by Grant Allen
MANTEGNA. — ADORATION OF THE MAGI (CENTRAL PANEL OF THE TRIPTYCH).
Below it, 571, attributed to Giorgione, perhaps by Caroto (or Torbido), is a noble *portrait, said to be Gattamelata, where face, hair, armour, and everything are exquisitely painted.
Next it, * *1111, is a marvellous triptych by Mantegna. One of the minutest and finest works of the great master’s early period. Its finish is exquisite. Note the influence of northern art in it. The central panel, slightly curved, consists of an Adoration of the Magi, where the face of the Madonna and the treatment of the Child are highly typical of Mantegna’s manner. The tall bent St. Joseph, the realistic portrait-like faces of the Three Kings (almost German or Flemish in tone), the camels and cortège in the background, the cave behind, and the still half conventional rocks, should all be noted. Observe, too, how in North Italian art intercourse with the East (through Venice) makes the cavalcade of the Kings really oriental in costume and features. All the faces in the background are fine studies of Asiatic or African types. This is a picture to look into and dwell upon. To the left is the Resurrection, where the straining upward faces and necks show Mantegna’s love of setting himself difficulties to conquer. Each of these attitudes and faces deserves close study. To the right, the Circumcision, where the shrinking boy in the Madonna’s arms, and the aged figures close by, are thoroughly Mantegnesque. Observe the typical Paduan enrichment of the architectural background, and the Venetian touch in the bystander child sucking his finger. Every part of this magnificent work demands close attention. I have treated of it more fully in one of my articles in the Pall-Mall Magazine.
Number 648 is Titian’s pretty portrait of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, in the character of St. Catherine, whose spiked wheel just appears in the background. There is nothing else saintly about this attractive portrait of a lovely and richly dressed Venetian woman. The purple satin of her sleeves, the rich green brocade, the jewelry and gewgaws, and the regal head-dress, are admirably painted. Notice especially the pearls, each produced by a few consummate touches. Note how art has become conscious and triumphant: it does things now with a twist of the hand which earlier it elaborated with endless minuteness.
Beyond the door, 586, is a noble portrait by Moroni: fine in attitude, expression, and detachment from its background.
On the right wall, 631, is a Giovanni Bellini; the Madonna by the Lake, a curious and unusual mystic attempt on this great painter’s part to introduce novelty and variety into the groups of saints attendant on Our Lady. He had an order for so many, and he tried to vivify their grouping. To the extreme left is the Madonna enthroned, without the infant Saviour. (I cannot account for this unusual omission, was it for a mother who had lost her baby?) Beside her kneels St. Catherine of Alexandria, crowned; to the left, a most unconventional Catherine of Siena (?). Behind the parapet stand St. Peter and St. Paul, the former only recognisable by the type of his features. Below, children are playing with fruit and with a symbolical tree, perhaps that of the future Cross. As the figures have no haloes it is impossible to decide which is intended for the infant Saviour, but I take him to be the one playing with the tree, a natural symbol. To the extreme right are the two great plague-saints, St. Job, the patriarch (almost peculiar to the Adriatic, and well seen in Bellini’s great plague-picture from San Giobbe now in the Academy at Venice), and St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, proving this work to be most likely a votive plague-picture. In the background are other curious episodes, St. Anthony the Hermit with the Satyr, etc. The landscape, with its artificial rocks, is peculiar and poetical; it should be compared with Mantegna, Bellini’s fellow pupil and brother-in-law. But I half doubt the ascription. This strangely mystic picture is, if authentic, unique among Bellini’s works; whoever painted it, it represents an abortive attempt at that freer style of Sacra Conversazione which was later achieved in another form by Titian and his successors. (Some authorities attribute this work to Basaiti.)
Above it, *584 and *584 bis, are two good pictures by Cima da Conegliano, exhibiting well the Bellinesque type of Venetian Madonna, with her serene and queenly features, her strong column-like neck, and her peculiar head-dress. Notice the naked children, and the painting of the hands. The St. Peter with the keys is highly characteristic of Venetian treatment. This type of Madonna, best seen in Bellini at Venice, develops at last into Titian’s ideal. Its evolution is interesting. The round-faced, strong-necked, matronly Venetian Madonna, extremely unlike any other Italian representation of Our Lady, seems to be ultimately derived from the school of Cologne, through Giovanni da Allemagna, a Rhenish artist who settled at Venice, and founded the school of the Vivarini. His type, altered and beautified by Bellini, was further modified by Titian and his successors, but always retained at Venice its matronly roundness and its fine neck. Elsewhere in Italy the Madonna, derived directly from the thin-faced fretful Byzantine type, is slight and girlish, no matter how varied in other particulars.
