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

The early Bolognese School does not really exist except as an offshoot of the Ferrarese. Marco Zoppo (590) was "no better," says Morelli, "than a caricature of his master, Squarcione, and besides, he spent the greater part of his life at Venice;" whilst Lippo Dalmasii (752) was very inferior to contemporary artists elsewhere. The so-called earlier Bolognese School was really founded by the Ferrarese Francesco Cossa and Lorenzo Costa, who moved to Bologna about 1480, and the latter of whom "set up shop" with Francia in that town (see under 629). Remarks on the later "Eclectic" School of Bologna, formed by the Carracci, may more conveniently be deferred (see p. 35)

THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

"More allied to the Tuscan than to the Venetian spirit, the Umbrian masters produced a style of genuine originality. The cities of the Central Apennines owed their specific quality of religious fervour to the influences emanating from Assisi, the headquarters of the cultus of St. Francis. This pietism, nowhere else so paramount, except for a short period in Siena, constitutes the individuality of Umbria" (J. A. Symonds: Renaissance in Italy, iii. 133).

Yonder's a work now, of that famous youthThe Urbinate…Well, I can fancy how he did it all,Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,Above and through his art…Browning: Andrea del Sarto.

The Umbrian School, unlike the Florentine, was distinctively provincial; painting was not centralised in any great capital, but flourished in small towns and retired valleys – in Perugia, Foligno, Borgo S. Sepolcro, S. Severino, Rimini (see 2118), etc. Hence the older traditions of Italian art held their ground, and the religious feeling of the Middle Ages survived long after it had elsewhere been superseded. This tendency was confirmed by the spirit of the district. The little townships of Umbria begirdle the Hill of Assisi, the hallowed abode of St. Francis, and were the peculiar seats of religious enthusiasm. Art followed the current of life, just as it did in Florence or Venice or Padua; and Umbria – "the Galilee," as it has been called, "of Italy" – thus produced a distinct type in painting, marked by a quality of sentimental pietism. The influence of Siena, whose artists worked at Perugia, must have made in the same direction, and it is interesting to notice in this room one picture of St. Catherine of Siena (249), and two of her namesake of Alexandria (693, 168). It is interesting, further, to notice how the "purist" style of landscape, identified with this pietistic art (see under 288), is characteristic of the district itself. "Whoever visits the hill-town of Perugia will be struck," says Morelli, "with two things: the fine, lovely voices of the women, and the view that opens before the enraptured eye, over the whole valley, from the spot where the old castle stood of yore. On your left, perched on a projecting hill that leans against the bare sunburnt down, lies Assisi, the birthplace of S. Francis, where first his fiery soul was kindled to enthusiasm, where his sister Clara led a pious life, and finally found her grave. Lower down, the eye can still reach Spello and its neighbouring Foligno, while the range of hills, on whose ridge Montefalco looks out from the midst of its gray olives, closes the charming picture. This is the gracious nook of earth, the smiling landscape, in which Pietro Perugino loves to place his chaste, God-fraught Madonnas, and which in his pictures, like soft music, heightens the mood awakened in us by his martyrs pining after Paradise" (German Galleries, p. 252). "All is wrought," says another writer, "into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is one of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle and of the early painters before him: the faces of the Madonnas are beyond the discomposure of passion, and their very draperies betoken an Elysian atmosphere which wind never blew" (Letters of Edward FitzGerald, i. 45). Such were the local circumstances of the art which, beginning with the almost grotesque pietism of Niccolò da Foligno (1107), led up to the "purist ideal" of Perugino and to the first manner of Raphael.

