The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 3 (of 3)

Of Pietro's many ultramontane pupils, Giovanni Spagnuolo, a Spaniard, called Lo Spagna, who settled at Spoleto, is considered by Vasari as the most eminent. But all these names united confer less celebrity on Pietro, than the felicity of having reared the powers of Raffaello Sanzio, if not the founder, the great establisher of the Roman School.

Raffaello Sanzio, born at Urbino on Holy Friday, April 1483, was the son of Giovanni Sanzio, named among the contemporaries and occasional helpers of Pietro, in whose school, after having imparted the first rudiments of Art to his son, conscious of his own inferiority, he had the modesty to place him. Here his progress was so rapid that he soon rendered himself completely master of Vannucci's style, soon became his favourite pupil, soon his co-adjutor, and in a short period more than his competitor: for though the pictures which he painted at Cività di Castello and Perugia, and are so amorously dwelt on by Lanzi, still betray in composition, design, and colour, the principles of the master, they exhibit symptoms of that expression, that beauty, those simple graces, that refinement and precision of finish, which not only had remained unknown to Pietro, but in their purity were never attained by any subsequent artist. – Some of these are perceivable already, if scantily, in the Procession to Golgotha, preceded by horsemen and attended by the Madonna and her female train; and still less perceptibly in one of its predelle which exhibits the Saviour held extended by his Mother, Magdalen and John: they cannot be mistaken in the predelle which represents him among the sleeping disciples praying in the garden, – performances of his puerility, and most probably before he left the school of Pietro.

After an enumeration of Raffaello's juvenile works at Cività di Castello and at Perugia, we are told that he who ascribed Sanzio's art to length of study and not to nature, was not acquainted with the powers of his mind.[91 - See Vasari on Michael Angelo's observations on Tizian.]

That such was the verdict of Michael Agnolo, is recorded by Condivi; and from aught that appears, it does not seem either invidious or incompetent. If Art be a complete system of invariable rules, he only is a master of Art who substantiates its precepts by equal uniformity of execution and taste; and till he arrives at that point, he can only be said to have seized more or less of its parts in making approaches to the whole, and to be indebted to "study" and not to "nature," if he put himself at last in possession of it.

Such was the progress of Raffaello; he arrived by degrees at style in design, by degrees at style in composition, by degrees at invention, expression, and at what appeared to him colour. His genius emancipated him from the shackles of prescription and fashion, rapidly, if we compare his progress with the shortness of his life or the progress of the rest of his contemporaries, but slowly, if we compare him with Michael Angelo, whose system of Art seems to have been born with him, whose infancy, virility, age, exhibit one uniform principle. Every element of the system displayed in the Capella Sistina and on the tombs in S. Lorenzo, may be traced in his essays at the garden of the Medici and in the Holy Family painted for Angelo Doni: but what eye will discover the future painter of the Heliodorus, or the composer of the Cartoons in the bridal arrangements of our Lady's Wedding at Cività di Castello, or even in the Cartoons for the sacristy of the Duomo at Sienna?

Though the commission of painting in that place a series of the most memorable events in the life of Pope Pio II. (a Siennese celebrated by the name of Enea Silvio,) had been given to Pinturicchio, who had sufficient modesty and taste to avail himself of the superior and growing powers of his friend, – it has been asked what enterprise of equal magnitude had in that infant state of Art ever been consigned to a single hand, without considering that the co-operation of Raffaello was adventitious, and less owing to the opinion which he had established of himself in the public mind than to the modesty of Pinturicchio. And had not Luca Signorelli singly been entrusted with a work at Orvieto, whose tremendous and universally interesting subjects beyond comparison excelled whatever the embassies, the poetic and papal honours, the canonization of a nun, the ceremonies of a council, the death of the hero himself, and the transportation of his corpse from Ancona to Rome, however varied by character, impressed by the sensibility of the artist, or raised above the heraldry of the times, could pretend to achieve beyond the precincts of Sienna?

Whether Raffaello furnished the whole of the Cartoons for that work, or only part, cannot be ascertained from the contradictory account of Vasari,[92 - "Fece li Schizzi e i Cartoni di tutte le Istorie."Vita di Pinturicchio."Fece alcuni de' disegni e Cartoni di quell' opera."Vita di Raffaello.] who in the life of Pinturicchio asserts the first, and in that of Raffaello, the second. As he, however, did not leave Sienna for Florence till 1504, it is probable that he continued to assist his friend in completing the whole historic series: the work itself is in perfect preservation, and though better informed eyes than those of Bottari[93 - In the picture on the facciata, Bottari says, "Si vede non solo il disegno, ma in molte teste anche il colore di Raffaello."] might not be competent to discriminate the parts which exclusively belong to Raffaello, it is certain that in the progress of the pictures there is an evident progress toward style.

