*rs 
 
 
 
 [BRARY 
 
 FHE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CAL IFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 J. LORENZ SPORER
 
 > 
 
 '. -10 
 
 Li*S 
 
 *> 
 \
 
 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
 
 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, M.A. 
 
 PART I. THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. 
 
 PART II. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 
 
 PART III. THE FINE ARTS. 
 
 PART IV. ITALIAN LITERATURE. 2 Voi.s. 
 
 PART V. THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 2 Voi.s.
 
 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 
 
 THE FINE ARTS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 1 AIT INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTK,' 'STUDIES OF THE 3RKEK POKT8,' 
 AND ' SKETCHES IN ITALY AND GREECE.' 
 
 Dii Romae indigetes, Trojae tuque auctor, Apollo. 
 Unde genus nostrum cceli se tollit ad astra, 
 Hanc saltern auferri laudem prohibete Latinis: 
 Artibus emineat semper, studiisque Minervee, 
 Italia, et gentes doceat pulcherrima Roma ; 
 Quandoquidem armorum penitus fortuna recessit, 
 Tanta Italos inter crevit discordia reges ; 
 Ipsi DOS inter saevos distringimus enses, 
 Nee patriam pudet externis aperire tyrannis. 
 
 VIDA, Poetica, lib. ri. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1888.
 
 AUTHOR'S EDITION.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 .5-33 
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 THIS book is one of the three written on the u Re- 
 naissance in Italy." The other two are respectively 
 called " The Age of the Despots" and " The Revival 
 of Learning." They deal with the politics and the 
 scholarship of the period. A fourth book is being 
 written on " Italian Literature." 
 
 Though these books taken together and in the 
 order planned by the author form one connected 
 study of Italian culture at a certain period of his- 
 tory, still each aims at a completeness of its own, 
 and each can be read independently of its com- 
 panions. That the author does not regard acquaint- 
 ance with any one of them as essential to a profit- 
 able reading of any other has been shown by the 
 publication of each with a separate title-page and 
 without numeration of the volumes, while all three 
 bear the same general heading of <l Renaissance in 
 Italy."
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS third volume of my book on the Renaissance 
 in Italy does not pretend to retrace the history of 
 the Italian arts, but rather to define their relation 
 to the main movement of Renaissance culture. 
 Keeping this, the chief object of my whole work, 
 steadily in view, I have tried to explain the de- 
 pendence of the arts on mediaeval Christianity at 
 their commencement, their gradual emancipation 
 from ecclesiastical control, and their final attain- 
 ment of freedom at the moment when the classical 
 revival culminated. 
 
 Not to notice the mediaeval period in this evo- 
 lution would be impossible ; since the revival of 
 Sculpture and Painting at the end of the thir- 
 teenth century was among the earliest signs of 
 that new intellectual birth to which we give the 
 title of Renaissance. I have, therefore, had to 
 deal at some length with stages in the develop- 
 ment of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting,
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 which form a prelude to the proper age of my 
 own history. 
 
 In studying the architectural branch of the 
 subject, I have had recourse to Fergusson's Illus- 
 trated Handbook of Architecture, to Burckhardt's 
 Cicerone, to Griiner's Terra-Cotta Buildings of 
 North Italy, to Milizia's Mentor ie degli Architetti, 
 and to many illustrated works on single buildings 
 in Rome, Tuscany, Lombardy, and Venice. For 
 the history of Sculpture I have used Burckhardt's 
 Cicerone and the two important works of Charles 
 C. Perkins, entitled Tuscan Sculptors and Italian 
 Sculptors. Such books as Le Tre Porte del Bat- 
 tistero di Firenze, Griiner's Cathedral of Orvieto, 
 and Lasinio's Tabernacolo della Madonna d'Or- 
 sammichele have been helpful by their illustrations. 
 For the history of Painting I have made use prin- 
 cipally of Vasari's Vite de piu eccellenti Pittori, 
 etc., in Le Monnier's edition of Crowe and Ca- 
 valcaselle's History of Painting, of Burckhardt's 
 Cicerone, of Rosini's illustrated Storia della Pit- 
 tura Italiana, of Rio's L?Art Chretien, and of 
 Henri Beyle's Histoire de la Peinture en Italie. I 
 should, however, far exceed the limits of a pref- 
 ace were I to make a list of all the books J
 
 PREFACE, vii 
 
 have consulted with profit on the history of the 
 arts in Italy. 
 
 In this part of my work I feel that I owe less 
 to reading than to observation. I am not aware 
 of having mentioned any important building, statue, 
 or picture which I have not had the opportunity 
 of studying. What I have written in this volume 
 about the monuments of Italian art has always 
 been first noted face to face with the originals, 
 and afterward corrected, modified, or confirmed 
 in the course of subsequent journeys to Italy. I 
 know that this method of composition, if it has 
 the merit of freshness, entails some inequality 
 of style and disproportion in the distribution of 
 materials. In the final preparation of my work 
 for press I have therefore endeavored, as far as 
 possible, to compensate this disadvantage by ad- 
 hering to the main motive of my subject the 
 illustration of the Renaissance spirit as this was 
 manifested in the Arts. 
 
 I must add, in conclusion, that Chapters VII. 
 and IX. and Appendix II. are in part reprinted 
 from the Westminster, the CornMll, and the Con- 
 temporary. 
 
 CUFTON : March, 1877.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROBLEM FOR THE FINE ARTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Art in Italy and Greece The Leading Phase of Culture ^Es- 
 thetic Type of Literature Painting the Supreme Italian Art 
 Its Task in the Renaissance Christian and Classical Tradi- 
 tions Sculpture for the Ancients Painting for the Romance 
 Nations Mediaeval Faith and Superstition The Promise of 
 Painting How far can the Figurative Arts express Christian 
 Ideas ? Greek and Christian Religion Plastic Art incapable 
 of solving the Problem A more Emotional Art needed 
 Place of Sculpture in the Renaissance Painting and Christian 
 Story Humanization of Ecclesiastical Ideas by Art Hostility 
 of the Spirit of True Piety to Art Compromises effected by 
 the Church Fra Bartolommeo's S. Sebastian Irreconcilability 
 of Art and Theology, Art and Philosophy Recapitulation 
 Art in the end Paganizes Music The Future of Painting 
 after the Renaissance ..... i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Architecture of Mediaeval Italy Milan, Genoa, Venice The Des- 
 pots as Builders Diversity of Styles Local Influences Lom- 
 bard, Tuscan Romanesque, Gothic Italian want of feeling for 
 Gothic Cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto Secular Buildings 
 of the Middle Ages Florence and Venice Private Palaces 
 Public Halls Palazzo della Signoria at Florence Arnolfo 
 di Cambio S. Maria del Fiore Brunelleschi's Dome Classi-
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGI 
 
 cal revival in Architecture Roman Ruins Three Periods in 
 Renaissance Architecture Their Characteristics Brunelleschi 
 Alberti Palace-building Michellozzo Decorative work 
 of the Revival Bramante Vitoni's Church of the Umilta at 
 Pistoja Palazzo del Te Villa Farnesina Sansovino at Venice 
 Michael Angelo The Building of S.Peter's Palladio The 
 Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza Lombard Architects Theo- 
 rists and students of Vitruvius Vignola and Scamozzi Euro- 
 pean influence of the Palladian style Comparison of Scholars 
 and Architects in relation to the Revival of Learning . . 40 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCULPTURE. 
 
 Niccola Pisano Obscurity of the sources for a History of Early 
 Italian Sculpture Vasari's Legend of Pisano Deposition from 
 the Cross at Lucca Study of Nature and the Antique Sar- 
 cophagus at Pisa Pisan Pulpit Niccola's School Giovanni 
 Pisano Pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja Fragments of his work 
 at Pisa Tomb of Benedict XI. at Perugia Bass-reliefs at 
 Orvieto Andrea Pisano Relation of Sculpture to Painting 
 Giotto Subordination of Sculpture to Architecture in Italy 
 Pisano's Influence in Venice Balduccio of Pisa Orcagna 
 The Tabernacle of Orsammichele The Gates of the Floren- 
 tine Baptistery Competition of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and 
 Della Quercia Comparison of Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's 
 Trial-pieces Comparison of Ghiberti and Della Quercia The 
 Bass-reliefs of S. Petronio Ghiberti's Education His Picto- 
 rial Style in Bass-relief His feeling for the Antique Donatel- 
 lo Early Visit to Rome Christian subjects Realistic Treat- 
 ment S. George and David Judith Equestrian Statue of 
 Gattamelata Influence of Donatello's Naturalism Andrea 
 Verocchio His David Statue of Colleoni Alessandro Leo- 
 pardi Lionardo's Statue of Francesco Sforza The Pollajuoli 
 Tombs of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Luca della Robbia 
 His Treatment of Glazed Earthenware Agostino di Duccio 
 The Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia Antonio Rosse!-* 
 lino Matteo Civitali Mino da Fiesole Benedetto da Majanq 
 Characteristics and Masterpieces of this Group Sepulchraj 
 Monuments Andrea Contucci's. Tombs in S. Majia del Popolq
 
 CONTENTS. 4 
 
 PACK 
 
 Desiderio da Settignano Sculpture in S. Francesco at Rimi- 
 ni-~-Venetian Sculpture Verona Guido Mazzoni of Modena 
 Certosa of Pavia Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo Sansovino at 
 Venice Pagan Sculpture Michael Angelo's Scholars Baccio 
 Bandinelli Bartolommeo Ammanati Cellini Gian Bologna 
 Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture . . loo 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Distribution of Artistic Gifts in Italy Florence and Venice 
 Classification by Schools Stages in the Evolution of Painting 
 Cimabue The Rucellai Madonna Giotto His widespread 
 Activity The Scope of his Art Vitality Composition 
 Color Naturalism Healthiness Frescoes at Assisi and Pa- 
 dua Legend of S. Francis The Giotteschi Pictures of the 
 Last Judgment Orcagna in the Strozzi Chapel Ambrogio 
 Lorenzetti at Pisa Dogmatic Theology Capella degli Spag- 
 nuoli Traini's ' Triumph of S. Thomas Aquinas ' Political 
 Doctrine expressed in Fresco Sala della Pace at Siena 
 Religious Art in Siena and Perugia The Relation of the 
 Giottesque Painters to the Renaissance . . . .180 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Mediaeval Motives exhausted New Impulse toward Technical 
 Perfection Naturalists in Painting Intermediate Achieve- 
 ment needed for the Great Age of Art Positive Spirit of the 
 Fifteenth Century Masaccio The Modern Manner Paolo 
 Uccello Perspective Realistic Painters The Model Piero 
 della Francesca His Study of Form Resurrection at Borgo 
 San Sepolcro Melozzo da Forli Squarcione at Padua Gen- 
 tile da Fabriano Fra Angelico Benozzo Gozzoli His Deco- 
 rative Style Lippo Lippi Frescoes at Prato and Spoleto 
 Filippino Lippi Sandro Botticelli His value for the Student 
 of Renaissance Fancy His feeling for Mythology Piero di 
 Cosimo Domenico Ghirlandajo In what Sense he sums up
 
 x? CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGS 
 
 the Age Prosaic Spirit Florence hitherto supreme in Paint- 
 ing Extension of Art activity throughout Italy Medicean 
 Patronage ....... 
 
 224. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Two Periods in the True Renaissance Andrea Mantegna 
 His Statuesque Design His Naturalism Roman Inspira- 
 tion Triumph of Julius Caesar Bass-Reliefs Luca Signorelli 
 The Precursor of Michael Angelo Anatomical Studies 
 Sense of Beauty The Chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto Its 
 Arabesques and Medallions Degrees in his Ideal Enthusi- 
 asm for Organic Life Mode of treating Classical Subjects 
 Perugino His Pietistic Style His Formalism The Psycho- 
 logical Problem of his Life Perugino's Pupils Pinturicchio 
 At Spello and Siena Francia Fra Bartolommeo Transition 
 to the Golden Age Lionardo da Vinci The Magician of the 
 Renaissance Raphael The Melodist Correggio The Faun 
 Michael Angelo The Prophet .... 266 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 VENETIAN PAINTING. 
 
 Painting bloomed late in Venice Conditions offered by Venice 
 to Art Shelley and Pietro Aretino Political Circumstances of 
 Venice Comparison with Florence The Ducal Palace Art 
 regarded as an adjunct to State Pageantry Myth of Venezia 
 Heroic Deeds of Venice Tintoretto's Paradise and Guardi's 
 Picture of a Ball Early Venetian Masters of Murano Gian 
 Bellini Carpaccio's little Angels The Madonna of S. Zac- 
 caria Giorgione Allegory, Idyl, Expression of Emotion 
 The Monk at the Clavichord Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese 
 Tintoretto's Attempt to dramatize Venetian Art Veronese's 
 Mundane Splendor Titian's Sophoclean Harmony Their 
 Schools Further Characteristics of Veronese of Tintoretto 
 His Imaginative Energy Predominant Poetry Titian's Per- 
 fection of Balance Assumption of Madonna Spirit common 
 to the Great Venetians ...... 347
 
 CONTENTS. xiti 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO. 
 
 MM 
 
 Contrast of Michael Angelo and Cellini Parentage and Boyhood 
 of Michael Angelo Work with Ghirlandajo Gardens of S. 
 Marco The Medicean Circle Early Essays in Sculpture 
 Visit to Bologna First Visit to Rome The Pietd' of S. 
 Peter's Michael Angelo as a Patriot and a Friend of the 
 Medici Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa Michael Angelo and 
 Julius II. The Tragedy of the Tomb Design for the Pope's 
 Mausoleum Visit to Carrara Flight from Rome Michael 
 Angelo at Bologna Bronze Statue of Julius Return to Rome 
 Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Greek and Modern Art 
 Raphael Michael Angelc, and Leo X. S. Lorenzo The New 
 Sacristy Circumstances under which it was designed and 
 partly finished Meaning of the Allegorips Incomplete State 
 of Michael Angelo's Marbles Paul III. The ' Last Judgment ' 
 Critiques of Contemporaries The Dome of S. Peter's Vit- 
 toria Colonna Tommaso Cavalieri Personal Habits of 
 Michael Angelo His Emotional Nature Last Illness . . 384 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LIFE OF BENVENUTO CELLINI. 
 
 His Fame His Autobiography Its Value for the Student of 
 History, Manners, and Character in the Renaissance Birth, 
 Parentage, and Boyhood Flute-playing Apprenticeship to 
 Marcone Wanderjahr The Goldsmith's Trade at Florence 
 Torrigiani and England Cellini leaves Florence for Rome 
 Quarrel with the Guasconti Homicidal Fury Cellini a Law 
 to himself Three Periods in his Manhood Life in Rome 
 Diego at the Banquet Renaissance Feeling for Physical Beauty 
 Sack of Rome Miracles in Cellini's Life His Affections 
 Murder of his Brother's Assassin Sanctuary Pardon and Ab- 
 solution Incantation in the Colosseum First Visit to France 
 Adventures on the Way Accused of Stealing Crown Jewels in 
 Rome Imprisonment in the Castle of S. Angelo The Gover- 
 nor Cellini's Escape His Visions The Nature of his Reli- 
 gion Second Visit to France The Wandering Court Le Petit
 
 Xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 MM 
 
 Nesle Cellini in the French Law Courts Scene at Fontaine- 
 bleau Return to Florence Cosimo de' Medici as a Patron 
 Intrigues of a Petty Court Bandinelli The Duchess Statue 
 of Perseus End of Cellini's Life Cellini and Machiavelli . 437 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE EPIGONI. 
 
 Full Development and Decline of Painting Exhaustion of the old 
 Motives Relation of Lionardo to his Pupils His Legacy to the 
 Lombard School Bernardino Luini Gaudenzio Ferrari The 
 Devotion of the Sacri Monti The School of Raphael Nothing 
 left but Imitation Unwholesome Influences of Rome Giulio 
 Romano Michael Angelesque Mannerists Misconception of 
 Michael Angelo Correggio founds no School Parmigianino 
 Macchinisti The Bolognese After-growth of Art in Florence 
 Andrea del Sarto His Followers Pontormo Bronzino Re- 
 vival of Painting in Siena Sodoma His Influence on Pacchia, 
 Beccafumi, Peruzzi Garofalo and Dosso Dossi at Ferrara 
 The Campi at Cremona Brescia and Bergamo The Deca- 
 dence in the second half of the Sixteenth Century The Coun- 
 ter-Reformation Extinction of the Renaissance Impulse . 481 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 I. The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello .... 507 
 
 II. Michael Angelo's Sonnets . . . , . 512 
 
 III. Chronological Tables . .... 529
 
 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROBLEM FOR THE FINE ARTS. 
 
 Art in Italy and Greece The Leading Phase of Culture ^Esthetic 
 Type of Literature Painting the Supreme Italian Art Its Task 
 in the Renaissance Christian and Classical Traditions Sculpture 
 for the Ancients Painting for the Romance Nations Mediaeval 
 Faith and Superstition The Promise of Painting How far can 
 the Figurative Arts express Christian Ideas ? Greek and Christian 
 Religion Plastic Art incapable of solving the Problem A more 
 Emotional Art needed Place of Sculpture in the Renaissance 
 Painting and Christian Story Humanization of Ecclesiastical 
 Ideas by Art Hostility of the Spirit of True Piety to Art Com- 
 promises effected by the Church Fra Bartolommeo's S. Sebastian 
 Irreconcilability of Art and Theology, Art and Philosophy Re- 
 capitulation Art in the end Paganizes Music The Future of 
 Painting after the Renaissance. 
 
 IT has been granted only to two nations, the Greeks 
 and the Italians, and to the latter only at the time of 
 the Renaissance, to invest every phase and variety of 
 intellectual energy with the form of art. Nothing 
 notable was produced in Italy between the thirteenth 
 and the seventeenth centuries that did not bear the 
 stamp and character of fine art. If the methods of 
 science may be truly said to regulate our modes of
 
 2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 thinking at the present time, it is no less true trut, 
 during the Renaissance, art exercised a like control- 
 ling influence. Not only was each department of 
 the fine arts practiced with singular success ; not only 
 was the national genius to a very large extent ab- 
 sorbed in painting, sculpture, and architecture ; but 
 the aesthetic impulse was more subtly and widely 
 diffused than this alone would imply. It possessed 
 the Italians in the very center of their intellectual 
 vitality, imposing its conditions on all the manifes- 
 tations of their thought and feeling, so that even 
 their shortcomings may be ascribed in a great meas- 
 ure to their inability to quit the aesthetic point of 
 view. 
 
 We see this in their literature. It is probable 
 that none but artistic natures will ever render full 
 justice to the poetry of the Renaissance. Critics 
 endowed with a less lively sensibility to beauty of 
 outline and to harmony of form than the Italians 
 complain that their poetry lacks substantial quali- 
 ties ; nor is it except by long familiarity with the 
 plastic arts of their contemporaries that we come to 
 understand the ground assumed by Ariosto and 
 Poliziano. We then perceive that these poets were 
 not so much unable as instinctively unwilling to go 
 beyond a certain circle of effects. They subordinated 
 their work to the ideal of their age, and that ideal was 
 one to which a painter rather than a poet might
 
 AESTHETIC ENTHUSIASM. 3 
 
 successfully aspire. A succession of pictures, hai 
 moniously composed and delicately toned to please 
 the mental eye, satisfied the taste of the Italians. 
 But, however exquisite in design, rich in color, and 
 complete in execution this literary work may be, it 
 strikes a Northern student as wanting in the highest 
 elements of genius sublimity of imagination, dra- 
 matic passion, energy and earnestness of purpose. 
 In like manner, he finds it hard to appreciate those 
 didactic compositions on trifling or prosaic themes 
 which delighted the Italians for the very reason that 
 their workmanship surpassed their matter. These 
 defects, as we judge them, are still more apparent in 
 the graver branches of literature. In an essay or a 
 treatise we do not so much care for well-balanced 
 disposition of parts or beautifully-rounded periods, 
 though elegance may be thought essential to classic 
 masterpieces, as for weighty matter and trenchant 
 observations. Having the latter, we can dispense 
 at need with the former. The Italians of the Re- 
 naissance, under the sway of the fine arts, sought 
 after form, and satisfied themselves with rhetoric. 
 Therefore we condemn their moral disquisitions and 
 their criticisms as the flimsy playthings of intellectual 
 voluptuaries. Yet the right way of doing justice to 
 these stylistic trifles is to regard them as product i; 
 of an all-embracing genius for art, in a people whose 
 most serious enthusiasms were aesthetic.
 
 4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 The speech of the Italians at that epoch, their 
 social habits, their ideal of manners, their standard 
 of morality, the estimate they formed of men, were 
 alike conditioned and qualified by art. It was an age 
 of splendid ceremonies and magnificent parade, when 
 the furniture of houses, the armor of soldiers, the 
 dress of citizens, the pomp of war, and the pageantry 
 of festival were invariably and inevitably beautiful. 
 On the meanest articles of domestic utility, cups and 
 platters, door-panels and chimney-pieces, coverlets for 
 beds and lids of linen-chests, a wealth of artistic inven- 
 tion was lavished by innumerable craftsmen, no less 
 skilled in technical details than distinguished by rare 
 taste. From the Pope upon St. Peter's chair to the 
 clerks in a Florentine counting-house, every Italian 
 was a judge of art. Art supplied the spiritual oxygen, 
 without which the life of the Renaissance must have 
 been atrophied. During that period of prodigious 
 activity the entire nation seemed to be endowed with 
 an instinct for the beautiful, and with the capacity 
 for producing it in every conceivable form. As we 
 travel through Italy at the present day, when ' time, 
 war, pillage, and purchase ' have done their worst to 
 denude the country of its treasures, we still marvel 
 at the incomparable and countless beauties stored in 
 every burgh and hamlet. Pacing the picture-galleries 
 of Northern Europe, the country-seats of English 
 nobles, and the palaces of Spain, the same reflection
 
 METHOD OF TREATMENT. 5 
 
 is still forced upon us : how could Italy have done 
 what she achieved within so short a space of time ? 
 What must the houses and the churches once have 
 been from which these spoils were taken, but which 
 still remain so rich in masterpieces? Psychologi- 
 cally to explain this universal capacity for the fine 
 arts in the nation at this epoch is perhaps impos- 
 sible. Yet the fact remains, that he who would com- 
 prehend the Italians of the Renaissance must study 
 their art, and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread 
 throughout the labyrinthine windings of national 
 character. He must learn to recognize that herein 
 lay the sources of their intellectual strength as well 
 as the secret of their intellectual weakness. 
 
 It lies beyond the scope of this work to embrace 
 in one inquiry the different forms of art in Italy, or 
 to analyze the connection of the aesthetic instinct 
 with the manifold manifestations of the Renaissance. 
 Even the narrower task to which I must confine 
 myself is too vast for the limits I am forced to 
 impose upon its treatment. I intend to deal with 
 Italian painting as the one complete product which 
 remains from the achievements of this period, touch- 
 ing upon sculpture and architecture more super- 
 ficially. Not only is painting the art in which the 
 Italians among all the nations of the world stand 
 unapproachably alone, but it is also the one that best 
 enables us to gauge their genius at the time when
 
 6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 they impressed their culture on the rest of Europe. 
 In the history of the Italian intellect painting takes 
 the same rank as that of sculpture in the Greek. 
 Before beginning, however, to trace the course of 
 Italian art, it will be necessary to discuss some pre- 
 liminary questions, important for a right understand- 
 ing of the relations assumed by painting to the 
 thoughts of the Renaissance, and for explaining its 
 superiority over the sister art of sculpture in that 
 age. This I feel the more bound to do because it 
 is my object in this volume to treat of art with 
 special reference to the general culture of the 
 nation. 
 
 What, let us ask in the first place, was the task 
 appointed for the fine arts on the threshold of the 
 modern world ? They had, before all things, to 
 give form to the ideas evolved by Christianity, and 
 to embody a class of emotions unknown to the 
 ancients. 1 The inheritance of the Middle Ages 
 
 1 It may fairly be questioned whether that necessary connection 
 between art and religion which is commonly taken for granted does 
 in truth exist ; in other words, whether great art might not flourish 
 without any religious content. This, however, is a speculative prob- 
 lem, for the present and the future rather than the past. Historically, 
 it has always been found that the arts in their origin are dependent on 
 religion. Nor is the reason far to seek. Art aims at expressing an 
 ideal ; and this ideal is the transfiguration of human elements into 
 something nobler, felt and apprehended by the imagination. Such an 
 ideal, such an all-embracing glorification of humanity only exists for 
 simple and unsophisticated societies in the form of religion. Religion 
 is the universal poetry which all possess ; and the artist, dealing with 
 the mythology of his national belief, feels himself in vital sympathy
 
 CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN TRADITIONS. ^ 
 
 had to be appropriated and expressed. In the 
 course of performing this work, the painters helped 
 to humanize religion, and revealed the dignity and 
 beauty of the body of man. Next, in the fifteenth 
 century, the riches of classic culture were discovered 
 and art was called upon to aid in the interpretation 
 of the ancient to the modern mind. The problem 
 was no longer simple. Christian and pagan tra- 
 ditions came into close contact, and contended for 
 the empire of the newly-liberated intellect. During 
 this struggle the arts, true to their own principles, 
 eliminated from both traditions the more strictly 
 human elements, and expressed them in beautiful 
 form to the imagination and the senses. The brush 
 of the same painter depicted Bacchus wedding 
 Ariadne and Mary fainting on the hill of Calvary. 
 Careless of any peril to dogmatic orthodoxy, and 
 undeterred by the dread of encouraging pagan sen- 
 suality, the artists wrought out their modern ideal 
 of beauty in the double field of Christian and Hel- 
 lenic legend. Before the force of painting was ex- 
 hausted, it had thus traversed the whole cycle ot 
 
 with the imagination of the men for whom he works. More than the 
 painter is required for the creation of great painting, and more than 
 the poet for the exhibition of immortal verse. Painters are but the 
 hands, and poets but the voices, whereby peoples express their accu- 
 mulated thoughts and permanent emotions. Behind them crowd the 
 generations of the myth-makers ; and around them floats the vital 
 atmosphere of enthusiasms on which their own souls and the souls of 
 their brethren have been nourished.
 
 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 thoughts and feelings that form the content of the 
 modern mind. Throughout this performance, art 
 proved itself a powerful coagent in the emancipa- 
 tion of the intellect ; the impartiality wherewith its 
 methods were applied to subjects sacred and profane, 
 the emphasis laid upon physical strength and beauty 
 as good things and desirable, the subordination of 
 classical and mediaeval myths to one aesthetic law 
 of loveliness, all tended to withdraw attention from 
 the differences between paganism and Christianity, 
 and to fix it on the goodliness of that humanity 
 wherein both find their harmony. 
 
 This being in general the task assigned to art 
 in the Renaissance, we may next inquire what 
 constituted the specific quality of modern as dis- 
 tinguished from antique feeling, and why painting 
 could not fail to take the first place among modern 
 arts. In other words, how was it that, while sculp- 
 ture was the characteristic fine art of antiquity, 
 painting became the distinguishing fine art of the 
 modern era? No true form of figurative art in- 
 tervened between Greek sculpture and Italian paint- 
 ing. The latter took up the work of investing 
 thought with sensible shape from the dead hands 
 of the former. Nor had the tradition that con- 
 nected art with religion been interrupted, although 
 a new cycle of religious ideas had been substituted 
 for the old ones. The late Roman and Byzantine
 
 MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY. 9 
 
 manners, through which the vital energies of the 
 Athenian genius dwindled into barren formalism, 
 still lingered, giving crude and lifeless form to 
 Christian conceptions. But the thinking and feel- 
 ing subject, meanwhile, had undergone a change so 
 all-important that it now imperatively required fresh 
 channels for its self-expression. It was destined 
 to find these, not as of old in sculpture, but in 
 painting. 
 
 During the interval between the closing of the 
 ancient and the opening of the modern age, the faith 
 of Christians had attached itself to symbols and ma- 
 terial objects little better than fetiches. The host, 
 the relic, the wonder-working shrine, things endowed 
 with a mysterious potency, evoked the yearning and 
 the awe of mediaeval multitudes. To such concrete 
 actualities the worshipers referred their sense of 
 the invisible divinity. The earth of Jerusalem, the 
 Holy Sepulchre, the House of Loreto, the Sudarium 
 of Saint Veronica, aroused their deepest sentiments 
 of awful adoration. Like Thomas, they could not 
 be contented with believing ; they must also touch 
 and handle. At the same time, in apparent contra- 
 distinction to this demand for things of sense as 
 signs of supersensual power, the claims of dogma 
 on the intellect grew more imperious, and mysti- 
 cism opened for the dreaming soul a realm of spir- 
 itual rapture. For the figurative arts there was
 
 io RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 no true place in either of these regions. Painting 
 and sculpture were alike alien to the grosser super- 
 stitions, the scholastic subtleties, and the ecstatic 
 trances of the Middle Ages ; nor had they any thing 
 in common with the logic of theology. Votaries 
 who kissed a fragment of the cross with passion 
 could have found but little to satisfy their ardor in 
 pictures painted by a man of genius. A formless 
 wooden idol, endowed with the virtue of curing 
 disease, charmed the pilgrim more than a statue 
 noticeable only for its beauty or its truth to life. 
 We all know that Wunderthatige Bilder sind meist 
 nur schlechte Gemalde. In architecture alone, the 
 mysticism of the Middle Ages, their vague but po- 
 tent feelings of infinity, their yearning toward a 
 deity invisible, but localized in holy things and 
 places, found artistic outlet. Therefore architecture 
 was essentially a mediaeval art. The rise of sculp- 
 ture and painting indicated the quickening to life 
 of new faculties, fresh intellectual interests, and a 
 novel way of apprehending the old substance of 
 religious feeling; for comprehension of these arts 
 implies delight in things of beauty for their own 
 sake, a sympathetic attitude toward the world of 
 sense, a new freedom of the mind produced by the 
 regeneration of society through love. 
 
 The mediaeval faiths were still vivid when the 
 first Italian painters began their work, and the
 
 THE PROMISE OF THE ARTS. n 
 
 sincere endeavor of these men was to set forth 
 in beautiful and worthy form the truths of Chris- 
 tianity. The eyes of the worshiper should no 
 longer have a mere stock or stone to contemplate : 
 his imagination should be helped by the dogmatic 
 presentation of the scenes of sacred history, and 
 his devotion be quickened by lively images of the 
 passion of our Lord. Spirit should converse with 
 spirit, through no veil of symbol, but through the 
 transparent medium of art, itself instinct with in- 
 breathed life and radiant with ideal beauty. The 
 body and the soul, moreover, should be reconciled ; 
 and God's likeness should be once more acknowl- 
 edged in the features and the limbs of man. Such 
 was the promise of art ; and this promise was in a 
 great measure fulfilled by the painting of the four- 
 teenth century. Men ceased to worship their God 
 in the holiness of ugliness ; and a great city called 
 its street Glad on the birthday-festival of the first 
 picture investing religious emotion with aesthetic 
 charm. But in making good the promise they had 
 given, it was needful for the arts on the one hand 
 to enter a region not wholly their own the region 
 of abstractions and of mystical conceptions; and 
 on the other to create a world of sensuous delight- 
 fulness, wherein the spiritual element was mate- 
 rialized to the injury of its own essential quality, 
 Spirit, indeed, spake to spirit, so far as the religious
 
 13 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 content was concerned ; but flesh spake also to flesh 
 in the aesthetic form. The incarnation promised 
 by the arts involved a corresponding sensuousness. 
 Heaven was brought down to earth, but at the 
 cost of making men believe that earth itself was 
 heavenly. 
 
 At this point the subject of our inquiry naturally 
 divides into two main questions. The first concerns 
 the form of figurative art specially adapted to the 
 requirements of religious thought in the fourteenth 
 century. The second treats of the effect resulting 
 both to art and religion from the expression of 
 mystical and theological conceptions in plastic form. 
 
 When we consider the nature of the ideas assi- 
 milated in the Middle Ages by the human mind, it 
 is clear that art, in order to set them forth, demanded 
 a language the Greeks had never greatly needed, 
 and had therefore never fully learned. To over- 
 estimate the difference from an aesthetic point of 
 view between the religious notions of the Greeks 
 and those which Christianity had made essential 
 would be difficult. Faith, hope, and charity ; humility, 
 endurance, suffering; the Resurrection and the Judg- 
 ment ; the Fall and the Redemption ; Heaven and 
 Hell ; the height and depth of man's mixed nature ; 
 the drama of human destiny before the throne of 
 God : into the sphere of thoughts like these, vivid 
 and solemn, transcending the region of sense and
 
 THE GREEK IDEAL. 13 
 
 corporeity, carrying the mind away to an ideal world, 
 where the things of this earth obtained a new reality 
 by virtue of their relation to an invisible and infinite 
 Beyond, the modern arts in their infancy were thrust 
 There was nothing finite here or tangible, no glad- 
 ness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the swift- 
 ness of a young man's limbs, no simple idealization 
 of natural delightfulness. The human body, which 
 the figurative arts must needs use as the vehicle of 
 their expression, had ceased to have a value in and 
 for itself, had ceased to be the true and adequate 
 investiture of thoughts demanded from the artist. 
 At best it could be taken only as the symbol of some 
 inner meaning, the shrine of an indwelling spirit 
 nobler than itself; just as a lamp of alabaster owes 
 its beauty and its worth to the flame it more than 
 half conceals, the light transmitted through its scarce 
 transparent walls. 
 
 In ancient art those moral and spiritual qualities 
 which the Greeks recognized as truly human and 
 therefore divine allowed themselves to . be incar- 
 nated in well-selected types of physical perfection. 
 The deities of the Greek mythology were limited 
 to the conditions of natural existence: they were 
 men and women of a larger mold and freer person- 
 ality; less complex, inasmuch as each completed 
 some one attribute ; less thwarted in activity, inas- 
 much as no limit was assigned to exercise of power,
 
 14 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 The passions and the faculties of man, analyzed by 
 unconscious psychology, and deified by religious 
 fancy, were invested by sculpture with appropriate 
 forms, the tact of the artist selecting corporeal quali- 
 ties fitted to impersonate the special character of 
 each divinity. Nor was it possible that, the gods 
 and goddesses being what they were, exact 
 analogues should not be found for them in idealized 
 humanity. In a Greek statue there was enough 
 soul to characterize the beauty of the body to ren- 
 der her due meed of wisdom to Pallas, to distinguish 
 the swiftness of Hermes from the strength of Hera- 
 cles, or to contrast the virginal grace of Artemis 
 with the abundance of Aphrodite's charms. At the 
 same time the spirituality that gave its character to 
 each Greek deity was not such that, even in thought, 
 it could be dissociated from corporeal form. The 
 Greeks thought their gods as incarnate persons ; and 
 all the artist had to see to was that this incarnate 
 personality should be impressive in his marble. 
 
 Christianity, on the other hand, made the moral 
 and spiritual nature of man all-essential. It sprang 
 from an earlier religion, that judged it impious to 
 give any form to God. The body and its terrestrial 
 activity occupied but a subordinate position in its 
 system. It was the life of the soul, separable from 
 this frame of flesh, and destined to endure when 
 earth and all that it contains had ended ^a life that
 
 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 15 
 
 was continued conflict and aspiring struggle which 
 the arts, insofar as they became its instrument, were 
 called upon to illustrate. It was the worship of a 
 Deity, all spirit, to be sought on no one sacred hill, 
 to be adored in no transcendent shape, that they 
 were bound to heighten. The most highly prized 
 among the Christian virtues had no necessary con- 
 nection with beauty of feature or strength of limb. 
 Such beauty and such strength at any rate were 
 accidental, not essential. A Greek faun could not 
 but be graceful ; a Greek hero was of necessity 
 vigorous. But St. Stephen might be steadfast to 
 the death without physical charm ; St. Anthony might 
 put to flight the devils of the flesh without muscular 
 force. It is clear that the radiant physical perfection 
 proper to the deities of Greek sculpture was not 
 sufficient in this sphere. Again, the most stirring ' 
 episodes of the Christian mythology involved pain 
 and perturbation of the spirit ;< the victories of the 
 Christian athletes were won in conflicts carried on 
 within their hearts and souls ' For we wrestle not 
 against flesh and blood, but against principalities 
 and powers,' demoniac leaders of spiritual legions. 
 It is, therefore, no less clear that the tranquillity and 
 serenity of the Hellenic ideal, so necessary to con- 
 summate sculpture, was here out of place. How 
 could the Last Judgment, that day of wrath, when 
 every soul, however insignificant on earth, will play
 
 16 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the first part for one moment in an awful tragedy, be 
 properly expressed in plastic form, harmonious and 
 pleasing? And supposing that the artist should 
 abandon the attempt to exclude ugliness and discord, 
 pain and confusion, from his representation of the 
 Dies Ires, how could he succeed in setting forth by 
 the sole medium of the human body the anxiety and 
 anguish of the soul at such a time ? The physical 
 form, instead of being adequate to the ideas ex- 
 pressed, and therefore helpful to the artist, is a posi- 
 tive embarrassment, a source of weakness. The 
 most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque delineation 
 of the Judgment, when compared with the pangs 
 inflicted on the spirit by a guilty conscience, pangs 
 whereof words may render some account, but which 
 can find no analogue in writhings of the limbs or 
 face, must of necessity be found a failure. Still 
 more impossible, if we pursue this train of thought 
 into another region, is it for the figurative arts to 
 approach the Christian conception of God in His 
 omnipotence and unity. Christ Himself, the central 
 figure of the Christian universe, the desired of all 
 nations, in whom the Deity assumed a human form 
 and dwelt with men, is no fit subject for such art at 
 any rate as the Greeks had perfected. The fact of 
 His incarnation brought Him indeed within the 
 proper sphere of the fine arts ; but the chief events 
 of His life on earth removed Him beyond the reach
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION. 17 
 
 of sculpture. This is an important consideration. 
 It is to this that our whole argument is tending. 
 Therefore to enlarge upon this point will not be 
 useless. 
 
 Christ is specially adored in His last act of love 
 on Calvary j and how impossible it is to set that 
 forth consistently with the requirements of strictly 
 plastic art may be gathered by comparing the pas- 
 sion of St. Bernard's Hymn to our Lord upon the 
 Cross with all that Winckelmann and Hegel have 
 so truly said about the restrained expression, digni- 
 fied generality, and harmonious beauty essential to 
 sculpture. It is the negation of tranquillity, the 
 excess of feeling, the absence of comeliness, the 
 contrast between visible weakness and invisible om- 
 nipotence, the physical humiliation voluntarily suf- 
 fered by Him that ' ruled over all the angels, that 
 walked on the pavements of heaven, whose feet 
 were clothed with stars' it is all thts that gives 
 their force and pathos to these stanzas * 
 
 Omnis vigor atque viror 
 Hinc recessit ; non admiror 
 Mors apparet in inspectu, 
 Totus pendens in defectu, 
 
 Attritus aegra marie. 1 
 
 1 All Thy strength and bloom are faded*. 
 Who hath thus Thy state degraded .? 
 Death upon Thy form is written ; 
 See the wan worn limbs, the smitten 
 Breast upon the cruel tree !
 
 i8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Sic affectus, sic despectus, 
 Propter me sic interfectus, 
 Peccatori tam indigno 
 Cum amoris in te signo 
 
 Appare clara facie. 
 
 We have never heard that Pheidias or Praxiteles 
 chose Prometheus upon Caucasus for the supreme 
 display of his artistic skill ; and even the anguish 
 expressed in the group of the Laocoon is justly 
 thought to violate the laws of antique sculpture. Yet 
 here was a greater than Prometheus one who had 
 suffered more, and on whose suffering the salvation 
 of the human race depended, to exclude whom from 
 ihe sphere of representation in art was the same as 
 confessing the utter impotence of art to grasp the 
 vital thought of modern faith. It is clear that the 
 muses of the new age had to haunt Calvary instead 
 of Helicon, slaking their thirst at no Castalian spring, 
 but at the fount of tears outpoured by all creation for 
 a stricken God. What Hellas had achieved supplied 
 no norm or method for the arts in this new service. 
 
 From what has hitherto been advanced, we may 
 assert with confidence that, if the arts were to play 
 an important part in Christian culture, an art was 
 imperatively demanded that should be at home in 
 the sphere of intense feeling, that should treat the 
 
 1 Thus despised and desecrated, 
 Thus in dying desolated, 
 Slain for me, of sinners vilest, 
 Loving Lord, on me Thou smilest : 
 
 Shine, bright face, and strengthen me !
 
 SCULPTURE FOR THE GREEKS. 19 
 
 body as the interpreter and symbol of the soul, and 
 should not shrink from pain and passion. How far 
 the fine arts were at all qualified to express the 
 essential thoughts of Christianity a doubt suggested 
 in the foregoing paragraphs and how far, through 
 their proved inadequacy to perform this task com- 
 pletely, they weakened the hold of mediaeval faiths 
 upon the modern mind, are questions to be raised 
 hereafter.X For the present it is enough to affirm 
 that least of all the arts could sculpture, with its 
 essential repose and its dependence on corporal con- 
 ditions, solve the problem. Sculpture had suited 
 the requirements of Greek thought. It belonged 
 by right to men who not unwillingly accepted the 
 life of this world as final, and who worshiped in 
 their deities the incarnate personality of man made 
 perfect. But it could not express the cycle of 
 Christian ideas. The desire of a better world, the 
 fear of a worse ; the sense of sin referred to physical 
 appetites, and the corresponding mortification of the 
 flesh ; hope, ecstasy, and penitence and prayer im- 
 ply contempt or hatred for the body, suggest notions 
 too spiritual to be conveyed by the rounded con- 
 tours of beautiful limbs, too full of struggle for statu- 
 esque tranquillity. The new element needed a 
 more elastic medium of expression. Motives more 
 varied, gradations of sentiment more delicate, the 
 fugitive and transient phases of emotion, the inner
 
 20 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 depths of consciousness, had somehow to be seized. 
 It was here that painting asserted its supremacy. 
 Painting is many degrees further removed than 
 sculpture from dependence on the body in the full- 
 ness of its physical proportions. It touches our sen- 
 sibilities by suggestions more indirect, more mobile, 
 and more multiform. Color and shadow, aerial 
 perspective and complicated grouping, denied to 
 sculpture, but within the proper realm of painting, 
 have their own significance, their real relation to 
 feelings vaguer, but not less potent, than those 
 which find expression in the simple human form. 
 To painting, again, belongs the play of feature, indi- 
 cative of internal movement, through a whole gamut 
 of modulations inapprehensible by sculpture. All 
 that drapery by its partial concealment of the form 
 it clothes, and landscape by its sympathies with 
 human sentiment, may supply to enhance the passion 
 of the spectator pertains to painting. This art, 
 therefore, owing to the greater variety of means at 
 its disposal, and its greater adequacy to express 
 emotion, became the paramount Italian art 
 
 To sculpture in the Renaissance, shorn of the 
 divine right to create gods and heroes, was left the 
 narrower field of decoration, portraiture, and sepul- 
 chral monuments. In the last of these departments 
 it found the noblest scope for its activity ; for be- 
 yond the grave, according to Christian belief, the
 
 PAINTING FOR THE MODERN WORLD. 21 
 
 account of the striving, hoping, and resisting soul is 
 settled. The corpse upon the bier may bear the 
 stamp of spiritual character impressed on it in life ; 
 but the spirit, with its struggle and its passion, has 
 escaped as from a prison-house, and flown else- 
 whither. The body of the dead man, for whom this 
 world is over, and who sleeps in peace, awaiting 
 resurrection, and thereby not wholly dead, around 
 whose tomb watch sympathizing angels or contem- 
 plative genii, was, therefore, the proper subject for the 
 highest Christian sculpture. Here, if anywhere, the 
 right emotion could be adequately expressed in stone, 
 and the molded form be made the symbol of repose, 
 expectant of restored activity. The greatest sculptor 
 of the modern age was essentially a poet of Death. 
 
 Painting, then, for the reasons already assigned 
 and insisted on, was the art demanded by the modern 
 intellect upon its emergence from the stillness of the 
 Middle Ages. The problem, however, even for the 
 art of painting was not simple. The painters, follow- 
 ing the masters of mosaic, began by setting forth the 
 history, mythology, and legends of the Christian 
 Church in imagery freer and more beautiful than 
 lay within the scope of treatment by Romanesque or 
 Byzantine art. So far their task was comparatively 
 easy ; for the idyllic grace of maternal love in the 
 Madonna, the pathetic incidents of martyrdom, the 
 courage of confessors, the ecstasies of celestial joy
 
 33 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 in redeemed souls, the loveliness of a pure life in 
 modest virgins, and the dramatic episodes of sacred 
 story, furnish a multitude of motives admirably 
 pictorial. There was, therefore, no great obstacle 
 upon the threshold, so long as artists gave their 
 willing service to the Church. Yet, looking back 
 upon this phase of painting, we are able to perceive 
 that already the adaptation of art to Christian dogma 
 entailed concessions on both sides. Much, on the 
 one hand, had to be omitted from the programme 
 offered to artistic treatment, for the reason that the 
 fine arts could not deal with it at all. Much, on the 
 other hand, had to be expressed by means which 
 painting in a state of perfect freedom would repu- 
 diate. Allegorical symbols, like Prudence with two 
 faces, and paintul episodes of agony and anguish 
 marred her work of beauty. There was consequently 
 a double compromise, involving a double sacrifice of 
 something precious. The faith suffered by having 
 its mysteries brought into the light of day, incar- 
 nated in form, and humanized. Art suffered by 
 being forced to render intellectual abstractions to the 
 eye through figured symbols. 
 
 As technical skill increased, and as beauty, the 
 proper end of art, became more rightly understood 
 the painters found that their craft was worthy of being 
 made an end in itself, and that the actualities of life 
 observed around them had claims upon their genius
 
 &EAUTY AN END IN ITSELF. 23 
 
 no less weighty than dogmatic mysteries. The sub- 
 jects they had striven at first to realize with all sim- 
 plicity now became the vehicles for the display of 
 sensuous beauty, science, and mundane pageantry. 
 The human body received separate and independent 
 study, as a thing in itself incomparably beautiful, 
 commanding more powerful emotions by its magic 
 than aught else that sways the soul. At the same 
 time the external world, with all its wealth of animal 
 and vegetable life, together with the works of human 
 ingenuity in costly clothing and superb buildings, 
 was seen to be in every detail worthy of most pa- 
 tient imitation. Anatomy and perspective taxed the 
 understanding of the artist, whose whole force was 
 no longer devoted to the task of bringing religious 
 ideas within the limits of the representable. Next, 
 when the classical revival came into play, the 
 arts, in obedience to the spirit of the age, left the 
 sphere of sacred subjects, and employed their full- 
 grown faculties in the domain of myths and pagan 
 fancies. In this way painting may truly be said to 
 have opened the new era of culture, and to have first 
 manifested the freedom of the modern mind. When 
 Luca Signorelli drew naked young men for a back- 
 ground to his picture of Madonna and the infant 
 Christ, he created for the student a symbol of the 
 attitude assumed by fine art in its liberty of outlook 
 over the whole range of human interests. Standing
 
 t4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 before this picture in the Uffizzi, we feel that the 
 Church, while hoping to adorn her cherished dogmas 
 with aesthetic beauty, had encouraged a power an- 
 tagonistic to her own, a power that liberated the 
 spirit she sought to inthrall, restoring to mankind 
 the earthly paradise from which monasticism had 
 expelled it 
 
 Not to diverge at this point, and to entertain the 
 difficult problem of the relation of the fine arts to 
 Christianity, would be to shrink from the most thorny 
 question offered to the understanding by the history 
 of the Renaissance. On the very threshold of the 
 matter I am bound to affirm my conviction that the 
 spiritual purists of all ages the Jews, the iconoclasts 
 of Byzantium, Savonarola, and our Puritan ances- 
 tors were justified in their mistrust of plastic art 
 The spirit of Christianity and the spirit of figurative 
 art are opposed, not because such art is immoral, 
 but because it can not free itself from sensuous asso- 
 ciations. 1 It is always bringing us back to the dear 
 life of earth, from which the faith would sever us. 
 It is always reminding us of the body which piety 
 
 1 1 am aware that many of my readers will demur that I am con- 
 founding Christianity with ascetic or monastic Christianity ; yet I can 
 not read the New Testament, the 'Imitatio Christi,' the 'Confessions ' 
 of S. Augustine, and the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' without feeling that Chris- 
 tianity in its origin, and as understood by its chief champions, was and 
 is ascetic. Of this Christianity I therefore speak, not of the philoso- 
 phized Christianity, which is reasonably regarded with suspicion by 
 the orthodox and the uncompromising. It was, moreover, with Chris- 
 tianity of this primitive type that the arts came first into collision.
 
 ANTAGONISM OF ART AND PURE PIETY. 25 
 
 bids us to forget. Painters and sculptors glorify 
 that which saints and ascetics have mortified. The 
 masterpieces of Titian and Correggio, for example, 
 lead the soul away from compunction, away from 
 penitence, away from worship even, to dwell on the 
 delight of youthful faces, blooming color, graceful 
 movement, delicate emotion. 1 Nor is this all : relig- 
 ious motives may be misused for what is worse than 
 merely sensuous suggestiveness. The masterpieces 
 of the Bolognese and Neapolitan painters, while they 
 pretend to quicken compassion for martyrs in their 
 agony, pander to a bestial blood-lust lurking in the 
 darkest chambers of the soul. 3 Therefore it is that 
 piety, whether the piety of monastic Italy or of 
 Puritan England, turns from these aesthetic triumphs 
 as from something alien to itself. When the wor- 
 shiper would fain ascend on wings of ecstasy to 
 God, the infinite, ineffable, unrealized, how can he 
 endure the contact of those splendid forms, in which 
 the lust of the eye and the pride of life, professing to 
 subserve devotion, remind him rudely of the good- 
 liness of sensual existence? Art, by magnifying 
 human beauty, contradicts these Pauline maxims : 
 1 For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain ;' ' Set 
 your affections on things above, not on things on 
 earth ;' ' Your life is hid with Christ in God.' The 
 
 1 Titian's ' Assumption of the Virgin ' at Venice, Correggio's ' Cor- 
 onation of the Virgin ' at Parma. 
 
 2 Domenichino, Guido, Ribera, Salvator Rosa.
 
 26 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 sublimity and elevation it gives to carnal loveliness 
 are themselves hostile to the spirit that holds no 
 truce or compromise of traffic with the flesh. As 
 displayed in its most perfect phases, in Greek sculp- 
 ture and Venetian painting, art dignifies the actual 
 mundane life of man ; but Christ, in the language of 
 uncompromising piety, means every thing most alien 
 to this mundane life self-denial, abstinence from 
 fleshly pleasure, the waiting for true bliss beyond 
 the grave, seclusion even from social and domestic 
 ties. ' He that loveth father and mother more than 
 me is not worthy of me.' ' He that taketh not his 
 cross and followeth me is not worthy of me.' It is 
 needful to insist upon these extremest sentences of 
 the New Testament, because upon them was based 
 the religious practice of the Middle Ages, more sin- 
 cere in their determination to fulfill the letter and 
 embrace the spirit of the Gospel than any succeeding 
 age has been. 1 
 
 If, then, there really exists this antagonism be- 
 tween fine art glorifying human life and piety con- 
 temning it, how came it, we may ask, that even in 
 the Middle Ages the Church hailed art as her co- 
 adjutor ? The answer lies in this, that the Church 
 has always compromised. When the conflict of the 
 first few centuries of Christianity had ended in her 
 
 1 Not to quote again the ' Imitatio Christ!,' it is enough to allude to 
 S. Francis as shown in the ' Fioretti.'
 
 THE COMPROMISES OF THE CHURCH. 27 
 
 triumph, she began to mediate between asceticism 
 and the world. Intent on absorbing all existent ele- 
 ments of life and power, she conformed her system 
 to the Roman type, established her service in ba- 
 silicas and pagan temples, adopted portions of the 
 antique ritual, and converted local genii into saints. 
 At the same time she utilized the spiritual forces of 
 monasticism, and turned the mystic impulse of ecstat- 
 ics to account. The Orders of the Preachers and 
 the Begging Friars became her militia and police; 
 the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist 
 was made an engine of the priesthood ; the dreams 
 of Paradise and Purgatory gave value to her par- 
 dons, interdictions, jubilees, indulgences, and curses. 
 In the Church the spirit of the cloister and the spirit 
 of the world found neutral ground, and to the prac- 
 tical accommodation between these hostile elements 
 she owed her wide supremacy. The Christianity 
 she formed and propagated was different from that 
 of the New Testament, inasmuch as it had taken up 
 into itself a mass of mythological anthropomorphic 
 elements. Thus transmuted and materialized, thus 
 accepted by the vivid faith of an unquestioning 
 populace, Christianity offered a proper medium for 
 artistic activity. The whole first period of Italian 
 painting was occupied with the endeavor to set 
 forth in form and color the popular conceptions of 
 a faith at once unphilosophical and unspiritual, beau-
 
 38 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 
 
 tiful and fit for art by reason of the human elements 
 it had assumed into its substance. It was natural, 
 therefore, that the Church should show herself in- 
 dulgent to the arts, which were effecting in their own 
 sphere what she had previously accomplished, though 
 purists and ascetics, holding fast by the original 
 spirit of their creed, might remain irreconcilably 
 antagonistic to their influence. The Reformation, 
 on the contrary, rejecting the whole mass of com- 
 promises sanctioned by the Church, and returning to 
 the elemental principles of the faith, was no less 
 naturally opposed to fine arts, which, after giving 
 sensuous form to Catholic mythology, had recently 
 attained to liberty and brought again the gods of 
 Greece. 
 
 A single illustration might be selected from the 
 annals of Italian painting to prove how difficult even 
 the holiest-minded and most earnest painter found it 
 to effect the proper junction between plastic beauty 
 and pious feeling. Fra Bartolommeo, the disciple of 
 Savonarola, painted a Sebastian in the cloister of 
 S. Marco, where it remained until the Dominican 
 confessors became aware, through the avowals of 
 female penitents, that this picture was a stumbling- 
 block and snare to souls. It was then removed, and 
 what became of it we do not know for certain. Fra 
 Bartolommeo undoubtedly intended this ideal por- 
 trait of the martyr to be edifying. S. Sebastian
 
 ART AND RELIGION. 29 
 
 was to stand before the world as the young man, 
 strong and beautiful, who endured to the end and 
 won the crown of martyrdom. No other ideas but 
 those of heroism, constancy, or faith were meant to 
 be expressed ; but the painter's art demanded that 
 their expression should be eminently beautiful, and 
 the beautiful body of the young man distracted 
 attention from his spiritual virtues to his physical 
 perfections. A similar maladjustment of the means 
 of plastic art to the purposes of religion would have 
 been impossible in Hellas, where the temples of 
 Eros and of Phoebus stood side by side; but in 
 Christian Florence the craftsman's skill sowed seeds 
 of discord in the souls of the devout. 1 
 
 This story is but a coarse instance of the separa- 
 tion between piety and plastic art. In truth, the 
 difficulty of uniting them in such a way that the latter 
 shall enforce the former lies far deeper than its 
 powers of illustration reach. Religion has its proper 
 end in contemplation and in conduct. Art aims at 
 presenting sensuous embodiment of thoughts and feel- 
 ings with a view to intellectual enjoyment. Now, 
 many thoughts are incapable of sensuous embodi- 
 
 1 The difficulty of combining the true spirit of piety with the 
 ideal of natural beauty in art was strongly felt by Savonarola. Rio 
 (' L'Art chretien, vol. ii. pp. 422-426) has written eloquently on this 
 subject, but without making it plain how Savonarola's condemnation 
 of life studies from the nude could possibly have been other than 
 an obstacle to the liberal and scientific prosecution of the art of 
 painting.
 
 30 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 ment ; they appear as abstractions to the philoso- 
 phical intellect or as dogmas to the theological 
 understanding. To effect an alliance between art 
 and philosophy or art and theology in the specific 
 region of either religion or speculation is, therefore, 
 an impossibility. In like manner there are many 
 feelings which can not properly assume a sensuous 
 form ; and these are precisely religious feelings, in 
 which the soul abandons sense, and leaves the actual 
 world behind, to seek her freedom in a spiritual 
 region. 1 Yet, while we recognize the truth of this 
 reasoning, it would be unscientific to maintain that, 
 until they are brought into close and inconvenient 
 contact, there is direct hostility between religion and 
 the arts. The sphere of the two is separate ; their 
 aims are distinct; they must be allowed to perfect 
 themselves, each after its own fashion. In the large 
 philosophy of human nature, represented by Goethe's 
 famous motto, there is room for both, because those 
 who embrace it bend their natures neither wholly to 
 the pietism of the cloister nor to the sensuality of art. 
 They find the meeting-point of art and of religion 
 in their own humanity, and perceive that the antag- 
 onism of the two begins when art is set to do work 
 
 1 See Rio, ' L'Art Chretien,' vol. ii. chap. xi. pp. 319-327, for an 
 ingenious defense of mystic art. The tales he tells of Bernardino da 
 Siena and the blessed Umiliana will not win the sympathy of Teu- 
 tonic Christians, who must believe that semi-sensuous, semi-pious rap- 
 tures, like those described by S. Catherine of Siena and S. Theresa, 
 have something in them psychologically morbid.
 
 RECAPITULA TION. 3 1 
 
 alien to its nature, and to minister to what it does not 
 naturally serve. 
 
 At the risk of repetition I must now resume the 
 points I have attempted to establish in this chapter. 
 As in ancient Greece, so also in Renaissance Italy, 
 the fine arts assumed the first place in the intel- 
 lectual culture of the nation. But the thought 
 and feeling of the modern world required an aes- 
 thetic medium more capable of expressing emotion 
 in its intensity, variety, and subtlety than sculpture. 
 Therefore painting was the art par excellence of 
 Italy. Yet even painting, notwithstanding the range 
 and wealth of its resources, could not deal with the 
 motives of Christianity so successfully as sculpture 
 with the myths of paganism. The religion it inter- 
 preted transcended the actual conditions of humanity, 
 while art is bound down by its nature to the limita- 
 tions of the world we live in. The Church imagined 
 art would help her ; and within a certain sphere of 
 subjects, by vividly depicting Scripture histories and 
 the lives of saints, by creating new types of serene 
 beauty and pure joy, by giving form to angelic 
 beings, by interpreting Mariolatry in all its charm 
 and pathos, and by rousing deep sympathy with our 
 Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to 
 piety. Yet painting had to omit the very pith and 
 kernel of Christianity as conceived by devout, un- 
 compromising purists. Nor did it do what the
 
 32 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Church would have desired. Instead of riveting 
 the fetters of ecclesiastical authority, instead of en- 
 forcing mysticism and asceticism, it really restored to 
 humanity the sense of its own dignity and beauty, 
 and helped to prove the untenability of the mediaeval 
 stand-point ; for art is essentially and uncontrollably 
 free, and, what is more, is free precisely in that realm 
 of sensuous delightfulness from which cloistral re- 
 ligion turns aside to seek her own ecstatic liberty of 
 contemplation. 
 
 The first step in the emancipation of the modern 
 mind was taken thus by art, proclaiming to men 
 the glad tidings of their goodliness and greatness 
 in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their 
 use. Whatever painting touched became by that 
 touch human ; piety, at the lure of art, folded her 
 soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This 
 the Church had not foreseen. Because the freedom of 
 the human spirit expressed itself in painting only under 
 visible images, and not, like heresy, in abstract sen- 
 tences ; because this art sufficed for Mariolatry and 
 confirmed the cult of local saints ; because its sensu- 
 ousness was not at variance with a creed that had 
 been deeply sensualized the painters were allowed 
 to run their course unchecked. Then came a second 
 stage in their development of art. By placing the 
 end of their endeavor in technical excellence and 
 anatomical accuracy, they began to make representa-
 
 REVIVED PAGANISM. 33 
 
 tion an object in itself, independently of its spiritual 
 significance. Next, under the influence of the clas- 
 sical revival, they brought home again the old 
 powers of the earth Aphrodite and Galatea and 
 the Loves, Adonis and Narcissus and the Graces, 
 Phoebus and Daphne and Aurora, Pan and the Fauns, 
 and the Nymphs of the woods and the waves. 
 
 When these dead deities rose from their sep- 
 ulchres to sway the hearts of men in the new age, it 
 was found that something had been taken from their 
 ancient bloom of innocence, something had been 
 added of emotional intensity. Italian art recognized 
 their claim to stand beside Madonna and the saints 
 in the Pantheon of humane culture ; but the painters 
 remade them in accordance with the modern spirit. 
 This slight touch of transformation proved that 
 they preserved a vital meaning for x an altered age. 
 Having personified for the antique world qualities 
 which, though suppressed and ignored by militant 
 and mediaeval Christianity, were strictly human, the 
 Hellenic deities still signified those qualities for 
 modern Europe, now at length re-fortified by contact 
 with the ancient mind. For the Renaissance was a 
 return in all sincerity and faith to the glory and glad- 
 ness of nature, whether in the world without or in 
 the soul of man. To apprehend that glory and that 
 gladness with the pure and primitive perceptions of 
 the early mythopoets was not given to the men oi
 
 34 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the new world. Yet they did what in them lay, 
 with senses sophisticated by many centuries of sub- 
 tlest warping, to replace the first free joy of kinship 
 with primeval things. For the painters, far more 
 than for the poets of the sixteenth century, it was 
 possible to reproduce a thousand forms of beauty, 
 each attesting to the delightfulness of physical exist- 
 ence, to the inalienable rights of natural desire, and 
 to the participation of mankind in pleasures held in 
 common by us with the powers of earth and sea 
 and air. 
 
 It is wonderful to watch the blending of elder 
 and of younger forces in this process. The old gods 
 lent a portion of their charm even to Christian my- 
 thology, and showered their beauty-bloom on saints 
 who died renouncing them. Sodoma's Sebastian is 
 but Hyacinth or Hylas transpierced with arrows, 
 so that pain and martyrdom add pathos to his poetry 
 of youthfulness. Lionardo's S. John is a Faun of 
 the forest, ivy-crowned and laughing, on whose lips 
 the word ' Repent ' would be a gleeful paradox. For 
 the painters of the full Renaissance, Roman martyrs 
 and Olympian deities the heroes of the Acta Sanc- 
 torum, and the heroes of Greek romance were alike 
 burghers of one spiritual city, the city of the beau- 
 tiful and human. What exquisite and evanescent 
 fragrance was educed from these apparently diverse 
 blossoms by their interminglement and fusion how
 
 FUSION OF CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN MOTIVES. 35 
 
 the high-wrought sensibilities of the Christian were 
 added to the clear and radiant fancies of the Greek, 
 and how the frank sensuousness of the pagan gave 
 body and fullness to the floating wraiths of an ascetic 
 faith remains a miracle for those who, like our 
 master Lionardo, love to scrutinize the secrets of 
 twin natures and of double graces. There are not 
 a few for whom the mystery is repellent, who shrink 
 from it as from Hermaphroditus. These will always 
 find something to pain them in the art of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 Having co-ordinated the Christian and pagan 
 traditions in its work of beauty, painting could ad- 
 vance no farther. The stock of its sustaining mo- 
 tives was exhausted. A problem that preoccupied 
 the minds of thinking men at this epoch was, how to 
 harmonize the two chief moments of human culture, 
 the classical and the ecclesiastical. Without being 
 as conscious of their hostility as we are, men felt 
 that the pagan ideal was opposed to the Christian, 
 and at the same time that a reconciliation had to 
 be effected. Each had been w r orked out separately ; 
 but both were needed for the modern synthesis. All 
 that aesthetic handling, in this region more immedi- 
 ately fruitful than pure thought, could do towards 
 mingling them was done by the impartiality of the 
 fine arts. Painting, in the work of Raphael, accom- 
 plished a more vital harmony than philosophy in the
 
 36 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 writings of Pico and Ficino. A new Catholicity, a 
 cosmopolitan orthodoxy of the beautiful, was mani- 
 fested in his pictures. It lay outside his power, or 
 that of any other artist, to do more than to extract 
 from both revelations the elements of beauty they 
 contained, and to show how freely he could use 
 them for a common purpose. Nothing but the 
 scientific method can in the long-run enable us to 
 reach that further point, outside both Christianity 
 and paganism, at which the classical ideal of a tem- 
 perate and joyous natural life shall be restored to 
 the conscience educated by the Gospel. This, per- 
 chance, is the religion, still unborn or undeveloped, 
 whereof Joachim of Flora dimly prophesied when 
 he said that the kingdom of the Father was past, 
 the kingdom of the Son was passing, and the king- 
 dom of the Spirit was to be. The essence of it is 
 contained in the whole growth to us ward of the 
 human mind ; and though a creed so highly intel- 
 lectualized as that will be can never receive ade- 
 quate expression from the figurative arts, still the 
 painting of the sixteenth century forms for it, as it 
 were, a not unworthy vestibule. It does so, because 
 it first succeeded in humanizing the religion of the 
 Middle Ages, in proclaiming the true value of antique 
 paganism for the modern mind, and in making both 
 subserve the purposes of free and unimpeded art. 
 Meanwhile, at the moment when painting was
 
 MUSIC. 37 
 
 about to be exhausted, a new art had arisen, for 
 which it remained, within the aesthetic sphere, to 
 achieve much that painting could not do. When the 
 cycle of Christian ideas had been accomplished by 
 the painters, and when the first passion for antiquity 
 had been satisfied, it was given at last to Music to 
 express the soul in all its manifold feeling and 
 complexity of movement. In music we see the 
 point of departure where art leaves the domain of 
 myths, Christian as well as pagan, and occupies itself 
 with the emotional activity of man alone, and for 
 its own sake. Melody and harmony, disconnected 
 from words, are capable of receiving most varied 
 interpretations, so that the same combinations of 
 sound express the ecstasies of earthly and of heavenly 
 love, conveying to the mind of the hearer only that 
 element of pure passion which is the primitive and 
 natural ground-material of either. They give dis- 
 tinct form to moods of feeling as yet undetermined; 
 or, as the Italians put it, la musica e il lamento deir 
 amore o lapreghiera agli dei. This, combined with 
 its independence of all corporeal conditions, rendeis 
 music the true exponent of the spirit in its freedom, 
 and therefore the essentially modern art. 
 
 For Painting, after the great work accomplished 
 during the Renaissance,when the painters ran through 
 the whole domain of thought within the scope of 
 that age, there only remained portraiture, history,
 
 38 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 dramatic incident, landscape, genre, still life, and 
 animals. In these spheres the art is still exercised, 
 and much good work, undoubtedly, is annually pro- 
 duced by European painterc But painting has lost 
 its hold upon the center of our intellectual activity. 
 It can no longer give form to the ideas that rule 
 the modern world. These ideas are too abstract, 
 too much a matter of the understanding, to be suc- 
 cessfully handled by the figurative arts ; and it can 
 not be too often or too emphatically stated that 
 these arts produce nothing really great and uni- 
 versal in relation to the spirit of their century, ex- 
 cept by a process analogous to the mythopoetic. 
 With conceptions incapable of being sensuously ap- 
 prehended, with ideas that lose their value when 
 they are incarnated, they have no power to deal. 
 As meteors become luminous by traversing the 
 grosser element of our terrestrial atmosphere, so the 
 thoughts that art employs must needs immerse 
 themselves in sensuousness. They must be of a 
 nature to gain rather than to suffer by such immer- 
 sion ; and they must make a direct appeal to minds 
 habitually apt to think in metaphors and myths. 
 Of this sort are all religious ideas at a certain stage 
 of their development, and this attitude at certain 
 moments of history is adopted by the popular con- 
 sciousness. We have so far outgrown it, have so 
 completely exchanged mythology for curiosity, and
 
 ART AND THE MODERN SPIRIT. 39 
 
 metaphor for science, that the necessary conditions 
 for great art are wanting. Our deepest thoughts 
 about the world and God are incapable of personi- 
 fication by any aesthetic process ; they never enter 
 that atmosphere wherein alone they could become 
 through fine art luminous. For the painter, who 
 is the form-giver, they have ceased to be shining 
 stars, and are seen as opaque stones ; and though 
 divinity be in them, it is a deity that refuses the 
 investiture of form.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Architecture of Mediaeval Italy Milan, Genoa, Venice The Despots 
 as Builders Diversity of styles Local influences Lombard, Tus- 
 can Romanesque, Gothic Italian want of feeling for Gothic Ca- 
 thedrals of Siena and Orvieto Secular Buildings of the Middle 
 Ages Florence and Venice Private Palaces Public Halls Pa- 
 lazzo della Signoria at Florence Arnolfo del Cambio S. Maria del 
 Fiore Brunelleschi's Dome Classical revival in Architecture Ro- 
 man ruins Three periods in Renaissance Architecture Their cha- 
 racteristics Brunelleschi Albert! Palace-building Michellozzo 
 Decorative work of the Revival Bramante Vitoni's Church 
 of the Umilta at Pistoja Palazzo del Te- Villa Farnesina San- 
 sovino at Venice Michael Angelo The building of S. Peter's 
 Palladio The Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza Lombard Ar- 
 chitects Theorists and students of Vitruvius Vignola and Sca- 
 mozzi European influence of the Palladian style Comparison of 
 Scholars and Architects in relation to the Revival of Learning. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE is always the first of the fine arts 
 to emerge from barbarism in the service of religion 
 and of civic life. A house, as Hegel says, must be 
 built for the god, before the image of the god, carved 
 in stone or figured in mosaic, can be placed there. 
 Council chambers must be prepared for the senate 
 of a State before the national achievements can be 
 painted on the walls. Thus Italy, before the age 
 of the Renaissance proper, found herself provided 
 with churches and palaces, which were destined in
 
 THE AGE OF THE COMMUNES. 41 
 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to be adorned 
 with frescoes and statues. 
 
 It was in the middle of the thirteenth century, 
 during the long struggle for independence carried 
 on by the republics of Lombardy and Tuscany 
 against the Empire and the nobles, that some of 
 the most durable and splendid public works were 
 executed. The domes and towers of Florence and 
 of Pisa were rising above the city walls, while the 
 burghers who subscribed for their erection were 
 staining the waves of Meloria and the canebrakes of 
 the Arbia with their blood. Lombardy, at the end 
 of her duel with Frederick Barbarossa, completed 
 a vast undertaking, by which the fields of Milan 
 are still rendered more productive than any other 
 pasture-land in Europe. The Naviglio Grande, 
 bringing the waters of the Ticino through a plain 
 of thirty miles to Milan, was begun in 1 1 79, and 
 was finished in 1258. The torrents of S. Gothard 
 and the Simplon, which, after filling the Lago 
 Maggiore, seemed destined to run wasteful through 
 a wilderness of pebbles to the sea, were thus turned 
 to account ; and to this great engineering work, as 
 bold as it was simple, Milan owed the wealth that 
 placed her princes on a level with the sovereigns 
 of Europe. At the same period she built her 
 walls, and closed their circuit with the sixteen gates 
 that showed she loved magnificence combined with
 
 42 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 strength. Genoa, between 1276 and 1283, pro- 
 tected her harbors by a gigantic mole, and in 
 1295 brought the streams of the Ligurian Alps into 
 the city by an aqueduct worthy of old Rome. 
 Venice had to win her very footing from the sea 
 and sand. So firmly did she drive her piles, so 
 vigilantly watch their preservation, that palaces and 
 cathedrals of marble might be safely reared upon 
 the bosom of the deep. Meanwhile, stone bridges 
 began to span the rivers of Italy ; the streets and 
 squares of towns were everywhere paved with flags. 
 Before the first years of the fourteenth century 
 the Italian cities presented a spectacle of solid and 
 substantial comfort very startling to northerners who 
 traveled from the unpaved lanes of London and 
 the muddy labyrinths of Paris. 
 
 Sismondi remarks with just pride that these 
 great works were Republican. They were set on 
 foot for the public use, and were constructed at 
 the expense of the commonwealths. It is, how- 
 ever, right to add that what the communes had 
 begun the princes continued. To the splendid 
 taste of the Visconti dynasty, for instance, Milan 
 owed her wonderful Duomo and the octagon bell- 
 tower of S. Gottardo. The Certosas of Pavia 
 and Chiaravalle, the palace of Pavia, and a host 
 of minor monuments remain in Milan and its neigh- 
 borhood to prove how much a single family per-
 
 DIVERS TYPES IN ITALY. 43 
 
 formed for the adornment of the cities they had 
 subjugated. And what is true of Milan applies 
 to Italy throughout its length and breadth. The 
 despots held their power at the price of magnifi- 
 cence in schemes of public utility. So much at least 
 of the free spirit of the communes survived in them, 
 that they were always rivaling each other in great 
 works of architecture. Italian tyranny implied aes- 
 thetic taste and liberality of expenditure. 
 
 In no way is the characteristic diversity of the 
 Italian communities so noticeable as in their build- 
 ings. Each district, each town, has a well-defined 
 peculiarity, reflecting the specific qualities of the 
 inhabitants and the conditions under which they 
 grew in culture. In some cases we may refer this 
 local character to nationality and geographical posi- 
 tion. Thus the name of the Lombards has been 
 given to a style of Romanesque, which prevailed 
 through Northern and Central Italy during the pe- 
 riod of Lombard ascendency. 1 The Tuscans never 
 
 1 The question of the genesis of the Lombard style is one of the 
 most difficult in Italian art-history. I would not willingly be under- 
 stood to speak of Lombard architecture in any sense different from 
 that in which it is usual to speak of Norman. To suppose that either 
 the Lombards or the Normans had a style of their own, prior to their 
 occupation of districts from the monuments of which they learned 
 rudely to use the decayed Roman manner, would be incorrect. Yet 
 it seems impossible to deny that both Normans and Lombards in 
 adapting antecedent models added something of their own, specific to 
 themselves as Northerners. The Lombard, like the Norman or 
 the Rhenish Romanesque, is the first stage in the progressive mediaeval 
 architecture of its own district.
 
 44 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 forgot the domes of their remote ancestors ; the 
 Romans adhered closely to Latin traditions ; the 
 Southerners were affected by Byzantine and Sara- 
 cenic models. In many instances the geology of 
 the neighborhood determined the picturesque fea- 
 tures of its architecture. The clay-fields of the 
 valley of the Po produced the brick-work of Cre- 
 mona, Pavia, Crema, Chiaravalle, and Vercelli. To 
 their quarries of mandorlato the Veronese builders 
 owed the peach-bloom colors of their columned 
 aisles. Carrara provided the Pisans with mellow 
 marble for their Baptistery and Cathedral ; Monte 
 Ferrato supplied Pistoja and Prato with green ser- 
 pentine ; while the pietra serena of the Apennines 
 added austerity to the interior of Florentine build- 
 ings. Again, in other instances, we detect the in- 
 fluence of commerce or of conquest. The inter- 
 course of Venice with Alexandria determined the 
 unique architecture of S. Mark's. The Arabs and 
 the Normans left ineffaceable traces of their sojourn 
 on Palermo. Naples and Messina still bear marks 
 upon their churches of French workmen. All along 
 the coasts we here and there find evidences of 
 Oriental style imported into mediaeval Italy, while 
 the impress of the Spaniard is no less manifest in 
 edifices of a later period. 
 
 Existing thus in the midst of many potent influ- 
 ences, and surrounded by the ruins of past civiliza-
 
 RECOMBINATION OF STYLES. 45 
 
 tions, the Italians recombined and mingled styles of 
 marked variety. The Roman, Byzantine, Saracenic, 
 Lombard, and German traditions were blended in 
 their architecture, as the presiding genius of each 
 place determined. It followed that master-works of 
 rare and subtle invention were produced, while no 
 one type was fully perfected, nor can we point to any 
 paramount Italian manner. In Italy what was gained 
 in richness and individuality was lost in uniformity 
 and might. Yet we may well wonder at the versatile 
 appreciation of all types of beauty that these monu- 
 ments evince. How strange, for example, it is to 
 think of the Venetians borrowing the form and 
 structure of their temple from the mosques of Alex- 
 andria, decking its fagade with the horses of Lysip- 
 pus, and paneling the sanctuary with marbles from 
 the harem-floors of Eastern emperors ; while at the 
 other end of Italy, at Palermo, close beside the 
 ruined colonnades of Segesta, Norman kings were 
 embroidering their massive churches with Saracenic 
 arabesques and Greek mosaics, interspersing deli- 
 cate Arabian tracery with rope-patterns and mon- 
 sters of the deep, and linking Cuphic sentences with 
 Scandinavian runes. Meanwhile, at Rome, tombs, 
 baths, and theaters had been turned into fortresses. 
 The Orsini held the Mole of Hadrian ; the Savelli 
 ensconced themselves in the Theater of Marcellus, 
 and the Colonnesi in the Mausoleum of Augustus ;
 
 46 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the Colosseum and the Arches of Constantine and 
 Titus harbored the Frangipani ; the Baths of 
 Trajan housed the Capocci ; while the Gaetani made 
 a castle of Caecilia Metella's tomb. Under those 
 vast resounding vaults swarmed a brood of me- 
 diaeval bravi like the wasps that hang their pear- 
 shaped combs along the cloisters of Pavia. There 
 the ghost of the dead empire still sat throned and 
 sceptered. The rites of Christianity were carried on 
 beneath Agrippa's dome, in Diocletian's baths, in 
 the Basilicas. No other style but that of the im- 
 perial people struck root near the Eternal City. 
 Among her three hundred churches, Rome can only 
 show one Gothic building. Further to the north, 
 where German influences were more potent, the 
 cathedrals still displayed, each after its own kind, a 
 sunny southern waywardness. Glowing with mar- 
 bles and mosaics, glittering with ornaments, where 
 the foliage of the Corinthian acanthus hides the sym- 
 bols of the Passion, and where birds and Cupids peep 
 from tangled fruits beneath grave brows of saints 
 and martyrs ; leaning now to the long low colon- 
 nades of the basilica, now to the high-built arches of 
 the purely pointed style ; surmounting the meeting- 
 point of nave and transept with Etruscan domes ; 
 covering the fagade with bass-reliefs, the roof with 
 statues; raising the porch-pillars upon lions and 
 winged griffins ; flanking the nave with bell-towers,
 
 LOMBARD, ROMANESQUE, GOTHIC. 47 
 
 or planting them apart like flowers in isolation on 
 the open square these wonderful buildings, the 
 delight and joy of all who love to trace variety in 
 beauty, and to note the impress of a nation's genius 
 upon its art, seem, like Italy herself, to feel all influ- 
 ences and to assimilate all nationalities. 
 
 Amid the many styles of architecture contending 
 for mastery in Italy, three, before the age of the 
 Revival, bid fair to win the battle. These were the 
 Lombard, the Tuscan Romanesque, and the Gothic. 
 Chronologically the two former flourished nearly 
 during the same centuries, while Gothic, coming from 
 without, suspended their development. But chro- 
 nology is of little help in the history of Italian archi- 
 tecture ; its main features being, not uniformity of 
 progression, but synchronous diversity and salience 
 of local type. What remained fixed through all 
 changes in Italy was a bias toward the forms of 
 Roman building, which eventually in the Renaissance, 
 becoming scientifically apprehended, determined the 
 taste of the whole nation. 
 
 It is, perhaps, not wholly fanciful to say that, as 
 the Lombards just failed to mold the Italians by 
 conquest into a united people, so their architecture 
 fell short of creating one type for the peninsula. 1 From 
 some points of view the historian might regret that 
 
 *I use the term Lombard architecture here, as defined above (p. 
 43, note), for the style of building prevalent in Italy during the Lorp' 
 bard occupation, or just after.
 
 48 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Italy did not receive that thorough subjugation in the 
 eighth century which would have broken down local 
 distinctions. Such regrets, however, are singularly 
 idle ; for the main currents of the world's history 
 move not by chance ; and how, moreover, could 
 Italy have fulfilled her destiny without the divers 
 forms of political existence that made her what she 
 was ? Yet, standing before some of the great Lom- 
 bard churches, we are inclined to speculate, perhaps 
 with better reason, what the result would have 
 been if that style of architecture could have assumed 
 the complete ascendency over the Italians which the 
 Romanesque and Gothic of the North exerted over 
 France and England ? l The pyramidal facade 
 common in these buildings, the campanili that sus- 
 pend aerial lanterns upon plain square towers, the 
 domes rising tier over tier from the intersection of 
 nave and transept to end in minarets and pinnacles, 
 the long low colonnades of marble pilasters, the 
 open porches resting upon lions, the harmonious 
 blending of baked clay and rosy-tinted stone, the 
 bold combination of round and pointed arches, 
 and the weird invention whereby every string- 
 
 1 The essential difference between Italy and either Northern France 
 or England was that in Italy there existed monuments of Roman great- 
 ness, which could never be forgotten by her architects. They always 
 worked with at least half of their attention turned to the past : nor had 
 they the exhilarating sense of free, spontaneous, and progressive in- 
 vention. This point has been well worked out by Mr. Street in the 
 last chapter of his book on the ' Architecture of North Italy.'
 
 TUSCAN ROMANESQUE. 49 
 
 course and capital has been carved with lions, 
 sphinxes, serpents, mermaids, griffins, harpies, 
 winged horses, lizards, and knights in armor all 
 these are elements that might, we fancy, have been 
 developed into a noble national style. As it is, the 
 churches in question are often more bizarre than 
 really beautiful. Their peculiar character, however, 
 is inseparably associated with the long reaches of 
 green plain, the lordly rivers, and the background 
 of blue hills and snowy Alps that constitute the 
 charm of Lombard landscape. 
 
