A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools

A picture "with a pedigree," being mentioned by Vasari. "In the church of the Scala (at Verona)," he says, in his life of the painter, "the picture of the Madonna with St. Anna is by his hand, and is placed between the San Sebastiano of Il Moro and the San Rocco of Cavazzola (Morando)." The latter picture (735) and Girolamo's now hang on the same wall of our Gallery. In the composition of this picture one may trace, perhaps, the influence of the dainty work Girolamo was first accustomed to. Thus the trefoil, or cloverleaf pattern, is followed both in the arrangement of the Virgin, St. Anne, and the Child, and in that of the little playing angels below. Notice the pretty trellis-work of roses on either side, and the slain dragon at the Virgin's feet, emblematic (the latter) of Christ's victory over the powers of evil, and (the former) of the "ways of pleasantness" and "paths of peace" that he came to prepare.

749. THE GIUSTI FAMILY OF VERONA

Niccolo Giolfino (Veronese: painted 1486-1518).

Little is known of this painter except that he was a friend of Mantegna. The façade of his house at Verona was painted with frescoes, the upper part by Mantegna, the lower by Giolfino himself. He was probably a scholar of Liberale, to whose altar-piece in the cathedral at Verona he added the wings. One of his best works is a large altar-piece in S. Anastasia in that city.

Two groups of family portraits, chiefly interesting for studies in costume, originally in one picture, which formed the predella of an altar-piece: hence the upward look of some of the faces.

750. THE DOGE GIOVANNI MOCENIGO

Lazzaro Bastiani (Venetian: about 1425-1512). See also (p. xx)

This picture was, until recently, ascribed to Carpaccio, of whom, therefore, some account is here retained. It was once inscribed with Carpaccio's name and the date 1479, but these, having been shown to be false, were removed. The work is now attributed, in accordance with the conclusions reached by Signor Molmenti and Dr. Ludwig179 to Bastiani.

Lazzaro Bastiani was for many years the victim of one of Vasari's confusions. Carpaccio, we are told by that authority, "taught his art to two of his brothers, both of whom imitated him closely; one of these was called Lazzaro, the other Sebastiano." No such painters existed; but the name of Lazzaro Bastiani is on record as that of a painter already at work in 1449. The presumption is, therefore, that he was not taught by, but the master of, Carpaccio, by which latter painter there is no dated work before 1490. Numerous records of later works by Bastiani from 1449 onwards have been discovered; and there is a public document of December 11, 1508, in which Bastiani and Carpaccio were appointed to value the frescoes executed by Giorgione on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Our picture, hitherto supposed to be an early work of Carpaccio, should be compared with the signed and dated (1484) work of Bastiani in the Duomo of Murano, representing a Canon kneeling before the Virgin. Other pictures by him are in the Academies of Vienna and Venice respectively.

Various technical similarities between the work of Bastiani and Carpaccio are pointed out by Sig. Molmenti and Dr. Ludwig, but Bastiani's pictures lack the charm and gaiety of Carpaccio and his chief claim to fame is that which the critics now award him of having been the master of that great painter.