Number *583 bis is a fragmentary Carpaccio, of some Old Testament subject (or of a Way to Calvary), where all the figures are most typical of their painter.
Number 579 is an Annunciation of the school of Paolo Veronese. (Morelli attributes it to Zelotti.) The Madonna is one of Veronese’s Venetian models. The action takes place in a vast loggia, of the school of Sansovino, where only the formal arrangement reminds one of the empty central colonnade in Neri di Bicci’s pictures. The Announcing Angel, with his annunciation lily in his hand, just descended from the sky, and raising his hand with a theatrical gesture, contrasts in every respect with earlier and more sacred treatments. He is just a plump Venetian figure, ostentatiously posing himself in what he considers a telling attitude. It is interesting to note here the retention of all the formal features, such as the garden in the background, the prie-dieu, etc., side by side with the utter and lamentable transformation in the spirit of the scene. Note the Holy Ghost, descending in the midst in a vague glory of cherubs. You cannot properly understand such pictures as these unless you have first studied earlier representations of the same subjects.
Number 592, by Sebastiano del Piombo, represents the Death of Adonis, a Renaissance mythological subject, treated in Sebastiano’s earlier manner, almost wholly Venetian, but with tinges of Roman influence beginning to show in it.
Just beyond, 578, is a pleasing portrait by Paris Bordone.
Number 575 is Lorenzo Lotto’s Holy Family, with St. Anne and the Madonna in a familiar attitude (we have seen it before), and St. James and St. Jerome introduced in the background. It should be compared with the pair by Cima, close by, to show the development in Venetian treatments of this subject.
Number 574, by Polidoro Veneziano, is the Madonna and Child with St. Francis, where the composition and the landscape background are in the style initiated by Titian.
On the entrance wall, again, is 572, Paolo Veronese’s St. Catherine, the exact analogue of the Annunciation just noticed.
Below it, 627 is attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo (probably Dosso Dossi). Striking portrait of a general.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SECOND HALL OF THE VENETIAN SCHOOL AND THE EARLY FLORENTINE PAINTINGS.
The next room, the second hall of the Venetian School, has, left of the door, 590, a Madonna and Child with St. John, by Titian, in a mandorla of cherubs. A good picture in a transitional manner.
Near it is 609, reduced copy of Titian’s celebrated Battle of Cadore (burnt in the fire at the Doge’s Palace in 1577), a work noted for its life and movement, and its vigorous treatment.
Number 3390 is a Tintoretto, one of his finest portraits, full of character and dignity, and admirable in colour.
Number 613 is a fine luminous portrait by Paris Bordone.
The left wall has a fine portrait of Sansovino the sculptor, by Tintoretto; 636, a Crucifixion, by Paolo Veronese, well exhibiting the later non-sacred conception of this subject; and *633, a beautiful Madonna and Child, with the boy Baptist and St. Anthony the Hermit, by Titian. The
last is one of his most exquisite Madonnas. Above it is an admirable cartoon by Bellini (or of his school) for a Pietà.
On the end wall, 623, is a fine Holy Family with St. Mary Magdalen, by Palma Vecchio (perhaps a copy), in which the face and head-dress of the Madonna, and the face and hair of the Magdalen, should be carefully compared with Cima and Titian. The colour is rich and well harmonised.
Beneath it, 639, is a fine portrait of a Man with a Guitar by an unknown artist (Moretto?).
Number 625 exhibits Titian’s most mundane style of Madonna, with a well-made Venetian young lady in the character of St. Catherine. The infant Christ has here attained the furthest height of Renaissance treatment, while Our Lady’s face is frankly human and ladylike. Trace its evolution by the aid of the Palma above it, the Bellini, the Cima, etc.
Number *630 is Giorgione’s Judgment of Solomon, with fine landscape background and striking figures. This and its companion piece are among the very few works attributed to this great Master which Morelli allows to be authentic. They were probably painted in his seventeenth or eighteenth year. The deep colour, the sparkling touch, the feeling for nature, and the fine drawing of the figure are there already.