Aggrandisement of style might reasonably be supposed to have been the motive that drew Raffaello to Florence. The David of M. Angiolo was placed; he had begun his cartoon, which from its very inaccessibility, and the high character of the artist whom it opposed, must have been an object of eager curiosity to the public, and of tremulous expectation to the student. Florence was, no doubt, at that period divided into two technic factions, Vinciists and Bonarotists; it does not, however, appear that Raffaello adhered to either of the two leaders; neither the learning and energy of Bonaroti, nor the magic chiaroscuro of Lionardo, could divert the future painter of the passions from his course; he therefore attached himself to the study of Masaccio, as a more direct guide to the drama. The implicit application of that master's conceptions in the same or similar subjects, when he was in the vigour of his powers, if it be the most celebrated proof of this, is a less convincing one than the similarity of taste and vein of thought which pervades their works, and might, to men of bolder conjecture than I pretend to, prove that Masaccio might have been what Raffaello was, had time and means conspired.

According to the account of Vasari,[94 - Essendo con Pinturicchio a Siena – messo da parte quell' opera, e ogni utile e commodo suo, se ne venne a Fiorenza. Morta la Madre, partì e andò a Urbino, e accomodate le cose sue, ritornò a Perugia. Prima che partisse, &c. – Così venuto a Firenze, fece il cartone per il quadro di Madonna Atalanta Baglioni; dipinse per A. Doni e Dom. Canigiani; studiò le cose vecchie di Masaccio; acquistò miglioramento dai lavori di Lionardo e di Michelagnolo; ebbe stretta domestichezza con Frà Bartolomeo di S. Marco; ma in su la maggior frequenza di questa pratica fu richiamato a Perugia, dove finì l'opera della gia detta Madonna Atalanta Baglioni, &c. – Finito questo lavoro e tornato a Fiorenza, gli fu dai Dei cittadini Fiorentini allegata una tavola, &c. ma chiamato da Bramante si trasferì a Roma. – Vasari, Vita di Raffaello da Urbino, ed. Firenze, 1771. p. 163, 167, 172.According to this account of Vasari, Raffaelle went three times to Florence; the first time, when roused by the fame of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, he left Pinturicchio 1504, and continued at Florence till he was called away by the death of his mother to Urbino, from whence, having settled his affairs, and painted certain things, he went to Perugia, and after some public works there, returned again to Florence with a commission from A. Baglioni. This is the period fixed by Vasari of his acquaintance with Bartolomeo di S. Marco, the progressive improvements of his style, and his pictures for A. Doni and D. Canigiani, and must have been his longest stay in that capital, though interrupted by a new call to Perugia, during which he finished the picture of the Burial of Christ, now in the Borghese Palace, for the Chapel Baglioni, and then returned for the third time to Florence.] Raffaello went three times to Florence: the first time when, according to the biographer, roused by the fame of Lionardo and M. Angiolo, he left the partnership of Pinturicchio, 1504 – the date of the recommendatory letter with the affixed name of Joanna Feltria, Duchess of Urbino, addressed to the Gonfaloniere Pietro Soderini, and said to be still preserved at Florence among the papers of the Gaddi family. Supposing the date of the letter (1st October, 1504) to be correct, and the writer of it to have been acquainted with the person she recommends, its genuineness, as Fiorillo observes, is liable to strong suspicion. Its expressions might fit a lad of ten or twelve years, but certainly not a young man of one-and-twenty, the age of Raffaello, who had painted many pictures, was at that very time employed in a great public work, and only three years after was called to Rome by Giulio the Second.

Though Raffaello's talents had spread his name, and attracted the attention and the wishes of Giulio the Second to employ him in the decoration of the Vatican, it may be presumed that the persuasive influence of his relative, Bramante Lazzari, decided the Pontiff to distinguish him by that immediate and exclusive call to Rome, which raised him above all rival competition, and opened the most splendid period of his life, most probably 1507. Which was the picture he began with, would not have been contested by his biographers, encomiasts, and critics, from Vasari to Mengs, had they attended less to hearsay, for tradition it cannot be called, than to the evidence of the works themselves. To date the dispute on the Sacrament after the School of Athens, equally inverts the progressive powers of the artist in conception, taste, style, and execution. Everywhere that composition betrays a young performer, enviably successful in each individual part, but whom experience has not yet enabled to spread an harmonious whole. The connection of its upper with the lower scene, less divided than rent asunder, depends entirely on a mental effort in the spectator. The parallelism of the celestial synod, impresses more with formal monotony than awful energy, and the ostentatious abuse of gold impairs its dignity. In the lower part of the picture, less sublime than dramatic, the artist moves in his own element; its parallelism and its contrasts, no longer the result of ceremonious symmetry, but of the inspiring principle, warms contemplation to sympathy, and its characteristic correctness exhibits in Raffaello's own unassisted, or rather unalloyed hand, the style of the School of Athens, the Mass of Bolsena, the female part of the Heliodorus, and with a felicity unattained in the Parnassus and the Attila, – the more ample outlines and the increased volume of forms in the Angels, and the Heliodorus and his accomplices on the foreground.