 It Lombard architecture, properly so called, was 
 partial in its influence and confined to a compara- 
 tively narrow local sphere, the same is true of the 
 Tuscan Romanesque. The church of Samminiato, 
 near Florence [about 1013], and the cathedral of 
 Pisa [begun 1063], not to mention numerous ex- 
 amples at Lucca and Pistoja, are sufficient evidences 
 that in the darkest period of the Middle Ages the 
 Italians were aiming at an architectural Renaissance. 
 The influence of classical models is apparent both 
 in the construction and the detail of these basilicas ; 
 while the deeply-grounded preference of the Italian 
 genius for round arches, for colonnades of pillars 
 and pilasters, and for large rectangular spaces, with 
 low roofs and shallow tribunes, finds full satisfaction 
 in these original and noble buildings. It is impos- 
 sible to refrain from deploring that the Roman-
 
 So RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 esque of Tuscany should have been checked in its 
 development by the intrusion of the German Gothic. 
 Had it run its course unthwarted, a national style 
 suited to the temperament of the people might have 
 been formed, and much that was pedantic in the 
 revival of the fifteenth century have been obviated. 
 The place of Gothic architecture in Italy de- 
 mands fuller treatment. It was due partly to the 
 direct influence of German emperors, partly to the 
 imperial sympathies of the great nobles, partly to 
 the Franciscan friars, who aimed at building large 
 churches cheaply, and partly to the admiration ex- 
 cited by the grandeur of the Pointed style as it 
 prevailed in Northern Europe, that Gothic so alien 
 to the Italian genius and climate took root, spread 
 widely, and flourished freely for a season. In thus 
 enumerating the conditions favorable to the spread 
 of Gottico-Tedesco, I am far from wishing to assert 
 that this style was purely foreign. Italy, in com- 
 mon with the rest of Europe, passed by a natural 
 process of evolution from the Romanesque to the 
 Pointed manner, and treated the latter with an 
 originality that proves sincere and deep assimila- 
 tion. Yet the first Gothic church, that of S. 
 Francis at Assisi, was designed by a German ; the 
 most splendid, that of Our Lady at Milan, is em- 
 phatically German. 1 During the comparatively brief 
 
 1 Even though it be now proved that not Heinrich von Gmunden,
 
 GOTHIC. 51 
 
 period of Gothic ascendency the Italians never for- 
 got their Latin and Lombard sympathies. The 
 mood of mind in which they Gothicized was partial 
 and transient. The evolution of this style was, 
 therefore, neither so spontaneous and simple, nor 
 yet so uninterrupted and complete, in Italy as 
 in the North. While it produced the church of 
 S. Francesco at Assisi and the cathedrals of Siena, 
 Orvieto, Lucca, Bologna, Florence, and Milan, 
 together with the town-halls of Perugia, Siena, 
 and Florence, it failed to take firm hold upon the 
 national taste, and died away before the growing 
 passion for antiquity that restored the Italians to 
 a sense of their own intellectual greatness. It is 
 clear that, as soon as they were conscious of their 
 vocation to revive the culture of the classic age, 
 they at once and forever abandoned the style appro- 
 priate to northern feudalism. They seem to have 
 adopted it half-unwillingly, and to have understood 
 it only in the imperfect way in which they compre- 
 hended chivalry. 
 
 The Italians never rightly apprehended the spe- 
 cific nature of Gothic architecture. They could not 
 forget the horizontal lines, flat roofs, and blank walls 
 of the Basilica. Like their Roman ancestors, they 
 aimed at covering the ground with the smallest pos- 
 
 but Marco Frisone da Campione, not a German, but a Milanese, was 
 the first architect, this is none the less true about its style.
 
 52 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 sible expenditure of construction ; to inclose large 
 spaces within simple limits was their first object, and 
 the effect of beauty or sublimity was gained by the 
 proportions given to the total area. When, there- 
 fore, they adopted the Gothic style, they failed to 
 perceive that its true merit consists in the negation 
 of nearly all that the Latin style holds precious. 
 Horizontal lines are as far as possible annihilated ; 
 walls are lost in windows ; aisles and columns, apses 
 and chapels, are multiplied with a view to complexity 
 of architectonic effect ; flat roofs become intolerable. 
 The whole force employed in the construction has 
 an upward tendency, and the spire is the completion 
 of the edifice ; for to the spire its countless soaring 
 lines lines not of stationary strength, but of as- 
 cendant growth converge. All this the Italians 
 were slow to comprehend. The campanile, for 
 example, never became an integral part of their 
 buildings. It stood alone, and was reserved for 
 its original purpose of keeping the bells. The 
 windows, for a reason very natural in Italy, where 
 there is rather too much than too little sunlight, 
 were curtailed ; and instead of the multiplied bays 
 and clustered columns of a northern Gothic aisle, 
 the nave of so vast a church as S. Petronio at 
 Bologna is measured by six arches raised on simple 
 piers. The fagade of an Italian cathedral was 
 studied as a screen, quite independently of its rela-
 
 DEFECTS AND Q UALITIES OF I TALI AN GO THIC. 53 
 
 tion to the interior; in the beautiful church of 
 Crema, for example, the moon at night looks 
 through the upper windows of a frontispiece raised 
 far above the low roof of the nave. For the total 
 effect of the exterior, as will be apparent to any one 
 who observes the Duomo of Orvieto from behind, 
 no thought was taken. In this way the Italians 
 missed the point and failed to perceive the poetry of 
 Gothic architecture. Its symbolical significance was 
 lost upon them ; perhaps we ought to say that 
 the Italian temperament, in art as in religion, was 
 incapable of assimilating the vague yet powerful 
 mysticism of the Teutonic races. 
 
 On the other hand, what they sacrificed of 
 genuine Gothic character was made good after their 
 own fashion. Surface decoration, whether of fresco 
 or mosaic, bronze-work or bass-relief, wood-carving 
 or paneling in marble, baked clay or enameled 
 earthenware, was never carried to such perfection 
 in Gothic buildings of the purer type; nor had 
 sculpture in the North an equal chance of detaching 
 itself from the niche and tabernacle, which forced 
 it to remain the slave of architecture. Thus the 
 comparative defects of Italian Gothic were directly 
 helpful in promoting those very arts for which the 
 people had a genius unrivaled among modern 
 nations. 
 
 It is only necessary to contrast the two finest
 
 54 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 cathedrals of this style, those of Siena and Orvieto, 
 with two such buildings as the cathedrals of Rheims 
 and Salisbury, in order to perceive the structural 
 inferiority of the former, as well as their superiority 
 for all subordinate artistic purposes. Long straight 
 lines, low roofs, narrow windows, a facade of sur- 
 prising splendor but without a strict relation to 
 the structure of the nave and aisles, a cupola sur- 
 mounting the intersection of nave, choir, and tran- 
 septs ; simple tribunes at the east end, a detached 
 campanile, round columns instead of clustered piers, 
 a mixture of semicircular and pointed arches ; these 
 are some of the most salient features of the Sienese 
 Duomo. But the material is all magnificent ; and 
 the hand, obedient to the dictates of an artist's 
 brain, has made itself felt on every square foot of 
 the building. Alternate courses of white and black 
 marble, cornices loaded with grave or animated 
 portraits of the Popes, sculptured shrines, altars, 
 pulpits, reliquaries, fonts and holy-water vases, 
 panels of inlaid wood and pictured pavements, 
 bronze candelabra and wrought-iron screens, gild- 
 ing and color and precious work of agate and 
 lapis lazuli the masterpieces of men famous each 
 in his own line delight the eye in all directions. 
 The whole church is a miracle of richness, a radiant 
 and glowing triumph of inventive genius, the pro- 
 duct of a hundred master-craftsmen toiling through
 
 CATHEDRAL OF SIENA. 55 
 
 successive centuries to do their best. All its count- 
 less details are so harmonized by the controlling 
 taste, so brought together piece by piece in obe- 
 dience to artistic instinct, that the total effect is 
 ravishingly beautiful. Yet it is clear that no one 
 paramount idea, determining and organizing all 
 these marvels, existed in the mind of the first 
 architect. In true Gothic work the details that 
 make up the charm of this cathedral would have 
 been subordinated to one architectonic thought; 
 they would not have been suffered to assert their 
 individuality, or to contribute, except as servants, 
 to the whole effect. The northern Gothic church 
 is like a body with several members ; the southern 
 Gothic church is an accretion of beautiful atoms. 
 The northern Gothic style corresponds to the 
 national unity of federalized races, organized by a 
 social hierarchy of mutually dependent classes. In 
 the southern Gothic style we find a mirror of politi- 
 cal diversity, independent personality, burgher-like 
 equality, despotic will. Thus the specific qualities 
 of Italy on her emergence from the Middle Ages 
 may be traced by no undue exercise of the fancy in 
 her monuments. They are emphatically the crea- 
 tion of citizens of men, to use Giannotti's phrase, 
 distinguished by alternating obedience and com- 
 mand, not ranked beneath a monarchy, but capable 
 themselves of sovereign power. 1 
 
 1 See ' Age of the Despots,' p. 196.
 
 56 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 What has been said of Siena is no less true of 
 the Duomo of Orvieto. Though it seems to aim 
 at a severer Gothic, and though the facade is more 
 architecturally planned, a single glance at the ex- 
 terior of the edifice shows that the builders had no 
 lively sense of the requirements of the style they 
 used. What can be more melancholy than those 
 blank walls, broken by small round recesses pro- 
 truding from the side-chapels of the nave, those 
 gaunt and barren angles at the east end, and those 
 few pinnacles appended at a venture ? Noting 
 these shortcomings, we are irresistibly reminded 
 of Horace Walpole's achievements at Strawberry 
 Hill. On the other hand, the interior is noble. 
 The feeling for space possessed by the architect 
 has expressed itself in proportions large and solemn ; 
 the area inclosed, though somewhat cold and vacu- 
 ous to Northern taste, is at least impressive by its 
 severe harmony. But the real attractions of the 
 church are isolated details. Wherever the indi- 
 vidual artist-mind has had occasion to emerge, there 
 our gaze is riveted, our criticism challenged, our 
 admiration won. The frescoes of Signorelli, the 
 bass-reliefs of the Pisani, the statuary of Lo Scalza 
 and Mosca, the tarsia of the choir stalls, the Alex- 
 andrine work and mosaics of the fagade, the bronzes 
 placed upon its brackets, and the wrought acanthus 
 scrolls of its superb pilasters these are the objects
 
 CATHEDRALS OF ORVIETO AND MILAN. 57 
 
 for inexhaustible wonder in the cathedral of Or- 
 vieto. On approaching a building of this type, we 
 must abandon our conceptions of organic architec- 
 ture : only the Greek and northern Gothic styles 
 deserve that epithet. We must not seek for severe 
 discipline and architectonic design. Instead of one 
 presiding, all-determining idea, we must be prepared 
 to welcome a wealth of separate beauties, wrought 
 out by men of independent genius, whereby each 
 part is made a masterpiece, and many diverse 
 elements become a whole of picturesque rather 
 than architectural impressiveness. 
 
 It would not be difficult to extend this kind of 
 criticism to the Duomo of Milan. Speaking strictly, 
 a more unlucky combination of different styles 
 the pyramidal facade of Lombard architecture and 
 the long thin lights of German Gothic, for example 
 or a clumsier misuse of ill-appropriated details 
 in the heavy piers of the nave and the monster 
 windows of the east end, could scarcely be im- 
 agined. Yet no other church, perhaps, in Europe 
 leaves the same impression of the marvelous upon 
 the fancy. The splendor of its pure white marble 
 blushing with the rose of evening or of dawn, ra- 
 diant in noonday sunlight, and fabulously fairy-like 
 beneath the moon and stars, the multitudes of stat- 
 ues sharply cut against a clear blue sky, and gazing 
 at the Alps across that memorable tract of plain,
 
 $8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the immense space and light-irradiated gloom of 
 the interior, the deep tone of the bells above at 
 a vast distance, and the gorgeous colors of the 
 painted glass, contribute to a scenical effect un- 
 paralleled in Christendom. 
 
 The two styles, Lombard and Gothic, of which 
 I have been speaking were both in a certain sense 
 exotic. Within the great cities the pith of the 
 population was Latin ; and no style of building that 
 did not continue the tradition of the Romans satis- 
 fied them. It was a main feature of the Renais- 
 sance that, when the Italians undertook the task of 
 reuniting themselves by study with the past, they 
 abandoned all other forms of architecture, and did 
 their best to create one in harmony with the relics 
 of Latin monuments. To trace the history of this 
 revived classic architecture will occupy me later in 
 this chapter; but for the moment it is necessary to 
 turn aside and consider briefly the secular buildings 
 of Italy before the date of the Renaissance proper. 
 
 About the same time that the cathedrals were 
 being built, the nobles filled the towns with fortresses. 
 These at first were gaunt and unsightly ; how over- 
 crowded with tall, bare towers a mediaeval Italian 
 city could be is still shown by San Gemignano, the 
 only existing instance where the torroni have been 
 left untouched. 1 In course of time, when the aris- 
 
 1 Pavia, it may be mentioned, has stiU many towers standing, and 
 th? two at Bologna are famous.
 
 SECULAR BUILDINGS. 59 
 
 tocracy came to be fused with the burghers, and 
 public order was maintained by law in the great 
 cities, these forts made way for spacious palaces. 
 The temper of the citizens in each place and the 
 local character of artistic taste determined the specific 
 features of domestic as of ecclesiastical architecture. 
 Though it is hard to define what are the social differ- 
 ences expressed by the large quadrangles of Fran- 
 cesco Sforza's hospital at Milan, and the heavy cube 
 of the Riccardi palace at Florence, we feel that the 
 genius loci has in each case controlled the architect. 
 The sunny spaces of the one building, with its terra- 
 cotta traceries of birds and grapes and Cupids, con- 
 trast with the stern brown moldings and impen- 
 etrable solidity of the other. That the one was 
 raised by the munificence of a sovereign in his capi- 
 tal, while the other was the dwelling of a burgher in 
 a city proud of its antique sobriety, goes some way 
 to explain the difference. In like manner the court- 
 life of a dynastic principality produced the castle of 
 Urbino, so diverse in its style and adaptation from 
 the ostentatious mansions of the Genoese mer- 
 chants. It is not fanciful to say that the civic life of 
 a free and factious republic is represented by the 
 heavy walls and narrow windows of Florentine 
 dwelling-places. In their rings of iron, welded be- 
 tween rock and rock about the basement, as though 
 for the beginning of a barricade in their torch-
 
 60 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 rests of wrought metal, gloomy portals and dimly- 
 lighted courts, we trace the habits of caution and 
 reserve that marked the men who led the parties of 
 Uberti and Albizzi. The Sienese palaces are lighter 
 and more elegant in style, as belonging to a people 
 proverbially pleasure-loving ; while a still more sump- 
 tuous and secure mode of life finds expression in 
 the open loggie and spacious staircases of Venice. 
 The graceful buildings that overhang the Grand 
 Canal are exactly fitted for an oligarchy, sure of its 
 own authority and loved by the people. Feudal 
 despotism, on the contrary, reigns in the heart of 
 Ferrara, where the Este's stronghold, moated, draw- 
 bridged, and portcullised, casting dense shadow over 
 the water that protects the dungeons, still seems to 
 threaten the public square and overawe the homes 
 of men. 
 
 To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, again, 
 we owe the town halls and public palaces that 
 form so prominent a feature in the city architec- 
 ture of Italy. The central vitality of once powerful 
 states is symbolized in the broletti of the Lombard 
 cities, dusty and abandoned now in spite of their 
 clear-cut terra-cotta traceries. There is something 
 strangely melancholy in their desolation. Wander- 
 ing through the vast hall of the Ragione at Padua, 
 where the very shadows seem asleep as they glide 
 over the wide unpeopled floor, it is not easy to
 
 PUBLIC PALACES. 61 
 
 remember that this was once the theater of eager 
 intrigues, ere the busy stir of the old burgh was 
 utterly extinguished. Few of these public palaces 
 have the good fortune to be distinguished, like that 
 of the Doge at Venice, by world-historical memories 
 and by works of art as yet unrivaled. The spirit 
 of the Venetian Republic still lives in that unique 
 building. Architects may tell us that its Gothic 
 arcades are melodramatic ; sculptors may depreciate 
 the decorative work of Sansovino ; painters may 
 assert that the genius of Titian, Tintoret, and Vero- 
 nese shines elsewhere with greater luster. Yet the 
 poet clings with ever-deepening admiration to the 
 sea-born palace of the ancient mistress of the sea, 
 and the historian feels that here, as at Athens, art 
 has made the past toward which he looks eternal. 
 
 Two other great Italian houses of the Common- 
 wealth, rearing their towers above the town for 
 tocsin and for ward, owe immortality to their intrin- 
 sic beauty. These are the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena 
 and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Few buildings 
 in Europe are more picturesquely fascinating than the 
 palace of Siena, with its outlook over hill and dale 
 to cloud-capped Monte Amiata. Yet, in spite of 
 its unparalleled position on the curved and sloping 
 piazza, where the contrade of Siena have run their 
 palio for centuries, this palace lacks the vivid 
 interest attaching to the home Arnolfo raised at
 
 62 RENAISSANCE IN 2'IALY. 
 
 Florence for the rulers 01 his native city. During 
 their term of office the Priors never quitted the 
 palace of the Signoiy. All deliberations on state 
 affairs took place within its walls, and its bell was 
 the pulse that told how the heart of Florence 
 throbbed. The architect of this huge mass of 
 masonry was Arnolfo del Cambio, one of the 
 greatest builders of the Middle Ages, a man who 
 may be called the Michael Angelo of the thirteenth 
 century. 1 In 1298 he was ordered to erect a dwell- 
 ing-place for the Commonwealth, to the end that 
 the people might be protected in their fortress from 
 the violence of the nobles. The building of the 
 palace and the leveling of the square around it 
 were attended with circumstances that bring forcibly 
 before our minds the stern conditions of republican 
 life in mediaeval Italy. A block 01 houses had to be 
 bought from the family of Foraboschi ; and their 
 tower, called Torre della Vacca, was raised and 
 turned into the belfry of the Priors. There was 
 not room enough, however, to construct the palace 
 itself with right angles, unless it were extended into 
 the open space where once had stood the houses of 
 
 1 Amolfo was born in 1232 at Colle, in the Val d'Elsa. He was a 
 sculptor as well as architect, the assistant of Niccola Pisano at Siena, 
 and the maker of the tomb of Cardinal de Braye at Orvieto. This 
 tomb is remarkable as the earliest instance of the canopy withdrawn 
 by attendant angels from the dead man's form, afterwards so fre- 
 quently adopted by the Pisan school
 
 PALACE OF THE SIGNORY AT FLORENCE. 63 
 
 the Uberti, ' traitors to Florence and Ghibellines.' 
 In destroying these, the burghers had decreed that 
 thenceforth forever the feet of men should pass 
 where the hearths of the proscribed nobles once had 
 blazed. Arnolfo begged that he might trespass on 
 this site ; but the people refused permission. Where 
 the traitors' nest had been, there the sacred founda- 
 tions of the public house should not be laid. Con- 
 sequently the Florentine Palazzo is, was, and will be 
 cramped of its correct proportions. 1 
 
 No Italian architect has enjoyed the proud 
 privilege of stamping his own individuality more 
 strongly on his native city than Arnolfo ; and for 
 this reason it may be permitted to enlarge upon his 
 labors here. When we take our stand upon the 
 hill of Samminiato, the Florence at our feet owes 
 her physiognomy in a great measure to this man. 
 The tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the bulk of 
 the Duomo, and the long low oblong mass o." Santa 
 Croce are all his. His too are the walls that define 
 the city of flowers from the gardens round about 
 her. 8 Even the master-works of his successors sub- 
 ordinate their beauty to his first conception. Giotto's 
 campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola, and Orcagna's 
 church of Orsammichele, in spite of their undoubted 
 
 1 Giov. Villani, viii. 26. 
 
 * See Milizia, vol. i. p. 135. These walls were not finished till 
 some time after Arnolfo's death. They lost their ornament of towers 
 in the siege of 1 529, and they are now being rapidly destroyed.
 
 64 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 an I authentic originality, are placed where he had 
 ph nned 
 
 In 1294 the Florentines determined to rebuild 
 thejr mother-church upon a scale of unexampled 
 grandeur. The commission given to their architect 
 displays so strikingly the lordly spirit in which these 
 burghers set about the work, that, though it has 
 been often quoted, a portion of the document shall 
 be recited here. ' Since the highest mark of pru- 
 dence in a people of noble origin is to proceed in 
 the management of their affairs so that their mag- 
 nanimity and wisdom may be evinced in their out- 
 ward acts, we order Arnolfo, head-master of our 
 commune, to make a design for the renovation of 
 Santa Reparata in a style of magnificence which 
 neither the industry nor the power of man can sur- 
 pass, that it may harmonize with the opinion of many 
 wise persons in this city and state, who think that 
 this commune should not engage in any enterprise 
 unless its intention be to make the result correspond 
 with that noblest sort of heart which is composed of 
 the united will of many citizens.' 1 From Giovanni 
 Villani we learn what taxes were levied by the 
 Wool-Guild, and set apart in 1331 for the completion 
 of the building. They were raised upon all goods 
 bought or sold within the city in two separate rates, 
 the net produce amounting in the first year to 2,000 
 
 1 From Perkins's 'Tuscan Sculptors,' vol i. p. 54.
 
 THE DUOMO OF FLORENCE. 65 
 
 lire. 1 The cathedral designed by Arnolfo was of 
 vast dimensions : it covers 84,802 feet, while that of 
 Cologne covers 81,461 feet; and, says Fergusson, 
 ' as far as mere conception of plan goes, there can be 
 little doubt but that the Florentine cathedral far 
 surpasses its German rival.' 2 Nothing, indeed, can 
 be imagined more noble than the scheme of this 
 huge edifice. Studying its ground-plan, and noting 
 how the nave unfolds into a mighty octagon, which 
 in its turn displays three well-proportioned apses, we 
 are induced to think that a sublimer thought has 
 never been expressed in stone. At this point, how- 
 ever, our admiration receives a check. In the execu- 
 tion of the parts Arnolfo dwarfed the building he 
 had conceived on so magnificent a scale ; aiming at 
 colossal simplicity, he failed to secure the multiplicity 
 of subordinated members essential to the total effect 
 of size. ' Like all inexperienced architects, he seems 
 to have thought that greatness of parts would add 
 to the greatness of the whole, and in consequence 
 used only four great arches in the whole length of 
 his nave, giving the central aisle a width of fifty-five 
 feet clear. The whole width is within ten feet of 
 that of Cologne, and the height about the same ; 
 and yet in appearance the height is about half, 
 and the breadth less than half, owing to the better 
 
 1 Giov. Villani, x. 192. 
 
 1 ' Illustrated Handbook of Architecture,' book vi. chap. i.
 
 66 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 proportion of the parts and to the superior appro- 
 priateness in the details on the part of the German 
 cathedral.' 1 The truth of these remarks will be 
 felt by every one on whom the ponderous vacuity of 
 the interior has weighed. Other notable defects 
 there are too in this building, proceeding chiefly 
 from the Italian misconception of Gothic style. The 
 windows are few and narrow, so that little light 
 even at noonday struggles through them ; and broad 
 barren spaces of gray walls oppress the eye. Ex- 
 ternally the whole church is paneled with parti- 
 colored marbles, according to Florentine custom ; 
 but this paneling bears no relation to the structure : 
 it is so much surface decoration possessing value 
 chiefly for the colorist. Arnolfo died before the 
 dome, as he designed it, could be placed upon the 
 octagon, and nothing is known for certain about the 
 form he meant it to assume. It seems, however, 
 probable that he intended to adopt something similar 
 to the dome of Chiaravalle, which ends, after a suc- 
 cession of narrowing octagons, in a slender conical 
 pyramid. 2 Subordinate spires would then have been 
 placed at each of the four angles where the nave and 
 transepts intersect; and the whole external effect, 
 for richness and variety, would have outrivaled that 
 of any European building. It is well known that 
 
 ' 'Illustrated Handbook of Architecture,' book vi. chap. L 
 ' See Grtlner's Terra Cotta Architecture of North Italy/ plates 3 
 and 4,
 
 ARNOLFO AND BRUNELLESCHL 67 
 
 the erection of the dome was finally intrusted to 
 Brunelleschi in 1420. Arnolfo's church now sus- 
 tains in air an octagonal cupola of the simplest pos- 
 sible design, in height and size rivaling that of S. 
 Peter's. It was thus that the genius of the Renais- 
 sance completed what the genius of the Middle Ages 
 had begun. But in Italy there was no real break 
 between the two periods. Though Arnolfo em- 
 ployed the pointed style in his design, we find 
 nothing genuinely Gothic in the church. It has no 
 pinnacles, flying buttresses, side chapels, or subordi- 
 nate supports. To use the phrase of Michelet, who 
 has chosen the dramatic episode of Brunelleschi's 
 intervention in the rearing of the dome for a parable 
 of the Renaissance, ' the colossal church stood up 
 simply, naturally, as a strong man in the morning 
 rises from his bed without the need of staff or 
 crutch.' 1 This indeed is the glory of Italian as 
 compared with Northern architecture. The Italians 
 valued the strength of simple perspicuity : all the 
 best works of their builders are geometrical ideas of 
 the purest kind translated into stone. It is, however, 
 true that the gain of vast aerial space was hardly 
 
 1 Compare what Albert! says in his preface to the Treatise on 
 Painting, 'Opere,' vol. iv. p. 12. 'Chi mai si duro e si invido non 
 lodasse Pippo architetto vedendo qui struttura si grande, erta sopra i 
 cieli, ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti i popoli toscani, fatta sanza 
 alcuno aiuto di travamenti o di copia di legname, quale artificio certo, 
 se io ben giudico, come a quest! tempi era incredibile potersi, cosi 
 forse appresso gli antiqui fu non saputo nfe conosciuto ?'
 
 68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 sufficient to compensate for the impression of emp- 
 tiness they leave upon the senses. We feel this 
 very strongly when we study the model prepared by 
 Bramante's pupil, Cristoforo Rccchi, for the cathe- 
 dral of Pavia ; yet here we see the neo-Latin genius 
 of the Italian artist working freely in an element 
 exactly suited to his powers. When the same order 
 of genius sought to express its conception through 
 the language of the Gothic style, the result was in 
 variably defective. 1 
 
 The classical revival of the fifteenth century 
 made itself immediately felt in architecture ; and 
 Brunelleschi's visit to Rome in 1403 may be fixed as 
 the date of the Renaissance in this art. Gothic, as 
 we have already seen, was an alien in Italy. Its 
 importation from the North had checked the free 
 development of national architecture, which in the 
 eleventh century began at Pisa by a conscious return 
 to classic details. But the reign of Gothic was 
 destined to be brief. Petrarch and Boccaccio, as I 
 showed in my last volume, turned the whole intel- 
 lectual energy of the Florentines into the channels 
 
 1 What the church of S. Petronio at Bologna would have been, 
 if it had been completed on the scale contemplated, can hardly be 
 imagined. As it stands, it is immense, and coldly bare in its immen- 
 sity. Yet the present church is but the nave of a temple designed 
 with transepts and choir. The length was to have been 800 feet, the 
 width of the transepts 525, the dome 183 feet in diameter. A building 
 so colossal in extent, and so monotonously meager in conception, could 
 not but have been a failure.
 
 REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN STYLE. 69 
 
 of Latin and Greek scholarship. 1 The ancient 
 world absorbed all interests, and the Italians with 
 one will shook themselves free of the mediaeval 
 style they never rightly understood, and which they 
 henceforth stigmatized as barbarous. 2 
 
 The problem that occupied all the Renaissance 
 architects was how to restore the manner of ancient 
 Rome as far as possible, adapting it to the modern 
 requirements of ecclesiastical, civic, and domestic 
 buildings. Of Greek art they knew comparatively 
 nothing : nor indeed could Greek architecture have 
 offered for their purpose the same plastic elements 
 as Roman itself a derived style, admitting of 
 easier adjustment to modern uses than the inflexibly 
 pure art of Greece. At the same time they pos- 
 sessed but imperfect fragments of Roman work. 
 The ruins of baths, theaters, tombs, temple-fronts, 
 and triumphal arches were of little immediate assist- 
 ance in the labor of designing churches and 
 palaces. All that the architects could do, after 
 familiarizing themselves with the remains of ancient 
 
 1 ' Revival of Learning,' chap. ii. 
 
 2 The following passage quoted from Milizia, ' Memorie degli Ar- 
 chitetti,' Parma, 1781, vol. i. p. 135, illustrates the contemptuous atti- 
 tude of Italian critics to Gothic architecture. After describing 
 Arnolfo's building of the Florentine Duomo, he proceeds : ' In questo 
 Architetto si vide qualche leggiero barlume di buona Architettura, 
 come di Pittura in Cimabue suo contemporaneo. Ma in tutte le cose 
 e fisiche e morali i passaggi si fanno per insensibili gradagioni ; onde 
 per lungo tempo ancora si mantenne il corrotto gusto, che si pud chi- 
 amare Arabo-Tedesco.'
 
 70 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Rome, and assimilating the spirit of Roman art, was 
 to clothe their own inventions with classic details. 
 The form and structure of their edifices were mod- 
 ern ; the parts were copied from antique models. 
 A want of organic unity and structural sincerity is 
 always the result of those necessities under which a 
 secondary and adapted style must labor ; and thus 
 the pseudo-Roman buildings even of the best Re- 
 naissance period display faults similar to those of 
 the Italian Gothic. While they are remarkable for 
 grandeur of effect in all that concerns the distribu- 
 tion of light and shade, the covering and inclosing 
 of space, and the disposition of masses, they show 
 at best but a superficial correspondence between the 
 borrowed forms and the construction these are used 
 to mask. 1 The edifices of this period abound in 
 more or less successful shams, in surface decoration 
 more or less pleasing to the eye ; their real greatness, 
 meanwhile, consists in the feeling for spatial propor- 
 tions and for linear harmonies possessed by their 
 architects. 
 
 Three periods in the development of Renaissance 
 architecture may be roughly marked* The first, 
 extending from 1420 to 1500, is the age of experi- 
 
 1 Observe, for example, the casing of a Gothic church at Rimini 
 by Alberti with a series of Roman arches ; or the facade of S. Andrea 
 at Mantua, where the vast and lofty central arch leads, not into the 
 nave itself, but into a shallow vestibule. 
 1 See Burckhardt, Cicerone,' vol. i. p. 167.
 
 THREE PERIODS OF RENAISSANCE WORK. ^\ 
 
 ment and of luxuriant inventiveness. The second 
 embraces the first forty years of the sixteenth 
 century. The most perfect buildings of the Italian 
 Renaissance were produced within this short space 
 of time. The third, again comprising about forty 
 years, from 1540 to 1580, leads onward to the 
 reign of mannerism and exaggeration, called by the 
 Italians barocco. In itself the third period is distin- 
 guished by a scrupulous purism bordering upon 
 pedantry, strict adherence to theoretical rules, and 
 sacrifice of inventive qualities to established canons. 
 To do more than briefly indicate the masterpieces 
 of these three periods would be impossible in a 
 work that does not pretend to treat of architecture 
 exhaustively : and yet to omit all notice of the 
 builders of this age and of their styles would be to 
 neglect the most important art-phase of the time I 
 have undertaken to illustrate. 
 
 In the first period we are bewildered by the luxu- 
 riance of creative powers and by the rioting of the 
 fancy in all forms of beauty indiscriminately mingled. 
 In general we detect a striving after effects not fully 
 realized, and a tendency to indulge in superfluous 
 ornament without regard for strictness of design. 
 The imperfect comprehension of classical models 
 and the exuberant vivacity of the imagination in the 
 fifteenth century account for the florid work of this 
 time. Something too is left of mediaeval fancy ;
 
 7 * RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 the details borrowed from the antique undergo fan- 
 tastic transmutation at the hands of men accustomed 
 to the vehement emotion of the romantic ages. What- 
 ever the Renaissance took from antique art, it was 
 at first unable to assimilate either the moderation of 
 the Greeks or the practical sobriety of the Romans. 
 Christianity had deepened and intensified the sources 
 of imaginative life ; and just as reminiscences of 
 classic style impaired Italian Gothic, so now a trace 
 of Gothic is perceptible in the would-be classic work 
 of the Revival. The result of these combined in- 
 fluences was a wonderful and many-featured hybrid, 
 best represented in one monument by the fagade of 
 the Certosa at Pavia. While characterizing the 
 work of the earlier Renaissance as fused of divers 
 manners, we must not forget that it was truly living, 
 full of purpose, and, according to its own standard, 
 sincere. It was a new birth ; no mere repetition of 
 something dead and gone, but the product of vivid 
 forces stirred to original creativeness by admiration 
 for the past It corresponded, moreover, with ex- 
 quisite exactitude to the halting of the conscience 
 between Christianity and paganism, and to the blent 
 beauty that the poets loved. On reeds dropped 
 from the hands of dead Pan the artists of this period, 
 each in his own sphere, piped ditties of romance. 
 
 To these general remarks upon the style of the 
 first period the Florentine architects offer an excep-
 
 BRUNELLESCHL 73 
 
 tion ; and yet the first marked sign of a new era in 
 the art of building was given at Florence. Purity of 
 taste and firmness of judgment, combined with 
 scientific accuracy, were always distinctive c* Flo- 
 rentines. To such an extent did these qualities 
 determine their treatment of the arts that acute 
 critics have been found to tax them with hardness 
 and frigidity. 1 Brunelleschi in 1425 designed the 
 basilica of S. Lorenzo after an original but truly 
 classic type, remarkable for its sobriety and cor- 
 rectness. What he had learned from the ruins of 
 Rome he here applied in obedience to his own 
 artistic instinct. S. Lorenzo is a columnar edifice 
 with round arches and semicircular apses. Not 
 a form or detail in the whole church is strictly 
 speaking at variance with Roman precedent ; and 
 yet the general effect resembles nothing we possess of 
 antique work. It is a masterpiece of intelligent Re- 
 naissance adaptation. The same is true of S. Spirito, 
 built in 14/0, after Brunelleschi's death, according 
 to his plans. The extraordinary capacity ot this 
 great architect will, however, win more homage from 
 ordinary observers when they contemplate the Pitti 
 Palace and the cupola of the cathedral. Both oi these 
 are masterworks of personal originality. What is 
 Roman in the Pitti Palace is the robust simplicity 
 of massive strength ; but it is certain that nc patri- 
 
 1 See De Stendhal, ' Histoire de la Peinture en Italic,' p. 122.
 
 74 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 cian of the republic or the empire inhabited a house 
 at all resembling this. The domestic habits of the 
 Middle Ages, armed for self-defense, and on guard 
 against invasion from without, still find expres- 
 sion in the solid bulk of this forbidding dwelling- 
 place, although its majesty and largeness show that 
 the reign of milder and more courtly manners has 
 begun. To speak of the cupola of the Duomo in 
 connection with a simple revival of Roman taste 
 would be equally inappropriate. It remains a tour 
 de force of individual genius, cultivated by the expe- 
 rience of Gothic vault-building, and penetrated with 
 the greatness of imperial Rome. Its spirit of dauntless 
 audacity and severe concentration alone is antique. 
 
 Almost contemporary with Brunelleschi was Leo 
 Battista Alberti, a Florentine, who, working upon 
 somewhat different principles, sought more closely to 
 reproduce the actual elements of Roman architecture. 1 
 In his remodeling of S. Francesco at Rimini the 
 type he followed was that of the triumphal arch, and 
 what was finished of that wonderful fagade remains 
 to prove how much might have been made of well- 
 proportioned pilasters and nobly-curved arcades. 8 
 
 1 For a notice of his life, see ' Revival of Learning,' p. 341. 
 
 1 The Arch of Augustus at Rimini was the model followed by 
 Alberti in this fagade. He intended to cover the church with a cupola, 
 as may be seen from the design on a medal of Sigismondo Pandolfo 
 Malatesta. See too the letter written by him to Matteo da Bastia, 
 Alberti, ' Opere,' vol. iv. p. 397.
 
 ALBERT!. 75 
 
 The same principle is carried out in S. Andrea at 
 Mantua. The frontispiece of this church is a 
 gigantic arch of triumph ; the interior is noticeable 
 for its simple harmony of parts, adopted from the 
 vaulted baths of Rome. The combination of these 
 antique details in an imposing structure implied a 
 high imaginative faculty at a moment when the rules 
 of classic architecture had not been as yet reduced to 
 method. Yet the weakness of Alberti's principle is 
 revealed when we consider that here the lofty cen- 
 tral arch of the facade serves only for a decoration. 
 Too high and spacious even for the chariots of a 
 Roman triumph, it forms an inappropriate entrance 
 to the modest vestibule of a Christian church. 
 
 Like Brunelleschi, Alberti applied his talents to 
 the building of a palace in Florence that became a 
 model to subsequent architects. The Palazzo Ru- 
 cellai retains many details of the mediaeval Tuscan 
 style, especially in the windows divided by slender 
 pilasters. But the three orders introduced by way 
 of surface decoration, the doorways, and the cornices, 
 are transcripts from Roman ruins. This building, 
 one of the most beautiful in Italy, was copied by 
 Francesco di Giorgio and Bernardo Florentine for 
 the palaces they constructed at Pienza. 
 
 This was the age of sumptuous palace-building ; 
 and for no purpose was the early Renaissance style 
 better adapted than for the erection of dwelling-
 
 76 RENAISSANCE JN ITALY. 
 
 houses that should match the free and worldly 
 splendor of those times. The just medium be- 
 tween mediaeval massiveness and classic simplicity 
 was attained in countless buildings beautiful and 
 various beyond description. Bologna is full of them ; 
 and Urbino, in the Ducal Palace, contains one spe- 
 cimen unexampled in extent and unique in interest. 
 Yet here, as in all departments of fine art, Florence 
 takes the lead. After Brunelleschi and Alberti 
 came Michellozzo, the favorite architect of Cosimo 
 de' Medici ; Benedetto da Majano ; Giuliano and 
 Antonio di San Gallo ; and II Cronaca. Cosimo de' 
 Medici, having said that ' envy is a plant no man 
 should water,' denied himself the monumental house 
 designed by Brunelleschi, and chose instead the 
 modest plan of Michellozzo. Brunelleschi had meant 
 to build the Casa Medici along one side of the 
 Piazza di S. Lorenzo; but when Cosimo refused 
 his project, he broke up the model he had made, to 
 the great loss of students of this age of architecture. 
 Michellozzo was then commissioned to raise the 
 mighty, but comparatively humble, Riccardi Palace 
 at the corner of the Via Larga, which continued to 
 be the residence of the Medici through all their 
 checkered history, until at last they took possession 
 of the Palazzo Pitti. 1 The most beautiful of all 
 
 1 This ancestral palace of the Medici passed in 1659 to the Mar- 
 chese Gabriele Riccardi, from the Duke Francesco II.
 
 PALACES OF THE FIRST PERIOD, 77 
 
 Florentine dwelling-houses designed at this period 
 is that which Benedetto da Majano built for Filippo 
 Strozzi. Combining the burgher-like austerity of 
 antecedent ages with a grandeur and a breadth of 
 style peculiar to the Renaissance, the Palazzo 
 Strozzi may be chosen as the perfect type of Flor- 
 entine domestic architecture. 1 Other cities were 
 supplied by Florence with builders, and Milan owed 
 her fanciful Ospedale Maggiore at this epoch to 
 Antonio Filarete, a Florentine. This great edifice 
 illustrates the emancipation from fixed rule that dis- 
 tinguishes much of the architecture of the earlier 
 Renaissance. The detail is not unfrequently Gothic 
 especially in the pointed windows ; but the feeling 
 of the whole structure, in its airy space and light- 
 ness, delicate terra-cotta moldings, and open loggie, 
 is truly Cinque Cento. 2 
 
 1 Von Reumont, ' Lorenzo de' Medici,' vol. ii. pp. 187-191, may be 
 consulted for an interesting account of the building of this Casa 
 Grande by Filippo Strozzi. The preparations were made with great 
 caution, lest it should seem that a work too magnificent for a simple 
 citizen was being undertaken ; in particular, Filippo so contrived that 
 the costly opus rusticutn employed in the construction of the basement 
 should appear to have been forced upon him. This is characteristic 
 of Florence in the days of Cosimo. The foundation stone was laid in 
 the morning of August 16, 1489, at the moment when the sun arose 
 above the summits of the Casentino. The hour, prescribed by as- 
 trologers as propitious, had been settled by the horoscope ; masses 
 meanwhile were said in several churches, and alms distributed. 
 
 8 Antonio Filarete, or Averulino, architect and sculptor, was author 
 of a treatise on the building of the ideal city, one of the most curious 
 specimens of Renaissance fancy, to judge from the account rendered 
 of the manuscript by Rio, vol. iii. pp. 321-328.
 
 7 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 In no other style than this of the earlier Renais- 
 sance is the builder more inseparably connected 
 with the decorator. The labors of the stone- 
 carver, who provided altars chased with Scripture 
 histories in high relief, pulpits hung against a col- 
 umn of the nave, tombs with canopies and floral 
 garlands, organ galleries enriched with bass-reliefs of 
 singing boys, ciboria with kneeling and adoring 
 angels, marble tabernacles for relics, vases for holy 
 water, fonts and fountains, and all the indescribable 
 wealth of scrolls and friezes around doors and 
 screens and balustrades that fence the choir, are 
 added to those of the bronze-founder, with his 
 mighty doors and pendent lamps, his candelabra 
 sustained by angels, torch-rests and rings, embossed 
 basements for banners of state, and portraits of re- 
 cumbent senators or prelates. 1 The wood-carver 
 contributes tarsia like that of Fra Giovanni da Ve- 
 rona. 2 The worker in wrought iron welds such 
 
 1 Matteo Civitale, Benedetto da Majano, Mino da Fiesole, Luca 
 dclla Robbia, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, Lo Scalza, Omodeo, 
 and the Sansovini, not to mention less illustrious sculptors, filled the 
 churches of Italy with this elaborate stone-work. Among the bronze 
 founders it is enough to name Ghiberti, Antonio Filarete, Antonio Pol- 
 lajuolo, Donatello and his pupil Bertoldo, Andrea Riccio, the master 
 of the candelabrum in S. Antonio at Padua, Jacopo Sansovino, the 
 master of the door of the sacristy in S. Mark's at Venice, Alessandro 
 Leopardi, the master of the standard-pedestals of the Piazza of S. 
 Mark's. I do not mean these lists to be in any sense exhaustive, but 
 simply to remind the reader of the rare and many-sided men of genius 
 who devoted their abilities to this kind of work. Some of their master- 
 pieces will be noticed in detail in the chapter on Sculpture. 
 
 ' Especially his work at Monte Oliveto, near Siena, and in the
 
 ARTS OF DECORATION. 79 
 
 screens as guard the chapel of the Sacra Cintola at 
 Prato. The Robbias prepare their delicately-toned 
 reliefs for the lunettes above the doorways. Model- 
 ers in clay produce the terra-cotta work of the Cer- 
 tosa, 01 the carola of angels who surround the little 
 cupola behind the church of S. Eustorgio at Milan. 1 
 Meanwhile mosaics are provided for the dome or 
 let into the floor; 2 agates and marbles and lapis 
 lazuli are pieced together for altar fronts and panel- 
 ings ; 3 stalls are carved into fantastic patterns, and 
 heavy roofs are embossed with figures of the saints 
 and armorial emblems. 4 Tapestry is woven from 
 the designs of excellent masters ; 5 great painters 
 
 church of Monte Oliveto at Naples. The Sala del Cambio at Perugia 
 may also be cited as rich in tarsia-work designed by Perugino, while the 
 church of S. Pietro de' Cassinensi outside the city is a museum of 
 masterpieces executed by Fra Damiano da Bergamo and Stefano da 
 Bergamo from designs of Raphael. Not less beautiful are the inlaid 
 wood panels in the Palace of Urbino, by Maestro Giacomo of Flor- 
 ence. 
 
 1 The churches and palaces of Lombardy are peculiarly rich in 
 this kind of decoration. The fagade of the Oratory of S. Bernardino 
 at Perugia, designed and executed by Agostino di Duccio, is a master- 
 piece of rare beauty in this style. 
 
 s Not to mention the Renaissance mosaics of S. Mark's at Venice, 
 the cupola of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome, executed in mosaic by 
 Raphael, deserves special mention. A work illustrative of this cupola 
 is one of Ludwig Griiner's best publications. 
 
 * South Italy and Florence are distinguished by two marked styles 
 in this decoration of inlaid marbles or opera di commesso. Compare 
 the Medicean chapel in S. Lorenzo, for instance, with the high altar of 
 the cathedral of Messina. 
 
 * The roof of the Duomo at Volterra is a fine specimen. 
 
 * It will not be forgotten that Raphael's cartoons were made for 
 tapestry.
 
 8o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 contribute arabesques of fresco or of stucco mixed 
 with gilding, and glass is colored from the outlines 
 of such draughtsmen as Ghiberti. 
 
 Some of the decorative elements I have hastily 
 enumerated will be treated in connection with the 
 respective arts of sculpture and painting. The fact, 
 meanwhile, deserves notice that they received a 
 new development in relation to architecture during 
 the first period of the Renaissance, and that they 
 formed, as it were, an integral part of its main aesthet- 
 ical purpose. Strip a chapel of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury of ornamental adjuncts, and an uninteresting 
 shell is left: what, for instance, would the fagades of 
 the Certosa and the Cappella Colleoni be without 
 their sculptured and inlaid marbles? The genius 
 of the age found scope in subordinate details, and 
 the most successful architect was the man who com- 
 bined in himself a feeling for the capacities of the 
 greatest number of associated arts. As the conse- 
 quence of this profuse expenditure of loving care on 
 every detail, the monuments of architecture belong- 
 ing to the earlier Renaissance have a poetry that 
 compensates for structural defects ; just as its wildest 
 literary extravagances the Hypnerotomachia Poli- 
 phili, for instance have a charm of wanton fancy 
 and young joy that atones to sympathetic students 
 for intolerable pedantries. 
 
 In the second period the faults of the first group
 
 BR AM ANTE. 81 
 
 of Renaissance builders were in a large measure 
 overcome, and their striving after the production of 
 new yet classic form was more completely realized. 
 The reckless employment of luxuriant decoration 
 yielded to a chastened taste, without the sacrifice of 
 beauty or magnificence. Style was refined; the 
 construction of large buildings was better under- 
 stood, and the instinct for what lies within the 
 means of a revived and secondary manner was more 
 true. 
 
 To Bramante must be assigned the foremost 
 place among the architects of the golden age. 1 
 Though little of his work survives entire and un- 
 spoiled, it is clear that he exercised the profoundest 
 influence over both successors and contemporaries. 
 What they chiefly owed to him was the proper sub- 
 ordination of beauty in details to the grandeur of 
 simplicity and to unity of effect. Fie came at a 
 moment when constructive problems had been 
 solved, when mechanical means were perfected, and 
 when the sister arts had reached their highest point. 
 His early training in Lombardy accustomed him to 
 the adoption of clustered piers instead of single 
 columns, to semicircular apses and niches, and to 
 
 1 Bramante Lazzari was born at Castel Durante, near Urbino, in 
 1444. He spent the early years of his architect's life in Lombardy, in 
 the service of Lodovico Sforza, and came probably to Rome upon his 
 patron's downfall in 1499.
 
 82 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 the free use of minor cupolas elements of design 
 introduced neither by Brunelleschi nor by Albert! 
 into the Renaissance style of Florence, but which 
 were destined to determine the future of architec- 
 ture for all Italy. Nature had gifted Bramante with 
 calm judgment and refined taste ; his sense of the 
 right limitations of the pseudo-Roman style was 
 exquisite, and his feeling for structural symmetry 
 was just If his manner strikes us as somewhat 
 cold and abstract when compared with the more 
 genial audacities of the earlier Renaissance, we must 
 remember how salutary was the example of a 
 rigorous and modest manner in an age which re- 
 quired above all things to be preserved from its 
 own luxuriant waywardness of fancy. It is hard to 
 say how much of the work ascribed to Bramante in 
 Northern Italy is genuine ; most of it, at any rate, 
 belongs to the manner of his youth. The church of 
 S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi, the palace of 
 the Cancelleria at Rome, and the unfinished cathe- 
 dral of Pavia enable us to comprehend the general 
 character of this great architect's refined and noble 
 manner. S. Peter's, it may be said in passing, re- 
 tains, in spite of all subsequent modifications, many 
 essentially Bramantesque features especially in the 
 distribution of the piers and rounded niches, 
 
 Bramante formed no school strictly so called, 
 though his pupils, Cristoforo Rocchi and Ventura
 
 SCHOLARS OP BRAMANTE. 83 
 
 Vitoni, carried out his principles of building at Pavia 
 and Pistoja. Vitoni's church of the Umilta in the 
 latter city is a pure example of conscientious neo- 
 Roman architecture. It consists of a large octagon 
 surmounted by a dome and preceded by a lofty vaulted 
 atrium or vestibule. The single round arch of this 
 vestibule repeats the testudo of a Roman bath, and 
 the decorative details are accurately reproduced from 
 similar monuments. Unfortunately, Giorgio Vasari, 
 who was employed to finish the cupola, spoiled its 
 effect by raising it upon an ugly attic ; it is probable 
 that the church, as designed by Vitoni, would have 
 presented the appearance of a miniature Pantheon. 
 At Rome the influence of Bramante was propagated 
 through Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Baldassare 
 Peruzzi. Raphael's claim to consideration as an 
 architect rests upon the Palazzi Vidoni and Pandol- 
 fini, the Capella Chigi in S. Maria del Popolo, and 
 the Villa Madama. The last-named building, ex- 
 ecuted by Giulio Romano after Raphael's design, is 
 carried out in a style so forcible as to make us fancy 
 that the pupil had a larger share in its creation than 
 his teacher. These works, however, sink into insig- 
 nificance before the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, the 
 masterpiece of Giulio's genius. This most noble of 
 Italian pleasure-houses remains to show what the 
 imagination of a poet-artist could recover from the 
 splendor of old Rome and adapt to the use of his
 
 84 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 own age. The vaults of the Thermae of Titus, with 
 their cameos of stucco and frescoed arabesques, are 
 here repeated on a scale and with an exuberance of 
 invention that surpass the model. Open loggie 
 yield fair prospect over what were once trim gar- 
 dens; spacious halls, adorned with frescoes in the 
 vehement and gorgeous style of the Roman school, 
 form a fit theater for the grand parade-life of an 
 Italian prince. The whole is pagan in its pride and 
 sensuality, its prodigality of strength, and insolence 
 of freedom. Having seen this palace, we do not 
 wonder that the fame of Giulio flew across the Alps 
 and lived upon the lips of Shakspere: for in his 
 master-work at Mantua he collected, as it were, and 
 epitomized in one building all that inthralled the 
 fancy of the Northern nations when they thought of 
 Italy. 
 
 A pendant to the Palazzo del Te is the Villa 
 Fames! na, raised on the banks of the Tiber by 
 Baldassare Peruzzi for his fellow-townsman Agos- 
 tino Chigi of Siena. It is an idyl placed beside a 
 lyric ode, gentler and quieter in style, yet full of 
 grace, breathing the large and liberal spirit of enjoy- 
 ment that characterized the age of Leo. The fres- 
 coes of Galatea and Psyche, executed by Raphael 
 and his pupils, have made this villa famous in the 
 annals of Italian painting. The memory of the 
 Roman banker's splendid style of living mark it out
 
 SAN SO VINO. 85 
 
 as no less noteworthy in the history of Renaissance 
 
 manners. 1 
 
 Among the great edifices of this second period we 
 may reckon Jacopo Sansovino's buildings at Venice, 
 though they approximate rather to the style of the 
 earlier Renaissance in all that concerns exuberance 
 of decorative detail. The Venetians, somewhat 
 behind the rest of Italy in the development of the 
 fine arts, were at the height of prosperity and wealth 
 during the middle period of the Renaissance ; and 
 no city is more rich in monuments of the florid style. 
 Something of their own delight in sensuous mag- 
 nificence they communicated even to the foreigners 
 who dwelt among them. The court of the Ducal 
 Palace, the Scuola di S. Rocco, the Palazzo Corner, 
 and the Palazzo Vendramini-Calergi, illustrate the 
 strong yet fanciful bravura style that pleased the aris- 
 tocracy of Venice. Nowhere else does the architec- 
 ture of the Middle Ages melt by more imperceptible 
 degrees into that of the Revival, retaining through 
 all changes the impress of a people splendor-loving 
 in the highest sense. The Library of S. Mark, built 
 by Sansovino in 1536, remains, however, the crown- 
 ing triumph of Venetian art. It is impossible to 
 contemplate its noble double row of open arches 
 without feeling the eloquence of rhetoric so brilliant, 
 rithout echoing the judgment of Palladio, that 
 1 See 'Age of the Despots,' p. 437.
 
 86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 nothing more sumptuous or beautiful had been in- 
 vented since the age of ancient Rome. 
 
 Time would fail to tell of all the architects 
 who crowd the first half of the sixteenth century 
 of Antonio di San Gallo, famous for fortifications ; 
 of Baccio d' Agnolo, who raised the Campanile of S. 
 Spirito at Florence ; of Giovanni Maria Falconetto, 
 to whose genius Padua owed so many princely edi- 
 fices; of Michele Sanmicheli, the military architect 
 of Verona, and the builder of five mighty palaces 
 for the nobles of his native city. Yet the greatest 
 name of all this period can not be omitted : Michael 
 Angelo must be added to the list of builders in the 
 golden age. In architecture, as in sculpture, he not 
 only bequeathed to posterity masterpieces of indi- 
 vidual energy and original invention, in their kind 
 unrivaled, but he also prepared for his successors 
 a false way of working, and justified by his exam- 
 ple the extravagances of the decadence. Without 
 noticing the fagade designed for S. Lorenzo at 
 Florence, the transformation of the Baths of Diocle- 
 tian into a church, the remodeling of the Capitoline 
 buildings, and the continuation of the Palazzo Far- 
 nese works that either exist only in drawings or have 
 been confused by later alterations it is enough here 
 to mention the Sagrestia Nuova of S. Lorenzo and 
 the cupola of S. Peter's. The sacristy may be 
 looked on either as the masterpiece of a sculptor
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO. 87 
 
 who required fit setting for his statues, or of an 
 architect who designed statues to enhance the struc- 
 ture he had planned. Both arts are used with equal 
 ease, nor has the genius of Michael Angelo dealt 
 more masterfully with the human frame than with 
 the forms of Roman architecture in this chapel. He 
 seems to have paid no heed to classic precedent, and 
 to have taken no pains to adapt the parts to the 
 structural purpose of the building. It was enough 
 for him to create a wholly novel framework for the 
 modern miracle of sculpture it enshrines, attending 
 to such rules of composition as determine light and 
 shade, and seeking by the slightness of moldings 
 and pilasters to enhance the terrible and massive 
 forms that brood above the Medicean tombs. The 
 result is a product of picturesque and plastic art, as 
 true to the Michaelangelesque spirit as the Temple 
 of the Wingless Victory to that of Pheidias. But 
 where Michael Angelo achieved a triumph of bold- 
 ness, lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie ; 
 and this chapel of the Medici, in spite of its gran- 
 diose simplicity, proved a stumbling-block to sub- 
 sequent architects by encouraging them to despise 
 propriety and violate the laws of structure. The 
 same may be said with even greater truth of the 
 Laurentian Library and its staircase. The false 
 windows, repeated pillars, and barefaced aiming at
 
 88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 effect, that mark the insincerity of the barocco style, 
 are found here almost for the first time. 
 
 What S. Peter's would have been, if Michael 
 Angelo had lived to finish it, can be imagined from 
 his plans and elevations still preserved. It must 
 always remain a matter of profound regret that 
 his project was so far altered as to sacrifice the 
 effect of the dome from the piazza This dome 
 is Michael Angelo's supreme achievement as an 
 architect. It not only preserves all that is majestic 
 in the cupola of Brunelleschi, but it also avoids 
 the defects of its avowed model, by securing the 
 entrance of abundant light, and dilating the imagi- 
 nation with the sense of space to soar and float 
 in. It is the dome that makes S. Peter's what it 
 is the adequate symbol of the Church in an age 
 that had abandoned medievalism and produced a 
 new type of civility for the modern nations. On 
 the connection between the building of S. Peter's 
 and the Reformation I have touched already. 1 This 
 mighty temple is the shrine of Catholicity, no longer 
 cosmopolitan by right of spiritual empire, but secu- 
 larized and limited to Latin races. At the same 
 time it represents the spirit of a period when the 
 Popes still led the world as intellectual chiefs. As the 
 decree for its erection was the last act of the Papacy 
 
 1 See ' Age of the Despots,' p. 439. See Gregorovius, ' Geschichte 
 der Stadt Rom,' vol. viii. p. 127, and the quotation there translated 
 from Pallavicini's History of the Council of Trent.'
 
 S. PETER'S. 89 
 
 before the schism of the North had driven it into 
 blind conflict with advancing culture, so S. Peter's 
 remains the monument to after ages of a moment 
 when the Roman Church, unterrified as yet by 
 German rebels, dared to share the mundane im- 
 pulse of the classical revival. She had forgotten the 
 catacombs, and ruthlessly destroyed the Basilica of 
 Constantine. By rebuilding the mother-church of 
 Western Christianity upon a new plan, she broke 
 with tradition ; and if Rome has not ceased to 
 be the Eternal City, if all ways are still leading to 
 Rome, we may even hazard a conjecture that in 
 the last days of their universal monarchy the Popes 
 reared this fane to be the temple of a spirit alien 
 to their own. It is at any rate certain that S. 
 Peter's produces an impression less ecclesiastical, 
 and less strictly Christian, than almost any of the 
 elder and far humbler churches of Europe. Raised 
 by proud and secular pontiffs in the heyday of re- 
 nascent humanism, it seems to wait the time when 
 the high-priests of a religion no longer hostile to 
 science or antagonistic to the inevitable force of 
 progress will chant their hymns beneath its spa- 
 cious dome. 
 
 The building of S. Peter's was so momentous 
 in modern history, and so decisive for Italian archi- 
 tecture, that it may be permitted me to describe 
 the vicissitudes through which the structure passed
 
 90 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 before receiving completion. Nicholas V., founder 
 of the secular papacy and chief patron of the hu- 
 manistic movement in Rome, had approved a 
 scheme for thoroughly rebuilding and refortifying 
 the pontifical city. 1 Part of this plan involved the 
 reconstruction of S. Peter's. The old basilica was 
 to be removed, and on its site was to rise a mighty 
 church, shaped like a Latin cross, with a central 
 dome and two high towers flanking the vestibule. 
 Nicholas died before his project could be carried 
 into effect Beyond destroying the old temple of 
 
 Probus and marking out foundations for the trib- 
 
 i 
 
 une of the new church, nothing had been accom- 
 plished ; 2 nor did his successors until the reign of 
 Julius think of continuing what he had begun. In 
 1506, on the 1 8th of April, Julius laid the first 
 stone of S. Peter's according -to the plans provided 
 by Bramante. The basilica was designed in the 
 shape of a Greek cross, surmounted by a colossal 
 dome, and approached by a vestibule fronted with six 
 columns. As in all the works of Bramante, sim- 
 plicity and dignity distinguished this first scheme. 3 
 
 1 See ' Age of the Despots,' pp. 378-380. ' Revival of Learning,' 
 pp. 224-229. For his architectural designs see his life, by Manetti, 
 book ii., in Muratori, vol. iii. part ii. 
 
 * Gregorovius, vol. vii. p. 638. 
 
 * Besides the great work of Bonanni, ' Templi Vaticani Historia,' I 
 may refer my readers to the atlas volume of ' Illustrations, Architec- 
 tural and Pictorial, of the Genius of Michael Angelo Buonarroti,' com- 
 piled by Mr. Harford (Colnaghi, 1857). Plates i to 7 of that work are
 
 ARCHITECTS OF S. PETERS. 91 
 
 For eight years, until his death in 1514, Bramante 
 labored on the building. Julius, the most im- 
 patient of masters, urged him to work rapidly. 
 In consequence of this haste, the substructures of the 
 new church proved insecure, and the huge piers 
 raised to support the cupola were imperfect, while 
 the venerable monuments contained in the old church 
 were ruthlessly destroyed. 1 After Bramante's death 
 Giuliano di S. Gallo, Fra Giocondo, and Raphael 
 successively superintended the construction, each 
 for a short period. Raphael, under Leo X., was 
 appointed sole architect, and went so far as to alter 
 the design of Bramante by substituting the Latin 
 for the Greek cross. Upon his death, Baldassare 
 Peruzzi continued the work, and supplied a series 
 of new designs, restoring the ground-plan of the 
 church to its original shape. He was succeeded 
 in the reign of Paul III. by Antonio di S. Gallo, 
 who once more reverted to the Latin cross, and 
 proposed a novel form of cupola with flanking 
 towers for the fagade, of bizarre more than beautiful 
 proportions. After a short interregnum, during 
 which Giulio Romano superintended the building 
 
 devoted to the plans of S. Peter's. Plate 4 is specially interesting, 
 since it represents in one view the old basilica and the design ot 
 Bramante, together with those of Antonio di S. Gallo and Michael 
 Angelo. 
 
 1 The subterranean vaults of S. Peter's contain mere fragments of 
 tombs, some precious as historical records, some valuable as works of 
 art, swept together pell-mell from the ruins of the old basilica.
 
 9 2 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 and did nothing remarkable, Michael Angelo was 
 called in 1535 to undertake the sole charge of the 
 edifice. lie declared that wherever subsequent 
 architects had departed from Bramante's project, 
 they had erred. 'It is impossible to deny that 
 Bramante was as great in architecture as any man 
 has been since the days of the ancients. When 
 he first laid the plan of S. Peter's, he made it not 
 a mass of confusion, but clear and simple, well 
 lighted, and so thoroughly detached that it in no 
 way interfered with any portion of the palace.' 1 
 Having thus pronounced himself in general for 
 Bramante's scheme, Michael Angelo proceeded to 
 develop it in accordance with his own canons of 
 taste. He retained the Greek cross ; but the dome, 
 as he conceived it, and the details designed for 
 each section of the building, differed essentially 
 from what the earlier master would have sanctioned. 
 Not the placid and pure taste of Bramante, but the 
 masterful and fiery genius of Buonarroti is respon- 
 sible for the colossal scale of the subordinate parts 
 and variously broken lineaments of the existing 
 church. In spite of all changes of direction, the 
 fabric of S. Peter's had been steadily advancing. 
 Michael Angelo was, therefore, able to raise the 
 central structure as far as the drum of the cupola 
 
 1 See the original letter to Ammanati, published from the Archivio 
 Buonarroti, by Signer Milanesi, p. 535.
 
 COMPLETION OF S. PETERS. 93 
 
 before his death. His plans and models were care- 
 fully preserved, and a special papal ordinance de- 
 creed that henceforth there should be no deviation 
 from the scheme he had laid down. Unhappily 
 this rule was not observed. Under Pius V., Vig- 
 nola and Piero Ligorio did indeed continue his 
 tradition ; under Gregory XI II., Sixtus V., and 
 Clement VIII., Giacomo della Porta made no sub- 
 stantial alterations; and in 1590, Domenico Fon- 
 tana finished the dome. But during the pontificate 
 of Paul V., Carlo Maderno resumed the form of 
 the Latin cross, and completed the nave and vesti- 
 bule, as they now stand, upon this altered plan 
 (1614). The consequence is what has been already 
 noted at a moderate distance from the church 
 the dome is lost to view ; it only takes its true 
 position of predominance when seen from afar. In 
 the year 1626, S. Peter's was consecrated by 
 Urban VIII., and the mighty work was finished. 
 It remained for Bernini to add the colonnades 
 of the piazza, no less picturesque in their effect 
 than admirably fitted for the pageantry of world- 
 important ceremonial. At the end of the eighteenth 
 century it was reckoned that the church had cost 
 but little less than fifty million scudi. 
 
 Michael Angelo forms the link between the 
 second and third periods of the Renaissance. Among 
 the architects of the latter age we have to reckon
 
 94 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 those who based their practice upon minute study 
 of antique writers, and who, more than any of their 
 predecessors, realized the long-sought restitution of 
 the classic style according to precise scholastk 
 canons. 1 A new age had now begun for Italy. 
 The glory and the grace of the Renaissance, its 
 blooming time of beauty, and its springtide of young 
 strength, were over. Strangers held the reins of 
 power, and the Reformation had begun to make 
 itself felt in the Northern provinces of Christendom. 
 A colder and more formal spirit everywhere pre- 
 vailed. The sources of invention in the art of 
 painting were dried up. Scholarship had pined 
 away into pedantic purism. Correct taste was 
 coming to be prized more highly than originality of 
 genius in literature. Nor did architecture fail to 
 manifest the operation of this change. The greatest 
 builder of the period was Andrea Palladio of Vi- 
 cenza, who combined a more complete analytical 
 knowledge of antiquity with a firmer adherence to 
 rule and precedent than even the most imitative of 
 his forerunners. It is useless to seek for decorative 
 fancy, wealth of detail, or sallies of inventive genius 
 in the Palladian style. All is cold and calculated in 
 
 1 I am far from meaning that the earlier architects had not been 
 guided by ancient authors. Alberti's ' Treatise on the Art of Building' 
 is a sufficient proof of their study of Vitruvius, and we know that 
 Fabio Calvi translated that writer into Italian for Raphael. In the 
 later Renaissance this study passed into purism.
 
 PALLADIO. 95 
 
 the many palaces and churches of this master which 
 adorn both Venice and Vicenza ; they make us feel 
 that creative inspiration has been superseded by the 
 labor of the calculating reason. One great public 
 building of Palladio's, however the Palazzo della 
 Ragione at Vicenza may be cited as, perhaps, the 
 culminating point of pure Renaissance architecture. 
 In its simple and heroical arcades, its solid columns, 
 and noble open spaces, the strength of Rome is 
 realized to the eyes of those who do not pene- 
 trate too far inside the building. 1 Here, and here 
 only, the architectural problem of the epoch 
 how to bring the art of the ancients back to life and 
 use again was solved according to the spirit and 
 the letter of the past. Palladio never equaled this, 
 the earliest of all his many works. 
 
 In the first half of the sixteenth century the 
 dictatorship of art had been already transferred from 
 Florence and Rome to Lombardy. 8 The painters 
 who carried on the great traditions were Venetian. 
 Among the architects, Palladio was a native of 
 Vicenza ; Giacomo Barozzi, the author of the ' Trea- 
 tise on the Orders/ took the name by which he is 
 known from his birthplace, Vignola ; Vincenzo Sca- 
 
 1 It must be confessed that this grandiose and picturesque struc- 
 ture is but a shell to mask an earlier Gothic edifice. 
 
 '" Compare ' Revival of Learning,' p. 506, for the same transler 
 ence ol power in literature from Central to Northern Italy at this 
 time.
 
 96 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 mozzi was a fellow-townsman of Palladio ; Galeazzo 
 Alcssi, though born at Perugia, spent his life and 
 developed his talents in Genoa ; Andrea Formigine, 
 the palace-builder, was a Bolognese ; Bartolommeo 
 Ammanati alone at Florence exercised the arts of 
 sculpture and architecture in their old conjunction. 
 Vignola, Palladio's elder by a few years, displays in 
 his work even more of the scholastically frigid spirit 
 of the late Renaissance, the narrowing of poetic 
 impulse, and the dwindling of vitality, that sadden 
 the second half of the sixteenth century in Italy. 
 Scamozzi, laboring at Venice on works that San- 
 sovino left unfinished, caught the genial spirit of the 
 old Venetian style. Alessi, in like manner, at Genoa, 
 felt the influences of a rich and splendor-loving 
 aristocracy. His church of S. Maria di Carignano 
 is one of the most successful ecclesiastical buildings 
 of the late Renaissance, combining the principles of 
 Bramante and Michael Angelo in close imitation of 
 S. Peter's, and adhering in detail to the canons of 
 the new taste. 
 
 These canons were based upon a close study of 
 Vitruvius. Palladio, Vignola, and Scamozzi were no 
 less ambitious as authors than as architects ; * their 
 
 Palladio's 'Four Books of Architecture,' first published at Venice 
 m 1 570, and Vignola's ' Treatise on the Five Orders' have been trans- 
 lated into all the modern languages. Scamozzi projected, and partly 
 finished, a comprehensive work on ' Universal Architecture,' which 
 was printed in 1685 at Venice.
 
 THE PALL ADI AN STYLE. 97 
 
 minute analysis of antique treatises on the art of 
 construction led to the formation of exact rules for 
 the treatment of the five classic orders, the propor- 
 tions of the chief parts used in building, and the 
 correct method of designing theaters and palaces 
 church-fronts and cupolas. Thus architecture in its 
 third Renaissance period passed into scholasticism. 
 
 The masters of this age, chiefly through the 
 weight of their authority as writers, exercised a 
 wider European influence than any of their pre- 
 decessors. We English, for example, have given 
 Palladio's name to the Italian style adopted by us 
 in the seventeenth century. This selection of one 
 man to represent an epoch was due partly no doubt 
 to the prestige of Palladio's great buildings in the 
 South, but more, I think, to the facility with which 
 his principles could be assimilated. Depending but 
 little for effect upon the arts of decoration, his style 
 was easily imitated in countries where painting and 
 sculpture were unknown, and where a genius like 
 Jean Goujon, the Sansovino of the French, has 
 never been developed. To have rivaled the fagade 
 of the Certosa would have been impossible in 
 London. Yet here Wren produced a cathedral 
 worthy of comparison with the proudest of the late 
 Italian edifices. Moreover, the principles of taste 
 that governed Europe in the seventeenth century 
 were such as found fitter architectural expression in
 
 98 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 this style than in the more genial and capricious 
 manner of the earlier periods. 
 
 After reviewing the rise and development ot 
 Renaissance architecture, it is almost irresistible to 
 compare the process whereby the builders of this 
 age learned to use dead forms for the expression of 
 their thoughts, with the similar process by which the 
 scholars accustomed themselves to Latin meters and 
 the cadences of Ciceronian periods. 1 The object in 
 each case was the same to be as true to the antique 
 as possible, and without actually sacrificing the inde- 
 pendence of the modern mind, to impose upon it the 
 limitations of a bygone civilization. At first the 
 enthusiasm for antiquity inspired architects and 
 scholars alike with a desire to imitate per saltum, 
 and many works of fervid sympathy and pure artistic 
 intuition were produced. In course of time the laws 
 both of language and construction were more accu- 
 rately studied ; invention was superseded by ped- 
 antry; after Poliziano and Alberti came Bembo 
 and Palladio. In proportion as architects learned 
 more about Vitruvius, and scholars narrowed their 
 taste to Virgil, the style of both became more 
 cramped and formal. It ceased at last to be possible 
 to express modern ideas freely in the correct Latinity 
 required by cultivated ears, while no room for origi- 
 nality, no scope for poetry of invention, remained in 
 1 See ' Revival of Learning/ chap. viiL
 
 NEO-ROMAN STYLE. 99 
 
 the elaborated method of the architects. Neo-Latin 
 literature dwindled away to nothing, and Palladio 
 was followed by the violent reactionaries of the 
 barocco mannerism. 
 
 In one all-important respect this parallel breaks 
 down. While the labors of the Latinists subserved 
 the simple process of instruction, by purifying literary 
 taste and familiarizing the modern mind with the 
 masterpieces of the classic authors, the architects 
 created a new common style for Europe. With all 
 its defects, it is not likely that the neo-Roman archi- 
 tecture, so profoundly studied by the Italians, and 
 so anxiously refined by their chief masters, will ever 
 wholly cease to be employed. In all cases where a 
 grand and massive edifice, no less suited to purposes 
 of practical utility than imposing by its splendor, is 
 required, this style of building will be found the best. 
 Changes of taste and fashion, local circumstances, 
 and the personal proclivities of modern architects may 
 determine the choice of one type rather than another 
 among the numerous examples furnished by Italian 
 masters. But it is not possible that either Greek or 
 Gothic should permanently take the place assigned 
 to neo-Roman architecture in the public buildings of 
 European capitals.
 
 CHAFFER III. 
 
 SCULPTURE. 
 
 Ntccola Pisano Obscurity of the sources for a History of Early Italian 
 Sculpture Vasari's Legend of Pisano Deposition from the Cross 
 at Lucca Study of Nature and the Antique Sarcophagus at Pisa 
 Pisan Pulpit Niccola's School Giovanni Pisano Pulpit in S. 
 Andrea at Pistoja Fragments of his work at Pisa Tomb of Ben- 
 edict XI. at Perugia Bass-reliefs at Orvieto Andrea Pisano 
 Relation of Sculpture to Painting Giotto Subordination of Sculp- 
 ture to Architecture in Italy Pisano's Influence in Venice Bal- 
 duccio of Pisa Orcagna The Tabernacle of Orsammichele The 
 Gates of the Florentine Baptistery Competition of Ghiberti, Bru- 
 nelleschi, and Delia Quercia Comparison of Ghiberti's and Brunel- 
 leschi's Trial-pieces Comparison of Ghiberti and Delia Quercia 
 The Bass-reliefs of S. Petronio Ghiberti's Education His Picto- 
 rial Style in Bass-relief His feeling for the Antique Donatello 
 Early Visit to Rome Christian subjects Realistic Treatment S. 
 George and David Judith Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata 
 Influence of Donatello's Naturalism Andrea Verocchio His 
 David Statue of Colleoni Alessandro Leopardi Lionardo's 
 Statue of Francesco Sforza The Pollajuoli Tombs of Sixtus IV. 
 and Innocent VIII. Luca della Robbia His Treatment of Glazed 
 Earthenware Agostino di Duccio The Oratory of S. Bernardino 
 at Perugia Antonio Rossellino Matteo Civitali Mino da Fiesole 
 Benedetto da Majano Characteristics and Masterpieces of this 
 Group Sepulchral Monuments Andrea Contucci's Tombs in S. 
 Maria del Popolo Desiderio da Settignano Sculpture in S. Fran- 
 cesco at Rimini Venetian Sculpture Verona Guido Mazzoni of 
 Modena Certosa of Pavia Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo Sanso- 
 vino at Venice Pagan Sculpture Michael Angelo's Scholars 
 Baccio Bandinelli Bartolommeo Ammanati Cellini Gian Bo- 
 logna Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture. 
 
 IN the procession of the fine arts sculpture always 
 follows close upon the steps of architecture, and at
 
 NICCOLA PISANO. 101 
 
 first appears in some sense as her handmaid. Me- 
 diaeval Italy found her Pheidias in a great man of 
 Pisan origin, born during the first decade of the 
 thirteenth century. It was Niccola Pisano, architect 
 and sculptor, who first breathed with the breath of 
 genius life into the dead forms of plastic art. From 
 him we date the dawn of the sesthetical Renaissance 
 with the same certainty as from Petrarch that of hu- 
 manism ; for he determined the direction not only of 
 sculpture but also of painting in Italy. To quote 
 the language of Lord Lindsay's panegyric : ' Neither 
 Dante nor Shakspere can boast such extent and 
 durability of influence; for whatever of highest 
 excellence has been achieved in sculpture and paint- 
 ing, not in Italy only but throughout Europe, has 
 been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, 
 and in following up the principle which he first 
 struck out.' 1 In truth Niccola Pisano put the 
 artist on the right track of combining the study of 
 antiquity with the study of nature ; and to him be- 
 longs the credit not merely of his own achievement, 
 considerable as that may be, but also of the work of 
 his immediate scholars and of all who learned from 
 him to portray life. From Niccola Pisano onward 
 to Michael Angelo and Cellini we trace one gene- 
 alogy of sculptors, who, though they carried art 
 beyond the sphere of his invention, looked back to 
 
 1 ' Sketches of the History of Christian Art,' vol. ii. p. 102.
 
 102 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 him as their progenitor. The man who first eman- 
 cipated sculpture from servile bondage, and opened 
 a way for the attainment of true beauty, would by 
 the Greeks have been honored with a special cultus 
 as the Hero Eponym of art. It remains for us 
 after our own fashion to pay some such homage to 
 Pisano. 
 
 The chief difficulty with which the student of 
 early art and literature has to deal is the insuffi- 
 ciency of positive information. Instead of accurate 
 dates and well-established facts, he finds a legend, 
 rich apparently in detail, but liable at every point 
 to doubt, and subject to attack by plausible conjec- 
 ture. In the absence of contemporary documents 
 and other trustworthy sources of instruction, he is 
 tempted to substitute his own hypotheses for tradi- 
 tion and to reconstruct the faulty outlines of for- 
 gotten history according to his own ideas of fitness. 
 The Germans have been our masters in this species 
 of destructive, dubitative, restorative criticism ; and 
 it is undoubtedly flattering to the historian's vanity 
 to constitute himself a judge and arbiter in cases where 
 tact and ingenuity may claim to sift the scattered 
 fragments of confused narration. Yet to resist this 
 temptation is in many cases a plain and simple duty. 
 Tradition, when not positively disproved, should be 
 allowed to have its full value ; and a sounder historic 
 sense is exercised in adopting its testimony with due
 
 THE LEGEND OF NICCOLA. 103 
 
 caution than in recklessly rejecting it and substi- 
 tuting guesses which the lack of knowledge renders 
 unsubstantial. Tradition may err about dates, de- 
 tails, and names. It is just here that antiquarian 
 research can render valuable help. But there are 
 occasions when the perusal of documents and the 
 exercise of what is called the higher criticism afford 
 no surer basis for opinion. If in such cases a legend 
 has been formed and recorded, the student will ad- 
 vance further toward comprehending the spirit of 
 his subject by patiently considering what he knows 
 to be in part perhaps a mythus than by starting 
 with the foregone conclusion that the legend must of 
 necessity be worthless, and that his cunning will 
 suffice to supply the missing clue. 1 
 
 Thus much I have said by way of preface to 
 what follows upon Niccola Pisano. Almost all we 
 know about him is derived from a couple of inscrip- 
 tions, a few contracts, and his life by Giorgio Vasari. 
 It is clear that Vasari often wrote with careless- 
 ness, confusing dates and places, and taking no 
 
 1 Since I wrote the paragraph above, I have chanced to read Mr. 
 Ruskin's eloquent tirade against the modern skeptical school of critics 
 in his 'Mornings in Florence,' 'The Vaulted Book,' pp. 105, 106. 
 With the spirit of it I thoroughly agree ; feeling that, in the absence of 
 solid evidence to the contrary, I would always rather accept sixteenth- 
 century Italian tradition with Vasari than reject it with German or 
 English speculators of to-day. This does not mean that I wish to 
 swear by Vasari, when he can be proved to have been wrong, but 
 that I regard the present tendency to mistrust tradition, only because 
 it is tradition, as in the highest sense uncritical.
 
 104 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 pains to verify the truth of his assertions. Much 
 of Niccola's biography reads like a legend in his 
 p a g es the popular and oral tradition of a great 
 man, whose panegyric it was more easy in the 
 sixteenth century to adorn with rhetoric than to 
 chronicle the details of his life with scrupulous 
 fidelity. A well-founded conviction of Vasari's fre- 
 quent inaccuracy has induced recent critics to call in 
 question many hitherto accepted points about the 
 nationality and training of Pisano. The discussion 
 of their arguments I leave for the appendix, con- 
 tenting myself at present with relating so much of 
 Vasari's legend as can not, I think, reasonably be 
 rejected. 1 
 
 Before the sculptor appeared in Niccola Pisano, 
 he was already a famous architect ; and it must 
 always be remembered that he and his school 
 subordinated the plastic to the constructive arts. 
 It was not until the year 1233, or 1237, according 
 to different modern calculations, that he executed 
 his first masterpiece in sculpture. 2 This was a 
 Deposition from the Cross, in high relief, placed 
 
 1 See Appendix I., on the Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello. 
 
 5 The date is extremely doubtful. Were we to trust internal evi- 
 dence the evidence of style and handling we should be inclined to 
 name this not the earliest but the latest and ripest of Pisano's works. 
 It may be suggested in passing that the form of the lunette was favor- 
 able to the composition by forcing a gradation in the figures from the 
 center to either side. There is an engraving of this bass-relief in 
 Ottley's 'Italian School of Design.'
 