Number 589, Paolo Veronese’s Martyrdom of St. Justina, shows a Venetian lady, pallid from fear, with Moors and negroes as bystanders or executioners, and portraits of Venetian gentlemen as Roman officials, afraid of getting their fine robes spoiled by the spurting blood of the martyr. A most frank instance of a sacred subject distorted from its purpose, but pleasing in colour and large in treatment. Nice architecture.
Above it is 628, Bonifazio’s Last Supper.
Number *621 is a Giorgione, the Child Moses undergoing the ordeal of fire — a legendary subject. Compare with the companion piece.
Number * *622, also by Giorgione, is a splendid portrait of a Knight of Malta: a noble and authentic work, very much repainted.
Number 642 is a good portrait by Moroni.
On the right wall is 619, Palma Vecchio’s *Judith, which strikes a key-note. It is very much injured. Also, notice 618, an unfinished Madonna and Child, by Titian, a copy of his famous Pesaro Madonna at Venice; 617, Tintoretto’s Marriage at Cana, a sketch for the great picture at Venice, with alterations; and, on the same wall, several good portraits.
On the entrance wall, by the door, is a Transfiguration by Savoldo, with the curious modern touch and tendency of that very original Lombard painter. Note the transformation of earlier conceptions. Above it, 646, is Tintoretto’s Sacrifice of Isaac.
I do not enlarge upon many of these pictures, because the Venetian school is so much better studied in Venice than at Florence, where the series is but fragmentary. Those who have visited Venice will be able to put most of these works into their proper order in the evolution of Venetian painting. For those who have not, they must remain unplaced till another visit.
Return to the second Long Corridor, and take the first door to the left, which leads through a passage (with portraits of painters) to the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco. This room contains some of the finest and most interesting works of the Early Florentine period. Left of the door, as you enter, is *1310, a Gentile da Fabriano: four isolated saints, portions of an altar-piece, with the Madonna (who once was there) omitted. On the left is St. Mary Magdalen, with her alabaster box of ointment; next to her St. Nicholas of Bari, with his golden balls: on his robes are embroidered the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptism of Christ. Note such subjects hereafter, embroidered on the robes of other bishops. They often throw light on the personages represented. Then, St. John the Baptist of Florence, as the ascetic saint, and St. George, with the red cross on his lance and shield, a striking figure. In the cuspidi above, other saints and angels. This picture comes from the church of St. Nicholas in Florence, and the Nicholas stood on the right hand of Our Lady.
Number 1302, beneath, is a predella by Benozzo Gozzolo: (1) Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a charming girlish figure; (2) Pietà with St. John and the Magdalen; (3) St. Anthony with his crutch and book, and St. Benedict holding a book and arrow. This is from Santa Croce.
On the end wall, * *1309, by Don Lorenzo Monaco, is a great altar-piece of the Coronation of the Virgin, in a magnificent tabernacle of three arches. Adequately to describe this noble picture, the only important work now remaining by Fra Angelico’s master, would require many pages. I note a few points. Below are the circles of heaven, with stars and angels. The centre once held a reliquary, now gone, about which angels swing censers.
In the group of saints under the left arch, nearest the throne, is St. John the Baptist of Florence; then, St. Peter with the keys, and St. Benedict, with a scourge (this being a Camaldolese-Benedictine picture, painted for Don Lorenzo’s own monastery of the Angeli at Florence); above him St. Stephen, with the stones on his head; beside whom stands St. Paul, holding his sword and his Epistle to the Romans; then, St. James the Greater with a staff, St. Anthony Abbot with a crutch, and other saints less discernible, among whom I believe I detect St. Louis of France, and St. Louis of Toulouse. In the opposite arch: on the extreme right, to balance St. Benedict, in white robes, is St. Romuald, founder of the Camaldolese order (a branch of the Benedictines); next him, St. Andrew and St. John the Evangelist; behind the last, St. Lawrence, with his gridiron (Lorenzo’s name saint); St. Bartholomew with his knife, and St. Francis with his Franciscan robes and crucifix. Between the last two, a bishop, probably San Zanobi, as his mitre bears the Florentine lily. Between him and St. Francis is, I think, St. Vincent. The rest I cannot decipher. Observe the numerous angels, representing the monastery. In the cuspidi, an Annunciation, and Christ blessing. Many of the figures on the frame may also be identified. On the left are King David, Noah with the ark, and other Old Testament characters; on the right, Daniel, Moses with the stone tables, and various prophets. The predella contains Bible scenes, and stories from the life of St. Benedict. The first represents his death, where his disciple St. Maurus sees his soul ascending to heaven; the second, his teaching in his monastery, with St. Maurus and the young monk who was tempted by the devil. (See the same subject in the very different St. Benedict series by Francesco di Giorgio Martini in the Scuola Toscana, Terza Sala.) The third is a Nativity, and the fourth an Adoration of the Magi; the fifth represents St. Benedict in his cell with Benedictine saints, male and female: he sends out St. Maurus to rescue St. Placidus from drowning; the sixth shows the resuscitation of a novice, killed by a falling house at the Convent of Monte-Cassino. (The same scenes occur, with others, in Spinello Aretino’s frescoes in the Sacristy at San Miniato.) Taking it all round, it is a noble work for its date, worth close study.