The works of Vittore Carpaccio (about 1450-1522) have of recent years attracted great attention owing to the prominence given to them by Ruskin in all his writings since 1870. Of "The Presentation" in the Venetian Academy (dated 1510) he says: "You may measure yourself, outside and in, – your religion, your taste, your knowledge of art, your knowledge of men and things, – by the quantity of admiration which honestly, after due time given, you can feel for this picture. You are not required to think the Madonna pretty, or to receive the same religious delight from the conception of the scene which you would rightly receive from Angelico, Filippo Lippi, or Perugino. This is essentially Venetian, – prosaic, matter of fact, – retaining its supreme common-sense through all enthusiasm. Nor are you required to think this a first-rate work in Venetian colour. This is the best picture in the Academy, precisely because it is not the best piece of colour there; – because the great master has subdued his own main passion, and restrained his colour-faculty, though the best in Venice, that you might not say the moment you came before the picture, as you do of the Paris Bordone, 'What a piece of colour!' Carpaccio does not want you to think of his colour, but of your Christ… If you begin really to feel the picture, observe that its supreme merit is in the exactly just balance of all virtue; – detail perfect, yet inconspicuous; composition intricate and severe, but concealed under apparent simplicity; and painter's faculty of the supremest, used nevertheless with entire subjection of it to intellectual purpose." Other powers of Carpaccio are better seen in the St. Ursula Series, also in the Venetian Academy, and since Ruskin's day honourably hung. "They are," says Layard, "masterly works, rich in all that gives value and grandeur to historical art. The rather monotonous history which forms the groundwork of many of them is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by happy moral allusions. The colours, notwithstanding injudicious cleanings and restorations, still shine with the purest light. The variety of expression, always lifelike, in the many figures, their beautiful and simple action, and the admirable dramatic representation of the different incidents connected with the story, give these pictures an inexpressible charm. The subject of the dream of the young St. Ursula, in bed in her chamber, with her table and an open book upon it and her vase of flowers, has a purity and simplicity quite unique" (i. 320). These pictures were painted 1490-5. Of later date (1502-1511) is the series in the little church of S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni. They are full of the charm of picturesque reality, the wealth of rich and quaint accessories, the playful fancy and penetrative imagination, which characterise Carpaccio. Occasional works by him are to be seen in various continental galleries (e. g. Milan and Ferrara); but it is only in Venice that any adequate conception of him can be formed. Of his life little is known. He was born either in one of the Venetian islands, or in Istria. He generally signed himself "Victor Carpathius." Vasari calls him Scarpaccia; in old Venetian documents, he is Scarpaza. "He was associated with Gentile Bellini in executing the historical paintings for the Hall of the Great Council in the Ducal Palace, and it has been thought possible that he accompanied Gentile to Constantinople as an assistant. The minute knowledge of Oriental customs and costumes which his works display suggests that he had visited the East, and even those parts of it which were then still under the sway of the Sultans of Egypt" (Burton). Ruskin's criticisms, and descriptions of his principal pictures, will be found in his Guide to the Academy at Venice, St. Mark's Rest (Supplements), and Fors Clavigera, 1872, xx.; 1873, xxvi.; 1876, pp. 329, 340, 357, 381; 1877, p. 26; 1878, p. 182. An earlier reference is in the Oxford Lectures on Art, § 73. Copies from some of Carpaccio's "Schiavoni" pictures are in the Arundel Society's Collection. Copies of the "Ursula" series and other pictures made for Ruskin are in the St. George's Museum at Sheffield.

This is a votive picture commissioned by Giovanni Mocenigo (who reigned over Venice 1477-1485), to be presented by him, according to the custom with reigning doges, to the Ducal Palace. The scene selected represents the doge kneeling before the Virgin and begging her protection on the occasion of the plague of 1478. The gold vase on the altar before the throne contains medicaments, for which, according to the inscription below, a blessing is invoked: "Celestial Virgin, preserve the City and Republic of Venice and the Venetian State, and extend your protection to me if I deserve it." Behind the doge is his patron saint St. John, on the opposite side is St. Christopher. The setting thus chosen for the doge's picture is characteristic. "The first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of its vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than that principle of portraiture which prevails with us in these days, whose end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in face and in all circumstances of accompaniment; tending constantly to insolence of attitude, and levity and haughtiness of expression, and worked out further in mean accompaniments of worldly splendour and possession; together with hints or proclamations of what the person has done or supposes himself to have done, which, if known, it is gratuitous in the portrait to exhibit, and, if unknown, it is insolent to proclaim… To which practices are to be opposed … the mighty and simple modesty of … Venice, where we find the … doges not set forth with thrones and curtains of state, but kneeling, always crownless, and returning thanks to God for his help; or as priests, interceding for the nation in its affliction" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 19). The picture was bought in 1865 from the Doge's descendant, Aloise Count Mocenigo di Sant' Eustachio.

751. MADONNA AND CHILD

Giovanni Santi (Umbrian: about 1440-1494).

This picture is of peculiar interest because it is by Raphael's father. It does not, however, give a full idea of the extent to which Raphael's talent was hereditary, for Giovanni's easel pictures, such as this, are inferior to his wall pictures. The young Raphael had all the advantages of an atmosphere of artistic culture. Giovanni, like his father before him, was a well-to-do burgher, and kept originally a general retail shop, but he afterwards – under the teaching, it is thought, of Melozzo da Forli – took to painting, and his house, if one may judge from Piero della Francesca's visit in 1467, was a resort of painters. At the brilliant court of Duke Federigo of Urbino, Giovanni moreover acquired a taste for literature, and there is a long rhyming chronicle by him extant in which he describes the Duke's visit to Mantua, and amongst other things praises greatly the works of Mantegna, Melozzo, and Piero della Francesca. But to see how much of Raphael's genius was original, one has only to compare this picture by the father with one (say 744) by the son. Giovanni's female heads are not without a mild dignity of their own; but his works lack the soft grace and winning charm that distinguish his son's.