 DECAY OF CLASSICAL SCULPTURE. 105 
 
 in a lunette over one of the side doors of S. Martino 
 at Lucca. The noble forms of this group, the large- 
 ness of its style, the breadth of drapery and free- 
 dom of action it displays, but, above all, the unity 
 of its design, proclaimed that a new era had begun 
 for art. In order to appreciate the importance of 
 this relief, it is only necessary to compare it with 
 the processional treatment of similar subjects upon 
 early Christian sarcophagi, where each figure stands 
 up stiff and separate, nor can the controlling and 
 combining artist's thought be traced in any effort 
 after composition. Ever since the silver age of 
 Hadrian, when a Bithynian slave by his beauty 
 gave a final impulse to the genius of Greece, sculp- 
 ture had been gradually declining until nothing was 
 left but a formal repetition of conventional outlines. 
 The so-called Romanesque and Byzantine styles 
 were but the dotage of second childhood, fumbling 
 with the methods and materials of an irrecoverable 
 past. It is true, indeed, that unknown mediaeval 
 carvers had shown an instinct for the beautiful as well 
 as great fertility of grotesque invention. The fagades 
 of Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and 
 sometimes forcibly dramatic groups of animals and 
 men in combat ; and contemporaneously with Nic- 
 cola Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the North 
 were adorning the fagades and porches of cathe- 
 drals with statuary unrivaled in one style of love-
 
 106 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 liness. 1 Yet the founder of a line of progressive 
 artists had not arisen, and, except in Italy, the con- 
 ditions were still wanting under which alone the 
 plastic arts could attain to independence. A fresh 
 start, at once conscious and scientific, was impera- 
 tively demanded. This new beginning sculpture took 
 in the brain of Niccola Pisano, who returned from 
 the by-paths of his predecessors to the free field 
 of nature, and who learneci precious lessons from 
 the fragments of classical sculpture existing in his 
 native town. As though to prove the essential 
 dependence of the modern revival upon the recovery 
 of antique culture, we find that his genius, in spite 
 of its powerful originality and profoundly Christian 
 bias, required the confirmation which could only 
 be derived from Graeco-Roman precedent. In the 
 Campo Santo at Pisa may still be seen a sar- 
 cophagus representing the story of Hippolytus and 
 Phaedra, where once reposed the dust of Beatrice, 
 the mother of the pious Countess Matilda of Tus- 
 cany. Studying the heroic nudities and noble atti- 
 tudes of this bass-relief, Niccola rediscovered the 
 right way of art not by merely copying his model, 
 but by divining the secret of the grand style. His 
 work at Pisa contains abundant evidence that, 
 while he could not wholly free himself from the 
 
 1 Rheims Cathedral, for example, was begun in 1211. Upon its 
 western portals is the loveliest of Northern Gothic sculpture.
 
 THE PI SAN PULPIT. 107 
 
 defects of the later Romanesque manner, betrayed 
 by his choice of short and square-set types, he 
 nevertheless learned from the antique how to aim 
 at beauty and freedom in his imitation of the 
 living human form. A marble vase, sculptured 
 with Indian Bacchus and his train of Maenads, 
 gave him further help. From these grave or grace- 
 ful classic forms, satisfied with their own goodliness, 
 and void of inner symbolism, the Christian sculptor 
 drank the inspiration of Renaissance art. In the 
 Adoration of the Magi, carved upon his Pisan 
 pulpit, Madonna assumes the haughty pose of The- 
 seus' wife ; while the high-priest, in the Circum- 
 cision, displays the majesty of Dionysus leaning 
 on the neck of Ampelus. Nor again is the naked 
 vigor of Hippolytus without its echo in the figure 
 of the young man Hercules or Fortitude upon 
 a bracket of the same pulpit. These sculptures of 
 Pisano are thus for us a symbol of what happened 
 in the age of the Revival. The old world and 
 the new shook hands ; Christianity and Hellenism 
 kissed each other. And yet they still remained 
 antagonistic fused externally by art, but severed 
 in the consciousness that, during those strange 
 years of dubious impulse, felt the might of both. 
 Monks leaning from Pisano's pulpit preached the 
 sinfulness of natural pleasure to women whose eyes 
 were fixed on the adolescent beauty of an athlete.
 
 io8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Not far off was the time when Filarete should cast in 
 bronze the legends of Ganymede and Leda for the 
 portals of S. Peter's, when Raphael should mingle a 
 carnival of more than pagan sensuality with Bible 
 subjects in Leo's Loggie.when Guglielmo della Porta 
 should place the naked portrait of Giulia Bella in 
 marble at the feet of Paul III. upon his sepulchre. 1 
 Niccola, meanwhile, did not follow his Roman 
 models in any slavish spirit. They were neither 
 numerous nor excelknt enough to compel blind 
 imitation or to paralyze inventive impulse. The 
 thoughts to be expressed in marble by the first 
 modern artist were not Greek. This in itself saved 
 him from that tendency to idle reproduction which 
 proved the ruin of the later neo-pagan sculptors. 
 Yet the fragments of antique work he found within 
 
 1 Antonio Fflarete was commissioned, soon after 1431, by Euge- 
 nius IV., to make the great gates of S. Peter's. The decorative frame- 
 work represents a multitude of living creatures snails, snakes, lizards, 
 mice, butterflies, and birds half hidden in foliage, together with the 
 best known among Greek myths, the Rape of Proserpine, Diana and 
 Actaeon, Europa and the Bull, the Labors of Hercules, etc. Such 
 fables as the Fox and the Stork, the Fox and the Crow, and old stories 
 like that of the death of JEschylus, are included in this medley. The 
 monument of Paul III. is placed in the choir of S. Peter's. Oiulia 
 Bella was the mistress of Alexander VI., and a sister of the Farnese, 
 who owed his cardinal's hat to her influence. To represent her as an 
 allegory of Truth upon her brother's tomb might well pass for a grim 
 satire. The Prudence opposite is said to be a portrait of the Pope's 
 mother, Giovanna Gafitani. She resembles nothing more than a duenna 
 of the type of Martha in Goethe's ' Faust.' Here, again, the allegory 
 would point a scathing sarcasm, if we did not remember the naivete 
 of the Renaissance.
 
 NICCOLA'S STYLE. log 
 
 his reach, helped him to struggle after a higher 
 quality of style, and established standards of suc- 
 cessful treatment. For the rest, his choice of form 
 and the proportions of his figures show that Niccola 
 resorted to native Tuscan models. If nothing of 
 his handiwork were left but the bass-relief of the 
 Inferno on the Pisan pulpit, the torsos of the men 
 struggling with demons in that composition would 
 prove this point. It remains his crowning merit 
 to have first expressed the mythology of Chris- 
 tianity and the sentiment of the Middle Ages with 
 the conscious- aim of a real artist. And here it may 
 be noticed that, a true Italian, he infused but little 
 of intense or mystical emotion into his art. Nic- 
 cola is more of a humanist, if this word may be 
 applied to a sculptor, than some of his immediate 
 successors. The hexagonal pulpit in the Baptistery 
 of Pisa, the octagonal pulpit in the cathedral of 
 Siena, the fountain in the market-place of Perugia, 
 and the shrine of S. Dominic at Bologna, all of 
 them designed and partly finished between 1260 
 and 1274 by Niccola and his scholars, display his 
 mastery over the art of sculpture in the maturity 
 of his genius. So highly did the Pisans prize their 
 fellow-townsman's pulpit that a law was passed and 
 guardians were appointed for its preservation 
 much in the same way as the Zeus of Phidias was 
 consigned to the care of the Phaidruntai,
 
 HO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Niccola Pisano founded a school. His son Gio- 
 vanni, and the numerous pupils employed upon the 
 monuments just mentioned at Siena, Bologna, and 
 Perugia, carried on the tradition of their master, and 
 spread his style abroad through Italy. Giovanni 
 Pisano, to whom we owe the Spina Chapel and the 
 Campo Santo at Pisa, the fagade of the Sienese 
 Duomo, and the altar-shrine of S. Donate at Arezzo 
 four of the purest works of Gothic art in Italy- 
 showed a very decided leaning to the vehement and 
 mystic style of the Transalpine sculptors. We trace 
 a dramatic intensity in Giovanni's work, not derived 
 from his father, not caught from study of the an- 
 tique, and curiously blended with the general char- 
 acteristics of the Pisan school. In spite of the 
 Gothic cusps introduced by Niccola into his pulpits, 
 the spirit of his work remained classical. The 
 young Hercules holding the lion's cub in his right 
 hand upon his shoulder, while with his left he tames 
 the raging lioness, has the true Italian instinct for a 
 return to Latin style. The same sympathy with 
 the past is observable in the self-restraint and com- 
 parative coldness of the bass-reliefs at Pisa. The Ju- 
 nonian attitude of Madonna, the senatorial dignity of 
 Simeon, the ponderous folding of the drapery, and 
 the massive carriage of the neck throughout denote 
 an effort to revivify an antique manner. What, 
 therefore, Niccola effected for sculpture was a class-
 
 GIOVANNI PISANO. in 
 
 ical revival in the very depth of the Middle Ages. 
 The case is different with his son Giovanni. Profiting 
 by the labors of his father, and following in his foot- 
 steps, he carried the new art into another region, 
 and brought a genius of more picturesque and forci- 
 ble temper into play. The value of this new di- 
 rection given to sculpture for the arts of Italy, espe- 
 cially for painting, can not be exaggerated. Without 
 Giovanni's intervention, the achievement of Niccola 
 might possibly have been as unproductive of im- 
 mediate results as the Tuscan Romanesque, that 
 mediaeval effort after the Renaissance, was in archi- 
 tecture. 1 
 
 The Gothic element, so cautiously adopted by 
 Niccola, is used with sympathy and freedom by his 
 son, whose masterpiece, the pulpit of S. Andrea at 
 Pistoja, might be selected as the supreme triumph 
 of Italian Gothic sculpture. The superiority of 
 that complex and consummate work of plastic art 
 over the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery, in all the 
 most important qualities of style and composition, 
 can scarcely be called in question. Its only serious 
 fault is an exaggeration of the height of the pillars 
 in proportion to the size of the hexagon they 
 support. Like the pulpits of the Baptistery, of the 
 Duomo of Pisa, and of the Duomo of Siena, it 
 combines bass-reliefs and detached statues, carved 
 
 1 See above, p. 49.
 
 112 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 capitals, and sculptured lions, in a maze of mar- 
 velous invention ; but it has no rival in the archi- 
 tectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling 
 for balanced masses it displays. The five sub- 
 jects chosen by Giovanni for his bass-reliefs are the 
 Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Mas- 
 sacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion, and the Last 
 Judgment. In the Nativity our Lady is no longer 
 the Roman matron of Niccola's conception, but 
 a graceful mother, young in years, and bending 
 with the weakness of childbirth. Her attitude, ex- 
 quisite by the suggestion of tenderness and deli- 
 cacy, is one that often reappears in the later work 
 of the Pisan school for example, in the rough 
 abozzamento in the Campo Santo at Pisa, above 
 the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, and at Or- 
 vieto on the facade of the cathedral ; but it has no- 
 where else been treated with the same sense of 
 beauty. The Massacre of the Innocents, compared 
 with this relief, is a tragedy beside an idyl. Here 
 the whole force of Giovanni's eminently dramatic 
 genius comes into full play. Not only has he treated 
 the usual incidents of mothers struggling with sol- 
 diers and bewailing their dead darlings, but he has 
 also introduced a motive, which might well have 
 been used by subsequent artists in dealing with 
 the same subjects. Herod is throned in one corner 
 of the composition ; before him stand a group of
 
 PULPIT AT PISTOJA. 113 
 
 men and women, some imploring the tyrant for 
 mercy, some defying him in impotent despair, and 
 some invoking the curse of God upon his head. In 
 the Adoration of the Magi, again, Giovanni shows 
 originality by the double action he has chosen to 
 develop. On one side the kings are sleeping, while 
 an angel comes to wake them, pointing out the star. 
 On the other side they fall at the feet of the Ma- 
 donna. It will be gathered even from these bare 
 descriptions that Giovanni introduced a stir of life 
 and movement, and felt his subjects with a poetic 
 intensity, alien to the ideal of Grseco-Roman sculp- 
 ture. He effected a fusion between the grand style 
 revived by Niccola and the romantic fervor of the 
 modern imagination. It was in this way that the 
 tradition handed down by him proved inestimably 
 serviceable to the painters. 
 
 The bass-reliefs, however, by no means form the 
 chief attraction of this pulpit. At each of its six 
 angles stand saints, evangelists, and angels, whose 
 symbolism it is not now so easy to decipher. The 
 most beautiful groups are a company of angels blow- 
 ing the judgment trumpets, and a winged youth 
 standing above a winged lion and bull. These 
 groups separate the several compartments of the 
 bass-reliefs, and help to form the body of the pulpit. 
 Beneath, on capitals of the supporting pillars, stand 
 the Sibyls, each with her attendant genius, while
 
 114 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 prophets lean or crouch within the spandrels of the 
 arches. Thus every portion of this master-work is 
 crowded with figures some detached, some executed 
 in relief; and yet, amid so great a multitude, the eye 
 is not confused ; the total effect is nowhere dissipated. 
 The whole seems governed by one constructive 
 thought, projected as a perfect unity of composition. 1 
 A later work of Giovanni Pisano was the pulpit 
 executed for the cathedral of Pisa, now unfortu- 
 nately broken up. An interesting fragment, one of 
 the supporting columns of the octagon which formed 
 the body of this structure, still exists in the museum 
 of the Campo Santo. It is an allegorical statue of 
 Pisa. The Ghibelline city is personified as a crowned 
 woman, suckling children at her breast, and stand- 
 ing on a pedestal supported by the eagle of the 
 Empire. She wears a girdle of rope seven times 
 knotted, to betoken the rule of Pisa over seven sub- 
 ject islands. At the four corners of her throne 
 stand the four human virtues, Prudence, Temper- 
 ance, Justice, and Fortitude, distinguished less by 
 beauty of shape than by determined energy of sym- 
 bolism. Temperance is a naked woman, with hair 
 twisted in the knots and curls of a Greek Aphro- 
 dite. Justice is old and wrinkled, clothed with mas- 
 
 1 Having said so much about this pulpit of S. Andrea, I am sorry 
 that I can not reler the English reader to any accessible representation 
 of it. For its sake alone, if for no other purpose, Pistoja is well worth 
 a visit.
 
 TOMB OF BENEDICT XI. 115 
 
 sive drapery, and holding in her hand the scales. 
 Throughout this group there is no attempt to realize 
 forms pleasing to the eye ; the sculptor has aimed at 
 suggesting to the mind as many points of intellec- 
 tual significance as possible. In spite of ugliness 
 and hardness, the Allegory of Pisa commands re- 
 spect by vigor of conception, and rivets attention 
 by force of execution. 
 
 A more popular and pleasing monument by Gio- 
 vanni Pisano is the tomb of Benedict XI. in the 
 church of S. Domenico at Perugia. The Pope, whose 
 life was so obnoxious to the ambition of Philip le 
 Bel that his timely death aroused suspicion of poison, 
 lies asleep upon his marble bier with hands crossed in 
 an attitude of peaceful expectation. 1 At his head 
 and feet stand angels drawing back the curtains that 
 would else have shrouded this last slumber of a good 
 man from the eyes of the living. 2 A contrast is thus 
 established between the repose of the dead and the 
 ever-watchful activity of celestial ministers. Sleep 
 so guarded, the sculptor seeks to tell us, must have 
 glorious waking ; and when those hands unfold upon 
 the Resurrection morning, the hushed sympathy of 
 the attendant angels will break into smiles and sing- 
 ing, as they lead the just man to the Lord he served 
 in life. 
 
 1 It was long believed that he died of eating poisoned figs. 
 a See above, p. 62, note, for the original conception of this motive 
 iit Orvieto.
 
 1 16 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 Whether Giovanni Pisano had any share in the 
 sculpture on the fagade of the cathedral at Orvieto 
 is not known for certain. Vasari asserts that Niccola 
 and his pupils worked upon this series of bass-reliefs, 
 setting forth the whole biblical history and the cycle 
 of Christian beliefs from the creation of the world f ^ 
 the last judgment. Yet we know that Niccola him- 
 self died at least twelve years before the foundation 
 of the church in 1290; nor is there any proof that 
 his immediate scholars were engaged upon the fabric. 
 The Orvietan archives are singularly silent with 
 regard to a monument of so large extent and vast 
 importance, which must have taxed to the uttermost 
 the resources of the ablest stone-carvers in Italy. 1 
 Meanwhile, what Vasari says is valuable only as a 
 witness to the fame of Niccola Pisano. His manner, 
 as continued and developed by his school, is unmis- 
 takable at Orvieto : but in the absence of direct 
 information, we are left to conjecture the conditions 
 under which this the closing if not the crowning 
 achievement of thirteenth-century sculpture was pro- 
 duced. 
 
 When the great founder of Italian art visited 
 Siena in 1266 for the completion of his pulpit in 
 the Duomo, he found a guild of sculptors, or taglia- 
 pietri, in that city, numbering some sixty members, 
 
 1 See ' II Duomo di Orvieto, descritto ed illustrate per Lodovico 
 Luzi/ pp. 330-339.
 
 BASS-REf^fEFS AT ORVIETO. 117 
 
 and governed by a rector and three chamberlains. 
 Instead of regarding Niccola with jealousy, these 
 craftsmen only sought to learn his method. Accord- 
 ingly it seems that a new impulse was given to 
 sculpture in Siena ; and famous workmen arose who 
 combined this art with that of building. The chief 
 of these was Lorenzo Maitani, who died in 1330, 
 having designed and carried to completion the 
 Duomo of Orvieto during his lifetime. 1 While en- 
 gaged in this great undertaking, Maitani directed a 
 body of architects, stone-carvers, bronze-founders, 
 mosaists, and painters, gathered together into a 
 guild from the chief cities of Tuscany. It can not 
 be proved that any of the Pisani, properly so called, 
 were among their number. Lacking evidence to the 
 contrary, we must give to Maitani, the master-spirit 
 of the company, full credit for the sculpture carried 
 out in obedience to his general plan. As the church 
 of S. Francis at Assisi formed an epoch in the his- 
 tory of painting, by concentrating the genius of 
 Giotto on a series of masterpieces, so the Duomo of 
 Orvieto, by giving free scope to the school of Pisa, 
 marked a point in the history of sculpture. It would 
 be difficult to find elsewhere even separate works of 
 greater force and beauty belonging to this, the first 
 or architectural, period of Italian sculpture ; and 
 
 1 See Luzi, pp. 317-328, and the first extant commission given io 
 1310 to Maitani, which follows, pp. 328-330.
 
 Ii8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 nowhere has the whole body of Christian belief been 
 set forth with method more earnest and with vigor 
 more sustained. 1 The subjects selected by these 
 unknown craftsmen for illustration in marble are in 
 many instances the same as those afterward painted 
 in fresco by Michael Angelo and Raphael at Rome. 
 Their treatment, for example, of the creation of 
 Adam and Eve, adopted in all probability from still 
 earlier and ruder workmen, after being refined by 
 the improvements of successive generations, may 
 still be observed in the triumphs of the Sistine 
 Chapel and the Loggie. 2 It was the practice of 
 Italian artists not to seek originality by diverging 
 from the traditional modes of presentation, but to 
 
 1 The whole series has been admirably engraved under the super- 
 intendence of Ludwig Griiner. Special attention may be directed to 
 the groups of angels attendant on the Creator in his last day's work ; 
 to the 'Adoration of the Shepherds,' distinguished by tender and idyllic 
 grace ; and to the 'Adoration of the Magi," marked no less by majesty. 
 The dead breaking open the lids of their sarcophagi and rising to 
 judgment are justly famous for spirited action. 
 
 * In Gothic sculpture of an early date the Bible narrative is lite- 
 rally represented. God draws Eve from the open side of sleeping 
 Adam. On the fagade of Orvieto this motive is less altered than re- 
 fined. The wound in Adam's side is visible, but Eve is coming from 
 behind his sleeping body in obedience to the beckoning hand of her 
 Creator. Ghiberti in the bronze gate of the Florentine Baptistery still 
 further develops the poetic beauty of the motive. Angels lift Eve in 
 the air above Adam, in whose side there is now no open wound, and 
 sustain her face to face with God, who calls her into life. Delia 
 Quercia, on the fagade of S. Petronio, confines himself to the creative 
 act, expressed by the raised hand of the Maker, and the answering 
 attitude ot Eve; and this conception receives final treatment from 
 Michael Angelo in the frescoes of the Sistine.
 
 ANDREA PISANO. 119 
 
 prove their mastery by rendering these as perfect 
 and effective as the maturity of art could make 
 them. For the Italians, as before them for the 
 Greeks, plagiarism was a word unknown, in all cases 
 where it was possible to improve upon the invention 
 of less fortunate predecessors. The student of art 
 may, therefore, now enjoy the pleasure of tracing 
 sculpturesque or pictorial motives from their genesis 
 in some rude fragment to their final development in 
 the master-works of a Lionardo or a Raphael, where 
 scientific grouping of figures, higher idealization of 
 style, the suggestion of freer movement, and more 
 varied dramatic expression yield at last the full 
 flower that the simple germ enfolded. 
 
 Among the most distinguished scholars of Nic- 
 cola Pisano's tradition must now be mentioned An- 
 drea da Pontadera, called Andrea Pisano, who carried 
 the manner of his master to Florence, and helped 
 to fulfill the destiny of Italian sculpture by submitting 
 it to the rising art of painting. Under the direction of 
 Giotto he carved statues for the Campanile and the 
 facade of S. Maria del Fiore ; and in the first gate of 
 the Baptistery he bequeathed a model of bass-relief in 
 bronze, which largely influenced the style of inasters 
 in the fifteenth century. To overpraise the simplicity 
 and beauty of design, the purity of feeling, and the 
 technical excellence of Andrea's bronze-work would 
 be difficult. Many students will always be found to
 
 IM RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 prefer his self-restraint and delicacy to the more 
 florid manner of Ghibcrti. 1 What we chiefly observe 
 in this gate is the control exercised by the sister art 
 of painting over his mode of conception arid treat- 
 ment. If Giovanni Pisano developed the dramatic 
 and emphatic qualities of Gothic sculpture, Andrea 
 was attracted to its allegories ; if Giovanni infused 
 romantic vehemence of feeling into the frigid class- 
 icism of his father, Andrea diverged upon an- 
 other track of picturesque delineation. A new sun 
 had now arisen in the heavens of art. This was 
 the sun of Giotto, whose genius, eminently pictorial, 
 brought the Italians to a true sense of their sesthet- 
 ical vocation, illuminating with its brightness the 
 elder and more technically finished craft of the 
 stone-carver. Sculpture, which in the school of 
 Niccola Pisano had been subordinate to architec- 
 ture, became a sub-species of painting in the hands 
 of Andrea. 
 
 It was thus, as I have elsewhere stated, that 
 the twofold doom of plastic art in Italy was accom- 
 plished. In order to embody the ideas of Chris- 
 tianity, art had to think more of expression than of 
 pure fc.Tn. Expression is the special sphere of paint- 
 ing ; and therefore sculpture followed the lead of the 
 sister art, as soon as painting was strong enough to 
 
 1 ' Le Tre Porte del Battistero di San Giovanni di Firenze, incise 
 d illustrate' (Firenze, 1821), contains outlines of all Andrea Pisano's 
 and Ghiberti's work.
 
 SCULPTURE AND PAINTING. 121 
 
 give that lead, instead of remaining, as in Greece, the 
 mistress of her own domain. On the deeper reasons 
 for this subordination of sculpture to painting I have 
 dwelt already, while showing that a large class of 
 subjects, where physical qualities are comparatively 
 indifferent and of no account, were forced upon the 
 artist by Christianity. 1 Humility and charity may 
 be found alike in blooming youth or in ascetic age ; 
 nor is it possible to characterize saints and martyrs 
 by those corporeal characteristics which distinguish 
 a runner from a boxer, or a chaste huntress from a 
 voluptuous queen of love. Italian sculpture aban- 
 doned the presentation of the naked human body 
 as useless. The emotions written on the face be- 
 came of more importance than the modeling of the 
 limbs, and recourse was had to allegorical symbols 
 or emblematic attitudes for the interpretation of the 
 artist's thought. Andrea Pisano's figure of Hope, 
 raising hands and eyes toward an offered crown, 
 seems but a repetition of the motive expressed 
 by Giotto in the chiaroscuro frescoes of the Arena 
 chapel. 2 Owing to similar causes, drapery, which in 
 Greece had served to illustrate the structure or the 
 movement of the body it clothed, was used by the 
 Italian sculptors to conceal the iimbs, and to enhance 
 by flowing skirt or sinuous fold or agitated scarf 
 
 1 See above, pp. 12-18. 
 
 3 What Giotto himself was, as a designer for sculpture, is shown in 
 the little reliefs upon the basement of his campanile.
 
 m RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 some quality of the emotions. The result was that 
 sculpture assumed a place subordinate to painting, 
 and that the masterpieces of the early Italian carv- 
 ers are chiefly bass-reliefs pictures in bronze or 
 marble. 
 
 In a like degree, though not for the same reason, 
 sculpture in Italy remained subordinate to architec- 
 ture, until such time as the neo-Hellenism of the 
 full Renaissance produced a crowd of pseudo-classic 
 statues, destined to take their places not in churches, 
 but in the courtyards of palaces and on the open 
 squares of cities. The cause of this fact is not far 
 to seek. In ancient Greece the temple had been 
 erected for the god, and the statue dwelt within the 
 cella like a master in his house. Christianity for- 
 bade an image of the living God ; consequently the 
 Church had another object than to roof the statue 
 of a deity. It was the meeting-place of a congre- 
 gation bent on worshiping Him who dwells not in 
 houses made with hands, and whom the heaven of 
 heavens can not contain. The vast spaces and aerial 
 arcades of mediaeval architecture had their meaning 
 in relation to the mystic apprehension of an unseen 
 power. It followed of necessity that the carved 
 work destined to decorate a Christian temple could 
 never be the main feature of the building. It ex- 
 isted for the Church, and not the Church fo* iO 
 
 1 What has previously been noted in the chapter upon architecture
 
 THE PIS AN STYLE IN NORTH ITALY, 123 
 
 Through Andrea Pisano the style of Niccola 
 was extended to Venice. There is reason to believe 
 that he instructed Filippo Calendario, to whom we 
 should ascribe the sculptured corners of the Ducal 
 Palace. Venice, however, invariably exercised her 
 own controlling influence over the arts of aliens ; so 
 we find a larger, freer, richer, and more mundane 
 treatment in these splendid carvings than in aught 
 produced by Pisan workmen for their native towns 
 of Tuscany. 
 
 Nino, the sculptor of the Madonna delta Rosa, 
 the chief ornament of the Spina chapel, and Tom- 
 maso, both sons of Andrea da Pontalera, together 
 with Giovanni Balduccio of Pisa, continued the 
 traditions of the school founded by Niccola. Bal- 
 duccio, invited by Azzo Visconti to Milan, carved 
 the shrine of S. Peter Martyr in the church of 
 S. Eustorgio, and impressed his style on Matteo da 
 Campione, the sculptor of the shrine of S. Augus- 
 tine at Pavia. 1 These facts, though briefly stated, 
 are not without significance. Travelers who have 
 
 deserves repetition here that the Italian style of building gave more 
 scope to independent sculpture, owing to its preference for flat walls, 
 and its rejection of multiplied niches, canopies, and so forth, than the 
 Northern Gothic. Thus, however subordinated to architecture, sculp- 
 ture in Italy still had more scope for self-assertion than in Germany 
 or France. 
 
 1 See Perkins, ' Italian Sculptors,' p. 109, for a description of the 
 Area di S. Agostino, which he assigns to Matteo and Bonino da 
 Campione. This shrine, now in the Duomo, was made for the sacristy 
 of S. Pietroin Cielo d'Oro, where it stood until the year 1832.
 
 124 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 visited the churches of Pavia and Milan, after 
 studying the shrine, or area ac Italians call it, of 
 S. Dominic at Bologna, must have noticed the 
 ascendency of Pisan style in these three Lombard 
 towns, and have felt how widely Niccola's creative 
 genius was exercised. Traces of the same influence 
 may perhaps be observed in the tombs of the 
 Scaligers at Verona. 1 
 
 The most eminent pupil of Andrea Pisano, how- 
 ever, was a Florentine the great Andrea Arcag- 
 nuolo di Cione, commonly known as Orcagna. This 
 man, like the more illustrious Giotto, was one 
 amohg the earliest of those comprehensive, many- 
 sided natures , reduced by Florence for her ever- 
 lasting g'ory He studied the goldsmith's craft 
 under his father, Cione, passing the years of his 
 apprenticeship, like other Tuscan artists, in the 
 technical details of an industry that then supplied 
 the strictest method of design. With his brother, 
 Bernardo, he practiced painting. Like Giotto, he 
 was no mean *,oet ; 8 and like all the higher crafts- 
 men of his age, he was an architect. Though the 
 church of Orsammichele owes its present form to 
 Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, as capo ma'estro after Gaddi's 
 death, completed the structure; and though the 
 
 1 Bonino da Campione, the Milanese, who may have had a hand in 
 the Area di S. Agostino, carved the tomb of Can Signorio. That of 
 Martino II. was executed by another Milanese, Perino. 
 
 1 See Trucchi, ' Poesie Italiane Inedite, vol. ii.
 
 ORCAGNA'S TABERNACLE. 125 
 
 Loggia de' Lanzi, long ascribed to him by writers 
 upon architecture, is now known to be the work of 
 Benci di Cione, yet Orcagna's Loggia del Bigallo, 
 more modest but not less beautiful, prepared the way 
 for its construction. Of his genius as a painter, 
 proved by the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel, I shall 
 have to speak hereafter. As a sculptor he is best 
 known through the tabernacle of Orsammichele, built 
 to enshrine the picture of Madonna by Ugolino da 
 Siena. 1 
 
 In this monument Orcagna employed carved 
 bass-reliefs and statuettes, intaglios and mosaics, in- 
 crustations of agates, enamels, and gilded glass pat- 
 terns, with a sense of harmony so refined, and a 
 mastery over each kind of workmanship so perfect, 
 that the whole tabernacle is an epitome of the minor 
 arts of mediaeval Italy. The subordination of sculp- 
 ture to architectural effect is noticeable ; and the 
 Giottesque influence appears even more strongly 
 here than in the gate of Andrea Pisano. This in- 
 fluence Orcagna received indirectly through his 
 master in stone carving; it formed, indeed, the 
 motive force of figurative art during his lifetime. 
 The subjects of the Annunciation, the Nativity, 
 the Marriage of the Virgin, and the Adoration of 
 the Three Kings, framed in octagonal moldings at 
 
 See the illustrated work, ' II Tabernacolo della Madonna d'Or- 
 sammichele,' Firenze, 1851.
 
 u6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the base of the tabernacle, illustrate the domination 
 of a spirit distinct both from the neo-Romanism of 
 Niccola and the Gothicism of Giovanni Pisano. 
 That spirit is Florentine in a general sense, and 
 specifically Giottesque. Charity, again, with a flaming 
 heart in her hand, crowned with a flaming brazier, 
 and suckling a child, is Giottesque not only in alle- 
 gorical conception but also in choice of type and 
 treatment of drapery. 
 
 While admiring the tabernacle of Orsammichele, 
 we are reminded that Orcagna was a goldsmith to 
 begin with, and a painter. Sculpture he practiced as 
 an accessory. What the artists of Florence gained 
 in delicacy of execution, accuracy of modeling, and 
 precision of design by their apprenticeship to the 
 goldsmith's trade was hardly perhaps sufficient to 
 compensate for loss of training in a larger style. It 
 was difficult, we fancy, for men so educated to con- 
 ceive the higher purposes of sculpture. Contented 
 with elaborate workmanship and beauty of detail, 
 they failed to attain to such independence of treat- 
 ment as may be reached by sculptors who do not 
 carry to their work the preconceptions of a nar- 
 rower handicraft. Thus even Orcagna's master- 
 piece may strike us not as the plaything of a 
 Pheidian genius condescending for once to ' breathe 
 through silver,' but of a consummate goldsmith taxing
 
 THE BAPTISTERY GATES. 127 
 
 the resources of his craft to form a monumental 
 jewel. 1 
 
 The facade of Orvieto was the final achievement 
 of the first or architectural period of Italian sculp- 
 ture. Giotto, Andrea Pisano, and Orcagna, formed 
 the transition to the second period. To find one 
 characteristic title for the style of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury is not easy, since it was marked by many dis- 
 tinct peculiarities. If, however, we choose to call it 
 pictorial, we shall sufficiently mark the quality of 
 some eminent masters, and keep in view the su- 
 premacy of painting at this epoch. A great public 
 enterprise at Florence brings together in honorable 
 rivalry the chief craftsmen of the new age, and 
 marks the advent of the Renaissance. When the 
 Signory, in concert with the Arte de' Mercanti, de- 
 cided to complete the bronze gates of the Baptistery 
 in the first year of the fifteenth century, they issued 
 a manifesto inviting the sculptors of Italy to prepare 
 designs for competition. Their call was answered 
 by Giacomo della Quercia of Siena, by Filippo Bru- 
 nelleschi and Lorenzo di Cino Ghiberti of Florence, 
 and by two other Tuscan artists of less note. The 
 young Donatello, aged sixteen, is said to have been 
 consulted as to the rival merits of the proofs sub- 
 mitted to the judges. Thus the four great masters 
 
 1 The weighty chapter in Alberti's ' Treatise on Painting,' lib. iii. 
 cap. 5, might be used to support this paragraph.
 
 128 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of Tuscan art in its prime met before the Florentine 
 Baptistery. 1 Giacomo della Quercia was excluded 
 from the competition at an early stage; but the 
 umpires wavered long between Ghiberti and Bru- 
 nellcschi, until the latter with notable generosity, 
 feeling the superiority of his rival, and conscious 
 perhaps that his own laurels were to be gathered in 
 the field of architecture, withdrew his claim. In 
 1403 Ghiberti received the commission for the first 
 of the two remaining gates. He afterward obtained 
 the second ; and as they were not finished until 
 1452, the better part of his lifetime was spent upon 
 them. He received in all a sum of 30,798 golden 
 florins for his labor and the cost of the material 
 employed. 
 
 The trial-pieces prepared by Brunelleschi and 
 Ghiberti are now preserved in the Bargello. 2 Their 
 subject is the Sacrifice o/ Isaac ; and a comparison 
 of the two leaves no doubt of Ghiberti's superiority. 
 The faults of Brunelleschi's model are want of re- 
 pose and absence of composition. Abraham rushes 
 in a frenzy of murderous agitation at his son, who 
 writhes beneath the knife already at his throat. The 
 angel swoops from heaven with extended arms, 
 reaching forth one hand to show the ram to Abra- 
 
 1 Quercia, born 1374; Ghiberti, 1378; Brunelleschi. 1379; Dona- 
 tello, 1386. 
 
 * They are engraved in the work cited above, 'Le Tre Porte, 
 seconda Porta, Tavole i. e ii.
 
 GHIBERTI AND BRUNELLESCHI. 129 
 
 ham, and clasping the patriarch's wrist with the 
 other. The ram meanwhile is scratching his nose 
 with his near hind leg ; one of the servants is taking 
 a thorn from his foot, while the other fills a cup 
 from the stream at which the ass is drinking. Thus 
 each figure has a separate uneasy action. Those 
 critics who contend that the unrest of sixteenth-cen- 
 tury sculpture was due to changes in artistic and 
 religious feeling wrought by the Renaissance would 
 do well to examine this plate, and see how much 
 account must be taken of the artist's temperament 
 in forming their opinion. Brunelleschi adhered to 
 the style and taste of the fifteenth century at its 
 commencement ; but the too fervid quality of his 
 character impaired his work as a sculptor. Ghibertij 
 on the other hand, translated the calm of his harmo- 
 nious nature into his composition. The angel leans 
 from heaven and points to the ram, which is seated 
 quietly and out of sight of the main actors. Isaac 
 kneels in the attitude of a submissive victim, though 
 his head is turned aside, as if attracted by the rush of 
 pinions through the air ; while Abraham has but just 
 lifted his hand, and the sacrifice is only suggested as 
 a possibility by the naked knife. The two servants 
 are grouped below in conversation, one on each side 
 of the browsing ass. This power of telling a story 
 plainly, but without dramatic vehemence ; of elimi- 
 nating the painful details of the subject, and combin-
 
 130 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 ing its chief motives into one agreeable whole, gave 
 peculiar charm to Ghiberti's manner. It marked 
 him as an artist distinguished by good taste. 
 
 How Delia Quercia created the Sacrifice of Isaac 
 we do not know. His bass-reliefs upon the facade of 
 S. Petronio at Bologna, and round the font of S. 
 John's Chapel in the cathedral of Siena, enable us, 
 however, to compare his style with that of Ghiberti 
 in the handling of a subject common to both, the 
 Creation of Eve! There is no doubt but that Delia 
 Quercia was a formidable rival. Had the gates 
 of the Baptistery been intrusted to his execution, 
 we might have possessed a masterpiece of more 
 heroic style. While smoothness and an almost 
 voluptuous suavity of outline distinguish Ghiberti's 
 naked Eve, gliding upheld by angels from the side 
 of Adam at her Maker's bidding, Delia Quercia's 
 group, by the concentration of robust and rugged 
 power, anticipates the style of Michael Angelo. 
 Ghiberti treats the subject pictorially, placing his 
 
 1 The bass-reliefs of S. Petronio were executed between 1425 and 
 1435. Those of the font in the chapel of S. John (not the lower 
 church of S. John), at Siena, are ascribed to Quercia, and are in his 
 manner ; but when they were finished I do not know. They set forth 
 six subjects from the story of Adam and Eve, with a compartment de- 
 voted to Hercules killing the Centaur Nessus, and another to Samson 
 or Hercules and the Lion. The choice of subjects, affording scope for 
 treatment of the nude, is characteristic ; so is the energy of handling, 
 though rude in detail. It may be worth while to notice here a similar 
 series of reliefs upon the facade of the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo, 
 representing scenes from the story of Adam in conjunction with the 
 labors of Hercules.
 
 GHIBERTI AND DELL A QUERCIA. 131 
 
 figures in a landscape, and lavishing attendant 
 angels. Delia Quercia, in obedience to the stricter 
 laws of sculpture, restrains his composition to the 
 three chief persons, and brings them into close con- 
 nection. While Adam reclines asleep in a beautiful 
 and highly-studied attitude, Eve has just stepped 
 forth behind him, and God stands robed in massive 
 drapery, raising His hand as though to draw her into 
 life. There is, perhaps, an excess of dramatic action 
 in the lifted right leg of Eve, and too much of 
 pantomimic language in the expressive hands of Eve 
 and her Creator. The robe, again, in its volumi- 
 nous and snaky coils, and the triangular nimbus of 
 the Deity, produce an effect of heaviness rather 
 than of majesty. Yet we feel, while studying 
 this composition, that it is a noble and original at- 
 tempt, falling but little short of supreme accomplish- 
 ment Without this antecedent sketch, Michael 
 Angelo might not have matured the most complete 
 of all his designs in the Sistine Chapel. The simi- 
 larity between Delia Quercia's bass-relief and Buonar- 
 roti's fresco of Eve is incontestable. The young 
 Florentine, while an exile in Bologna, and engaged 
 upon the shrine of S. Dominic, must have spent 
 hours of study before the sculptures of S. Petronio ; 
 so that this seed of Delia Quercia's sowing bore 
 after many years the fruit of world-renowned achieve- 
 ment in Rome.
 
 I 3 a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Two other memorable works of Delia Quercia 
 must be parenthetically mentioned. These are the 
 Fonte Gaja on the public square of Siena, now un- 
 happily restored, and the portrait of Ilaria del Car- 
 retto on her tomb in the cathedral of Lucca. The 
 latter has long been dear to English students of 
 Italian art through words inimitable for their 
 strength of sympathetic criticism. 1 
 
 Ghiberti was brought up as a goldsmith by his 
 stepfather, and it is said that while a youth he spent 
 much of his leisure in modeling portraits and cast- 
 ing imitations of antique gems and coins for his 
 friends. At the same time he practiced painting. 
 We find him employed in decorating a palace at 
 Rimini for Carlo Malatesta, when his stepfather 
 recalled him to Florence, in order that he might 
 compete for the Gate of the Baptistery. It is prob- 
 able that from this early training Ghiberti derived 
 the delicacy of style and smoothness of execution 
 that are reckoned among the chief merits of his 
 work. He also developed a manner more pictorial 
 than sculpturesque, which justifies our calling him a 
 painter in bronze. When Sir Joshua Reynolds re- 
 marked, 'Ghiberti's landscape and buildings occu- 
 pied so large a portion of the compartments that 
 the figures remained but secondary objects,' 9 his 
 
 1 Ruskin's ' Modern Painters,' vol. ii. chap vii., Repose. 
 * See Flaxman's ' Lectures on Sculpture,* p.
 
 PICTURESQUE BASS-RELIEF. 133 
 
 criticism might fairly have been taxed with some in- 
 justice even to the second of the two gates. Yet, 
 though exaggerated in severity, his words convey a 
 truth important for the understanding of this period 
 of Italian art. 
 
 The first gate may be cited as the supreme 
 achievement of bronze-casting in the Tuscan prime. 
 In the second, by the introduction of elaborate land- 
 scapes and the massing together of figures arranged 
 in multitudes at three and sometimes four distances, 
 Ghiberti overstepped the limits that separate sculp- 
 ture from painting. Having learned perspective 
 from Brunelleschi, he was eager to apply this new 
 science to his own craft, not discerning that it has 
 no place in noble bass-relief. He therefore aban- 
 doned the classical and the early Tuscan tradition, 
 whereby reliefs, whether high or low, are strictly 
 restrained to figures arranged in line or grouped 
 together without accessories. Instead of painting 
 frescoes, he set himself to model in bronze whole 
 compositions that might have been expressed with 
 propriety in color. The point of Sir Joshua's 
 criticism, therefore, is that Ghiberti's practice of 
 distributing figures on a small scale in spacious 
 landscape framework was at variance with the 
 severity of sculptural treatment. The pernicious 
 effect of his example may be traced in much Flo* 
 rentine work of the mid-Renaissance period which
 
 134 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 passed for supremely clever when it was produced 
 What the unique genius of Ghiberti made not 
 merely pardonable but even admirable became 
 under other hands no less repulsive than the trans- 
 ference of pictorial effects to painted glass. 1 
 
 That Ghiberti was not a great sculptor of statues 
 is proved by his work at Orsammichele. He was 
 no architect, as we know from his incompetence 
 to do more than impede Brunelleschi in the building 
 of the dome. He came into the world to create 
 a new and inimitable style of hybrid beauty in 
 those gates of Paradise. His susceptibility to the 
 first influences of the classical revival deserves notice 
 here, since it shows to what an extent a devotee 
 of Greek art in the fifteenth century could worship 
 the relics of antiquity without passing over into 
 imitation. When the Hermaphrodite was discovered 
 in the vineyard of S. Celso, Ghiberti r s admiration 
 found vent in exclamations like the following : ' No 
 tongue could describe the learning and art displayed 
 in it, or do justice to its masterly style.' Another 
 antique, found near Florence, must, he conjectures, 
 have been hidden out of harm's way by 'some 
 gentle spirit in the early days of Christianity.' 
 1 The touch only,' he adds, ' can discover its beau- 
 
 1 This criticism of the ' Gate of Paradise ' sounds even to the writer 
 of it profane, and demands a palinode. Who, indeed, can affirm that 
 he would wish the floating figure of Eve or the three angels at Abra- 
 ham's tent-door other than they are ?
 
 EARLY AND LATE CLASSICISM. 135 
 
 ties, which escape the sense of sight in any light' 1 
 It would be impossible to express a reverential 
 love of ancient art more tenderly than is done in 
 these sentences. So intense was Ghiberti's passion 
 for the Greeks that he rejected Christian chronol- 
 ogy and reckoned by Olympiads a system that 
 has thrown obscurity over his otherwise precious 
 notes of Tuscan artists. In spite of this devotion, 
 he never appears to have set himself consciously 
 to reproduce the style of Greek sculpture, or to 
 have set forth Hellenic ideas. Fie remained un- 
 affectedly natural, and in a true sense Christian. 
 The paganism of the Renaissance is a phrase with 
 no more meaning for him than for that still more 
 delicate Florentine spirit, Luca della Robbia ; and 
 if his works are classical, they are so only in 
 Goethe's sense, when he pronounced, ' the point 
 is for a work to be thoroughly good, and then it 
 is sure to be classical.' 
 
 One great advantage of the early days of the 
 Renaissance over the latter was this, that pseudo- 
 paganism and pedantry had not as yet distorted 
 the judgment or misdirected the aims of artists. 
 Contact with the antique world served only to 
 stimulate original endeavor, by leading the stu- 
 dent back to the fountain of all excellence in nature, 
 
 1 See the ' Commentaries of Ghiberti,' printed in vol. i. of Vasari 
 (Lemonnier, 1846).
 
 1 3 6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 and by exhibiting types of perfection in technical 
 processes. To ape the sculptors of Antinous, or 
 to bring to life again the gods who died with Pan, 
 was not yet longed for. Of the impunity with 
 which a sculptor in that period could submit his 
 genius to the service and the study of ancient art 
 without sacrificing individuality, Donatello furnishes 
 a still more illustrious example than Ghiberti. 
 Early in his youth Donatello journeyed with Bru- 
 nelleschi to Rome, in order to acquaint himself 
 with the monuments then extant. How thoroughly 
 he comprehended the classic spirit is proved by the 
 bronze patera wrought for his patron Ruberto Mar- 
 telli, and by the frieze of the triumphant Bacchus. 1 
 Yet the great achievements of his genius were 
 Christian in their sentiment and realistic in their 
 style. The bronze Magdalen of the Florentine 
 Baptistery and the bronze Baptist of the Duomo 
 at Siena 2 are executed with an unrelenting ma- 
 terialism, not alien indeed to the sincerity of classic 
 art, but divergent from antique tradition, inasmuch 
 as the ideas of repentant and prophetic asceticism 
 had no place in Greek mythology. 
 
 Donatello, with the uncompromising candor of 
 an artist bent on marking character, felt that he was 
 bound to seize the very pith and kernel of his subject 
 
 1 The patera is at South Kensington, the frieze at Florence. 
 1 As also the wooden Baptist in the Frari at Venice.
 
 DONATELLO^ FIDELITY TO NATURE. \$] 
 
 If a Magdalen were demanded of him, he would not 
 condescend to model a Venus and then place a 
 book and skull upon a rock beside her ; nor did 
 he imagine that the bloom and beauty of a laugh- 
 ing Faun were fitting attributes for the preacher 
 of repentance. It remained for later artists, in- 
 toxicated with antique loveliness and corroded with 
 worldly skepticism, to reproduce the outward sem- 
 blance of Greek deities under the pretense of 
 setting forth the myths of Christianity. Such com- 
 promise had not occurred to Donatello. The mo- 
 tive of his art was clearly apprehended, his method 
 was sincere ; certain phases of profound emotion 
 had to be represented with the physical charac- 
 teristics proper to them. The result, ugly and 
 painful as it may sometimes be, was really more 
 concordant with the spirit of Greek method than 
 Leonardo's John or Correggio's Magdalen. That 
 is to say, it was straightforward and truthful ; 
 whereas the strange caprices of the later Renais- 
 sance too often betrayed a double mind, disloyal 
 alike to paganism and to Christianity, in their effort 
 to combine divergent forces. It may still be argued 
 that such conceptions as sorrow for sin and mor- 
 tification of the flesh, unflinchingly portrayed by 
 haggard gauntness in the saints of Donatello, are 
 unfit for sculpturesque expression. 
 
 A more felicitous embodiment of modern feel-
 
 t 3 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 ing was achieved by Donatello in S. George and 
 David. The former is a marble statue placed 
 upon the north wall of Orsammichele ; the latter 
 is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, and now 
 exhibited in the Bargello. 1 Without striving to 
 idealize his models, the sculptor has expressed in 
 both the Christian conception of heroism, fearless 
 in the face of danger, and sustained by faith. The 
 naked beauty of the boy David and the mailed 
 manhood of S. George are raised to a spiritual 
 region by the type of feature and the pose of 
 body selected to interpret their animating impulse. 
 These are no mere portraits of wrestlers such as 
 peopled the groves of Altis at Olympia, no ideals 
 of physical strength translated into brass and 
 marble, like the Hercules of Naples or the Vatican. 
 The one is a Christian soldier ready to engage 
 Apollyon in battle to the death ; the other the 
 boy-hero of a marvelous romance. The body 
 in both is but the shrine of an indwelling soul, 
 the instrument and agent of a faith-directed will ; 
 and the crown of their conflict is no wreath of 
 laurel or of parsley. In other words, the value 
 of S. George and David to the sculptor lay not 
 in their strength and youthful beauty though he 
 has endowed them with these excellent gifts 
 
 1 There is another ' David,' by Donatello, in marble ; also in the 
 Bargello, scarcely less stiff and ugly than the ' Baptist.'
 
 DONA TELL&S MASTERPIECES. 139 
 
 so much as in their significance for the eternal 
 struggle of the soul with evil. The same power 
 of expressing Christian sentiment in a form of 
 perfect beauty, transcending the Greek type by 
 profounder suggestion of feeling, is illustrated in 
 the well-known low-relief of an angel's head in 
 profile, technically one of Donatello's most masterly 
 productions. 1 
 
 It is no part of my present purpose to enumerate 
 the many works of Donatello in marble and bronze ; 
 yet some allusion to their number and variety is 
 necessary in order to show how widely his influence 
 was diffused through Italy. In the monuments of 
 Pope John XXIII., of Cardinal Brancacci, and of 
 Bartolommeo Aragazzi, he subordinated his genius to 
 the treatment of sepulchral and biographical subjects 
 according to time-honored Tuscan usage. They 
 were severally placed in Florence, Naples, and Mon- 
 tepulciano. For the cathedral of Prato he executed 
 bass-reliefs of dancing boys; a similar series, intended 
 for the balustrades of the organ in S. Maria del 
 Fiore, is now preserved in the Bargello museum. 
 The exultation of movement has never been ex- 
 pressed in stone with more fidelity to the strict rules 
 of plastic art. For his friend and patron, Cosimo 
 de Medici, he cast in bronze the group of Judith 
 and Hotof ernes a work that illustrates the clumsi- 
 
 1 The cast was published by the Arundel Society. The original 
 belongs to Lord Elcho.
 
 j 4 o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 ness of realistic treatment, and deserves to be 
 remembered chiefly for its strange fortunes. When 
 the Medici fled from Florence in 1494, their palace 
 was sacked ; the new republic took possession 
 of Donatello's Judith, and placed it on a pedestal 
 before the gate of the Palazzo Vecchio, with this 
 inscription, ominous to would-be despots: Exemplum 
 salutis publics cives posuere. MCCCCXC Kit now 
 stands near Cellini's Perseus under the Loggia de' 
 
 V Q 
 
 Lanzi. For the pulpits of S. Lorenzo, Donatello 
 made designs of intricate bronze bass-reliefs, which 
 
 were afterward completed by his pupil Bertoldo. 
 .h* ^o 
 
 These, though better known to travelers, are less 
 
 excellent than the reliefs in bronze wrought by 
 Donatello's own hand for the church of S. An- 
 thony at Padua 1 To that city he was called in 
 1451, in order that he might model the equestrian 
 statue of Gattamelata. It still stands on the 
 Piazza, a masterpiece of scientific bronze-founding, 
 the first great portrait of a general on horseback 
 since the days of Rome. 2 At Padua, in the hall of 
 the Palazzo della Ragione, is also preserved the 
 wooden horse, which is said to have been con- 
 structed by the sculptor for the noble house of 
 
 1 It has been suggested, with good show of reason, that Montegna 
 was largely indebted to these bass-reliefs for his lofty style. 
 
 * This omits the statues of the Scaligers : but no mediaeval work 
 aimed at equal animation. The antique bronze horses at Venice and 
 the statue of Marcus Aurelius must have been in Donatello's mind.
 
 ANDREA VEROCCH10. 141 
 
 Capodilista. These two examples of equestrian 
 modeling marked an epoch in Italian statuary. 
 
 When Donato di Nicolo di Betto Bardi, called 
 Donatello because men loved his sweet and cheerful 
 temper, died in 1466 at the age of eighty, the 
 brightest light of Italian sculpture in its most promis- 
 ing period was extinguished. Donatello's influence, 
 felt far and wide through Italy, was of inestimable 
 value in correcting the false direction toward pic- 
 torial sculpture which Ghiberti, had he flourished 
 alone at Florence, might have given to the art. His 
 style was always eminently masculine. However 
 tastes may differ about the positive merits of his 
 several works, there can be no doubt that the prin- 
 ciples of sincerity, truth to nature, and technical 
 accuracy they illustrate were all-important in an age 
 that lent itself too readily to the caprices of the 
 fancy and the puerilities of florid taste. To regret 
 that Donatello lacked Ghiberti's exquisite sense of 
 beauty, is tantamount to wishing that two of the 
 greatest artists of the world had made one man 
 between them. 
 
 Donatello did not, in the strict sense of the term, 
 found a school. 1 Andrea Verocchio, goldsmith, 
 painter, and worker in bronze, was the most distin- 
 
 1 The sculptor of a beautiful tomb erected for the Countess of 
 Montorio and her infant daughter in the church of S. Bernardino at 
 Aquila was probably Andrea dell' Aquila, a pupil of Donatello. See 
 Perkins's ' Italian Sculptors,' pp. 46, 47.
 
 14J RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 guished of his pupils. To all the arts he practiced, 
 Verocchio applied limited powers, a meager manner, 
 and a prosaic mind. Yet few men have exercised 
 at a very critical moment a more decided influence. 
 The mere fact that he numbered Lionardo da Vinci, 
 Lorenzo di Credi, and Pietro Perugino among his 
 scholars proves the esteem of his contemporaries ; 
 and when we have observed that the type of face 
 selected by Lionardo and transmitted to his fol- 
 lowers appears also in the pictures of Lorenzo di 
 Credi and is first found in the David of Verocchio, 
 we have a right to affirm that the master of these 
 men was an artist of creative genius as well as a 
 careful workman. Florence still points with pride 
 to the Incredulity of Thomas on the eastern wall of 
 Orsammichele, to the Boy and Dolphin in the court 
 of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to the David of this 
 sculptor : but the first is spoiled by heaviness and an- 
 gularity of drapery ; the second, though fanciful and 
 marked by fluttering movement, is but a caprice ; 
 the third outdoes the hardest work of Donatello by 
 its realism. Verocchio's David, a lad of some seven- 
 teen years, has the lean, veined arms of a stone-hewer 
 or gold-beater. As a faithful portrait of the first 
 Florentine prentice who came to hand, this statue 
 might have merit but for the awkward cuirass and 
 kilt that partly drape the figure. 
 
 The name of Verocchio is best known to the
 
 THE STATUE OF COLLEONL 143 
 
 world through the equestrian statue of Barto- 
 lommeo Colleoni. When this great Condottiere, 
 the last surviving general trained by Braccio da 
 Montone, died in 1475, he bequeathed a large por- 
 tion of his wealth to Venice, on condition that his 
 statue should be erected on horseback in the Piazza 
 di S. Marco. Colleoni, having long held the baton 
 of the Republic, desired that after death his portrait, 
 in his habit as he lived, should continue to look 
 down on the scene of his old splendor. By an 
 ingenious quibble the Senators adhered to the letter 
 of his will without infringing a law that forbade 
 them to charge the square of S. Mark with monu- 
 ments. They ruled that the Piazza in front of the 
 Scuola di S. Marco, better known as the Campo 
 di S. Zanipolo, might be chosen as the site of Col- 
 leoni's statue, and to Andrea Verocchio was given 
 the commission for its erection. 
 
 Andrea died in 1488 before the model for the 
 horse was finished. The work was completed, and 
 the pedestal was supplied by Alessandro Leopardi. 
 To Verocchio, profiting by the example of Donatello's 
 Gattamelata, must be assigned the general concep- 
 tion of this statue ; but the breath of life that ani- 
 mates both horse and rider, the richness of detail 
 that enhances the massive grandeur of the group, 
 and the fiery spirit of its style of execution were due 
 to the Venetian genius of Leopardi. Verocchio
 
 144 RENAISSANCE IN JTAL Y. 
 
 alone produced nothing so truly magnificent. This 
 joint creation of Florentine science and Venetian 
 fervor is one of the most precious monuments of 
 the Renaissance. From it we learn what the men 
 who fought the bloodless battles of the common- 
 wealths, and who aspired to principality, were like. 
 ' He was tall,' writes a biographer of Colleoni, 1 ' of 
 erect and well-knit figure, and well-proportioned 
 limbs. His complexion tended rather to brown, 
 marked withal by bright and sanguine flesh-tints. 
 He had black eyes ; their brilliancy was vivid, their 
 gaze terrible and penetrating. In the outline of his 
 nose and in all his features he displayed a manly 
 nobleness combined with goodness and prudence.' 
 Better phrases can not be chosen to describe his statue. 
 While admiring this masterpiece and dwelling 
 on its royal style, we are led to deplore most 
 bitterly the loss of the third equestrian statue of the 
 Renaissance. Nothing now remains but a few tech- 
 nical studies made by Lionardo da Vinci for his 
 portrait of Francesco Sforza. The two elaborate 
 models he constructed and the majority of his minute 
 designs have been destroyed. He intended, we are 
 told, to represent the first Duke of the Sforza 
 dynasty on his charger, trampling the body of a 
 prostrate and just conquered enemy. Rubens' tran- 
 
 1 ' Istoria della Vita e Fatti dell' eccellentissimo Capitano di guerra 
 Bartolorameo Colleoni,' scritta per Pietro Spino. Republiahed, 1 859.
 
 ANTONIO DEL POLLAJUOLO. 145 
 
 script from the Battle of the Standard, enables us 
 to comprehend to some extent how Lionardo might 
 have treated this motive. The severe and cautious 
 style of Donatello, after gaining freedom and fervor 
 from Leopardi, was adapted to the ideal presentation 
 of dramatic passion by Lionardo. Thus Gattame- 
 lata, Colleoni, and Francesco Sforza would, through 
 their statues, have marked three distinct phases in the 
 growth of art. The final effort of Italian sculpture 
 to express human activity in the person of a mounted 
 warrior has perished. In this sphere we possess 
 nothing which, like the tombs of S. Lorenzo in 
 relation to sepulchral statuary, completes a series of 
 development. 
 
 If Donatello founded no school, this was far 
 more the case with Ghiberti. His supposed pupil, 
 Antonio del Pollajuolo, showed no sign of Ghiberti's 
 influence, but struck out for himself a style distin- 
 guished by almost brutal energy and bizarre realism 
 characteristics the very opposite to those of his 
 master. If the bronze relief of the Crucifixion in 
 the Bargello be really Pollajuolo's, we may even 
 trace a leaning to Verocchio in his manner. The 
 emphatic passion of the women recalls the group 
 of mourners round the death-bed of Selvaggia Tor- 
 nabuoni in Verocchio's celebrated bass-relief. Polla- 
 juolo, like so many Florentine artists, was a gold- 
 smith, a painter, and a worker in niello, before he
 
 146 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 took to sculpture. As a goldsmith he is said to 
 have surpassed all his contemporaries, and his 
 mastery over this art influenced his style in general. 
 What we chiefly notice, however, in his choice of 
 subjects is a frenzy of murderous enthusiasm, a 
 grimness of imagination, rare among Italian artists. 
 The picture in the Uffizzi of Hercules and Anttzus 
 and the well-known engraving of naked men fight- 
 ing a series of savage duels in a wood, might be 
 chosen as emphatic illustrations of his favorite mo- 
 tives. The fiercest emotions of the Renaissance find 
 expression in the clenched teeth, strained muscles, 
 knotted brows, and tense nerves depicted by 
 Pollajuolo with eccentric energy. We seem to be 
 assisting at some of those combats a steccato chiuso 
 wherein Sixtus IV. delighted, or to have before 
 our eyes a fray between Crocensi and Vallensi in 
 the streets of Rome. 1 The same remarks apply to 
 the terra-cotta relief by Pollajuolo in the South 
 Kensington Museum. This piece displays the 
 struggles of twelve naked men, divided into six 
 pairs of combatants. Two of the couples hold 
 short chains with the left hand, and seek to stab 
 each other with the right. In the case of another 
 two couples the fight is over, and the victor is insult- 
 ing his fallen foe. In each of the remaining pairs 
 one gladiator is on the point of yielding to hi? 
 
 1 See ' Age of the Despots/ p. 395, note 2.
 
 TOMBS OF SIXTUS AND INNOCENT. 147 
 
 adversary. There are thus three several moments 
 of duel to the death, each illustrated by two couples. 
 The mathematical distribution of these dreadful 
 groups gives an effect of frozen passion ; while the 
 vigorous workmanship displays not only an enthu- 
 siasm for muscular anatomy, but a real sympathy 
 with blood-fury in the artist. 
 
 There was, therefore, a certain propriety in the 
 choice of Pollajuolo to cast the sepulchre of Sixtus 
 IV. in bronze at Rome. The best judges complain, 
 not without reason, that the allegories surrounding 
 this tomb are exaggerated and affected in style ; yet 
 the dead Pope, stretched in pomp upon his bier, 
 commands more than merely historical interest ; 
 while the figures, seated as guardians round the 
 old man, terrible in death, communicate an impres- 
 sion of monumental majesty. Criticised in detail, 
 each separate figure may be faulty. The composi- 
 tion, as a whole, is picturesque and grandiose. The 
 same can scarcely be said about the tomb of Inno- 
 cent VIII., erected by Antonio and his brother 
 Piero del Pollajuolo. While it perpetuates the 
 memory of an uninteresting Pontiff, it has but little, 
 as a work of art, to recommend it. The Pollajuoli 
 were not great sculptors. In the history of Italian 
 art they deserve a place, because of the vivid person- 
 ality impressed upon some portions of their work.
 
 t48 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 Few draughtsmen carried the study of muscular 
 anatomy so far as Antonio. 1 
 
 Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first 
 eighty years of the fifteenth century, offers in many 
 important respects a contrast to his contemporaries 
 Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their im- 
 mediate followers. He made his art as true to life 
 as it is possible to be, without the rugged realism of 
 Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces of 
 Ghiberti. The charm of his work is never im- 
 paired by scientific mannerism that stumbling-block 
 to critics like De Stendhal in the art of Florence ; 
 nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a senti- 
 mental style. How to render the beauty of nature 
 in her most delightful moments taking us with him 
 into the holiest of holies, and handling the sacred 
 vessels with a child's confiding boldness was a secret 
 known to Luca della Robbia alone. We may well 
 find food for meditation in the innocent and cheerful 
 inspiration of this man, whose lifetime coincided 
 with the period of sordid passions and debased ambi- 
 tion in the Church and States of Italy. 
 
 Luca was apprenticed in his youth to a gold- 
 smith ; but of what he wrought before the age of 
 forty-five we know but little. 2 At that time his 
 
 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap xvi., may be consulted as to 
 the several claims of the two brothers. 
 
 * His bass-reliefs on Giotto's campanile of Grammar, Astronomy,
 
 LUC A DELLA ROBBIA. 149 
 
 faculty had attained full maturity, and he produced 
 the groups of dancing children and choristers in- 
 tended for the organ gallery of the Duomo. Wholly 
 free from affectation, and depending for effect upon 
 no merely decorative detail, these bass-reliefs deserve 
 the praise bestowed by Dante on the sculpture seen 
 in Purgatory :* 
 
 Dinanzi a noi pareva si verace, 
 Quivi intagliato in un atto soave, 
 Che non sembrava immagine che tace. 
 
 Movement has never been suggested in stone 
 with less exaggeration, nor have marble lips been 
 made to utter sweeter and more varied music. 
 Luca's true conception of the limits to be observed 
 in sculpture appears most eminently in the glazed 
 t^rra-cotta work by which he is best known. An 
 ordinary artist might have found the temptation to 
 aim at showy and pictorial effects in this material 
 overwhelming. Luca restrained himself to pure white 
 on pale blue, and preserved an exquisite simplicity of 
 line in all his compositions. There is an almost un- 
 earthly beauty in the profiles of his Madonnas, a tem- 
 pered sweetness in the modulation of their drapery 
 and attitude, that prove complete mastery in the art 
 of rendering evanescent moments of expression, the 
 most fragile subtleties of the emotions that can stir 
 
 Geometry, Plato, Aristotle, etc., are anterior to 1445 ; and even about 
 this date there is uncertainty, some authorities fixing it at 1435. 
 1 Purg., x. ^7 and xi. 68.
 
 Ijo RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 a tranquil spirit. Andrea della Rohbia, the nephew 
 of Luca, with his four sons, Giovanni, Luca, Am- 
 brogio, and Girolamo, continued to manufacture the 
 glazed earthenware of Luca's invention. These men, 
 though excellent artificers, lacked the fine taste of 
 their teacher. Coarser colors were introduced ; the 
 eye was dazzled with variety ; but the power of 
 speaking to the soul as Luca spoke was lost 1 
 
 After the Della Robbia's, this is the place to 
 mention Agostino di Gucci or di Duccio, 2 a sculp- 
 tor who handled terra-cotta somewhat in the manner 
 of Donatello's flat-relief, introducing more richness 
 of detail, and aiming at more passion than Luca's 
 taste permitted. For the oratory of S. Bernar- 
 dino at Perugia he designed the fagade partly in 
 stone and partly in baked clay crowded v th 
 figures, flying, singing, playing upon instruments 
 of music, with waving draperies and windy hair, 
 and the ecstasy of movement in their delicately- 
 modeled limbs. If nothing else remained of Agos- 
 tino's workmanship, this fagade alone would place 
 him in the first rank of contemporary artists. He 
 owed something, perhaps, to his material ; for terra- 
 
 1 Among the very best works of the later Robbian school may be 
 cited the frieze upon the fa9ade of the Ospedale del Ceppo at Pistoja, 
 representing in varied color, and with graceful vivacity, the Seven Acts 
 of Mercy. Date about 1525. 
 
 3 He calls himself Agostinus Florentinus Lapicida on his facade of 
 the Oratory of S. Bernardino.
 
 WORK IN TERRA-COTTA. 151 
 
 cotta has the charm of improvization. The hand, 
 obedient to the brain, has made it in one moment 
 what it is, and no slow hours of labor at the stone 
 have dulled the first caprice of the creative fancy. 
 Work, therefore, which, if translated into marble, 
 might have left our sympathy unstirred, affects us 
 with keen pleasure in the mold of plastic clay. 
 What prodigality of thought and invention has 
 been lavished on the terra-cotta models of unknown 
 Italian artists! What forms and faces, beautiful 
 as shapes of dreams, and, like dreams, so airy 
 that we think they will take flight and vanish, 
 lean to greet us from cloisters and palace fronts in 
 Lombardy ! To catalogue their multitude would 
 be impossible. It is enough to select one instance 
 out of many ; this shall be taken from the chapel 
 of S. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio at Milan. High 
 up around the cupola runs a frieze of angels, sing- 
 ing together and dancing with joined hands, while 
 bells composed of fruits and flowers hang down be- 
 tween them. Each angel is an individual shape of 
 joy ; the soul in each moves to its own deep mel- 
 ody, but the music made of all is one. Their 
 raiment flutters, the bells chime ; the chorus of 
 their gladness falls like voices through a starlight 
 heaven, half-heard in dreams and everlastingly re- 
 membered. 
 
 Four sculptors, the younger contemporaries of
 
 I5J RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Luca della Robbia, and marked by certain common 
 qualities, demand attention next All the work of 
 Antonio Rossellino, Matteo Civitali, Mino da Fie- 
 sole, and Benedetto da Majano is distinguished by 
 sweetness, grace, tranquillity, and self-restraint as 
 though these artists had voluntarily imposed limits 
 on their genius, refusing to trespass beyond a traced 
 circle of religious subjects, or to aim at effects un- 
 realizable by purity of outline, suavity of expres- 
 sion, delicacy of feeling, and urbanity of style. 
 The charm of manner they possess in common can 
 scarcely be defined except by similes. The inno- 
 cence of childhood, the melody of a lute or song- 
 bird as distinguished from the music of an orchestra, 
 the rathe tints of early dawn, cheerful light on 
 shallow streams, the serenity of a simple and un- 
 tainted nature that has never known the world- 
 many such images occur to the mind while thinking 
 of the sculpture of these men. To charge them 
 with insipidity, immaturity, and monotony would be 
 to mistake the force of genius and skill displayed by 
 them. We should rather assume that they confined 
 themselves to certain types of tranquil beauty, with- 
 out caring to realize more obviously striking effects, 
 and that this was their way of meeting the require- 
 ments of sculpture considered as a Christian art. 
 The melody of their design, meanwhile, is like 
 the purest song-music of Pergolese or Salvator
 
 ANTONIO ROSSELLINO. 153 
 
 Rosa, unapproachably perfect in simple outline, and 
 inexhaustibly refreshing. 
 
 Though it is possible to characterize the style of 
 these sculptors by some common qualities observa- 
 ble in their work, it should rather be the aim of 
 criticism to point out their differences. Antonio 
 Rossellino, for example, might be distinguished by 
 his leaning toward the manner of Ghiberti, whose 
 landscape backgrounds he has adopted in the cir- 
 cular medallions of his monumental sculpture. A 
 fine perception of the poetic capabilities of Christian 
 art is displayed in Rossellino's idyllic treatment of 
 the Nativity the adoration of the shepherds, the 
 hush of reverential stillness in the worship Mary 
 pays her infant son. 1 To the qualities of sweetness 
 and tranquillity rare dignity is added in the monu- 
 ment of the young Cardinal di Portogallo. 2 The 
 sublimity of the slumber that is death has never 
 been more nobly and feelingly portrayed than in the 
 supine figure and sleeping features of this most 
 beautiful young man, who lies watched by angels 
 beneath a heavy-curtained canopy. The genii of 
 eternal repose modeled by Greek sculptors are 
 twin-brothers of Love, on whom perpetual slumber 
 has descended amid poppy-fields by Lethe's stream. 
 
 1 See especially a roundel in the Bargello, and the altar-piece in 
 the church of Monte OHveto at Naples. Those who wish to under- 
 stand Rossellino should study him in the latter place. 
 
 * In the church of Samminiato, near Florence.
 
 154 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 The turmoil of the world is over for them ; they will 
 never wake again ; they do not even dream. Sleep 
 is the only power that still has life in them. But 
 the Christian can not thus conceive the mystery of 
 the soul ' fallen on sleep.' His art must suggest a 
 time of waiting and a time of waking ; and this it 
 does partly through the ministration of attendant 
 angels, who would not be standing there on guard 
 if the clay-cold corpse had no futurity, partly by 
 breathing upon the limbs and visage of the dead a 
 spirit as of life suspended for a while. Thus the 
 soul herself is imaged in the marble ' most sweetly 
 slumbering in the gates of dreams.' 
 
 What Vespasiano tells us of this cardinal, born of 
 the royal house of Portugal, adds the virtue of sin- 
 cerity to Rossellino's work, proving there is no flat- 
 tery of the dead man in his sculpture. 1 'Among his 
 other admirable virtues,' says the biographer, ' Mes- 
 ser Jacopo di Portogallo determined to preserve his 
 virginity, though he was beautiful above all others 
 of his age. Consequently he avoided all things that 
 might prove impediments to his vow, such as free 
 discourse, the society of women, balls, and songs. 
 In this mortal flesh he lived as though he had been 
 free from it the life, we may say, rather of an angel 
 than a man. And if his biography were written 
 from his childhood to his death, it would be not only 
 
 1 Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 152-157.
 
 SEPULCHRAL STATUARY. 155 
 
 an ensample, but confusion to the world. Upon his 
 monument the hand was modeled from his own, 
 and the face is very like him, for he was most lovely 
 in his person, but still more in his soul.' 
 
 While contemplating this monument of the 
 young cardinal, we feel that the Italians of that age 
 understood sepulchral sculpture far better than their 
 immediate successors. They knew how to carve 
 the very soul, according to the lines which our Web- 
 ster, a keen observer of all things relating to the 
 grave and death, has put into Jolenta's lips : 
 
 But indeed, 
 
 If ever I would have mine drawn to the life, 
 I would have a painter steal it at such time 
 I were devoutly kneeling at my prayers ; 
 There is then a heavenly beauty in't ; the soul 
 Moves in the superficies, 
 
 The same Webster condemns that evil custom of 
 aping life and movement on the monuments of dead 
 men which began to obtain when the motives of 
 pure repose had been exhausted. ' Why,' asks the 
 Duchess of Malfi, 'do we grow fantastical in our 
 death-bed ? Do we affect fashion in the grave ? ' 
 'Most ambitiously,' answers Bosola: 'princes' 
 images on their tombs do not lie as they were 
 wont, seeming to pray up to heaven ; but with their 
 hands under their cheeks (as if they died of the 
 toothache) : they are not carved with their eyes 
 fixed upon the stars ; but, as their minds were
 
 156 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 wholly bent upon the world, the self-same way they 
 seem to turn their faces.' A more trenchant criti- 
 cism than this could hardly have been pronounced 
 upon Andrea Contucci di Monte Sansavio's tombs 
 of Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo della Rovere, if 
 Bosola had been standing before them in the church 
 of S. Maria del Popolo when he spoke. Were it 
 the function of monumental sculpture to satirize the 
 dead, or to point out their characteristic faults for 
 the warning of posterity, then the sepulchres of 
 these worldly cardinals of Sixtus IV.'s creation 
 would be artistically justified. But the object of art 
 is not this. The idea of death, as conceived by 
 Christians, has to be portrayed. The repose of the 
 just, the resurrection of the body, and the coming 
 judgment afford sufficient scope for treatment of 
 good men and bad alike. Or if the sculptor have 
 sublime imagination, he may, like Michael Angelo, 
 suggest the alternations of the day and night, slum- 
 ber and waking, whereby ' our little life is rounded 
 with a sleep.' 
 
 This digression will hardly be thought super- 
 fluous when we reflect how large a part of the sculp- 
 tor's energy was spent on tombs in Italy. Matteo 
 Civitali of Lucca was at least Rossellino's equal in 
 the sculpturesque delineation of spiritual qualities ; 
 but the motives he chose for treatment were more 
 varied. All his work is penetrated with deep, prayer-
 
 MATTEO CI VITA LI. 157 
 
 ful, intense feeling ; as though the artist's soul, poured 
 forth in ecstasy and adoration, had been given to the 
 marble. This is especially true of two angels kneel- 
 ing upon the altar of the Chapel of the Sacrament in 
 Lucca Cathedral. Civitali, by singular good fortune, 
 was chosen in the best years of his life to adorn the 
 cathedral of his native city ; and it is here, rather 
 than at Genoa, where much of his sculpture may 
 also be seen, that he deserves to be studied. For 
 the people of Lucca he designed the Chapel of the 
 Santo Volto a gem of the purest Renaissance arch- 
 itecture and a pulpit in the same style. His most 
 remarkable sculpture is to be found in three monu- 
 ments : the tombs of Domenico Bertini and Pietro 
 da Noceto, and the altar of S. Regulus. The last 
 might be chosen as an epitome of all that is most 
 characteristic in Tuscan sculpture of the earlier 
 Renaissance. It is built against the wall, and archi- 
 tecturally designed so as to comprehend a full- 
 length figure of the bishop stretched upon his bier 
 and watched by angels, a group of Madonna and 
 her child seated above him, a row of standing saints 
 below, and a predella composed of four delicately- 
 finished bass-reliefs. Every part of this complex 
 work is conceived with spirit and executed with 
 care ; and the various elements are so combined as 
 to make one composition, the body of the saint on
 
 I 5 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 his sarcophagus forming the central object of the 
 whole. 
 
 To do more than briefly mention the minor sculp- 
 tors of this group would be impossible. Mino di 
 Giovanni, called Da Fiesole, was characterized by 
 grace that tended to degenerate into formality. The 
 tombs in the Abbey of Florence have an almost 
 infantine sweetness of style, which might be ex- 
 tremely piquant were it not that Mino pushed this 
 quality in other works to the verge of mannerism. 1 
 Their architectural features are the same as those of 
 similar monuments in Tuscany : a shallow recess, 
 flanked by Renaissance pilasters, and roofed with a 
 semicircular arch ; within the recess, the full-length 
 figure of the dead man on a marble coffin of antique 
 design ; in the lunette above, a Madonna carved 
 in low relief. 2 Mino's bust of Bishop Salutati in 
 the cathedral church of Fiesole is a powerful por- 
 
 1 These tombs in the Badia were erected for Count Ugo, Governor 
 of Tuscany under Otho II., and for Messer Bernardo Giugni. Mino 
 also made the tomb for Pope Paul II., parts of which are preserved in 
 the Grotte of S. Peter's. At Rome he carved a tabernacle for S. Maria 
 in Trastevere, and at Volterra a ciborium for the Baptistery one of 
 his most sympathetic productions. The altars in the Baglioni Chapel 
 of S. Pietro Cassinense at Perugia, in S. Ambrogio at Florence, and in 
 the cathedral of Fiesole, and the pulpit in the Duomo at Prato, may 
 be mentioned among his best works 
 
 * Besides Civitali's altar of S. Regulus, and the tomb of Pietro da 
 Noceto already mentioned, Bernardo Rossellino's monument to Lio- 
 nardo Bruni, and Desiderio's monument to Carlo Marsuppini in S. 
 Croce at Florence, may be cited as eminent examples of Tuscan 
 sepulchres.
 
 MINO AND DESIDERIO. 159 
 
 trait, no less distinguished for vigorous indi- 
 viduality than consummate workmanship. The 
 wax-like finish of the finely-chiseled marble alone 
 betrays that delicacy which with Mino verged 
 on insipidity. The same faculty of character de- 
 lineation is seen in three profiles, now in the 
 Bargello Museum, attributed to Mino. They repre- 
 sent Frederick Duke of Urbino, Battista Sforza, 
 and Galeazzo Sforza. The relief is very low, rising 
 at no point more than half an inch above the 
 surface of the ground, but so carefully modulated as 
 to present a wonderful variety of light and shade, 
 and to render the facial expression with great 
 vividness. 
 
 Desiderio da Settignano, one of Donatello's few 
 scholars, was endowed with the same gift of exqui- 
 site taste as his friend Mino da Fiesole; 1 but his 
 inventive faculty was bolder, and his genius more 
 robust, in spite of the profuse ornamentation and 
 elaborate finish of his masterpiece, the tomb of 
 Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce. The bust he made 
 of Marietta di Palla degli Strozzi enables us to com- 
 pare his style in portraiture with that of Mino. 8 It 
 would be hard to find elsewhere a more captivating 
 
 1 The wooden statue of the Magdalen in Santa Trinita at Flor- 
 ence shows Desiderio's approximation to the style of his master. She 
 is a careworn and ascetic saint, with the pathetic traces of great 
 beauty in her emaciated face. 
 
 2 This bust is in the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence.
 
 160 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 combination of womanly sweetness and dignity. 
 We feel, in looking at these products of the best age 
 of Italian sculpture, that the artists who conceived 
 them were, in the truest sense of the word, gentle. 
 None but men courteous and unaffected could have 
 carved a face like that of Marietta Strozzi, breathing 
 the very spirit of urbanity. To express the most 
 amiable qualities of a living person in a work of art 
 that should suggest emotional tranquillity by harmo- 
 nious treatment, and indicate the temperance of a 
 disciplined nature by self-restraint and moderation 
 of style, and to do this with the highest technical 
 perfection, was the triumph of fifteenth-century 
 sculpture. 
 
 An artist who claims a third place beside Mino 
 and his friend, ' il bravo Desider si dolce e bello,' * 
 is Benedetto da Majano. In Benedetto's bass-reliefs 
 at San Gemignano, carved for the altars of those 
 unlovely Tuscan worthies, S. Fina and S. Bartolo, 
 we find a pictorial treatment of legendary subjects, 
 proving that he had studied Ghirlandajo's frescoes. 
 The same is true about his pulpit in S. Croce at 
 Florence, his treatment of the story of S. Savino at 
 Faenza, and his Annunciation in the church of 
 Monte Oliveto at Naples. Benedetto, indeed, may 
 be said to illustrate the working of Ghiberti's influ- 
 
 1 So Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father, described Desiderio da Set- 
 tignano.
 
 TUSCAN SCULPTURE. 161 
 
 ence by his liberal use of landscape and architectural 
 backgrounds ; but the style is rather Ghirlandajo's 
 than Ghiberti's. If it was a mistake in the sculptors 
 of that period to subordinate their art to painting, 
 the error, we feel, was aggravated by the imitation 
 of a manner so prosaic as that of Ghirlandajo. That 
 Benedetto began life as a tarsiatore may perhaps 
 help to account for his pictorial style in bass-relief. 1 
 In estimating his total claim as an artist, we must 
 not forget that he designed the formidable and 
 splendid Strozzi Palace. 
 
 It will be observed that all the sculptors hitherto 
 mentioned have been Tuscans ; and this is due to 
 no mere accident nor yet to caprice on the part of 
 their historian. Though the other districts of Italy 
 produced admirable workmen, the direction given to 
 this art proceeded from Tuscany. Florence, the 
 metropolis of modern culture, determined the course 
 of the sesthetical Renaissance. Even at Rimini we 
 can not account for the carvings in low relief, so 
 fanciful, so delicately wrought, and so profusely 
 scattered over the side chapels of S. Francesco, 
 
 1 The following story is told about Benedetto's youth. He made 
 two large inlaid chests or cassoni, adorned with all the skill of a 
 worker in tarsia or wood-mosaic, and carried these with him to King 
 Matthias Corvinus, of Hungary. Part of his journey was performed 
 by sea. On arriving and unpacking his chests, he found that the sea- 
 damp had unglued the fragile wood-mosaic, and all his work was 
 spoiled. This determined him to practice the more permanent art of 
 sculpture. See Perkins, vol. i p. 228.
 
 i6a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 without the intervention of two Florentines, Ber- 
 nardo Ciuffagni and Donatello's pupil Simone ; while 
 in the palace of Urbino we trace some hand not 
 unlike that of Mino da Fiesole at work upon the 
 moldings of door and architrave, cornice and high- 
 built chimney. 1 Not only do we thus find Tuscan 
 craftsmen or their scholars employed on all the great 
 public buildings throughout Italy ; but it also happens 
 that, except in Tuscany, the decoration of churches 
 and palaces is not unfrequently anonymous. 
 