A description of two Drawings by Raffaello, from an account of the Collection of Drawings and Prints in the Gallery of Duke Albrecht, of Sachsen Teschen, at Vienna.[95 - From the "Annalen der bildenden Künste für die Osterreichischen Staaten, Von Hans Rudolph Füessli." Erster theil. Wien. 1801. Annals of the Plastic Arts in Austria.]

I

Two naked male figures, apparently studies from Nature, on one leaf, drawn in red chalk: one with nearly all his back turned to the eye, rests the left hand on his hip, and with the right points to something before him. Somewhat behind you see the other, sideways, in perfect repose, leaning with both hands on a long spear-like staff; the background has some rudiments of a sketched head. To the right of the spectator, at the side of the first figure, you read, "1515, Raffahell di Urbin der so hoch vom Pobst geacht ist gwest, hat diese nakte Bild gemacht, und hat sy dem Albrecht Dürer gen Nornberg geschikt, in seini hand zu weissen."[96 - 1515. Raffahell di Urbin, who was so highly esteemed by the Pope, has made these naked figures, and has sent them to Albrecht Durer at Nornberg, to show him his hand.]

That Raffaello in his last years, and when at the height of his celebrity, did exchange drawings with Albert Durer, is attested by the biographers of both: and that the design here described is one of that number, is incontestably proved, not only by the peculiarity of style, the elegance and facility of outline, the characteristic contrast of solid and muscular parts, but by the identity of the handwriting with the manuscripts of Albert still existing at Nürnberg, his native city.

I therefore think it no improbable conjecture to suppose that Raffaello, by transmitting this specimen of his hand to Albert, intended to make him sensible of the difference between imitating Nature and dryly copying a model, and so impress him with the necessity of contrasting his outline according to the different texture of the parts in the bodies before him.

This interesting leaf is one foot three inches three lines in height, and ten inches eight lines in width, Vienna measure; and in perfect preservation.

II

This design differs in nothing from the well-known picture of the Transfiguration, but the absolute nudity of all the figures.

That Raffaello was accustomed to sketch in naked outlines, may be known from most collections that possess something of his hand; but perhaps none but this may be able to produce a design, of a numerous and complete composition, in which every figure is rendered with anatomical correctness and finished chiaroscuro.

Another singularity of this important leaf is, the characteristic disparity of execution in the figures; for though all are drawn with the pen, and on the first glance seem hatched in one uniform manner, it soon appears on close inspection, that they cannot have been produced by the same hand.

The figures of the three Disciples on the Mount, especially the foreshortened one, are treated with that spirited facility and confident decision which always mark the pen of Raffaello. Those of the Saviour and the collateral prophets, though drawn with less precision and contours here and there, by repeated strokes, corrected, still exhibit on the whole the same spirit, facility, and confidence of hand. Of the actors below, the figure of John, with hands crossed on his breast, and the three next to him have the same Raffaellesque characteristics, and so the whole of the females kneeling on the foreground; but of the adjoining apostle, with the book in his hand, the projected leg and foot are absolutely out of drawing; whilst the Demoniac and his father, with all the remaining figures, drawn by mere practice, without a symptom of the master spirit, give palpable proofs of a different hand.

It appears no improbable conjecture that Raffaello, after settling the plan and fully arranging the figures of his picture, drew the nudities of this design as the bases of his draperies: for this reason only, the principal parts of the forms, and those muscles that would act most visibly on the draperies, are designed correctly, and finished with decision; whilst the heads, and what was either to be naked in the picture or did not act immediately on the drapery, remained in careless and superficial lines.

That Raffaello suffered parts of his Transfiguration, and in my opinion some of the most important parts, to receive all but the last finish from a pupil, if tradition had not told us, there is ocular demonstration in the picture itself. The proportions of the Demoniac's father are neglected as a whole, in relation of limb to limb, and the figure is sacrificed to place. The face of Christ himself, as it was seen in the Louvre, is unworthy of Raffaello's hand and conception.[97 - This observation is founded on close inspection of this picture, in the room of the "Restoration," in 1802. The face of Christ not only appeared no longer that which all thought it to be who had seen it at S. Pietro in Montorio, but even inferior to that in the print of Dorigny, had assumed an expression nearer allied to meanness than to dignity, without sublimity austere, and forbidding. It is probable, however, that these changes originated under the sacrilegious hands of the restorers, who had before destroyed the better part of the Madonna di Foligno.]

The reason why some of the figures are drawn in the true spirit of the artist, and others in a bald and insignificant manner, may be, that after slightly sketching the whole, he gave his own finish in the design to those parts only which he intended to execute with his own hand in the picture; and less solicitous for the rest, left them to the hand of some inferior pupil.