"Worth study, in spite of what critics say of its crudity. Concede its immaturity, at least, though an immaturity visibly susceptible of a delicate grace, it wins you nevertheless to return again and again, and ponder, by a sincere expression of sorrow, profound, yet resigned, be the cause what it may, among all the causes of sorrow inherent in the ideal of maternity, human or divine. But if you keep in mind, when looking at it, the facts of Raphael's childhood,180 you will recognise in his father's picture, not the anticipated sorrow of the Mater Dolorosa over the dead son, but the grief of a simple household over the mother herself taken early from it. This may have been the first picture the eyes of the world's great painter of Madonnas rested on; and if he stood diligently before it to copy, and so copying, quite unconsciously, and with no disloyalty to his original, refined, improved, substituted, – substituted himself, in fact, his finer self – he had already struck the persistent note of his career" (Pater: Miscellaneous Studies, p. 32).

752. MADONNA AND CHILD

Lippo Dalmasii (Bolognese: painted 1376-1410). See also (p. xx)

A picture by a Bolognese artist, of the Giottesque period, Lippo, son of Dalmasius, called also "Lippo of the Madonna," from the many pictures like this he painted: no Bolognese gentleman's family, we are told, was considered complete without one.

753. ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

Altobello Melone (Cremonese: painted about 1500).

There was no native and independent school of Cremona. Melone was a pupil of Romanino at Brescia. He painted some of the frescoes in the nave of Cremona Cathedral.

Two of Christ's disciples are walking after his death and burial to Emmaus. The risen Christ "drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden, that they should not know him" (Luke xxiv. 16). The painter makes excuses for the disciples not recognising their Master by naïvely dressing Him as a tourist with an alpenstock.

755. RHETORIC.}

756. MUSIC. }

Melozzo da Forli (Umbrian: 1438-1494).

Melozzo, born at Forli in the Romagna, near Ravenna, is classed with the Umbrian School, both because he studied (it is believed) under Piero della Francesca, and because he worked at Urbino. Giovanni Santi, who was his friend, especially praises Melozzo, "to me so dear," for his skill in perspective; and, like many other artists of these times, he was an architect as well as a painter. In 1472 he was in Rome; he was one of the original members of the Roman Academy of St. Luke, founded by Sixtus IV., and in the book of the Academy he signs his name as "Painter to the Pope." Some of his Roman frescoes are preserved. In the Vatican gallery is a fresco transferred to canvas, commemorating the restoration of the Vatican Library and containing many portraits. This work has been published by the Arundel Society, but Melozzo is more widely known by the figures of angels playing on musical instruments, now in the sacristy of St. Peter's, which have been published by the same Society. These grand figures of youths with abundant flowing hair are "among the most beautiful and masterful creations of the Renaissance spirit, caught up, it would seem, into a certain ecstasy and rapture of divine things." Portions of a fresco, painted for SS. Apostoli, representing the Ascension of our Lord, are now on the staircase of the Quirinal Palace. The work was "one of the most grand and daring feats of foreshadowing that art has bequeathed, and may be considered as the first illustration of that science which Mantegna and Correggio further developed" (Kugler). In this connection we may notice in our pictures that "the steps and the figures thereon are drawn in perspective, as if they were real objects seen from below; they present the earliest example the Gallery possesses of this kind of perspective illusion, which was practised with great success by Mantegna, and carried out on the grandest scale by Michael Angelo in the ceiling of the Sistine chapel" (Monkhouse, In the National Gallery, p. 115). About the year 1480 Melozzo went to Urbino, where he executed the work described below. In Forli itself a few frescoes by Melozzo survive. In the British Museum there are some drawings by this rare master.

