. p. 398.

[149] See Entretiens sur les Vies et sur les Ouvrages des plus excellens Peintres, tom. i. p. 502.

[150] See pp. 245, 253.

[151] Lett. Pitt. tom. iii. lett. 227. Rosa, Sat. iii. p. 85.

[152] Salvator Rosa in his third satire, p. 84, narrates the rebuke which the Prelate gave Michelangiolo for his indecency in painting the Saints themselves without garments.

[153] Microscosmo, p. 6.

[154] Tom. ii. p. 254.

[155] He is also blamed for this part of the perspective by others. (See P. M. della Valle in the "Prosa recitata in Arcadia," 1784, p. 260, of the Giorn. Pis. tom, liii.)

[156] Malv. tom. ii. p. 254.

[157] Vite de' Pittori, &c. p. 44.

[158] Dialogo sopra la Pittura.

[159] Idea del Tempio della Pittura, p. 41.

[160] Conca, Descriz. Odeporica della Spagna, tom. i. page 24.

[161] The ignorant believe that Michelangiolo "nailed a man to a cross and left him there to expire, in order to paint from the life a figure of our Saviour on the cross." See Dati, in his notes of the Life of Parrhasius, who is said to have committed a similar homicide. This story of the latter is probably a fable, and undoubtedly it is so of Michelangiolo. The crucifixions of this artist are often repeated, sometimes with a single figure, sometimes with our Lady and S. John; at other times with two Angels, who collect the blood. Bottari mentions several of these pictures in different galleries. To these we may add the picture of the Caprara palace, and those in the possession of Monsignor Bonfigliuoli and of Sigg. Biancani in Bologna. Sig. Co. Chiappini of Piacenza has a very good one, and there is another in the church of the college of Ravenna.

[162] A name given by the Italians to pictures of a dead Christ on the knees of his mother.

[163] Bottari, in his Notes to the Letter of Preziado, doubts whether this supposed scholar of Michelangiolo be Galeazzo Alessi, remarking at the same time that this last was rather an architect than a painter. I am inclined to think that the Matteo in question may have been the foregoing Matteo da Lecce, or da Leccio, and that owing to one of those errors, which Clerche in his "Arte Critica," calls ex auditu, his name in Spain became D'Alessi, or D'Alessio, the letters c and s in many countries being made use of reciprocally. Besides, this Leccese, of whom we write in the fourth volume, flourished in the time of Vargas, went to Spain, affected the style of Michelangiolo, and never settled himself in any place from his desire of seeing the world. Memoirs of him appear to have been collected in Spain, by Pacheco, who lived in 1635 (Conca, iii. 252), who in his account, at this distance of time, must have been guided by vulgar report; a bad authority for names, particularly those of foreigners, as was noticed in the Preface. That he should further be called Roman instead of Italian, in a foreign country, and that he should there adopt the name of Perez, not having assumed any surname in Rome, can scarcely appear strange to the reader, and the more so as he is described as an adventurer—a species of persons who subsist upon tricks and frauds.

[164] Sebastiano painted it again for the Osservanti of Viterbo; and there is a similar one described in the Carthusian Monastery, at Naples, which is painted in oil, and is supposed to be the work of Bonarruoti.

[165] Limbo, among theologians of the Roman Church, is the place where the souls of just men, who died before the coming of our Saviour, and of unbaptized children, are supposed to reside.

[166] This noble fresco was ruined during the revolutionary tumults at Rome.—Tr.

[167] That Raffaello was at this time well versed in perspective it is unreasonable to doubt, as Bottari has done: he proceeded from the school of Perugino, who was very eminent in that science; and he left a good specimen at Siena, where he remained some time before he came to Florence.

[168] Vol. iii. p. 126.

[169] This is conspicuous in a S. Raffaello with Tobias, which was transferred from the royal gallery of Florence to the imperial gallery of Vienna.—See Rosa Scuola Italiana, p. 141.

[170] Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxv. cap 10.

[171] "Any excellence he possessed was stolen from the admirable manner of our Florentine painter, Rosso; a man truly of wonderful genius." Cellini, in his life, as quoted by Baldinucci, tom. v. p. 72. He who writes thus of the ablest pupil of Giulio Romano, either was unacquainted with his works in Bologna, and in Mantua, executed before he knew Rosso, or blinded by party rage, was incapable of appreciating them.

[172] Page 81.

[173] About the time when Michele taught, there resided in Spain one Tommaso Fiorentino; one of whose portraits is mentioned by the Sig. Ab. Conca, (tom. i. p. 90,) belonging to the Royal Palace at Madrid. In the Ducal Palace of Alva, there are also galleries of grotesques, where we read the name of Tommaso Fiorentino, the author, to which is added (tom. ii. p. 362) "The name of this professor of the art is quite new to me; in his grotesques we meet with the exact style of the sons of Bergamasco, &c." I hardly know how the name can appear new to the Ab. Conca, when he had already mentioned it elsewhere; nor how the composition of an artist, who painted in 1521, could resemble that of others who were still young in the year 1570, in which their father died.

[174] Vasari, in his Life of Morto, says, that he came to Florence in order to improve his skill in figures, in which he was deficient, by studying the models of Vinci and of Michelangiolo. In despair, however, he returned to his grotesques. Now I shall elsewhere produce an unedited document shewing his ability in figure painting, which I should not have occasion to do if the beautiful portrait of Morto, in the Royal Gallery at Florence, was, as is conjectured, by his hand. But I am inclined to think that it is the likeness of an unknown person, who, as I have seen in other portraits, caused himself to be drawn with a finger pointing to a death's head, in order to remind him of his mortality, but in this picture the head has been capriciously interpreted as a symbol of the name of Morto, and the painting given as the portrait and work of Feltrese; of whom Vasari gives a very different one.

[175] They wrought from the designs of Pontormo, and still more those of Bronzino. They also wrought for the Duke of Ferrara after the designs of Giulio Romano, published by Gio. Battista Mantuano, among his prints.

[176] A similar composition is to be seen in an altar-piece in the cathedral of Volterra. It is inscribed, Opus Leonardi Pistoriens. an. 1516. This, however, ought not to be passed over on account of an historical doubt started by the Cavalier Tolomei, whether there flourished, at the same period, two Lionardi da Pistoja; thus insinuating they were of different families. And this would appear to be the case. The painter of the piece in Volterra was not Grazia, at Naples, probably, surnamed Guelfo; since his master Penni, if we are to believe Vasari, was in that year, 1516, still the scholar and assistant of Raffaello; nor does it seem probable that he educated a pupil of so much merit. The Leonardo, therefore, who painted in Volterra, must have been some other of more proficiency.

[177] "Hic invenies quidquid diversorum colorum generibus et mixturis habet Græcia … quidquid in fenestrarum varietate pretiosa diligit Francia."

[178] Zanetti, Nuova Raccolta delle Monete e Zecche d'Italia, (tom. iv. p. 158). In this work we meet with a long Latin document, which makes mention of a brother of Marco, named Paolo, also a painter; qui habet in cartâ designatam mortem S. Francisci, et Virginis gloriose, sicut picte sunt ad modum theutonicum in pano (i.e. panno) ad locum minorum in Tarvisio.

[179] Tom. iii. p. 25.

[180] Bellori vite de' Pittori, &c. page 392.