 This does not, however, interfere with the truth 
 that sculpture, like all the arts, assumed a some- 
 what different character in each Italian city. The 
 Venetian stone-carvers leaned from the first to a richer 
 and more passionate style than the Florentine, repro- 
 ducing the types of Cima's and Bellini's paintings. 2 
 Whole families, like the Bregni classes, like 
 
 1 For further description of the sculpture at Rimini, I may refer to 
 my ' Sketches in Italy and Greece,' pp. 250-252. For the student of 
 Italian art who has no opportunity of visiting Riminiit is greatly to 
 be regretted that these reliefs have never yet even in photography 
 been reproduced. The palace of Duke Frederick at Urbino was de- 
 signed by Luziano, a Dalmatian architect, and continued by Baccio 
 Pontelli, a Florentine. The reliefs of dancing Cupids, white on blue 
 ground, with wings and hair gilt, and the children holding pots of 
 roses and gilly-flowers, in one of its great rooms, may be selected for 
 special mention. Ambrogio or Ambrogino da Milano, none of whose 
 handiwork is found in his native district, and who may therefore be 
 supposed to have learned and practiced his art elsewhere, was the 
 sculptor of these truly genial reliefs. 
 
 a See, for example, the remarkable bass-relief of the Doge Lion arc! o 
 Loredano, engraved by Perkins, ' Italian Sculptors/ p. 201.
 
 NORTH ITALIAN SCULPTURE. 163 
 
 the Lombard! schools, like that of Alessandro 
 Leopardi, worked together on the monumental 
 sculpture of S. Zanipolo. In the tombs of the 
 Doges the old Pisan motive of the curtains (first 
 used by Arnolfo di Cambio at Orvieto, and after- 
 ward with grand effect by Giovanni Pisano at Pe- 
 rugia) is expanded into a sumptuous tent-canopy. 
 Pages and genii and mailed heroes take the place of 
 angels, and the marine details of Roman reliefs are 
 copied in the subordinate decoration. At Verona 
 the mediaeval tombs of the Scaligers, with their vast 
 chest-like sarcophagi and mounted warriors, exhibit 
 features markedly different from the monuments of 
 Tuscany ; while the mixture of fresco with sculpture, 
 in monuments like that of the Cavalli in S. Anastasia, 
 and in many altar-pieces, is at variance with Flor- 
 entine usage. On the terra-cotta moldings, so 
 frequent in Lombard cities, I have already had 
 occasion to touch briefly. They almost invariably 
 display a feeling for beauty more sensuous, with less 
 of scientific purpose in their naturalism, than is 
 common in the Tuscan style. Guido Mazzoni of 
 Modena, called II Modanino, may be mentioned as 
 the sculptor who freed terra-cotta from its depend- 
 ence upon architecture, and who modeled groups of 
 overpowering dramatic realism. His Pieta, in the 
 Church of Monte Oliveto at Naples, is valu-
 
 i<54 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 able, less for its passionate intensity of expression 
 than for the portraits of Pontano, Sannazaro, and 
 Alfonso of Aragon. 1 This sub-species of sculpture 
 was freely employed in North Italy to stimulate 
 devotion, and to impress the people with lively 
 pictures of the Passion. The Sacro Monte at Va- 
 rallo, for example, is covered with a multitude of 
 chapels, each one of which presents some chapter 
 of Bible history dramatically rendered by life-size 
 groups of terra-cotta figures. Some of these were 
 designed by eminent painters, and executed by clever 
 modelers in clay. Even now they are scarcely less 
 stirring to the mind of a devout spectator than the 
 scenes of mediaeval Mystery may have been. 
 
 The Certosa of Pavia, lastly, is the center of a 
 school of sculpture that has little in common with 
 the Florentine tradition. Antonio Amadeo 2 and 
 Andrea Fusina, acting in concert with Ambrogio 
 
 1 Another Modenese, Antonio Begarelli, born in 1479, developed 
 this art of the plasticatore, with quite as much pictorial impressiveness 
 and in a style of stricter science than his predecessor II Modanino. 
 His masterpieces are the ' Deposition from the Cross ' in S. Francesco, 
 and the ' Pieta ' in S. Pietro, of his native city. 
 
 8 The name of this great master is variously written Giovanni 
 Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo, or degli Amadei, or de' Madeo, or 
 a Madeo pointing possibly to the town Madeo as his native place. 
 Through a long life he worked upon the fabric of the Milanese Duomo, 
 the Certosa of Pavia, and the Chapel of Colleoni at Bergamo. To 
 him we owe the general design of the facade of the Certosa and 
 the cupola of the Duomo of Milan. For the details of his work 
 and an estimate of his capacity, see Perkins, ' Italian Sculptors,' pp. 
 127 137.
 
 ANTONIO AMADEO. 165 
 
 Borgognone the painter, gave it in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury that character of rich and complex decorative 
 beauty which many generations of artists were des- 
 tined to continue and complete. Among the count- 
 less sculptors employed upon its marvelous fagade 
 Amadeo asserts an individuality above the rest, 
 which is further manifested in his work in the Cap- 
 pella Colleoni at Bergamo. We there learn to know 
 him not only as an enthusiastic cultivator of the 
 mingled Christian and pagan manner of the quat- 
 trocento, but as an artist in the truest sense of the 
 word sympathetic. The sepulchral portrait of Medea, 
 daughter of the great Condottiere, has a grace almost 
 beyond that of Delia Quercia's Ilarial Much, no 
 doubt, is due to the peculiarly fragile beauty of the 
 girl herself, who lies asleep with little crisp curls 
 clustering upon her forehead, and with a string of 
 pearls around her slender throat. But the sensibility 
 to loveliness so delicate, and the power to render 
 it in marble with so ethereal a touch upon the rigid 
 stone, belong to the sculptor, and win for him our 
 worship. 
 
 The list of fifteenth-century sculptors is almost 
 ended ; and already, on the threshold of the six- 
 
 This statue was originally intended for a chapel built and en- 
 dowed by Colleoni at Basella, near Bergamo. When he determined 
 to erect his chapel in S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo, he intrusted 
 the execution of this new work to Amadeo, and the monument of 
 Medea was subsequently placed there.
 
 166 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 teenth, stands the mighty form of Michael Angela 
 Andrea Contucci da Sansavino and his pupil Jacopo 
 Tatti, called also Sansovino, after his master, must, 
 however, next be mentioned as continuing the Flor- 
 entine tradition without subservience to the style of 
 Buonarroti. Andrea da Sansavino was a sculptor in 
 whom for the first time the faults of the mid-Renais- 
 sance period are glaringly apparent. He persistently 
 sacrificed simplicity of composition to decorative 
 ostentation, and tranquillity of feeling to theatrical 
 effect. The truth of this will be acknowledged by 
 all who have studied the tombs of the cardinals in 
 S. Maria del Popolo already mentioned, 1 and the 
 bass-reliefs upon the Santa Casa at Loreto. In tech- 
 nical workmanship Andrea proved himself an able 
 craftsman, modeling marble with the plasticity of 
 wax, and lavishing patterns of the most refined in- 
 vention. Yet the decorative prodigality of this 
 master corresponded to the frigid and stylistic graces 
 of the neo-Latin poets. It was so much mannerism 
 adopted without real passion from the antique, and 
 applied with a rhetorical intention. Those acanthus 
 scrolls and honeysuckle borders, in spite of their 
 consummate finish, fail to arrest attention, leaving 
 the soul as unstirred as the Ovidian cadences of 
 Bembo. 
 
 1 See above, p. 1 56. I have spelt the name Sansovino, when 
 applied to Jacopo Tatti, in accordance with time-honored usage.
 
 JACOPO SAN SO VINO. 167 
 
 Jacopo Tatti was a genius of more distinction. 
 Together with San Gallo and Bramante he studied the 
 science of architecture in Rome, where he also worked 
 at the restoration of newly-discovered antiques, 
 and cast in bronze a copy of the Laocoon. Thus 
 equipped with the artistic learning of his age, he 
 was called in 1523 by the Doge, Andrea Gritti, to 
 Venice. The material pomp of Venice at this epoch, 
 and the pride of her unrivaled luxury, affected his 
 imagination so powerfully that his genius, tutored by 
 Florentine and Umbrian masters among the ruins 
 of old Rome, became at once Venetian. In the 
 history of the Renaissance the names of Titian and 
 Aretino, themselves acclimatized aliens, are insep- 
 arably connected with that of their friend San- 
 sovino. At Venice he lived until his death in 1570, 
 building the Zecca, the library, the Scala d'Oro in 
 the Ducal Palace, and the Loggietta beneath the 
 bell-tower of S. Mark. In all his work he sub- 
 ordinated sculpture to architecture, and his statuary 
 is conceived in the bravura manner of Renaissance 
 paganism. Whatever may be the faults of Sansovino 
 in both arts, it can not be denied that he expressed, 
 in a style peculiar to himself, the large voluptuous ex- 
 ternal life of Venice at a moment when this city was 
 the Paris or the Corinth of Renaissance Europe. 
 At the same time, the shallowness of Sansovaio's 
 inspiration as a sculptor is patent in his masterpieces
 
 1 68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of parade the Neptune and the Mars, guarding the 
 Sala d'Oro. Separated from the architecture of 
 the court and staircase, they are insignificant in spite 
 of their colossal scale. In their place they add a 
 haughty grandeur, by the contrast which their flow- 
 ing forms and arrogant attitudes present to the 
 severer lines of the construction. But they are 
 devoid of artistic sincerity, and occupy the same 
 relation to true sculpture as flourishes of rhetoric, 
 however brilliant, to poetry embodying deep thought 
 or passion. At first sight they impose : on further 
 acquaintance we find them chiefly interesting as 
 illustrations of a potent civic life upon the wane, 
 gorgeous in its decay. 
 
 Sansovino was a first-rate craftsman. The most 
 finished specimen of his skill is the bronze door of 
 the Sacristy of S. Marco, upon which he is said to 
 have worked through twenty years. Portraits of 
 the sculptor, Titian, and Pietro Aretino are intro- 
 duced into the decorative border. These heads start 
 from the surface of the gate with astonishing vivacity. 
 That Aretino should thus daily assist in effigy at 
 the procession of priests bearing the sacred em- 
 blems from the sacristy to the high altar of S. Mark 
 is one of the most characteristic proofs of sixteenth- 
 century indifference to things holy and things pro- 
 fane. 
 
 Jacopo Sansovino marks the final intrusion of
 
 INTRUSION OF PAGANISM. 169 
 
 paganism into modern art. The classical revival 
 had worked but partially and indirectly upon Ghi- 
 berti and Donatello not because they did not feel 
 it most intensely, but because they clung to nature 
 far more closely than to antique precedent. This 
 enthusiasm inspired Sansovino with the best and 
 strongest qualities that he can boast; and if his 
 genius had been powerful enough to resist the fasci- 
 nation of merely rhetorical effects, he might have 
 produced a perfect restoration of the classic style. 
 His was no lifeless or pedantic imitation of antique 
 fragments, but a real expression of the fervor with 
 which the modern world hailed the discoveries re- 
 vealed to it by scholarship. This is said advisedly. 
 The most beautiful and spirited pagan statue of the 
 Renaissance period, justifying the estimate here 
 made of Sansovino's genius, is the Bacchus exhibited 
 in the Bargello Museum. Both the Bacchus and the 
 Satyriscus at his side are triumphs of realism, irra- 
 diated and idealized by the sculptor's vivid sense of 
 natural gladness. Considered as a restitution of the an- 
 tique manner, this statue is even superior to the Bac- 
 chus of Michael Angelo. While the mundane splen- 
 dor of Venice gave body and fullness to Sansovino's 
 paganism, he missed the self-restraint and purity of 
 taste peculiar to the studious shades of Florence. In 
 his style, both architectural and sculptural, the neo~ 
 pagan sensuality of Italy expanded all its bloom.
 
 170 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 For the artist at this period a Greek myth and a 
 Christian legend were all one. Both afforded the 
 occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent forms, 
 devoid of any but voluptuous feeling ; while both 
 might be subordinated to rich effects of decoration. 1 
 To this point the intellectual culture of the fifteenth 
 century had brought the plastic arts of Italy, by a 
 process similar to that which ended in the Partus 
 Virginis of Sannazaro. They were still indisputably 
 vigorous, and working in accordance with the move- 
 ment of the modern spirit. Yet the synthesis they at- 
 tempted to effect between heathenism and Christi- 
 anity, by a sheer effort of style, and by indifferentism, 
 strikes us from the point of view of art alone, not 
 reckoning religion or morality, as unsuccessful. Still, 
 if it be childish on the one hand to deplore that the 
 Christian earnestness of the earlier masters had failed, 
 it would be even more ridiculous to complain that 
 paganism had not been more entirely recovered. The 
 double mind of the Renaissance, the source of its 
 weakness in art as in thought, could not be avoided, 
 because humanity at this moment had to lose the 
 mediaeval sincerity of faith, and to assimilate the 
 spirit of a bygone civilization. This, for better or for 
 worse, was the phase through which the intellect of 
 
 1 To multiply instances is tedious ; but notice in this connection 
 the Hermaphroditic statue of S. Sebastian at Orvieto, near the western 
 door. It is a fair work of Lo Scalza.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO. 171 
 
 modern Europe was obliged to pass ; and those who 
 have confidence in the destinies of the human race 
 will not spend their strength in moaning over such 
 shortcomings as the periods of transition bring inevi- 
 tably with them. The student of Italian history may 
 indeed more reasonably be allowed to question 
 whether the arts, if left to follow their own develop- 
 ment unchecked, might not have recovered from the 
 confusion of the Renaissance and have entered on a 
 stage of nobler activity through earnest and unaf- 
 fected study of nature. But the enslavement of the 
 country, together with the counter-Reformation, sus- 
 pended the Renaissance in mid-career; and what 
 remains of Italian art is incomplete. Besides, it 
 must be borne in mind that the confusion of opinions 
 consequent upon the clash of the modern with the 
 ancient world left no body of generally accepted 
 beliefs to express ; nor has the time even yet arrived 
 for a settlement and synthesis that shall be favorable 
 to the activity of the figurative arts. 
 
 Sansovino himself was neither original nor power- 
 ful enough to elevate the mixed motives of Renais- 
 sance sculpture by any lofty idealization. To do 
 that remained for Michael Angelo. The greatness 
 of Michael Angelo consists in this that while 
 literature was sinking into the frivolity of Academies 
 and the filth of the Bernesque Capitoli, while the 
 bare-faced villainies of Aretino won him credit, while
 
 174 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 sensual magnificence formed the ideal of artists who 
 were neither Greeks nor Christians, while Ariosto 
 found no subject fitter for his genius than a glittering 
 romance, he and he alone maintained the Dantesque 
 dignity of the Italian intellect in his sculpture. 
 Michael Angelo stands so far apart from other men, 
 and is so gigantic a force for good and evil in the 
 history of art, that to estimate his life and labor in 
 relation to the Renaissance must form the subject 
 of a separate chapter. For the present it is enough 
 to observe that his immediate scholars, Raflfaello da 
 Montelupo and Gian Angelo Montorsoli, caught 
 little from their master but the mannerism of con- 
 torted form and agitated action. This mannerism, 
 a blemish even in the strong work of Buonarroti, 
 became ridiculous when adopted by men of feeble 
 powers and passionless imagination. By straining 
 the art of sculpture to its utmost limits, Michael 
 Angelo expressed vehement emotions in marble ; and 
 the forced attitudes affected in his work had their 
 value as significant of spiritual struggle. His imita- 
 tors showed none of their master's sublime force, none 
 of that terribilila which made him unapproachable 
 in social intercourse and inimitable in art. They 
 merely fancied that dignity and beauty were to be 
 achieved by placing figures in difficult postures, ex- 
 aggerating muscular anatomy, and twisting the limbs 
 of their models upon sections of ellipses in uncom-
 
 BANDINELLI AND AMMAN ATI. 173 
 
 fortable attitudes, till the whole of their work was 
 writhen into uncouth lines. Buonarroti himself was 
 not responsible for these results. He wrought out his 
 own ideal with the firmness of a genius that obeys 
 the law of its own nature, doing always what it must. 
 That the decadence of sculpture into truculent bra- 
 vado was independent of his direct influence is 
 further proved by the inefficiency of his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 Baccio Bandinelli and Bartolommeo Ammanati 
 filled the squares of the Italian cities with statues of 
 Hercules and satyrs, Neptune and river-gods. We 
 know not whether to select the vulgarity, the feeble- 
 ness, or the pretentiousness of these pseudo-clas- 
 sical colossi for condemnation. They have nothing 
 Greek about them but their names, their nakedness, 
 and their association with myths the significance 
 whereof was never really felt by the sculptors. 
 Some of Bandinelli's designs, it is true, are vigorous ; 
 but they are mere drawings from undraped peasants, 
 life studies depicting the human animal. His Her- 
 cules and Cacus, while it deserves all the sarcasm 
 hurled at it by Cellini, proves that Bandinelli could 
 not rise above the wrestling bout of a porter and a 
 coal-heaver. Nor would it be possible to invent a 
 motive less in accordance with Greek taste than the 
 conceit of Ammanati's fountain at Castello, where 
 Hercules by squeezing the body of Antaeus makes
 
 174 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the drinking-water of a city spout from a giant's 
 mouth. Such pitiful misapplications of an art which 
 is designed to elevate the commonplace of human 
 form, and to render permanent the nobler qualities 
 of physical existence, shows how superficially and 
 wrongly the antique spirit had been apprehended. 
 
 Some years before his death Ammanati ex- 
 pressed in public his regret that he had made so 
 many giants and satyrs, feeling that, by exhibiting 
 forms of lust, brutality, and animalism to the gaze of his 
 fellow-countrymen, he had sinned against the higher 
 law revealed by Christianity. For a Greek artist to 
 have spoken thus would have been impossible. The 
 Faun, the Titan, and the Satyr had a meaning for 
 him, which he sought to set forth in accordance with 
 the semi-religious, semi-poetical traditions of his race ; 
 and when he was at work upon a myth of nature- 
 forces, he well knew that at the other end of the 
 scale, separated by no spiritual barrier, but removed 
 to an almost infinite distance of refinement, Zeus, 
 Phoebus, and Pallas claimed his loftier artistic in- 
 spiration. Ammanati's confession, on the contrary, 
 betrays that schism between the conscience of Chris- 
 tianity and the lusts let loose by ill-assimilated 
 sympathy with antique heathenism which was a 
 marked characteristic of the Renaissance. The 
 coarser passions, held in check by ecclesiastical dis- 
 cipline, dared to emerge into the light of day under
 
 LOW LEVEL OF RENAISSANCE PAGANISM. 175 
 
 the supposed sanction of classical examples. What 
 the Visconti and the Borgias practiced in their secret 
 chambers, the sculptors exposed in marble and the 
 poets in verse. All alike, however, were mistaken 
 in supposing that antique precedent sanctioned this 
 efflorescence of immorality. No amount of Greek 
 epigrams by Strato and Meleager, nor all the Her- 
 maphrodites and Priapi of Rome, had power to annul 
 the law of conduct established by the founders of 
 Christianity, and ratified by the higher instincts of 
 the Middle Ages. Nor again were artists justified 
 before the bar of conscience in selecting the baser 
 elements of paganism for imitation, instead of aiming 
 at Greek self-restraint and Roman strength of char- 
 acter. All this the men of the Renaissance felt 
 when they listened to the voice within them. Their 
 work, therefore, in so far as it pretended to be a 
 reconstruction of the antique, was false. The sen- 
 suality it shared in common with many Greek and 
 Roman masterpieces had ceased to be frank and in 
 the true sense pagan. To shake off Christianity, 
 and to revert with an untroubled conscience to the 
 manners of a bygone age, was what they could 
 not do. 
 
 The errors I have attempted to characterize did 
 not, however, prevent the better and more careful 
 works of sculpture, executed in illustration of classical 
 mythology, from having a true value. The Perseus
 
 176 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of Cellini and some of Gian Bologna's statues belong 
 to a class of aesthetic productions which show how 
 much that is both original and excellent may be 
 raised in the hotbed of culture. 1 They express a 
 genuine moment of the Renaissance with vigor, 
 and deserve to be ranked with the Latin poetry of 
 Poliziano, Bembo, and Pontano. The worst that 
 can be said of them is that their inspiration was 
 factitious, and that their motives had been handled 
 better in the age of Greek sincerity. 
 
 Gian Bologna, born at Douai, but a Florentine 
 by education, devoted himself almost exclusively to 
 mythological sculpture. That he was a greater 
 sculptor than his immediate predecessors will be 
 affirmed by all who have studied his bronze Mer- 
 cury, the Venus of Pctraja, and the Neptune on the 
 fountain of Perugia. Something of the genuine 
 classic feeling had passed into his nature. The 
 Mercury is not a reminiscence of any antique statue. 
 It gives in bronze a faithful and spirited reading of 
 Virgil's lines, and is conceived with artistic purity 
 not unworthy of a good Greek period. The Nep- 
 tune is something more than a muscular old man ; 
 and, in its place, it forms one of the most striking 
 ornaments of Italy. It is worthy of remark that 
 sculpture, in this stage, continued to be decorative. 
 
 1 This brief allusion to Cellini must suffice for the moment, as I 
 intend to treat of him in a separate chapter.
 
 RETROSPECT. 177 
 
 Fountains are among the most successful monu- 
 ments of the late Renaissance. Even Montorsoli's 
 fountain at Messina is in a high sense picturesquely 
 beautiful. 
 
 Casting a glance backward over the foregoing 
 sketch of Italian sculpture, it will be seen that three 
 distinct stages were traversed in the evolution of 
 this art. The first may be called architectural, the 
 second pictorial, the third neo-pagan. Defined by 
 their artistic purposes, the first idealizes Christian 
 motives ; the second is naturalistic ; the third at- 
 tempts an idealization inspired by revived paganism. 
 As far as the Renaissance is concerned, all three are 
 moments in its history ; though it was only during the 
 third that the influences of the classical revival made 
 themselves overwhelmingly felt. Niccola Pisano in 
 the first stage marked a fresh point of departure 
 for his art by a return to Graeco-Roman standards 
 of the purest type then attainable, in combination 
 with the study of nature. Giovanni Pisano effected a 
 fusion between his father's manner and the Gothic 
 style. The Pisan sculpture was wholly Christian ; 
 nor did it attempt to free itself from the service of 
 architecture. Giotto opened the second stage by 
 introducing new motives, employed by him with 
 paramount mastery in painting. Under his influence 
 the sculptors inclined to picturesque effects, and the 
 direction thus given to sculpture lasted through the
 
 1 78 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 fifteenth century. For the rest, the style of these 
 masters was distinguished by a fresh and charming 
 naturalism, and by rapid growth in technical pro- 
 cesses. While assimilating much of the classical 
 spirit, they remained on the whole Christian ; and 
 herein they were confirmed by the subjects they 
 were chiefly called upon to treat, in the decoration 
 of altars, pulpits, church facades, and tombs. The 
 revived interest in antique literature widened their 
 sympathies and supplied their fancy with new mate- 
 rial ; but there is no imitative formalism in their 
 work. Its beauty consists in a certain immature 
 blending of motives chosen almost indiscriminately 
 from Christian and pagan mythology, vitalized by 
 the imagination of the artist, and presented with the 
 originality of true creative instinct. During the 
 third stage the results of prolonged and almost 
 exclusive attention to the classics, on the part of 
 the Italians as a people, make themselves manifest. 
 Collections of antiquities and libraries had been 
 formed in the fifteenth century ; the literary ener- 
 gies of the nation were devoted to the interpretation 
 of Greek and Latin texts, and the manners of 
 society affected paganism. At the same time a 
 worldly Church and a corrupt hierarchy had done 
 their utmost to enfeeble the spirit of Christianity. 
 That art should prove itself sensitive to this phase 
 of intellectual and social life was natural. Religious
 
 THE DOUBLE MIND OF THE RENAISSANCE. 179 
 
 subjects were now treated by the sculptors with 
 superficial formalism and cynical indifference, while 
 all their ingenuity was bestowed upon providing 
 pagan myths with new forms. How far they suc- 
 ceeded has been already made the matter of inquiry. 
 The most serious condemnation of art in this third 
 period is that it halted between two opinions, that it 
 could not be sincere. But this double-mindedness, 
 as I have tried to show, was necessary ; and there- 
 fore to lament over it is weak. What the Renais- 
 sance achieved for the modern world was the libera- 
 tion of the reason, the power of starting on a new 
 career of progress. The false direction given to the 
 art of sculpture at one moment of this intellectual 
 revival may be deplored ; and still more deplorable 
 is the corresponding sensual debasement of the race 
 who won for us the possibility of freedom. But the 
 life of humanity is long and vigorous, and the phi- 
 losopher of history knows well that the sum total of 
 accomplishment at any time must be diminished by 
 an unavoidable discount. The Renaissance, like a 
 man of genius, had the defects of its qualities.
 
 CHAPTER tV. 
 
 PAINTING, 
 
 Distribution of Artistic Gifts in Italy Florence and Venice Classi- 
 fication by Schools Stages in the Eve lution of Painting Cimabue 
 The Rucellai Madonna Giotto His widespread Activity The 
 Scope of his Art Vitality Composition Color Naturalism 
 Healthiness Frescoes at Assisi and Padua Legend of S. Francis 
 The Giotteschi Pictures of the Last Judgment Orcagna in the 
 Strozzi Chapel Ambrogio Lorenzetti at Pisa Dogmatic Theol- 
 ogy Capella degli Spagnuoli Traini's ' Triumph of S. Thomas 
 Aquinas ' Political Doctrine expressed in Fresco Sala della Pace 
 at Siena Religious Art in Siena and Perugia The Relation of 
 the Giottesque Painters to the Renaissance. 
 
 IT is the duty of the historian of painting to trace 
 the beginnings of art in each of the Italian commu- 
 nities, to differentiate their local styles, and to ex- 
 plain their mutual connections. For the present 
 generation this work is being done with all-sufficient 
 thoroughness and accuracy. 1 The historian of cul- 
 ture, on the other hand, for whom the arts form one 
 important branch of intellectual activity, may dispense 
 with these detailed inquiries, and may endeavor to 
 seize the more general outlines of the subject. He 
 need not weigh in balances the claims of rival cities 
 
 1 In the ' History of Painting in Italy/ by Messr? Oowe and 
 Cavalcaselle.
 
 TUSCANY, UMBR1A, VENICE. 181 
 
 to priority, nor hamper his review of national pro- 
 gress by discussing the special merits of the several 
 schools. Still there are certain broad facts about the 
 distribution of artistic gifts in Italy which it is neces- 
 sary to bear in mind. However much we may 
 desire to treat of painting as a phase of national 
 and not of merely local life, the fundamental 
 difficulty of Italian history, its complexity and va- 
 riety, owing to the subdivisions of the nation into 
 divers states, must here as elsewhere be acknowl- 
 edged. To deny that each o/ the Italian centers 
 had its own strong personality in art that painting, 
 as practiced in Genoa or Naples, differed from the 
 painting of Ferrara or Urbino would be to contra- 
 dict a law that has been over and over again insisted 
 upon already in these volumes. 
 
 The broad outlines of the subject can be briefly 
 stated. Surveying the map of Italy, we find that 
 we may eliminate from our consideration the north- 
 western and the southern provinces. Not from 
 Piedmont nor from Liguria, not from Rome nor 
 from the extensive kingdom of Naples, does Italian 
 painting take its origin, or at any period derive im- 
 portant contributions. 1 Lombardy, with the excep- 
 
 1 Nothing is more astonishing than the sterility of Genoa and of 
 Rome. Neither in sculpture nor in painting did these cities produce 
 any thing memorable, though Genoa was well placed for receiving the 
 influences of Pisa, and had the command of the marble quarries of 
 Carrara, while Rome was the resort of all the art-students of Italy.
 
 1 8* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 tion of V r enice, is comparatively barren of originative 
 elements. 1 To Tuscany, to Umbria, and to Venice, 
 roughly speaking, are due the really creative forces 
 of Italian painting; and these three districts were 
 marked by strong peculiarities. In art, as in politics, 
 Florence and Venice exhibit distinct types of char- 
 acter. 2 The Florentines developed fresco, and 
 devoted their genius to the expression of thought 
 by scientific design. The Venetians perfected oil- 
 painting, and set forth the glory of the world as it 
 appeals to the imagination and the senses. The art 
 of Florence may seem to some judges to savor 
 overmuch of intellectual dryness ; the art of Venice, 
 in the apprehension of another class of critics, offers 
 something overmuch of material richness. 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 fervor to the 
 influences emanating from Assisi, the head-quarters 
 of the cultus of S. Francis, The pietism, nowhere 
 
 The very early eminence of Apulia in architecture and the plastic arts 
 led to no results. 
 
 1 Milan, it is true, produced a brilliant school of sculptors, and the 
 Certosa of Pavia is a monument of her spontaneous artistic genius. 
 But in painting, until the date of Lionardo's advent, she achieved 
 little. 
 
 "See 'Age of the Despots,' pp. 221-236, for the constitutional 
 characteristics of Florence and Venice ; and ' Revival of Learning, 1 
 pp. 162-165, for the intellectual supremacy of Florence.
 
 LOMBARD Y AND ROME. 183 
 
 else so paramount, except for a short period in Siena, 
 constitutes the individuality of Umbria. 
 
 With regard to the rest of Italy, the old custom 
 of speaking about schools and places, instead of 
 signalizing great masters, has led to misconception, 
 by making it appear that local circumstances were 
 more important than the facts justify. We do not 
 find elsewhere what we find in Tuscany, in Umbria, 
 and in Venice a definite quality, native to the 
 district, shared through many generations by all its 
 painters, and culminating in a few men of command- 
 ing genius. When, for instance, we speak of the 
 School of Milan, what we mean is the continuation 
 through Lionardo da Vinci and his pupils of the 
 Florentine tradition, as modified by him and intro- 
 duced into the Lombard capital. That a special 
 style was developed by Luini, Ferrari, and other 
 artists of the Milanese duchy, so that their man- 
 ner differs essentially from that of Parma and 
 Cremona, does not invalidate the importance of 
 this fact about its origin. The name of Roman 
 School, again, has been given to Raphael and Michael 
 Angelo together with their pupils. The truth is that 
 Rome, for one brief period, during the pontificates 
 of Julius and Leo, was the focus of Italian intellect 
 Allured by the patronage of the Papal Curia, not 
 only artists, but scholars and men of letters, flocked 
 from all the cities of Italy to Rome, where they
 
 i84 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 found a nobler sphere for the exercise of their facul- 
 ties than elsewhere. But Rome, while she lent her 
 imperial quality of grandeur to the genius of her 
 aliens, was in no sense originative. Rome produced 
 no first-rate master from her own children, if we 
 except Giulio Romano. The title of originality is 
 due rather to Padua, the birthplace of Mantegna, 
 or to Parma, the city of Correggio, whose works 
 display independence of either Florentine or Vene- 
 tian traditions. Yet these great masters were 
 isolated, neither expressing in any definite form the 
 character of their districts nor founding a succes- 
 sion of local artists. Their influence was incontes- 
 tably great, but widely diffused. Bologna and Fer- 
 rara, Brescia and Bergamo, Cremona and Verona, 
 have excellent painters ; and it is not difficult to 
 show that in each of these cities art assumed specific 
 characters. Yet the interest of the schools in these 
 towns is due mainly to the varied influences brought 
 to bear upon them from Venice, Umbria, and Milan. 
 In other words, they are affiliated, each according to 
 its geographical position, to the chief originative 
 centers. 
 
 What I have advanced in the foregoing para- 
 graphs is not meant for a polemic against the ,time- 
 honored division of Italian painters into local 
 schools, but for a justification of my own proposed 
 method of treatment. Having undertaken to deal
 
 RELATION OF PAINTING TO CULTURE. 18$ 
 
 with painting as the paramount art-product of the 
 Renaissance, it will be my object to point out the 
 leading characteristics of aesthetic culture in Italy, 
 rather than to dwell upon its specific differences. 
 The Venetian painters I intend to reserve for a 
 separate chapter, devoting this and the two next to 
 the general history of the art as developed in Tus- 
 cany and propagated by Tuscan influences. 1 In 
 pursuing this plan I shall endeavor to show how 
 the successive stages in the evolution of Italian 
 painting corresponded to similar stages in the his- 
 tory of the Renaissance. Beginning as the hand- 
 maid of the Church, and stimulated by the enthu- 
 siasm of the two great popular monastic orders, 
 painting was at first devoted to embodying the 
 thoughts of mediaeval Christianity. In proportion 
 as the painters fortified themselves by study of the 
 
 1 A glance at the map shows to what a large extent the Italians 
 owed the progress of their arts to Tuscany. Pisa, as we have already 
 seen, took the lead in sculpture. Florence, at a somewhat later period, 
 revived painting, while Siena contemporaneously developed a style 
 peculiar to herself. This Sienese style thoroughly Tuscan, though 
 different from that of Florence exercised an important influence over 
 the schools of Umbria, and gave a peculiar quality to Perugian 
 painting. Through Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San 
 Sepolcro, the Florentine tradition was extended to Umbria and the 
 Roman States. Perugia might be even geographically claimed for 
 Tuscany, inasmuch as the Tiber divides the old Etrurian territory 
 from the Umbrians and the duchy of Spoleto. Lionardo was a Tuscan 
 settled as an alien in Milan. Raphael, though a native of Urbino, 
 derived his training from Florence, indirectly through his father 
 and his master Perugino, more immediately from Fra Bartolommeo 
 and Michael Angelo.
 
 1 86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 natural world, their art became more secular. Mys- 
 ticism gave way to realism. It was felt that much 
 besides religious sentiment was worthy of expression. 
 At the same time, about the year 1440, this pro- 
 cess of secularization was hastened by the influences 
 of the classical revival, renewing an interest in the 
 past life of humanity, and stirring a zeal for science. 
 The painters, on the one hand, now aimed at accu- 
 rate delineation of actual things : good perspective, 
 correct drawing, sound portraiture, occupied their 
 attention, to the exclusion of more purely spiritual 
 motives. On the other hand they conceived an 
 admiration for the fragments of the newly-discovered 
 antiques, and felt the plastic beauty of Hellenic 
 legends. It is futile to attempt, as M. Rio has done, 
 to prove that this abandonment of the religious 
 sphere of earlier art was for painting a plain decline 
 from good to bad, or to make the more or less of 
 spiritual feeling in a painter's style the test of his 
 degree of excellence ; nor can we by any sophistries 
 be brought to believe that the Popes of the fifteenth 
 century were pastoral protectors of solely Christian 
 arts. The truth is, that in the Church, in politics, 
 and in society, the fifteenth century witnessed a sen- 
 sible decrease of religious fervor, and a very con- 
 siderable corruption of morality. Painting felt this 
 change ; and the secularization, which was inevitable, 
 passed onward into paganism. Yet the art itself
 
 CIMABU&S MADONNA. 187 
 
 can not be said to have suffered, when on the thresh- 
 old of the sixteenth century stand the greatest 
 painters whom the world has known neither Catho- 
 lics nor heathens, but, in their strength of full accom- 
 plished art and science, human. After Italy, in the 
 course of that century, had been finally enslaved, 
 then, and not till then, painting suffered from the 
 general depression of the national genius. The 
 great luminaries were extinguished one by one, till 
 none were left but Michael Angelo in Rome, and 
 Tintoret in Venice. The subsequent history of 
 Italian painting is occupied with its revival under the 
 influences of the Counter Reformation, when a new 
 religious sentiment, emasculated and ecstatic, was ex- 
 pressed in company with crude naturalism and cruel 
 sensualism by Bolognese and Neapolitan painters. 
 
 I need scarcely repeat the tale of Cimabue's 
 picture, visited by Charles of Anjou, and borne 
 in triumph through the streets with trumpeters, be- 
 neath a shower of garlands, to S. Maria Novella. 1 
 Yet this was the birthday festival of nothing less 
 than what the world now values as Italian painting. 
 In this public act of joy the people of Florence 
 
 1 If Vasari is to be trusted, this visit of Charles of Anjou to 
 Cimabue's studio took place in 1267; but neither the Malespini nor 
 Villani mention it, and the old belief that the Borgo Allegri owed 
 its name to the popular rejoicing at that time is now somewhat dis- 
 credited. See Vasari, Le Monnier, 1846, vol. i. p. 225, note 4. Gino 
 Capponi, in his 'Storia della Repubblica di Firenze,' vol. i. p. 157, 
 refuses, however, to reject the legend.
 
 1 88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 recognized and paid enthusiastic honor to the art 
 arisen among them from the dead. If we rightly 
 consider the matter, it is not a little wonderful that 
 a whole community should thus have hailed the pres- 
 ence in their midst of a new spirit of power and 
 beauty. It proves the widespread sensibility of the 
 Florentines to things of beauty, and shows the sym- 
 pathy which, emanating from the people, was des- 
 tined to inspire and brace the artist for his work. 1 
 
 In a dark transept of S. Maria Novella, raised 
 by steps above the level of the church, still hangs 
 this famous Madonna of the Rucellai not far, per- 
 haps, from the spot where Boccaccio's youths and 
 maidens met that Tuesday morning in the year of 
 the great plague; nor far, again, from where the 
 solitary woman, beautiful beyond belief, conversed 
 with Machiavelli on the morning of the first of May 
 in 1527.* We who can call to mind the scenes that 
 picture has looked down upon we who have studied 
 the rise and decadence of painting throughout Italy 
 from this beginning even to the last work of the 
 latest Bolognese may do well to visit it with rever- 
 ence, and to ponder on the race of mighty masters 
 whose lineage here takes its origin. 
 
 Cimabue did not free his style from what are 
 
 1 See Capponi, vol. i. pp. 59, 78, for a description of the gay and 
 courteous living of the Florentines upon the end of the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 * Sec the ' Descrizione della Peste di Firenze.'
 
 CIMABUE AND GIOTTO. 189 
 
 called Byzantine or Romanesque mannerisms. To 
 unpracticed eyes his saints and angels, with their stiff 
 draperies and angular attitudes, though they exhibit 
 stateliness and majesty, belong to the same tribe as 
 the grim mosaics and gaunt frescoes of his predeces- 
 sors. It is only after careful comparison that we 
 discover, in this picture of the Rucellai, for example, 
 a distinctly fresh endeavor to express emotion and 
 to depict life. The outstretched arms of the infant 
 Christ have been copied from nature, not merely 
 borrowed from tradition. The six kneeling angels 
 display variety of attitude suited to several shades 
 of devout affection and adoring service. The head 
 of the Madonna, heavy as it is and conventional in 
 type, still strives to represent maternal affection 
 mingled with an almost melancholy reverence. Pro- 
 longing our study, we are led to ask whether the 
 painter might not have painted more freely had he 
 chosen whether, in fact, he was not bound down to 
 the antique mode of presentation consecrated by 
 devout tradition. This question occurs with even 
 greater force before the wall-paintings ascribed to 
 Cimabue in the church of S. Francis at Assisi. 
 
 It remained for Giotto Bondone, born at Ves- 
 pignano in 1276, just at the date of Niccola Pisano's 
 death, to carry painting in his lifetime even further 
 than the Pisan sculptor had advanced the sister art. 
 Cimabue, so runs a legend luckily not yet dis-
 
 190 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 credited, found the child Giotto among the sheep- 
 folds on the solemn Tuscan hill-side, drawing with 
 boyish art the outline of a sheep upon a stone. 1 
 The master recognized his talent, and took him 
 from his father's cottage to the Florentine bottega, 
 much as young Haydn was taken by Reuter to S. 
 Stephen's at Vienna. Gifted with a large and com- 
 prehensive intellect, capable of sustained labor, and 
 devoted with the unaffected zeal of a good crafts- 
 man to his art, Giotto, in the course of his long 
 career, filled Italy with work that taught succeeding 
 centuries of painters. As we travel from Padua in 
 the north, where his Arena Chapel sets forth the 
 legend of Mary and the life of Christ in a series of 
 incomparable frescoes, southward to Naples, where 
 he adorned the Convent of S. Chiara, we meet with 
 Giotto in almost every city. The Passion of our 
 Lord and the Allegories of S. Francis were painted 
 by him at Assisi. S. Peter's at Rome still shows 
 his mosaic of the Ship of the Church. Florence 
 raises his wonderful bell-tower, that lily among 
 campanili, to the sky; and preserves two chapels 
 of S. Croce, illuminated by him with paintings 
 from the stories of S. Francis and S. John. In the 
 
 1 I wish I could here transcribe the most beautiful passage from 
 Ruskin's 'Giotto and his Works in Padua,' pp. n, 12, describing the 
 contrast between the landscape of Valdarno and the landscape of the 
 hills of the Mugello district. I can only refer readers to the book, 
 printed for the Arundel Society, 1854.
 
 GIOTTO'S TRUTH TO NATURE. 19! 
 
 chapel of the Podesta he drew the portraits of 
 Dante, Brunetto Latini, and Charles of Valois. And 
 these are but a tithe of his productions. Nothing, 
 indeed, in the history of art is more remarkable than 
 the fertility of this originative genius, no less indus- 
 trious in labor than fruitful of results for men who 
 followed him. The sound common sense, the genial 
 temper, and the humor of the man, as we learn to 
 know him in tales made current by Vasari and the 
 novelists, help to explain how he achieved so much, 
 with energy so untiring and with excellence so even. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that Giotto and his 
 scholars, within the space of little more than half a 
 century, painted out upon the walls of the churches 
 and public palaces of Italy every great conception of 
 the Middle Ages. And this they achieved without 
 ascetic formalism, energetically, but always rev- 
 erently, aiming at expressing life and dramatizing 
 Scripture history. The tale told about Giotto's first 
 essay in drawing might be chosen as a parable : he 
 was not found beneath a church roof tracing a mo- 
 saic, but on the open mountain, trying to draw the 
 portrait of the living thing committed to his care. 
 
 What, therefore, Giotto gave to art was, before 
 all things else, vitality. His Madonnas are no 
 longer symbols of a certain phase of pious awe, but 
 pictures of maternal love. The Bride of God 
 suckles her divine infant with a smile, watches him
 
 1 92 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 playing with a bird, or stretches out her arms to 
 take him when he turns crying from the hands of 
 the circumcising priest. By choosing incidents like 
 these from real home-life, Giotto, through his paint- 
 ing, humanized the mysteries of faith, and brought 
 them close to common feeling. Nor was the change 
 less in his method than his motives. Before his day 
 painting had been without composition, without 
 charm of color, without suggestion of movement or 
 the play of living energy. He first knew how to 
 distribute figures in the given space with perfect 
 balance, and how to mass them together in animated 
 groups agreeable to the eye. He caught varied and 
 transient shades of emotion, and expressed them 
 by the posture of the body and the play of feature. 
 The hues of morning and of evening served him. 
 Of all painters he was most successful in preserving 
 the clearness and the light of pure, well-tempered 
 colors. His power of telling a story by gesture 
 and action is unique in its peculiar simplicity. There 
 are no ornaments or accessories in his pictures. The 
 whole force of the artist has been concentrated on 
 rendering the image of the life conceived by him. 
 Relying on his knowledge of human nature, and 
 seeking only to make his subject intelligible, no 
 painter is more unaffectedly pathetic, more uncon- 
 sciously majestic. While under the influence of his 
 genius, we are sincerely glad that the requisite
 
 GIOTTO'S GIFT OF LIFE. 193 
 
 science for clever imitation of landscape and archi- 
 tectural backgrounds was not forthcoming in his age. 
 Art had to go through a toilsome period of geo- 
 metrical and anatomical pedantry, before it could 
 venture, in the frescoes of Michael Angelo and 
 Raphael, to return with greater wealth of knowledge 
 on a higher level to the divine simplicity of its 
 childhood in Giotto. 
 
 In the drawing of the figure Giotto was sur- 
 passed by many meaner artists of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. Nor had he that quality of genius which 
 selects a high type of beauty, and is scrupulous to 
 shun the commonplace. The faces of even his most 
 sacred personages are often almost vulgar. In his 
 choice of models for saints and apostles we already 
 trace the Florentine instinct for contemporary por- 
 traiture. Yet, though his knowledge of anatomy 
 was defective and his taste was realistic, Giotto 
 solved the great problem of figurative art far better 
 than more learned and fastidious painters. He never 
 failed to make it manifest that what he meant to 
 represent was living. Even to the non-existent he 
 gave the semblance of reality. We can not help 
 believing in his angels leaning waist-deep from the 
 blue sky, wringing their hands in agony above the 
 Cross, pacing like deacons behind Christ when He 
 washes the feet of His disciples, or sitting watchful 
 and serene upon the empty sepulchre. He was,
 
 1 94 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 moreover, essentially a fresco-painter, working with 
 rapid decision on a large scale, aiming at broad 
 effects, and willing to sacrifice subtlety to clearness 
 of expression. The health of his whole nature and 
 his robust good sense are everywhere apparent in 
 his solid, concrete, human work of art. There is no 
 trace of mysticism, no ecstatic piety, nothing morbid 
 or hysterical, in his imagination. Imbuing whatever 
 he handled with the force and freshness of actual 
 existence, Giotto approached the deep things of the 
 Christian faith and the legend of S. Francis in the 
 spirit of a man bent simply on realizing the objects 
 of his belief as facts. His allegories of Poverty, 
 Chastity, and Obedience, at Assisi, are as beautiful 
 and powerfully felt as they are carefully constructed. 
 Yet they conceal no abstruse spiritual meaning, but 
 are plainly painted ' for the poor laity of love to 
 read.' The artist-poet who colored the virginal 
 form of Poverty, with the briars beneath her feet 
 and the roses blooming round her forehead, proved 
 by his well-known canzone that he was free from 
 monastic Quixotism, and took a practical view of 
 the value of worldly wealth. 1 His homely humor 
 saved him from the exaltation and the childishness 
 that formed the weakness of the Franciscan revival. 
 By the same firm grasp upon reality he created 
 more than mere abstractions in his chiaroscuro 
 
 1 See Trucchi, ' Poesie Italiane Inedite,' vol. ii. p. 8.
 
 S. FRANCESCO AT ASSISI. 195 
 
 figures of the virtues and vices at Padua. Fortitude 
 and Justice, Faith and Envy, are gifted by him with 
 a real corporeal existence. They seem fit to play 
 their parts with other concrete personalities upon 
 the stage of this world's history. Giotto in truth 
 possessed a share of that power which belonged to 
 the Greek sculptors. He embodied myths in phys- 
 ical forms, adequate to their intellectual meaning. 
 This was in part the secret of the influence he exer- 
 cised over the sculptors of the second period ; * and 
 had the conditions of the age been favorable to 
 such development, some of the allegorical types 
 created by him might have passed into the Pantheon 
 of popular worship as deities incarnate. 
 
 The birth of Italian painting is closely connected 
 with the religious life of the Italians. The building 
 of the church of S. Francis at Assisi gave it the 
 first great impulse ; and to the piety aroused by S. 
 Francis throughout Italy, but mostly in the valleys 
 of the Apennines, it owed its animating spirit in the 
 fourteenth century. The church of Assisi is double. 
 One structure of nave and choir and transept is 
 imposed upon another ; and the walls of both, from 
 floor to coping-stone, are covered with fresco 
 painted pictures taking here the place occupied by 
 mosaic in such churches as the cathedral of Mon- 
 reale, or by colored glass in the northern cathedrals 
 1 See above, pp. 119-122.
 
 196 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of the pointed style. Many of these frescoes date 
 from years before the birth of Giotto. Giunta the 
 Pisan, Gaddo Gaddi, and Cimabue are supposed to 
 have worked there, painfully continuing or feebly 
 struggling to throw off the decadent traditions of a 
 dying art. In their school Giotto labored, and 
 modern painting arose with the movement of new 
 life beneath his brush. Here, pondering in his 
 youth upon the story of Christ's suffering, and in 
 his later manhood on the virtues of S. Francis and 
 his vow, he learned the secret of giving the sem- 
 blance of flesh and blood reality to Christian thought. 
 His achievement was nothing less than this. The 
 Creation, the Fall, the Redemption of the World, 
 the moral discipline of man, the Judgment, and the 
 final state of bliss or misery all these he quickened 
 into beautiful and breathing forms. Those were 
 noble days, when the painter had literally acres of 
 walls given him to cover ; when the whole belief of 
 Christendom, grasped by his own faith, and firmly 
 rooted in the faith of the people round him, as yet 
 unimpaired by alien emanations from the world of 
 classic culture, had to be set forth for the first time 
 in art. His work was then a Bible, a compendium of 
 grave divinity and human history, a book embracing 
 all things needful for the spiritual and the civil life 
 of man. He spoke to men who could not read, for 
 whom there were no printed pages, but whose heart
 
 GIOTTO'S INFLUENCE. 197 
 
 received his teaching through the eye. Thus paint- 
 ing was not then what it is now, a decoration of 
 existence, but a potent and efficient agent in the 
 education of the race. Such opportunities do not 
 occur twice in the same age. Once in Greece for 
 the pagan world ; once in Italy for the modern 
 world ; that must suffice for the education of the 
 human race. 
 
 Like Niccola Pisano, Giotto not only founded a 
 school in his native city, but spread his manner far 
 and wide over Italy, so that the first period of the 
 history of painting is the Giottesque. The Gaddi 
 of Florence, Giottino, Puccio Capanna, the Loren- 
 zetti of Siena, Spinello of Arezzo, Andrea Orcagna, 
 Domenico Veneziano, and the lesser artists of the 
 Pisan Campo Santo, were either formed or influ- 
 enced by him. To give account of the frescoes of 
 these painters would be to describe how the relig- 
 ious, social, and philosophical conceptions of the 
 fourteenth century found complete expression in 
 form and color. By means of allegory and pic- 
 tured scene they drew the portrait of the Middle 
 Age in Italy, performng jointly and in combination 
 with the followers of Niccola Pisano what Dante 
 had done singly by his poetry. 
 
 It has often been remarked that the drama of the 
 life beyond this world its prologue in the courts of 
 death, the tragedy of judgment, and the final state of
 
 198 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 bliss or misery prepared for souls preoccupied the 
 mind of the Italians at the close of the Middle Ages. 
 Every city had its pictorial representation of the 
 Dies Ira ; and within this framework the artist was 
 free to set forth his philosophy of human nature, 
 adding such touches of satire or admonition as suited 
 his own temper or the circumstances of the place for 
 which he worked. Dante's poem has immortalized 
 this moment of Italian consciousness, when the belief 
 in anothei world was used to intensify the emotions 
 of this life when the inscrutable darkness toward 
 which men traveJ became for them a black and pol- 
 ished mirror, reflecting with terrible luminousness 
 the events of the present and the past. So familiar 
 had the Italians become with the theme of death 
 artistically treated that they did not shrink from 
 acted pageants of the tragedy of Hell. Giovanni 
 Villani tells us that in 1304 the companies and clubs 
 of pleasure, formed for making festival throughout 
 the town of Florence on the ist of May, contended 
 with each other for the prize of novelty and rarity in 
 sports provided for the people. Among the rest, the 
 Borgo S. Friano had it cried about the streets that 
 ' whoso wished for news from the other world should 
 find himself on May-day on the bridge Carraja or the 
 neighboring banks of Arno. And in Arno they 
 contrived stages upon boats and various small craft, 
 and made the semblance and figure of Hell there
 
 INFERNO AND PARADISO. 199 
 
 with flames and other pains and torments, with men 
 dressed as demons horrible to see ; and others had 
 the shape of naked souls ; and these they gave unto 
 those divers tortures with exceeding great crying 
 and groaning and confusion, the which seemed hate- 
 ful and appalling unto eyes and ears. The novelty 
 of the sport drew many citizens, and the bridge Car- 
 raja, then of wood, was so crowded that it brake in 
 several places and fell with the folk upon it, whereby 
 were many killed and drowned, and many were dis- 
 abled ; and as the crier had proclaimed, so now in death 
 went much folk to learn news of the other world.' 
 
 Such being the temper of the people, we find 
 that some of the greatest works of art in this age 
 were paintings of Death and Hell, Heaven and 
 Judgment. Orcagna, in the Strozzi Chapel of S. 
 Maria Novella, set forth these scenes with a wonder- 
 ful blending of beauty and grotesque invention. In 
 the treatment of the Inferno he strove to delineate 
 the whole geography of Dante's first cantica, tracing 
 the successive circles and introducing the various 
 episodes commemorated by the poet. Interesting 
 as this work may be for the illustration of the 
 Divine Comedy as understood by Dante's immediate 
 successors, we turn from it with a sense of relief to 
 admire the saints and angels ranged in goodly row, 
 ' each burning upward to his point of bliss,' whereby 
 the painter has depicted Paradise. Early Italian
 
 200 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 art has nothing more truly beautiful to offer than the 
 white-robed Madonna kneeling at the judgment-seat 
 of Christ. 1 
 
 It will be felt by every genuine student of art 
 that if Orcagna painted these frescoes in S. Maria 
 Novella, whereof there is no doubt, he could not 
 have executed the wall-paintings in the Campo 
 Santo at Pisa attributed to him by Vasari. Whether 
 Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti were the artists to 
 whom we owe those three grave and awful panels 
 may still be regarded an open question, though 
 recent investigations have rendered this hypothesis 
 
 1 The wonderful beauty of Orcagna's faces, profile after profile laid 
 together like lilies in a garden border, can only be discovered after 
 long study. It has been my good fortune to examine, through the 
 kindness of Mrs. Higford Burr, a large series of tracings, taken 
 chiefly by the Right Hon. A. H. Layard, from the frescoes of Giot- 
 tesque and other early masters, which, by the selection of simple form 
 in outline, demonstrate not only the grand composition of these 
 religious paintings, but also the incomparable loveliness of their types. 
 How great the Trecentist i were as draughtsmen, how imaginative was 
 the beauty of their conception, can be best appreciated by thus arti- 
 ficially separating their design from their coloring. The semblance 
 of archaism disappears, and leaves a vision of pure beauty, delicate 
 and spiritual. The collection to which I have alluded was made 
 some years ago, when access to the wall-paintings of Italy for the 
 purpose of tracing was still possible. It includes nearly the whole of 
 Lorenzetti's work in the Sala della Pace; much of Giotto, the Gozzoli 
 frescoes at S. Gemignano, frescoes of the Veronese masters and of 
 the Paduan Baptistery, a great deal of Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, 
 Luini, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Piuturicchio, Masolino, etc. The earliest 
 masters of Arezzo, Pisa, Siena, Urbino are copiously illustrated, while 
 few burghs or hamlets of the Tuscan and Umbrian districts have been 
 left unvisited. This unique collection belongs to Mrs. Higford Burr, 
 of Aldermaston. That it should somehow be rendered useful to art- 
 students is much to be desired.
 
 FRESCOES OF THE PIS AN CEMETERY. 201 
 
 probable. 1 At the end of the southern wall of the 
 cemetery, exposed to a cold and equal north light 
 from the cloister windows, these great compositions, 
 after the lapse of five centuries, bring us face to face 
 with the most earnest thoughts of mediaeval Chris- 
 tianity. Their main purpose seems to be to illus- 
 trate the advantage of the ascetic over the secular 
 mode of life, and to school men into living with the 
 fear of death before their eyes. The first displays 
 the solitary vigils, self-imposed penances, cruel temp- 
 tations, firm endurance, and beatific visions of the 
 anchorites in the Thebaid. The second is devoted 
 to the triumph of Death over the pomp, strength, 
 wealth, and beauty of the world. The third reveals 
 a grimly realistic and yet awfully imaginative vision 
 of judgment, such as it has rarely been granted to a 
 painter to conceive. Thus to the awakening soul of 
 the Italians, on the threshold of the modern era, 
 with the sonnets of Petrarch and the stories of 
 Boccaccio sounding in their memories, this terrible 
 master presented the three saddest phantoms of the 
 Middle Ages the specter of death omnipotent, the 
 solitude of the desert as the only refuge from a 
 sinful and doomed world, the dread of divine justice 
 inexorable and inevitable. In those piles of the 
 promiscuous and abandoned dead, those fiends and 
 
 1 See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. 445-451, for a discussion 
 of the question.
 
 202 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 angels poised in mid-air struggling for souls, those 
 blind and mutilated beggars vainly besieging Death 
 with prayers and imprecations for deliverance, while 
 she descends in her robe of woven wire to mow 
 down with her scythe the knights and ladies in their 
 garden of delight ; again in those horses snuffing at 
 the open graves, those countesses and princes face 
 to face with skeletons, those serpents coiling round 
 the flesh of what was once fair youth or maid, those 
 multitudes of guilty men and women trembling 
 beneath the trump of the archangel tearing their 
 cheeks, their hair, their breasts in agony, because 
 they see Hell through the prison-bars, and hear the 
 raging of its fiends, and feel the clasp upon their 
 wrists and ankles of clawed hairy demon hands ; in all 
 this terrific amalgamation of sinister and tragic ideas, 
 vividly presented, full of coarse dramatic power, 
 and intensified by faith in their material reality, the 
 Lorenzetti brethren, if theirs be indeed the hands 
 that painted here, summed up the nightmares of the 
 Middle Age and bequeathed an ever-memorable 
 picture of its desolate preoccupations to the rising 
 world. They have called to their aid poetry, and 
 history, and legend. Boccaccio supplies them with the 
 garden scene of youths and damsels dancing among 
 roses, while the plague is at their gates and death is 
 in the air above. From Petrarch they have bor-
 
 INTENSE EARNESTNESS OF EARLY ART. 203 
 
 rowed the form and mystic robe of Death herself. 1 
 Uguccione della Faggiuola has sat for the portrait 
 of the Captain who must quail before the terrors of 
 the tomb, and Castruccio Castracane is the strong 
 man cut off in the blossom of his age. The prisons 
 of the Visconti have disgorged their victims, cast 
 adrift with maiming that makes life unendurable but 
 does not hasten death. 2 The lazar-houses and the 
 charnels have been ransacked for forms of grisly 
 decay. Thus the whole work is not merely ' an 
 hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson ' of ascetic phi- 
 losophy ; it is also a realization of mediaeval life in 
 its crudest intensity and most uncompromising truth. 
 For mere beauty these painters had but little regard. 8 
 Their distribution of the subjects chosen for treatment 
 on each panel shows, indeed, a keen sense for the 
 value of dramatic contrast and a masterly power of 
 varying while combining the composition. Their 
 chief aim, however, is to produce the utmost realism 
 of effect, to translate the poignancy of passion, the 
 
 1 Ed una donna involta in veste negra, 
 Con un furor qua! io non so se mai 
 Al tempo de' giganti fosse a Flegra. 
 
 Trionfo della Morte, cap. i. 31. 
 
 J On a scroll above these wretches is written this legend : 
 Dacche prosperitade ci ha lasciati, 
 O morte, medicina d'ogni pena, 
 Deh vieni a darne omai 1'ultima cena. 
 
 1 This might be used as an argument against the Lorenzetti hypoth- 
 esis ; for their work at Siena is eminently beautiful.
 
 204 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 dread certainty of doom, into forms of unmistakable 
 fidelity Therefore they do not shrink from prosaic 
 and revolting details. The knight who has to hold 
 his nose above the open grave, the lady who presses 
 her cheek against her hand with a spasm of distress, 
 the horse who pricks his ears and snorts with open 
 nostrils, the grooms who start aside like savage 
 creatures, all suggest the loathsomeness of death, its 
 physical repulsiveness. In the Last Judgment the 
 same kind of dramatic force is used to heighten a 
 sublime conception. The crouching attitude and 
 the shrouded face of the Archangel Raphael, whose 
 eyes alone are visible above the hand that he has 
 thrust forth from his cloak to hide the grief he feels, 
 prove more emphatically than any less realistic 
 motive could have done how terrible, even for the 
 cherubic beings to whose guardianship the human 
 race has been assigned, will be the trumpet of the 
 wrath of God. 1 Studying these frescoes, we can not 
 but reflect what nerves, what brains, what hearts 
 encased in triple brass the men who thought and 
 felt thus must have possessed. They make us com- 
 prehend not merely the stern and savage temper of 
 the Middle Ages, but the intense and fiery ebullition 
 of the Renaissance, into which, as by a sudden 
 
 1 The attitude and the eyes of this archangel have an imaginative 
 potency beyond that of any other motive used by any painter to suggest 
 the terror of the Dies Irae. Simplicity and truth of vision in the artist 
 have here touched the very summit of intense dramatic presentation.
 
 THEOLOGY AND S. DOMINIC. 205 
 
 liberation, so much imprisoned pent-up force was 
 driven. 
 
 A different but scarcely less important phase of 
 mediaeval thought is imaged in the frescoes of the 
 Capella degli Spagnuoli in S. Maria Novella. 1 Dog- 
 matic theology is here in the ascendant. While S. 
 Francis bequeathed a legend of singular suavity and 
 beauty, overflowing with the milk of charity and 
 mildness, to the Church, S. Dominic assumed the 
 attitude of the saint militant and orthodox. Dante's 
 words about him 
 
 L'amoroso drudo 
 Delia fede Cristiana, il santo atleta, 
 Benigno a* suoi, ed a' nemici crudo,* 
 
 omit nothing that is needed to characterize the im- 
 
 1 The 'Triumph of S. Thomas Aquinas,' in this cloister chapel, has 
 long been declared the work of Taddeo Gaddi. ' The Triumph of the 
 Church Militant,' and the 'Consecration of S. Dominic,' used to be 
 ascribed, on the faith of Vasari, to Simone Martini of Siena. Inde- 
 pendently of its main subject, this vast wall-painting is specially inter- 
 esting on account of its portraits. The work has a decidedly Sienese 
 character; but recent critics are inclined to assign it to a certain 
 Andrea, of Florence. See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. 89. The 
 same critics doubt the hand of Taddeo Gaddi in the ' Triumph of S. 
 Thomas,' vol. i. p. 374, and remark that ' these productions of the art 
 of the fourteenth century are, indeed, second-class works, executed by 
 pupils of the Sienese and Florentine school, and unworthy of the high 
 praise which has ever been given to them.' Whatever may be ulti- 
 mately thought about the question of their authorship and pictorial 
 merit, their interest to the student of Italian painting in relation to 
 mediaeval thought will always remain indisputable. Few buildings 
 in the length and breadth of Italy possess such claims on our attention 
 as the Capella degli Spagnuoli. 
 
 The amorous fere of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, gentle 
 to his own, and to his foes cruel.
 
 ao6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 pression produced upon the Christian world by this 
 remorseless foe of heresy, this champion of the faith 
 who dealt in butcheries and burnings. S. Francis 
 taught love ; S. Dominic taught wrath ; and both, 
 perhaps, were needed for the safety of the mediaeval 
 Church the one by resuscitating the spirit of the 
 Gospels, the other by resisting the intrusion of alien 
 ideals ere the time for their triumph had arrived. 
 What the painters of these frescoes undertook to 
 delineate for the Dominicans of Florence was the 
 fabric of society sustained and held together by 
 the action of inquisitors and doctors issued from 
 their order. The Pope with his Cardinals, the Em- 
 peror with his Council, represent the two chief forces 
 of Christendom, as conceived by the mediaeval jurists 
 and the school of Dante. Seated on thrones, they 
 are ready to rise in defense of Holy Church, sym- 
 bolized by a picture of S. Maria del Fiore. At their 
 feet the black and white hounds of the Dominican 
 order Domini canes, according to the monkish 
 pun are hunting heretical wolves. Opposite this 
 painting is the apotheosis of S. Thomas Aquinas. 
 Beneath the footstool of this ' dumb ox of Sicily,' as 
 he was called, grovel the heresiarchs Arius, Sabel- 
 lius, Averrhoes. At again a lower level, as though 
 supporting the saint on either hand, are ranged 
 seven sacred and seven profane sciences, each with 
 its chief representative. Thus Rhetoric and Cicero,
 
 TRIUMPH OF S. THOMAS AQUINAS. 207 
 
 Civil Law and Justinian, Speculative Theology and 
 the Areopagite, Practical Theology and Peter Lom- 
 bard, Geometry and Euclid, Arithmetic and Abra- 
 ham, are grouped together. It will be seen that the 
 whole learning of the Middle Age its philosophy 
 as well as its divinity is here combined as in a 
 figured abstract, for the wise to comment on and for 
 the simple to peruse. None can avoid drawing the 
 lesson that knowledge exists for the service of the 
 Church, and that the Church, while she instructs 
 society, will claim complete obedience to her de- 
 crees. The ipse dixit of the Dominican author of 
 the Summa is law. 
 
 Such frescoes, by no means uncommon in Do- 
 minican cloisters, still retain great interest for the 
 student of scholastic thought. In the church of S. 
 Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome, where Galileo was 
 afterward compelled to sign his famous retractation, 
 Filippino Lippi painted another triumph of S. 
 Thomas, conceived in the spirit of Taddeo Gaddi's, 
 but expressed with the freedom of the middle Re- 
 naissance. Nor should we neglect to notice the 
 remarkable picture by Traini in S. Caterina at Pisa. 
 Here the doctor of Aquino is represented in an 
 aureole surrounded by a golden sphere or disk, on the 
 edge of which are placed the four evangelists, together 
 with Moses and S. Paul. 1 At his side, within the 
 
 1 Every thing outside this golden region is studded with stars to 
 signify an InovpdvioS rdiroS, or heaven of heavens. S. Thomas and the
 
 208 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 burnished sphere, Plato and Aristotle stand upright, 
 holding the Timceus and the Ethics in their hands. 
 Christ in glory is above the group, emitting from His 
 mouth three rays upon the head of S. Thomas. 
 Single rays descend in like manner upon the evan- 
 gelists and Moses and S. Paul. They, like Plato 
 and Aristotle, hold open books ; and rays from these 
 eight volumes converge upon the head of the an- 
 gelical doctor, who becomes the focus, as it were, of 
 all the beams sent forth from Christ and from the 
 classic teachers, whether directly effused or trans- 
 mitted through the writers of the Bible. S. Thomas 
 lastly holds a book open in his hand, and carries 
 others on his lap ; while lines of light are shed from 
 these upon two bands of the faithful, chiefly Do- 
 minican monks, arranged on each side of his footstool. 
 Averrhoes lies prostrate beneath his feet, with his 
 book face downward, lightning-smitten by a shaft 
 from the leaves of the volume in the saint's hand, 
 whereon is written : Veritatem meditabitur guttur 
 meum et labia mea detestabuntur impiuml 
 
 This picture, afterward repeated by Benozzo 
 Gozzoli with some change in the persons, 2 has been 
 
 Greeks are inside the golden sphere of science, and below on earth are 
 the heresiarchs and faithful. Rosini gives a faithful outline of this 
 picture in his Atlas of Illustrations. 
 
 ' ' For my mouth shall speak truth ; and wickedness is an abomina- 
 tion to my lips.' Prov. viii. 7. 
 
 2 Gozzoli's picture is now in the Louvre. I think Guillaume de 
 Saint Amour takes the place of Averrhoes.
 
 AVERRHOISM IN ART. 209 
 
 minutely described, because it is important to bear 
 in mind the measure of inspiration conceded by the 
 mediaeval Church to the fathers of Greek philosophy, 
 and her utter detestation of the peripatetic traditions 
 transmitted through the Arabic by Averrhoes. Aver- 
 rhoes, though Dante placed him with the great souls 
 of pagan civilization in the first circle of Inferno, 1 
 was regarded as the protagonist of infidelity. The 
 myth of incredulity that gathered round his memory 
 and made him hated in the Middle Ages has 
 been traced with exquisite delicacy by Renan, 2 who 
 shows that his name became a rallying-point for 
 freethinkers. Scholars like Petrarch were eager to 
 confute his sect, and artists used him as a symbol of 
 materialistic disbelief. Thus we meet with Averrhoes 
 among the lost souls in the Pisan Campo Santo, 
 distinguished as usual by his turban and long beard. 
 On the other hand, the frank acceptance of pagan 
 philosophy, in so far as it could be accommodated to 
 the doctrine of the Church, finds full expression in 
 the art of this early period. On the walls of the 
 Palazzo Pubblico at Siena were painted the figures 
 of Curius Dentatus and Cato, 3 while the pavement 
 
 1 Inf. iv. 144. 
 
 4 ' Averroes et 1'AverroIsme,' pp. 236-316. 
 
 * In the chapel. They are the work of Taddeo di Bartolo, and 
 bear this inscription : ' Specchiatevi in costoro, voi che reggete.' The 
 mediaeval painters of Italy learned lessons of civility and government 
 as willingly from classical tradition, as they deduced the lessons of 
 piety and godly living from the Bible. Herein they were akin to
 
 210 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of the Duomo showed Hermes Trismegistus in- 
 structing both a pagan and a Christian, and Socrates 
 ascending the steep hill of virtue. Perugino, some 
 years later, decorated the Sala del Cambio at Peru- 
 gia with the heroes, philosophers, and worthies of 
 the ancient world. We are thus led by a gradual 
 progress up to the final achievement of Raphael in 
 the Vatican. Separating the antique from the 
 Christian tradition, but placing them upon an 
 equality in his art, Raphael made the School of 
 Athens an epitome of Greek and Roman wisdom, 
 while in the Dispute of the Sacrament he symbolized 
 the Church in heaven and Church on earth. 
 
 Another class of ideas, no less illustrative of 
 medievalism, can be studied in the Palazzo Pub- 
 blico at Siena. There, on the walls of the Sala 
 della Pace or de' Nove, may be seen the frescoes 
 whereby Ambrogio Lorenzetti expressed theories of 
 society and government peculiar to his age. 1 The 
 panels are three in number. In the first the painter 
 has delineated the Commune of Siena by an im- 
 perial male figure in the prime of life, throned on a 
 judgment-seat, holding a scepter in his right hand 
 and a medallion of Justice in his left. 2 He wears 
 
 Dante, who chose Virgil for the symbol of the human understanding, 
 and Beatrice for the symbol of divine wisdom, revealed to man in 
 Theology. 
 
 1 He began his work in 1 337. 
 
 1 A similar mode of symbolizing the Commune is chosen in the bass-
 
 POLITICAL THEORIES IN ART. 211 
 
 no coronet, but a burgher's cap ; and beneath his 
 footstool are the Roman twins, suckled by the she- 
 wolf. 1 Above his head in the air float Faith, 
 Charity, and Hope the Christian virtues ; while 
 Justice, Temperance, Magnanimity, Prudence, For- 
 titude, and Peace, six women, crowned, and with 
 appropriate emblems, are enthroned beside him. 
 The majestic giant of the Commune towers above 
 them all in bulk and stature, as though to indicate 
 the people's sovereignty. The virtues are his assess- 
 ors and inspirers he is king. Beneath the dais 
 occupied by these supreme personages are ranged 
 on either hand mailed and visored cavaliers, mounted 
 on chargers, the guardians of the state. All the 
 citizens in their degrees advance toward the throne, 
 carrying between them, pair by pair, a rope received 
 from the hands of Concord ; while some who have 
 transgressed her laws are being brought with bound 
 hands to the judgment-seat. Concord herself, being 
 less the virtue of the government than of the gov- 
 erned, is seated on a line with the burghers in a 
 place apart beneath the throne of Civil Justice, who 
 is allegorized as the dispenser of rewards and punish- 
 ments, as well as controller of the armed force and 
 
 reliefs of Archbishop Tarlati's tomb at Arezzo, where the discord of 
 the city is represented by an old man of gigantic stature, throned and 
 maltreated by the burghers, who are tearing out his hair by handfuls. 
 Over this figure is written ' II Comune Pelato.' 
 
 1 These were adopted as the ensign of Siena, in the Middle Ages.
 
 212 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the purse of the community. The whole of this 
 elaborate allegory suffers by the language of descrip- 
 tion. Those who have seen it, and who are familiar 
 with Sienese chronicles, feel that, artistically la- 
 bored as the painter's work may be, every figure 
 had a passionate and intense meaning for him. 1 His 
 picture is the epitome of government conducted by a 
 sovereign people. Nor can we fail to be struck with 
 the beauty of some details. The pale, earnest faces 
 of the horsemen are eminently chivalrous, with 
 knightly honor written on their calm and fearless 
 features. Peace, reclining at ease upon her pillow, 
 is a lovely woman in loose raiment, her hair wreathed 
 with blossoms, in her hand an olive-branch, her feet 
 reposing upon casque and shield. She is like a 
 painted statue, making us wonder whether the artist 
 had not copied her from the Aphrodite of Lysippus, 
 ere the Sienese destroyed this statue in their dread 
 of paganism. 2 
 
 1 In the year 1336, just before Ambrogio began to paint, the 
 Sienese Republic had concluded a league with Florence for the main- 
 tenance of the Guelf party. The Monte de' Nove still ruled the city 
 with patriotic spirit and equity, and had not yet become a forceful 
 oligarchy. The power of the Visconti was still in its cradle ; the great 
 plague had not devastated Tuscany. As early as 1355 the whole of 
 the fair order represented by Ambrogio was shaken to the foundation, 
 and Siena deserved the words applied to it by De Comines. See 
 ' Aje of the Despots,' p. 207, note 2. 
 
 9 Rio, perversely bent on stigmatizing whatever in Italian art 
 wavors of the Renaissance, depreciates this lovely form of Peace. 
 ' L'Art Chretien,' vol. i. p. 57.
 
 GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT. 213 
 
 In the other two panels of this hall Ambrogio 
 Lorenzetti painted the contrast of good and bad 
 government, harmony and discord. A city full of 
 brawls and bloodshed is set in opposition to one 
 where the dance and viol do not cease. Merchants 
 are plundered as they issue from the gates on one 
 side ; on the other, trains of sumpter-mules are 
 securely winding along mountain paths. Tyranny, 
 with all the vices for his council and with Terror for 
 prime minister, presides over the ill-governed town. 
 The burghers of the happy commune follow trade 
 or pleasure, as they list ; a beautiful winged genius, 
 inscribed Securitas, floats above their citadel. It 
 should be added that in both these pictures the 
 architecture is the same ; for the painter has de- 
 signed to teach how different may be the state of 
 one and the same city according to its form of gov- 
 ernment. Such, then, were the vivid images whereby 
 Ambrogio Lorenzetti expressed the mediaeval curse 
 of discord, and the ideal of a righteous rule. It is 
 only necessary to read the Diario Sanese of Alle- 
 gretto Allegretti in order to see that he drew no 
 fancy picture. The torchlight procession of burghers 
 swearing amity by couples in the cathedral there 
 described receives exact pictorial illustration in the 
 fresco of the Sala della Pace. 1 Siena, by her bloody 
 
 1 See Muratori, vol. xxiii. or the passage translated by me in the 
 'Age of the Despots,' p. 616.
 
 a 14 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 factions and her passionate peacemakings, expressed 
 in daily action what the painter had depicted on her 
 palace walls. 
 
 The method of treatment adopted for these 
 chapters has obliged me to give priority to Florence, 
 and to speak of the two Lorenzetti, Pietro in the 
 Pisan Campo Santo and Ambrogio in the Sala della 
 Pace at Siena, as though they were followers of 
 Giotto ; so true is it that the main currents of 
 Tuscan art were governed by Florentine influences, 
 and that Giotto's genius made itself felt in all the 
 work of his immediate successors. It must, how- 
 ever, be observed that painting had an independent 
 origin among the Sienese, and that Guido da Siena 
 may claim to rank even earlier than Cimabue. 1 In 
 the year 1260, just before engaging in their duel 
 with Florence, the Sienese dedicated their city to 
 the Virgin ; and the victory of Montaperti, following 
 immediately upon this vow, gave a marked impulse 
 to their piety. 2 The early masters of Siena devoted 
 themselves to religious paintings, especially to pic- 
 tures of Madonna suited for chapels and oratories. 
 We find upon these mystic panels an ecstasy of 
 
 1 His 'Madonna' in S. Domenico is dated 1221. For a full dis- 
 cussion of Guido da Siena's date, see Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. 
 pp. 180-185. 
 
 * On their coins the Sienese struck this legend : ' Sena vetus Civi- 
 tas Virginis.' It will be remembered how the Florentines, two centu- 
 ries and a half later, dedicated their city to Christ as king.
 
 DUCCIO'S MADONNA. 215 
 
 adoration and a depth of fervor which are alien to 
 the more sober spirit of Florence, combined with an 
 almost infantine delight in pure bright colors, and 
 in the decorative details of the miniaturist. 
 
 The first great painter among the Sienese was 
 Duccio di Buoninsegna. 1 The completion of his 
 masterpiece a picture of the Majesty of the Virgin, 
 executed for the high altar of the Duomo marked 
 an epoch in the history of Siena. Nearly two years 
 had been spent upon it ; the painter receiving six- 
 teen soldi a day from the Commune, together with 
 his materials, in exchange for his whole time and 
 skill and labor. At last, on June 9, 1310, it was 
 carried from Duccio's workshop to its place in the 
 cathedral. A procession was formed by the clergy, 
 with the archbishop at their head, followed by the 
 magistrates of the Commune, and the chief men of 
 the Monte de' Nove. These great folk crowded 
 round their lady ; after came a multitude of burghers 
 bearing tapers ; while the rear was brought up by 
 women and children. The bells rang and trumpets 
 blew as this new image of the Sovereign Mistress of 
 Siena was borne along the summer-smiling streets of 
 her metropolis to take its throne in her high temple. 
 Duccio's altar-piece presented on one face to the 
 spectator a Virgin seated with the infant Christ 
 upon her lap, and receiving the homage of the patron 
 
 ' Date of birth unknown ; date of death, about 13201
 
 216 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 saints of Siena On the other, he depicted the 
 principal scenes of the Gospel story and the Passion 
 of our Lord in twenty-eight compartments. What 
 gives peculiar value to this elaborate work of Sienese 
 art is that in it Duccio managed to combine the tra- 
 dition of an early hieratic style of painting with all 
 the charm of brilliant coloring, and with dramatic 
 force of presentation only rivaled at that time by 
 Giotto. Independently of Giotto, he performed at a 
 stroke what Cimabue and his pupil had achieved for 
 the Florentines, and bequeathed to the succeeding 
 painters of Siena a tradition of art beyond which 
 they rarely passed. 
 
 Far more than their neighbors at Florence, the 
 Sienese remained fettered by the technical methods 
 and the pietistic formulae of the earliest religious 
 painting. To make their conventional representa- 
 tions of Madonna's love and woe and glory burn 
 with all the passion of a fervent spirit, and to testify 
 their worship by the oblation of rich gifts in color- 
 ing and gilding massed around her, was their earnest 
 aim. It followed that, when they attempted subjects 
 on a really large scale, the faults of the miniaturist 
 clung about them. I need hardly say that Ambrogio 
 and Pietro Lorenzetti form notable exceptions to 
 this general statement. It may be applied, however, 
 with some truth to Simone Martini, the painter, who 
 during his lifetime enjoyed a celebrity only second to
 
 SIMOME MARTINI. $17 
 
 that of Giotto. 1 Like Giotto, Simone exercised his 
 art in many parts of Italy. Siena, Pisa, Assisi, 
 Orvieto, Naples, and Avignon can still boast of wall 
 and easel pictures from his hand ; and though it has 
 been suggested that he took no part in the decora- 
 tion of the Capella degli Spagnuoli, the impress of 
 his manner remains at Florence in those noble fres- 
 coes of the Church Militant and the Consecration of 
 S. Dominic?' Simone's first undisputed works are 
 to be seen at Siena and at Assisi, where we learn 
 what he could do as &frescante in competition with 
 the ablest Florentines. In the Palazzo Pubblico of 
 his native city he painted a vast picture of the Virgin 
 enthroned beneath a canopy and surrounded by 
 saints; 3 while at Assisi he put forth his whole power 
 in portraying the legend of S. Martin. In all his 
 
 1 He is better known as Simone Memmi, a name given to him by 
 a mistake of Vasari's. He was born in 1283, at Siena. He died in 
 1344 at Avignon. Petrarch mentions his portrait of Madonna Laura, 
 in the 49th and 5Oth sonnets of the Rime in Vita di Madonna Laura. 
 In another place he uses these words about Simone : ' duos ego novi 
 pictores egregios, nee formosos, Jottum Florentinum civem, cujus in- 
 ter modernos fama ingens est, et Simonem Senensem.' Epist. Fam. 
 lib. v. 17, p. 653. Petrarch proceeds to mention that he has also 
 known sculptors, and asserts their inferiority to painters in modern 
 times. 
 
 2 See above, p. 205. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle reject, not 
 without reason, as it seems to me, the tradition that Simone painted 
 the frescoes of S. Ranieri in the Campo Santo at Pisa. See vol. ii. p. 
 83. What remains of his work at Pisa is an altar-piece in S. Caterina. 
 
 3 To Simone is also attributed the interesting portrait of Guidoric- 
 cio Fogliani de' Ricci, on horseback, in the Sala del Consiglio. This, 
 however, has been so much repainted as to have lost its character.
 
 2i8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 paintings we trace the skill of an exquisite and pa- 
 tient craftsman, elaborately careful to finish his work 
 with the utmost refinement, sensitive to feminine 
 beauty, full of delicate inventiveness, and gifted with 
 a rare feeling for grace. These excellent qualities 
 tend, however, toward affectation and over-softness ; 
 nor are they fortified by such vigor of conception 
 or such majesty in composition as belong to the 
 greatest trecentisti. The Lorenzetti alone soared 
 high above the Sienese mannerism into a region of 
 masculine imaginative art. We feel Simone's charm 
 mostly in single heads and detached figures, some 
 of which at Assisi have incomparable sweetness. 
 Molles Sence, the delicate and femininely variable, 
 fond of all things brilliant, and unstable through 
 defect of sternness, was the fit mother of this ingeni- 
 ous and delightful master. 
 