Number 1305 is a Domenico Veneziano, representing the Madonna and Child, enthroned, under a very peculiar canopy, with St. John the Baptist, St. Francis (Bernard?), San Zanobi, and St. Lucy. (It was painted for the church of St. Lucy at Florence.) A hard picture, in very peculiar colouring, but with fine drawing and good characterisation. It is, in point of fact, an early attempt at oil-painting, the secret of which Domenico had learnt, and which he imparted to Andrea del Castagno, who murdered him in order that he alone might possess it. The colouring is clear and bright, but lacks harmony; it is anything but melting. The drawing and composition remind one of Andrea del Castagno.
Number 24, by Lorenzo di Credi, is a Virgin adoring the Child. The infant is exquisite.
Number 1286, * *Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi, is one of the painter’s finest sacred works, where all the conventional elements are retained, while a totally new meaning is given to the merest detail, such as the great ruined classical temple, and far more to the group of attendants on the Three Kings, all of whom are contemporary Florentine portraits. Notice in the figure of the Young King, to the right, in white (a portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici), how completely Botticelli has transformed and spiritualised the earlier conception. The portrait faces of al
l the Three Kings, indeed, are exquisitely beautiful: the eldest, seen in profile, is Cosimo Pater Patriæ. Equally fine is the group of men of letters and statesmen to the right. Do not overlook the poetical Botticellian touch in the light gauze veil thrown over the Second King’s gift, nor the fur on his dress, nor the dainty painting of the peacock on the ruin, nor the thoughtful face of the draped figure in yellow, to the extreme right, nor the haughty aristocratic mouths of the Medici to the left, nor indeed anything about this wonderful picture. Every face is significant, every fold of the drapery is beautiful and flowing. (From Santa Maria Novella.)
BOTTICELLI. — ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
Number 1297 is *Ghirlandajo’s beautiful Madonna and Child, with adoring Angels, a work of his early manner. All the details of this picture are marvellous. Observe the architecture and decoration of the canopy, and the trees in the background. Also, the carpet on the steps, and the vase of flowers, including Florentine lilies. One stage below the Madonna stand the two archangels, Michael with his sword, and the half-womanish Raphael with the box of ointment he carried to Tobit, — both exquisite figures in Ghirlandajo’s most attractive manner. A step lower down kneel two sainted bishops; to the right, San Zanobi, with the lily on his morse, to the left another, who is probably St. Just, because the picture comes from the church of San Giusto, near Florence. Note the figures on their robes. This is one of Ghirlandajo’s best and most carefully painted panels.
Number 17 is *Fra Angelico’s famous tabernacle of the Madonna and Child, with St. John the Baptist and St. Mark the Evangelist, patrons of Florence and of the Convent of San Marco. This is an early picture (1433), the drawing still very crude and rigid. It has a draped and somewhat vapid infant, Giottesque in type, and its Madonna disappoints; but round its frame are charming angels, continually copied. On the outside of the flaps, St. Peter and St. Mark again (or is it St. Jerome?) with the lion. Beneath it, 1294, its predella, relating to these same saints. In the left compartment, St. Peter preaches at Rome, while St. Mark the Evangelist takes down his words to write his gospel. Centre, Adoration of the Magi, where the action of one of the Kings and Joseph is very unusual. In the right compartment is the Martyrdom of St. Mark, who is dragged by a rope at Alexandria, with the overthrow of his assailants by hail and lightning: in the background, Christ appearing to him in prison. This was painted for the Guild of Linen Merchants, whose patron was St. Mark.