The scattered character of Umbrian art above referred to makes it impossible for us to trace its course historically. From that point of view each of the local schools would have to be treated separately. Of the local schools which were the earliest to develop – Gubbio, Fabriano, and S. Severine – the first two are not represented here at all, and the third has only one picture (249). The taste for art amongst the people of Perugia was much later in developing itself. Even up to 1440 they had to rely on Sienese artists; and later still they sent for Piero della Francesca, of Borgo S. Sepolcro, who had studied at Florence and had greatly advanced the science of perspective. Many of the Umbrian masters – Melozzo, Palmezzano, Fra Carnovale, Giovanni Santi, and even perhaps Perugino, were pupils of his. The earliest native artist of Perugia in the gallery is Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1103), who, however, owed much to the Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli. This Fiorenzo was probably the master of Pinturicchio. The latter worked for some time under Perugino, who had studied under Piero della Francesca and afterwards himself went to study in Florence. Perugino in his turn was the master, after Timoteo Viti, of Raphael. The development of Raphael's art, leading in its later periods to directions far removed from the Umbrian ideal, is traced under the biographical notice of that master (1171). We have thus completed the circle of the principal Umbrian masters. They are allied, as it will have been seen, by teaching, to the Florentines, but they retained a distinctive character throughout. The one exception in this respect is Luca Signorelli, who, though he was apprenticed to Piero della Francesca, was born nearer to Florence, and whose affinities are far more with the Florentine than with the Umbrian School.

THE VENETIAN AND ALLIED SCHOOLS 23

"The Venetian School proposed to itself the representation of the effect of colour and shade on all things; chiefly on the human form. Here you have the most perfect representation possible of colour, and light, and shade, as they affect the external aspect of the human form, and its immediate accessories, architecture, furniture, and dress. This external aspect of noblest nature was the first aim of the Venetians, and all their greatness depended on their patience in achieving it" (Ruskin: Two Paths, §§ 20, 22).

Diego answered thus: "I saw in VeniceThe true test of the good and beautiful;First, in my judgment, ever stands that school,And Titian first of all Italian men is."Velazquez, reported by Boschini, in curious Italian verse thus translated by Dr. Donaldson.