 After the days of Duccio and Simone Martini, 
 of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, were over, there 
 remained but little for the Sienese to do in painting. 
 Taddeo di Bartolo continued the tradition of Duccio, 
 as the later Giottesques continued that of Giotto. 
 His most remarkable wall-painting is a fresco of the 
 Apostles visiting the Virgin, the motive of which is 
 marked by great originality. 1 Our Lady is seated in 
 an open loggia with a company of holy men and 
 women round her. Descending from the sky and 
 
 1 In S. Francesco at Pisa.
 
 SPINELLO ARET1NO. 219 
 
 floating through the arches are three of the Apostles, 
 while one who has just alighted from his aerial transit 
 kneels and folds his hands in adoration. Seldom 
 have the longing and the peace of loving worship 
 been more poetically expressed than here. The 
 seated, kneeling, standing, and flying figures are 
 admirably grouped together; their draperies are 
 dignified and massive ; and the architectural acces- 
 sories help the composition by dividing it into three 
 balanced sections. 
 
 Such power of depicting movement was rare in 
 the fourteenth century. To find its analogue, we 
 must betake ourselves to the frescoes of Spinello 
 Aretino, a master more decidedly Giottesque than 
 his contemporary, Taddeo di Bartolo. 1 A Gabriel, 
 rushing down from heaven to salute Madonna, with 
 all the whirr of archangelic pinions and the glory of 
 Paradise around him, is a fine specimen of Spinello's 
 vehemence. The same quality, more tempered, is 
 noticeable in his frescoes of the legend of S. Ephe- 
 sus at Pisa. 2 Few faces in the paintings of any 
 period are more fascinating than the profiles under 
 steel-blue battle-caps of that god-like pair the 
 knightly saint and the Archangel Michael break- 
 ing by the irresistible force of their onset and their 
 
 1 Spinello degli Spinelli was born of a Ghibelline family, exiled from 
 Florence, who settled at Arezzo, about 1308. He died at Arezzo in 
 1410, aged 92, according to some computations. 
 
 1 South wall of the Cainpo Santo, on the; left hnr.d of the entrance.
 
 220 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 calm youthful beauty through the mailed ranks of 
 the Sardinian pagans. Spinello was essentially a 
 warlike painter ; among the best of his compositions 
 may be named the series of pictures from the history 
 of the Venetian campaign against Frederick Bar- 
 barossa. 1 It is a pity that the war of liberation 
 carried on by the Lombard communes with the Em- 
 pire should have left but little trace on Italian art ; 
 and therefore these paintings of Spinello, in addition 
 to their intrinsic merit, have rare historical interest. 
 Delighting in the gleam of armor and the shock of 
 speared warriors, Spinello communicated something 
 of this fiery spirit even to his saints. The monks of 
 Samminiato near Florence employed him in 1388 to 
 paint their newly-finished sacristry with the legend 
 of S. Benedict. In the execution of this task 
 Spinello displayed his usual grandeur and vigor, 
 treating the gray-robed brethren of Monte Cassino 
 like veritable champions of a militant Church. When 
 he died, in 1410, it might have been truly said that 
 the flame of the torch kindled by Giotto was at last 
 extinguished. 
 
 The student of history can not but notice with 
 surprise that a city famed like Siena for its vanity, 
 its factious quarrels, and its delicate living should 
 have produced an almost passionately ardent art of 
 
 1 In the Sala di Balia of the public palace at Siena.
 
 SIENA AND PERUGIA. 221 
 
 piety. 1 The same reflections are suggested at Pe- 
 rugia, torn by the savage feuds of the Oddi and 
 Baglioni, at warfare with Assisi, reduced to exhaus- 
 tion by the discords of jealous parties, yet memorable 
 in the history of painting as the head-quarters of the 
 pietistic Umbrian school. The contradiction is, how- 
 ever, in both cases more apparent than real. The 
 people both of Siena and Perugia were highly im- 
 pressible and emotional, quick to obey the prompt- 
 ings of their passion, whether it took the form of 
 hatred or of love, of spiritual fervor or of carnal 
 violence. Yielding at one moment to the preachings 
 of S. Bernardino, at another to the persuasions of 
 Grifonettp degli Baglioni, the Perugians won the 
 character of being fiends or angels according to the 
 temper of their leaders; while Siena might boast 
 with equal right of having given birth to S. Catherine 
 and nurtured Beccadelli. The religious feeling was 
 a passion with them on a par with all the other 
 movements of their quick and mobile temperament : 
 it needed ecstatic art for its interpretation. What 
 was cold and sober would not satisfy the men of 
 these two cities. The Florentines, more justly 
 balanced, less abandoned to the frenzies of impas- 
 sioned impulse, less capable of feeling the rapt 
 exaltation of the devotee, expressed themselves in 
 
 'See 'Inferno,' xxix. 121 ; the sonnets on the months by Cene 
 dalla Chitarra, 'Poeti del Primo Secolo,' vol. ii. pp. 196-207; the epi 
 thet Molles Settee, given by Beccadelli ; and the remarks of De Comines
 
 222 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 art distinguished for its intellectual power, its sanity, 
 its scientific industry, its adequacy to average human 
 needs. Therefore Florentine influences determined 
 the course of painting in Central Italy. Therefore 
 Giotto, who represented the Florentine genius in the 
 fourteenth century, set his stamp upon the Loren- 
 zetti. The mystic painters of Umbria and Siena 
 have their high and honored place in the history of 
 Italian art. They supply an element which, except 
 in the work of Fra Angelico, was defective at Flor- 
 ence ; but to the Florentines was committed the 
 great charge of interpreting the spirit of Italian civili- 
 zation in all its branches, not for the cloister only 
 or the oratory, but for humanity at large, through 
 painting. 
 
 Giotto and his followers, then, in the fourteenth 
 century painted, as we have seen, the religious, philo- 
 sophical, and social conceptions of their age. As 
 artists, their great discovery was the secret of de- 
 picting life. The ideas they expressed belonged to 
 the Middle Ages. But by their method and their 
 spirit they anticipated the Renaissance. In execut- 
 ing their work upon the walls of palaces and churches, 
 they employed a kind of fresco. Fresco was essen- 
 tially the Florentine vehicle of expression. Among 
 the peoples of Central Italy it took the place of 
 mosaic in Sicily, Ravenna, and Venice, as the means 
 of communicating ideas by forms to the unlettered
 
 FRESCO. 223 
 
 laity, and as affording to the artist the widest and 
 the freest sphere for the expression of his thoughts. 1 
 
 1 I have not thought it necessary to distinguish between tempera 
 and fresco. In tempera painting the colors were mixed with egg, 
 gum, and other vehicles dissolved in water, and laid upon a dry 
 ground. In fresco painting the colors, mixed only with water, were 
 laid upon plaster while still damp. The latter process replaced the 
 former for wall-paintings in the fourteenth century.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Mediaeval motives exhausted New Impulse toward Technical Perfec 
 tion Naturalists in Painting Intermediate Achievement needed 
 for the Great Age of Art Positive Spirit of the Fifteenth Century 
 Masaccio The Modern Manner Paolo Uccello Perspective 
 Realistic Painters The Model Piero della Francesca His 
 Study of Form Resurrection at Borgo San Sepolcro Melozzo da 
 Forli Squarcione at Padua Gentile da Fahriano Fra Angelico 
 Benozzo Gozzoli His Decorative Style Lippo Lippi Frescoes 
 at Prato and Spoleto Filippino Lippi Sandro Botticelli His 
 value for the Student of Renaissance Fancy His feeling for Myth- 
 ology Piero di Cosimo Domenico Ghirlandajo In what sense 
 he sums up the Age Prosaic Spirit Florence hitherto supreme in 
 Painting Extension of Art activity throughout Italy Medicean 
 Patronage. 
 
 AFTER the splendid outburst of painting in the first 
 half of the fourteenth century, there came a lull. 
 The thoughts and sentiments of mediaeval Italy had 
 been now set forth in art. The sincere and simple 
 style of Giotto was worked out. But the new culture 
 of the Revival had not as yet sufficiently penetrated 
 the Italians for the painters to express it ; nor had 
 they mastered the technicalities of their craft in such 
 a manner as to render the delineation of more com- 
 plex forms of beauty possible. The years between 
 1400 and 1470 may be roughly marked out as the
 
 NEW AIMS IN ART. 225 
 
 second period of great activity in painting. At this 
 time sculpture, under the hands of Ghiberti, Do- 
 natello, and Luca della Robbia, had reached a higher 
 point than the sister art. The debt the sculptors 
 owed to Giotto they now repaid in full measure to 
 his successors, in obedience to the law whereby 
 sculpture, though subordinated, as in Italy, to paint- 
 ing, is more precocious in its evolution. One of the 
 most marked features of this period was the progress 
 in the art of design, due to bronze modeling and 
 bass-relief; for the painters, laboring in the work- 
 shops of the goldsmiths and the stone-carvers, 
 learned how to study the articulation of the human 
 body, to imitate the nude, and to aim by means of 
 graduated light and dark at rendering the effect of 
 roundness in their drawing. The laws of perspective 
 and foreshortening were worked out by Paolo Uccello 
 and Brunelleschi. New methods of coloring were 
 attempted by the PeselliandthePollajuoli. Abandon- 
 ing the conventional treatment of religious themes, 
 the artists began to take delight in motives drawn 
 from every-day experience. It became the fashion 
 to introduce contemporary costumes, striking por- 
 traits, and familiar incidents into sacred subjects, so 
 that many pictures of this period, though worthless 
 to the student of religious art, are interesting 
 for their illustration of Florentine custom and char- 
 acter. At the same time the painters began to
 
 226 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 imitate landscape and architecture, loading the back- 
 ground of their frescoes with pompous vistas of 
 palaces and city towers, or subordinating their 
 figures to fantastic scenery of wood and rock and 
 sea-shore. Many were naturalists, delighting, like 
 Gentile da Fabriano, in the delineation of field 
 flowers and living creatures, or, like Piero di Cosimo, 
 in the portrayal of things rare and curious. Gardens 
 pleased their eyes, and birds and beasts and insects. 
 Whole menageries and aviaries, for instance, were 
 painted by Paolo Uccello. Others, again, aban- 
 doned the old ground of Christian story for the 
 tales of Greece and Rome ; and not the least charm- 
 ing products of the time are antique motives treated 
 with the freshness of romantic feeling. We look in 
 vain for the allegories of the Giottesque masters ; 
 that stage of thought has been traversed, and a new 
 cycle of poetic ideas, fanciful, idyllic, corresponding 
 to Boiardo's episodes rather than to Dante's vision, 
 opens for the artist. Instead of seeking to set forth 
 vast subjects with the equality of mediocrity, like 
 the Gaddi, or to invent architectonic compositions 
 embracing the whole culture of their age, like the 
 Lorenzetti, the painters were now bent upon realiz- 
 ing some special quality of beauty, expressing some 
 fantastic motive, or solving some technical problem 
 of peculiar difficulty. They had, in fact, outgrown 
 the childhood of their art ; and while they had not
 
 THE MIDDLE PERIOD OF EFFORT. 227 
 
 yet attained to mastery, had abandoned the impos- 
 sible task of making it the medium of universal 
 expression. In this way the manifold efforts of the 
 workers in the first half of the fifteenth century pre- 
 pared the ground for the great painters of the Golden 
 Age. It remained for Raphael and his contem- 
 poraries to achieve the final synthesis of art in 
 masterpieces of consummate beauty. But this they 
 could not have done without the aid of those innu- 
 merable intermediate laborers whose productions 
 occupy in art the place of Bacon's media axiomata 
 in science. Remembering this, we ought not to 
 complain that the purpose of painting at this epoch 
 was divided, or that its achievements were imper- 
 fect. The whole intellectual conditions of the coun- 
 try were those of growth, experiment, preparation, 
 and acquisition, rather than of full accomplishment. 
 What happened in the field of painting was happen- 
 ing also in the field of scholarship ; and we have 
 good reason to be thankful that, by the very nature 
 of the arts, these tentative endeavors have a more 
 enduring charm than the dull tomes of contemporary 
 students. Nor, again, is it rational to regret that 
 painting, having started with the sincere desire of ex- 
 pressing the hopes and fears that agitate the soul of 
 man, and raise him to a spiritual region, should now 
 be occupied with lessons in perspective and anatomy. 
 In the twofold process of discovering the world and
 
 aa8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 man, this dry ground had inevitably to be explored, 
 and its exploration could not fail to cost the sacrifice 
 of much that was impassioned and imaginative in 
 the earlier and less scientific age of art. 1 The spirit 
 of Cosimo de' Medici, almost cynical in its posi- 
 tivism, the spirit of Sixtus IV., almost godless in its 
 egotism, were abroad in Italy at this period ; 2 indeed 
 the fifteenth century presents at large a spectacle of 
 prosaic worldliness and unideal aims. Yet the work 
 done by the artists was the best work of the epoch, 
 far more fruitful of results and far more perma- 
 nently valuable than that of Filelfo inveighing in 
 filthy satires against his personal foes, or of Becca- 
 delli endeavoring to inoculate modern literature 
 with the virus of pagan vices. Petrarch in the four- 
 teenth century had preached the evangel of human- 
 ism ; Giotto in the fourteenth century had given life 
 to painting. The students of the fifteenth, though 
 their spirit was so much baser and less large than 
 Petrarch's, were following in the path marked out 
 for them and leading forward to Erasmus. The 
 painters of the fifteenth, though they lacked the unity 
 of aim and freshness of their master, were learning 
 what was needful for the crowning and fulfillment of 
 his labors on a loftier stage. 
 
 Foremost among the pioneers of Renaissance- 
 
 1 See ' Age of the Despots,' p. 17. 
 
 ' See 'Revival of Learning,' pp. 168-178.
 
 MASACC1O. 229 
 
 painting, towering above them all by head and 
 shoulders, like Saul among the tribes of Israel, 
 stands Masaccio. 1 The Brancacci chapel of the 
 Carmine at Florence, painted in fresco almost en- 
 tirely by his hand, was the school where all suc- 
 ceeding artists studied, and whence Raphael deigned 
 to borrow the composition and the figures of a por- 
 tion of his Cartoons. The Legend of S. Catherine^ 
 painted by Masaccio in S. Clemente at Rome, 
 though an earlier work, is scarcely less remarkable 
 as evidence that a new age had begun for art. 
 In his frescoes the qualities essential to the style 
 of the Renaissance what Vasari calls the modern 
 manner appear precociously full-formed. Besides 
 life and nature they have dignity and breadth, the 
 grand and heightened manner of emancipated art. 
 Masaccio is not inferior to Giotto in his power of 
 telling a story with simplicity ; but he understands 
 the value of perspective for realizing the circum- 
 stances of the scene depicted. His august groups 
 of the apostles are surrounded by landscape tran- 
 quillizing to the sense and pleasant to the eye. 
 
 1 His real name was Tommaso di Ser Giovanni, of the family ot 
 Scheggia. Masaccio means in Tuscan, ' Great hulking Tom,' just as 
 Masolino, his supposed master and fellow-worker, means ' Pretty 
 little Tom.' Masolino was Tommaso di Cristofero Fini, born in 1384 
 in S. Croce. It is now thought that we have but little of his authentic 
 work except the frescoes at Castiglione di Olona, near Milan. Ma- 
 saccio was born at San Giovanni, in the U7per valley of the Amo, in 
 1402. He died at Rome In 1429.
 
 sy> RENAISSANCE IK" ITALY. 
 
 Mountain-lines and distant horizons lend space and 
 largeness to his compositions, and the figures of his 
 men and women move freely in a world prepared 
 for them. In Masaccio's management of drapery we 
 discern the influence of plastic art ; without conceal- 
 ing the limbs, which are always modeled with a free- 
 dom that suggests the power of movement even in 
 stationary attitudes, the voluminous folds and broad 
 masses of powerfully-colored raiment invest his 
 forms with a nobility unknown before in painting. 
 His power of representing the nude is not less 
 remarkable. But what above all else renders his 
 style attractive is the sense of aerial space. For 
 the first time in art the forms of living persons are 
 shown moving in a transparent medium of light, 
 graduated according to degrees of distance, and 
 harmonized by tones that indicate an atmospheric 
 unity. In comparing Masaccio with Giotto we 
 must admit that, with so much gained, something 
 has been sacrificed. Giotto succeeded in present- 
 ing the idea, the feeling, the pith of the event, and 
 pierced at once to the very ground-root of imagina- 
 tion. Masaccio thinks overmuch, perhaps, of ex- 
 ternal form, and is intent on air-effects and color- 
 ing. He realizes the phenomenal truth with a 
 largeness and a dignity peculiar to himself. But 
 we ask whether he was capable of bringing close 
 to our hearts the secret and the soul of spiritual
 
 PAOLO UCCELLO. 231 
 
 things. Has not art beneath his touch become 
 more scenic, losing thereby somewhat of dramatic 
 poignancy ? 
 
 Born in 1402, Masaccio left Florence in 1429 
 for Rome, and was not heard of by his family 
 again. Thus perished, at the early age of twenty- 
 seven, a painter whose work reveals not only the 
 originality of real creative genius, but a maturity 
 that moves our wonder. What might he not have 
 done if he had lived ? Between his style in the 
 Brancacci chapel and that of Raphael in the Vati- 
 can there seems to be but a narrow gap, which 
 might perchance have been passed over by this 
 man if death had spared him. 
 
 Masaccio can by no means be taken as a fair 
 instance of the painters of his age. Gifted with 
 exceptional powers, he overleaped the difficulties 
 of his art, and arrived intuitively at results whereof 
 as yet no scientific certainty had been secured. 
 His contemporaries applied humbler talents to se- 
 vere study, and wrought out by patient industry 
 those principles which Masaccio had divined. Their 
 work is therefore at the same time more archaic 
 and more pedantic, judged by modern standards. 
 It is difficult to imagine a style of painting less 
 attractive than that of Paolo Uccello. 1 Yet his 
 
 1 His family name was Doni. He was born about 1396, and died 
 at the age of about 73. He got his name Uccello from his partiality 
 for painting birds, it is said.
 
 232 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 fresco of the Deluge in the cloisters of S. Maria 
 Novella, and his battle-pieces one of which may 
 be seen in the National Gallery taught nearly 
 all that painters needed of perspective. The lesson 
 was conveyed in hard, dry, uncouth diagrams, ill- 
 colored and deficient in the quality of animation. 
 At this period the painters, like the sculptors, were 
 trained as goldsmiths, and Paolo had been a crafts- 
 man of that guild before he gave his whole mind 
 to the study of linear perspective and the drawing 
 of animals. The precision required in this trade 
 forced artists to study the modeling of the human 
 form, and promoted that crude naturalism which 
 has been charged against their pictures. Carefully 
 to observe, minutely to imitate some actual person- 
 the Sandro of your workshop or the Cecco from 
 the market-place became the pride of painters. 
 No longer fascinated by the dreams of mediaeval 
 mysticism, and unable for the moment to invest 
 ideals of the fancy with reality, they meanwhile 
 nade the great discovery that the body of a man 
 is a miracle of beauty, each limb a divine wonder, 
 each muscle a joy as great as sight of stars or 
 flowers. Much that is repulsive in the pictures of 
 the Pollajuoli and Andrea del Castagno, the leaders 
 in this branch of realism, is due to admiration for 
 the newly-studied mechanism of the human form. 
 They seem to have cared but little to select their
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE MODEL. 233 
 
 types or to accentuate expression, so long as they 
 were able to portray the man before them with 
 fidelity. 1 The comeliness of average humanity was 
 enough for them ; the difficulties of reproducing 
 what they saw exhausted their force. Thus the 
 master-works on which they staked their reputation 
 show them emulous of fame as craftsmen, while 
 only here and there, in minor paintings for the 
 most part, the poet that was in them sees the light. 
 Brunelleschi told Donatello the truth when he said 
 that his Christ was a crucified contadino. Intent 
 on mastering the art of modeling, and determined 
 above all things to be accurate, the sculptor had 
 forgotten that something more was wanted in a 
 crucifix than the careful study of a robust peasant- 
 boy. 
 
 A story of a somewhat later date still further 
 illustrates the dependence of the work of art upon 
 the model in Renaissance Florence. Jacopo San- 
 sovino made the statue of a youthful Bacchus in 
 close imitation of a lad called Pippo Fabro. Posing 
 for hours together naked in a cold studio, Pippo 
 fell into ill health, and finally went mad. In his 
 madness he frequently assumed the attitude of the 
 Bacchus to which his life had been sacrificed, and 
 which is now his portrait. The legend of the painter 
 who kept his model on a cross in order that he 
 
 1 See above, p. 142, what has been said about Verocchio's 'David.'
 
 434 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 might the more minutely represent the agonies of 
 death by crucifixion, is but a mythus of the realistic 
 method carried to its logical extremity. 
 
 Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San 
 Sepolcro, and a pupil of Domenico Veneziano, must 
 be placed among the painters of this period who 
 advanced their art by scientific study. He carried 
 the principles of correct drawing and solid model- 
 ing as far as it is possible for the genius of man to 
 do, and composed a treatise on perspective in the 
 vulgar tongue. But these are not his best titles to 
 fame. By dignity of portraiture, by loftiness of 
 style, and by a certain poetical solemnity of imagina- 
 tion, he raised himself above the level of the mass 
 of his contemporaries. Those who have once seen 
 his fresco of the Resurrection in the hall of the 
 Compagnia della Misericordia at Borgo San Sepol- 
 cro will never forget the deep impression of solitude 
 and aloofness from all earthly things produced by it. 
 It is not so much the admirable grouping and mas- 
 terly drawing of the four sleeping soldiers, or even 
 the majestic type of the Christ emergent without 
 effort from the grave, as the communication of a 
 mood felt by the painter and instilled into our souls, 
 that makes this by far the grandest, most poetic, 
 and most awe-inspiring picture of the Resurrection. 
 The landscape is simple and severe, with the cold 
 light upon it of the dawn before the sun is risea
 
 P1ERO BELLA FRANCESCA. 235 
 
 The drapery of the ascending Christ is tinged with 
 auroral colors like the earliest clouds of morning ; 
 and his level eyes, with the mystery of the slumber 
 of the grave still upon them, seem gazing, far be- 
 yond our scope of vision, into the region of the 
 eternal and illimitable. Thus, with Piero for mysta- 
 gogue, we enter an inner shrine of deep religious 
 revelation. The same high imaginative faculty 
 marks the fresco of the Dream of Constantine in S. 
 Francesco at Arezzo, where, it may be said in pass- 
 ing, the student of art must learn to estimate what 
 Piero could do in the way of accurate foreshorten- 
 ing, powerful delineation of solid bodies, and noble 
 treatment of drapery. 1 To Piero, again, we owe most 
 precious portraits of two Italian princes, Sigismondo 
 Pandolfo Malatesta and Federigo of Urbino, master- 
 pieces 2 of fidelity to nature and sound workman- 
 ship. 
 
 In addition to the many great paintings that 
 command our admiration, Piero claims honor as 
 the teacher of Melozzo da Forli and of Luca Sig- 
 norelli. Little is left to show the greatness of Me- 
 lozzo ; but the frescoes preserved in the Quirinal are 
 enough to prove that he continued the grave and 
 
 1 A drawing made in red chalk for this ' Dream of Constantine ' has 
 been published in fac-simile by Ottley, in his ' Italian School of Design.' 
 He wrongly attributes it, however, to Giorgione, and calls it a ' Subject 
 Unknown.' 
 
 a The one in S. Francesco at Rimini, the other in the Uffizzi.
 
 236 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 lofty manner of his master. 1 Signorelli bears a 
 name illustrious in the first rank of Italian painters ; 
 and to speak of him will be soon my duty. It was 
 the special merit of these artists to elevate the ideal 
 of form and to seek after sublimity, without depart- 
 ing from the path of conscientious labor, in an age 
 preoccupied on the one hand with technicality and 
 naturalism, on the other with decorative prettiness 
 and pietism. 
 
 While the Florentine and Umbro-Tuscan mas- 
 ters were perfecting the arts of accurate design, a 
 similar direction toward scientific studies was given 
 to the painters of Northern Italy at Padua. Michael 
 Savonarola, writing his panegyric of Padua about 
 1440, expressly mentions Perspective as a branch of 
 philosophy taught in the high school ; 2 and the influ- 
 ence of Francesco Squarcione, though exaggerated 
 by Vasari, was not inconsiderable. This man, who 
 began life as a tailor or embroiderer, was early in- 
 terested in the fine arts. Like Ciriac of Ancona, he 
 had a taste for travel and collection, 3 visiting the 
 sacred soil of Greece and sojourning in divers towns 
 
 1 Two angels have recently been published by the Arundel Society, 
 who have also copied Melozzo's wall-painting of Sixtus IV. in the 
 Vatican. It is probable that the picture in the Royal Collection at 
 Windsor, of Duke Frederick of Urbino listening to the lecture of a 
 Humanist, is also a work of Melozzo's, much spoiled by repainting. 
 See ' Revival of Learning,' p. 304. 
 
 3 Muratori, vol. xxiv. 1181. 
 
 1 For Ciriac of Ancona, see ' Revival of Learning/ p. 155.
 
 SCHOOL OF SQUARCIONE. 237 
 
 of Italy, everywhere making drawings, copying pic- 
 tures, taking casts from statues, and amassing mem- 
 oranda on the relics of antiquity as well as on the 
 methods practiced by contemporary painters. Equip- 
 ped with these aids to study, Squarcione returned to 
 Padua, his native place, where he opened a kind of 
 school for painters. It is clear that he was himself 
 less an artist than an amateur of painting, with a 
 turn for teaching, and a conviction, based upon the 
 humanistic instincts of his age, that the right way of 
 learning was by imitation of the antique. During 
 the course of his career he is said to have taught no 
 less than 137 pupils, training his apprentices by the 
 exhibition of casts and drawings, and giving them 
 instruction in the science of perspective. 1 From his 
 studio issued the mighty Andrea Mantegna, whose 
 life-work, one of the most weighty moments in the 
 history of modern art, will be noticed at length in 
 the next chapter. For the present it is enough to 
 observe that through Squarcione the scientific and 
 humanistic movement of the fifteenth century was 
 communicated to the art of Northern Italy. There, 
 as at Florence, painting was separated from eccle- 
 siastical tradition, and a new starting-point was 
 
 1 The services rendered by Squarcione to art have been thoroughly 
 discussed by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ' Painting in North 
 Italy,' vol. i. chap. 2. I can not but think that they underrate the im- 
 portance of his school.
 
 238 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 sought in the study of mathematical principles, and 
 the striving after form for its own sake. 
 
 Without attempting the detailed history of paint- 
 ing in this period of divided energy and diverse 
 effort, it is needful here to turn aside and notice 
 those masters of the fifteenth century who remained 
 comparatively uninfluenced by the scholastic studies 
 of their contemporaries. Of these, the earliest and 
 most notable was Gentile da Fabriano, the last great 
 painter of the Gubbian school. 1 In the predella of 
 his masterpiece at Florence there is a little panel, 
 which attracts attention as one of the earliest at- 
 tempts to represent a sunrise. The sun has just 
 appeared above one of those bare sweeping hillsides 
 so characteristic of Central Italian landscape. Part 
 of the country lies untouched by morning, cold and 
 gray : the rest is silvered with the level light, falling 
 sidewise on the burnished leaves and red fruit of 
 the orange-trees, and casting shadows from olive- 
 branches on the furrows of a new-plowed field. 
 Along the road journey Joseph and Mary and the 
 infant Christ, so that you may call this little land- 
 scape a Flight into Egypt, if you choose. Gentile, 
 with all his Umbrian pietism, was a painter for 
 whom the fair sights of the earth had exquisite value. 
 
 1 He was born between 1360 and 1370, and he settled at Florence 
 about 1422, where he opened a bottega in S. Trinita. In 1423 he 
 painted his masterpiece, the 'Adoration of the Magi,' now exhibited 
 in the Florentine Academy of Arts.
 
 GENTILE AND ANGELICO. 239 
 
 The rich costumes of the Eastern kings, their train 
 of servants, their hawks and horses, hounds and 
 monkeys, are painted by him with scrupulous 
 fidelity ; and nothing can be more true to nature 
 than the wild flowers he has copied in the frame- 
 work of this picture. Yet we perceive that, though 
 he felt in his own way the naturalistic impulse of the 
 age, he had scarcely any thing in common with mas- 
 ters like Uccello or Verocchio. 
 
 Still less had Fra Angelico. Of all the painters 
 of this period he most successfully resisted the per- 
 suasions of the Renaissance, and perfected an art 
 that owed little to sympathy with the external world. 
 He thought it a sin to study or to imitate the naked 
 form, and his most beautiful faces seem copied from 
 angels seen in visions, not from any sons of men. 
 While the artists around him were absorbed in 
 mastering the laws of geometry and anatomy, Fra 
 Angelico sought to express the inner life of the 
 adoring soul. Only just so much of realism, whether 
 in the drawing of the body and its drapery or in 
 the landscape background, as seemed necessary for 
 suggesting the emotion, or for setting forth the story, 
 found its way into his pictures. The message they 
 convey might have been told almost as perfectly 
 upon the lute or viol. His world is a strange one 
 a world not of hills and fields and flowers and 
 men of flesh and blood, but one where the people
 
 240 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 are embodied ecstasies, the colors tints from evening 
 clouds or apocalyptic jewels, the scenery a flood of 
 light or a background of illuminated gold. His 
 mystic gardens, where the ransomed souls embrace, 
 and dance with angels on the lawns outside the City 
 of the Lamb, are such as were never trodden by 
 the foot of man in any paradise of earth. 
 
 Criticism has a hard task in attempting to dis- 
 cern the merit of the several painters of this time. 
 It is clear that we must look not to Fra Angelico 
 but to Masaccio for the progressive forces that 
 were carrying art forward to complete accomplish- 
 ment. Yet the charm of Masaccio is as nothing in 
 comparison with that which holds us spell-bound 
 before the sacred and impassioned reveries of the 
 Fiesolan monk. Masaccio had inestimable value 
 for his contemporaries. Fra Angelico, now that 
 we know all Masaccio can teach, has a quality so 
 unique that we return again and again to the con- 
 templation of his visions. Thus it often happens 
 that we are tempted to exaggerate the historical 
 importance of one painter because he teaches us 
 by some peculiar quality, and to overestimate the 
 intrinsic value of another because he was a motive 
 power in his own age. Both these temptations 
 should be resolutely resisted by the student who is 
 capable of discerning different kinds of excellence and 
 diverse titles to affectionate remembrance. Tracing
 
 BENOZZO GOZZOLL 241 
 
 the history of Italian painting is like pursuing a jour- 
 ney down an ever-broadening river, whose affluents 
 are Giotto and Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, 
 and Mantegna. We have to turn aside and land upon 
 the shore, in order to visit the heaven-reflecting lake- 
 let, self-encompassed and secluded, called Angelico. 
 Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico, 
 but in no sense the continuator of his tradition, 
 exhibits the blending of several styles by a genius 
 of less creative than assimilative force. That he 
 was keenly interested in the problems of perspec- 
 tive and foreshortening, and that none of the know- 
 ledge collected by his fellow-workers had escaped 
 him, is sufficiently proved by his frescoes at Pisa. 
 His compositions are rich in architectural details, 
 not always chosen with pure taste, but painted with 
 an almost infantine delight in the magnificence of 
 buildings. Quaint birds and beasts and reptiles 
 crowd his landscapes ; while his imagination runs 
 riot in rocks and rivers, trees of all variety, and 
 rustic incidents adopted from real life. At the 
 same time he felt an enjoyment like that of Gentile 
 da Fabriano in depicting the pomp and circum- 
 stance of pageantry, and no Florentine of the 
 fifteenth century was more fond of assembling the 
 personages of contemporary history in groups. 1 
 
 1 See, for instance, the valuable portraits of the Medicean family 
 with Ficino and Poliziano, in the fresco of the ' Tower of Babel ' at Pisa-
 
 242 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Thus he showed himself sensitive to the chief in- 
 fluences of the earlier Renaissance, and combined 
 the scientific and naturalistic tendencies of his age 
 in a manner not devoid of native poetry. What he 
 lacked was depth of feeling, the sense of noble 
 form, the originative force of a great mind. His 
 poetry of invention, though copious and varied, 
 owed its charm to the unstudied grace of improviza- 
 tion, and he often undertook subjects where his 
 idyllic rather than dramatic genius failed to sustain 
 him. It is difficult, for instance, to comprehend 
 how M. Rio could devote two pages to Gozzoli's 
 Destruction of Sodom, so comparatively unimpres- 
 sive in spite of its aggregated incidents, when he 
 passes by the Fulminati of Signorelli, so tragic in 
 its terrible simplicity, with a word. 1 
 
 This painter's marvelous rapidity of execution 
 enabled him to produce an almost countless series 
 of decorative works. The best of these ,are the 
 frescoes of the Pisan Campo Santo, of the Riccardi 
 Palace at Florence, of San Gemignano, and of 
 Montefalco. It has been well said of Gozzoli that, 
 though he attempted grand subjects on a large 
 scale, he could not rise above the limitations of a 
 style better adapted to the decoration of Cassoni 
 than to fresco. 2 Yet within the range of his own 
 
 1 ' L'Art Chrgtien/ vol. ii. p. 397. 
 
 * The same remark might be made about the Venetian Bonifazio.
 
 IDYLLIC AND ROMANTIC FANCY. 243 
 
 powers there are few more fascinating painters 
 His feeling for fresh nature for hunters in the 
 woods at night or dawn, for vintage-gatherers 
 among their grapes, for festival troops of cavaliers 
 and pages, and for the marriage-dances of young 
 men and maidens yields a delightful gladness to 
 compositions lacking the simplicity of Giotto and 
 the dignity of Masaccio. 1 No one knew better how 
 to sketch the quarrels of little boys in their nursery, 
 or the laughter of serving-women, or children carry- 
 ing their books to school; 2 and when the idyllic 
 genius of the man was applied to graver themes, 
 his fancy supplied him with multitudes of angels 
 waving rainbow-colored wings above fair mortal 
 faces. Bevies of them nestle like pigeons on the 
 penthouse of the hut of Bethlehem, or crowd to- 
 gether round the infant Christ. 3 
 
 From these observations on the style of Benozzo 
 Gozzoli it will be seen that in the evolution of Re- 
 it is remarkable that the ' Adoration of the Magi ' was always a favor- 
 ite subject with painters of this caliber. 
 
 1 I may refer to the picture of the hunters in the Taylor Gallery at 
 Oxford, the ' Vintage of Noah ' at Pisa, the attendants of the Magi in 
 the Riccardi Palace, and the Carola in the ' Marriage of Jacob and 
 Rachel ' at Pisa. 
 
 * ' Stories of Isaac and Ishmael and of Jacob and Esau ' at Pisa, 
 and ' Story of S. Augustine ' at San Gemignano. Nothing can be 
 prettier than the school-children in the latter series. The group of 
 the little boy, horsed upon a bigger boy's back for a whipping, is one of 
 the most natural episodes in painting. 
 
 9 Riccardi Chapel.
 
 244 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 naissance culture he may be compared with the 
 romantic poets for whom the cheerfulness of nature 
 and the joy that comes to men from living in a 
 many-colored world of inexhaustible delight were 
 sufficient sources of inspiration. It should be men- 
 tioned lastly that he enjoyed the patronage and 
 friendship of the Medicean princes. 
 
 Another painter favored by the Medici was 
 Fra Filippo Lippi, whose life and art-work were 
 alike the deviation of a pleasure-loving tempera- 
 ment from its natural sphere into the service of the 
 Church. Left an orphan at the age of two years, 
 he was brought up by an aunt, who placed him, 
 as a boy of eight, in the convent of the Carmine 
 at Florence. For monastic duties he had no voca- 
 tion, and the irregularities of his behavior caused 
 scandal even in that age of cynical indulgence. It 
 can scarcely be doubted that the schism between 
 his practice and profession served to debase and 
 vulgarize a genius of fine imaginative quality, while 
 the uncongenial work of decorating choirs and paint- 
 ing altar-pieces limed the wings of his swift spirit 
 with the dullness of routine that savored of hypoc- 
 risy. Bound down to sacred subjects, he was too 
 apt to make angels out of street-urchins, and to 
 paint the portraits of his peasant-loves for Virgins. 1 
 
 1 For an example, the picture of Madonna worshiping the infant 
 Christ upheld by two little angels in the Uffizzi.
 
 FRA FILIPPO AT PRATO AND SPOLETO. 245 
 
 His delicate sense of natural beauty gave peculiai 
 charm to this false treatment of religious themes. 
 Nothing, for example, can be more attractive than 
 the rows of angels bearing lilies in his Coronation 
 of the Virgin ; 1 and yet, when we regard them 
 closely, we find that they have no celestial quality 
 of form or feature. Their grace is earthly, and 
 the spirit breathed upon the picture is the loveli- 
 ness of color, quiet and yet glowing blending 
 delicate blues and greens with whiteness purged 
 of glare. The beauties as well as the defects of 
 such compositions make us regret that Fra Filippo 
 never found a more congenial sphere for his imagi- 
 nation. As a painter of subjects half-humorous 
 and half-pathetic, or as the illustrator of romantic 
 stories, we fancy that he might have won fame 
 rivaled only by the greatest colorists. 
 
 One such picture it was granted him to paint, 
 and this is his masterpiece. In the prime of life 
 he was commissioned to decorate the choir of the 
 cathedral at Prato with the legends of S. John 
 Baptist and S. Stephen. All of these frescoes are 
 noteworthy for their firm grasp upon reality in the 
 portraits of Florentine worthies, and for the har- 
 monious disposition of the groups; but the scene 
 of Salome dancing before Herod is the best for its 
 poetic feeling. Her movement across the floor 
 
 1 In the Academy of Fine Arts at Florence.
 
 246 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 before the tyrant and his guests at table, the quaint 
 fluttering of her drapery, the well-bred admiration 
 of the spectators, their horror when she brings the 
 Baptist's head to Herodias, and the weak face of 
 the half-remorseful Herod are expressed with a 
 dramatic power that shows the genius of a poet 
 painter. And even more lovely than Salome are 
 a pair of girls locked in each other's arms close 
 by Herodias on the dais. A natural and spon- 
 taneous melody, not only in the suggested move- 
 ments of this scene, but also in the coloring, choice 
 of form, and treatment of drapery, makes it one of 
 the most musical of pictures ever painted. 
 
 Fra Filippo was not so successful in the choir of 
 the cathedral at Spoleto, where he undertook to paint 
 scenes from the life of the Virgin. Yet those who 
 have not examined these frescoes, ruinous in their 
 decay and spoiled by stupid restoration, can form no 
 just notion of the latent capacity of this great master. 
 The whole of the half-dome above the tribune is 
 filled with a Coronation of Madonna. A circular 
 rainbow surrounds both her and Christ. She is 
 kneeling with fiery rays around her, glorified by her 
 assumption into heaven. Christ is enthroned, and 
 at His side stands a seat prepared for His mother, as 
 soon as the crown that He is placing on her head 
 shall have made her Queen. From the outer courts 
 of heaven, thronged with multitudes of celestial
 
 FILIPP1NO LIPPI. 247 
 
 beings, angels are crowding in, breaking the lines of 
 the prismatic aureole, as though the ardor of their 
 joy could scarcely be repressed ; while the everlast- 
 ing light of God sheds radiance from above, and far 
 below lies earth with diminished sun and moon. 
 The boldness of conception in this singular fresco 
 reveals a genius capable of grappling with such 
 problems as Tintoretto solved. Fra Filippo died at 
 Spoleto, and left his work unfinished to the care of 
 his assistant, the Fra Diamante. Over his tomb Lo- 
 renzo de' Medici caused a monument to be erected, 
 and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate 
 the fame of a painter highly prized by his patrons. 
 The space devoted in these pages to Fra Lippo 
 Lippi is justified not only by the excellence of his own 
 work, but also by the influence he exercised over 
 two of the best Florentine painters of the fifteenth 
 century. Whether Filippino Lippi was in truth his 
 son by Lucrezia Buti, a novice he is said to have 
 carried from her cloister in Prato, has been called in 
 question by recent critics ; but they adduce no posi- 
 tive arguments for discrediting the story of Vasari. 1 
 There can, however, be no doubt that to the Frate, 
 whether he was his father or only his teacher, 
 Filippino owed his style. His greatest works were 
 
 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap. 19. Nothing was more 
 common in the practice of Italian arts than for pupils to take their 
 name from their masters, in the same way as they took them from 
 their fathers, by the prefix di or otherwise.
 
 248 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 painted in continuation of Masaccio's frescoes in the 
 Carmine at Florence. It is the best warrant of their 
 excellence that we feel them worthy to hold the place 
 they do, and that Raphael transferred one of their 
 motives, the figure of S. Paul addressing S. Peter in 
 prison, to his cartoon of Mars Hill. That he was 
 not so accomplished as Masaccio in the art of com- 
 position, that his scale of color is less pleasing, and 
 that his style in general lacks the elevation of his 
 mighty predecessor, is not sufficient to place him in 
 any position of humiliating inferiority. 1 What above 
 all things interests the student of the Renaissance in 
 Filippino's work is the powerful action of revived 
 classicism on his manner. This can be traced better 
 in the Caraffa Chapel of S. Maria sopra Minerva at 
 Rome and in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella 
 at Florence than in the Carmine. The Triumph of 
 S. Thomas Aquinas and the Miracle of S. John 
 are remarkable for an almost insolent display of 
 Roman antiquities not studied, it need scarcely be 
 
 1 The most simply beautiful of Filippino's pictures is the oil-paint- 
 ing in the Badia at Florence, which represents Madonna attended by 
 angels dictating the story of her life to S. Bernard. In this most 
 lovely religious picture Filippino comes into direct competition with 
 Perugino (see the same subject at Munich), without suffering by the 
 contrast. The type of Our Lady, striven after by Botticelli and other 
 masters of his way of feeling, seems to me more thoroughly attained 
 by Filippino than by any of his fellow-workers. She is a woman 
 acquainted with grief and nowise distinguished by the radiance of her 
 beauty among the daughters of earth. It is measureless love for the 
 mother of his Lord that makes S. Bernard bow before her with eyes of 
 wistful adoration and hushed reverence.
 
 SANDRO BOTTICELLI. 249 
 
 observed, with the scientific accuracy of Alma 
 Tadema for such science was non-existent in the 
 fifteenth century but paraded with a kind of 
 passion. To this delight in antique details Filip- 
 pino added violent gestures, strained attitudes, 
 and affected draperies, producing a general result 
 impressive through the artist's energy, but quaint 
 and unattractive. 
 
 Sandro Botticelli, the other disciple of Fra Lippo, 
 bears a name of greater mark. He is one of those 
 artists much respected in their own days, who suf- 
 fered eclipse from the superior splendor of imme- 
 diate successors, and to whom, through sympathy 
 stimulated by prolonged study of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, we have of late paid tardy and somewhat 
 exaggerated honors. 1 His fellow-workers seem to 
 have admired him as an able draughtsman gifted 
 
 1 The study of the fine arts offers few subjects of more curious in- 
 terest than the vicissitudes through which painters of the type of Bot- 
 ticelli, not absolutely and confessedly in the first rank, but attractive 
 by reason of their relation to the spirit of their age, and of the seal of 
 intimiti set upon their work, have passed. In the last century and 
 the beginning of this, our present preoccupation with Botticelli would 
 have passed for a mild lunacy, because he has none of the qualities then 
 most in vogue and most enthusiastically studied, and because the 
 moment in the history of culture he so faithfully represents was then 
 but little understood. The prophecy of Mr. Ruskin, the tendencies of 
 our best contemporary art in Mr. Burne Jones's painting, the specific 
 note of our recent fashionable poetry, and, more than all, our delight 
 in the delicately-poised psychological problems of the middle Renais- 
 sance, have evoked a kind of hero-worship for this excellent artist 
 and true poet.
 
 250 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 with a rare if whimsical imagination ; but no one 
 recognized in him a leader of his age. For us he 
 has an almost unique value as representing the 
 interminglement of antique and modern fancy at a 
 moment of transition, as embodying in some of his 
 pictures the subtlest thought and feeling of men for 
 whom the classic myths were beginning to live once 
 more, while new guesses were timidly hazarded in 
 the sphere of orthodoxy. 1 Self-confident sensuality 
 had not as yet encouraged painters to substitute a 
 florid rhetoric for the travail of their brain ; nor was 
 enough known about antiquity to make the servile 
 imitation of Greek or Roman fragments possible. 
 Yet scholarship had already introduced a novel ele- 
 ment into the culture of the nation. It was no 
 doubt with a kind of wonder that the artists heard 
 of Fauns and Sylvans, and the birth of Aphrodite 
 from the waves. Such fables took deep hold upon 
 their fancy, stirring them to strange and delicate 
 creations, the offspring of their own thought, and no 
 
 1 A friend writing to me from Italy speaks thus of Botticelli, and 
 of the painters associated with him : ' When I ask myself what it is I 
 find fascinating in him for instance, which of his pictures, or what 
 element in them I am forced to admit that it is the touch of paganism 
 in him, the fairy-story element, the echo of a bea utiful lapsed mythology 
 which he has found the means of transmitting.' The words I have 
 printed in italics seem to me very true. At the same time we must 
 bear in mind that the scientific investigation of nature had not in the 
 fifteenth century begun to stand between the sympathetic intellect and 
 the outer world. There was still the possibility of that 'lapsed myth- 
 ology, 1 the drnam of poets and the delight of rrtists, seeming posi- 
 tively the best form of expression for sentiments aroused by nature.
 
 MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS. 251 
 
 mere copies of marbles seen in statue-galleries. The 
 very imperfection of these pictures lends a value to 
 them in the eyes of the student, by helping him to 
 comprehend exactly how the revelations of the 
 humanists affected the artistic sense of Italy. 
 
 In the mythological work of Botticelli there is 
 always an element of allegory, recalling the Middle 
 Age-j and rendering it far truer to the feelings of the 
 fifteenth century than to the myths it illustrates. 
 His painting of the Spring, suggested by a passage 
 from Lucretius, 1 is exquisitely poetic ; and yet the 
 true spirit of the Latin verse has not been seized 
 to have done that would have taxed the energies of 
 Titian but something special to the artist and 
 significant for Medicean scholarshi p has been added- 
 There is none of the Roman largeness and freedom 
 in its style ; Venus and her Graces are even some- 
 what melancholy, and their movements savor of 
 affectation. This combination or confusion of artistic 
 impulses in Botticelli, this treatment of pagan themes 
 in the spirit of mediaeval mysticism, sometimes ended 
 in a bathos of grotesqueness. It might suffice to 
 cite the pregnant Aphrodite in the National Gal- 
 lery, if the Mars and Venus in the same collection 
 were not even a more striking instance. Mars is a 
 young Florentine, whose throat and chest are beau- 
 tifully studied from the life, but whose legs and 
 
 1 De Rerum NaturA, lib. v. 737.
 
 352 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 belly, belonging no doubt to the same model, fall 
 far short of heroic form. He lies fast asleep with 
 the corners of his mouth drawn down, as though he 
 were about to snore. Opposite there sits a woman, 
 weary and wan, draped from neck to foot in the thin 
 raiment Botticelli loved. Did we not know she was 
 meant for Venus, we might take her for a Piagnone 
 dressed up in fine clothes against the dictates of her 
 conscience to oblige a worldly and now drunken 
 husband. Four little goat-footed Cupids playing with 
 the armor of the sleeping lad complete the com- 
 position. These wanton loves are admirably con. 
 ceived and exquisitely drawn ; nor indeed can any 
 drawing exceed in beauty the line that leads from 
 the flank along the ribs and arm of Mars up to his 
 lifted elbow. The whole design, like one of Picro 
 di Cosimo's pictures in another key, leaves a strong 
 impression on the mind, due partly to the oddity of 
 treatment, partly to the careful work displayed, and 
 partly to the individuality of the artist. It gives us 
 keen pleasure to feel exactly how a painter like 
 Botticelli applied the dry naturalism of the early 
 Florentine Renaissance, as well as his own original 
 imagination, to a subject he imperfectly realized. 
 But a Greek or a Roman would have rejected this 
 picture as false to the mythus of Mars and Venus ; 
 and whether Botticelli wished it to be less descrip- 
 tive than emblematic might be fairly questioned.
 
 BIRTH OF APHRODITE. 353 
 
 At first sight the face and attitude of that unseduc- 
 tive Venus, wide awake and melancholy opposite 
 her snoring lover, seems to symbolize the indignities 
 which women may have to endure from insolent and 
 sottish boys with only youth to recommend them. 
 This interpretation, however, sounds like satire. It 
 is more respectful to presume that Botticelli failed, 
 partly through inadequacy of means and partly 
 through the sentimental reverence of his age for 
 classic stories, to do the authorized version of the 
 legend justice. 
 
 Botticelli's Birth of Aphrodite expresses this 
 transient moment in the history of the Renaissance 
 with more felicity. It would be impossible for any 
 painter to design a more exquisitely outlined figure 
 than that of his Venus, who, with no covering but 
 her golden hair, is wafted to the shore by zephyrs. 
 Roses fall upon the ruffled waves, and the young 
 gods of the air twine hands and feet together as 
 they float. In the picture of Spring there is the 
 same choice of form, the same purity of line, the 
 same rare interlacement in the limbs. It would 
 seem as though Botticelli intended every articulation 
 of the body to express some meaning ; and this, 
 though it enhances the value of his work for sym- 
 pathetic students, often leads him to the verge of 
 affectation. Nothing but a touch of affectation in 
 the twined fingers of Raphael and Tobias impairs the
 
 a 54 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 beauty of one of Botticelli's best pictures at Turin 
 We feel the same discord looking at them as we do 
 while reading the occasional concetti in Petrarch ; 
 and all the more in each case does the discord pain 
 us because we know that it results from their specific 
 quality carried to excess. 
 
 Botticelli's sensibility to the refinements of draw- 
 ing gave peculiar character to all his work. Atten- 
 tion has frequently been called to the beauty of his 
 roses. 1 Every curl in their frail petals is rendered 
 with as much care as though they were the hands or 
 feet of Graces. Nor is it, perhaps, a mere fancy to 
 imagine that the corolla of an open rose suggested 
 to Botticelli's mind the composition of his best- 
 known picture, the circular Coronation of the Virgin 
 in the Uffizzi. That masterpiece combines all Bot- 
 ticelli's best qualities. For rare distinction of beauty 
 in the faces it is unique, while the mystic calm and 
 resignation, so misplaced in his Aphrodites, find a 
 meaning here. 2 There is only one other picture in 
 
 1 The rose-tree background in a Madonna belonging to Lord 
 Elcho is a charming instance of the value given to flowers by careful 
 treatment. 
 
 a I can not bring myself to accept Mr. Pater's reading of the Ma- 
 donna's expression. It seems to me that Botticelli meant to portray 
 the mingled awe and tranquillity of a mortal mother chosen for the 
 Son of God. He appears to have sometimes aimed at conveying more 
 than painting can compass ; and since he had not Lionardo's genius, 
 he gives sadness, mournfulness, or discontent for some more subtle 
 mood. Next to the Madonna of Uffizzi, Botticelli's loveliest religious 
 picture to my mind is the ' Nativity,' belonging to Mr. Fuller Maitland.
 
 PIERO DI COSIMO. 255 
 
 Italy, a Madonna and Child with S. Catherine in 
 a landscape by Boccaccino da Cremona, that in any 
 degree rivals the peculiar beauty of its types. 1 
 
 Sandro Botticelli was not a great painter in the 
 same sense as Andrea Mantegna. But he was a 
 true poet within the limits of a certain sphere. We 
 have to seek his parallel among the verse-writers 
 rather than the artists of his day. Some of the 
 stanzas of Poliziano and Boiardo, in particular, might 
 have been written to explain his pictures, or his pic- 
 tures might have been painted to illustrate their 
 verses. 2 In both Poliziano and Boiardo we find the 
 same touch upon antique things as in Botticelli ; and 
 this makes him serviceable almost above all painters 
 to the readers of Renaissance poetry. 
 
 The name of Piero di Cosimo has been men- 
 tioned incidentally in connection with that of Botti- 
 celli ; and though his life exceeds the limits assigned 
 for this chapter, so many links unite him to the class 
 
 Poetic imagination in a painter has produced nothing more graceful 
 and more tender than the dance of angels in the air above, and the 
 embracement of the angels and the shepherds on the lawns below. 
 
 1 In the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice. I do not mention this 
 picture as a complete pendant to Botticelli's famous tondo. The faces 
 of S. Catherine and Madonna, however, have something of the rarity 
 that is so striking in that work. 
 
 5 I might mention stanzas 122-124 f Poliziano's ' Giostra,' describ- 
 ing Venus in the lap of Mars; or stanzas 99- 107, describing the birth 
 of Venus ; and from Boiardo's ' Orlando Innamorato' I might quote 
 the episode of Rinaldo's punishment by Love (lib. ii. canto xv. 43), or 
 the tale of Silvanella and Narcissus (lib. ii. canto xvii. 49).
 
 2 $6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of painters I have been discussing that I can find 
 no better place to speak of him than this. His 
 biography forms one of the most amusing chapters 
 in Vasari, who has taken great delight in noting 
 Piero's quaint humors and eccentric habits, and 
 whose description of a Carnival triumph devised by 
 him is one of our most precious documents in illus- 
 tration of Renaissance pageantry. 1 The point that 
 connects him with Botticelli is the romantic treat- 
 ment of classical mythology, best exemplified in his 
 pictures of the tale of Perseus and Andromeda. 8 
 Piero was by nature and employment a decorative 
 painter ; the construction of cars for pageants, and 
 the adornment of dwelling-rooms and marriage- 
 chests, affected his whole style, rendering it less 
 independent and more quaint than that of Botticelli. 
 Landscape occupies the main part of his composi- 
 tions, made up by a strange amalgam of the most 
 eccentric details rocks toppling over blue bays, 
 sea-caverns, and fantastic mountain ranges. Groups 
 of little figures disposed upon these spaces tell the 
 story, and the best invention of the artist is lavished 
 on the form of monstrous creatures like the dragon 
 slain by Perseus. There is no attempt to treat the 
 classic subject in a classic spirit : to do that, and to 
 
 1 1 hope to make use of this passage in a future section of my work 
 on the Italian Poetry of the Renaissance. Therefore I pass by this 
 portion of Piero's art-work now. 
 
 a Uffizzi Gallery.
 
 THE DEAD PROCRIS. 257 
 
 fail in doing it, remained for Cellini. 1 We have, on 
 the contrary, before us an image of the ore, as it 
 appeared to Ariosto's fancy a creature borrowed 
 from romance and made to play its part in a Greek 
 myth. The same criticism applies to Piero's picture 
 of the murdered Procris watched by a Satyr of the 
 woodland. 2 In creating his Satyr the painter has 
 not had recourse to any antique bass-relief, but has 
 imagined for himself a being half human, half bestial, 
 and yet wholly real ; nor has he portrayed in Pro- 
 cris a nymph of Greek form, but a girl of Florence. 
 The strange animals and gaudy flowers introduced 
 into the landscape background further remove the 
 subject from the sphere of classic treatment. Flor- 
 entine realism and quaint fancy being thus curiously 
 blended, the artistic result may be profitably studied 
 for the light it throws upon the so-called paganism 
 of the earlier Renaissance. Fancy at that moment 
 was more free than when superior knowledge of 
 antiquity had created a demand for reproductive art, 
 and when the painters thought less of the meaning 
 of the fable for themselves than of its capability of 
 being used as a machine for the display of erudition. 
 It remains to speak of the painter who closes 
 and at the same time gathers up the whole tradition 
 
 1 See the bass-relief upon the pedestal of his ' Perseus ' in the 
 Loggia de' Lanzi. 
 
 * In the National Gallery.
 
 458 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 of this period. Domenico Ghirlandajo deserves this 
 place of honor not because he had the keenest in- 
 tuitions, the deepest thought, the strongest passion, 
 the subtlest fancy, the loftiest imagination for in all 
 these points he was excelled by some one or other 
 of his contemporaries or predecessors but because 
 his intellect was the most comprehensive and his 
 mastery of art the most complete. His life lasted 
 from 1449 to 1498, and he did not distinguish him- 
 self as a painter till he was past thirty. 1 Therefore 
 he does not properly fall within the limit of 1470, 
 assigned roughly to this age of transition in painting. 
 But in style and spirit he belonged to it, resuming 
 in his own work the qualities we find scattered 
 through the minor artists of the fifteenth century, 
 and giving them the unity of fusion in a large and 
 lucid manner. Like the painters hitherto discussed, 
 he was working toward the full Renaissance ; yet he 
 reached it neither in ideality nor in freedom. His 
 art is the art of the understanding only ; and to this 
 the masters of the golden age added radiance, sub- 
 limity, grace, passion qualities of the imagination 
 beyond the scope of men like Ghirlandajo. 
 
 It is almost with reluctance that a critic feels 
 obliged to name this powerful but prosaic painter as 
 
 1 His family name was Domenico di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. 
 He probably worked during his youth and early manhood as a gold- 
 smith, and got his artist's name from the trade of making golden chap- 
 lets for the Florentine women. See Vasari, vol. v. p. 66.
 
 DO MEN I CO GHIRLANDAJO. 259 
 
 the Giotto of the fifteenth century in Florence, the 
 tutelary angel of an age inaugurated by Masaccio. 
 He was a consummate master of the science col- 
 lected by his predecessors. No one surpassed him 
 in the use of fresco. His orderly composition, in 
 the distribution of figures and the use of architec- 
 tural accessories, is worthy of all praise ; his por- 
 traiture is dignified and powerful i 1 his choice of form 
 and treatment of drapery noble. Yet we can not help 
 noting his deficiency in the finer sense of beauty, the 
 absence of poetic inspiration or feeling in his work, 
 the commonplaceness of his color, and his weari- 
 some reiteration of calculated effects. He never 
 arrests attention by sallies of originality, or charms 
 us by the delicacies of suggestive fancy. He is 
 always at the level of his own achievement, so that 
 in the end we are as tired with able Ghirlandajo as 
 the men of Athens with just Aristides. Who, how- 
 ever, but Ghirlandajo could have composed the fres- 
 coes of S. Fina at S. Gemignano, the fresco of the 
 Death of S. Francis in S. Trinita at Florence, or that 
 again of the Birth of the Virgin in S. Maria Novella ? 
 There is something irritating in pure common sense 
 imported into art, and Ghirlandajo's masterpieces 
 are the apotheosis of that quality. How correct, 
 
 1 What, after all, remains the grandest quality of Ghirlandajo is 
 his powerful drawing of characteristic heads. They are as various as 
 they are vigorous. What a nation of strong men must the Florentines 
 have been ! we feel while gazing at his frescoes.
 
 26o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 how judicious, how sagacious, how mathematically 
 ordered ! we exclaim ; but we gaze without emotion, 
 and we turn away without regret It does not vex us 
 to read how Ghirlandajo used to scold his prentices 
 for neglecting trivial orders that would fill his purse 
 with money. Similar traits of character pain us with 
 a sense of impropriety in Perugino. They har- 
 monize with all we feel about the work of Ghirlan- 
 dajo. It is bitter mortification to know that Michael 
 Angelo never found space or time sufficient for his 
 vast designs in sculpture. It is a positive relief to 
 think that Ghirlandajo sighed in vain to have the 
 circuit of the walls of Florence given him to paint. 
 How he would have covered them with composi- 
 tions, stately, flowing, easy, sober, and incapable of 
 stirring any feeling in the soul ! 
 
 Though Ghirlandajo lacked almost every true 
 poetic quality, he combined the art of distributing 
 figures in a given space, with perspective, fair know- 
 ledge of the nude, and truth to nature, in greater 
 perfection than any other single painter of the age he 
 represents ; and since these were precisely the gifts of 
 that age to the great Renaissance masters, we accord 
 to him the place of historical honor. It should be 
 added that, like almost all the artists of this epoch, he 
 handled sacred and profane, ancient and modern, 
 subjects in the same style, introducing contemporary 
 customs and costumes. His pictures are therefore
 
 SUPREMACY OF FLORENCE. 261 
 
 valuable for their portraits and their illustration of 
 Florentine life. Fresco was his favorite vehicle ; and 
 in this preference he showed himself a true master of 
 the school of Florence : but he is said to have main- 
 tained that mosaic, as more durable, was superior to 
 wall-painting. This saying, if it be authentic, justifies 
 our criticism of his cold achievement as a painter. 
 
 Reviewing the ground traversed in this and the 
 last chapter, we find that the painting of Tuscany, 
 and in particular the Florentine section of it, has 
 absorbed attention. It is characteristic of the next 
 age that other districts of Italy began to contribute 
 their important quota to the general culture of the 
 nation. The force generated in Tuscany expanded 
 and dilated till every section of the country took 
 part in the movement which Florence had been first 
 to propagate. What was happening in scholarship 
 began to manifest itself in art, for the same law 
 of growth and distribution affected both alike ; and 
 thus the local differences of the Italians were to 
 some extent abolished. The nation, never destined 
 to acquire political union in the Renaissance, pos- 
 sessed at last an intellectual unity in its painters and 
 its students, which justifies our speaking of the great 
 men of the golden period as Italians and not as 
 citizens of such or such a burgh. In the Middle 
 Ages United Italy was an Idea to theorists like 
 Dante, who dreamed for her an actual supremacy
 
 262 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 beneath her Emperor's sway in Rome. The reason- 
 ing to which they trusted proved fallacious, and their 
 hopes were quenched. Instead of the political empire 
 of the De Monarchia, a spiritual empire had been 
 created, and the Italians were never more powerful 
 in Europe than when their sacred city was being 
 plundered by the imperial bandits in 1527. It is 
 necessary, at the risk of some repetition, to keep this 
 point before the reader, if only as an apology for the 
 method of treatment to be followed in the next 
 chapter, where the painters of the mid-Renaissance 
 period will be reviewed less in relation to their 
 schools and cities than as representatives of the 
 Italian spirit. 
 
 Since the intellectual unity gained by the Italians 
 in the age of the Renaissance was chiefly due to the 
 Florentines, it is a matter of some moment to re- 
 consider the direct influences brought to bear upon 
 the arts in Florence during the fifteenth century. I 
 have chosen Ghirlandajo as the representative of 
 painting in that period. I have also expressed the 
 opinion that his style is singularly cold and prosaic, 
 and have hinted that this prosaic and cold quality 
 was caused by a defect of emotional enthusiasm, by 
 preoccupation with finite aims. Herein Ghirlandajo 
 did but reflect the temper of his age that temper 
 which Cosimo de' Medici, the greatest patron of both 
 art and scholarship in Florence before 1470, repre-
 
 MEDICEAN INFLUENCE. 263 
 
 sented in his life and in his public policy. It con- 
 cerns us, therefore, to take into account the nature 
 of the patronage extended by the Medici to art. 
 Excessive praise and blame have been showered 
 upon these burgher princes in almost equal quan- 
 tities ; so that, if we were to place Roscoe and Rio, 
 as the representatives of conflicting views, in the 
 scales together, they would balance each other, and 
 leave the index quivering. This bare statement 
 warns the critic to be cautious, and inclines him to 
 accept the intermediate conclusion that neither the 
 Medici nor the artists could escape the conditions of 
 their century. It is specially argued on the one 
 hand against the Medici that they encouraged a sen- 
 sual and worldly style of art, employing the painter 
 to decorate their palaces with nude figures, and 
 luring them away from sacred to profane subjects. 
 Yet Cosimo gave orders to Donatello for his David 
 and his Judith, employed Michellozzo and Brunel- 
 leschi to build him convents and churches, and filled 
 the library of S. Marco, where Fra Angelico was 
 painting, with a priceless collection of MSS. His 
 own private chapel was decorated by Benozzo Goz- 
 zoli. Fra Lippo Lippi and Michael Angelo Buonar- 
 roti were the house-friends of Lorenzo de' Medici. 
 Leo Battista Alberti was a member of his philo- 
 sophical society. The only great Florentine artist 
 who did not stand in cordial relations to the Medi-
 
 t64 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 cean circle was Lionardo da Vinci. This sufficiently 
 shows that the Medicean patronage was commen- 
 surate with the best products of Florentine genius ; 
 nor would it be easy to demonstrate that encourage- 
 ment, so largely exhibited and so intelligently used, 
 could have been in the main injurious to the arts. 
 
 There is, however, a truth in the old grudge 
 against the Medicean princes. They enslaved Flor- 
 ence ; and even painting was not slow to suffer from 
 the stifling atmosphere of tyranny. Lorenzo delib- 
 erately set himself to enfeeble the people by luxury, 
 partly because he liked voluptuous living, partly 
 because he aimed at popularity, and partly because it 
 was his interest to enervate republican virtues. The 
 arts, used for the purposes of decoration in triumphs 
 and carnival shows, became the instruments of 
 careless pleasure ; and there is no doubt that even 
 earnest painters lent their powers with no ill-will 
 and no bad conscience to the service of lascivious 
 patrons. ' Per la citta, in diverse case, fece tondi di 
 sua mano e femmine ignude assai,' says Vasari about 
 Sandro Botticelli, who afterward became a Piagnone 
 and refused to touch a pencil. 1 We may, therefore, 
 reasonably concede that if the Medici had never 
 taken hold on Florence, or if the spirit of the times 
 had made them other than they were in loftiness of 
 
 1 In many houses he painted roundels with his own hand, and 
 of naked women plenty.
 
 LOW STANDARD OF THE AGE. 265 
 
 aim and nobleness of heart, the arts of Italy in the 
 Renaissance might have shown less of worldliness 
 and materialism. It was against the demoralization 
 of society by paganism, as against the enslavement 
 of Florence by her tyrants, that Savonarola strove ; 
 and since the Medici were the leaders of the clas- 
 sical revival, as well as the despots of the dying 
 commonwealth, they justly bear the lion's share of 
 that blame which fell in general upon the vices of 
 their age denounced by the prophet of S. Marco. 
 We may regard it either as a singular misfortune for 
 Italy or as the strongest sign of deep-seated Italian 
 corruption, that the most brilliant leaders of culture 
 both at Florence and at Rome Cosimo, Lorenzo, 
 and Giovanni de* Medici promoted rather than 
 checked the debasing influences of the Renaissance, 
 and added the weight of their authority to the 
 popular craving for sensuous amusement. 
 
 Meanwhile, what was truly great and noble in 
 Renaissance Italy, found its proper home in Flor- 
 ence ; where the spirit of freedom, if only as an 
 idea, still ruled ; where the populace was still capable 
 of being stirred to supersensual enthusiasm ; and 
 where the flame of the modem intellect burned 
 with its purest, whitest luster.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Two Periods in the True Renaissance Andrea Mantegna His 
 Statuesque Design His Naturalism Roman Inspiration 
 Triumph of Julius Caesar Bass-Reliefs LucaSignorelli The Pre- 
 cursor of Michael Angelo Anatomical Studies Sense of Beauty 
 The Chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto Its Arabesques and Medal- 
 lions Degrees in his Ideal Enthusiasm for Organic Life Mode 
 of treating Classical Subjects Perugino His Pietistic Style His 
 Formalism The Psychological Problem of his Life Perugino's 
 Pupils Pinturicchio At Spello and Siena Francia Fra Barto- 
 lommeo Transition to the Golden Age Lionardo da Vinci The 
 Magician of the Renaissance Raphael The Melodist Correggio 
 The Faun Michael Angelo The Prophet. 
 
 THE Renaissance, so far as Painting is concerned, 
 may be said to have culminated between the years 
 1470 and 1550. These dates, it must be frankly 
 admitted, are arbitrary ; nor is there any thing more 
 unprofitable than the attempt to define by strict 
 chronology the moments of an intellectual growth 
 so complex, so unequally progressive, and so varied 
 as that of Italian art. All that the historian can 
 hope to do is to strike a mean between his reckon- 
 ing of years and his more subtle calculations based 
 on the emergence of decisive genius in special men. 
 An instance of such compromise is afforded by 
 Lionardo da Vinci, who belongs, as far as dates
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF ITALIAN ART. 267 
 
 go, to the last half of the fifteenth century, but 
 who must, on any estimate of his achievement, 
 be classed with Michael Angelo among the final 
 and supreme masters of the full Renaissance. To 
 violate the order of time, with a view to what 
 may here be called the morphology of Italian art, 
 is, in his case, a plain duty. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to regard 
 the eighty years above mentioned as a period no 
 longer of promise and preparation, but of fulfillment 
 and accomplishment. Furthermore, the thirty years 
 at the close of the fifteenth century may be taken 
 as one epoch in this climax of the art, while the 
 first half of the sixteenth forms a second. Within 
 the former falls the best work of Mantegna, Peru- 
 gino, Francia, the Bellini, Signorelli, Fra Barto- 
 lommeo. To the latter we may reckon Michael 
 Angelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, and 
 Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da Vinci, though be- 
 longing chronologically to the former epoch, ranks 
 first among the masters of the latter ; and to this 
 also may be given Tintoretto, though his life ex- 
 tended far beyond it to the last years of the century. 
 We thus obtain, within the period of eighty years 
 from 1470 to 1550, two subordinate divisions of . 
 time, the one including the last part of the fifteenth 
 century, the other extending over the best years of 
 the sixteenth.
 
 268 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 The subdivisions I have just suggested cor- 
 respond to two distinct stages in the evolution of 
 art. The painters of the earlier group win our 
 admiration quite as much by their aim as by their 
 achievement. Their achievement, indeed, is not so 
 perfect but that they still make some demand upon 
 interpretative sympathy in the student. There is, 
 besides, a sense of reserved strength in their work. 
 We feel that their motives have not been developed 
 to the utmost, that their inspiration is not exhausted ; 
 that it will be possible for their successors to ad- 
 vance beyond them on the same path, not realizing 
 more consummate excellence in special points, but 
 combining divers qualities, and reaching absolute 
 freedom. 
 
 The painters of the second group display 
 mastery more perfect, range of faculty more all- 
 embracing. What they design they do ; nature and 
 art obey them equally ; the resources placed at 
 their command are employed with facile and un- 
 fettered exercise of power. The hand obedient 
 to the brain is now so expert that nothing further 
 is left to be desired in the expression of the artist's 
 thought. 1 The student can only hope to penetrate 
 
 1 ' La man che ubbedisce ail' intelletto ' is a phrase pregnant with 
 meaning, used by Michael Angelo in one of his sonnets. See Guasti, 
 'Le Rime di Michael Angelo,' p. 173. Michael Angelo's blunt criti- 
 cism of Perugino, that he was goffo, a fool in art, and his rude speech 
 to Francia's handsome son, that his father made better forms by night
 
 TWO PERIODS OF THE TRUE RENAISSANCE. 269 
 
 the master's meaning. To imagine a step further 
 in the same direction is impossible. The full 
 flower of the Italian genius has been unfolded. 
 Its message to the world in art has been de- 
 livered. 
 
 Chronology alone would not justify us in draw- 
 ing these distinctions. What really separates the two 
 groups is the different degree in which they severally 
 absorbed the spirit and uttered the message of their 
 age. In the former the Renaissance was still imma- 
 ture, in the latter it was perfected. Yet all these 
 painters deserve in a true sense to be called its 
 children. Their common object is art regarded as an 
 independent function, and relieved from the bondage 
 of technical impediments. In their work the liberty 
 of the modern mind finds its first and noblest expres- 
 sion. They deal with familiar and time-honored 
 Christian motives reverently ; but they use them at 
 the same time for the exhibit-on of pure human 
 beauty. Pagan influences yield them spirit-stirring 
 inspiration ; yet the antique models of style, which 
 proved no less embarrassing to their successors than 
 Saul's armor was to David, weigh lightly, like a 
 magician's breastplate, upon their heroic strength. 
 
 Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua in 1431. 
 Vasari says that in his boyhood he herded cattle, 
 
 than day, sufficiently indicate the different aims pursued by the painters 
 nf the two periods distinguished above.
 
 270 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 and it is probable that he was the son of a small 
 Lombard farmer. What led him to the study of 
 the arts we do not know ; but that his talents were 
 precociously developed is proved by his registra- 
 tion in 1441 upon the books of the painters' guild 
 at Padua. He is there described as the adopted 
 son of Squarcione. At the age oi seventeen he 
 signed a picture with his name. Studying the casts 
 and drawings collected by Squarcione for his Pa- 
 duan school, the young Mantegna found congenial 
 exercise for his peculiar gifts. 1 His early frescoes 
 in the Eremitani at Padua look as though they had 
 been painted from statues or clay models, carefully 
 selected for the grandeur of their forms, the nobility 
 of their attitudes, and the complicated beauty of 
 their drapery. The figures, arranged on different 
 planes, are perfect in their perspective ; the action 
 is indicated by appropriate gestures, and the color- 
 ing, though faint and cold, is scientifically calcu- 
 
 1 Though Mantegna seems to have owed all his training to Padua, 
 it is impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque one 
 among the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan impre- 
 sario oi third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in 
 that nest. His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating 
 from the meager means of study within his reach those elements 
 which enabled him to divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt 
 its reproduction. In order to facilitate the explanation of the problem 
 offered by his early command of style, it has been suggested with 
 great show of reason that he received a strong impression from the 
 work executed in bass-relief by Donatello for the church of S. Antonio 
 at Padua. Thus Florentine influences helped to form even the original 
 genius of this greatest of tht Lombard masters.
 
 ANDREA MANTEGNA. 271 
 
 lated. Yet not a man or woman in these wondrous 
 compositions seems to live. Well provided with 
 bone and muscle, they have neither blood nor any 
 thing suggestive of the breath of life within them. 
 It is as though Mantegna had been called to paint 
 a people turned to stone, arrested suddenly amid 
 their various occupations, and preserved for cen- 
 turies from injury in some Egyptian solitude of 
 dewless sand. 
 
 In spite of this unearthly immobility, the Pa- 
 duan frescoes exercise a strange and potent spell. 
 We feel ourselves beneath the sway of a gigantic 
 genius, intent on solving the severest problems of 
 his art in preparation for the portraiture of some 
 high intellectual abstraction. It should also be 
 observed that, notwithstanding their frigidity 
 and statuesque composure, the pictures of .S". 
 Andrew and ,5*. Christopher in the chapel of the 
 Eremitani reveal minute study of real objects. 
 Transitory movements of the body are noted 
 and transcribed with merciless precision ; an Italian 
 hillside, with its olive-trees and winding ways and 
 crown of turrets, forms the background of one 
 scene ; in another the drama is localized amid Re- 
 naissance architecture of the costliest style. Rustic 
 types have been selected for the soldiers, and com- 
 monplace details, down to a patched jerkin or a 
 broken shoe, bear witness to the patience and the
 
 272 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 observation of the master. But over all these things 
 the glamour of Medusa's head has fallen, turning 
 them to stone. We are clearly in the presence of 
 a painter for whom the attractions of nature were 
 subordinated to the fascinations of science a man 
 the very opposite, for instance, to Benozzo Gozzoli. 
 If Mantegna had passed away in early manhood, 
 like Masaccio, his fame would have been that of 
 a cold and calculating genius laboring after an 
 ideal unrealized except in its dry formal elements. 
 
 The truth is that Mantegna's inspiration was de- 
 rived from the antique. 1 The beauty of classical bass- 
 relief entered deep into his soul and ruled his imagi- 
 nation. In later life he spent his acquired wealth 
 in forming a collection of Greek and Roman anti- 
 quities. 2 He was, moreover, the friend of students, 
 eagerly absorbing the knowledge brought to light 
 by Ciriac of Ancona, Flavio Biondo, and other 
 antiquaries ; and so completely did he assimilate 
 the materials of scholarship that the spirit of a 
 
 1 Vasari, vol. v. p. 163, may be consulted with regard to Mantegna's 
 preference for the ideal of statuary, when compared with natural 
 beauty, as the model for a painter. 
 
 Q See Crowe and Cavalcaselle's ' History of Painting in North 
 Italy,' vol. i. p. 334, for an account of his antiquarian researches in 
 company with Felice Feliciano. His museum was so famous that in 
 1483 Lorenzo de' Medici, passing through Mantua from Venice, thought 
 it worthy of a visit. In his old age Mantegna fell into pecuniary diffi- 
 culties, and had to part with his collection. The forced sale of its 
 chief ornament, a bust of Faustina, is said to have broken his heart 
 Ib. p. 415.
 
 TRIUMPH OF JULIUS CAESAR. 273 
 
 Roman seemed to be re-incarnated in him. Thus, 
 independently of his high value as a painter, he 
 embodies for us in art that sincere passion for the 
 ancient world which was the dominating intellec- 
 tual impulse of his age. 
 
 The minute learning accumulated in the fifteenth 
 century upon the subject of Roman military life 
 found noble illustration in his frieze of Julius Ctzsar's 
 Triumph! Nor is this masterpiece a cold display 
 of pedantry. The life we vainly look for in the 
 frescoes of the Eremitani chapel may be found here 
 statuesque, indeed, in style and stately in move- 
 ment, but glowing with the spirit of revived anti- 
 quity. The processional pomp of legionaries bowed 
 beneath their trophied arms, the monumental majesty 
 of robed citizens, the gravity of stoled and veiled 
 priests, the beauty of young slaves, and all the para- 
 phernalia of spoils and wreaths and elephants and 
 ensigns, are massed together with the self-restraint 
 of noble art subordinating pageantry to rules of lofty 
 composition. What must the genius of the man 
 have been who could move thus majestically beneath 
 the weight of painfully-accumulated erudition, con- 
 verting an antiquarian motive into a theme for 
 
 1 Painted on canvas in tempera for the Marquis of Mantua, before 
 1488, looted by the Germans in 1630, sold to Charles I., resold by the 
 Commonwealth, bought back by Charles II., and now exposed, much 
 spoiled by time and change, but more by villainous repainting, on the 
 walls of Hampton Court.
 
 274 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 melodies of line composed in the grave Dorian 
 mood? 
 
 By no process can the classic purity of this bass- 
 relief be better understood than by comparing the 
 original with a transcript made by Rubens from a 
 portion of the Triumph} The Flemish painter 
 strives to add richness to the scene by Bacchanalian 
 riot and the sensuality of imperial Rome. His ele- 
 phants twist their trunks, and trumpet to the din of 
 cymbals; negroes feed the flaming candelabra with 
 scattered frankincense ; the white oxen of Clitum- 
 nus are loaded with gaudy flowers, and the dancing 
 maidens are disheveled Maenads. But the rhythmic 
 procession of Mantegna, modulated to the sound 
 of flutes and soft recorders, carries our imagination 
 back to the best days and strength of Rome. His 
 priests and generals, captives and choric women, are 
 as little Greek as they are modern. In them awakes 
 to a new life the spirit-quelling energy of the re- 
 public. The painter's severe taste keeps out of 
 sight the insolence and orgies of the empire ; he 
 conceives Rome as Shakspere did in Coriolanus* 
 
 In compositions of this type, studied after bass- 
 reliefs and friezes, Mantegna displayed a power that 
 was unique. Those who have once seen his draw- 
 
 1 An oil-painting in the National Gallery. 
 
 4 The so-called ' Triumph of Scipio ' in the National Gallery seems 
 to me in every respect feebler than the Hampton Court Cartoons.
 
 MANTEGNA'S BIOGRAPHY. 275 
 
 ings for Judith with the head of Holofernes, and for 
 Solomon judging between the two mothers, will 
 never forget their sculpture. The lines are graven 
 on our memory. When this marble master chose to 
 be tragic, his intensity was terrible. The designs 
 for a dead Christ carried to the tomb among the 
 weeping Marys concentrate within the briefest 
 space the utmost agony ; it is as though the very 
 ecstasy of grief had been congealed and fixed for- 
 ever. What, again, he could produce of purely 
 beautiful within the region of religious arts is shown 
 by his Madonna of the Victory* No other painter 
 has given to the soldier saints forms at once so 
 heroic and so chivalrously tender. 
 
 With regard to the circumstances of Mantegna's 
 biography, it may be said briefly that, though of 
 humble birth, he spent the greater portion of his life 
 at Court and in the service of princes. Tt was in 
 1456, after he had distinguished himself by the 
 
 'The 'Madonna della Vittoria/ now in the Louvre Gallery, was 
 painted to commemorate the achievements of Francesco Gonzaga in 
 the battle of Fornovo. That Francesco, General of the Venetian 
 troops, should have claimed that action, the eternal disgrace of Italian 
 soldiery, for a victory, is one of the strongest signs of the depth to 
 which the sense of military honor had sunk in Italy. But though 
 the occasion of its painting was so mean, the impression made by this 
 picture is too powerful to be described. It is in every detail grandiose : 
 masculine energy being combined with incomparable grace, religious 
 feeling with athletic dignity, and luxuriance of ornamentation with 
 severe gravity of composition. It is worth comparing this portrait 
 of Francesco Gonzaga with his bronze medal, just as Piero della 
 Francesco's picture of Sigismondo Malatesta should be compared 
 with Pisanello's medallion.
 