The height of this extraordinary design is one foot eight inches four lines; its breadth one foot two inches five lines; it is without injury.

Taddeo and Federigo Zuccari, the first declared mannerists of this school, sons of Ottaviano Zuccari, a mediocre painter of S. Angiolo in Vado, came to Rome successively, formed a school, and filled towns and states with an immense farrago of good, tolerable, and bad pictures. From the instructions of Pompeo da Fano and Giacomone da Faenza, but chiefly from an obstinate study of Raffaello's works, Taddeo, at no protracted period, gathered enough to diffuse over his own, an air, though not reality, of style, and to anticipate by contrivance and facility the rewards which time owes to invention and genius. Courting the senses of the multitude, he became the hero of the day; they saw their portraits in his faces, their limbs in his forms, their action in his attitudes; his draperies, hair, beards, had a cut of fashion. The simplicity of his disposition is often contrasted by half figures emerging from his foregrounds; perhaps less from a principle of imitating his more remote predecessors, than to invigorate the effect of his chiaroscuro, a method not unknown to Parmegiano.

Rome possesses vast works in fresco of Taddeo; among the best of these are some Gospel stories at the Consolazione. He seldom painted in oil, and less commendably in large than small: some of these are cabinet pictures of exquisite finish, – such a one, (formerly in the collection of the Duke of Urbino, but more recently at Osimo in the Palace Leopardi,) is the Nativity of the Saviour, and in Taddeo's very best style. But the work on which his fame chiefly rests, are the paintings of the Palazzo Farnese, at Caprarola (engraved in a moderate volume, by Prenner, 1748). They represent the Feats of the Farnese Family, in peace and war; to which are joined other stories, both sacred and profane; but what attracts attention most, is the celebrated "Stanza del Sonno," an apartment dedicated to Sleep, replete with a great variety of allegoric imagery, suggested to him by Annibale Caro, in a long, quaint letter, printed among his familiar ones, and reproduced among the "Lettere Pittoriche," t. iii. l. 99.

Dissimilar in the pursuits of life, Taddeo resembled Raffaello in death; he completed thirty-seven years, and obtained a monument close to Sanzio, in the "Rotonda."

His brother and pupil Federigo, inferior in design, resembles him in taste, though more mannered, more capricious in conceit, more crowded in composition. He completed what death had prevented Taddeo from finishing in the Sala Regia, that of Farnese, the Trinità de' Monti, and elsewhere, with the airs of heir-at-law to his brother's talents. Thus he raised an opinion of capacity for greater enterprise, and was invited by Francis I. to paint the great Cupola of the metropolitan church at Florence, which death alone had saved from Vasari's hands. There Federigo painted more than three hundred figures of fifty feet in height each, besides that of Lucifer, "so enormous," to use his own phrase, "that it makes the other figures appear infants;[98 - "Sì smisurata, che fa parere le altre, figure di Bambini," &c. Idea de' Pittori, Scultori, e Architetti, inserted among the Lettere Pittoriche, t. vi. p. 147.]– figures," he adds, "larger than the world ever witnessed before in Art." So little, however, hugeness excepted, is there to admire in this work, that at the time of Pier da Cortona, a painting of that master would have been substituted for it, had it not been feared that he would not live long enough to terminate the whole. After the Cupola, every work of consequence at Rome appeared his due, and he was recalled by Gregorio to paint the ceiling of the Paolina, and give a successor to Michael Angelo. It was at that period, that, on a charge preferred against him by some courtiers or domestics of Gregorio, he painted and exhibited the picture of Calumny, and his accusers with asses-ears, which raised a clamour that obliged him to fly from Rome. During his exile, which lasted some years, he visited Flanders, Holland, England; had a call even from Venice to paint a subject in the Ducal Palace, was everywhere caressed and remunerated, and, the Pope being mitigated, returned to reassume his interrupted labours in the Capella; the best work perhaps which, without the assistance of his brother, he has produced at Rome, though the larger altar-piece of S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and that of the Angioli at Gesù, with some others dispersed in other churches, may claim their share of merit. He built a house on Monte Pincio, rapidly and with the assistance of his scholars furnished with family portraits, conversations, and other whims in fresco, and left to prove him a trifler in Art, and the leader of decay.