The general characteristics of the Venetian School, as defined by Mr. Ruskin in the passage above quoted, may be traced both to historical circumstances and to physical surroundings. Thus the first broad fact to be noticed about the Venetian School of painting is that it is later than the Florentine by some hundred years or more. From the point of view of art, Venice, from her intimate connection as a trading power with the East, was almost a Byzantine colony. St. Mark's is a Byzantine church, her earliest palaces are Byzantine palaces. And so, too, for painting she relied exclusively on a Byzantine supply. It was not till the latter end of the fourteenth century that the influence of Giotto's works in the neighbouring town of Padua began to rouse Venice to do and think for herself in art, instead of letting her Greek subjects do all for her.24 But by the time Venetian painters had acquired any real mastery over their art, Venice was already in a state of great magnificence; her palaces, with their fronts of white marble, porphyry, and serpentine, were the admiration of every visitor. Painters paint what they see around them, and hence at the outset we find in the Venetian School the rendering of material magnificence and the brilliant colours that distinguish it throughout. Look, for instance, at the pictures by a comparatively early Venetian, like Crivelli (see 602); no other painter of a corresponding age showed such fondness for fruits and stuffs and canopies and jewels and brilliant architecture. And then, in the second place, there is the colour of Venice itself, caused by her position on the lagoons. The Venetians had no gardens; "but what are the purples and scarlets and blues of iris, anemone, or columbine, dispersed among deep meadow-grasses or trained in quiet cloister garden-beds, when compared with that melodrama of flame and gold and rose and orange and azure, which the skies and lagoons of Venice yield almost daily to the eye?" (Symonds's Renaissance, iii. 255). But, thirdly, the sea had a further influence on Venetian painting – it caused at once their love of bodily beauty and the kind of such beauty that they loved. Compare, for instance, a typical Venetian "beauty," such as Paris Bordone's (674), with one of Botticelli's (915): how great is the difference between them! Well, the sea "tends to induce in us great respect for the whole human body; for its limbs, as much as for its tongue or its wit… To put the helm up at the right moment is the beginning of all cunning, and for that we need arm and eye; – not tongue. And with this respect for the body as such, comes also the sailor's preference of massive beauty in bodily form. The landsmen, among their roses and orange-blossoms, and chequered shadows of twisted vine, may well please themselves with pale faces, and finely drawn eyebrows and fantastic braiding of hair. But from the sweeping glory of the sea we learn to love another kind of beauty; broad-breasted; level-browed, like the horizon; – thighed and shouldered like the billows; – footed like their stealing foam; – bathed in clouds of golden hair like their sunsets." Then further, "this ocean-work is wholly adverse to any morbid conditions of sentiment. Reverie, above all things, is forbidden by Scylla and Charybdis. By the dogs and the depths, no dreaming! The first thing required of us is presence of mind. Neither love, nor poetry, nor piety, must ever so take up our thoughts as to make us slow or unready." Herein will be found the source of a notable distinction between the treatment of sacred subjects by Venetian painters and all others. The first Venetian artists began with asceticism, just as the Florentines did; "always, however, delighting in more massive and deep colour than other religious painters. They are especially fond of saints who have been cardinals, because of their red hats, and they sunburn all their hermits into splendid russet brown" (see 768). Then again, through all enthusiasm they retain a supreme common sense. Look back, for instance, from the religious pictures in this room, from Titian's "Holy Family" (635), or Cima's "Madonna" (634), to those of the Umbrians, which we have just left. The Umbrian religion is something apart from the world, the Venetian is of it. The religion of the Venetian painters is as real as that of Fra Angelico. But it was the faith not of humble men or of mystics, not of profound thinkers or ecstatic visionaries, so much as of courtiers and statesmen, of senators and merchants, for whom religion was not a thing by itself but a part and parcel of ordinary life. "Throughout the rest of Italy, piety had become abstract, and opposed theoretically to worldly life; hence the Florentine and Umbrian painters generally separated their saints from living men. They delighted in imagining scenes of spiritual perfectness; – Paradises, and companies of the redeemed at the judgment; – glorified meetings of martyrs; – madonnas surrounded by circles of angels. If, which was rare, definite portraitures of living men were introduced, these real characters formed a kind of chorus or attendant company, taking no part in the action. At Venice all this was reversed, and so boldly as at first to shock, with its seeming irreverence, a spectator accustomed to the formalities and abstractions of the so-called sacred schools. The madonnas are no more seated apart on their thrones, the saints no more breathe celestial air. They are on our own plain ground – nay, here in our houses with us." Cima places the Madonna in his own country-side, whilst at Venice itself Tintoret paints Paradise as the decoration for the hall of the Greater Council of the State. The religion of the Venetian School was not less sincere than that of others, but it was less formal, less didactic; for Venice was constantly at feud with the popes, and here we come to the last circumstance which need be noticed as determining the characteristics of the school. "Among Italian cities Venice was unique. She alone was tranquil in her empire, unimpeded in her constitutional development, independent of Church interference, undisturbed by the cross purposes and intrigues of the despots, inhabited by merchants who were princes, and by a freeborn people who had never seen war at their gates. The serenity of undisturbed security, the luxury of wealth amassed abroad and liberally spent at home, gave a physiognomy of ease and proud self-confidence to all her edifices… The conditions of Florence stimulated mental energy and turned the face of the soul inwards. Those of Venice inclined the individual to accept life as he found it" (Symonds, iii. 259). Hence the ideal of Venetian painting was "stateliness and power; high intercourse with kingly and beautiful humanity, proud thoughts, or splendid pleasures; throned sensualities; and ennobled appetites."

A speciality of the Venetian School arising from the characteristics we have described is its portraiture. "If there be any one sign by which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble), – I say, if there be one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is their deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the dignity of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is clearly owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly realised or idealised his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or failings of the human nature around him, so that the best of his work is that which has most perfectly taken the colour of his own mind; and the least impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to have been unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is exactly the reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears often in some degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in domestic and grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But the moment he gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble and grave; the more literally true his work, the more majestic; and the same artist who will produce little beyond what is commonplace in painting a Madonna or an Apostle, will rise into unapproachable sublimity when his subject is a Member of the Forty, or a Master of the Mint" (Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iii. § lxxv.).