 276 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Paduan frescoes, that he first received an invitation 
 from the Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga. Of this 
 sovereign I have already had occasion to speak. 1 
 Reared by Vittorino da Feltre, to whom his father 
 had committed almost unlimited authority, Lodo- 
 vico had early learned to estimate the real ad- 
 vantages of culture. It was now his object to 
 render his capital no less illustrious by art than by 
 the residence of learned men. With this view he 
 offered Mantegna a salary of fifteen ducats a month, 
 together with lodging, corn, and fuel provided the 
 painter would place his talents at his service. Man- 
 tegna accepted the invitation ; but numerous engage- 
 ments prevented him from transferring his household 
 from Padua to Mantua until the year 1460. From 
 that date onward to 1506, when he died, Man- 
 tegna remained attached to the Gonzaga family, 
 serving three Marquises in succession, and adorning 
 their palaces, chapels, and country-seats with frescoes 
 now, alas ! almost entirely ruined. The grants of 
 land and presents he received in addition to his 
 salary enabled him to build a villa at Buscoldo, 
 where he resided during the summer, as well as to 
 erect a sumptuous mansion in the capital. 
 
 Between Mantua, Goito, and Buscoldo, Man- 
 tegna spent the last forty-six years of his life in con- 
 tinual employment, broken only by a short visit to 
 
 1 ' Revival of Learning,' p. 293.
 
 HIS CHARACTER AND PORTRAIT. 277 
 
 Florence in 1466, and another to Bologna in I472, 1 
 and by a longer residence in Rome between the 
 years 1488 and 1490. During the latter period 
 Innocent VIII. was Pope. He had built a chapel 
 in the Belvedere of the Vatican, and wished the 
 greatest painter of the day to decorate it. There- 
 fore he wrote to Francesco, Marquis of Mantua, 
 requesting that he might avail himself of Mantegna's 
 skill. Francesco, though unwilling to part with his 
 painter in ordinary, thought it unadvisable to disap- 
 point the Pope. Accordingly he dubbed Mantegna 
 knight, and sent him to Rome. The chapel painted 
 in fresco for Innocent was ruthlessly destroyed by 
 Pius VI. ; and thus the world has lost one of Man- 
 tegna's masterpieces, executed while his genius was 
 at its zenith. On his return to Mantua he finished 
 the decorations of the Castello of the Gonzaghi,and 
 completed his greatest surviving work, the Triumph 
 of Julius Cczsar. 
 
 By his wife, Nicolosia, the sister of Giovanni 
 and Gentile Bellini, Mantegna had several children, 
 one of whom, Francesco, adopted painting as a 
 trade. The great artist was by temper arrogant 
 and haughty ; nor could he succeed in living peace- 
 
 1 Nothing is known about Mantegna's stay in Florence. He went 
 to meet the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Bologna. This Cardinal, 
 a great amateur of music and connoisseur in relics of antiquity, came to 
 Mantua in August, 1472, where the'Orfeo'of Messer Angelo Poll- 
 ziano was produced for his amusement.
 
 278 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 ably with any of his neighbors. It appears that he 
 spent habitually more money than he could well 
 afford, freely indulging his taste for magnificence, 
 and disbursing large sums in the purchase of curiosi- 
 ties. Long before his death, his estate had been 
 involved in debt; and after his decease, his sons 
 were forced to sell the pictures in his studio for the 
 payment of pressing creditors. He was buried in 
 Alberti's church of S. Andrea at Mantua, in a chapel 
 decorated at his own expense. Over the grave was 
 placed a bronze bust, most noble in modeling and 
 perfect in execution. The broad forehead with its 
 deeply-cloven furrows, the stern and piercing eyes, 
 the large lips compressed with nervous energy, the 
 massive nose, the strength of jaw and chin, and the 
 superb clusters of the hair escaping from a laurel- 
 wreath upon the royal head, are such as realize for 
 us our notion of a Roman in the days of the Re- 
 public. Mantegna's own genius has inspired this 
 masterpiece, which tradition assigns to the medalist 
 Sperando Maglioli. Whoever wrought it must have 
 felt the incubation of the mighty painter's spirit, and 
 have striven to express in bronze the character of 
 his uncompromising art. 
 
 Of a different temperament, yet not wholly un- 
 like Mantegna in a certain iron strength of artistic 
 character, was Luca Signorelli, born about 1441 at 
 Cortona. The supreme quality of Mantegna was
 
 LUC A SIGNORELLL 279 
 
 studied purity of outline, severe and heightened 
 style. As Landor is distinguished by concentration 
 above all the English poets who have made trial of 
 the classic Muse, so Mantegna holds a place apart 
 among Italian painters because of his stern Roman 
 self-control. Signorelli, on the contrary, made his 
 mark by boldness, pushing experiment almost be- 
 yond the verge of truth, and approaching Michael 
 Angelo in the hardihood of his endeavor to outdo 
 nature. Vasari says of him that ' even Michael 
 Angelo imitated the manner of Luca, as every one 
 can see ; ' and indeed Signorelli anticipated the 
 greatest master of the sixteenth century not only in 
 his profound study of human anatomy, but also in 
 his resolution to express high thought and tragic 
 passion by pure form, discarding all the minor 
 charms of painting. Trained in the severe school of 
 Piero della Francesca, he early learned to draw 
 from the nude with boldness and accuracy ; and to 
 this point, too much neglected by his predecessors, 
 he devoted the full powers of his maturity. Anat- 
 omy he practiced, according to the custom of those 
 days, in the graveyard or beneath the gibbet. There 
 is a drawing by him in the Louvre of a stalwart 
 man carrying upon his back the corpse of a youth. 
 Both are naked. The motive seems to have been 
 taken from some lazar-house. Life-long study of 
 perspective in its application to the drawing of the
 
 2&> RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 figure made the difficulties of foreshortening and 
 the delineation of brusque attitude mere child's play 
 to this audacious genius. The most rapid move- 
 ment, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling 
 through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, 
 firmly-traced, unerring outline. If we dare to criti- 
 cise the productions of a master so original and 
 so accomplished, all we can say is that Signorelli 
 reveled almost too wantonly in the display of hazard- 
 ous posture, and that he sacrificed the passion of his 
 theme to the display of science. 1 Yet his genius 
 comprehended great and tragic subjects, and to 
 him belongs the credit in an age of ornament and 
 pedantry of having made the human body a lan- 
 guage for the utterance of all that is most weighty 
 in the thought of man. 
 
 A story is told by Vasari which brings Signorelli 
 very close t to our sympathy, and enables us to un- 
 derstand the fascination of pure form he felt so 
 deeply. ' It is related of Luca that he had a son 
 killed at Cortona, a youth of singular beauty in face 
 and person, whom he had tenderly loved. In his 
 grief the father caused the boy to be stripped naked, 
 and with extraordinary constancy of soul, uttering 
 no complaint and shedding no tear, he painted the 
 
 1 That he could conceive a stern and tragic subject, with all the 
 passion it required, is, however, proved not only by the frescoes at 
 Orvieto, but also by the powerful oil-painting of the ' Crucifixion ' at 
 Borgo San Sepolcro.
 
 STORY OF HIS SOWS DEATH. 2 Si 
 
 portrait of his dead son, to the end that he might 
 still be able, through the work of his own hand, to 
 contemplate that which nature had given him, but 
 which an adverse fortune had taken away.' So 
 passionate and ardent, so convinced of the indissol- 
 uble bond between the soul he loved in life and its 
 dead tenement of clay, and withal so iron-nerved 
 and stout of will, it behooved that man to be who 
 undertook in the plenitude of his power, at the age 
 of sixty, to paint upon the walls of the chapel of S. 
 Brizio at Orvieto the images of Doomsday, Resur- 
 rection, Heaven, and Hell. 1 
 
 1 This story has been used for verse in a way to heighten its ro- 
 mantic coloring. Such as the lines are, I subjoin them for the sake 
 of their attempt to emphasize and illustrate Renaissance feeling : 
 
 Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli, 
 
 The morning star of Michael Angelo, 
 
 Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers, 
 
 Who died. That day the master at his easel 
 
 Wielded the liberal brush wherewith he painted 
 
 At Orvieto, on the Duomo's walls, 
 
 Stern forms of Death and Heaven and Hell and Judgment 
 
 Then came they to him, cried : ' Thy son is dead, 
 
 Slain in a duel : but the bloom of life 
 
 Yet lingers round red lips and downy cheek.' 
 
 Luca spoke not, but listened. Next they bore 
 
 His dead son to the silent painting-room, 
 
 And left on tiptoe son and sire alone. 
 
 Still Luca spoke and groaned not ; but he raised 
 
 The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair, 
 
 Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed, 
 
 Naked and beautiful, where rosy curtains 
 
 Shed a soft glimmer of uncertain splendor 
 
 Life-like upon the marble limbs below. 
 
 Then Luca seized his palette : hour by hour
 
 282 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 It is a gloomy chapel in the Gothic cathedral of 
 that forlorn Papal city gloomy by reason of bad 
 lighting, but more so because of the terrible shapes 
 with which Signorelli has filled it. 1 In no other 
 work of the Italian Renaissance, except in the Sis- 
 tine Chapel, has so much thought, engaged upon the 
 most momentous subjects, been expressed with 
 greater force by means more simple and with effect 
 more overwhelming. Architecture, landscape, and 
 decorative accessories of every kind, the usual pad- 
 ding of quattrocento pictures, have been discarded 
 from the main compositions. The painter has relied 
 solely upon his power of imagining and delineating 
 the human form in every attitude, and under the 
 most various conditions. Darting like hawks or 
 swallows through the air, huddling together to shun 
 the outpoured vials of the wrath of God, writhing 
 with demons on the floor of Hell, struggling into 
 new life from the clinging clay, standing beneath the 
 footstool of the Judge, floating with lute and viol on 
 the winds of Paradise, kneeling in prayer, or clasp- 
 ing 'inseparable hands with joy and bliss in over- 
 measure forever' these multitudes of living beings, 
 
 Silence was in the room ; none durst approach : 
 Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly 
 A little maid peeped in and saw the painter 
 Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke, 
 Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas.' 
 
 1 See the article on Orvieto in my ' Sketches in Italy and Greece. '
 
 FRESCOES AT OR VIE TO. 283 
 
 angelic, diabolic, bestial, human, crowd the huge 
 spaces of the chapel walls. What makes the im- 
 pression of controlling doom the more appalling is 
 that we comprehend the drama in its several scenes, 
 while the chief actor, the divine Judge, at whose 
 bidding the cherubs sound their clarions, and the 
 dead arise, and weal and woe are portioned to the 
 saved and damned, is Himself unrepresented. 1 We 
 breathe in the presence of embodied consciences, 
 submitting, like our own, to an unseen inevitable will. 
 It would be doing Signorelli injustice at Orvieto 
 to study only these great panels. The details with 
 which he has filled all the vacant spaces above the 
 chapel stalls and round the doorway throw new 
 light upon his power. The ostensible motive for 
 this elaborate ornamentation is contained in the por- 
 traits of six poets, who are probably Homer, Virgil, 
 Lucan, Horace, Ovid, and Dante, il sesto tra cotanto 
 senno? But the portraits themselves, though vigo- 
 
 1 The earlier frescoes of Fra Angelico, on the roof, depict Christ 
 as Judge. But there is nothing in common with these works and Sig- 
 norelli's. 
 
 * This is the conjecture of Signer Luzi (' II Duomo di Orvieto,' p. 
 1 68). He bases it upon the Dantesque subjects illustrated, and quotes 
 from the ' Inferno : ' 
 
 ' Omero poeta sovrano ; 
 L'altro e Orazio satire che viene, 
 Ovidio e il terzo, e 1'ultimo Lucano.' 
 
 Nothing is more marked or more deeply interesting than the influence 
 exercised by Dante over Signorelli, an influence he shared with Giotto, 
 Orcagna, Botticelli, Michael Angelo, the greatest imaginative painters 
 of Central Italv.
 
 284 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 rously conceived and remarkable for bold fore- 
 shortening, are the least part of the whole design. 
 Its originality consists in the arabesques, medallions, 
 and chiaroscuro bass-reliefs, where the human form, 
 treated as absolutely plastic, supplies the sole deco- 
 rative element. The pilasters by the doorway, for 
 example, are composed, after the usual type of 
 Italian grotteschi, in imitation of antique candelabra, 
 with numerous stages for the exhibition of the artist's 
 fancies. Unlike the work of Raphael in the Loggie, 
 these pilasters of Signorelli show no birds or beasts, 
 no flowers or foliage, fruits or fauns, no masks or 
 sphinxes. They are crowded with naked men 
 drinking, dancing, leaning forward, twisting them- 
 selves into strange attitudes, and adapting their 
 bodies to the several degrees of the framework. 
 The same may be said of the arabesques around the 
 portraits of the poets, where men, women, and 
 children, some complete, some ending in foliage or 
 in fish-tails, are lavished with a wild and terrible 
 profusion. Hippogriffs and centaurs, sirens and 
 dolphins, are here used as adjuncts to humanity. 
 Amid this fantastic labyrinth of twisted forms we 
 find medallions painted in chiaroscuro with subjects 
 taken chiefly from Ovidian and Dantesque mythol- 
 ogy. Here every attitude of men in combat and in 
 motion has been studied from the nude, and multi- 
 tudes of figures draped and undraped are com-
 
 THE ARABESQUES. 285 
 
 pressed into the briefest compass. All but the 
 human form is sternly eliminated ; and the body 
 itself is treated with a mastery and a boldness that 
 prove Signorelli to have held its varied capabilities 
 firmly in his brain. He could not have worked out 
 all those postures from the living model. He played 
 freely with his immense stores of knowledge; but 
 his play was the pastime of a Prometheus. Each 
 pose, however hazardous, carries conviction with it 
 of sincerity and truth ; the life and liberty of nature 
 reign throughout. From the whole maze of inter- 
 laced and wrestling figures the terrible nature of the 
 artist's genius shines forth. They are almost all 
 strong men in the prime or past the prime of life, 
 chosen for their salient display of vital structure. 
 Signorelli was the first and, with the exception of 
 Michael Angelo, the last painter thus to use the 
 body, without sentiment, without voluptuousness, 
 without any second intention whatsoever, as the 
 supreme decorative principle. In his absolute sin- 
 cerity he made, as it were, a parade of hard and 
 rugged types, scorning to introduce an element of 
 beauty, whether sensuous or ideal, that should dis- 
 tract him from the study of the body in and for 
 itself. This distinguishes him in the arabesques at 
 Orvieto alike from Mantegna and Michael Angelo, 
 from Correggio and Raphael, from Titian and Paolo 
 Veronese.
 
 286 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 This point is so important for its bearing on 
 Renaissance art that I may be permitted to dilate at 
 greater length on Signorelli's choice of types and 
 treatment of form in general. Having a special 
 predilection for the human body, he by no means 
 confined himself to monotony in its presentation. 
 On the contrary, we can trace many distinct grades 
 of corporeal expression. First comes the abstract 
 nude, illustrated by the Resurrection and the ara- 
 besques at Orvieto. 1 Contemporary life, with all its 
 pomp of costume and insolence of ruffling youth, is 
 depicted in the Fulminati at Orvieto and in the 
 Soldiers of Totila at Monte Oliveto. 2 These tran- 
 scripts from the courts of princes and camps of 
 condottieri are invaluable as portraits of the lawless 
 young men who filled Italy with the noise of their 
 feuds and the violence of their adventures. They 
 illustrate Matarazzo's Perugian chronicle better than 
 any other Renaissance pictures ; for in frescoes like 
 those of Pinturicchio at Siena the same qualities are 
 softened to suit the painter's predetermined harmony, 
 whereas Signorelli rejoices in their pure untem- 
 pere.d character. 3 These, then, form a second stage. 
 
 1 The background to the circular 'Madonna' in the Uffizzi, the 
 ' Flagellation of Christ ' in the Academy at Florence and in the Brera 
 at Milan, and the ' Adam ' at Cortona belong to this grade. 
 
 * We may add the pages in a predella representing the ' Adoration 
 of the Magi ' in the Uffizzi. 
 
 8 Vasari mentions the portraits of Nicolo, Paolo, and Vitellozzc 
 Vitelli, Gian Paolo, and Orazio Baglioni, among others, in the frescoes 
 at Orvieto.
 
 FOUR TYPES OF FORM. 287 
 
 Third in degree we find the type of highly-idealized 
 adolescence reserved by Signorelli for his angels. 
 All his science and his sympathy with real life are 
 here subordinated to poetic feeling. It is a mistake 
 to say that these angels are the young men of Um- 
 bria whom he loved to paint in their striped jackets, 
 with the addition of wings to their shoulders. The 
 radiant beings who tune their citterns on the clouds 
 of Paradise, or scatter roses for elect souls, could not 
 live and breathe in the fiery atmosphere of sensuous 
 passions to which the Baglioni were habituated. A 
 grave and solemn sense of beauty animates these 
 fair male beings, clothed in voluminous drapery, 
 with youthful faces and still earnest eyes. Their 
 melody, like that of Milton, is severe. Nor are 
 Signorelli's angelic beings of one uniform type like 
 the angels of Fra Angelico. The athletic cherubs 
 of the Resurrection, breathing their whole strength 
 into the trumpets that awake the dead ; the mailed 
 and winged warriors, keeping guard above the pit 
 of Hell, that none may break their prison-bars among 
 the damned ; the lute-players of Paradise, with their 
 almost feminine sobriety of movement ; the flame- 
 breathing seraphs of the day of doom ; the Gabriel 
 of Volterra, in whom strength is translated into 
 swiftness these are the heralds, sentinels, musicians, 
 executioners, and messengers of the celestial court ; 
 and each class is distinguished by appropriate physical
 
 288 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 characteristics. At the other end of the scale, form- 
 ing a fourth grade, we may mention the depraved 
 types of humanity chosen for his demons those 
 greenish, reddish, ocherish fiends of the Inferno, 
 whom Signorelli created by exaggerating the more 
 grotesque qualities of the nude developed in his 
 arabesques. We thus obtain four several degrees 
 of form : the demoniac, the abstract nude, the ado- 
 lescent beauty of young men copied from choice 
 models, and the angelic. 
 
 Except in his angels, Signorelli was compara- 
 tively indifferent to what is commonly considered 
 beauty. He was not careful to select his models, or 
 to idealize their type. The naked human body, 
 apart from facial distinction or refinement of form, 
 contented him. Violent contrasts of light and 
 shadow, accentuating the anatomical structure with 
 rough and angular decision, give the effect of illus- 
 trative diagrams to his studies. Harmony of pro- 
 portion and the magic of expression are sacrificed to 
 energy emergent in a powerful physique. Redundant 
 life, in sinewy limbs, in the proud carriage of the 
 head upon the neck, in the sway of the trunk back- 
 ward from the reins, the firmly-planted calves and 
 brawny thighs, the thick hair, broad shoulders, spare 
 flanks, and massive gluteal muscles of a man of 
 twenty-two or upward, whose growth has been 
 confined to the development of animal force, was
 
 THE MEDALLIONS AT ORVIETO. 289 
 
 what delighted him. Yet there is no coarseness or 
 animalism properly so called in his style. He was 
 attracted by the marvelous mechanism of the hu- 
 man frame its goodliness regarded as the most 
 highly organized of animate existences. 
 
 Owing, perhaps, to this exclusive predilection 
 for organic life, Signorelli was not great as a color- 
 ist His patches of blues and reds in the frescoes of 
 Monte Oliveto are oppressively distinct ; his use of 
 dull brown for the shading of flesh imparts a dis- 
 agreeable heaviness to his best modeled forms ; nor 
 did he often attain in his oil-pictures to that grave 
 harmony we admire in his Last Supper at Cortona. 
 The world of light and color was to him a com- 
 paratively untraveled land. It remained for other 
 artists to raise these elements of pictorial expres- 
 sion to the height reached by Signorelli in his treat- 
 ment of the nude. 
 
 Before quitting the frescoes at Orvieto, some 
 attention should be paid to the medallions spoken of 
 above, in special relation to the classicism of the 
 earlier Renaissance. Scenes from Dante's Purgatorio 
 and subjects from the Metamorphoses of Ovid are 
 treated here in the same key ; but the latter, since 
 they engaged Signorelli's fancy upon Greek mythol- 
 ogy, are the more important for our purpose. Two 
 from the legend of Orpheus and two from that of 
 Proserpine might be chosen as typical of the whole
 
 290 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 series. Mediaeval intensity, curiously at variance 
 with antique feeling, is discernible throughout. The 
 satellites of Hades are gaunt and sinewy devils, 
 eager to do violence to Eurydice. Pluto himself 
 drives his jarring car-wheels up through the lava- 
 blocks and flames of Etna with a fury and a vehe- 
 mence we seek in vain upon antique sarcophagi. 
 Ceres, wandering through Sicily in search of her 
 lost daughter, is a gaunt witch with disheveled hair, 
 raising frantic hands to tear her cheeks ; while the 
 snakes that draw her chariot are no grave symbols 
 of the germinating corn, but greedy serpents ready 
 to spit fire against the ravishers of Proserpine. Thus 
 the tranquillity and self-restraint of Greek art yield 
 to a passionate and trenchant realization of the actual 
 romance. The most thrilling moments in the legend 
 are selected for dramatic treatment, grace and beauty 
 being exchanged for vivid presentation. A whole 
 cycle of human experience separates these medal- 
 lions from the antique bass-relief at Naples, where 
 Hermes hands the veiled Eurydice to Orpheus, and 
 all three are calm. That Signorelli, if he chose to 
 do so, could represent a classic myth with more of 
 classic feeling is shown by his picture of Pan Listen- 
 ing to Olympus! The nymph, the vine-leaf-girdled 
 
 1 Painted for Lorenzo de' Medici. It is now in the Berlin Museum 
 through the neglect of the National Gallery authorities to purchase if 
 for England.
 
 SIGNORELLFS FEELING FOR THE ANTIQUE. 291 
 
 i'aun, and the two shepherds, all imdraped and drawn 
 with subtle feeling for the melodies of line, render 
 this work one of his most successful compositions. 
 
 It would be interesting to compare Signorelli's 
 treatment of the antique with Mantegna's or Bot- 
 ticelli's. The visions of the pagan world, float- 
 ing before the mind of all men in the fifteenth 
 century, found very different interpreters in these 
 three painters Botticelli adding the quaint alloy 
 of his own fancy, Signorelli imparting the semi- 
 savagery of a terrible imagination, Mantegna, with 
 the truest instinct and the firmest touch, confining 
 himself to the processional pageantry of bass-relief. 
 Yet, were this comparison to be instituted, we could 
 hardly refrain from carrying It much further. Each 
 great master of the Renaissance had his own relation 
 to classical mythology. The mystic sympathies of 
 Leda and the Swan, as imaged severally by Lionardo 
 and Michael Angelo ; Correggio's romantic handling 
 of the myths of Dande and Io; Titian's and Tinto- 
 retto's rival pictures of Bacchus and Ariadne; Ra- 
 phael's Galatea; Pollajuolo's Hercules; the Europa 
 of Veronese ; the Circe of Dosso Dossi ; Palma's 
 Venus; Sodoma's Marriage of Alexander all these, 
 to mention none but pictures familiar to every trav- 
 eler in Italy, raise for the student of the classical 
 Revival absorbing questions relative to the influences 
 of pagan myths upon the modern imagination.
 
 292 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Signorelli was chiefly occupied, during the course 
 of his long career, upon religious pictures ; and the 
 high place he occupies in the history of Renaissance 
 culture is due partly to his free abandonment of 
 conventional methods in treating sacred subjects. 
 The Uffizzi Gallery contains a circular Madonna 
 by his hand, with a row of naked men for back- 
 ground the forerunner of Michael Angelo's famous 
 Holy Family. So far had art for art's sake already 
 encroached upon the ecclesiastical domain. To 
 discuss Signorelh's merits as a painter of altar-pieces 
 would be to extend the space allotted to him far 
 beyond its proper limits. It is not as a religious 
 artist that he takes his rank, but as having power- 
 fully promoted the rehabilitation of the body achieved 
 for art by the Renaissance. 
 
 Unlike Mantegna, Signorelli never entered the 
 service of a prince, though we have seen that he 
 executed commissions for Lorenzo de' Medici and 
 Pandolfo Petrucci. He bore a name which, if not 
 noble, had been more than once distinguished in the 
 annals of Tuscany. Residing at his native place, 
 Gortona, he there enjoyed the highest reputation, 
 and was frequently elected to municipal office. Con- 
 cerning his domestic life very little is known, but 
 what we do know is derived from an excellent 
 source. 1 His mother was the sister of Lazzaro, 
 
 1 I must not omit to qualify Vasari's praise of Luca Signorelli, by 
 reference to a letter recently published from the ' Archivio Buonarroti,
 
 SIGNORELLI'S PERSONAL CHARACTER. 293 
 
 great-grandfather of Giorgio Vasari. In his biog- 
 raphy of Signorelli, Vasari relates how, when he 
 was himself a boy of eight, his illustrious cousin 
 visited the house of the Vasari family at Arezzo ; 
 and hearing from little Giorgio's grammar-master 
 that he spent his time in drawing figures, Luca 
 turned to the child's father and said, ' Antonio, 
 since Giorgio takes after his family, you must by 
 all means have him taught ; for even though he 
 should pay attention to literature as well, drawing 
 can not fail to be a source of utility, honor, and 
 recreation to him, as it is to every man of worth.' 
 Luca's kindness deeply impressed the boy, who 
 afterward wrote the following description of his 
 personal qualities : ' He was a man of the most 
 excellent habits, sincere and affectionate with his 
 friends, sweet of conversation and amusing in so- 
 ciety, above all things courteous to those who had 
 need of his work, and easy in giving instruction 
 to his pupils. He lived splendidly, and took de- 
 light in dressing handsomely. This excellent dis- 
 
 Lettere a Diversi,' p. 391. Michael Angelo there addresses the Captain 
 of Cortona, and complains that in the first year of Leo's pontificate 
 Luca came to him and by various representations obtained from him 
 the sum of eighty Giulios, which he never repaid, although he made 
 profession to have done so. Michael Angelo was ill at the time, and 
 working with much difficulty on a statue of a bound captive for the 
 tomb of Julius. Luca gave a specimen of his renowned courtesy 
 by comforting the sculptor in these rather sanctimonious phrases : 
 ' Doubt net that angels will come from heaven to support your arms 
 and help you.'
 
 294 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 position caused him to be always held in highest 
 veneration both in his own city and abroad.' 
 
 To turn from Signorelli to Perugino is to plunge 
 at once into a very different atmosphere. 1 It is 
 like quitting the rugged gorges of high mountains 
 for a valley of the Southern Alps still, pensive, 
 beautiful, and colored with reflections from an 
 evening sky. Perugino knew exactly how to rep- 
 resent a certain mood of religious sentiment, blend- 
 ing meek acquiescence with a prayerful yearning of 
 the impassioned soul. His Madonnas worshiping 
 the infant Jesus in a tranquil Umbrian landscape, 
 his angels ministrant, his pathetic martyrs with 
 upturned holy faces, his sexless S. Sebastians and 
 immaculate S. Michaels, display the perfection of 
 art able by color and by form to achieve within 
 a narrow range what it desires. What this artist 
 seems to have aimed at was to create for the soul 
 amid the pomps and passions of this world a rest- 
 ing-place of contemplation tenanted by saintly and 
 seraphic beings. No pain comes near the folk of 
 his celestial city ; no longing poisons their repose ; 
 they are not weary, and the wicked trouble them 
 no more. Their cheerfulness is no less perfect than 
 their serenity ; like the shades of Hellas, they have 
 drunk Lethean waters from the river of content, 
 
 1 Pietro, known as Perugino from the city of his adoption, was the 
 son of Cristoforo Vannucci, of Citta della Pieve. He was born in 
 1446, and died at Fontignano, in 1 522.
 
 PERUGIN&S PIETISTIC STYLE. 295 
 
 and all remembrance of things sad or harsh has 
 vanished from their minds. The quietude of holi- 
 ness expressed in this ideal region was a legacy 
 to Perugino from earlier Umbrian masters; but 
 his technical supremacy in fresco-painting and in 
 oils, his correct drawing within certain limits, and 
 his refined sense of color enabled him to realize 
 it more completely than his less accomplished pre- 
 decessors. In his best work the Renaissance set 
 the seal of absolute perfection upon pietistic art. 
 
 We English are fortunate in possessing one of 
 Perugino's sincerest devotional oil-pictures. 1 His 
 frescoes of S. Sebastian at Panicale, and of the 
 Crucifixion at Florence, are tolerably well known 
 through reproductions ; 2 while the Vision of S. Ber- 
 nard at Munich and the Pieta in the Pitti Gallery 
 are familiar to all traveled students of Italian paint- 
 ing. These masterpieces belong to Perugino's best 
 period, when his inspiration was fresh and his en- 
 thusiasm for artistic excellence was still unimpaired ; 
 and when, as M. Rio thinks, the failure of his faith 
 had not yet happened. It is only at Perugia, however, 
 in the Sala del Cambio, that we are able to gauge 
 the extent of his power and to estimate the value 
 of his achievement beyond the pale of strictly re- 
 ligious themes. 
 
 1 The triptych in the National Gallery. 
 
 a They have been published by the Arundel Society.
 
 296 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Early in the course of his career Perugino seems 
 to have become contented with a formal repetition 
 of successful motives, and to have checked the 
 growth of his genius by adhering closely to a pre- 
 scribed cycle of effects. The praises of his patrons 
 and the prosperity of his trade proved to his keen 
 commercial sense that the raised ecstatic eyes, 
 the upturned oval faces, the pale olive skin, the 
 head inclined upon the shoulder, the thin fluttering 
 hair, the ribbons and the dainty dresses of his 
 holy persons found great favor in Umbrian pal- 
 aces and convents. Thenceforward he painted but 
 little else ; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he 
 was obliged to treat the representative heroes of 
 Greek and Roman story, he adopted the same 
 manner. 1 Leonidas, the lion-hearted Spartan, and 
 Cato, the austere Roman, who preferred liberty to 
 life, bend their mild heads like flowers in Pemgino's 
 frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied 
 folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction 
 of the Eterno Padre, conceived as a benevolent 
 old man for a conventional painting of the Trinity; 
 and Ganymede is a page-boy with the sweet submis- 
 sive features of Tobias. Already Perugino had 
 opened a manufactory of pietistic pictures, and was 
 employing many pupils on his works. He coined 
 
 1 These frescoes were begun in 1499. It may be mentioned that 
 in this year, on the refusal of Perugino to decorate the Cappella di S. 
 Brizio, the Orvietans intrusted that work to Signorelli.
 
 PERUGIN&S PERSONAL CHARACTER. 297 
 
 money by fixing artificially beautiful faces upon 
 artificially elegant figures, placing a row of these 
 puppets in a landscape with calm sky behind them, 
 and calling the composition by the name of some 
 familiar scene. His inspiration was dead, his in- 
 vention exhausted ; his chief object seemed to be 
 to make his trade thrive. 
 
 Perugino will always remain a problem to the 
 psychologist who believes in physiognomy, as well as 
 to the student of the passionate times in which he 
 lived. His hard unsympathetic features in the por- 
 traits at Perugia and Florence do not belie, but 
 rather win credence for, Vasari's tales about his sordid 
 soul. 1 Local traditions and contemporary rumors, 
 again, give color to what Vasari relates about his 
 infidelity ; while the criminal records of Florence 
 prove that he was not over-scrupulous to keep his 
 hands from violence. 2 How could such a man, we 
 
 1 Uffizzi and Sala del Cambio. 
 
 a ' Fu Pietro persona di assai poca religione, e non se gli pote mai 
 far credere rimmortalita dell' anima : anzi, con parole accomodate al 
 suo cervello di porfidor ostinatissimamente ricuso ogni buona vita. 
 Aveva ogni sua speranza ne* beni della fortuna, e per danari arebbe 
 fatto ogni male contratto.' Vasari, vol. vi. p. 50. The local tradition 
 alluded to above relates to the difficulties raised by the Church against 
 the Christian burial of Perugino: but if he died oi plague, as it is 
 believed (see C. and C., vol. iii. p. 244), these difficulties were prob- 
 ably caused by panic rather than belief in his impiety. For Gasparo 
 Celio's note on Perugino 's refusal to coniess upon his death-bed, saying 
 that he preferred to see how an impenitent soul would fare in the 
 other world, the reader may consult Rio's ' L'Art Chretien,' vol. ii. p, 
 269. The record of Perugiuo's arming himself in Pec. 1486, together
 
 298 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 ask ourselves, have endured to pass a long life in 
 the fabrication of devotional pictures ? Whence did 
 he derive the sentiment of masterpieces, for piety 
 only equaled by those of Fra Angelico, either in his 
 own nature or in the society of a city torn to pieces 
 by the factions of the Baglioni ? How, again, was it 
 possible for an artist who at times touched beauty 
 so ideal to be contented with the stenciling by his 
 pupils of conventional figures on canvases to which 
 he gave his name? Taking these questions sepa- 
 rately, we might reply that ' there is no art to find 
 the mind's construction in the face ; ' that painting in 
 the sixteenth century was a trade regulated by the 
 demand for particular wares ; that men can live 
 among ruffians without sharing their mood ; that the 
 artist and the moral being are separate, and may not 
 be used to interpret each other. Yet, after giving 
 due weight to such answers, Perugino, being what 
 he was, living at the time he did, not as a recluse, 
 but as a prosperous impresario of painting, and sys- 
 tematically devoting his powers to pietistic art, must 
 be for us a puzzle. That the quietism of his highly- 
 artificial style should have been fashionable in Peru- 
 gia, while the Baglioni were tearing each other to 
 pieces and the troops of the Vitelli and the Borgia 
 were trampling upon Umbria, is one of the most 
 
 with a notorious assassin, Aulista di Angelo of Perugia, in order tc . 
 waylay and beat a private enemy of his near S. Pietro Maggiore at 
 Florence, is quoted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 183.
 
 AN IMPRESARIO OF PAINTING. 299 
 
 striking paradoxes of an age rich in dramatic con- 
 tradictions. 
 
 It is much to be regretted, with a view to solving 
 the question of Perugino's personality in relation to 
 his art, that his character does not emerge with any 
 salience from the meager notices we have received 
 concerning him, and that we know but little of his 
 private life. Vasari tells us that he married a very 
 beautiful girl, and that one of his chief pleasures was 
 to see this wife handsomely dressed at home and 
 abroad. He often decked her out in clothes and 
 jewels with his own hand. For the rest, we find in 
 Perugino, far more than in either Mantegna or Sig- 
 norelli, an instance of the simple Italian craftsman, 
 employing numerous assistants, undertaking contract 
 work on a large scale, and striking keen bargains 
 with his employers. Both at Florence and at Pe- 
 rugia he opened a bottega; and by the exercise of his 
 trade as a master-painter he realized enough money 
 to buy substantial estates in those cities, as well as 
 in his birthplace. 1 In all the greatest art-works of 
 the age he took his part. Thus we find him paint- 
 ing in the Sistine Chapel between 1484 and 1486, 
 treating with the commune of Orvieto for the com- 
 pletion of the chapel of S. Brizio in 1489, joining in 
 the debate upon the facade of S. Maria del Fiore in 
 
 1 ' Guadagnd molte ricchezze ; e in Fiorenza muro e compr6 case ; 
 ed in Perugia ed a Castello della Pieve acquisto molti beni stabili.' 
 Vasarij vol. vL p. 50.
 
 300 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 
 
 1 49 1 , giving his opinion upon the erection of Michael 
 Angelo's David at Florence in 1 504 , and competing 
 with Signorelli, Pinturicchio, and Bazzi for the 
 decoration of the Stanze of the Vatican in 1508. 
 The rising of brighter stars above the horizon during 
 his lifetime somewhat dimmed his fame, and caused 
 him much disquietude ; yet neither Raphael nor 
 Michael Angelo interfered with the demand for 
 his pictures, which continued to be lively till the 
 very year of his death. That he was jealous of 
 these younger rivals appears from the fact that he 
 brought an action against Michael Angelo for having 
 called his style stupid and antiquated. In the cele- 
 brated phrase cast at him by the blunt and scornful 
 master of a new art-mystery * we discern the abrupt 
 line of division between time-honored tradition and 
 the maniera moderna of the full Renaissance. The 
 old Titans had to yield their place before the new 
 Olympian deities of Italian painting. There is some- 
 thing pathetic in the retirement of the gray-haired 
 Perugino from Rome, to make way for the victorious 
 Phcebean beauty of the boy Raphael. 
 
 The influence of Perugino upon Italian art was 
 powerful though transitory. He formed a band of 
 able pupils, among whom was the great Raphael ; 
 and though Raphael speedily abandoned his mas- 
 ter's narrow footpath through the fields of painting, 
 
 1 'Goffo nelT arte.' See Vasari. voL vl p. 46. See too above, p. 268.
 
 BERNARDO PINTURICCHIO. 301 
 
 he owed to Perugino the invaluble benefit of train- 
 ing in solid technical methods and traditions of pure 
 taste. From none of his elder contemporaries, with 
 the exception of Fra Bartolommeo, could the young 
 Raphael have learned so much that was congenial 
 to his early instincts. What, for example, might 
 have befallen him if he had worked with Signorelli 
 it is difficult to imagine ; for while nothing is more 
 obvious on the one hand than Raphael's originality, 
 his strong assimilative bias is scarcely less remarka- 
 ble. The time has not yet come to speak of Ra- 
 phael ; nor will space suffice for detailed observations 
 
 . 
 
 on his fellow-students in the workshop at Perugia. 
 The place occupied by Perugino in the evolution of 
 Italian painting is peculiar. In the middle of a posi- 
 tive and worldly age, declining fast to frigid skep- 
 ticism and political corruption, he set the final touch 
 of technical art upon the devotion transmitted from 
 earlier and more enthusiastic centuries. The flower 
 of Umbrian piety blossomed in the masterpieces of 
 his youth, and faded into dryness in the affectations 
 of his manhood. Nothing was left on the same line 
 for his successors. 
 
 Among these, Bernardo Pinturicchio can here 
 alone be mentioned. A thorough naturalist, though 
 saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian 
 school, Pinturicchio was not distracted either by 
 scientific or ideal aims from the clear and fluent
 
 302 RENAISSANCE IN JTAL Y. 
 
 presentation of contemporary manners and cos- 
 tumes. He is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who 
 brings us here and there in close relation to the men 
 of his own time, and has in consequence a special 
 value for the student of Renaissance life. His wall- 
 paintings in the library of the cathedral of Siena are 
 so well preserved that we need not seek elsewhere 
 for better specimens of the decorative art most 
 highly prized in the first years of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. 1 These frescoes have a richness of effect and 
 a vivacity of natural action which, in spite of their 
 superficiality, render them highly charming. The 
 life of ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II., is here 
 treated like a legend There is no attempt at repre- 
 senting the dress of half a century anterior to the 
 painter's date, or at rendering accurate historic por- 
 traiture. Both Pope and Emperor are romantically 
 conceived, and each portion of the tale is told as 
 though it were a fit in some popular ballad. So 
 much remains of Perugian affectation as gives a 
 kind of child-like grace to the studied attitudes and 
 many-colored groups of elegant young men. 
 
 We must always be careful to distinguish the 
 importance of an artist considered as the exponent 
 of his age from that which he may claim by virtue 
 of some special skill or some peculiar quality of feel- 
 
 1 I select these for comment rather than the frescoes at Spello, 
 beautiful as these are, because they have more interest in relation to 
 the style of the Renaissance.
 
 FRANCIA. 303 
 
 ing. The art of Perugino, for example, throws but 
 little light upon the Renaissance taken as a whole. 
 Intrinsically valuable because of its technical perfec- 
 tion and its purity of sentiment, it was already in 
 the painter's lifetime superseded by a larger and a 
 grander manner. The progressive forces of the 
 modern style found their channels outside him. 
 This again is true of Francesco Raibolini, surnamed 
 Francia from his master in the goldsmith's craft. 
 Francia is known to Englishmen as one of the most 
 sincerely pious of Christian painters by his incom- 
 parable picture of the Dead Christ in our National 
 Gallery. The spirituality that renders Fra Angelico 
 unintelligible to minds less ecstatically tempered than 
 his own is not found in such excess in Francia, nor 
 does his work suffer from the insipidity of Perugino's 
 affectation. Deep religious feeling is combined with 
 physical beauty of the purest type in a masterpiece 
 of tranquil grace. A greater degree of naivete and 
 naturalness compensates for the inferiority of Fran- 
 cia's to Perugino's supremely perfect handling. This 
 is true of Francia's numerous pictures at Bologna ; 
 where indeed, in order to be rightly known, he 
 should be studied by all lovers of the quattrocento 
 style in its most delightful moments. 1 For mastery 
 over oil-painting and for charm of color Francia 
 
 1 The ' Assumption ' in S. Frediano at Lucca should also be men- 
 tioned as one of Francia's masterpieces.
 
 304 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 challenges comparison with what is best in Perugino, 
 though he did not quite attain the same technical 
 excellence. 
 
 One more painter must delay us yet awhile 
 within the limits of the fifteenth century. Barto- 
 Ibmmeo di Paolo del Fattorino, better known as 
 Baccio della Porta or Fra Bartolommeo, forms at 
 Florence the connecting link between the artists of 
 the earlier Renaissance and the golden age. 1 By 
 chronological reckoning he is nearly a quarter of a 
 century later than Lionardo da Vinci, and is the 
 exact contemporary of Michael Angelo. As an 
 artist, he has thoroughly outgrown the quattrocento 
 style, and falls short only by a little of the greatest. 
 In assigning him a place among the predecessors 
 and precursors of the full Renaissance, I am there- 
 fore influenced rather by the range of subjects he 
 selected, and by the character of his genius, than by 
 calculations of time or estimate of ability. 
 
 Fra Bartolommeo was sent, when nine years 
 old, into the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, where he 
 began his artist's life by color-grinding, sweeping 
 out the shop, and errand-running. It was in Cosimo's 
 bottega that he made acquaintance with Mariotto 
 Albertinelli, who became his intimate friend and 
 fellow-worker. In spite of marked differences of 
 
 1 His father was a muleteer of Suffignano, who settled at Florence, 
 in a house and garden near the gate of S. Piero Gattolino. He was 
 born in 1475, and he died in 1517.
 
 FRA SARTOLOMMEO AND ALBERTINELLI. 305 
 
 character, disagreements upon the fundamental mat- 
 ters of politics and religion, and not unfrequent quar- 
 rels, these men continued to be comrades through 
 the better part of their joint lives. Baccio was 
 gentle, timid, yielding, and industrious. Mariotto 
 was willful, obstinate, inconsequent, and flighty. 
 Baccio fell under the influence of Savonarola, pro- 
 fe^sed himself a piagnone, and took the cowl of the 
 Dominicans. 1 Mariotto was a partisan of the Medici, 
 an uproarious pallesco, and a loose liver, who event- 
 ually deserted the art of painting for the calling of 
 an innkeeper. Yet so sweet was the temper of the 
 Frate, and so firm was the bond of friendship estab- 
 lished in boyhood between this ill-assorted couple, 
 that they did not part company until 1512, three 
 years before Mariotto's death and five before that of 
 Bartolommeo. During their long association the 
 task of designing fell upon the Frate, while Alberti- 
 nelli took his orders and helped to work out his 
 conceptions. Both were excellent craftsmen and 
 consummate colorists, as is proved by the pictures 
 executed by each unassisted. Albertinelli's Saluta- 
 tion in the Uffizzi yields no point of grace and vigor 
 to any of his more distinguished coadjutor's paintings. 
 The great contributions made by Fra Barto- 
 lommeo to the art of Italy were in the double region 
 
 1 In S. Domenico at Prato in 1 500. He afterward resided in S. 
 Marco at Florence.
 
 306 RENAISSANCE IN ITALV. 
 
 of composition and coloring. In his justly-cele- 
 brated fresco of S. Maria Nuova at Florence a 
 Last Judgment with a Christ enthroned amid 
 a choir of Saints he exhibited for the first time a 
 thoroughly-scientific scheme of grouping based on 
 geometrical principles. Each part is perfectly bal- 
 anced in itself, and yet is necessary to the structure 
 of the whole. The complex framework may be 
 subdivided into numerous sections no less harmo- 
 niously ordered than is the total scheme to which 
 they are subordinated. Simple figures the pyramid 
 and the triangle, upright, inverted, and interwoven 
 like the rhymes in a sonnet form the basis of the 
 composition. This system was adhered to by the 
 Frate in all his subsequent works. To what extent 
 it influenced the style of Raphael will be afterward 
 discussed. As a colorist, Fra Bartolommeo was 
 equal to the best of his contemporaries, and superior 
 to any of his rivals in the school of Florence. Few 
 painters of any age have combined harmony of tone 
 so perfectly with brilliance and richness. It is a 
 real joy to contemplate the pure and splendid folds 
 of the white drapery he loved to place in the fore- 
 ground of his altar-pieces. Solidity and sincerity 
 distinguish his work in every detail, while his feeling 
 is remarkable for elevation and sobriety. All that 
 he lacks is the boldness of imagination, the depth of 
 passion, and the power of thought, that are indispen- 
 sable to genius of the highest order. Gifted with a
 
 THE PAINTER OF ADORATION. 307 
 
 sympathetic and a pliant rather than a creative and 
 self-sustained nature, he was sensitive to every in- 
 fluence. Therefore we find him learning much in 
 his youth from Lionardo, deriving a fresh impulse 
 from Raphael, and endeavoring in his later life, 
 after a visit to Rome in 1514, to ' heighten his style,' 
 as the phrase went, by emulating Michael Angelo. 
 The attempt to tread the path of Buonarroti was a 
 failure. What Fra Bartolommeo sought to gain in 
 majesty he lost in charm. His was essentially a 
 pure and gracious manner, upon which sublimity 
 could not be grafted. The gentle soul, who dropped 
 his weapon when the convent of S. Marco was 
 besieged by the Compagnacci, 1 and who vowed, if 
 Heaven preserved him in the tumult, to become a 
 monk, had none of Michael Angelo's terribilita. 
 Without possessing some share of that spirit, it was 
 vain to aggrandize the forms and mass the raiment 
 of his prophets in imitation of the Sistine. 
 
 Nature made Fra Bartolommeo the painter of 
 adoration. 2 His masterpiece at Lucca the Madonna 
 delta Misericordia is a poem of glad worship, a 
 hymn of prayerful praise. Our Lady stands elate, 
 between earth and heaven, appealing to her Son for 
 mercy. At her footstool are her suppliants, the 
 
 1 May 23, 1498. 
 
 a In addition to the pictures mentioned above, I may call attention 
 to the adoring figure of S. Catherine of Siena, in three large paint- 
 ings now severally in the Pitti, at Lucca, and in the Louvre.
 
 308 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 men anrf women and little children of the city she 
 has saved. The peril is past. Salvation has been 
 won ; and the song of thanksgiving ascends from all 
 those massed and mingled forms in unison. Not 
 less truly is the great unfinished picture of Madonna 
 surrounded by the Patron Saints of Florence a poem 
 of adoration. 1 This painting was ordered by the 
 Gonfalonier Piero Soderini, the man who dedicated 
 Florence to Christ as King. He intended it to take 
 its place in the hall of the Consiglio Grande, where 
 Michael Angelo and Lionardo gained their earliest 
 laurels. Before it could be finished, the Republic 
 perished. 2 ' That/ says Rio, ' is the reason why he 
 left but an imperfect work for those at least who 
 are only struck by what is wanting, in it Others 
 will at first regard it with the interest attaching to 
 unfinished poems, interrupted by the jailer's call or 
 by the stern voice of the executioner. Then they 
 will study it in all its details, in order to appreciate 
 its beauties ; and that appreciation will be the more 
 perfect in proportion as a man is the more fully pene- 
 trated with its dominant idea, and with the attendant 
 circumstances that bring this home to him. It is not 
 against an abstract enemy that the intercession of 
 the celestial powers is here invoked : it is not by a 
 caprice of the painter or his patron that, in the group 
 
 1 In the Uffizzi. As a composition, it is the Frate's masterpiece. 
 
 2 See 'Age of the Despots,' p. 427, for this consequence of the 
 sack of Prato.
 
 INFLUENCE OF SAVONAROLA. 309 
 
 of centra! figures, S. Anne attracts attention before 
 the Holy Virgin, not only by reason of her pre- 
 eminence, but also through the intensity of her 
 heavenward prayer, and again through her beauty, 
 which far surpasses that of nearly all Madonnas 
 painted by Fra Bartolommeo.' * But artist and 
 patron had indeed good reason, in this crisis of the 
 Commonwealth, to select as the most eminent advo- 
 cate for Florence at the bar of Heaven that saint 
 on whose day, July 26, 1343, had been celebrated 
 the emancipation of the city from its servitude to 
 Walter of Brienne. 
 
 The great event of Fra Bartolommeo's life was 
 the impression produced on him by Savonarola. 3 
 Having listened to the Dominican's terrific denun- 
 ciations of worldliness and immorality, he carried 
 his life-studies to the pyre of vanities, resolved to 
 assume the cowl, and renounced his art. Between 
 1499, when he was engaged in painting the Last 
 Jiidgment of S. Maria Nuova, and 1506, he is 
 supposed never to have touched the pencil. When 
 he resumed it Savonarola had been burned for 
 heresy, and Fra Bartolommeo was a brother in his 
 convent of S. Marco. Savonarola has sometimes 
 
 1 'L'Art Chretien,' vol. ii. p. 515. 
 
 * Two of our best portraits of Savonarola, the earlier inscribed 
 'Hieronymi Ferrariensis a Deo Missi Prophetae Effigies,' the later 
 treated to represent S. Peter Martyr, are from the hand of Fra Bar- 
 tolommeo. See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 433.
 
 jio RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 been described as an iconoclast, obstinately hostile 
 to the fine arts. This is by no means a true 
 account of the crusade he carried on against the 
 pagan sensuality of his contemporaries. He de- 
 sired that art should remain the submissive hand- 
 maid of the Church and the willing servant of pure 
 morality. While he denounced the heathenism of the 
 style in vogue at Florence, and forbade the study 
 of the nude, he strove to encourage religious paint- 
 ing, and established a school for its exercise in the 
 cloister of S. Marco. It was in this monastic 
 bottega that Fra Bartolommeo, in concert with his 
 friend Albertinelli, worked for the benefit of the con- 
 vent after the year 1506. The reforms Savonarola 
 attempted in the fine arts as in manners, by running 
 counter to the tendencies of the Renaissance at a 
 moment when society was too corrupt to be re- 
 generated, and the passion for antiquity was too 
 powerful to be restrained, proved of necessity in- 
 effective. It may further be said that the limita- 
 tions he imposed would have been fatal to the free 
 development of art if they had been observed. 
 
 Several painters, besides Fra Baccio, submitted 
 to Savonarola's influence. Among these the most 
 distinguished were the pure and gentle Lorenzo di 
 Credi and Sandro Botticelli, who, after the great 
 preacher's death, is said to have abandoned paint 
 ing. Neither Lorenzo di Credi nor Fra Baccio
 
 THE FOUR ARCHANGELS OF PAINTING. 311 
 
 possessed a portion of the prophet's fiery spirit. 
 Had that but found expression in their cloistral 
 pictures, one of the most peculiar and characteristic 
 flowers of art the world has ever known would 
 then have bloomed in Florence. The mantle cf 
 Savonarola, however, if it fell upon any painter, 
 fell on Michael Angelo, and we must seek an echo of 
 the friar's thunders in the Sistine Chapel. Fra Barto- 
 lommeo was too tender and too timid. The sublimi- 
 ties of tragic passion lay beyond his scope. Though 
 I have ventured to call him the painter of adoration, 
 he did not feel even this movement of the soul 
 with the intensity of Fra Angelico. In the person 
 of S. Dominic kneeling beneath the cross Fra An- 
 gelico painted worship as an ecstasy, wherein the 
 soul goes forth with love and pain and yearning 
 beyond any power of words or tears or music to 
 express what it would utter. To these heights of 
 the ascetic ideal Fra Bartolommeo never soared. 
 His sobriety bordered upon the prosaic. 
 
 We have now reached the great age of the 
 Italian Renaissance, the age in which, not counting 
 for the moment Venice, four archangelic natures 
 gathered up all that had been hitherto achieved in 
 art since the days of Pisano and Giotto, adding 
 such celestial illumination from the sunlight of their 
 inborn genius that in them the world forever sees 
 what art can do. Lionardo da Vinci was born in
 
 312 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Valdarno in 1452, and died in France in 1519. 
 Michael Angelo Buonarroti was born at Caprese, in 
 the Cascntino, in' 1475, and died at Rome in 1564, 
 having outlived the lives of his great peers by nearly 
 half a century. Raphael Santi was born at Urbino 
 in 1483, and died in Rome in 1520. Antonio Alle- 
 gri was born at Correggio in 1494, and died there in 
 1534. To these four men, each in his own degree 
 and according to his own peculiar quality of mind, 
 the fullness of the Renaissance, in its power and free- 
 dom, was revealed. They entered the inner shrine 
 where dwelt the spirit of their age, and bore to the 
 world without the message each of them had heard. 
 In their work posterity still may read the mean- 
 ing of that epoch, differently rendered according to 
 the difference of gifts in each consummate artist, 
 but comprehended in its unity by study of the four 
 together. Lionardo is the wizard or diviner ; to 
 him the Renaissance offers her mystery and lends 
 her magic. Raphael is the Phoebean singer; to 
 him the Renaissance reveals her joy and dowers 
 him with her gift of melody. Correggio is the 
 Ariel or Faun, the lover and light-giver; he has 
 surprised laughter upon the face of the universe, and 
 he paints this laughter in ever-varying movement. 
 Michael Angelo is the prophet and Sibylline seer ; 
 to him the Renaissance discloses the travail of her 
 spirit ; him she endues with power ; he wrests hef
 
 LIOKARDO DA VINCL 313 
 
 secret, voyaging, like an ideal Columbus, the vast 
 abyss of thought alone. In order that this revela- 
 tion of the Renaissance in painting should be com- 
 plete, it is necessary to add a fifth power to these 
 four that of the Venetian masters, who are the 
 poets of carnal beauty, the rhetoricians of mundane 
 pomp, the impassioned interpreters of all things 
 great and splendid in the pageant of the outer 
 world. As Venice herself, by type of constitution 
 and historical development, remained sequestered 
 from the rest of Italy, so her painters demand sepa- 
 rate treatment. 1 It is enough, therefore, for the pres- 
 ent to remember that without the note they utter 
 the chord of the Renaissance lacks its harmony. 
 
 Lionardo, the natural son of Messer Pietro, 
 notary of Florence and landed proprietor at Vinci/ 
 was so beautiful of person that no one, says Vasari, 
 has sufficiently extolled his charm ; so strong of 
 limb that he could bend an iron ring or horseshoe 
 between his fingers ; so eloquent of speech that 
 those who listened to his words were fain to answer 
 ' Yes ' or ' No ' as he thought fit. This child of 
 grace and persuasion was a wonderful musician. 
 The Duke of Milan sent for him to play upon his 
 lute and improvize Italian canzoni. The lute he 
 carried was of silver, fashioned like a horse's head, 
 and tuned according to acoustic laws discovered 
 
 1 See below, chapter vii.
 
 314 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 by himself. Of the songs he sang to its accom- 
 paniment none have been preserved. Only one 
 sonnet remains to show of what sort was the poetry 
 of Lionardo, prized so highly by the men of his 
 own generation. This, too, is less remarkable for 
 poetic beauty than for sober philosophy expressed 
 with singular brevity of phrase. 1 
 
 This story of Da Vinci's lute might be chosen as 
 a parable of his achievement. Art and science were 
 never separated in his work ; and both were not 
 unfrequently subservient to some fanciful caprice, 
 some bizarre freak of originality. Curiosity and love 
 of the uncommon ruled his nature. By intuition and 
 by persistent interrogation of nature he penetrated 
 many secrets of science ; but he was contented with 
 the acquisition of knowledge. Once found, he had 
 but little care to distribute the results of his inves- 
 
 1 This sonnet I have translated into English with such closeness to 
 the original words as I found possible : 
 
 He who can do not what he wills, should try 
 To will what he can do ; for since 'tis vain 
 To will what can't be compassed, to abstain 
 From idle wishing is philosophy. 
 
 Lo, all our happiness and grief imply 
 Knowledge or not of will's ability : 
 They therefore can, who will what ought to be, 
 Nor wrest true reason from her seat awry. 
 
 Nor what a man can, should he always will : 
 Oft seemeth sweet what after is not so ; 
 And what I wished, when had, hath cost a tear. 
 
 Then, reader of these lines, if thou wouldst still 
 Be helpful to thyself, to others dear, 
 Will to can alway what thou ought to do.
 
 HtS SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY. 315 
 
 tigations ; at most he sought to use them for pur- 
 poses of practical utility. 1 Even in childhood he is 
 said to have perplexed his teachers by propounding 
 arithmetical problems. In his maturity he carried 
 anatomy further than Delia Torre; he invented 
 machinery for water-mills and aqueducts ; he devised 
 engines of war, discovered the secret of conical rifle- 
 bullets, adapted paddle-wheels to boats, projected 
 new systems of siege artillery, investigated the prin- 
 ciples of optics, designed buildings, made plans for 
 piercing mountains, raising churches, connecting 
 rivers, draining marshes, clearing harbors. 2 There 
 was no branch of study whereby nature through the 
 effort of the inquisitive intellect might be subordi- 
 nated to the use of man of which he was not master. 
 
 1 See the letter addressed by Lionardo to Lodovico Sforza enume- 
 rating his claims as a mechanician, military and civil engineer, archi- 
 tect, etc. It need scarcely be mentioned that he served Cesare Bor- 
 gia and the Florentine Republic as an engineer, and that much of his 
 time at Milan was spent in hydraulic works upon the Adda. It should 
 be added here that Lionardo committed the results of his discoveries 
 to writing ; but he published very little, and that by no means the 
 most precious portion of his thoughts. He founded at Milan an 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences, if this name may be given to a re- 
 union of artists, scholars, and men of the world, to whom it is probable 
 that he communicated his researches in anatomy. The ' Treatise on 
 Painting' which bears his name is a compilation from notes and MSS. 
 first printed in 1651. 
 
 2 The folio volume of sketches in the Ambrosian Library at Milan 
 contains designs for all these works. The collection in the Royal 
 Library at Windsor is no less rich. Among Lionardo's scientific 
 drawings in the latter place may be mentioned a series of maps illus- 
 trating the river system of Central Italy, with plans for improved 
 drainage.
 
 316 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Nor, richly gifted as was Lionardo, did he trust his 
 natural facility. His patience was no less marvelous 
 than the quickness of his insight. He lived to illus- 
 trate the definition of genius as the capacity for 
 taking infinite pains. 
 
 While he was a boy, says Vasari, Lionardo 
 modeled in terra-cotta certain heads of women 
 smiling. This was in the workshop of Verocchio, 
 who had already fixed a smile on David's face in 
 bronze. When an old man, he left Mono, Lisa on 
 the easel not quite finished, the portrait of a subtle, 
 shadowy, uncertain smile. This smile, this enigmatic 
 revelation of a movement in the soul, this seductive 
 ripple on the surface of the human personality, was 
 to Lionardo a symbol of the secret of the world, an 
 image of the universal mystery. It haunted him all 
 through his life, and innumerable were the attempts 
 he made to render by external form the magic of 
 this fugitive and evanescent charm. 
 
 Through long days he would follow up and 
 down the streets of Florence or of Milan beautiful 
 unknown faces, learning them by heart, interpreting 
 their changes of expression, reading the thoughts 
 through the features. These he afterward com- 
 mitted to paper. We possess many such sketches 
 a series of ideal portraits, containing each an un- 
 solved riddle that the master read ; a procession of 
 shadows, cast by reality, that, entering the camera
 
 BEAUTY AND UGLINESS. 317 
 
 lucida of the artist's brain, gained new and spiritual 
 quality. 1 In some of them his fancy seems to be 
 imprisoned in the labyrinths of hair; in others the 
 eyes deep with feeling* or hard with gem-like bril- 
 liancy have caught it, or the lips that tell and hide 
 so much, or the nostrils quivering with moment- 
 ary emotion. Beauty, inexpressive of inner mean- 
 ing, must, we conceive, have had but slight attraction 
 for him. We do not find that he drew ' a fair naked 
 body ' for the sake of its carnal charm ; his hasty 
 studies of the nude are often faulty, mere memo- 
 randa of attitude and gesture. The human form 
 was interesting to him either scientifically or else as 
 an index to the soul. Yet he felt the influence of 
 personal loveliness. His favorite pupil Salaino 
 was a youth ' of singular grace, with curled and 
 waving hair, a feature of personal beauty by which 
 Lionardo was always greatly pleased.' Hair, the 
 most mysterious of human things, the most manifold 
 in form and hue, snake-like in its subtlety for the 
 entanglement of souls, had naturally supreme attrac- 
 tiveness for the magician of the arts. 
 
 1 Shelley says of the poet : 
 
 He will watch from dawn till gloom 
 The lake-reflected sun illume 
 The yellow bees in the ivy "bloom ; 
 Nor heed nor see what things they be, 
 But from these create he can 
 Forms more real than living man, 
 Nurslings of immortality.
 
 318 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 With like energy Lionardo bent himself to divine 
 the import of ugliness. Whole pages of his sketch- 
 book are filled with squalid heads of shriveled 
 crones and ghastly old men with idiots, goitred 
 cretins, criminals, and clowns. It was not that he 
 loved the horrible for its own sake; but he was 
 determined to seize character, to command the 
 gamut of human physiognomy from ideal beauty 
 down to forms bestialized by vice and disease. The 
 story related by Giraldi concerning the head of Judas 
 in the Cenacolo at Milan sufficiently illustrates the 
 method of Lionardo in creating types and the utility 
 of such caricatures as his note-books contain. 1 
 
 It is told that he brought into his room one day 
 a collection of reptiles lizards, newts, toads, vipers, 
 efts all creatures that are loathsome to the common 
 eye. These, by the magic of imagination, he com- 
 bined into a shape so terrible that those who saw it 
 shuddered. Medusa's snake-enwoven head exhaling 
 poisonous vapor from the livid lips ; Leda, swan- 
 like beside her swan lover ; Chimaera, in whom 
 many natures mingled and made one ; the conflict 
 of a dragon and a lion ; S. John, conceived not as a 
 prophet, but as a vine-crowned Faun, the harbinger 
 of joy over pictorial motives of this kind, attractive 
 by reason of their complexity or mystery, he loved 
 
 1 See De Stendhal, ' Histoire de la Peinture en Italic,' p. 143, for 
 this story.
 
 DOUBLE INTERESTS OF THE RENAISSANCE. 319 
 
 to brood ; and to this fascination of a sphinx-like 
 charm we owe some of his most exquisite drawings 
 Lionardo more than any other artist who has ever 
 lived (except perhaps his great predecessor Leo 
 Battista Alberti) felt the primal sympathies that bind 
 men to the earth, their mother, and to living things, 
 their brethren. 1 Therefore the borderland between 
 humanity and nature allured him with a spell half 
 aesthetic and half scientific. In the dawn of Hellas 
 this sympathetic apprehension of the world around 
 him would have made him a supreme mythopoet. 
 In the dawn of the modern world curiosity claimed 
 the lion's share of his genius : nor can it be denied 
 that his art suffered by this division of interests. The 
 time was not yet come for accurate physiological 
 investigation, or for the true birth of the scientific 
 spirit ; and in any age it would have been difficult . 
 for one man to establish on a sound basis discoveries 
 made in so many realms as those explored by Lio- 
 nardo. We can not therefore but regret that he was 
 not more exclusively a painter. If, however, he had 
 confined his activity to the production of works equal 
 to the Cenacolo, we should have missed the most 
 complete embodiment in one personality of the two- 
 
 1 In the ' Treatise on Painting,' Da Vinci argues strongly against 
 isolating man. He regarded the human being as in truth a microcosm 
 to be only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, 
 as a painter, the same thought as Pico. (See ' Revival of Learning,' 
 p. 49.) Therefore he urges the claims of landscape on the attention of 
 artists.
 
 320 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 fold impulses of the Renaissance and of its boundless 
 passion for discovery. 
 
 Lionardo's turn for physical science led him to 
 study the technicalities of art with fervent industry. 
 Whatever his predecessors had acquired in the 
 knowledge of materials, the chemistry of colors, 
 the mathematics of composition, the laws of perspec- 
 tive, and the illusions of chiaroscuro he developed 
 to the utmost. To find a darker darkness and a 
 brighter brightness than had yet been shown upon 
 the painter's canvas; to solve problems of fore- 
 shortening; to deceive the eye by finely -graduated 
 tones and subtle touches ; to submit the freest play of 
 form to simple figures of geometry in grouping, were 
 among the objects he most earnestly pursued. At 
 the same time his deep feeling for all things that 
 have life gave him new power in the delineation of 
 external nature. The branching of flower-stems, 
 the outlines of fig-leaves, the attitudes of beasts and 
 birds in motion, the arching of the fan-palm, were 
 rendered by him with the same consummate skill as 
 the dimple on a cheek or the fine curves of a young 
 man's lips. 1 Wherever he perceived a difficulty, he 
 
 1 I might refer in detail to four studies of bramble branches, leaves, 
 and flowers and fruit, in the Royal Collection at Windsor, most wonder- 
 ful for patient accuracy and delicate execution ; also to drawings of 
 oak-leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush, 
 and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are 
 as valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific 
 character of each plant with greater precision would be impossible.
 
 LOVE OF STRANGE THINGS. 321 
 
 approached and conquered it. Love, which is the 
 soul of art Love, the bond-slave of Beauty and the 
 son of Poverty by Craft led him to these triumphs. 
 He used to buy caged birds in the market-place that 
 he might let them loose. He was attached to horses, 
 and kept a sumptuous stable ; and these he would 
 draw in eccentric attitudes, studying their anatomy 
 in detail for his statue of Francesco Sforza. 1 In the 
 Battle of the Standard, known to us only by a sketch 
 of Rubens, 2 he gave passions to the horse not 
 human passion, nor yet merely equine but such as 
 horses might feel when placed upon a par with men. 
 In like manner the warriors are fiery with bestial 
 impulses leonine fury, wolfish ferocity, fox-like 
 cunning. Their very armor takes the shape of 
 monstrous reptiles. To such an extent did the 
 interchange of human and animal properties haunt 
 Lionardo's fancy. 
 
 From what has been already said we shall be 
 better able to understand Lionardo's love of the 
 bizarre and grotesque. One day a vine-dresser 
 brought him a very curious lizard. The master 
 fitted it with wings injected with quicksilver to 
 
 1 See the series of anatomical studies of the horse in the Royal 
 Collection. 
 
 5 Engraved by Edelinck. The drawing has obvious Lionardesque 
 qualities ; but how far it may be from the character of the original we 
 can guess by Rubens' transcript from Mantegna. (See above, p. 274.) 
 De Stendhal says wittily of this work, 'C'est Virgile traduit par 
 Madame de Stael,' op. cit. p. 162.
 
 322 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 give them motion as the creature crawled. Eyes, 
 horns, and a beard, a marvelous dragon's mask, 
 were placed upon its head. This strange beast 
 lived in a cage, where Lionardo tamed it ; but no 
 one, says Vasari, dared so much as to look at it 1 
 On quaint puzzles and perplexing schemes he mused 
 a good part of his life away. At one time he was 
 for making wings to fly with ; at another he in- 
 vented ropes that should uncoil, strand by strand ; 
 again, he devised a system of flat corks by means 
 of which to walk on water. 2 One day, after having 
 scraped the intestines of a sheep so thin that he 
 could hold them in the hollow of his hand, he filled 
 them with wind from a bellows, and blew and blew 
 until the room was choked, and his visitors had 
 to run into corners. Lionardo told them that this 
 was a proper symbol of genius. 
 
 Such stories form what may be called the legend 
 of Lionardo's life ; and some of them seem simple, 
 others almost childish. 3 They illustrate what is 
 
 1 In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are anatomical draw- 
 ings for the construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic 
 claws. The bony, muscular, and venous structure of its legs and feet 
 is accurately indicated. 
 
 a See the drawings engraved and published by Gerli in his ' Disegni 
 di Lionardo da Vinci,' Milan, 1784. 
 
 8 Vasari is the chief source of these legends. Giraldi, Lomazzo, the 
 Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply fur- 
 ther details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed 
 his contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality. 
 There is a touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is 
 wanting in the legend of Piero di Cosimo.
 
 DISLIKE OF FINISHING. 323 
 
 meant when we call him the wizard of the Renais- 
 sance. Art, nature, life, the mysteries of existence, 
 the infinite capacity of human thought, the riddle 
 of the world, all that the Greeks called Pan, so 
 swayed and allured him that, while he dreamed 
 and wrought and never ceased from toil, he seemed 
 to have achieved but little. The fancies of his 
 brain were, perhaps, too subtle and too fragile to 
 be made apparent to the eyes of men. He was wont, 
 after years of labor, to leave his work still incom- 
 plete, feeling that he could not perfect it as he de- 
 sired ; yet even his most fragmentary sketches have a 
 finish beyond the scope of lesser men. ' Extraordi- 
 nary power,' says Vasari, ' was in his case conjoined 
 with remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness 
 and magnanimous daring.' Yet he was constantly 
 accused of indolence and inability to execute. 1 Often 
 and often he made vast preparations and accom- 
 plished nothing. It is well known how the Prior 
 of S. Maria delle Grazie complained that Lionardo 
 stood for days looking at his fresco, and for weeks 
 never came near it ; how the monks of the Annun- 
 ziata at Florence were cheated out of their painting, 
 jtor which elaborate designs had yet been made ; how 
 Leo X., seeing him mix oils with varnish to make 
 
 1 Even Michael Angelo, meeting him in Florence, flung in his 
 teeth that ' he had made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and 
 could not cast it, and through shame left it as it was, unfinished.' See 
 'Arch. St. It.,' serie terza, xvi. 226.
 
 324 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 a new medium, exclaimed, 'Alas! this man will 
 do nothing ; he thinks of the end before he makes 
 a beginning.' A good answer to account for the 
 delay was always ready on the painter's lips, as that 
 the man of genius works most when his hands are 
 idlest ; Judas, sought in vain through all the thieves' 
 resorts in Milan, is not found ; I can not hope to see 
 the face of Christ except in Paradise. Again, when 
 an equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza had been 
 modeled in all its parts, another model was begun be- 
 cause Da Vinci would fain show the warrior triumph- 
 ing over a fallen foe. 1 The first motive seemed to 
 him tame; the second was unrealizable in bronze. 
 ' I can do any thing possible to man,' he wrote to 
 Lodovico Sforza, 'and as well as any living artist 
 either in sculpture or painting.' But he would do 
 nothing as task-work, and his creative brain loved 
 better to invent than to execute. 2 ' Of a truth,' 
 continues his biographer, ' there is good reason to 
 believe that the very greatness of his most exalted 
 
 1 In the Royal Collection at Windsor there is a whole series of 
 studies for these two statues, together with drawings for the mold in 
 which Lionardo intended to cast them. The second of the two is 
 sketched with great variety of motive. The horse is rearing; the 
 fallen enemy is vainly striving to defend himself; the victor in one 
 drawing is reining in his steed, in another is waving a truncheon, in a 
 third is brandishing his sword, in a fourth is holding the sword in act 
 to thrust. The designs for the pedestals, sometimes treated as a tomb 
 and sometimes as a fountain, are equally varied. 
 
 2 ' Concevoir,' said Balzac, ' c'est jouir, c'est fumer cles cigarettes 
 enchantees ; mais sans 1'exdcution tout s'en va en reve et en fumee,' 
 Quoted by Sainte Beuve, ' Causeries du Lundi,' vol. ii. p. 353.
 
 FATE OF LIONARDO'S MASTERPIECES. 325 
 
 mind, aiming at more than could be effected, was 
 itself an impediment ; perpetually seeking to add 
 excellence to excellence and perfection to perfection. 
 This was without doubt the true hinderance, so that, 
 as our Petrarch has it, the work was retarded by 
 desire.' At the close of that cynical and positive 
 century, the spirit whereof was so well expressed 
 by Cosimo de' Medici, 1 Lionardo set before him- 
 self aims infinite instead of finite. His designs of 
 wings to fly with symbolize his whole endeavor. 
 He believed in solving the insoluble ; and nature 
 had so richly dowered him in the very dawn-time 
 of discovery that he was almost justified in this 
 delusion. Having caught the Proteus of the world, 
 he tried to grasp him ; but the god changed shape 
 beneath his touch. Having surprised Silenus asleep, 
 he begged from him a song ; but the song Silenus 
 sang was so marvelous in its variety, so subtle in 
 its modulations, that Lionardo could do no more 
 than recall scattered phrases. His Proteus was 
 the spirit of the Renaissance. The Silenus from 
 whom he forced the song was the double nature 
 of man and of the world. 
 
 By ill chance it happened that Lionardo's 
 greatest works soon perished. His cartoon at Flor- 
 ence disappeared. His model for Sforza's statue 
 was used as a target by French bowmen. His 
 1 See ' Revival of Learning,' p. 177.
 
 326 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 Last Supper remains a mere wreck in the Convent 
 delle Grazie. Such as it is, blurred by ill-usage 
 and neglect, more blurred by impious repainting, 
 that fresco must be seen by those who wish to 
 understand Da Vinci. It has well been called the 
 compendium of all his studies and of all his writings ; 
 and, chronologically, it is the first masterpiece of 
 the perfected Renaissance. 1 Other painters had 
 represented the Last Supper as a solemn prologue 
 to the Passion, or as the mystical inauguration of 
 the greatest Christian sacrament. 2 But none had 
 dared to break the calm of the event by a dramatic 
 action. The school of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Ghir- 
 landajo, Perugino, even Signorelli, remained within 
 the sphere of symbolical suggestion ; and their 
 work gained in dignity what it lost in intensity. 
 Lionardo combined both. He undertook to paint 
 a moment, to delineate the effect of a single word 
 upon twelve men seated at a table, and to do this 
 without sacrificing the tranquillity demanded by 
 ideal art, and without impairing the divine majesty 
 of Him from whose lips that word has fallen. The 
 time has long gone by for detailed criticism, or 
 description of a painting known to eveiy body. It 
 
 1 It was finished, according to Fra Paciolo, in 1498. 
 
 * Signorelli, with his usual originality, chose the moment when 
 Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples. In that rare picture 
 at Cortona we see not the betrayed Chief, but the founder of a new 
 religion.
 
 Tff CENACOLO. 327 
 
 is enough to observe that the ideal representation 
 of a dramatic moment, the life breathed into each 
 part of the composition, the variety of the types 
 chosen to express varieties of character, and the 
 scientific distribution of the twelve apostles in four 
 groups of three around the central Christ, mark 
 the appearance of a new spirit of power and free- 
 dom in the arts. What had hitherto been treated 
 with religious timidity, with conventional stiffness, 
 or with realistic want of grandeur, was now human- 
 ized and at the same time transported into a higher 
 intellectual region ; and though Lionardo discrowned 
 the apostles of their aureoles, he for the first time 
 in the history of painting created a Christ not un- 
 worthy to be worshiped as the prcesens Deus. 
 We know not whether to admire most the perfec- 
 tion of the painter's art or his insight into spiritual 
 things. 1 
 
 If we are forced to feel that, with Da Vinci, 
 accomplishment fell short of power and promise, 
 
 1 The Cenacolo alone will not enable the student to understand 
 Lionardo. He must give his attention to the master's sketch-books, 
 those studies in chalk, in tempera, on thin canvas and paper, prepared 
 for the stylus or the pen, which Vasari calls the final triumphs of 
 designing, and of which, in spite of the loss of many of his books, the 
 surviving specimens are very numerous. Some are easily accessible in 
 Gerli, Chamberlaine, and the autotype reproductions. It is possible 
 that a sympathetic student may get closer to the all-embracing and all- 
 daring genius of the magician through these drawings than if he had 
 before him an elaborate work in fresco or in oils. They express the 
 many-sided, mobile, curious, and subtle genius of the man in its 
 entirety.
 
 328 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the case is very different with Raphael. In him 
 there was no perplexity, no division of interests. 
 He was fascinated by no insoluble mystery and 
 absorbed by no seductive problems. His faculty 
 and his artistic purpose were exactly balanced, ade- 
 quate, and mutually supporting. He saw by intui- 
 tion what to do, and he did it without let or 
 hinderance, exercising from his boyhood till his early 
 death an unimpeded energy of pure productiveness. 
 Like Mozart, to whom he bears in many respects 
 a remarkable resemblance, Raphael was gifted with 
 inexhaustible fertility and with unwearied industry. 
 Like Mozart, again, he had a nature which con- 
 verted every thing to beauty. Thought, passion, emo- 
 tion, became in his art living melody. We almost 
 forget his strength in admiration of his grace ; the 
 travail of his intellect is hidden by the serenity 
 of his style. There is nothing overmuch in any 
 portion of his work, no sense of effort, no straining 
 of a situation, not even that element of terror need- 
 ful to the true sublime. It is as though the spirit 
 of young Greece had lived in him again, purifying 
 his taste to perfection and restraining him from 
 the delineation of things stern or horrible. 
 
 Raphael found in this world nothing but its 
 joy, and communicated to his ideal the beauty of 
 untouched virginity. Brescia might be sacked with 
 sword and flame. The Baglioni might hew them-
 
 RAPHAEL'S FACILITY AND FERTILITY. 329 
 
 selves to pieces in Perugia. The plains of Ravenna 
 might flow with blood. Urbino might change 
 masters and obey the viperous Duke Valentino. 
 Raphael, meanwhile, working through his short 
 May-life of less than twenty years, received from 
 nature and from man a message that was harmony 
 unspoiled by one discordant note. His very per- 
 son was a symbol of his genius. Lionardo was 
 beautiful but stately, with firm lips and penetrating 
 glance ; he conquered by the magnetism of an in- 
 calculable personality. The loveliness of Raphael 
 was fair and flexible, fascinating not by power or 
 mystery, but by the winning charm of open-hearted 
 sweetness. To this physical beauty, rather delicate 
 than strong, he united spiritual graces of the most 
 amiable nature. He was gentle, docile, modest, 
 ready to oblige, free from jealousy, binding all 
 men to him by his cheerful courtesy. 1 In morals 
 he was pure. Indeed, judged by the lax standard of 
 those times, he might be called almost immaculate. 
 His intellectual capacity, in all that concerned the 
 art of painting, was unbounded ; but we can not 
 place him among the many-sided heroes of the 
 Renaissance. What he attempted in sculpture, 
 
 1 ' Raffaello, che era la gentilezza stessa .... restavano vintl 
 dalla cortesia e dall' arte sua, ma piu dal genio della sua buona natura ; 
 la quale era si piena di gentilezza e si colma di carita, che egli si 
 vedeva che fino agli animali 1'onoravano, non che gli uomini.' Vasari, 
 vol. via. pp. 6, 60.
 
 330 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 though elegant, is comparatively insignificant ; and 
 the same may be said about his buildings. As a 
 painter he was capable of comprehending and ex- 
 pressing all things without excess or sense of la- 
 bor. Of no other artist do we feel that he was 
 so instinctively, unerringly right in what he thought 
 and did. 
 
 Among his mental faculties the power of assim- 
 ilation seems to have been developed to an ex- 
 traordinary degree. He learned the rudiments of 
 his art in the house of his father Santi at Urbino, 
 where a Madonna is still shown the portrait of 
 his mother, with a child, perhaps the infant Raphael, 
 upon her lap. Starting, soon after his father's death, 
 as a pupil of Perugino, he speedily acquired that 
 master's manner so perfectly that his earliest works 
 are only to be distinguished from Perugino's by 
 their greater delicacy, spontaneity, and inventive- 
 ness. Though he absorbed all that was excellent 
 in the Peruginesque style, he avoided its affectations, 
 and seemed to take departure for a higher flight 
 from the most exquisite among his teacher's early 
 paintings. Later on, while still a lad, he escaped 
 from Umbrian conventionality by learning all that 
 was valuable in the art of Masaccio and Fra Bar- 
 tolommeo. To the latter master, himself educated 
 by the influence of Lionardo, Raphael owed more, 
 perhaps, than to any other of his teachers. The
 
 RAPHAELS ASSIMILATIVE FACULTY. 331 
 
 method of combining figures in masses, needful 
 to the general composition, while they preserve a 
 subordinate completeness of their own, had been 
 applied with almost mathematical precision by the 
 Frate in his fresco at S. Maria Nuova. 1 It re- 
 appears in all Raphael's work subsequent to his 
 first visit to Florence 2 (1504-1506). So great, in- 
 deed, is the resemblance of treatment between the 
 two painters that we know not well which owed 
 the other most. Many groups of women and 
 children in the Stanze, for example especially in 
 the Miracle of Bolsena and the Heliodorus seem 
 almost identical with Fra Bartolommeo's Madonna 
 delta Misericordia at Lucca. Finally, when Raphael 
 settled in Rome, he laid himself open to the influ- 
 ence of Michael Angelo, and drank in the classic 
 spirit from the newly-discovered antiques. Here 
 at last it seemed as though his native genius 
 might suffer from contact with the potent style of 
 his great rival ; and there are many students of 
 art who feel that Raphael's later manner was a 
 declension from the divine purity of his early pic- 
 tures. There is, in fact, a something savoring 
 of overbloom in the Farnesina frescoes, as though 
 the painter's faculty had been strained beyond its 
 
 1 See above, p. 306. 
 
 4 The ' Holy Family ' at Munich, and the ' Madonna del Baldac- 
 chino ' in the Pitti, might be mentioned as experiments on Raphael's 
 part to perfect the Frate's scheme of composition.
 