Invited by Philip II. he went to Madrid, but failed to please; his place was supplied by Tibaldi, and he sent back with a good pension to Italy. Towards the end of his life he made another journey, scouring the principal towns of Italy, and leaving his works wherever he could place them: of these the Assumption of the Madonna in an oratorio at Rimini on which he wrote his name, and her Death at Sta. Maria in Acumine of the same place, with figures more than usually studied, deserve notice. His Presepio in the Duomo of Foligno, has simplicity and grace; nor less have the two stories relative to the Madonna, painted for the Duke of Urbino in a chapel at Loretto. The Miracle of the Snow, in the library of the Cistercians at Milano, is a multitudinous composition filled with portraits as usual, variously coloured and well preserved. The Borromean College at Pavia, has a saloon painted in fresco from incidents in the life of S. Carlo: the most approved of these is the Saint praying in his recess: nor might the other two, that of the consistory in which he received the Cardinal's hat, and the Pest of Milano, want commendation had they overflowed less in figures. At Torino he painted for the Jesuits a St. Paul; began to ornament a gallery for the Duke, Charles Emanuel; published his Idea de' Pittori Scultori ed Architetti, and dedicated it to the Duke. This was followed, at his return to Lombardy, by two other treatises; "La dimora di Parma del Sig. Cav. Federico Zuccaro; and Il passaggio per Italia, colla dimora di Parma del Sig. Cav. Federigo Zuccari," both printed at Bologna 1608. Next year, on his return to Rome, he fell sick at Ancona, and there died. His talents, which extended to sculpture and architecture, were inferior to his fortune, which preceded that of all his contemporaries, and was in a great measure the effect of personal qualities; lordly aspect and demeanour, some literary culture, persuasive manners, and a liberality that absorbed the wealth which his hand had accumulated.

Emulation seems to have been his chief motive of writing: he longed to break a lance with Vasari, whom, from whatever cause, as appears from the postils tacked to the Vite, he disliked. They have been sometimes, especially in the Life of Taddeo, quoted and treated as effusions of envy and malignity by the annotator of the Roman edition. To prove his superiority over the Tuscan, he chose a style as obscure and inflated as that of Giorgio is diffuse and plain; the whole of the treatise printed at Torino reels in a round of internal and external design, and contains less precept than peripatetic speculation, which rendered the schools of that day more loquacious than learned. His language runs over in intellective[99 - Disegno interiore ed esteriore; concetti intellettivi e formativi; sostanze sostanziali, forme formali. – Titolo del capitolo XII. che la filosofia e il filosofare è disegno metaforico similitudinario. – Disegno, Segno di Dio.] and formative conceits, in substantial substances and formal forms; even the titles of his chapters are larded with equal fulsomeness of phrase, like that of the XIIth., that "philosophy and to philosophize, is metaphoric and similitudinarious design." These are the bait of fools – for none but fools can hope to gather meaning from the bubbles of sophistry, or stoop to disentangle etymologies which derive disegno from "Dei signum," the sign of God!

This treatise was probably the offspring of his presidency in the Academy of St. Luke; for office gives insolence. The Academy dates its origin from the Pontificate of Gregorio XIII., who granted the brief of its foundation[100 - Baglioni, Vita di Muziano.] to Muziano. It had not, however, its full effect till after the return of Zuccari from Spain, who put it in force and was unanimously declared "Principe," or President. That was his day of triumph; he returned from the inauguration in the church of S. Martino at the foot of the Campidoglio, accompanied by a great concourse of artists and litterators to his own house, where shortly after he built a saloon for the accommodation of the Academy, in whose praise he overflowed in prose and poems, more than once quoted in his larger treatise; and to seal his extreme affection, bequeathed like Muziano, in case his own line should fail, the bulk of his fortune to the establishment.

Giuseppe Cesari, sometimes distinguished by the name of Il Cavaliere d'Arpino,[101 - 1560-1640.] his native place, was in art what Marino was in poetry – brilliancy without substance is the characteristic of both, and either proved the ancient observation, that Arts and Republics receive the greatest damage from the greatest capacities. The talent of Cesari bubbled up from his infancy, made him an object of admiration, procured him through F. Danti, the protection of Gregorio XIII., and in a short time the reputation of the first master at Rome. Less than the felicity with which he is said to have executed some pictures from certain designs of M. Agnolo, in the possession of Giacomo Rocca, his exuberance alone was sufficient to establish supremacy of name among a race who measured genius by quantity, and science by confidence of method. If his numbers were rabble, he arranged them with the skill of a general; if common-place furnished him with features, arrogance of touch brushed them into notice; and the horses which he drew with equal truth and fire, supplied the incorrectness or imbecility of the rider. The excellence of his colour in fresco, the gaiety which he spread over a vast surface, hid from the common eye monotony of manner, poverty of character, and want of finish in the detail of parts.

They were observed, reprobated and opposed by M.A. Caravaggio, A. Caracci, and the few who saw and thought with them. Quarrels arose, and challenges were given: that of Caravaggio, Cesari refused to accept, because he had not yet been knighted, and Annibale rejected that of Cesari, because, said he, "I know no other weapon than my pencil." They both experienced the difference of the difficulties that attend legislation and reform of taste, and were left ineffectually to struggle with an empiric, who outlived either upwards of thirty years, and then left a race worse than himself behind him.

THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES

Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum, Stabiæ, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom of the middle ages.

But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage, on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[102 - Dominici.] avails himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[103 - "Le opere superstiti ne deon decidere; e secondo queste Marco da Siena, ch'è il padre della Storia pittorica Napolitana, giudicò che in grandezza di fare Cimabue prevalepe." – Lanzi, ii. I. 580.] who from them, judged him inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.

The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli, named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has reached our time.[104 - Tommaso had a brother Pietro de' Stefani, who professed painting, but practised sculpture: of his works the monuments of Pope Innocenzio IV., who died at Naples 1254, of Charles the First and Second, are the most eminent. The two sitting statues of these two kings are still seen over the small gates of the Episcopal palace.]

About 1325, Giotto was invited by King Robert to Naples, for the purpose of painting the church of Sta. Chiara; he came and filled it with Gospel history, and apocalyptic mysteries, from inventions, said in the time of Vasari to have been formerly communicated to him by Dante. These works, because they darkened the church, were whitewashed in the beginning of the last century, with the exception of a Madonna called della Grazia, and some other sainted image, preserved by female piety. Giotto conducted other works in Sta. Maria Coronata, and still others, which no longer exist in the Castle dell' Uovo. Maestro Simone, a Cremonese, according to some, but more probably a native of Naples, was the chosen partner of these works, and from so distinguished a choice, acquired some celebrity himself: from the resemblance of his style to Tesauro and to Giotto, he might have been the pupil of either, and was perhaps of both. Certain it is, that after the departure of Giotto, he received from Robert and Queen Sancia, many important commissions for various churches, and especially that of S. Lorenzo; there he painted Robert receiving the crown from his brother Lewis, Bishop of Toulouse, but died before he could finish the compartment of the chapel dedicated to that prelate after his demise and canonization. Though confessedly inferior in invention, character, and suavity of tone, he has nearly reached Giotto in some of his works: such as the dead Christ supported by his mother, in the church dell' Incoronata, and the Madonna with the Infant, on a gold-ground, now in the convent of the church della Croce, supposed by some to have been painted in oil.[105 - Signorelli Vicende della Coltura delle due Sicilie, – t. iii. 116.]

Simone had a son, Francesco di Simone, who died in 1360. His works are not numerous, but what has reached our days in the Capitolo di S. Lorenzo, is distinguished by an air of superior dignity and grace. Two other pupils of Simone, Gennaro di Cola and Stefanone, a similarity of manner associated in several public works, such as the chapel of S. Lewis, begun by Simone, and what still exists in S. Giovanni da Carbonara of subjects relative to our Lady. They are similar, however, without monotony. Gennaro, impressed by the difficulties of his art, and bent to overcome each obstacle by labour, appears precise, studied, and hard. Stefanone, guided by a spirit which in better days might have been called genius, boldly executed what he had conceived with warmth.

The pretended improvements of Colantonio del Fiore, (born 1352, died 1444,) a pupil of Francesco, neither appear to have been considerable enough in themselves, nor sufficiently authenticated, to place him at the head of a new epoch in style. Those barbarous relics of the middle ages, that meagerness of contour, dryness of colour, and want of perspective, which he is said to have abolished, had in a great measure vanished before, at the glance of Giotto. The gold grounds continued after both;[106 - The Vatican alone is sufficient to prove that gold-grounds were still recurred to in the best years of the sixteenth century.] and if in enumerating some of his works his encomiast is in doubt whether they may not rather belong to M. Simone, what is it but a tacit confession, that the art had made no considerable progress during the course of a century?

The life of Colantonio grasped nearly the half of two centuries, and the refinements for which he has been extolled must be looked for in those of his works, on whose authenticity there is no hesitation, produced on the verge of life. Such is the Madonna, &c. in Sta. Maria Nuova, a compound of harmonious hues, though painted on a gold ground; and still more in S. Lorenzo, Saint Jerome drawing a thorn from the lion's foot, the date 1436, a picture full of truth, in high esteem with foreigners, and for its better preservation removed by the fathers of the convent from the church itself to the sacristy. He had a scholar in Angiolo Franco, who has obtained the praise of Marco di Siena, for having invigorated the most successful imitation of Giotto by the tone and chiaroscuro of his master.