In its historical development the Venetian School may be divided, like other schools, into three main periods. First we have the Giottesque or heroic period, or, as it should in the case of Venice be called, "the Vivarini epoch, bright, innocent, more or less elementary, entirely religious art, reaching from 1400-1480." Next comes the Bellini epoch, sometimes classic and mythic as well as religious, 1480-1520. In this period Venetian art is "entirely characteristic of her calm and brave statesmanship, her modest and faithful religion." "Bright costumes, distinct and sunny landscapes, broad backgrounds of architecture, large skies, polished armour, gilded cornices, young faces of fisher-boys and country girls, grave faces of old men brown with sea-wind and sunlight, withered faces of women hearty in a hale old age, the strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity of patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the rosy whiteness and amber-coloured tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic and the lagoons – these are the source of inspiration to the Venetians of the second period… Among the loveliest motives in the altar-pieces of this period are the boy-angels playing flutes and mandolines beneath the Madonna on the steps of her throne. They are more earthly than Fra Angelico's melodists, and yet they are not precisely of human lineage. It is not, perhaps, too much to say that they strike the keynote of Venetian devotion, at once real and devoid of pietistic rapture" (Symonds, iii. 266.) Thirdly comes the epoch of "supremely powerful art corrupted by taint of death," 1520-1600.

This final transition may perhaps best be seen by tracing the similar progress in the technical feature which distinguishes the Venetian painters. They are the school of colour. Their speciality consists in seeing that "shadow is not an absence of colour, but is, on the contrary, necessary to the full presence of colour; every colour in painting must be a shadow to some brighter colour, and a light to some darker one – all the while being a positive colour itself. And the great splendour of the Venetian School arises from their having seen and held from the beginning this great fact – that shadow is as much colour as light, often much more. In Titian's fullest red the lights are pale rose-colour, passing into white – the shadows warm deep crimson. In Veronese's most splendid orange the lights are pale, the shadows crocus colour… Observe that this is no matter of taste, but fact. It is an absolute fact that shadows are as much colours as lights are; and whoever represents them by merely the subdued or darkened tint of the light, represents them falsely." But in the two earlier periods above specified, the Venetians are further "separated from other schools by their contentment with tranquil cheerfulness of light; by their never wanting to be dazzled. None of their lights are flashing or blinding; they are soft, winning, precious; lights of pearl, not of lime: only, you know, on this condition they cannot have sunshine: their day is the day of Paradise; they need no candles, neither light of the sun, in their cities; and everything is seen clear, as through crystal, far or near. This holds to the end of the fifteenth century. Then they begin to see that this, beautiful as it may be, is still a make-believe light; that we do not live in the inside of a pearl; but in an atmosphere through which a burning sun shines thwartedly, and over which a sorrowful night must far prevail. And then the chiaroscurists succeed in persuading them of the fact that there is mystery in the day as in the night, and show them how constantly to see truly, is to see dimly. And also they teach them the brilliancy of light, and the degree in which it is raised from the darkness; and instead of their sweet and pearly peace, tempt them to look for the strength of flame and coruscation of lightning." Three pictures may be noted in which the whole process may be traced. First in Bellini's "St. Jerome"25 (694) is the serene light of the Master of Peace. In another Bellini (726) is a first twilight effect – such as Titian afterwards developed into more solemn hues; whilst in No. 1130 is an example of the light far withdrawn and the coils of shade of Tintoret. (For Ruskin's general remarks on the Venetian School see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii.; Guide to Venetian Academy; Oxford Lectures on Art, §§ 134, 173-177.)

THE PADUAN SCHOOL

"Padovani gran dottori" (the Paduans are great scholars)

Italian Proverb.