 332 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 natural force. Muscles are exaggerated to give 
 the appearance of strength, and open mouths are 
 multiplied to indicate astonishment and action. 
 These faults may be found even in the Cartoons. 
 Yet who shall say that Raphael's power was on 
 the decline, or that his noble style was passing 
 into mannerism, after studying both the picture of 
 the Transfiguration and the careful drawings from 
 the nude prepared for this last work ? 
 
 So delicate was the assimilative tendency in 
 Raphael that what he learned from all his teachers, 
 from Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, Masaccio, Da 
 Vinci, Michael Angelo, and the antique, was mingled 
 with his own style without sacrifice of individuality. 
 Inferior masters imitated him, and passed their pic- 
 tures off upon posterity as Raphael's ; but to mistake 
 a genuine piece of his painting for the performance 
 of another is almost impossible. Each successive 
 step he made was but a liberation of his genius, 
 a stride toward the full expression of the beautiful 
 he saw and served. He was never an eclectic. 
 The masterpieces of other artists taught him how 
 to comprehend his own ideal. 
 
 Raphael is not merely a man, but a school. Just 
 as in his genius he absorbed and comprehended 
 many divers styles, so are many worthy craftsmen 
 included in his single name. Fresco-painters, mas- 
 ters of the easel, workmen in mosaic and marquetrie,
 
 THE RANGE OF HIS WORKS. 333 
 
 sculptors, builders, arras-weavers, engravers, deco- 
 rators of ceilings and of floors, all labored under 
 his eye, receiving designs from his hand, and exe- 
 cuting what was called thereafter by his name. 1 It 
 was thus partly by his facility and energy, partly by 
 the use he made of other men, that Raphael was 
 able to achieve so much. In the Vatican he covered 
 the walls and ceilings of the Stanze with historical 
 and symbolical frescoes that embrace the whole of 
 human knowledge. The cramping limits of ecclesi- 
 astical tradition are transcended. The synod of the 
 antique sages finds a place beside the synod of the 
 fathers and the company of saints. Parnassus and 
 the allegory of the virtues front each other. The 
 legend of Marsyas and the my thus of the Fall 
 are companion pictures. A new catholicity, a new 
 orthodoxy of the beautiful, appears. The Renais- 
 sance in all its breadth and liberality of judgment 
 takes ideal form. Nor is there any sense of discord ; 
 for the genius of Raphael views both revelations, 
 Christian and pagan, from a point of view of art 
 above them. To his pure and unimpeded faculty 
 the task of translating motives so diverse into mu- 
 tually concordant shapes was easy. On the domed 
 ceilings of the Loggie he painted sacred history in 
 
 1 See Vasari, vol. viii. p. 60, for a description of the concord that 
 
 reigned in this vast workshop. The genius and the gentle nature of 
 
 Raphael penetrated the whole group of artists, and seemed to give 
 them a single soul.
 
 334 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 a series of exquisitely simple compositions, known 
 as Raphael's Bible. The walls and pilasters were 
 adorned with arabesques that anticipated the dis- 
 covery of Pompeii, and surpassed the best of Roman 
 frescoes in variety and freedom. With his own 
 hands he colored the incomparable Triumph of 
 Galatea in Agostino Chigi's villa on the Tiber, while 
 his pupils traced the legend of Cupid and Psyche 
 from his drawings on the roof of the great banquet- 
 hall. Remaining within the circuit of Rome, we may 
 turn from the sibyls of S. Maria della Pace to the 
 genii of the planets in S. Maria del Popolo, from the 
 Violin-player of the Sciarra palace to the Trans- 
 figuration in the Vatican : wherever we go, we find 
 the masterpieces of this youth, so various in concep- 
 tion, so equal in performance. And then, to think 
 that the palaces and picture-galleries of Europe are 
 crowded with his easel-pictures, that his original 
 drawings display a boundless store of prodigal in- 
 ventive creativeness, that the Cartoons, of which 
 England is proud, are alone enough to found a 
 mighty master's fame ! 
 
 The vast mass of Raphael's works is by itself 
 astounding. The accuracy of their design and the 
 perfection of their execution are literally overwhelm- 
 ing to the imagination that attempts to realize the 
 conditions of his short life. There is nothing, or 
 but very little, of rhetoric in all this world of pic-
 
 THEIR MENTAL SCOPE AND VARIETY. 335 
 
 tures. The brain has guided the hand throughout, 
 and the result is sterling poetry. The knowledge, 
 again, expressed in many of his frescoes is so thor- 
 ough that we wonder whether in his body lived 
 again the soul of some accomplished sage. How, 
 for example, did he appropriate the history of phi- 
 losophy, set forth so luminously in the School of 
 Athens, that each head, each gesture, is the epitome 
 of some system? Fabio Calvi may, indeed, have 
 supplied him with serviceable notes on Greek phi- 
 losophy. But to Raphael alone belongs the triumph 
 of having personified the dry elements of learning in 
 appropriate living forms. The same is true of the 
 Parnassus, and, in a less degree, of the Disputa. 
 To the physiognomist these frescoes will always be 
 invaluable. The Heliodorus, the Miracle of Bol- 
 sena, and the Cartoons display a like faculty applied 
 with more dramatic purpose. Passion and action 
 take the place of representative ideas ; but the ca- 
 pacity for translating into perfect human form what 
 has first been intellectually aoprehended by the 
 artist is the same. 
 
 If, after estimating the range of thought revealed 
 in this portion of Raphael's work, we next consider 
 the labor of the mind involved in the distribution 
 of so many multitudes of beautiful and august human 
 figures, in the modeling of their drapery, the study 
 of their expression, and their grouping into balanced
 
 336 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 compositions, we may form some notion of the mag- 
 nitude of Raphael's performance. It is, indeed, prob- 
 able that all attempts at reflective analysis of this 
 kind do injustice to the spontaneity of the painter's 
 method. Yet, even supposing that the Miraculous 
 Draught of Fishes or the School of Athens were seen 
 by him as in a vision, this presumption will increase 
 our wonder at the imagination which could hold 
 so rich a store of details ready for immediate use. 
 That Raphael paid the most minute attention to the 
 details of his work is shown by the studies made 
 for these two subjects, and by the drawings for the 
 Transfiguration. A young man bent on putting 
 forth his power for the first time in a single picture 
 that should prove his mastery could not have 
 labored with more diligence than Raphael at the 
 height of his fame and in full possession of his 
 matured faculty. 
 
 When, furthermore, we take into account the 
 variety of Raphael's work, we arrive at a new point 
 of wonder. The drawing of Alexander's Marriage 
 with Roxana, the Temptation of Adam by Eve, and 
 the Massacre of the Innocents, engraved by Marc 
 Antonio, are unsurpassed not only as compositions, 
 but also as studies of the nude in chosen attitudes, 
 powerfully felt and nobly executed, In these de- 
 signs, which he never used for painting, the same 
 high style is successively applied to a pageant, an
 
 RAPHAELS HUMANITY. 337 
 
 idyl, and a drama. 1 The rapture of Greek art in 
 its most youthful moment has never been recaptured 
 by a modern painter with more force and fire of 
 fancy than in the Galatea. The tenderness of 
 Christian feeling has found no more exalted expres- 
 sion than in the multitudes of the Madonnas, each 
 more lovely than another, like roses on a tree in 
 June, from the maidenly Madonna del Gran' Duca 
 to the celestial vision of the San Sisto, that sub- 
 limest lyric of the art of Catholicity. 2 It is only 
 by hurrying through a list like this that we can ap- 
 preciate the many-sided perfection of Raphael's 
 accomplishment. How, lastly, was it possible that 
 this young painter should have found the time to 
 superintend the building of S. Peter's, and to form 
 a plan for excavating Rome in its twelve ancient 
 regions ? 8 
 
 When Lomazzo assigned emblems to the chief 
 painters of the Renaissance, he gave to Michael 
 Angelo the dragon of contemplation, and to Man- 
 tegna the serpent of sagacity. For Raphael, by a 
 happier instinct, he reserved man, the microcosm, 
 
 1 The Fresco of ' Alexander ' in the Palazzo Borghese is by an 
 imitator. 
 
 2 The ' Madonna di San Sisto ' was painted for a banner to be 
 borne in processions. It is a subtle observation of Rio that the ban- 
 ner, an invention of the Umbrian school, corresponds in painting to 
 the hymn in poetry. 
 
 3 See ' Revival of Learning,' p. 437, for Raphael's letter on this 
 subject to Leo X.
 
 538 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the symbol of powerful grace, incarnate intellect 
 This quaint fancy of the Milanese critic touches 
 the truth. What distinguishes the whole work of 
 Raphael is its humanity in the double sense of 
 the humane and human. Phoebus, as imagined by 
 the Greeks, was not more radiant, more victorious 
 by the marvel of his smile, more intolerant of 
 things obscene or ugly. Like Apollo chasing the 
 Eumenides from his Delphian shrine, Raphael will 
 not suffer his eyes to fall on what is loathsome 
 or horrific. Even sadness and sorrow, tragedy and 
 death, take loveliness from him. And here it must 
 be mentioned that he shunned stern and painful 
 subjects. He painted no martyrdom, no Last Jiidg- 
 ment, and no Cmcifixion, if we except the little early 
 picture belonging to Lord Dudley. 1 His men and 
 women are either glorious with youth or dignified in 
 hale old age. Touched by his innocent and earnest 
 genius, mankind is once more gifted with the har- 
 mony of intellect and flesh and feeling that be- 
 longed to Hellas. Instead of asceticism, Hellenic 
 temperance is the virtue prized by Raphael. Over 
 
 1 La Spasimo di Sicilia ' is the single Passion picture of Raphael's 
 maturity. The predella of ' Christ carrying the Cross,' at Leigh 
 Court, and the 'Christ showing his Wounds,' in the Tosi Gallery at 
 Brescia, are both early works painted under Umbrian influence. The 
 Borghese ' Entombment,' painted for Atalanta Baglioni, a pen and ink 
 drawing of the ' Pieta ' in the Louvre collection, Marc Antonio's en- 
 graving of the ' Massacre of the Innocents,' and an early picture of the 
 ' Agony in the Garden,' are all the other painful subjects I can now re- 
 member.
 
 CO R REG GI& S GLADNESS. 339 
 
 his niche in the Temple of Fame might be written, 
 ' I have said ye are gods ; ' for the children of men 
 in his ideal world are divinized. The god-like spirit 
 of man is all in all. Happy indeed was the art that 
 by its limitations and selections could thus early ex- 
 press the good news of the Renaissance ; while in the 
 spheres of politics and ethics, science and religion, 
 we are still so far from having learned its lesson. 
 
 Correggio is the Faun or Ariel of Renaissance 
 painting. Turning to him from Raphael, we are 
 naturally first struck by the affinities and differences 
 between them. Both drew from their study of the 
 world the elements of joy which it contains ; but the 
 gladness of Correggio was more sensuous than that 
 of Raphael ; his intellectual faculties were less 
 developed ; his rapture was more tumultuous and 
 Bacchantic. Like Raphael, Correggio died young ; 
 but his brief life was spent in comparative obscurity 
 and solitude. Far from the society of scholars and 
 artists, ignorant of courts, unpatronized by princes, 
 he wrought for himself alone the miracle of bright- 
 ness and of movement that delights us in his frescoes 
 and his easel-pictures. 
 
 Like a poet hidden 
 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden, 
 
 was this lyrist of luxurious ecstasy. In his work 
 there was nothing worldly ; that divides him from
 
 340 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 the Venetians, whose sensuousness he shared : 
 nothing scientific; that distinguishes him from Da 
 Vinci, the magic of whose chiaroscuro he com- 
 prehended : nothing contemplative ; that separates 
 him from Michael Angelo, the audacity of whose 
 design in dealing with forced attitudes he rivaled, 
 without apparently having enjoyed the opportunity 
 of studying his works. The cheerfulness of Ra- 
 phael, the wizardiy of Lionardo, and the bold- 
 ness of Michael Angelo met in him to form a new 
 style, the originality of which is indisputable, and 
 which takes us captive not by intellectual power, 
 but by the impulse of emotion. Of his artistic 
 education we know nothing ; and when we call 
 him the Ariel of painting, this means that \ve are 
 compelled to think of him as an elemental spirit, 
 whose bidding the air and the light and the hues 
 of the morning obey. 
 
 Correggio created a world of beautiful human 
 beings, the whole condition of whose existence is 
 an innocent and radiant wantonness. 1 Over the 
 domain of tragedy he had no sway ; nor could he 
 deal with subjects demanding pregnancy of intel- 
 lectual meaning. He paints the three Fates, foi 
 instance, like young and joyous Bacchantes ; if we 
 placed rose-garlands and thyrsi in their hands in- 
 
 1 For a fuller working out of this analysis I must refer to my 
 Sketches in Italy,' article ' Parma.' Much that follows is a quotation 
 from that essay.
 
 FEELING FOR LIGHT AND COLOR. 341 
 
 stead of the distaff and the thread of human des- 
 tinies, they might figure upon the panels of a 
 banquet-chamber in Pompeii. Nor, again, did he 
 possess that severe and lofty art of composition 
 which seeks the highest beauty of design in archi- 
 tectural harmony supreme above the melodies of 
 gracefulness in detail. He was essentially a lyrical 
 as distinguished from an epical or dramatic poet. 
 The unity of his work is derived from the effect of 
 light and atmosphere, the inbreathed soul of tremu- 
 lous and throbbing life, which bathes and liquefies 
 the whole. It was enough for him to produce a 
 gleeful symphony by the play of light and color, 
 by the animation of his figures, and by the intoxi- 
 cating beauty of his forms. His angels are genii 
 disimprisoned from the chalices of flowers, houris 
 of an erotic Paradise, elemental sprites of nature 
 wantoning in Eden in her prime. They belong to 
 the generation of the fauns. Like fauns, they 
 combine a certain wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy, 
 a delight in rapid motion as they revel amid clouds 
 and flowers, with the permanent and all-pervading 
 sweetness of the painter's style. Correggio's sensi- 
 bility to light and color that quality which makes 
 him unique among painters was on a par with his 
 feeling for form. Brightness and darkness are 
 woven together on his figures like an impalpable 
 veil, aerial and transparent, enhancing the palpita-
 
 342 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 tions of voluptuous movement which he loved. His 
 coloring does not glow or burn ; blithesome and 
 delicate, it seems exactly such a beauty-bloom as 
 sense requires for its satiety. That cord of jocund 
 color which may fitly be combined with the smiles 
 of daylight, the clear blues found in laughing eyes, 
 the pinks that tinge the cheeks of early youth, and 
 the warm yet silvery tones of healthy flesh, mingle, 
 as in a pearl-shell, on his pictures. Within his own 
 magic circle Correggio reigns supreme ; no other 
 artist having blent the witcheries of coloring, chiar- 
 oscuro, and wanton loveliness of form into a har- 
 mony so perfect in its sensuous charm. To feel 
 his influence, and at the same moment to be the 
 subject of strong passion, or intense desire, or 
 heroic resolve, or profound contemplation, or pen- 
 sive melancholy, is impossible. The Northern trav- 
 eler, standing beneath his master-works in Parma, 
 may hear from each of those radiant and laughing 
 faces what the young Italian said to Goethe : PercJie 
 pensa ? pensando s'invecchia. 
 
 Michael Angelo is the prophet or seer of the 
 Renaissance. It would be impossible to imagine a 
 stronger contrast than that which distinguishes hi? 
 art from Correggio's, or lives more different in all 
 their details than those which he and Raphael or 
 Lionardo lived respectively. During the eighty-nine 
 years of his earthly pilgrimage he saw Italy enslaved
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO^S EARNESTNESS, 343 
 
 and Florence extinguished ; it was his exceeding bitter 
 fate to watch the rapid decay of the arts and to wit- 
 ness the triumph of sacerdotal despotism over liberal 
 thought To none of these things was he indifferent ; 
 and the sorrow they wrought in his soul found ex- 
 pression in his painting. 1 Michael Angelo was not 
 framed by nature to fascinate like Lionardo, or to 
 charm like Raphael. His manners were severe and 
 simple. When he spoke, his words were brief and 
 pungent. When he wrote, whether in poetry or prose, 
 
 1 Much of the controversy about Michael Angelo which is con- 
 tinually being waged between his admirers and his detractors might 
 be set at rest if it were acknowledged that there are two distinct ways 
 of judging works of art. We may regard them simply as appealing to 
 our sense of beauty, and affording harmonious intellectual pleasure. 
 Or we may regard them as expressing the thought and spirit of their 
 age, and as utterances made by men whose hearts burned within 
 them. Critics trained in the study of good Greek sculpture, or in- 
 clined by temperament to admire the earlier products of Italian paint- 
 ing, are apt to pursue the former path exclusively. They demand 
 serenity and simplicity. Perturbation and violence they denounce as 
 blemishes. It does not occur to them that, though the phenomenon is 
 certainly rare, it does occasionally happen that a man arises whose 
 art is for him the language of his soul, and who lives in sympathetic 
 relation to the sternest interests of his age. If such an artist be born 
 when tranquil thought and serene emotions are impossible for one who 
 feels the meaning of his times with depth, he must either paint and 
 carve lies or he must abandon the serenity that was both natural and 
 easy to the Greek and the earlier Italian. Michael Angelo was one of 
 these select artistic natures. He used his chisel and his pencil to 
 express not merely beautiful artistic motives, but what he felt and 
 thought about the world in which he had to live : and this world was full 
 of the ruin of republics, the corruption and humiliation of society, the 
 subjection of Italy to strangers. In Michael Angelo the student of 
 both art and history finds an inestimably precious and rare point of 
 contact between the inner spirit of an age and its external expression 
 in sculpture and painting.
 
 344 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 he used the fewest phrases to express the most con- 
 densed meaning. When asked why he had not mar- 
 ried, he replied that the wife he had his art cost 
 him already too much trouble. He entertained few 
 friends, and shunned society. Brooding over the 
 sermons of Savonarola, the text of the Bible, the 
 discourses of Plato, and the poems of Dante, he made 
 his spirit strong in solitude by the companionship 
 with everlasting thoughts. Therefore, when he was 
 called to paint the Sistine Chapel, he uttered through 
 painting the weightiest prophecy the world has ever 
 seen expressed in plastic form. His theme is nothing 
 less than the burden of the prophets and the sibyls 
 who preached the coming of a light upon the world, 
 and the condemnation of the world which had re- 
 jected it by an inexorable judge Michelet says, not 
 without truth, that the spirit of Savonarola lives again 
 in these frescoes. The procession of the four-and- 
 twenty elders, arraigned before the people of Bres- 
 cia to accuse Italy of sin the voice that cried to 
 Florence, ' Behold the sword of the Lord, and that 
 swiftly ! Behold I, even I, do bring a deluge on 
 the earth ! ' are both seen and heard here very 
 plainly. But there is more than Savonarola in this 
 prophecy of Michael Angelo's. It contains the 
 stern spirit of Dante, aflame with patriotism, pas- 
 sionate for justice. It embodies the philosophy of 
 Plato. The creative God, who divides light from dark-
 
 HIS PROPHECY. 345 
 
 ness, who draws Adam from the clay and calls forth 
 new-born Eve in awful beauty, is the Demiurgus of 
 the Greek. Again, it carries the indignation of 
 Isaiah, the wild denunciations of Ezekiel, the mo- 
 notonous refrain of Jeremiah 'Ah, Lord, Lord!' 
 The classic Sibyls intone their mystic hymns; the 
 Delphic on her tripod of inspiration, the Erythraean 
 bending over her scrolls, the withered witch of 
 Cumae, the parched prophetess of Libya all seem 
 to cry, ' Repent, repent ! for the kingdom of the 
 spirit is at hand ! Repent and awake, for the judg- 
 ment of the world approaches ! ' And above these 
 voices we hear a most tremendous wail : ' The na- 
 tions have come to the birth ; but there is not 
 strength to bring forth.' That is the utterance of 
 the Renaissance, as it had appeared in Italy. She 
 who was first among the nations was now last ; 
 bound and bleeding, she lay prostrate at the temple- 
 gate she had unlocked. To Michael Angelo was 
 given for his portion not the alluring mysteries of 
 the new age, not the joy of the renascent world, not 
 the petulant and pulsing rapture of youth : these 
 had been divided between Lionardo, Raphael, and 
 Correggio but the bitter burden of the sense that 
 the awakening to life is in itself a pain, that the 
 revelation of the liberated soul is itself judgment, 
 that a light is shining, and that the world will not 
 comprehend it Pregnant as are the paintings of
 
 346 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Michael Angelo with religious import, they are no 
 longer Catholic in the sense in which the frescoes of 
 the Lorenzetti and Orcagna and Giotto are Catholic. 
 He went beyond the ecclesiastical standing-ground 
 and reached one where philosophy includes the 
 Christian faith. Thus the true spirit of the Renais- 
 sance was embodied in his work of art. 
 
 Among the multitudes of figures covering the 
 wall above the altar in the Sistine Chapel there is 
 one that might well stand for a symbol of the Re- 
 naissance. It is a woman of gigantic stature in the 
 act of toiling upward from the tomb. Grave-clothes 
 impede the motion of her body : they shroud her 
 eyes and gather round her chest. Part only of her 
 face and throat is visible, where may be read a look 
 of blank bewilderment and stupefaction, a struggle 
 with death's slumber in obedience to some inner 
 impulse. Yet she is rising slowly, half awake, and 
 scarcely conscious, to await a doom still undeter- 
 mined. Thus Michael Angelo interpreted the mean- 
 ing of his age.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 VENETIAN PAINTING. 
 
 Painting bloomed late in Venice Conditions offered by Venice to 
 Art Shelley and Pietro Aretino Political circumstances of 
 Venice Comparison with Florence The Ducal Palace Art re- 
 garded as an adjunct to State Pageantry Myth of Venezia 
 Heroic Deeds of Venice Tintoretto's Paradise and Guardi's Pic- 
 ture of a Ball Early Venetian Masters of Murano Gian Bellini 
 Carpaccio's little Angels The Madonna of S. Zaccaria Giorgione 
 Allegory, Idyl, Expression of Emotion The Monk at the Clavi- 
 chord Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese Tintoretto's attempt to 
 dramatize Venetian Art Veronese's Mundane Splendor Titian'? 
 Sophoclean Harmony Their Schools Further characteristics o* 
 Veronese of Tintoretto His Imaginative Energy Predominant 
 Poetry Titian's Perfection of Balance Assumption of Madonna 
 Spirit common to the Great Venetians. 
 
 IT was a fact of the greatest importance for the 
 development of the fine arts in Italy that painting 
 in Venice reached maturity later than in Florence. 
 Owing to this circumstance one chief aspect of the 
 Renaissance, its material magnificence and freedom, 
 received consummate treatment at the hands of 
 Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. To idealize the 
 sensualities of the external universe, to achieve for 
 color what the Florentines had done for form, to 
 invest the worldly grandeur of human life at one of 
 its most gorgeous epochs with the dignity of the
 
 348 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 highest art, was what these great artists were called 
 on to accomplish. Their task could not have been 
 so worthily performed in the fifteenth century as in 
 the sixteenth, if the development of the aesthetic sense 
 had been more premature among the Venetians. 
 
 Venice was precisely fitted for the part her 
 painters had to play. Free, isolated, wealthy, 
 powerful ; famous throughout Europe for the pomp 
 of her state equipage, and for the immorality of her 
 private manners ; ruled by a prudent aristocracy, 
 who spent vast wealth on public shows and on the 
 maintenance of a more than imperial civic majesty : 
 Venice, with her pavement of liquid chrysoprase, 
 with her palaces of porphyry and marble, her fres- 
 coed fagades, her quays and squares aglow with the 
 costumes of the Levant, her lagoons afloat with the 
 galleys of all nations, her churches floored with 
 mosaics, her silvery domes and ceilings glittering with 
 sculpture bathed in molten gold : Venice luxurious 
 in the light and color of a vaporous atmosphere, 
 where sea-mists rose into the mounded summer 
 clouds; arched over by the broad expanse of sky, 
 bounded only by the horizon of waves and plain and 
 distant mountain ranges, and reflected in all its 
 many hues of sunrise and sunset upon the glassy 
 surface of smooth waters : Venice asleep like a mira- 
 cle of opal or of pearl upon the bosom of an undu- 
 lating lake here and here only on the face of the
 
 NATURE IN VENICE. 349 
 
 whole globe was the unique city wherein the pride 
 of life might combine with the luster of the physical 
 universe to create and stimulate in the artist a sense 
 of all that was most sumptuous in the pageant of 
 the world of sense. 
 
 There is color in flowers. Gardens of tulips are 
 radiant, and mountain valleys touch the soul with 
 the beauty of their pure and gem-like hues. There- 
 fore the painters of Flanders and of Umbria, John 
 van Eyck and Gentile da Fabriano, penetrated some 
 of the secrets of the world of color. But what 
 are the purples and scarlets and blues of iris, ane- 
 mone, 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 
 eyes? The Venetians had no green fields and 
 trees, no garden borders, no blossoming orchards, 
 to teach them the tender suggestiveness, the quaint 
 poetry of isolated or contrasted tints. Their mea- 
 dows were the fruitless furrows of the Adriatic, hued 
 like a peacock's neck ; they called the pearl-shells of 
 their Lido flowers fior di mare. Nothing distracted 
 their attention from the glories of morning and of 
 evening presented to them by their sea and sky. It 
 was in consequence of this that the Venetians con- 
 ceived color heroically, not as a matter of missal-
 
 350 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 margins or of subordinate decoration, but as a motive 
 worthy in itself of sublime treatment. In like man- 
 ner, hedged in by no limitary hills, contracted by no 
 city walls, stifled by no narrow streets, but open to 
 the liberal airs of heaven and ocean, the Venetians 
 understood space and imagined pictures almost 
 boundless in their immensity. Light, color, air, 
 space : those are the elemental conditions of Vene- 
 tian art ; of those the painters weaved their ideal 
 world for beautiful and proud humanity. 
 
 Shelley's description of a Venetian sunset strikes 
 the key-note to Venetian painting: 1 
 
 As those who pause on some delightful way, 
 Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood 
 Looking upon the evening and the flood 
 Which lay between the city and the shore, 
 Paved with the image of the sky : the hoar 
 And airy Alps toward the north appeared, 
 Through mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared 
 Between the east and west ; and half the sky 
 Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, 
 Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew 
 Down the steep west into a wondrous hue 
 Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent 
 Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent 
 Among the many-folded hills they were 
 Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, 
 
 1 From the beginning of 'Julian and Maddalo,* which relates a 
 ride taken by Shelley with Lord Byron on the Lido, and their visit to 
 the madhouse on its neighboring island. The description, richly 
 colored and somewhat confused in detail, seems to me peculiarly 
 true to Venetian scenery. With the exception of Tunis, I know of no 
 such theater for sunset shows as Venice. Tunis has the same ele- 
 ments of broad lagoons and distant hills, but not the same vaporous 
 atmosphere.
 
 VENETIAN SUNSETS. 351 
 
 As seen from Lido through the harbor piles, 
 
 The likeness of a clump of peaked isles 
 
 And then, as if the earth and sea had been 
 
 Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen 
 
 Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, 
 
 Around the vaporous sun, from which there came 
 
 The inmost purple spirit of light, and made 
 
 Their very peaks transparent. ' Ere it fade,' 
 
 Said my companion, ' I will show you soon 
 
 A better station.' So, o'er the lagune 
 
 We glided : and from that funereal bark 
 
 I leaned, and saw the city ; and could mark 
 
 How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, 
 
 Its temples and its palaces did seem 
 
 Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 
 
 With this we may compare the following extract 
 from a letter addressed in May, 1544, to Titian by 
 one of the most unprincipled of literary bandits who 
 have ever disgraced humanity, but who nevertheless 
 was solemnized to the spirit of true poetry by the 
 grandiose aspect of nature as it appeared to him in 
 Venice. That Pietro Aretino should have so deeply 
 felt the charm of natural beauty in an age when even 
 the greatest artists and poets sought inspiration in 
 human life rather than the outer world, is a signifi- 
 cant fact. It seems to illustrate the necessity where- 
 by Venice became the cradle of the art of nature. 1 
 ' Having, dear sir, and my best gossip, supped alone 
 to the injury of my custom, or, to speak more truly, 
 supped in the company of all the boredoms of a cursed 
 
 1 ' Lettere di Messer Pietro Aretino,' Parigi, MDCIX, lib. iii. p. 48. 
 I have made a paraphrase rather than a translation of this rare and 
 curious description.
 
 352 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 quartan fever, hich will not let me taste the flavor 
 of any food, 1 rose from table sated with the same 
 disgust with which I had sat down to it. In this 
 mood I went and leaned my arms upon the sill out- 
 side my window, and throwing my chest and nearly 
 all my body on the marble, abandoned myself to the 
 contemplation of the spectacle presented by the in- 
 numerable boats, filled with foreigners as well as 
 people of the city, which gave delight not merely to 
 the gazers, but also to the Grand Canal itself, that 
 perpetual delight of all who plow its waters. From 
 this animated scene, all of a sudden, like one who 
 from mere ennui knows not how to occupy his mind, 
 I turned my eyes to heaven, which, from the moment 
 when God made it, was never adorned with such 
 painted loveliness of lights and shadows. The whole 
 region of the air was what those who envy you, 
 because they are unable to be you, would fain express. 
 To begin with, the buildings of Venice, though of 
 solid stone, seemed made of some ethereal substance. 
 Then the sky was full of variety here clear and 
 ardent, there dulled and overclouded. What mar- 
 velous clouds they were ! Masses of them in the 
 center of the scene hung above the house-roofs, 
 while the immediate part was formed of a gray tint 
 inclining to dark. I gazed astonished at the varied 
 colors they displayed. The nearer masses burned 
 with flames of sunset ; the more remote blushed with
 
 POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF VENICE. 353 
 
 a blaze of crimson less afire. Oh, how splendidly did 
 Nature's pencil treat and dispose that airy landscape, 
 keeping the sky apart from the palaces, just as 
 Titian does ! On one side the heavens showed a 
 greenish-blue, on another a bluish-green, invented 
 verily by the caprice of Nature, who is mistress of 
 the greatest masters. With her lights and her darks, 
 there she was harmonizing, toning, and bringing out 
 into relief, just as she wished. Seeing which, I, who 
 know that your pencil is the spirit of her inmost 
 soul, cried aloud thrice or four times, " Oh, Titian ! 
 where are you now ? " 
 
 In order to understand the destiny of Venice in 
 art, it is not enough to concentrate attention on the 
 peculiarities of her physical environment. Potent 
 as these were in the creation of her style, the politi- 
 cal and social conditions of the Republic require 
 also to be taken into account. Among Italian cities 
 Venice was unique. She alone was tranquil in her 
 empire, unimpeded in her constitutional develop- 
 ment, independent of Church interference, undis- 
 turbed by the cross-purposes and intrigues of the 
 despots, inhabited by merchants who were princes, 
 and by a free-born 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
 
 354 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 grim and anxious struggles of the Middle Ages left 
 no mark on Venice. How different was this town 
 from Florence, every inch of whose domain could tell 
 of civic warfare, whose passionate aspirations after 
 independence ended in the despotism of the bour- 
 geois Medici, whose repeated revolutions had slavery 
 for their climax, whose gray palaces bore on their 
 fronts the stamp of mediaeval vigilance, whose spirit 
 was incarnated in Dante the exile, whose enslave- 
 ment forced from Michael Angelo those groans of 
 a chained Titan expressed in the marbles of S. 
 Lorenzo ! It is not an insignificant, though a slight, 
 detail, that the predominant color of Florence is 
 brown, while the predominant color of Venice is 
 that of mother-of-pearl, concealing within its general 
 whiteness every tint that can be placed upon the 
 palette of a painter. The conditions of Florence 
 stimulated mental energy and turned the forces of 
 the soul inward. Those of Venice inclined the 
 individual to accept life as he found it. Instead of 
 exciting him to think, they disposed him to enjoy, or 
 to acquire by industry the means of manifold enjoy- 
 ment. To represent in art the intellectual strivings 
 of the Renaissance was the task of Florence and her 
 sons ; to create a monument of Renaissance mag- 
 nificence was the task of Venice. Without Venice 
 the modern world could not have produced that 
 flower of sensuous and unreflective loveliness in
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE. 355 
 
 painting which is worthy to stand beside the highest 
 product of the Greek genius in sculpture. For 
 Athena from her Parthenon stretches the hand to 
 Venezia enthroned in the ducal palace. The broad 
 brows and earnest eyes of the Hellenic goddess are 
 of one divine birth and lineage with the golden hair 
 and superb carriage of the sea-queen. 
 
 It is in the heart of Venice, in the House of the 
 Republic, that the Venetian painters, considered as 
 the interpreters of worldly splendor, fulfilled their 
 function with the most complete success. Centuries 
 contributed to make the ducal palace what it is. 
 The massive colonnades and Gothic loggias of the 
 external basement date from the thirteenth century ; 
 their sculpture belongs to the age when Niccola 
 Pisano's genius was in the ascendant. The square 
 fabric of the palace, so beautiful in the irregularity of 
 its pointed windows, so singular in its mosaic diaper 
 of pink and white, was designed at the same early 
 period. The inner court and the facade that over- 
 hangs the lateral canal display the handiwork of 
 Sansovino. The halls of the palace spacious 
 chambers where the Senate assembled, where am- 
 bassadors approached the Doge, where the Savi 
 deliberated, where the Council of Ten conducted 
 their inquisition are walled and roofed with pictures 
 of inestimable value, encased in framework of carved 
 oak, overlaid with burnished gold. Supreme art
 
 356 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 the art of the imagination perfected with delicate 
 and skillful care in detail is made in these proud 
 halls the minister of mundane pomp. In order that 
 the gold brocade of the ducal robes, that the scarlet 
 and crimson of the Venetian senator, might be duly 
 harmonized by the richness of their surroundings, it 
 was necessary that canvases measured by the square 
 yard, and rendered priceless by the authentic handi- 
 work of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, should glow 
 upon the walls and ceilings. A more insolent dis- 
 play of public wealth a more lavish outpouring of 
 human genius in the service of State pageantry, 
 can not be imagined. 
 
 Sublime over all allegories and histories depicted 
 in those multitudes of paintings sits Venezia her- 
 self enthroned and crowned, the personification of 
 haughtiness and power. Figured as a regal lady, 
 with yellow hair tightly knotted round a small head 
 poised upon her upright throat and ample shoulders, 
 Venice takes her chair of sovereignty as mistress 
 of the ocean to whom Neptune and the Tritons offer 
 pearls, as empress of the globe at whose footstool 
 wait Justice with the sword and Peace with the 
 olive-branch, as a queen of heaven exalted to the 
 clouds. They have made her a goddess, those great 
 painters ; they have produced a mythus, and per- 
 sonified in native loveliness that bride of the sea, 
 their love, their lady. The beauty of Venetian
 
 VENETIAN PIETY. 357 
 
 women and the glory of Venetian empire find their 
 meeting-point in her, and live as the spirit of Athens 
 lived in Pallas Promachos. On every side, above, 
 around, wherever the eye falls in those vast rooms, 
 are seen the deeds of Venice painted histories ol 
 her triumphs over emperors and popes and infidels, 
 or allegories of her greatness scenes wherein the 
 Doges perform acts of faith, with S. Mark for theii 
 protector, and with Venezia for their patroness. The 
 saints in Paradise, massed together by Tintoretto 
 and by Palma, mingle with mythologies of Greece 
 and Rome and episodes of pure idyllic painting. 
 
 Religion in these pictures was a matter of parade, 
 an adjunct to the costly public life of the Republic. 
 We need not, therefore, conclude that it was unreal. 
 Such as it was, the religion of the Venetian masters 
 is indeed as genuine as that of Fra Angelico or 
 Albert Diirer. But it was the faith not of humble 
 men or of mystics, not of profound thinkers or ec- 
 static visionaries, so much as of courtiers and states- 
 men, of senators and merchants, for whom religion 
 was a function among other functions, not a thing 
 apart, not a source of separate and supreme vitality. 
 Even as Christians, the Venetians lived a life sepa- 
 rate from the rest of Italy. Their Church claimed 
 independence of the see of Rome, and the enthu- 
 siasm of S. Francis was but faintly felt in the lagoons 
 Siena in her hour of need dedicated herself to Ma-
 
 3$8 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 donna; Florence in the hour of her regeneration 
 gave herself to Christ ; Venice remained under the 
 ensign of the leonine S. Mark. While the cities of 
 Lombardy and Central Italy ran wild with revivalism 
 and religious panics, the Venetians maintained their 
 calm, and never suffered piety to exceed the limits 
 of political prudence. There is, therefore, no mys- 
 tical exultation in the faith depicted by her artists. 
 That Tintoretto could have painted the saints in 
 glory a countless multitude of congregated forms, 
 a sea whereof the waves are souls as a background 
 for State ceremony, shows the positive and realistic 
 attitude of mind from which the most imaginative of 
 Venetian masters started when he undertook the 
 most exalted of religious themes. Paradise is a fact, 
 we may fancy Tintoretto reasoned ; and it is easier 
 to fill a quarter of an acre of canvas with a picture of 
 Paradise than with any other subject, because the 
 figures can be arranged in concentric tiers round 
 Christ and Madonna in glory. 
 
 There is a little sketch by Guardi represent- 
 ing a masked ball in the Council Chamber where 
 the Paradise of Tintoretto fills a wall. The men 
 are in periwigs and long waistcoats ; the ladies 
 wear hoops, patches, fans, high heels, and powder. 
 Bowing, promenading, intriguing, exchanging com- 
 pliments or repartees, they move from point to 
 point ; while from the billowy surge of saints,
 
 MYTHUS OF VENEZIA. 359 
 
 Moses with the table of the law and the Mag- 
 dalen with her adoring eyes of penitence look 
 down upon them. Tintoretto could not but have 
 foreseen that the world of living pettiness and 
 passion would perpetually jostle with his world 
 of painted sublimities and sanctities in that vast 
 hall. Yet he did not on that account shrink from 
 the task or fail in its accomplishment. Paradise 
 existed : therefore it could be painted ; and he was 
 called upon to paint it here. If the fine gentle- 
 men and ladies below felt out of harmony with the 
 celestial host, so much the worse for them. In this 
 practical spirit the Venetian masters approached 
 religious art, and such was the sphere appointed for 
 it in the pageantry of the Republic. When Paolo 
 Veronese was examined by the Holy Office respect- 
 ing some supposed irreverence in a sacred picture, 
 his answers clearly proved that in planning it he had 
 thought less of its spiritual significance than of its 
 aesthetic effect. 1 
 
 In the ducal palace the Venetian art of the 
 Renaissance culminates ; and here we might pause 
 a moment to consider the difference between these 
 paintings and the mediaeval frescoes of the Palazzo 
 Pubblico at Siena. 2 The Sienese painters conse- 
 crated all their abilities to the expression of thoughts, 
 theories of political self-government in a free state, 
 
 1 See Yriarte, ' Un Patricien de Venise,' p. 439. 
 8 See above, p. 210.
 
 360 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 and devotional ideas. The citizen who read the 
 lesson of the Sala del la Pace was instructed in his 
 duties to God and to the State. The Venetian 
 painters, as we have seen, exalted Venice and set 
 forth her acts of power. Their work is a glorifica- 
 tion of the Republic ; but no doctrine is inculcated, 
 and no system of thought is conveyed to the mind 
 through the eye. Daily pacing the saloons of the 
 palace, Doge and noble were reminded of the great- 
 ness of the state they represented. They were not 
 invited to reflect upon the duties of the governor 
 and governed. Their imaginations were dilated 
 and their pride roused by the spectacle of Venice 
 seated like a goddess in her home. Of all the 
 secular states of Italy the Republic of S. Mark's 
 alone produced this mythical ideal of the body 
 politic, self-sustained and independent of the citi- 
 zens, compelling their allegiance, and sustaining 
 them through generations with the life of its or- 
 ganic unity. 1 The artists had no reason to paint 
 thoughts and theories. It was enough to set forth 
 Venice and to illustrate her acts. 
 
 Long before Venetian painting reached a climax 
 in the decorative triumphs of the ducal palace, the 
 masters of the school had formed a style expressive 
 of the spirit of the Renaissance, considered as the 
 spirit of free enjoyment and living energy. To 
 1 See 'Age of the Despots,' p. 215.
 
 THE VIVARINI. 361 
 
 trace the history of Venetian painting is to follow 
 through its several stages the growth of that mastery 
 over color and sensuous beauty which was per- 
 fected in the works of Titian and his contempora- 
 ries. 1 Under the Vivarini of Murano the Venetian 
 school in its infancy began with a selection from 
 the natural world of all that struck them as most 
 brilliant. No other painters of their age in Italy 
 employed such glowing colors or showed a more 
 marked predilection for the imitation of fruits, rich 
 stuffs, architectural canopies, jewels, and landscape 
 backgrounds. Their piety, unlike the mysticism of 
 the Sienese and the deep thought of the Florentine 
 masters, is somewhat superficial and conventional. 
 The merit of their devotional pictures consists of 
 simplicity, vivacity, and joyousness. Our Lady and 
 her court of saints seem living and breathing upon 
 earth. There is no atmosphere of tranced solem 
 nity surrounding them, like that which gives pe- 
 culiar meaning to similar works of the Van Eycks 
 and Memling artists, by the way, who in many 
 important respects are more nearly allied than any 
 
 1 I must refer my readers to Crowe and Cavalcaselle for an esti- 
 mate of the influence exercised at Venice by Gentile de Fabriano, John 
 Alamannus, and the school of Squarcione. Antonello da Messina 
 brought his method of oil-painting into the city in 1470, and Gian 
 Bellini learned something at Padua from Andrea Mantegna. The 
 true point about Venice, however, is that the Venetian character 
 absorbed, assimilated, and converted to its own originality whatever 
 touched it.
 
 362 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 others to the spirit of the first age of Venetian 
 painting. 1 
 
 What the Vivarini began the three Bellini, 8 
 with Crivelli, Carpaccio, Mansueti, Basaiti, Catena, 
 Cima da Conegliano, Bissolo, Cordegliaghi, con- 
 tinued. Bright costumes, distinct and sunny land- 
 scapes, broad backgrounds of architecture, large 
 skies, polished armor, gilded cornices, young faces 
 of fisher-boys and country girls, 3 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 pa- 
 trician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the rosy 
 whiteness and amber-colored tresses of the daugh- 
 ters of the Adriatic and lagoons these are the 
 source of inspiration to the Venetians of the second 
 period. Mantegna, a few miles distant, at Padua, 
 was working out his ideal of severely classical de- 
 sign. Yet he scarcely touched the manner of the 
 Venetians with his influence, though Gian Bellini 
 was his brother-in-law and pupil, and though his 
 genius, in grasp of matter and in management of 
 
 1 The conditions of art in Flanders wealthy, bourgeois, proud, 
 free were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. The misty flats of 
 Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van 
 Eyck is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This 
 expresses the amount of likeness and of difference. 
 
 a Jacopo and his sons Gentile and Giovanni. 
 
 1 Notice particularly the Contadina type of S. Catherine in a pis- 
 ture ascribed to Cordegliaghi in the Venetian Academy.
 
 VENETIAN REALISM. 363 
 
 composition, soared above his neighbors. Lio- 
 nardo da Vinci at Milan was perfecting his prob- 
 lems of psychology in painting, offering to the 
 world solutions of the greatest difficulties in the 
 delineation of the spirit by expression. Yet not 
 a trace of Lionardo's subtle play of light and 
 shadow upon thoughtful features can be discerned 
 in the work of the Bellini. For them the mysteries 
 of the inner and the outer world had no attraction. 
 The externals of a full and vivid existence fasci- 
 nated their imagination. Their poetry and their 
 piety were alike simple and objective. How to 
 depict the world as it is seen a miracle of varying 
 lights and melting hues, a pageant substantial to 
 the touch and concrete to the eyes, a combination 
 of forms defined by colors more than outlines 
 was their task. They did not reach their end by 
 anatomy, analysis, and reconstruction. They under- 
 took to paint just what they felt and saw. 
 
 Very instructive are the wall-pictures of this 
 period, painted not in fresco but on canvas by Car- 
 paccio and Gentile Bellini, for the decoration ot 
 the Scuole of S. Ursula and S. Croce. 1 Not only 
 do these bring before us the life of Venice in its 
 manifold reality, but they illustrate the tendency 
 of the Venetian masters to express the actual world, 
 
 1 These Scuole were the halls of meeting for companies called by 
 the names of patron saints.
 
 364 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 rather than to formulate an ideal of the fancy or 
 to search the secrets of the soul. This realism, 
 if the name can be applied to pictures so poetical 
 as those of Carpaccio, is not, like the Florentine 
 realism, hard and scientific. A natural feeling for 
 grace and a sense of romance inspire the artist, 
 and breathe from every figure that he paints. The 
 type of beauty produced is charming by its negli- 
 gence and naivete; it is not thought out with 
 pains or toilsomely elaborated. 1 
 
 Among the loveliest motives used in the altar- 
 pieces of this period might be mentioned the boy- 
 angels playing flutes and mandolines beneath Ma- 
 donna on the steps of her throne. There are 
 usually three of them, seated or sometimes stand- 
 ing. They hold their instruments of music as 
 though they had just ceased from singing and 
 were ready to recommence at the pleasure of their 
 mistress. Meanwhile there is a silence in the celes- 
 tial company, through which the still voice of the 
 praying heart is heard, a silence corresponding to 
 the hushed mood of the worshiper. 2 The children 
 
 J Notice in particular, from the series of pictures illustrating the 
 legend of S. Ursula, the very beautiful faces and figures of the saint 
 herself and her young bridegroom, the Prince of Britain. Attendant 
 squires and pages in these paintings have all the charm of similar 
 subordinate personages in Pinturicchio, with none of his affectation. 
 
 8 The most beautiful of these angiolini, with long flakes of flaxen 
 hair falling from their foreheads, are in a Sacra Conversazione of Car- 
 paccio's in the Academy. Gian Bellini's, in many similar pictures, are 
 of the same delicacy.
 
 GIAN BELLINI. 365 
 
 are accustomed to the holy place ; therefore their 
 attitudes are both reverent and natural. 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. 
 
 Gian Bellini brought the art of this second 
 period to completion. In his sacred pictures the 
 reverential spirit of early Italian painting is com- 
 bined with a feeling for color and a dexterity in 
 its manipulation peculiar to Venice. Bellini can not 
 be called a master of the full Renaissance. He 
 falls into the same class as Francia and Perugino, 
 who adhered to quattrocento modes of thought 
 and sentiment, while attaining at isolated points 
 to the freedom of the Renaissance. In him the 
 colorists of the next age found an absolute 
 teacher ; no one has surpassed him in the difficult 
 art of giving tone to pure tints in combination. 
 There is a picture of Bellini's in S. Zaccaria at 
 Venice Madonna enthroned with Saints where 
 the skill of the colorist may be said to culminate 
 in unsurpassable perfection. The whole painting 
 is bathed in a soft but luminous haze of gold ; yet 
 each figure has its individuality of treatment, the 
 glowing fire of S. Peter contrasting with the pearly 
 coolness of the drapery and flesh-tints of the Mag-
 
 366 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 dalen. No brush- vvoik is perceptible. Surface 
 and substance have been elaborated into one har- 
 monious richness that defies analysis. Between 
 this picture, so strong in its smoothness, and any 
 masterpiece of Velasquez, so rugged in its strength, 
 what a wide abyss of inadequate half-achievement, 
 of smooth feebleness and feeble ruggedness exists ! 
 
 Giorgione, did we but possess enough of his 
 authentic works to judge by, would be found the first 
 painter of the true Renaissance among the Vene- 
 tians, the inaugurator of the third and great period. 1 
 Fie died at the age of thirty-six, the inheritor of 
 unfulfilled renown. Time has destroyed the last 
 vestige of his frescoes. Criticism has reduced the 
 number of his genuine easel-pictures to half a dozen. 
 He exists as a great name. The part he played in 
 the development of Venetian art was similar to that 
 of Marlowe in the history of our drama. He first 
 cut painting altogether adrift from mediaeval moor- 
 ings, and launched it on the waves of the Renais- 
 sance liberty. While equal as a colorist to Bellini, 
 though in a different and more sensuous region, 
 Giorgione, by the variety and inventiveness of his 
 conception, proved himself a painter of the caliber of 
 Titian. Sacred subjects he seems to have but rarely 
 treated, unless such purely idyllic pictures as the 
 
 1 What follows above about Giorgione is advanced with diffidence, 
 since the name of no other great painter has been so freely used to 
 cover the works of his inferiors.
 
 GIORGIONE. 367 
 
 Finding of Moses in the Uffizzi, and the Meeting of 
 Jacob and Rachel at Dresden, deserve the name. 
 Allegories of deep and problematic meaning, the 
 key whereof has to be found in states of the emotion 
 rather than in thoughts, delighted him. He may be 
 said to have invented the Venetian species of ro- 
 mance-picture, where an episode in a novella forms 
 the motive of the painting. 1 Nor was he deficient 
 in tragic power, as the tremendous study for a Lu- 
 crece in the Uffizzi collection sufficiently proves. 
 In his drawings he models the form without outline 
 by massive distribution of light and dark. In style 
 they are the very opposite of Lionardo's clearly- 
 defined studies touched with the metal point upon 
 prepared paper. They suggest coloring, and are 
 indeed the designs of a great colorist, who saw 
 things under the conditions of their tints and tone. 
 
 Of the undisputed pictures by Giorgione, the 
 grandest is the Monk at the Clavichord, in the Pitti 
 Palace at Florence. 2 The young man has his fingers 
 
 1 Lord Lansdowne's Giorgionesque picture of a young man crowned 
 with vine playing and singing to two girls in a garden, for example. 
 The celebrated Concert of the Louvre Gallery, so charming for its land- 
 scape and so voluptuous in its dreamy sense of Arcadian luxury, is 
 given by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to an imitator of Sebastian del 
 Piombo. See 'History of Painting in North Italy,' vol. ii. p. 147. 
 
 3 Under the fire of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's destructive criticism 
 it would require more real courage than I possess to speak of the ' En- 
 tombment ' in the Monte di Pieta at Treviso as genuine. Coarse and 
 unselect as are the types of the boy angels, as well as of the young 
 athletic giant who plays the part in it of the dead Christ, this is a
 
 368 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 on the keys ; he is modulating in a mood of grave and 
 sustained emotion ; his head is turned away toward 
 an old man standing near him. On the other side of 
 the instrument is a boy. These two figures are but 
 foils and adjuncts to the musician in the middle ; and 
 the whole interest of his face lies in its concentrated 
 feeling the very soul of music, as expressed in Mr. 
 Robert Browning's Abt Vogler, passing through his 
 eyes. This power of painting the portrait of an 
 emotion, of depicting by the features a deep and 
 powerful but tranquil moment of the inner life, must 
 have been possessed by Giorgione in an eminent 
 degree. We find it again in the so-called Begrus- 
 sung of the Dresden Gallery. 1 The picture is a 
 large landscape. Jacob and Rachel meet and salute 
 each other with a kiss. But the shepherd lying 
 beneath the shadow of a chestnut-tree beside a well 
 has a whole Arcadia of intense yearning in the eyes 
 of sympathy he fixes on the lovers. Something of 
 this faculty, it may be said in passing, descended to 
 Bonifazio, whose romance pictures are among the 
 most charming products of Venetian art, and one of 
 
 truly grandiose and striking picture. Nothing proves the average great- 
 ness of the Venetian masters more than the possibility of attributing 
 such compositions to obscure and subordinate craftsmen of the school. 
 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle assign this picture with some confidence, 
 and with fair show of reason, to Cariani, on whom again they father 
 the frescoes at Colleoni's Castle of Malpaga. I have ventured to 
 notice it above in connection with Giorgione, since it exhibits some of 
 the most striking Giorgionesque qualities, and shows the ascendency of 
 his imagination over the Venetian School.
 
 TITIAN, TINTORET, AND VERONESE. 369 
 
 whose singing women in the feast of Dives has the 
 Giorgionesque fullness of inner feeling. 
 
 Fate has dealt less unkindly with Titian, Tin- 
 toret, and Veronese than with Giorgione. The works 
 of these artists, in whom the Venetian Renaissance 
 attained completion, have been preserved in large 
 numbers and in excellent condition. Chronologically 
 speaking, Titian, the contemporary of Giorgione, 
 precedes Tintoretto, and Tintoretto is somewhat 
 earlier than Veronese. 1 But for the purpose of criti- 
 cism the three painters may be considered together 
 as the representatives of three marked aspects in the 
 fully-developed Venetian style. 
 
 Tintoretto, called by the Italians the thunder- 
 bolt of painting, because of his vehement impulsive- 
 ness and rapidity of execution, soars above his 
 brethren by the faculty of pure imagination. It was 
 he who brought to its perfection the poetry of chiar- 
 oscuro, expressing moods of passion and emotion 
 by brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, and semi- 
 opaque darkness, no less unmistakably than Bee- 
 thoven by symphonic modulations. H e too engrafted 
 on the calm and natural Venetian manner something 
 of the Michael Angelesque sublimity, and sought 
 to vary by dramatic movement the romantic motives 
 of his school. In his work, more than in that of his 
 
 1 Giorgione, b. 1478; d. 1511. Titian, b. 1477; d. 1576. Tinto- 
 retto, b. 1512; d. 1594. Veronese, b. 1530; d. 1588,
 
 370 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 contemporaries, Venetian art ceased to be decorative 
 and idyllic. 
 
 Veronese elevated pageantry to the height of 
 serious art. His domain is noonday sunlight ablaze 
 on sumptuous dresses and Palladian architecture. 
 Where Tintoretto is dramatic he is scenic. Titian, 
 in a wise harmony, without either the vEschylean 
 fury of Tintoretto or the material gorgeousness of 
 Veronese, realized an ideal of pure beauty. Con- 
 tinuing the traditions of Bellini and Giorgione, with 
 a breadth of treatment and a vigor of well-balanced 
 faculties peculiar to himself, Titian gave to color in 
 landscape and the human form a sublime yet sensu- 
 ous poetry no other painter in the world has reached. 
 
 Tintoretto and Veronese are, both of them, 
 excessive. The imagination of Tintoretto is too 
 passionate and daring ; it scathes and blinds like 
 lightning. The sense of splendor in Veronese 
 is overpoweringly pompous. Titian's exquisite hu- 
 manity, his large and sane nature, gives proper 
 value to the imaginative and the scenic elements 
 of the Venetian style, without exaggerating either. 
 In his masterpieces thought, color, sentiment, and 
 composition the spiritual and technical elements 
 of art exist in perfect balance; one harmonious 
 tone is given to all the parts of his production, 
 nor can it be said that any quality asserts itself 
 to the injury of the rest Titian, the Sophocles of
 
 SECONDARY MASTERS. yji 
 
 painting, has infused into his pictures the spirit of 
 music, the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders, 
 making power incarnate in a form of grace. 
 
 Round these great men are grouped a host of 
 secondary but distinguished painters Palma with 
 his golden-haired, large-bosomed sirens ; idyllic Boni- 
 fazio ; dramatic Pordenone, whose frescoes are all 
 motion and excitement ; Paris Bordone, who mingled 
 on his canvas cream and mulberry-juice and sun- 
 beams ; the Robusti, the Caliari, the Bassani, and 
 others whom it would be tedious to mention. One 
 breath, one afflatus, inspired them all ; and it is 
 due to this coherence in their style and inspiration 
 that the school of Venice, taken as a whole, can 
 show more masterpieces by artists of the second 
 class than any other in Italy. Superior or inferior 
 as they may relatively be among themselves, each 
 bears the indubitable stamp of the Venetian Re- 
 naissance, and produces work of a quality that 
 raises him to high rank among the painters of the 
 world. In the same way the spirit of the Renais- 
 sance, passing over the dramatists of our Elizabethan 
 age, enabled intellects of average force to take rank 
 in the company of the noblest. Ford, Massinger, 
 Heywood, Decker, Webster, Fletcher, Tourneur, 
 Marston, are seated round the throne at the feet of 
 Shakspere, Marlowe, and Jonson. 
 
 In order to penetrate the characteristics of Vene-
 
 372 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 tian art more thoroughly, it will be needful to 
 enter into detailed criticism of the three chief mas- 
 ters who command the school. To begin with 
 Veronese. His canvases are nearly always large- 
 filled with figures of the size of life, massed together 
 in groups or extended in long lines beneath white 
 marble colonnades, which inclose spaces of clear sky 
 and silvery clouds. Armor, shot silks and satins, 
 brocaded canopies, banners, plate, fruit, scepters, 
 crowns, all things, in fact, that burn and glitter in the 
 sun, form the habitual furniture of his pictures. 
 Rearing horses, dogs, dwarfs, cats, when occasion 
 serves, are used to add reality, vivacity, grotesque- 
 ness to his scenes. His men and women are large, 
 well proportioned, vigorous eminent for pose and 
 gesture rather than for grace or loveliness distin- 
 guished by adult more than adolescent qualities. 
 
 Veronese has no choice type of beauty for 
 either sex. We find in him, on the contrary, a some- 
 what coarse display of animal force in men, and of 
 superb voluptuousness in women. He prefers to paint 
 women draped in gorgeous raiment, as if he had 
 not felt the beauty of the nude. Their faces are too 
 frequently unrefined and empty of expression. His 
 noblest creatures are men of about twenty-five, 
 manly, brawny, crisp-haired, full of nerve and blood. 
 In all this Veronese resembles Rubens. But he 
 does not, like Rubens, strike us as gross, sensual,
 
 WORLDLY POMP OF VERONESE. 373 
 
 fleshly ; * he remains proud, powerful, and frigidly 
 materialistic. He raises neither repulsion nor desire, 
 but displays with the calm strength of art the empire 
 of the mundane spirit. All the equipage of wealth 
 and worldliness, the lust of the eye, and the pride of 
 life such vision as the fiend offered to Christ on the 
 mountain of temptation ; this is Veronese's realm. 
 Again, he has no flashes of poetic imagination like 
 Tintoretto; but his grip on the realities of the 
 world, his faculty for idealizing prosaic magnificence, 
 is even greater. 
 
 Veronese was precisely the painter suited to 
 a nation of merchants, in whom the associations 
 of the counting-house and the exchange mingled 
 with the responsibilities of the Senate and the 
 passions of princes. He never portrayed vehe- 
 ment emotions. There are no brusque movements, 
 no extended arms, like those of Tintoretto's Mag- 
 dalen in the Pieta at Milan, in his pictures. His 
 Christs and Marys and martyrs of all sorts are com- 
 posed, serious, courtly, well-fed personages, who, 
 like people of the world accidentally overtaken by 
 some tragic misfortune, do not stoop to distortions or 
 express more than a grave surprise, a decorous sense 
 of pain. 2 His angelic beings are equally earthly. 
 
 1 1 can not, for example, imagine Veronese painting any thing like 
 Rubens' two pictures of the ' Last Judgment ' at Munich. 
 
 2 For his sacred types see the ' Marriage at Cana ' in the Louvre, 
 the little ' Crucifixion ' and the ' Baptism ' of the Pitti, and the ' Mar- 
 tyrdom of S. Agata ' in the Uffizzi.
 
 374 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 The Venetian Rothschilds no doubt preferred 
 the ceremonial to the imaginative treatment of 
 sacred themes ; and to do him justice, Veronese 
 did not make what would in his case have been the 
 mistake of choosing the tragedies of the Bible for 
 representation. It is the story of Esther, with its 
 royal audiences, coronations, and processions ; the 
 marriage-feast at Cana ; the banquet in the house of 
 Levi, that he selects by preference. Even these 
 themes he removes into a region far from biblical 
 associations. His mise en scene is invariably borrowed 
 from luxurious Italian palaces large open courts 
 and loggie, crowded with guests and lackeys tables 
 profusely laden with gold and silver plate. The 
 same love of display led him to delight in allegory 
 not allegory of the deep and mystic kind, but of the 
 pompous and processional, in which Venice appears 
 enthroned among the deities, or Jupiter fulminates 
 against the vices, or the genii of the arts are personi- 
 fied as handsome women and blooming boys. In 
 dealing with mythology, again, it is not its poetry 
 that he touches ; he uses the tale of Europa, for 
 example, as the motive for rich toilettes and delight- 
 ful landscape, choosing the moment that has least in 
 it of pathos. These being the prominent features 
 of his style, it remains to be said that what is really 
 great in Veronese is the sobriety of his imagination 
 and the solidity of his workmanship. Amid so
 
 TINTORETTO'S IMAGINATIVE ENERGY. 375 
 
 much that is distracting, he never loses command 
 over his subject ; nor does he degenerate into fulsome 
 rhetoric. 
 
 Tintoretto is not at home in this somewhat vul- 
 gar region of ceremonial grandeur. He requires 
 both thought and fancy as the stimulus to his 
 creative effort. He can not be satisfied with repro- 
 ducing, even in the noblest combinations, merely 
 what he sees around him of resplendent and magnifi- 
 cent. There must be scope for poetry in the con- 
 ception and for audacity in the projection of his 
 subject, something that shall rouse the prophetic 
 faculty and evoke the seer in the artist, or Tintoretto 
 does not rise to his own altitude. Accordingly we 
 find that, in contrast with Veronese, he selects by 
 preference the most tragic and dramatic subjects to 
 be found in sacred history. The Crucifixion, with 
 its agonizing deity and prostrate groups of women, 
 sunk below the grief of tears; the Temptation in 
 the wilderness, with its passionate contrast of the 
 gray-robed Man of Sorrows and the ruby-winged, 
 voluptuous fiend ; the Temptation of Adam in Eden, 
 a glowing allegory of the fascination of the spirit by 
 the flesh ; Paradise, a tempest of souls, whirled like 
 Lucretian atoms or gold dust in sunbeams by the 
 celestial forces that perform the movement of the 
 spheres ; the Destruction of the world, where all the 
 fountains and rivers and lakes and seas of earth
 
 376 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 have formed one cataract that thunders with cities 
 and nations on its rapids down a bottomless gulf, 
 while all the winds and hurricanes of the air have 
 grown into one blast that carries men like dead 
 leaves up to judgment ; the Plague of the fiery ser- 
 pents, with multitudes encoiled and writhing on a 
 burning waste of sand ; the Massacre of the Inno- 
 cents, with its spilth of blood on slippery pavements of 
 porphyry and serpentine ; the Delivery of the tables 
 of the law to Moses amid clouds on Sinai, a white 
 ascetic, lightning-smitten man emerging in the glory 
 of apparent godhead ; the anguish of the Magdalen 
 above her martyred God ; the solemn silence of 
 Christ before the throne of Pilate; the rushing of 
 the wings of Seraphim, and the clangor of the 
 trumpet that awakes the dead these are the soul- 
 stirring themes that Tintoretto handles with the 
 ease of mastery. 1 
 
 Meditating upon Tintoretto's choice of such 
 subjects, we feel that the profoundest characteristic 
 of his genius is the determination toward motives 
 pre-eminently poetic rather than proper to the 
 figurative arts. The poet imagines a situation in 
 which the intellectual or emotional life is paramount, 
 and the body is subordinate. The painter selects 
 situations in which physical form is of the first im- 
 
 1 These examples are mostly chosen from the Scuola di S. Rocco 
 and the church of S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice; also from 'Pietas,' in 
 the Brera and the Pitti, the ' Paradise ' of the Ducal Palace, and a 
 sketch for ' Paradise ' in the Louvre.
 
 SEJVSJZ OF BEAUTY. 377 
 
 portance, and a feeling or a thought is suggested 
 But Tintoretto grapples immediately with poetical 
 ideas ; and he oftens fails to realize them fully 
 through the inadequacy of painting as a medium for 
 such matter. Moses, in the drama of the Golden 
 Calf, for instance, is a poem, not a true picture. 1 
 The pale ecstatic stretching out emaciated arms 
 presents no beauty of attitude or outline. Energy 
 of thought is conspicuous in the figure ; and reflec- 
 tion is needed to bring out the purpose of the painter. 8 
 It is not, however, only in the region of the 
 vast, tempestuous, and tragic that Tintoretto finds 
 himself at home. He is equal to every task 
 that can be imposed upon the imagination. Pro- 
 vided only that the spiritual fount be stirred, the 
 jet of living water gushes forth, pure, inexhaustible, 
 and limpid. In his Marriage of Bacchus and 
 Ariadne, that most perfect lyric of the sensuous 
 fancy from which sensuality is absent ; 3 in his 
 
 1 S. Maria dell' Orto. 
 
 9 What is here said about Tintoretto is also true of Michael 
 Angelo. His sculpture in S. Lorenzo, compared with Greek sculpture, 
 the norm and canon of the perfect in that art, may be called an inva- 
 sion of the realm of poetry or music. 
 
 3 There are probably not few of my readers who, after seeing this 
 painting in the Ducal Palace, will agree with me that it is, if not the 
 greatest, at any rate the most beautiful oil-picture in existence. In no 
 other picture has a poem of feeling and of fancy, a romance of varied 
 lights and shades, a symphony of delicately-blended hues, a play of 
 attitude and movement transitory but in no sense forced or violent, 
 been more successfully expressed by means more simple or with effect 
 more satisfying. Something of the mythopoetic faculty must have sur- 
 vived in Tintoretto, and enabled him to inspire the Greek tale with 
 this intense vitality of beauty.
 
 3?8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Temptation of Adam, that symphony of gray and 
 brown and ivory more lustrous than the hues of 
 sunset ; in his Miracle of S. Agnes, that lamb-like 
 maiden with her snow-white lamb among the soldiers 
 and the priests of Rome, Tintoretto has proved 
 beyond all question that the fiery genius of Titanic 
 artists can pierce and irradiate the placid and the 
 tender secrets of the soul with more consummate 
 mastery than falls to the lot of those who make 
 tranquillity their special province. 1 
 
 Paolo Veronese never penetrated to this inner 
 shrine of beauty, this Holiest of Holies where 
 the spiritual graces dwell. He could not paint 
 waxen limbs, with silver lights and golden and 
 transparent mysteries of shadow, like those of Bac- 
 chus, Eve, and Ariadne. Titian himself was power- 
 less to imagine movement like that of Aphrodite 
 floating in the air, or of Madonna adjuring Christ in 
 the Paradiso, or of Christ Himself judging by the 
 silent simplicity of His divine attitude the worldly 
 judge at whose tribunal He stands, or of the tempter 
 raising his jeweled arms aloft to dazzle with mere- 
 tricious brilliancy the impassive God above him, or 
 of Eve leaning in irresistible seductiveness against 
 the fatal tree, or of S. Mark down-rushing through 
 the sky to save the slave that cried to him, or of the 
 
 1 The first of these pictures is in the Ducal Palace, the other two 
 in the Academy at Venice.
 
 HARMONY OF TITIAN^S STYLE. 379 
 
 Mary who has fallen asleep with folded hands from 
 utter lassitude of agony at the foot of the cross. 
 
 It is in these attitudes, movements, gestures, 
 that Tintoretto makes the human form an index and 
 symbol of the profoundest, most tragic, most delicious 
 thought and feeling of the inmost soul. In day- 
 light radiancy and equable coloring he is surpassed 
 perhaps by Veronese. In mastery of every portion 
 of his art, in solidity of execution, and in unwaver- 
 ing hold upon his subject, he falls below the level of 
 Titian. Many of his pictures are unworthy of his 
 genius hurriedly designed, rapidly dashed upon the 
 canvas, studied by candlelight from artificial models, 
 with abnormal effects of light and dark, hastily 
 daubed with pigments that have not stood the test of 
 time. He was a gigantic improvisatore : that is the 
 worst thing we can say of him. But in the swift 
 intuitions of the imagination, in the purities and 
 sublimities of the prophet-poet's soul, neither Vero- 
 nese nor yet even Titian can approach him. 
 
 The greatest difficulty meets the critic who 
 attempts to speak of Titian. To seize the salient 
 characteristics of an artist whose glory it is to offer 
 nothing over-prominent, and who keeps the middle 
 path of perfection, is impossible. As complete 
 health may be termed the absence of obtrusive 
 sensation, as virtue has been called the just propor- 
 tion between two opposite extravagances, so is
 
 380 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Titian's art a golden mean of joy unbroken by 
 brusque movements of the passions a well-tem- 
 pered harmony in which no thrilling note suggests 
 the possibility of discord. In his work the world and 
 men cease to be merely what they are ; he makes 
 them what they ought to be : and this he does by 
 separating what is beautiful in sensuous life from its 
 alloy of painful meditation and of burdensome en- 
 deavor. The disease of thought is unknown in 
 his kingdom ; no divisions exist between the spirit 
 and the flesh ; the will is thwarted by no obstacles. 
 When we think of Titian, we are irresistibly led to 
 think of music. His Assumption of Madonna (the 
 greatest single oil-painting in the world, if we except 
 Raphael's Madonna di San Sisto) can best be de- 
 scribed as a symphony a symphony of color, where 
 every hue is brought into harmonious combination 
 a symphony of movement, where every line contrib- 
 utes to melodious rhythm a symphony of light 
 without a cloud a symphony of joy in which the 
 heavens and earth sing Hallelujah. Tintoretto, in 
 the Scuola di San Rocco, painted an Assumption of 
 the Virgin with characteristic energy and impulsive- 
 ness. A group of agitated men around an open 
 tomb, a rush of air and clash of seraph wings above, 
 a blaze of glory, a woman borne with sidewise- 
 svvaying figure from darkness into light that is his 
 picture, all brio, excitement, speed. Quickly con-
 
 TITIAN'S ASSUMPTION. 381 
 
 ceived, hastily executed, this painting bears the im- 
 press of its author's impetuous genius. But Titian 
 worked by a different method. On the earth, among 
 the apostles, there is action enough and passion ; 
 ardent faces straining upward, impatient men raising 
 impotent arms and vainly divesting themselves of 
 their mantles, as though they too might follow her 
 they love. In heaven is radiance, half eclipsing the 
 archangel who holds the crown, and revealing the 
 father of spirits in an aureole of golden fire. Be- 
 tween earth and heaven, amid choirs of angelic 
 children, rises the mighty mother of the faith of 
 Christ, who was Mary and is now a goddess, ecstatic 
 yet tranquil, not yet accustomed to the skies, but 
 far above the grossness and the incapacities of 
 earth. Her womanhood is so complete that those 
 for whom the meaning of her Catholic legend is lost 
 may hail in her humanity personified. 
 
 The grand manner can reach no further than 
 in this picture serene, composed, meditated, en- 
 during, yet full of dramatic force and of profound 
 feeling. Whatever Titian chose to touch, whether 
 it was classical mythology or portrait, history or 
 sacred subject, he treated in this large and healthful 
 style. It is easy to tire of Veronese ; it is pos- 
 sible to be fatigued by Tintoretto. Titian, like 
 nature, waits not for moods or humors in the 
 spectator. He gives to the mind joy of which
 
 382 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 it can never weary, pleasures that can not satiate, 
 a satisfaction not to be repented of, a sweetness 
 that will not pall. The least instructed and the 
 simple feel his influence as strongly as the wise or 
 learned 
 
 In the course of this attempt to describe the 
 specific qualities of Tintoretto, Veronese, and Titian, 
 I have been more at pains to distinguish differ- 
 ences than to point out similarities. What they 
 had in common was the Renaissance spirit as this 
 formed itself in Venice. Nowhere in Italy was art 
 more wholly emancipated from obedience to ecclesias- 
 tical traditions, without losing the character of genial 
 and natural piety. Nowhere was the Christian 
 history treated with a more vivid realism, harmo- 
 nized more simply with pagan mythology, or more 
 completely purged of mysticism. The Umbrian de- 
 votion felt by Raphael in his boyhood, the prophecy 
 of Savonarola, and the Platonism of Ficino absorbed 
 by Michael Angelo at Florence, the scientific pre- 
 occupations of Lionardo and the antiquarian inter- 
 ests of Mantegna, were all alike unknown at Venice. 
 Among the Venetian painters there was no conflict 
 between art and religion, or art and curiosity no 
 reaction against previous pietism, no perplexity of 
 conscience, no confusion of aims. Titian, Tintoretto, 
 and Veronese were children of the people, men 
 of the world, men of pleasure ; wealthy, urbane,
 
 THE VENETIAN RENAISSANCE. 383 
 
 independent, pious they were all these by turns ; 
 but they were never mystics, scholars, or philoso- 
 phers. In their aesthetic ideal religion found a 
 place, nor was sensuality rejected ; but the religion 
 was sane and manly, the sensuality was vigorous 
 and virile. Not the intellectual greatness of the 
 Renaissance, but its happiness and freedom, was 
 what they represented.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO. 
 
 Contrast of Michael Angelo and Cellini Parentage and Boyhood of 
 Michael Angelo Work with Ghirlandajo Gardens of S. Marco 
 The Medicean Circle Early Essays in Sculpture Visit to Bo- 
 logna First Visit to Rome The ' PietS' of S. Peter's Michael 
 Angelo as a T'atriot and a Friend of the Medici Cartoon for the 
 Battle of Pisa Michael Angelo and Julius II. The Tragedy of 
 the Tomb Design for the Pope's Mausoleum Visit to Carrara 
 Flight from Rome Michael Angelo at Bologna Bronze Statue of 
 Julius Return to Rome Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Greek 
 and Modern Art Raphael Michael Angelo and Leo X. S. Lo- 
 renzo The New Sacristy Circumstances under which it was de- 
 signed and partly finished Meaning of the Allegories Incom- 
 plete State of Michael Angelo's Marbles Paul III. The 'Last 
 Judgment ' Critiques of Contemporaries The Dome of S. Peter's 
 Vittoria Colonna Tommaso Cavalieri Personal Habits of 
 Michael Angelo His Emotional Nature Last Illness. 
 
 THE life of Italian artists at the time of the Re- 
 naissance may be illustrated by two biographies. 
 Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Benvenuto Cellini 
 were almost opposite in all they thought and felt, 
 experienced and aimed at. The one impressed his 
 own strong personality on art ; the other reflected 
 the light and shadow of the age in the record of 
 his manifold existence. Cellini hovered, like some 
 strong-winged creature, on the surface of human
 
 BUONARROTI AND CELLINI. 385 
 
 activity, yielding himself to every impulse, seeking 
 every pleasure, and of beauty feeling only the rude 
 animal compulsion. Deep philosophic thoughts, 
 ideas of death and judgment, the stern struggles of 
 the soul, encompassed Michael Angelo; the service 
 of beauty was with him religion. Cellini was the 
 creature of the moment the glass and mirror of 
 corrupt, enslaved, yet still resplendent Italy. In 
 Michael Angelo the genius of the Renaissance 
 culminated : but his character was rather that of 
 an austere Republican, free and solitary amid 
 the multitudes of slaves and courtiers. Michael 
 Angelo made art the vehicle of lofty and soul- 
 shaking thought. Cellini brought the fervor of an 
 inexhaustibly active nature to the service of sen- 
 suality, and taught his art to be the handmaid of a 
 soulless paganism. In these two men, therefore, we 
 study two aspects of their age. How far both were 
 exceptional need not here be questioned ; since their 
 singularity consists not so much in being differ- 
 ent from other Italians of the sixteenth century as 
 in concentrating qualities elsewhere scattered and 
 imperfect 
 
 Michael Angelo was born in 1475 at Caprese, 
 among the mountains of the Casentino, where his 
 father Lodovico held the office of Podesta. His 
 ancestry was honorable ; the Buonarroti even 
 claimed descent, but apparently without due reason,
 
 386 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 from the princely house of Canossa. 1 His mother 
 gave him to be suckled by a stone-cutter's wife at 
 Settignano, so that in after-days he used to say that 
 he had drawn in the love of chisels and mallets with 
 his nurse's milk. As he grew, the boy developed 
 an invincible determination toward the arts. Lo- 
 dovico, from motives of pride and prudence, opposed 
 his wishes, but without success. Michael Angelo 
 made friends with the lad Granacci, who was ap- 
 prenticed to Domenico Ghirlandajo, and at last 
 induced his father to sign articles for him to the 
 same painter. In Ghirlandajo's workshop he learned 
 the rudiments of art, helping in the execution of the 
 frescoes at S. Maria Novella, until such time as the 
 pupil proved his superiority as a draughtsman to his 
 teacher. The rupture between Michael Angelo and 
 Ghirlandajo might be compared with that between 
 Beethoven and Haydn. In both cases a proud, 
 uncompromising, somewhat scornful student sought 
 aid from a master great in his own line but inferior 
 in fire and originality of genius. 2 In both cases 
 
 1 See Vasari, voL xii. p. 333, and Gotti's 'Vita di Michaelangelo 
 Buonarroti,' vol. i. p. 4, for a discussion of this claim, and for a letter 
 written by Alessandro Count of Canossa, in 1520, to the artist. 
 
 * That Michael Angelo was contemptuous to brother artists is 
 proved by what Torrigiani said to Cellini : ' Aveva per usanza di uccel- 
 lare tutti quelli che dissegnavano.' He called Perugino goffo, told 
 Francia's son that his father made handsomer men by night than by 
 day, and cast in Lionardo's teeth that he could not finish the equestrian 
 statue of the Duke of Milan. It is therefore not improbable that when, 
 according to the legend, he corrected a drawing of Ghirlandajo's. he 
 may have said things unendurable to the elder painter.
 
 BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 387 
 
 the moment came when pupil and teacher per- 
 ceived that the eagle could no longer be confined 
 within the hawk's nest, and that henceforth it must 
 sweep the skies alone. After leaving Ghirlandajo's 
 bottega at the age of sixteen, Michael Angelo did in 
 truth thenceforward through his life pursue his art 
 alone. Granacci procured him an introduction to 
 the Medici, and the two friends together frequented 
 those gardens of S. Marco where Lorenzo had placed 
 his collection of antiquities. There the youth dis- 
 covered his vocation. Having begged a piece of 
 marble and a chisel, he struck out the Faun's mask 
 that still is seen in the Bargello. It is worth noticing 
 that Michael Angelo seems to have done no merely 
 prentice-work. Not a fragment of his labor from 
 the earliest to the latest was insignificant, and only 
 such thoughts as he committed to the perishable 
 materials of bronze or paper have been lost. There 
 was nothing tentative in his genius. \Into art, as 
 into a rich land, he came and conquered. In like 
 manner, the first sonnet composed by Dante is 
 scarcely less precious than the last lines of the Para- 
 diso. This is true of all the highest artistic na- 
 tures, who need no preparations and have no period 
 of groping. 
 
 Lorenzo de' Medici discerned in Michael Angelo 
 a youth of eminent genius, and took the lad into his 
 own household. The astonished father found him-
 
 388 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 self suddenly provided with a comfortable post and 
 courted for the sake of the young sculptor. In 
 Lorenzo's palace the real education of Michael 
 Angelo began. He sat at the same table with 
 Ficino, Pico, and Poliziano, listening to dialogues on 
 Plato and drinking in the golden poetry of Greece. 
 Greek literature and philosophy, expounded by the 
 men who had discovered them, and who were no 
 less proud of their discovery than Columbus of his 
 passage to the Indies, first molded his mind to those 
 lofty thoughts which it became the task of his life to 
 express in form. At the same time he heard the 
 preaching of Savonarola. In the Duomo and the 
 cloister of S. Marco another portion of his soul was 
 touched, and he acquired that deep religious tone 
 which gives its majesty and terror to the Sistine. 
 Much in the same way was Milton educated by the 
 classics in conjunction with the Scriptures. Both of 
 these austere natures assimilated from pagan art and 
 Jewish prophecy the two-fold elements they needed 
 for their own imaginative life. ( Both Michael An- 
 gelo and Milton, in spite of their parade of classic 
 style, were separated from the Greek world by a 
 gulf of Hebrew and of Christian feeling. 
 
 While Michael Angelo was thus engaged in 
 studying antique sculpture and in listening to Pico 
 and Savonarola, he carved his first bass-relief a 
 Battle of Hercules with the Centaurs, suggested to
 
 THE PIET2. 389 
 
 him by Poliziano. 1 Meantime Lorenzo died. His 
 successor Piero set the young man, it is said, to 
 model a snow statue, and then melted like a shape 
 of snow himself down from his pedestal of power in 
 Florence. Upon the expulsion of the tyrant and the 
 proclamation of the new republic, it was dangerous 
 for house-friends of the Casa Medici to be seen in 
 the city. Michael Angelo, therefore, made his way 
 to Bologna, where he spent some months in the 
 palace of Gian Francesco Aldovrandini, studying 
 Dante and working at an angel for the shrine of S. 
 Dominic. As soon, however, as it seemed safe to 
 do so, he returned to Florence ; and to this period 
 belongs the statue of the Sleeping Cupid, which was 
 sold as an antique to the Cardinal Raffaello Riario. 
 A dispute about the price of this Cupid took 
 Michael Angelo in 1496 to Rome, where it was des- 
 tined that the greater portion of his life should be 
 spent and his noblest works of art should be pro- 
 duced. Here, while the Borgias were turning the 
 Vatican into a den of thieves and harlots, he exe- 
 cuted the purest of all his statues a Pieta in marble. 2 
 Christ is lying dead upon His mother's knees. With 
 her right arm she supports his shoulders ; her left 
 
 I Engraved in outline in Harford's ' Illustrations of the Genius of 
 Michael Augelo Buonarroti,' Colnaghi, 1857. 
 