But a name of far greater importance to art is that of Antonio Solario, commonly called Lo Zingaro, the reputed son-in-law of Colantonio. His story, still more romantic than that which in Quintin Metsis transformed a blacksmith to a painter, tells that Solario, bred to the forge, became enamoured of a daughter of Colantonio, forsook the anvil, and by successful submission to a ten years' trial of painting, and the mediation of a queen, obtained the idol of his soul. Let those who told the tale vouch for its truth: what is less disputable, and interests this history more, are his travels from Naples to Bologna, where for several years he studied under Lippo Dalmasio, and from thence over Italy, to become acquainted with the principles of other masters; those of Vivarini at Venice; of Bicci at Florence; of Galasso at Ferrara; of Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano at Rome. These two, it is believed that he assisted, and Luca Giordano asserted that some heads in their pictures at the Lateran bore the legitimate marks of Solario's pencil. In heads he excelled; he inspired them, according to Marco da Siena, with the air of life. In perspective, if the times be weighed, his skill was considerable; in composition not contemptible. There is variety in his scenery; and if his dresses be not drapery, they are at least naturally folded. In the design of the extremities he was less happy; his attitudes often border on caricature, as his colour on crudeness. On his return to Naples, nine years after his departure, applauded by Colantonio and the public, he enjoyed the patronage of King Alfonso. His greatest work is the Life of S. Benedetto, in the compartments of the cloister of S. Severino, – frescoes filled with an incredible variety of objects. Other churches possess some altarpieces by him: he left many portraits and some very attractive Madonnas; but in the Dead Christ of S. Domenico Maggiore, and the S. Vincent of S. Pier Martire, including some stories of that Saint's life, he is said to have excelled himself. Zingaro reared a school, which with more or less felicity disseminated his principles for nearly half a century, and retained his name. Of its pupils, Niccola di Vito, long forgot in his works, is barely remembered as a buffoon; Simone Papa and Angiotillo di Roccadirame, scarcely emerged to mediocrity; Pietro and Ippolito (Polito) del Donzello deserve less transient attention. Sons-in-law of Angiolo Franco, and pupils of Giuliano da Majano in architecture, they were, according to Vasari,[107 - In the life of Giuliano da Majano. They are the first painters of the Neapolitan schools mentioned by him, though with an ambiguity which might induce us to believe that he meant to give them for Tuscany.] employed by him to decorate with paintings the fabric of Poggio Reale, which he had constructed for King Alfonso, where, continuing to operate under his son and successor Ferdinand, they represented the story of the Conspiracy formed in against him, a work celebrated by Jacopo Sannazaro.[108 - In the forty-first sonnet, addressed to King Federigo: "Vedi invitto Signor come risplende," &c.] Ippolito, alone or with his brother, filled the refectory of Sta. Maria Nuova with a number of subjects for the same prince, and then retired to Florence, where, not long after, he died. Piero remained at Naples distinguished and followed. Their style is that of their master, but with more suavity of colour. The first successful imitation of friezes, trophies, and storied basso-relievoes in chiaroscuro, may with probability be dated from them. That Pietro excelled in portraits, is evident from some animated heads saved among the ruins of certain frescoes of his on a wall of the Palace Matalona. Both were, however, surpassed in tone, and force of light and shade, and mellowness of outline, by Silvestro de Buoni, their pupil, whose pictures, scattered over the temples of Naples, have been enumerated by Dominici. Silvestro himself yields to Tesauro of questionable name,[109 - Some call him Giacomo, some Andria, most, and with greater probability, Bernardo.] whose works approach much nearer to the succeeding epoch than the united labours of his predecessors in vigour of invention, in judgment, propriety of attitude, truth of expression, and general harmony of the whole, with a relief beyond what seems credible in an artist unacquainted with other schools and other works than those of his native place. Such was his power of execution, that it challenged the wonder of Luca Giordano in the vigour of his career, when he contemplated the ceiling of San Giovanni de' Pappacodi, where Tesauro had painted the Seven Sacraments. They have been minutely described, and the portraits of Alfonso II. and of Ippolita Sforza, whom he is said to have represented, for the work itself is no more, in the Sacrament of Matrimony, afford some light as to the time in which it was painted. Another of his works, equally praised, in the Chapel Tocco of the Episcopal church, which represented a series of subjects from the life of Saint Asprenas, perished under the hands of one of Solimena's pupils. He was the father or uncle of Raimo Epifanio Tesauro, a considerable Frescante, who, according to Stanzioni, rekindled the evanescent spark of Zingaro's principles. Some few vestiges of his works remain in Sta. Maria Nuova and Monte Vergine. His dates reach from 1480 to 1501, and he may be considered as the last of this school, for Gio. Antonio d'Amato acquired fame by abandoning its style for that of Pietro Perugino.