These pictures are two of a series of seven, which were painted for the good Duke Frederick to decorate the library of the Ducal Palace at Urbino. The words on the frieze above our pictures are portions of a running inscription describing the Duke's style and titles. He was created "Gonfaloniere of the Church" (756) in 1465 and "Duke of Urbino" (755) in 1474. The series represented symbolically the seven arts – grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy – which, until the close of the Middle Ages, formed the curriculum of a liberal education. Notice in both pictures that the figures of the learners are kneeling – an attitude symbolical of the spirit of reverence and humility which distinguishes the true scholar ("I prayed, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me"); whilst the figures representing the sciences to be learned are seated on thrones – symbolical of the true kingship that consists in knowledge ("And I set her before kingdoms and thrones"), and are clothed about with pearls and other precious stones ("She is more precious than rubies").

In the picture of Rhetoric (755) the youth is being taught not to speak, but to read – "You must not speak," the Queen of Rhetoric seems to tell him, "until you have something to say." Notice, too, that Rhetoric is robed in cold gray. "You think Rhetoric should be glowing, fervid, impetuous? No. Above all things, – cool."

But Music (756) is robed in bright red, the colour of delight. The book now is closed. "After learning to reason, you will learn to sing; for you will want to. There is so much reason for singing in this sweet world, when one thinks rightly of it." Music points her scholar to a small organ – "not that you are never to sing anything but hymns, but that whatever is rightly called music, or work of the Muses, is divine in help and healing" (Mornings in Florence, v. 128, 134). Hanging from the wall on the left, almost above the scholar's head, is a sprig of bay, the Muses' crown. Other pictures of this same series are in the gallery at Berlin and in the Royal Collection at Windsor. The latter is of peculiar interest in the history of the Renaissance. It shows the Duke, his son and the Court, and a black-robed humanist, seated in a sort of pulpit – "the unique representation of a scene of frequent occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a part of every day's occupation" (see the description in Symonds, ii. p. 221).

757. CHRIST BLESSING LITTLE CHILDREN

Unknown (Dutch: School of Rembrandt).

This is one of the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. It was bought in 1866 as a Rembrandt and at a Rembrandt price (£7000), but was soon recognised as being only a work by some pupil. It is easy to be wise after the event, but it certainly seems strange that the connoisseurs of the time, even if technical differences had escaped them, should not have seen a lack of Rembrandt's power about this work. A writer in the Times (June 24, 1888) has no hesitation in ascribing the picture to Nicolas Maes. He says: "If it was painted by Maes it would probably have been after the series of small works, mostly dating about 1656. Maes was a pupil of Rembrandt in 1650, at the time when the master's treatment of sacred subjects was more direct than in his earlier years. In this picture fanciful costume is discarded, and the figures are painted straight from the life. The figure of Christ is, indeed, weak and conventional, but it is not to be expected that a young man would here be successful in a figure so foreign to his general practice; and, if we admit the supposition that the composition followed the small panels, the relaxation of style pervading the entire work tallies with the known facts of the career of Maes, who between 1660 and 1670 appears to have devoted himself almost entirely to portrait painting; these representations of Dutch and Antwerp burghers, though solid and respectable, possess none of the charm and interest of the earlier works owing their inspiration to the direct influence of Rembrandt." (See, for instance, No. 1277.) Some ascribe the picture with equal assurance to Lievens (see 1095); see an article by Ford Madox Brown in the Magazine of Art, Feb. 1890; others to Eeckhout (see The Athenæum, Jan. 19, 1907).

758. PORTRAIT OF THE COUNTESS PALMA OF URBINO

Piero della Francesca (Umbrian: 1416-1492). See 665.

Ascribed by Morelli to Paolo Uccello. "The treatment of the hair recalls that of one of the portraits in Paolo's battle-piece (583), while Piero used to represent curls in a thin and thread-like shape. The ornament on the left sleeve of the lady also reminds one of the decoration on the standard" (Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 17). "Of purely Florentine origin, and with its hardness of outline and modelling, and its severity of aspect, resembles a Pesellino writ large" (Claude Phillips in the Academy, Sept. 28, 1889).

This and the other profile head once ascribed to Piero (585) "are probably the earliest specimens we have in the National Gallery of pure portraits, i. e. pictures devoted simply to record the likeness of an individual, first introduced as donors into votive pictures, and next as actors in scenes from sacred history and legend. Portraits have at length made good their claim to a separate existence in pictorial art" (Monkhouse: The Italian Pre-Raphaelites, p. 41). To Piero della Francesca also we owe "most precious portraits (at Rimini and in the Uffizi) of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces of fidelity to nature and sound workmanship" (Symonds).