Padua, more than any other Italian city, was the home of the classical Renaissance in painting. It was at Padua, that is to say, that the principles which governed classical art were first and most distinctly applied to painting. The founder of this learned Paduan school26 was Squarcione (1394-1474). He had travelled in Italy and Greece, and the school which he set up in Padua on his return – filled with models and casts from the antique – enjoyed in its day such a reputation that travelling princes and great lords used to honour it with their visits. It was the influence of ancient sculpture that gave the Paduan School its characteristics. Squarcione was pre-eminently a teacher of the learned science of linear perspective; and the study of antique sculpture led his pupils to define all their forms severely and sharply. "In truth," says Layard, "the peculiarity of this school consists in a style of conception and treatment more plastic than pictorial." This characteristic of the school is pointed out below under some of Mantegna's pictures, but is seen best of all in Gregorio Schiavone (see especially 630). A second mark of the classical learning of the school may be observed in the choice of antique embellishments, of bas-reliefs and festoons of fruits in the accessories. For a third and crowning characteristic of the school – the repose and self-control of classical art – the reader is referred to the remarks under Mantegna's pictures. With Mantegna the school of Padua reached its consummation. Crivelli's pictures are hung with those of the Paduan school, for he too is believed to have been a pupil of Squarcione. But after Mantegna the learning of Padua must be traced not in native painters, but in its influence on other schools.

THE LATER ITALIAN SCHOOLS

"The eclectic school endeavoured to unite opposite partialities and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggerations. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already accomplished; – the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force; and by the self-denial of delight, gains higher delight" (Ruskin: Two Paths, § 59).

The typical painters, with whom this chapter is concerned, are those of the "Eclectic School" of Bologna – the Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni; and Salvator Rosa, the Neapolitan painter of about the same period.

It may be noticed, in the first place, that the lower repute in which these Italian painters of the seventeenth century are now held is of comparatively recent date. Poussin, for instance, ranked Domenichino next to Raphael, and preferred the works of the Carracci to all others in Rome, except only Raphael's, and Sir Joshua Reynolds cited them as models of perfection. Why, then, is it that modern criticism stamps the later Italian Schools as schools of the decadence? To examine the pictures themselves and to compare them with earlier works is the best way of finding out; but a few general remarks may be found of assistance. The painting of the schools now under consideration was "not spontaneous art. It was art mechanically revived during a period of critical hesitancy and declining enthusiasms." It was largely produced at Bologna by men not eminently gifted for the arts. When Ludovico Carracci, for instance, went to Venice, the veteran Tintoretto warned him that he had no vocation. Moreover "the painting which emerged there at the close of the sixteenth century embodied religion and culture, both of a base alloy… Therefore, though the painters went on painting the old subjects, they painted all alike with frigid superficiality. Nothing new or vital, fanciful or imaginative, has been breathed into antique mythology. What has been added to religious expression is repellent, … extravagantly ideal in ecstatic Magdalens and Maries, extravagantly realistic in martyrdoms and torments, extravagantly harsh in dogmatic mysteries, extravagantly soft in sentimental tenderness and tearful piety… If we turn from the ideas of the late Italian painters to their execution, we shall find similar reasons for its failure to delight" (Symonds's Renaissance, vii. 232). For "all these old eclectic theories were based not upon an endeavour to unite the various characters of nature (which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which it is impossible to do… All these specialities have their own charm in their own way; and there are times when the particular humour of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness; but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing one instantly takes away the distinctiveness" (Two Paths, § 58). It was not an attempt to unite the various characters of nature. On the contrary, "these painters, in selecting, omitted just those features which had given grace and character to their models. The substitution of generic types for portraiture, the avoidance of individuality, the contempt for what is simple and natural in details, deprived their work of attractiveness and suggestion. It is noticeable that they never painted flowers. While studying Titian's landscapes, they omitted the iris and the caper-blossom and the columbine, which star the grass beneath Ariadne's feet… They began the false system of depicting ideal foliage and ideal precipices – that is to say, trees which are not trees, and cliffs which cannot be distinguished from cork or stucco. In like manner, the cloths wherewith they clad their personages were not of brocade, or satin, or broadcloth, but of that empty lie called drapery … one monstrous nondescript stuff, differently dyed in dull or glaring colours, but always shoddy. Characteristic costumes have disappeared… After the same fashion furniture, utensils, houses, animals, birds, weapons, are idealised – stripped, that is to say, of what in these things is specific and vital"27 (Symonds, ibid. p. 233).