Such were the masters that marked the first epoch of the Neapolitan school; neither inconsiderable in number, nor contemptible in progress, for a state nearly always perplexed by war: it derives, however, its greatest lustre from having produced within the state the memorable artist whose resolution and perseverance made Italy mistress of the new-discovered method in oil-painting, and changed the face of art.[110 - See the remarks relative to Antoniello, in the history of Venetian art; but it is in place here to observe on the assertions of the Neapolitan writers, that, if the tradition of a Greek picture in oil at the Duomo of Messina be not fabulous, Antoniello could not have remained ignorant of it. If Colantonio was in possession of oil painting, how is the astonishment to be accounted for, which the method of John ab Eyk excited at Naples? How came the name of an obscure Fleming to fill in a short period all Europe, every prince to solicit his pencil, every painter to submit to his dictates or those of his scholars? Who, on the contrary, who out of Naples or its state, knew then Colantonio? who courted Solario? a man so apt, the son-in-law and scholar of the former, and before of Lippo Dalmasio – how forgot he to learn, or why did he neglect a method they are said to have practised so well, for the vulgar one of distemper? Either they knew nothing of the mystery at all, or in a degree too insignificant to affect the authority of Vasari, and the claims of John ab Eyk and Antoniello.]

Antoniello, a Messinese, of the Antonj family, universally known by the name of Antoniello da Messina, educated, according to Vasari, to the art at Rome, returned from that place to Sicily, and after some successful practice at Palermo and Messina, sailed to Naples, where he saw an historical picture painted in oil by John ab Eyk, which had been presented or disposed of to king Alfonso, by some Florentine traders. Charmed by the method, Antoniello forgot every other concern, passed into Flanders, and by close attendance, and some presents of Italian designs, captivated the heart of the old painter, who made him completely master of the secret, and soon after died. Antoniello then left Flanders, and after some months spent at Messina, repaired to Venice, where he practised with general admiration of his new method; communicated it to Domenico there, and he at Florence to the felon Castagna, till by gradual progress it embraced all Italy. What remains to be related of Antoniello, is reserved for the history of the Venetian school, to which by residence and practice he properly belongs, and which alone carried his new discovered method to the height it was capable of.

The second epoch of Neapolitan art was auspicious. P. Perugino had painted for the Cathedral an Assumption of the Virgin, now lost, a work which led to a better taste. Already, Amato, as we observed, had abandoned the manner of Zingaro to follow Pietro, though his style had still too much of the former to form more than the connecting link between the two epochs; when Raffaello and his school came into vogue, Naples was the first of exterior towns to profit by them, and they, about the middle of the century, were followed by some adherents of Michael Angiolo; nor till near 1600, was any attention paid to other masters, if we except Tiziano.

The new series begins with Andrea Sabbatini[111 - A. Sabbatini from 1480 to 1545.] of Salerno. Smitten with the style of P. Perugino, Andrea set out for Perugia, to enter his school; but hearing some painters at an inn on the road talk of Raffaello and the Vatican, he altered his mind and route, and went to Rome. Though not long under the guidance of Sanzio, being by the death of his father, 1513, obliged to return to Naples, he returned another man. He is said to have painted with Raffaello at the Pace and in the Vatican. A good copyist, and what is rare, a better imitator, if he did not soar with Giulio, he kept pace with the best of that school, and excelled some in correctness, and a style equally remote from affectation and manner, with depth of chiaroscuro, breadth of drapery, and a colour which has defied time. His works in oil and fresco, scattered over the metropolis and the kingdom at large, have been celebrated as miracles of art, though now either lost or greatly impaired.

Of his scholars all persevered not in his manner: thus Cesare Turco, as commendable in oil as unsuccessful in fresco, drew nearer to P. Perugino. More of Andrea was retained by Francesco Santafede, the father and master of Fabrizio, – painters whom few of that school equal in colour, and so uniform that their works can only be discriminated by the superior tinge and chiaroscuro of the father. But the scholar who most resembled Andrea was one Paolillo, whose works, nearly all ascribed to his master, till restored to their real author by Dominici, leave little doubt of his right to the first honours of that school, had his career not been intercepted by a violent death, occasioned by intrigue. Polidoro Caldara, of Caravaggio, escaped to Naples in 1527, from the sack of Rome, but not, as Vasari with less information than credulity relates, to starve. Received in the house of Andrea, formerly his fellow scholar, he soon acquired acquaintance, commissions, and even formed pupils before his departure for Sicily. He had been celebrated for his chiaroscuros at Rome: at Naples and Messina he attempted colour. The shadowy and pallid specimens he has left, leave a doubt whether he would ever have arrived at a degree of strength or brilliancy worthy of invention and style, though he has been praised with enthusiasm by Vasari for the colour of the Christ led to Calvary, a numerous composition, and the last before his assassination at Messina.

Gian Bernardo Lama left the school of Amato to attach himself to Polidoro, whom he more than once imitated with sufficient success to incur the suspicion of having been assisted by the master: he had, however, more sweetness than energy, and, in the sequel, was noted for his opposition to the vigorous inroads of the Tuscan style and the prevalence of Marco di Pino.

Francesco Rubiales, a Spaniard, from his felicity of imitation called Polidorino, is likewise named in Naples among the scholars of Caldara, whom he assisted in painting for the Orsini, and singly conducted several works at Monte Oliveto, and elsewhere, the greater part of which are no more.