766, 767. HEADS OF SAINTS

Domenico Veneziano (died 1461).

Though Domenico describes himself as Venetian (as on the signature to 1215), he worked at Perugia and Florence, and his works belie any connection with Venetian art. Between 1439 and 1445 he was engaged in the church of S. Maria Nuova, in which work he was assisted by his pupil Piero della Francesca. These pictures have perished. The works by his hand we possess give no evidence of his being an oil painter, but he is known to have used oil, and indeed was celebrated as one of the earliest Italian painters in that medium. Vasari's story about Andrea del Castagno's jealousy, and his murder of Domenico in consequence, is disproved by documentary evidence showing that Domenico survived his alleged murderer by five years. Domenico's only known works, now extant, are an altar-piece in the Uffizi and the work described below.

These heads are from the niche or tabernacle which contained the Madonna and Child, No. 1215. The work was executed for the Canto (street corner) de' Carnesecchi in Florence. It is thus referred to by Vasari: —

Being invited to Florence, the first thing Domenico did was to paint a tabernacle in fresco, at the corner of the Carnesecchi, in the angle of the two roads, leading, the one to the new, the other to the old Piazza of Santa Maria Novella. The subject of this work is a Virgin surrounded by various saints, and as it pleased the Florentines greatly and was much commended by the artists of the time, as well as by the citizens, this picture awakened bitter rage and envy against poor Domenico in the ill-regulated mind of Andrea (ii. 99 – here follows Vasari's rattling and reckless story of Domenico's murder by the jealous Andrea del Castagno).

For centuries Domenico's work was exposed to wind and weather. The heads, Nos. 766, 767, passed into the possession of Sir Charles Eastlake, from whose collection they were purchased for the National Gallery in 1867. The central fresco (No. 1215) was in 1851 detached from the wall and badly restored. It was subsequently acquired by Lord Lindsay, the author of Sketches of the History of Christian Art, whose son, James, Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, presented it to the nation in 1886.

768. ST. PETER AND ST. JEROME

Antonio Vivarini (Venetian: died 1470).

Antonio da Murano, called also Antonio Vivarini, was the eldest of a family of painters, who played a part in the development of the Venetian School corresponding to that of Giotto and his circle in the Florentine School. The Venetian is, it will be seen, a century later than the Florentine (cf. Introduction). It was at the adjacent island of Murano (where most of the Venetian glass is now made, and which was once the resort of the wealthier Venetian citizens) that an independent school first developed itself, Antonio and his brother Bartolommeo (see 284) being natives of that place. The work of the Vivarini was to impart a distinctively artistic impulse to the conventional craftsmanship which previously prevailed in Venice in accordance with Byzantine traditions. Recently published documents (dated 1272) give a curious insight into the position and work of the earliest Venetian painters (see Richter's Lectures on the National Gallery, pp. 23-29). They were treated merely as artisans. They were engaged for the most part in work which would now be classed as industrial craftsmanship in painting arms and furniture. Paintings, in our sense of the word, were an unimportant and occasional branch of their work. The division of labour which in our own day is a frequent cause of industrial disputes (as, for instance, between builders and plasterers) was then in dispute between painters and gilders. A recorded case was settled as follows: "We judge it just to permit the gilder to use colour, and the painter to use gilding, when the one or the other plays a subordinate part in the finished work. A decision in the opposite sense would seem to us hard; for it would be inconvenient to decree that a work which can be done by one, must be done by two. Thus, though each litigant loses, each is compensated for his loss. The profession of the gilder is gilding, but painting is permitted as an accessory. In like manner painting is the profession of the painter, but gilding is permitted as an accessory." In this picture, St. Peter's key is, it will be seen, embossed in goldsmiths' fashion, and Bartolommeo's picture has a gold background. Antonio Vivarini first worked in partnership with a certain Zuan (Giovanni), who appears to have been a German by birth, and the visitor will notice between the work of the early Venetian School a certain affinity with the contemporary German work of the Cologne School. After 1450 the name of Johannes the German disappears from the inscriptions on Vivarini altar-pieces, and that of Bartolommeo takes its place.