 II This group, placed in S. Peter's, was made for the French Car- 
 dinal de Saint Denys. It should be said that the first work of 
 Michael Angelo in Rome was the ' Bacchus ' now in the Florentine 
 Bargello, executed for Jacopo Gallo, a Roman gentleman.
 
 390 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 hand is gently raised as though to say, ' Behold and 
 see ! ' All that art can do to make death beautiful 
 and grief sublime is achieved in this masterpiece, 
 which was never surpassed by Michael Angelo in 
 later years. Already, at the age of four-and-twenty, 
 he had matured his ' terrible manner.' Already 
 were invented in his brain that race of superhuman 
 beings who became the hieroglyphs of his impas- 
 sioned utterance. Madonna has the small head and 
 heroic torso used by this master to symbolize force. 
 We feel she has no difficulty in holding the dead 
 Christ upon her ample lap and in her powerful arms, 
 Yet while the Pieta is wholly Michael Angelesque, we 
 find no lack of repose, none of those contorted lines 
 that are commonly urged against his manner. It is 
 a sober and harmonious composition, combining the 
 profoundest religious feeling with classical tranquil- 
 lity of expression. Again, though the group is for- 
 cibly original, this effect of originality is produced, 
 as in all the best work of the golden age, not by 
 new and startling conception, but by the handling 
 of an old and well-worn motive with the grandeur 
 of consummate style. What the genius of Italian 
 sculpture had for generations been striving after 
 finds its perfect realization here. It was precisely 
 by thus crowning the endeavors of antecedent 
 artists by bringing the opening buds of painting 
 and sculpture to full blossom, and exhausting the
 
 ROME AND FLORENCE. 391 
 
 resources of a long-sustained and common inspira- 
 tion that the great masters proved their supremacy 
 and rendered an advance beyond their vantage- 
 ground impossible. To those who saw and compre- 
 hended this Pieta in 1 500, it must have been evident 
 that a new power of portraying the very soul had 
 been manifested in sculpture a power unknown to 
 the Greeks because it lay outside the sphere of 
 their spiritual experience, and unknown to modern 
 artists because it was beyond their faculties of exe- 
 cution and conception. Yet who in Rome, among 
 the courtiers of the Borgias, had brain or heart to 
 understand these things ? 
 
 In 1501 Michael Angelo returned to Florence, 
 where he stayed until the year 1505. This period 
 was fruitful of results on which his after-fame de- 
 pended. The great statue of David, the two un- 
 finished medallions of Madonna in relief, the Holy 
 Family of the Tribune painted for Angelo Doni, and 
 the Cartoon of the Battle of Pisa were now produced ; 
 and no man's name, not even Lionardo's, stood higher 
 in esteem thenceforward. It will be remembered that 
 Savonarola was now dead, but that his constitution 
 still existed under the presidency of Pietro Soderini 
 'the non mai abbastanza lodato Cavaliere, as Pitti 
 calls him, the animascioccavi Machiavelli's epigram. 1 
 
 1 Pitti approved of the form of government represented by Sode- 
 rini. Machiavelli despised the want of decision that made him quit
 
 392 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Since Michael Angelo at this time was employed in 
 the service of masters who had superseded his old 
 friends and patrons, it may be well to review here 
 his attitude in general toward the house of Medici. 
 Throughout his lifetime there continued a conflict 
 between the artist and the citizen the artist owing 
 education and employment to successive members 
 of that house, the citizen resenting their despotism 
 and doing all that in him lay at times to keep them 
 out of Florence. As a patriot, as the student of Dante 
 and the disciple of Savonarola, Michael Angelo 
 detested tyrants. 1 One of his earliest madrigals, 
 conceived as a dialogue between Florence and her 
 exiles, expresses his mind so decidedly that I have 
 ventured to translate it; 2 the exiles first address 
 Florence, and she answers: 
 
 ' Lady, for joy of lovers numberless 
 
 Thou wast created fair as angels are. 
 Sure God hath fallen asleep in heaven afar, 
 When one man calls the boon of many his. 
 Give back to streaming eyes 
 The daylight of Thy face, that seems to shun 
 Those who must live defrauded of their bliss ! 
 
 Florence, and the evijBeia of the man. Hence their curiously -conflict- 
 ing phrases. 
 
 1 See the chapter entitled ' Delia Malitia e pessime Conditioni del 
 Tyranno,' in Savonarola's 'Tractate circa el reggimento e governo della 
 Citta di Firenze composto ad instantia delli excelsi Signori al tempo 
 di Giuliano Salviati, Gonfaloniere di Justitia.' A more terrible picture 
 has never been drawn by any analyst of human vice and cruelty and 
 weakness. 
 
 a Guasti's edition of the ' Rime,' p. 26.
 
 RELATION TO THE MEDICI. 393 
 
 'Vex not your pure desire with tears and sighs; 
 For he who robs you of my light hath none. 
 Dwelling in fear, sin hath no happiness ; 
 Since amid those who love, their joy is less 
 Whose great desire great plenty still curtails, 
 Than theirs who, poor, have hope that never fails.' 
 
 As an artist, owing his advancement to Lorenzo, 
 he had accepted favors binding him by ties of grat- 
 itude to the Medici, and even involving him in the 
 downfall of their house. For Leo X. he undertook 
 to build the fagade of S. Lorenzo and the Laurentian 
 Library. For Clement VII. he began the statues of 
 the Dukes of Urbino and Nemours. Yet, while 
 accepting these commissions from Medicean Popes, 
 he could not keep his tongue from speaking openly 
 against their despotism. After the sack of Prato it 
 appears from his correspondence that he had ex- 
 posed himself to danger by some expression of in- 
 dignation. 1 This was in 1512, when Soderini fled 
 and left the gates of Florence open to the Cardinal 
 Giovanni de' Medici. During the siege of Florence 
 in 1529 he fortified Samminiato, and allowed himself 
 to be named one of the Otto di Guerra chosen for 
 the express purpose of defending Florence against 
 the Medici. 8 After the fall of the city he made 
 
 1 He defends himself thus in a letter to Lodovico Buonarroti : 
 ' Del caso dei Medici io non d mai parlato contra di loro casa nessuna, 
 se non in quel modo che s'e parlato generalmente per ogn' uomo, 
 come fu del caso di Prato ; che se le pietre avessin saputo parlare, 
 n'avrebbono parlato.' 
 
 9 It seems clear from the correspondence in the Archivio Buonar- 
 roti, recently published, that when Michael Angelo fied from Florence
 
 394 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 peace with Clement by consenting to finish the 
 tombs of S. Lorenzo. Yet, while doing all he 
 could to save those insignificant dukes from oblivion 
 by the immortality of his art, Michael Angelo was 
 conscious of his own and his country's shame. The 
 memorable lines placed in the mouth of his Night 
 sufficiently display his feeling after the final return 
 of the Medici in I53O: 1 
 
 Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone, 
 So long as ruin and dishonor reign ; 
 To hear naught, to feel naught, is my great gain ; 
 Then wake me not, speak in an undertone. 
 
 When Clement VII. died, the last real repre- 
 sentative of Michael Angelo's old patrons perished, 
 and the sculptor was free to quit Florence forever. 
 During the reign of Duke Cosimo he never set foot in 
 his native city. It is thus clear that the patriot, the 
 artist, and the man of honor were at odds in him. 
 Loyalty obliged him to serve the family to whom he 
 owed so much ; he was, moreover, dependent for 
 opportunities of doing great work on the very men 
 whose public policy he execrated. Hence arose a 
 compromise and a confusion, hard to accommodate 
 with our conception of his upright and unyielding 
 temper. Only by voluntary exile, and after age had 
 
 to Venice in 1 529, he did so under the pressure of no ignoble panic, 
 but because his life was threatened by a traitor, acting possibly at the 
 secret instance of Malatesta Baglionj. See Heath Wilson, pp. 326^ 
 
 330- 
 
 1 gee Guasti, p. 4.
 
 THE BATTLE OF PISA. 395 
 
 made him stubborn to resist seductive offers, could 
 Michael Angelo act up to the promptings of his 
 heart and declare himself a citizen who held no truce 
 with tyrants. I have already in this book had occa- 
 sion to compare Dante, Michael Angelo, and Machi- 
 avelli. 1 In estimating the conduct of the two last, 
 it must not be forgotten that, by the action of in- 
 evitable causes, republican freedom had become in 
 Italy a thing of the past ; and in judging between 
 Machiavelli and Michael Angelo, we have to re- 
 member that the sculptor's work involved no sacri- 
 fice of principle or self-respect. Carving statues for 
 the tombs of Medicean dukes was a different matter 
 from dedicating the Prince to them. 
 
 This digression, though necessary for the right 
 understanding of Michael Angelo's relation to the 
 Medici, has carried me beyond his Florentine resi- 
 dence in 1501-1505. The great achievement of 
 that period was not the David, but the Cartoon for 
 the Battle of Ptsa? The hall of the Consiglio 
 
 1 ' Age of the Despots,' p. 318. 
 
 * To these years we must also reckon the two unfinished medal- 
 lions of ' Madonna and the Infant Christ,' the circular oil-picture of 
 the ' Holy Family,' painted for Angelo Doni, and the beautiful un- 
 finished picture of ' Madonna with the boy Jesus ' and ' S. John ' in the 
 National Gallery. The last of these works is one of the loveliest of 
 Michael Angelo's productions, whether we regard the symmetry of its 
 composition or the refinement of its types. The two groups of two 
 boys standing behind the central group on either hand of the Virgin 
 have incomparable beauty of form. The supreme style of the Sistine 
 is here revealed to us in embryo. Whether the ' Entombment,' also un-
 
 396 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Grande had been opened, and one wall had been 
 assigned to Lionardo. Michael Angelo was now 
 invited by the Signory to prepare a design for 
 another side of the state-chamber. When he dis- 
 played his cartoon to the Florentines, they pro- 
 nounced that Da Vinci, hitherto the undisputed 
 prince of painting, was surpassed. It is impossible 
 for us to form an opinion in this matter, since both 
 cartoons are lost beyond recovery. 1 We only know 
 that, as Cellini says, ' while they lasted, they formed 
 the school of the whole world,' 2 and made an epoch 
 in the history of art. When we inquire what was 
 the subject of Michael Angelo's famous picture, we 
 find that he had aimed at representing nothing of 
 more moment than a group of soldiers suddenly sur- 
 prised by a trumpet-call to battle, while bathing in 
 
 finished, and also in the National Gallery, belongs to this time, and 
 whether it be Michael Angelo's at all, is a matter for the experts to de- 
 cide. To my perception, it is quite unworthy of the painter of the 
 Doni ' Holy Family ; ' nor can I think that his want of practice in oil- 
 painting will explain its want of charm and vigor. 
 
 1 It has long been believed that Baccio Bandinelli destroyed 
 Michael Angelo's ; but Grimm, in his Life of the sculptor (vol. i. p. 
 376, Eng. Tr.), adduces solid arguments against this legend. A few 
 studies, together with the engravings of portions by Marc Antonio 
 and Agostino Veneziano, enable us to form a notion of the composi- 
 tion. At Holkham there is an old copy of the larger portion of the 
 cartoon, which has been engraved by Schiavonetti, and reproduced in 
 Harford's ' Illustrations,' plate x. 
 
 3 Vita, p. 23. Cellini, the impassioned admirer of Michael Angelo, 
 esteemed this cartoon so highly that he writes: 'Sebbene il divino 
 Michelagnolo fece la gran cappella di Papa Julio da poi, non arrive 
 mai a questo segno alia meta : la sua virtu non aggiunse mai da poi 
 alia forza di quei prirhi studj.'
 
 JULIUS II. 397 
 
 the Arno a crowd of naked men in every posture 
 indicating haste, anxiety, and struggle. Not for its 
 intellectual meaning, not for its color, not for its 
 sentiment, was this design so highly prized. Its 
 science won the admiration of artists and the public. 
 At this period of the Renaissance the bold and per- 
 fect drawing of the body gave an exquisite delight. 
 Hence, perhaps, Vasari's vapid talk about ' strava- 
 ganti attitudini,' ' divine figure,' ' scorticamenti,' and 
 so forth as if the soul of figurative art were in such 
 matters. The science of Michael Angelo, which in 
 his own mind was sternly subordinated to thought, 
 had already turned the weaker heads of his genera- 
 tion. 1 A false ideal took possession of the fancy, 
 and such criticism as that of Vasari and Pietro 
 Aretino became inevitable. 
 
 Meanwhile, a new Pope had been elected, and in 
 1505 Michael Angelo was once more called to 
 Rome. Throughout his artist's life he oscillated 
 thus between Rome and Florence Florence the 
 city of his ancestry, and Rome the city of his soul ; 
 Florence where he learned his art, and Rome where 
 he displayed what art can do of highest. Julius 
 was a patron of different stamp from Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent. He was not learned in book-lore : 
 ' Place a sword in my hand ! ' he said to the sculptor 
 at Bologna ; ' of letters I know nothing.' Yet he 
 
 1 The cartoon was probably exhibited in 1 505. See Gotti, vol. i. p 35.
 
 398 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 was no less capable of discerning excellence than 
 the Medici himself, and his spirit strove incessantly 
 after the accomplishment of vast designs. Between 
 Julius and Michael Angelo there existed the strong 
 bond of sympathy due to community of tempera- 
 ment. Both aimed at colossal achievements in their 
 respective fields of action. The imagination of both 
 was fired by large and simple rather than luxurious 
 and subtle thoughts. Both were nomini terribili, to 
 use a phrase denoting vigor of character made for- 
 midable by an abrupt uncompromising temper. 
 Both worked con furia, with the impetuosity of 
 daemonic natures ; and both left the impress of their 
 individuality graven indelibly upon their age. 
 
 Julius ordered the sculptor to prepare his mau- 
 soleum. Michael Angelo asked, ' Where am I to 
 place it ? ' Julius replied, ' In S. Peter's.' But the 
 old basilica of Christendom was too small for this 
 ambitious pontiff's sepulchre, designed by the auda- 
 cious artist. It was therefore decreed that a new 
 S. Peter's should be built to hold it. In this way 
 the two great labors of Buonarroti's life were 
 mapped out for him in a moment. But, by a strange 
 contrariety ot fate, to Bramante and San Gallo fell 
 respectively the planning and the spoiling of S. 
 Peter's. It was only in extreme old age that Michael 
 Angelo crowned it with that world's miracle, the 
 dome. The mausoleum, to form a canopy for which
 
 THE MAUSOLEUM. 399 
 
 the building was designed, dwindled down at last to 
 the statue of Moses thrust out of the way in the 
 church of S. Pietro in Vincoli. La tragedia delta 
 Sepoltura, as Condivi aptly terms the history of 
 Giulio's monument, began thus in 1505 and dragged 
 on till I545- 1 Rarely did Michael Angelo under- 
 take a work commensurate with his creative power, 
 but something came to interrupt its execution ; while 
 tasks outside his sphere, for which he never bar- 
 gained the painting of the Sistine Chapel, the 
 fagade of S. Lorenzo, the fortification of Samminiato 
 were thrust upon him in the midst of other more 
 congenial labors. What we possess of his achieve- 
 ment is a torso of his huge designs. 
 
 Giulio's tomb, as he conceived it, would have 
 been the most stupendous monument of sculpture in 
 the world. 2 That mountain of marble covered with 
 figures wrought in stone and bronze was meant to 
 be the sculptured poem of the thought of Death ; no 
 mere apotheosis of Pope Julius, but a pageant of the 
 soul triumphant over the limitations of mortality. 
 All that dignifies humanity arts, sciences, and laws ; 
 the victory that crowns heroic effort ; the majesty 
 of contemplation, and the energy of action was 
 
 1 Gotti, pp. 277-282. 
 
 1 Springer, in his essay, 'Michael Agnolo in Rome,' p. 21, makes 
 out that this large design was not conceived till after the death of 
 Julius. It is difficult to form a clear notion of the many changes in 
 the plan of the tomb, between 1 505 and 1 542, when Michael Angelo 
 signed the last contract with the heirs of Julius.
 
 400 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 symbolized upon ascending tiers of the great pyra- 
 mid ; while the genii of heaven and earth upheld the 
 open tomb where lay the dead man waiting for the 
 Resurrection. Of this gigantic scheme only one 
 imperfect drawing now remains. 1 The Moses and 
 the Bound Captives'* are all that Michael Angelo 
 accomplished. For forty years the Moses remained 
 in his workshop. For forty years he cherished a 
 hope that his plan might still in part be executed, 
 complaining the while that it would have been better 
 for him to have made sulphur matches all his life 
 than to have taken up the desolating artist's trade. 
 ' Every day,' he cries, ' I am stoned as though I had 
 crucified Christ. My youth has been lost, bound hand 
 and foot to this tomb.' 3 It was decreed apparently 
 that Michael Angelo should exist for after-ages as 
 a fragment; and such might Pheidias among the 
 Greeks have been, if he had worked for ephemeral 
 Popes and bankrupt princes instead of Pericles. 
 Italy in the sixteenth century, dislocated, distracted, 
 and drained of her material resources, gave no op- 
 portunity to artists for the creation of monuments 
 colossal in their unity. 
 
 Michael Angelo spent eight months at this 
 
 1 In the Uffizzi at Florence. See Heath Wilson, plate vi. 
 
 * Boboli Gardens, Bargello, Louvre. These captives are un- 
 finished. The ' Rachel ' and ' Leah ' at S. Pietro in Vincoli were com- 
 mitted to pupils by Michael Angelo. 
 
 B ' Che mi fosse messo a fare zolfanelli. . . . Son ogni di lapidato, 
 come se havessi crucifisso Cristo. . . . io mi truovo avere perduta 
 tutta la mia giovinezza legato a questa sepoltura.'
 
 FLIGHT FROM ROME. 401 
 
 period among the stone-quarries of Carrara, select- 
 ing marble for the Pope's tomb. 1 There his brain, 
 always teeming with gigantic conceptions, suggested 
 to him a new fancy. Could not the headland jut- 
 ting out beyond Sarzana into the Tyrrhene Sea 
 be carved by his workmen into a Pharos? To 
 transmute a mountain into a statue, holding a city 
 in either hand, had been the dream of a Greek 
 artist. Michael Angelo revived the bold thought; 
 but to execute it would have been almost beyond 
 his power. Meanwhile, in November, 1505, the 
 marble was shipped, and the quays of Rome were 
 soon crowded with blocks destined for the mauso- 
 leum. But when the sculptor arrived, he found 
 that enemies had been poisoning the Pope's mind 
 against him, and that Julius had abandoned the 
 scheme of the mausoleum. On six successive days 
 he was denied entrance to the Vatican, and the 
 last time with such rudeness that he determined 
 to quit Rome. 2 He hurried straightway to his 
 house, sold his effects, mounted, and rode without 
 further ceremony toward Florence, sending to the 
 Pope a written message bidding him to seek for 
 Michael Angelo elsewhere in future than in Rome. 
 It is related that Julius, anxious to recover what 
 had been so lightly lost, sent several couriers to 
 
 1 Gotti, p. 42. Grimm makes two visits to Carrara in 1 505 and 
 1506, vol. i. pp. 239,243. 
 
 * See his letter. Gotti, p. 44.
 
 402 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 bring him back. 1 Michael Angelo announced that 
 he intended to accept the Sultan's commission for 
 building a bridge at Pera, and refused to be per- 
 suaded to return to Rome. This was at Poggi- 
 bonsi. When he had reached Florence, Julius 
 addressed himself to Soderini, who, unwilling to 
 displease the Pope, induced Michael Angelo to 
 seek the pardon of the master he had so abruptly 
 quitted. By that time Julius had left the city for 
 the camp ; and when Michael Angelo finally ap- 
 peared before him, fortified with letters from the 
 Signory of Florence, it was at Bologna that they 
 met. ' You have waited thus long, it seems/ said 
 the Pope, well satisfied but surly, 'till we should 
 come ourselves to seek you.' The prelate who had 
 introduced the sculptor now began to make excuses 
 for him, whereupon Julius turned in a fury upon 
 the officious courtier, and had him beaten from 
 his presence. A few days after this encounter 
 Michael Angelo was ordered to cast a bronze 
 statue of Julius for the frontispiece of S. Petronio. 
 The sculptor objected that brass-foundry was not 
 his affair. ' Never mind,' said Julius ; ' get to 
 
 1 Our authorities for this episode in Michael Angelo's biography 
 are mainly Vasari and Condivi. Though there may be exaggeration 
 in the legend, it is certain that a correspondence took place between 
 the Pope and the Gonfalonier of Florence to bring about his return. 
 See Heath Wilson, pp. 79-87, and the letter to Giuliano di San Gallo 
 in Milanesi's 'Archivio Buonarroti,' p. 377. Michael Angelo appears 
 to have had some reason to fear assassination in Rome.
 
 STATUE OF JULIUS. 403 
 
 work, and we will cast your statue till it comes 
 out perfect.' 1 Michael Angelo did as he was bid, 
 and the statue was set up in 1508 above the great 
 door of the church. The Pope was seated, with 
 his right hand raised ; in the other were the keys. 
 When Julius asked him whether he was meant to 
 bless or curse the Bolognese with that uplifted hand, 
 Buonarroti found an answer worthy of a courtier : 
 ' Your Holiness is threatening this people, if it be 
 not wise.' Less than four years afterward Julius 
 lost his hold upon Bologna, the party of the Ben- 
 tivogli returned to power, and the statue was de- 
 stroyed. A bronze cannon, called the Giulia, was 
 made out of Michael Angelo's masterpiece by the 
 best gunsmith of his century, Alfonso, Duke of 
 Ferrara. 
 
 It seems that Michael Angelo's flight from 
 Rome in 1506 was due not only to his disappoint- 
 ment about the tomb, but also to his fear lest Julius 
 should give him uncongenial work to do. Bra- 
 mante, if we may believe the old story, had whis- 
 pered that it was ill-omened for a man to build 
 his own sepulchre, and that it would be well to 
 employ the sculptor's genius upon the ceiling of 
 the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, on his return to 
 Rome in 1508, this new task was allotted him. 
 
 1 See Michael Angelo's letters to Giovan Francesco Fattucci, and 
 his family. Gotti, pp. 55-65.
 
 404 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 In vain did Michael Angelo remind his master 
 of the months wasted in the quarries of Carrara ; 
 in vain he pointed to his designs for the monument, 
 and pleaded that he was not a painter by profes- 
 sion. 1 Julius had made up his mind that he should 
 paint the Sistine. Was not the cartoon at Flor- 
 ence a sufficient proof that he could do this if he 
 chose, and had he not learned the art of fresco in 
 the bottega of his master Ghirlandajo ? Whatever 
 his original reluctance may have been, it was speedily 
 overcome ; and the cartoons for the ceiling, projected 
 with the unity belonging to a single great concep- 
 tion, were ready by the summer of 1508* 
 
 ^ The difficulty of his new task aroused the artist's 
 energy. If we could accept the legend whereby 
 contemporaries expressed their admiration for this 
 
 1 See the sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoja : 
 
 La mia pittura morta 
 Difendi orma', Giovanni, e '1 mio onore, 
 Non sendo in loco bon, ne io pittore. 
 
 8 According to the first plan, Michael Angelo bargained with the 
 Pope for twelve Apostles in the lunettes, and another part to be 
 filled with ornament in the usual manner 'dodici Apostoli nelle 
 lunette, e'l resto un certo partimento ripieno d'adornamenti come si 
 usa.' Michael Angelo, after making designs for this commission, 
 told the Pope he thought the roof would look poor, because the 
 Apostles were poor folk ' perche furon poveri anche loro.' He then 
 began his cartoons for the vault as it now exists. See the letter to 
 Ser Giovan Francesco Fattucci, in the ' Archivio Buonarroti,' Milanesi, 
 pp. 426, 427. This seems to be the foundation for an old story of the 
 Pope's complaining that the Sistine roof looked poor without gild- 
 ing, and Michael Angelo's reply that the biblical personages depicted 
 there were but poor people.
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE SISTINE. 405 
 
 Titanic labor, we should have to believe the im- 
 possible that Michael Angelo ground his own 
 colors, prepared his own plaster, and completed 
 with his own hand the whole work, after having 
 first conquered the obstacles of scaffolding and 
 vault-painting by machines of his own invention, 1 
 and that only twenty months were devoted to the 
 execution of a series of paintings almost unequaled 
 in their delicacy, and surpassed by few single mas- 
 terpieces in extent. What may be called the 
 mythus of the Sistine Chapel has at last been 
 finally disproved, partly by the personal observa- 
 tions of Mr. Heath Wilson, and partly by the 
 publication of Michael Angelo's correspondence* 
 Though some uncertainty remains as to the exact 
 dates of the commencement and completion of the 
 vault, we now know that Michael Angelo continued 
 painting it at intervals during four successive years ; 
 and though we are not accurately informed about 
 his helpers, we no longer can doubt that able crafts- 
 men yielded him assistance. On May 10, 1508, 
 he signed a receipt for five hundred ducats advanced 
 
 1 Bramante, the Pope's architect, did in truth fail to construct the 
 proper scaffolding, whether through inability or jealousy. Michael 
 Angelo designed a superior system of his own, which became a model 
 for future architects in similar constructions. 
 
 8 See chapters vi. vii. and viii. of Mr. Charles Heath Wilson's ad- 
 mirable ' Life of Michel Angelo.' Aurelio Gotti's 'Vita di Michel 
 Agnolo' and Anton Springer's ' Michel Angelo in Rome' deserve to 
 be consulted on this passage in the painter's biography.
 
 406 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 by Julius for the necessary expenses of the under- 
 taking; and on the next day he paid ten ducats 
 to a mason for rough plastering and surface-finishing 
 applied to the vault. There is good reason to 
 believe that he began his painting during the 
 autumn of 1508. On November i, 1509, a certain 
 portion was uncovered to the public ; and before 
 the end of the year 1512 the whole was completed. 
 Thus, though the legend of Vasari and Condivi 
 has been stripped of the miraculous by careful 
 observation and keen-sighted criticism, enough re- 
 mains to justify the sense of wonder that expressed 
 itself in their exaggerated statements. No one 
 but Michael Angelo could have done what he did 
 in the Sistine Chapel. The conception was entirely 
 his own. The execution, except in subordinate 
 details and in matters pertaining to the mason's 
 craft, was also his. The rapidity with which he 
 labored was astounding. Mr. Heath Wilson infers 
 from the condition of the plaster and the joinings 
 observable in different parts that the figure of 
 Adam, highly finished as it is, was painted in three 
 days. Nor need we strip the romance from that 
 time-honored tale of the great master's solitude. 
 Lying on his back beneath the dreary vault, com- 
 muning with Dante, Savonarola, and the Hebrew 
 prophets in the intervals of labor, locking up the 
 chapel-doors in order to elude the jealous curiosity
 
 THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 407 
 
 of rivals, eating but little and scarcely sleeping, 
 he accomplished in sixteen months the first part 
 of his gigantic task. 1 From time to time Julius 
 climbed the scaffold and inspected the painter's 
 progress. Dreading lest death should come before 
 the work were finished, he kept crying, 'When 
 will you make an end ? ' ' When I can,' answered 
 the painter. 'You seem to want/ rejoined the 
 petulant old man, ' that I should have you thrown 
 down from the scaffold.' Then Michael Angelo's 
 brush stopped. The machinery was removed, and 
 the frescoes were uncovered in their incomplete- 
 ness to the eyes of Rome. 
 
 Entering the Capella Sistina, and raising our 
 eyes to sweep the roof, we have above us a long and 
 somewhat narrow oblong space, vaulted with round 
 arches, and covered from end to end, from side to 
 side, with a network of human forms. The whole 
 is colored like the dusky, tawny, bluish clouds of 
 thunder-storms. There is no luxury of decorative 
 art no gold, no paint-box of vermilion or emerald 
 green, has been lavished here. Somber and aerial, 
 like shapes condensed from vapor, or dreams be- 
 gotten by Ixion upon mists of eve or dawn, the 
 phantoms evoked by the sculptor throng that space. 
 
 1 The conditions under which Michael Angelo worked, without a 
 trained band of pupils, must have struck contemporaries, accustomed 
 to Raphael's crowds of assistants, with a wonder that justified Vasari's 
 emphatic language of exaggeration as to his single-handed labor.
 
 408 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Nine compositions, carrying down the sacred history 
 from the creation of light to the beginning of sin in 
 Noah's household, fill the central compartments of 
 the roof. Beneath these, seated on the spandrels, 
 are alternate prophets and sibyls, twelve in all, 
 attesting to the future deliverance and judgment of 
 the world by Christ. The intermediate spaces be- 
 tween these larger masses on the roof and in the 
 lunettes of the windows swarm with figures, some 
 naked and some draped women and children, boys 
 and young men, grouped in tranquil attitudes, or 
 adapting themselves with freedom to their station 
 on the curves and angles of the architecture. In 
 these subordinate creations Michael Angelo deigned 
 to drop the terrible style, in order that he might 
 show how sweet and full of charm his art could be. 
 The grace of coloring, realized in some of those 
 youthful and athletic forms, is such as no copy can 
 represent. Every posture of beauty and of strength, 
 simple or strained, that it is possible for men to 
 assume has been depicted here. Yet the whole is 
 governed by a strict sense of sobriety. The restless- 
 ness of Correggio, the violent attitudinizing of Tinto- 
 retto, belong alike to another and less noble spirit. 
 
 To speak adequately of these form-poems would 
 be quite impossible. Buonarroti seems to have 
 intended to prove by them that the human body 
 has a language inexhaustible in symbolism every
 
 POETRY OF PLASTIC FORM. 409 
 
 limb, every feature, and every attitude being a 
 word full of significance to those who comprehend, 
 just as music is a language whereof each note and 
 chord and phrase has correspondence with the 
 spiritual world. It may be presumptuous after this 
 fashion to interpret the design of him who called 
 into existence the heroic population of the Sistine. 
 Yet Michael Angelo has written lines which in some 
 measure justify the reading. This is how he closes 
 one of his finest sonnets to Vittoria Colonna : 
 
 Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere 
 More clearly than in human forms sublime ; 
 Which, since they image Him, compel my love. 
 
 Therefore to him a well-shaped hand, or throat, or 
 head, a neck superbly poised on an athletic chest, 
 the sway of the trunk above the hips, the starting of 
 the muscles on the flank, the tendons of the ankle, 
 the outline of the shoulder when the arm is raised, 
 the backward bending of the loins, the curves of a 
 woman's breast, the contours of a body careless in 
 repose or strained for action, were all words preg- 
 nant with pro foundest meaning, whereby fit utter- 
 ance might be given to the thoughts that raise man 
 near to God. But, it may be asked, what poems of 
 action as well as feeling are to be expressed in this 
 form-language? The answer is simple. Paint or 
 carve the body of a man, and, as you do it nobly, 
 you will give the measure of both highest thought
 
 416 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 and most impassioned deed. This is the key to 
 Michael Angelo's art. He cared but little for inani- 
 mate nature. The landscapes of Italy, so eloquent 
 in their sublimity and beauty, were apparently a 
 blank to him. His world was the world of ideas, 
 taking visible form, incarnating themselves in man. 
 One language the master had to serve him in all 
 need the language of plastic human form ; but it 
 was to him a tongue as rich in its variety of accent 
 and of intonation as Beethoven's harmonies. 
 
 In the Sistine Chapel, where plastic art is so 
 supreme, we are bound to ask the further question, 
 What was the difference between Michael Angelo 
 and a Greek ? The Parthenon with its processions 
 of youths and maidens, its gods and heroes, rejoic- 
 ing in their strength, and robed with raiment that 
 revealed their living form, made up a symphony of 
 meaning as full as this of Michael Angelo, and far 
 more radiant. The Greek sculptor embraced hu- 
 manity in his work no less comprehensively than the 
 Italian ; and what he had to say was said more plainly 
 in the speech they both could use. But between 
 Pheidias and Michael Angelo lay Christianity, the 
 travail of the world through twenty centuries. Clear 
 as morning, and calm in the unconsciousness of 
 beauty, are those heroes of the youth of Hellas. All 
 is grace, repose, strength shown but not asserted. 
 Michael Angelo's Sibyls and Prophets are old and
 
 GREEK AND MODERN ART. 411 
 
 wrinkled, bowed with thought, consumed by vigils, 
 startled from tranquillity by visions, overburdened 
 with the messages of God/ The loveliest among 
 them, the Delphic, lifts dilated eyes, as though to 
 follow dreams that fly upon the paths of trance. 
 Even the young men strain their splendid limbs, 
 and seem to shout or shriek, as if the life in them 
 contained some element of pain. ' He maketh his 
 angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire : ' this 
 verse rises to our lips when we seek to describe the 
 genii that crowd the cornice of the Sistine Chapel. 
 The human form in the work of Pheidias wore a 
 joyous and sedate serenity ; in that of Michael 
 Angelo it is turbid with a strange and awful sense 
 of inbreathed agitation. Through the figure-lan- 
 guage of the one was spoken the pagan creed, 
 bright, unperturbed, and superficial. The sculpture 
 of the Parthenon accomplished the transfiguration 
 of the natural man. In the other man awakes 
 to a new life of contest, disillusionment, hope, 
 dread, and heavenward striving. It was impos- 
 sible for the Greek and the Italian, bearing so 
 different a burden of prophecy, even though they 
 used the same speech, to tell the same tale ; and 
 this should be remembered by those critics who cast 
 exaggeration and contortion in the teeth of Michael 
 Angelo. Between the birth of the free spirit in 
 Greece and its second birth in I taly, there yawned a
 
 412 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 sepulchre wherein the old faiths of the world lay 
 buried and whence Christ had risen. 1 j 
 
 The star of Raphael, meanwhile, had arisen over 
 Rome. Between the two greatest painters of their 
 age the difference was striking. Michael Angelo 
 stood alone, his own master, fashioned in his own 
 school. A band of artists called themselves by 
 Raphael's name ;. and in his style we trace the in- 
 fluence of several predecessors. Michael Angelo 
 rarely received visits, frequented no society, formed 
 no pupils, and boasted of no friends at Court. 
 Raphael was followed to the Vatican by crowds of 
 students ; his levees were like those of a prince ; he 
 counted among his intimates the best scholars and 
 poets of the age ; his hand was pledged in marriage 
 to a cardinal's niece. It does not appear that they 
 engaged in petty rivalries, or that they came much 
 into personal contact with each other. While 
 Michael Angelo was so framed that he could learn 
 from no man, Raphael gladly learned of Michael 
 Angelo ; and after the uncovering of the Sistine 
 frescoes, his manner showed evident signs of altera- 
 
 1 In speaking of the Sistine I have treated Michael Angelo as a 
 sculptor, and it was a sculptor who designed those frescoes. Ne to 
 pittore is his own phrase. Compare an autotype of ' Adam ' in the Sis- 
 tine with one of ' Twilight ' in S. Lorenzo : it is clear that in the 
 former Michael Angelo painted what he would have been well pleased 
 to carve. A sculptor's genius was needed for the modeling of those 
 many figures ; it was, moreover, not a painter's part to deal thus dryly 
 with color.
 
 RAPHAEL AND LEO. 413 
 
 tion. Julius, who had given Michael Angelo the 
 Sistine, set Raphael to work upon the Stanze. For 
 Julius were painted the Miracle of Bolsena and the 
 Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, scenes 
 containing courtly compliments for the old Pope. 
 No such compliments had been paid by Michael 
 Angelo. Like his great parallel in music, Beethoven, 
 he displayed an almost arrogant contempt for the 
 conventionalities whereby an artist wins the favor 
 of his patrons and the world. 
 
 After the death of Julius, Leo X., in character 
 the reverse of his fiery predecessor, and by tem- 
 perament unsympathetic to the austere Michael 
 Angelo, found nothing better for the sculptor's 
 genius than to set him at work upon the fagade^ 
 of S. Lorenzo at Florence. The better part of 
 the years between 1516 and 1520 was spent in 
 quarrying marble at Carrara, Pietra Santa, and 
 Seravezza, This is the most arid and unfruitful 
 period of Michael Angelo's long life, a period of 
 delays and thwarted schemes and servile labors. 
 What makes the sense of disappointment greater is 
 that the fagade of S. Lorenzo was not even finished. 1 
 We hurry over this wilderness of wasted months, 
 and arrive at another epoch of artistic production. 
 
 Already in 1520 the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici 
 had conceived the notion of building a sacristy in S, 
 
 1 The Laurentian Library, however, was built in 1524.
 
 414 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Lorenzo to receive the monuments of Cosimo, the 
 founder of the house, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Giu- 
 liano Duke of Nemours, Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, 
 Leo X., and himself. 1 To Michael Angelo was 
 committed the design, and in 1521 he began to 
 apply himself to the work. Nine years had now 
 elapsed since the roof of the Sistine Chapel had been 
 finished, and during this time Michael Angelo had 
 produced little except the Christ of S. Maria sopra 
 Minerva. This new undertaking occupied him at 
 intervals between 1521 and 1534, a space of time 
 decisive for the fortunes of the Medici in Florence. 
 Leo died, and Giulio after a few years succeeded him 
 as Clement VII. The bastards of the house, Ippo- 
 ,lito and Alessandro, were expelled from Florence 
 in 1527. Rome was sacked by the Imperial troops; 
 then Michael Angelo quitted the statues and helped 
 to defend his native city against the Prince of 
 Orange. After the failure of the Republicans, he 
 was recalled to his labors by command of Clement. 
 Sullenly and sadly he quarried marbles for the 
 sacristy. Sadly and sullenly he used his chisel year 
 by year, making the very stones cry that shame and 
 ruin were the doom of his country. At last in 1534 
 Clement died. Then Michael Angelo flung down 
 
 See Gotti, pp. 150, 155, 158, 159, for the correspondence which 
 passed upon the subject, and the various alterations in the plan. As 
 in the case of all Michael Angelo's works, except the Sistine, only a 
 small portion of the original project was executed.
 
 SACRISTY OF S. LORENZO. 415 
 
 his mallet. The monuments remained unfinished, 
 and the sculptor set foot in Florence no more. 1 
 
 The sacristy of S. Lorenzo was built by Michael 
 Angelo and paneled with marbles to receive the 
 sculpture he meant to place there. 2 Thus the co- 
 lossal statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo were studied 
 with a view to their light and shadow as much as to 
 their form ; and this is a fact to be remembered by 
 those who visit the chapel where Buonarroti labored 
 both as architect and sculptor. Of the two Medici, 
 it is not fanciful to say that the Duke of Urbino is 
 the most immovable of spectral shapes eternalized 
 in marble ; while the Duke of Nemours, more grace- 
 ful and elegant, seems intended to present a contrast 
 to this terrible thought-burdened form. 3 The alle- 
 gorical figures, stretched on segments of ellipses be- 
 neath the pedestals of the two dukes, indicate phases 
 of darkness and of light, of death and life. They are 
 
 1 Cosimo de' Medici found it impossible to induce him to return to 
 Florence. See B. Cellini's Life, p. 436, for his way of receiving the 
 Duke's overtures. 
 
 3 See above, p. 87. 
 
 s Vasari names the gloomy statue called by the Italians // Pense- 
 roso, ' Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino ;' the sprightly one, ' Giuliano, Duke of 
 Nemours ; ' and this contemporary tradition has been recently con- 
 firmed by an inspection of the Penseroso's tomb (see a letter to the 
 Academy, March 13, 1875, by Mr. Charles Heath Wilson). Grimm, 
 in his ' Life of Michael Angelo,' gave plausible aesthetic reasons why we 
 should reverse the nomenclature ; but the discovery of two bodies be- 
 neath, the Penseroso, almost certainly those of Lorenzo and his sup- 
 posed son Alessandro, justifies Vasari. Neither of these statues can be 
 accepted as portraits.
 
 416 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 two women and two men ; tradition names them 
 Night and Day, Twilight and Dawning. Thus in 
 the statues themselves and in their attendant genii 
 we have a series of abstractions, symbolizing the 
 sleep and waking of existence, action and thought, 
 the gloom of death, the luster of life, and the inter- 
 mediate states of sadness and of hope that form the 
 borderland of both. Life is a dream between two 
 slumbers ; sleep is death's twin-brother ; night is the 
 shadow of death ; death is the gate of life such is 
 the mysterious mythology wrought by the sculptor 
 of the modern world in marble. All these figures, 
 by the intensity of their expression, the vagueness of 
 their symbolism, force us to think and question. 
 What, for example, occupies Lorenzo's brain ? Bend- 
 ing forward, leaning his chin upon his wrist, placing 
 the other hand upon his knee, on what does he for- 
 ever ponder ? The sight, as Rogers said well, ' fas- 
 cinates and is intolerable.' Michael Angelo has shot 
 the beaver cf the helmet forward on his forehead, 
 and bowed his head, so as to clothe the face in dark- 
 ness. But behind the gloom there is no skull, as 
 Rogers fancied. The whole frame of the powerful 
 man is instinct with some imperious thought. Has 
 he outlived his life and fallen upon everlasting con- 
 templation ? Is he brooding, injured and indignant, 
 over his own doom and the extinction of his race ? 
 Is he condemned to witness in immortal immobility
 
 MEANING OF THE ALLEGORIES. 417 
 
 the woes of Italy he helped to cause ? Or has the 
 sculptor symbolized in him the burden of that per- 
 sonality we carry with us in this life and bear for- 
 ever when we wake into another world ? Beneath 
 this incarnation of oppressive thought there lie, full- 
 length and naked, the figures of Dawn and Twilight, 
 Morn and Evening. So at least they are commonly 
 called : and these names are not inappropriate ; for 
 the breaking of the day and the approach of night 
 are metaphors for many transient conditions of the 
 soul. It is only as allegories in a large sense, com- 
 prehending both the physical and intellectual order, 
 and capable of various interpretation, that any of 
 these statues can be understood. Even the Dukes 
 do not pretend to be portraits : and hence in part 
 perhaps the uncertainty that has gathered round 
 them. Very tranquil and noble is Twilight : a giant 
 in repose, he meditates, leaning upon his elbow, 
 looking down. But Dawn starts from her couch, 
 as though some painful summons had reached her 
 sunk in dreamless sleep, and called her forth to 
 suffer. Her waking to consciousness is like that of 
 one who has been drowned, and who finds the return 
 to life agony. Before her eyes, seen even through 
 the mists of slumber, are the ruin and the shame of 
 Italy. Opposite lies Night, so sorrowful, so utterly 
 absorbed in darkness and the shade of death, that to 
 shake off that everlasting lethargy seems impossible.
 
 41 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Yet she is not dead. If we raise our voices, she too 
 will stretch her limbs and, like her sister, shudder 
 into sensibility with sighs. Only we must not wake 
 her ; for he who fashioned her has told us that her 
 sleep of stone is great good fortune. Both of these 
 women are large and brawny, unlike the Fates of 
 Pheidias in their muscular maturity. The burden of 
 Michael Angelo's thought was too tremendous to be 
 borne by virginal or graceful beings. He had to 
 make women no less capable of suffering, no less 
 world-wearied, than his country. 
 
 Standing before these statues, we do not cry, 
 How beautiful ! We murmur, How terrible, how 
 grand ! Yet, after long gazing, we find them gifted 
 with beauty beyond grace. In each of them there is 
 a palpitating thought, torn from the artist's soul and 
 crystallized in marble. It has been said that archi- 
 tecture is petrified music. In the sacristy of S. 
 Lorenzo we feel impelled to remember phrases of 
 Beethoven. Each of these statues becomes for us 
 a passion, fit for musical expression, but turned like 
 Niobe to stone. They have the intellectual vague- 
 ness, the emotional certainty, that belong to the 
 motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left 
 without a key, sculpture has passed beyond her old 
 domain of placid concrete form. The anguish of in- 
 tolerable emotion, the quickening of the consciousness 
 to a sense of suffering, the acceptance of the inevita
 
 UNFINISHED STATUES. 419 
 
 ble, the strife of the soul with destiny, the burden 
 and the passion of mankind that is what they con- 
 tain in their cold chisel-tortured marble. It is open 
 to critics of the school of Lessing to object that here 
 is the suicide of sculpture. It is easy to remark that 
 those strained postures and writhen limbs may have 
 perverted the taste of lesser craftsmen. Yet if 
 Michael Angelo was called to carve Medicean 
 statues after the sack of Rome and the fall of Flor- 
 ence if he was obliged in sober sadness to make 
 sculpture a fit language for his sorrow-laden heart 
 how could he have wrought more truthfully than 
 thus? To imitate him without sharing his emo- 
 tions or comprehending his thoughts, as the soulless 
 artists of the decadence attempted, was without all 
 doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, 
 not without reason, that in the evil days upon which 
 he had fallen, the fair antique Heiterkeit and Allge- 
 meinheit were beyond his reach. 
 
 Michael Angelo left the tombs of the Medici 
 unfinished; nor, in spite of Duke Cosimo's earnest 
 entreaties, would he afterward return to Florence 
 to complete them. Lorenzo's features are but rough- 
 hewn; so is the face of Night. Day seems strug- 
 gling into shape beneath his mask of rock, and 
 Twilight shows everywhere the tooth-dint of the 
 chisel. To leave unfinished was the fate of Michael 
 Angelo partly too, perhaps, his preference ; for he
 
 420 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 was easily deterred from work. Many of his mar- 
 bles are only just begun. The two medallion Ma- 
 donnas, the Madonna and Child in S. Lorenzo, the 
 Head of Brutus, the Bound Captives, and the Pieta 
 in the Duomo of Florence, are instances of master- 
 pieces in the rough. He loved to fancy that the 
 form dwelt within the stone, and that the chisel dis- 
 encumbered it of superfluity. Therefore, to his eye, 
 foreseeing what the shape would be when the rude 
 envelope was chipped away, the marble mask may 
 have taken the appearance of a veil or mantle. He 
 may have found some fascination in the incomplete- 
 ness that argued want of will but not of art ; and a 
 rough-hewn Madonna may have been to him what 
 a Dryad still inclosed within a gnarled oak was to a 
 Greek poet's fancy. We are not, however, justified 
 in therefore assuming, as a recent critic has sug- 
 gested, that Michael Angelo sought to realize a cer- 
 tain preconceived effect by want of finish. There is 
 enough in the distracted circumstances of his life 
 and in his temper, at once passionate and downcast, 
 to account for fragmentary and imperfect perform- 
 ance; nor must it be forgotten that the manual 
 labor of the sculptor in the sixteenth century was 
 by no means so light as it is now. A decisive argu- 
 ment against this theory is that Buonarroti's three 
 most celebrated statues the Pieta in S. Peter's, the 
 Moses, and the Dawn me executed with the highest
 
 MICHAEL ANGELAS ISOLATION. 421 
 
 polish it is possible for stone to take. 1 That he 
 always aimed at this high finish, but often fell below 
 it through discontent and ennui and the importunity 
 of patrons, we have the best reason to believe. 
 
 Michael Angelo had now reached his fifty-ninth 
 year. Lionardo and Raphael had already passed 
 away, and were remembered as the giants of a by- 
 gone age of gold. Correggio was in his last year. 
 Andrea del Sarto was dead. Nowhere except at 
 Venice did Italian art still flourish ; and the mundane 
 style of Titian was not to the sculptor's taste. He 
 had overlived the greatness of his country, and saw 
 Italy in ruins. Yet he was destined to survive 
 another thirty years, another lifetime of Masaccio 
 or Raphael, and to witness still worse days. When 
 we call Michael Angelo the interpreter of the bur- 
 den and the pain of the Renaissance, we must re- 
 member this long, weary old age, during which in 
 solitude and silence he watched the extinction of 
 Florence, the institution of the Inquisition, and the 
 abasement of the Italian spirit beneath the tyranny 
 of Spain. His sonnets, written chiefly in this latter 
 
 1 The ' Bacchus ' of the Bargello, the ' David/ the ' Christ ' of the 
 Minerva, the ' Duke of Nemours,' and the almost finished ' Night ' 
 might also be mentioned. His chalk drawings of the ' Bersaglieri,' the 
 Infant Bacchanals,' the ' Fall of Phaethon,' and the ' Punishment of 
 Tityos,' now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, prove that even in 
 old age Michael Angelo carried delicacy of execution as a draughts- 
 man to a point not surpassed even by Lionardo. Few frescoes, again, 
 were ever finished with more conscientious elaboration than those of 
 the Sistine vault.
 
 422 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 period of life, turn often on the thought of death. 
 His love of art yields to religious hope and fear, 
 and he bemoans a youth and manhood spent in 
 vanity. Once when he injured his leg by a fall 
 from the scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel, he re- 
 fused assistance, shut himself up at home, and lay 
 waiting for deliverance in death. His life was only 
 saved by the forcible interference of friends. 
 
 In 1534, a new Eurystheus arose for our Her- 
 cules. The Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, a fox by 
 nature and infamous through his indulgence for a 
 vicious bastard, was made Pope under the name of 
 Paul III. 1 Michael Angelo had shed luster on the 
 reigns of three Popes, his predecessors. For thirty 
 years the Farnese had watched him with greedy 
 eyes. After Julius, Leo, and Clement, the time 
 was now come for the heroic craftsman to serve 
 Paul. The Pope found him at work in his bottega 
 on the tomb of Julius ; for the ' tragedy of the mau- 
 soleum* still dragged on. The statue of Moses was 
 finished. ' That,' said Paul, ' is enough for one 
 Pope. Give me your contract with the Duke of 
 Urbino ; I will tear it. Have I waited all these 
 years ; and now that I am Pope at last, shall I not 
 have you for myself? I want you in the Sistine 
 Chapel.' Accordingly Michael Angelo, who had 
 
 1 See Varchi, at the end of the ' Storia Fiorentina/ for episodes in 
 the life of Pier Luigi Farnese, and Cellini for a popular estimate of the 
 Cardinal, his father.
 
 THE LAST JUDGMENT. 423 
 
 already made cartoons for the Last Judgment in 
 the life of Clement, once more laid aside the chisel 
 and took up the brush. For eight years, between 
 1534 and 1542, he labored at the fresco above the 
 high altar of the chapel, devoting his terrible genius 
 to a subject worthy of the times in which he lived. 
 Since he had first listened while a youth to the 
 prophecies of Savonarola, the woes announced in 
 that apocalypse had all come true. Italy had been 
 scourged, Rome sacked, the Church chastised. And 
 yet the world had not grown wiser ; vice was on the 
 increase, virtue grew more rare. 1 It was impossible, 
 after the experience of the immediate past and 
 within view of the present and the future, to con- 
 ceive of God as other than an angry judge, vin- 
 dictive and implacable. 
 
 The Last Judgment has long been the most 
 celebrated of Michael Angelo's paintings ; partly no 
 doubt because it was executed in the plenitude of his 
 fame, with the eyes of all Italy upon him ; partly 
 
 1 This extract from Cesare Balbo's ' Pensieri sulla Storia d'ltalia,' 
 Le Monnier, 1858, p. 57, may help to explain the situation : ' E se 
 lasciando gli uomini e i nomi grandi de' governanti, noi venissimo a 
 quella storia, troppo sovente negletta, dei piccoli, dei phi, dei go- 
 vernati che sono in somma scopo d'ogni sorta di governo , se, 
 coll' aiuto delle tante memorie rimaste di quell' secolo, noi ci adden- 
 trassimo a conoscere la condizione comune e privata degli Italiani di 
 quell' eta, noi troveremmo trasmesse dai governanti a' governati, e ri- 
 tornate da questi a quelli, tali universali scostumatezze ed immorality 
 tali fiacchezze e perfidie, tali mollezze e libidini, tali ozi e tali vizi, tali 
 avvilimenti insomma e corruzioni, che sembrano appena credibili in 
 una eta d' incivilmento cristiano.'
 
 424 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 because its size arouses vulgar wonder, and its theme 
 strikes terror into all who gaze on it. Yet it is neither 
 so strong nor so beautiful as the vault-paintings of 
 the Sistine. The freshness of the genius that created 
 Eve and Adam, unrivaled in their bloom of primal 
 youth, has passed away. Austerity and gloom have 
 taken possession of the painter. His style has hard- 
 ened into mannerism, and the display of barren 
 science in difficult posturing and strained anatomy 
 has become willful. Still, whether we regard this 
 fresco as closing the long series of Last Judgments 
 to be studied on Italian church-walls from Giotto 
 downward ; or whether we confine our attention, as 
 contemporaries seem to have done, to the skill of its 
 foreshortenings and groupings; 1 or whether we ana- 
 lyze the dramatic energy wherewith tremendous 
 passions are expressed, its triumph is in either case 
 decided. The whole wall swarms with ascending and 
 descending, poised and hovering, shapes men and 
 women rising from the grave before the Judge, taking 
 their station among the saved, or sinking with un- 
 utterable anguish to the place of doom a multitude 
 
 1 Vasari's description moves our laughter with its jargon about 'at- 
 titudini bellissime e scorti molto mirabili,' when the man, in spite of 
 his honest and enthusiastic admiration, is so little capable of penetra- 
 ting the painter's thought. Mr. Ruskin leaves the same impression 
 as Vasari: he too makes much talk about attitudes and muscles in 
 Michael Angelo, and seems to be on Vasari's level as to compre- 
 hending him. The difference is that Vasari praises, Ruskin blames; 
 both miss the mark.
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 425 
 
 that no man can number, surging to and fro in dim 
 tempestuous air. In the center at the top, Christ is 
 rising from His throne with the gesture of an angry 
 Hercules, hurling ruin on the guilty. He is such as 
 the sins of Italy have made Him. Squadrons of an- 
 gels, bearing the emblems of his passion, whirl around 
 Him like gray thunder-clouds, and all the saints lean 
 forward from their vantage-ground to curse and 
 threaten. At the very bottom bestial features take 
 the place of human lineaments, and the terror of 
 judgment has become the torment of damnation. 
 Such is the general scope of this picture. Of all its 
 merits, none is greater than the delineation of un- 
 certainty and gradual awakening to life. The 
 middle region between vigilance and slumber, 
 reality and dream, Michael Angelo ruled as his 
 own realm ; and a painting of the Last Judgment 
 enabled him to deal with this yueror^/izos GHOTOS this 
 darkness in the interval of crossing spears under 
 its most solemn aspect. 
 
 When the fresco was uncovered, there arose a 
 general murmur of disapprobation that the figures 
 were all nude. As society became more vicious, it 
 grew nice. Messer Biagio, the Pope's master of 
 the ceremonies, remarked that such things were 
 more fit for stews and taverns than a chapel. The 
 angry painter placed his portrait in Hell with a mark 
 of infamy that cast too lurid light upon this prudish
 
 426 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 speech. When Biagio complained, Paul wittily an- 
 swered that, had it been Purgatory, he might have 
 helped him, but in Hell is no redemption. Even 
 the foul-mouthed and foul-hearted Aretino wrote 
 from Venice to the same effect a letter astounding 
 for its impudence. 1 Michael Angelo made no defense. 
 Perhaps he reflected that the souls of the Pope him- 
 self and Messer Biagio and Messer Pietro Aretino 
 would go forth one day naked to appear before the 
 Judge, with the deformities of sin upon them, as in 
 Plato's Gorgias. He refused, however, to give clothes 
 to his men and women. Daniel da Volterra, who 
 was afterward employed to do this, got the name of 
 breeches-maker. 
 
 We are hardly able to appreciate the Last 
 Judgment ; it has been so smirched and blackened 
 by the smoke and dust of centuries. And this is 
 true of the whole Sistine Chapel. 2 Yet it is here 
 that the genius of Michael Angelo in all its terrible- 
 
 1 ' E possibile che voi, che per essere divino non degnate il con- 
 sortio degli huomini, haviate cio fatto nel maggior tempio di Dio ? 
 
 In un bagno delitioso, non in un choro supremo si conve- 
 
 niva il far vostro.' Those who are curious may consult Aretino's 
 correspondence with Michael Angelo in his published letters (Parigi, 
 1609), lib. i. p. 153 ; lib. ii. p. 9; lib. iii. pp. 45, 122 ; lib. iv. p. 37. 
 
 1 Braun's autotypes of the vault frescoes show what ravage the 
 lapse of time has wrought in them, by the cracking of the plaster, the 
 peeling off in places of the upper surface, and the deposit of dirt and 
 cobwebs. Mr. Heath Wilson, after careful examination, pronounces 
 that not only time but the willful hand of man, repainting and washing 
 the delicate tint-coats with corrosive acids, has contributed to their 
 ruin.
 
 BEYLE'S CRITIQUE. 427 
 
 ness must still be studied. In order to characterize 
 the impression produced by even the less awful of 
 these frescoes on a sympathetic student, I lay my 
 pen aside and beg the reader to weigh what Henri 
 Beyle, the versatile and brilliant critic, penciled in 
 the gallery of the Sistine Chapel on January 13, 
 1807 : 1 ' Greek sculpture was unwilling to reproduce 
 the terrible in any shape ; the Greeks had enough 
 real troubles of their own. Therefore, in the realm 
 of art, nothing can be compared with the figure of 
 the Eternal drawing forth the first man from non- 
 entity. The pose, the drawing, the drapery, all is 
 striking ; the soul is agitated by sensations that are 
 not usually communicated through the eyes. When, 
 in our disastrous retreat from Russia, it chanced 
 that we were suddenly awakened in the middle of 
 the dark night by an obstinate cannonading, which 
 at each moment seemed to gain in nearness, then all 
 the forces of a man's nature gathered close around 
 his heart ; he felt himself in the presence of fate, and, 
 having no attention left for things of vulgar interest, 
 he made himself ready to dispute his life with des- 
 tiny. The sight of Michael Angelo's pictures has 
 brought back to my consciousness that almost for- 
 gotten sensation. Great souls enjoy their own 
 greatness : the rest of the world is seized with 
 fear and goes mad.' 
 
 1 ' Histoire de la Peinture en Italic,' p. 332.
 
 428 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 After the painting of the Last Judgment, one 
 more great labor was reserved for Michael An- 
 gelo. 1 By a brief of September, 1535, Paul III. 
 had made him the chief architect as well as sculptor 
 and painter of the Holy See. He was now called 
 upon to superintend the building of S. Peter's, and 
 to this task, undertaken for the repose of his soul 
 without emolument, he devoted the last years of his 
 life. The dome of S. Peter's, as seen from Tivoli 
 or the Alban hills, like a cloud upon the Campagna, 
 is Buonarroti's ; but he has no share in the facade that 
 screens it from the piazza. It lies beyond the scope 
 of this chapter to relate once more the history of the 
 vicissitudes through which S. Peter's went between 
 the days of Alberti and Bernini. 2 I can but refer 
 to Michael Angelo's letter addressed to Barto- 
 lommeo Ammanati, valuable both as setting forth 
 his views about the structure, and as rendering the 
 fullest and most glorious meed of praise to his old 
 enemy Bramante. 3 All ancient jealousies, even had 
 they ever stirred the heart of Michael Angelo, had 
 long been set at rest by time and death The one 
 wish of his soul was to set a worthy diadem upon 
 
 1 That is not counting the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina in 
 the Vatican, painted about 1 544, which are now in a far worse state 
 even than the ' Last Judgment,' and which can never have done more 
 than show his style in decadence. 
 
 * See above, pp. 89-93. 
 
 3 See Gotti, p. 307, or ' Archivio Buonarroti,' p. 535.
 
 S. PETERS AND OLD AGE. 429 
 
 the mother-church of Christianity, repairing by the 
 majesty of art what Rome had suffered at the 
 hands of Germany and Spain, and inaugurating by 
 this visible sigh of sovereignty the new age of 
 Catholicity renascent and triumphant. 
 
 To the last period of Buonarroti's life (a space 
 of twenty-two years between 1542 and 1564) we 
 owe some of his most beautiful drawings sketches 
 for pictures of the Crucifixion made for Vittoria 
 Colonna, and a few mythological designs, like the 
 Rape of Ganymede, composed for Tommaso Cava- 
 lieri. His thoughts meanwhile were turned more 
 and more, as time advanced, to piety; and many 
 of his sonnets breathe an almost ascetic spirit of 
 religion. 1 We see in them the old man regretting 
 the years he had spent on art, deploring his enthusi- 
 asm for earthly beauty, and seeking comfort in the 
 cross alone. 
 
 Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest 
 My soul, that turns to His great love on high 
 Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread. 
 
 It is pleasant to know that these last years were 
 also the happiest and calmest. Though he had 
 lost his faithful friend and servant Urbino ; though 
 his father had died, an old man, and his brothers 
 had passed away before him one by one, his nephew 
 
 1 I have reserved my translation of the sonnets that cast most 
 light upon Michael Angelo's thought and feeling for an Appendix, 
 No. II.
 
 430 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 Lionardo had married in Florence, and begotten 
 a son called Michael Angelo. Thus he had the 
 satisfaction of hoping that his name would endure 
 and flourish, as indeed it has done almost to this 
 very day in Florence. What consolation this thought 
 must have brought him is clear to those who have 
 studied his correspondence and observed the tender 
 care and continual anxiety he had for his kins- 
 men. 1 Wealth now belonged to him : but he had 
 never cared for money; and he continued to live 
 like a poor man, dressing soberly and eating sparely, 
 often taking but one meal in the day, and that of 
 bread and wine. 2 He slept little, and rose by night 
 to work upon his statues, wearing a cap with a 
 candle stuck in front of it, that he might see where 
 to drive the chisel home. During his whole life 
 
 1 The majority of Michael Angelo's letters are written on do- 
 mestic matters about the affairs of his brothers and his father. 
 When they vexed him, he would break out into expressions like 
 the following : ' lo son ito, da dodici anni in qua, tapinando per 
 tutta Italia ; sopportato ogni vergognia ; patito ogni stento ; lacerate 
 il corpo mio in ogni fatica ; messa la vita propria a mille pericoli, solo 
 per aiutar la casa mia.' They are generally full of good counsel and 
 sound love. How he loved his father may be seen in the terza rima 
 poem on his death in 1534. 
 
 2 Notice this expression in a letter to his father, written from Rome, 
 about 1512 : ' Bastivi avere del pane, e vivete ben con Cristo e povera- 
 mente ; come fo io qua, che vivo meschinamente.' It does not seem 
 that he ever altered this poor way of living. For his hiring at Bologna, 
 in 1 507, a single room with one bed in it, for himself and his three 
 workmen, see Gotti, p. 58. His father in 1 500 rebuked him for the 
 meanness of his establishment ; ibid. p. 23. It appears that he was 
 always sending money home.
 
 PERSONAL QUALITIES. 431 
 
 he had been solitary, partly by preference, partly 
 by devotion to his art, and partly because he kept 
 men at a distance by his manner. 1 Not that Mi- 
 chael Angelo was sour or haughty ; but he spoke 
 his mind out very plainly, had no tolerance for 
 fools, and was apt to fly into passions. 9 Time had 
 now softened his temper and removed all causes 
 of discouragement. He had survived every rival, 
 and the world was convinced of his supremacy. 
 Princes courted him ; the Count of Canossa was 
 proud to claim him for a kinsman ; strangers, when 
 they visited Rome, were eager to behold in him its 
 greatest living wonder. 3 His old age was the serene 
 and splendid evening of a toilsome day. But better 
 
 1 ' Io sto qua in grande afanno, e con grandissima fatica di corpo, e 
 non 6 amici di nessuna sorte, e none voglio : e non 6 tanto tempo che 
 io possa mangiare el bisognio mio.' Letter to Gismondo, published by 
 Grimm. See, too, Sebastian del Piombo's letter to him of November 9, 
 1520: 'Ma fate paura a ognuno, insino a' papi.' Compare, too, the 
 letter of Sebastian, Oct. 15, 1512, in which Julius is reported to have 
 said, ' E terribile, come tu vedi, nonse pol praticar con lui.' Again, 
 Michael Angelo writes : ' Sto sempe solo, vo poco attorno e non parlo 
 a persona e massino di fiorentini.' Gotti, p. 255. 
 
 " When any thing went wrong with him, he became moody and ve- 
 hement : ' Non vi maravigliate che io vi abbi scritto alle volte cosi 
 stizosamente, che io 6 alle volte di gran passione, per molte cagioni che 
 avengono a chi e fuor di casa.' So he writes to his father in 1498. A 
 letter to Luigi del Riccio of 1 545 is signed ' Michelagnolo Buonarroti 
 non pittore, ne scultore, ne architettore, ma quel che voi volete, ma 
 none briaco, come vi dissi, in casa.' 
 
 8 See the letters of Cosimo de' Medici, Gotti, pp. 301-313, the 
 letter of Count Alessandro da Canossa, ibid. p. 4, and Pier Vettori's 
 letter to Borghini, about the visit of some German gentlemen, ibid, 
 p. 315-
 
 432 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 than all this, he now enjoyed both love and 
 friendship. 
 
 If Michael Angelo could ever have been hand- 
 some is more than doubtful. Early in his youth 
 the quarrelsome and vain Torrigiani broke his nose 
 with a blow of the fist, when they were drawing 
 from Masaccio's frescoes in the Carmine together. 1 
 Thenceforth the artist's soul looked forth from a 
 sad face, with small gray eyes, flat nostrils, and 
 rugged weight of jutting brows. Good care was 
 thus taken that light love shoald not trifle with 
 the man who was destined to be the prophet of 
 his age in art. Like Beethoven, he united a loving 
 nature, sensitive to beauty and desirous of affection, 
 with a rude exterior. He seemed incapable of 
 attaching himself to any merely mortal object, and 
 wedded the ideal. In that century of intrigue and 
 amour, we hear of nothing to imply that Michael 
 Angelo was a lover till he reached the age of sixty. 
 How he may have loved in the earlier periods of 
 his life, whereof no record now remains, can only 
 be guessed from the tenderness and passion out- 
 poured in the poems of his latter years. That 
 his morality was pure and his converse without 
 stain is emphatically witnessed by both Vasari and 
 Condivi. 2 But that his emotion was intense, and 
 
 ' See the story as told by Torrigiani himself in Cellini, ed. Le Mon- 
 nier, p. 23. 
 
 * After saying that he talked of love like Plato, Condivi continues :
 
 VI T TORI A COLONNA. 433 
 
 that to beauty in all its human forms he was 
 throughout his life a slave, we have his own son- 
 nets to prove. 
 
 In the year 1534 he first became acquainted 
 with the noble lady Vittoria, daughter of Fabrizio 
 Colonna, and widow of the Marquis of Pescara. 
 She was then aged forty-four, and had nine years 
 survived the loss of a husband she never ceased 
 to idolize. 1 Living in retirement in Rome, she em- 
 ployed her leisure with philosophy and poetry. 
 Artists and men of letters were admitted to her 
 society. Among the subjects she had most at heart 
 was the reform of the Church and the restoration 
 of religion to its evangelical purity. Between her 
 and Michael Angelo a tender affection sprang up, 
 based upon the sympathy of ardent and high-seeking 
 natures. If love be the right name for this exalted 
 and yet fervid attachment, Michael Angelo may 
 be said to have loved her with all the pent-up 
 forces of his heart. None of his works display a 
 predilection for girlish beauty, and it is probable 
 that her intellectual distinction and mature woman- 
 
 ' Non senti mai uscir di quella bocca se non parole onestissime, e che 
 avevan forza d'estinguere nella gioventu ogni incomposto e sfrenato 
 desiderio che in lei potesse cadere.' Compare Scipione Ammirato, 
 quoted by Guasti, Le Rime, p. xi. 
 
 1 Her intense affection for the Marquis of Pescara, to whom she 
 had been betrothed by her father at the age of five, is sufficiently 
 proved by those many sonnets and canzoni in which she speaks of him 
 as her Sun.
 
 434 RtfAtSSANCE IN ITAL V. 
 
 hood touched him even more than if she had been 
 younger. When they were together in Rome they 
 met frequently for conversation on the themes of 
 art and piety they both held dear. Of these dis- 
 courses a charming record has been preserved to 
 us by the painter Francis of Holland. 1 When they 
 were separated they exchanged poems and wrote 
 letters, some of which remain. On the death of 
 Vittoria, in 1547, the light of life seemed to be 
 extinguished for our sculptor. It is said that he 
 waited by her bedside, and kissed her hand when 
 she was dying. The sonnets he afterward composed 
 show that his soul followed her to heaven. 
 
 Another friend whom Michael Angelo found in 
 this last stage of life, and whom he loved with only 
 less warmth than Vittoria, was a young Roman 
 of perfect beauty and of winning manners. Tom- 
 maso Cavalieri must be mentioned next to the 
 Marchioness of Pescara as the being who bound 
 this greatest soul a captive. 2 Both Cavalieri and 
 Vittoria are said to have been painted by him, and 
 these are the only two portraits he is reported to 
 
 1 See Grimm, vol. ii. 
 
 8 See the Sonnets translated in my Appendix. See also the letters 
 to Cavalieri, quoted by Gotti, pp. 231, 232, 234. It is surely strained 
 criticism to conjecture, as Gotti has done, that these epistles were 
 meant for Vittoria, though written to Cavalieri. Taken together with 
 the sonnets and the letter of Bartolommeo Angiolini (Gotti, p. 233), 
 they seem to me to prove only Michael Angelo's warm love for this 
 young man.
 
 TOMAfASO CAVALIERL 435 
 
 have executed. /It may here be remarked that 
 nothing is more characteristic of his genius than 
 the determination to see through nature, to pass 
 beyond the actual to the abstract, anc( to use reality 
 only as a stepping-stone to the ideal, i This artistic 
 Platonism was the source both of his greatness and 
 his mannerism. As men choose to follow Blake 
 or Ruskin, they may praise or blame him ; yet 
 blame and praise pronounced on such a matter 
 with regard to such a man are equally impertinent 
 and insignificant. It is enough for the critic to 
 note with reverence that thus and thus the spirit 
 that was in him worked and moved. 
 
 When we read the sonnets addressed to Vittoria 
 Colonna and Cavalieri we find a something inex- 
 pressibly pathetic in this pure and fervent worship 
 of beauty, when the artist with a soul still young had 
 reached the limit of the years of man. Here and 
 there we trace in them an echo of his youth. The 
 Platonic dialogues he heard while yet a young man 
 at the suppers of Lorenzo reappear converted to the 
 very substance of his thought and style. At the 
 same time Savonarola resumes ascendency over his 
 mind ; and when he turns to Florence, it is of Dante 
 that he speaks. 
 
 At last the moment came when this strong soli- 
 tary spirit, much suffering and much loving, had to 
 render its account. It appears from a letter written
 
 436 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 to Lionardo Buonarroti on February 15, 1564, that 
 his old servant Antonio del Francese, the successor 
 of Urbino in his household, together with Tommaso 
 Cavalieri and Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, at- 
 tended him in his last illness. On the i8th of that 
 month, having bequeathed his soul to God, his body 
 to the earth, and his worldly goods to his kinsfolk, 
 praying them on their death-bed to think upon 
 Christ's passion, he breathed his last. His corpse 
 was transported to Florence, and buried in the 
 church of S. Croce with great pomp and honor by 
 the Duke, the city, and the Florentine Academy.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LIFE OF BENVENUTO CELLINL 
 
 His Fame His Autobiography Its Value for the Student of History, 
 Manners, and Character, in the Renaissance Birth, Parentage, and 
 Boyhood Flute-playing Apprenticeship to Marcone Wander- 
 jahr The Goldsmith's Trade at Florence Torrigiani and Eng- 
 land Cellini leaves Florence for Rome Quarrel with the Guas- 
 conti Homicidal Fury Cellini a Law to himself Three Periods 
 in his Manhood Life in Rome Diego at the Banquet Renais- 
 sance Feeling for Physical Beauty Sack of Rome Miracles in 
 Cellini's Life His Affections Murder of his Brother's Assassin 
 Sanctuary Pardon and Absolution Incantation in the Colosseum 
 First Visit to France Adventures on the Way Accused of Steal- 
 ing Crown Jewels in Rome Imprisonment in the Castle of S. 
 Angelo The Governor Cellini's Escape His Visions The Na- 
 ture of his Religion Second Visit to France The Wandering Court 
 Le Petit Nesle Cellini in the French Law Courts Scene at Fon- 
 tainebleau Return to Florence Cosimo de' Medici as a Patron 
 Intrigues of a petty Court Bandinelli The Duchess Statue of 
 Perseus End of Cellini's Life Cellini and Machiavelli. 
 
 FEW names in the history of Italian art are more 
 renowned than that of Benvenuto Cellini. This can 
 hardly be attributed to the value of his extant works ; 
 for though, while he lived, he was the greatest gold- 
 smith of his time, a skilled medalist, and an admi- 
 rable statuary, few of his many masterpieces now 
 survive. The plate and armor that bear his name 
 are only in some rare instances genuine ; and the
 
 43 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 bronze Perseus in the Loggia de* Lanzi at Florence 
 remains almost alone to show how high he ranked 
 among the later Tuscan sculptors. If, therefore, 
 Cellini had been judged merely by the authentic pro- 
 ductions of his art, he would not have acquired a 
 celebrity unique among his fellow-workers of the six- 
 teenth century. That fame he owes to the circum- 
 stances that he left behind him at his death a full and 
 graphic narrative of his stormy life. The vivid style 
 of this autobiography dictated by Cellini while en- 
 gaged in the labor of his craft, its animated picture 
 of a powerful character, the variety of its incidents, 
 and the amount of information it contains, place it 
 high both as a life-romance and also as a record of 
 contemporary history. After studying the labored 
 periods of Varchi, we turn to these memoirs, and 
 view the same events from the standpoint of an 
 artisan conveying his impressions with plebeian 
 raciness of phrase. The sack of Rome, the plague 
 and siege of Florence, the humiliation of Clement 
 VII., the pomp of Charles V. at Rome, the beha- 
 vior of the Florentine exiles at Ferrara, the inti- 
 macy between Alessandro de' Medici and his 
 murderer Lorenzino, the policy of Paul III., and 
 the methods pursued by Cosimo at Florence, are 
 briefly but significantly touched upon no longer by 
 the historian seeking causes and setting forth the 
 sequence of events, but by a shrewd observer in-
 
 HIS MIXED CHARACTER. 439 
 
 terested in depicting his own part in the great game 
 of life. Cellini haunted the private rooms of popes 
 and princes ; he knew the chief actors of his day, 
 just as the valet knows the hero ; and the pic- 
 turesque glimpses into their life we gain from him 
 add the charm of color and reality to history. 
 
 At the same time this book presents an admi- 
 rable picture of an artist's life at Rome, Paris, and 
 Florence. Cellini was essentially an Italian of the 
 Cinque-cento. His passions were the passions of 
 his countrymen ; his vices were the vices of his 
 time; his eccentricity and energy and vital force 
 were what the age idealized as virtu. Combining 
 rare artistic gifts with a most violent temper and a 
 most obstinate will, he paints himself at one time as 
 a conscientious craftsman, at another as a desperate 
 bravo. He obeys his instincts and indulges his ap- 
 petites with the irreflective simplicity of an animal. 
 In the pursuit of vengeance and the commission of 
 murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce 
 and fatal as a tiger. Yet his religious fervor is 
 sincere ; his impulses are generous ; and his heart 
 on the whole is good. His vanity is inordinate ; 
 and his unmistakable courage is impaired, to North- 
 ern apprehension, by swaggering bravado. 
 
 The mixture of these qualities in a personality so 
 natural and so clearly limned renders Cellini a most 
 precious subject for the student of Renaissance life
 
 440 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 and character. Even supposing him to have been 
 exceptionally passionate, he was made of the same 
 stuff as his contemporaries. We are justified in con- 
 cluding this not only from collateral evidence and 
 from what he tells us, but also from the meed of 
 honor he received. In Europe of the present day 
 he could hardly fail to be regarded as a ruffian, a 
 dangerous disturber of morality and order. In his 
 own age he was held in high esteem and buried by 
 his fellow-citizens with public ceremonies. A funeral 
 oration was pronounced over his grave ' in praise 
 both of his life and works, and also of his excellent 
 disposition of mind and body.' 1 He dictated the 
 memoirs that paint him as bloodthirsty, sensual, and 
 revengeful, in the leisure of his old age, and left 
 them with complacency to serve as witness of his 
 manly virtues to posterity. Even Vasari, whom he 
 hated, and who reciprocated his ill-will, records that 
 ' he always showed himself a man of great spirit and 
 veracity, bold, active, enterprising, and formidable 
 to his enemies ; a man, in short, who knew as well 
 how to speak to princes as to exert himself in his 
 art.' 
 
 Enough has been said to prove that Cellini was 
 not inferior to the average morality of the Renais- 
 sance, and that we are justified in accepting his life 
 
 1 ' In lode e onor della vita sua e opere d'esso, e buona disposizi- 
 one della anima e del corpo.' ' La Vita di Benvenuto Cellini,' Firenze, 
 Le Monnier, 1852. ' Documenti,' p. 578.
 
 BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 441 
 
 as a valuable historical document. 1 To give a 
 detailed account of a book pronounced by Horace 
 Walpole ' more amusing than any novel,' received 
 by Parini and Tiraboschi as the most delightful 
 masterpiece of Italian prose, translated into German 
 by Goethe, and placed upon his index of select 
 works by Auguste Comte, may seem superfluous. 
 Yet I can not afford to omit from my plan the most 
 singular and characteristic episode in the private 
 history of the Italian Renaissance. I need it for the 
 concrete illustration of much that has been said in 
 this and the preceding volumes of my work. 
 
 Cellini was born of respectable parents at Flor- 
 ence on the night of All Saints' Day in 1500, and 
 was called Benvenuto to record his father's joy at 
 having a son. 2 It was the wish of Giovanni Cellini's 
 heart that his son should be a musician. Benvenuto 
 in consequence practiced the flute for many years 
 attentively, though much against his will. At the 
 age of fifteen so great was his desire to learn the 
 arts of design that his father placed him under the 
 
 1 I do not by this mean to commit myself to the opinion that Cel- 
 lini is accurate in details or truthful. On the contrary, it is impos- 
 sible to read his life without feeling that his vanity and self-esteem 
 led him to exaggeration and misstatement. The value of the biog- 
 raphy consists in its picturesqueness, its brilliant and faithful color- 
 ing, and its unconscious self-revelation of an energetic character. 
 
 2 With regard to his pedigree Cellini tells a ridiculous story about 
 a certain Fiorino da Cellino, one of Julius Caesar's captains, who gave 
 his name to Florence. For the arms of the Cellini family, see lib. i. 
 cap. 50,
 
 442 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 care of the goldsmith Marcone. At the same time 
 he tells us in his memoirs : ' I continued to play 
 sometimes through complaisance to my father either 
 upon the flute or the horn ; and I constantly drew 
 tears and deep sighs from him every time he heard 
 me.' While engaged in the workshop of Marcone, 
 Benvenuto came to blows with some young men 
 who had attacked his brother, and was obliged to 
 leave Florence for a time. At this period he visited 
 Siena, Bologna, and Pisa, gaining his livelihood by 
 working in the shops of goldsmiths, and steadily 
 advancing in his art. 
 
 It must not be thought that this education was 
 a mean one for so great an artist. Painting and 
 sculpture in Italy were regarded as trades, and 
 the artist had his bottega just as much as the cobbler 
 or the blacksmith. 1 I have already had occasion 
 to point out that an apprenticeship to goldsmith's 
 work was considered at Florence an almost in- 
 dispensable commencement of advanced art-study. 2 
 
 1 To enlarge upon this point is hardly necessary ; or it would 
 be easy to prove from documentary evidence that artists so emi- 
 nent as Simone Martini, Gentile da Fabriano, Perugino, and Ghirlan- 
 dajo kept open shops, where customers could buy the products of 
 their craft from a highly-finished altar-piece down to a painted 
 buckler or a sign to hang above the street-door. The commercial 
 status of fine art in Italy was highly beneficial to its advancement, 
 inasmuch as it implied a thorough technical apprenticeship for 
 learners. The defective side of the system was apparent in great 
 workshops like that of Raphael, who undertook painting-commis- 
 sions quite beyond his powers of conscientious execution, 
 
 * See above, p. 124.
 
 ORFEVRIA. 443 
 
 Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Orcagna, Verocchio, Ghi- 
 berti, Pollajuolo, Ghirlandajo, Luca della Robbia, all 
 underwent this training before they applied them- 
 selves to architecture, painting, and sculpture. As 
 the goldsmith's craft was understood in Florence, it 
 exacted the most exquisite nicety in performance as 
 well as design. It forced the student to familiarize 
 himself with the materials, instruments, and technical 
 processes of art ; so that, later on in life, he was not 
 tempted to leave the execution of his work to jour- 
 neymen and hirelings. 1 No labor seemed too mi- 
 nute, no metal was too mean, for the exercise of the 
 master-workman's skill ; nor did he run the risk of 
 becoming one of those half-amateurs in whom ac- 
 complishment falls short of first conception. Art 
 ennobled for him all that he was called to do. 
 Whether cardinals required him to fashion silver 
 vases for their banquet-tables ; or ladies wished the 
 setting of their jewels altered; or a pope wanted 
 the enameled binding of a book of prayers ; or men- 
 at-arms sent sword-blades to be damaskeened with 
 acanthus foliage ; or kings desired fountains and 
 statues for their palace courts ; or poets begged to 
 have their portraits cast in bronze ; or generals 
 
 1 See lib. ii. cap. 5, for the description of Francis I. visiting Cel- 
 lini in his work-room. He finds him hammering away at the metal, 
 and suggests that he might leave that labor to his prentices. Cellini 
 replies that the excellence of his work would suffer if he did not do it 
 himself.
 
 444 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 needed medals to commemorate their victories, 01 
 dukes new coins for their mint ; or bishops ordered 
 reliquaries for the altars of their patron saints ; or 
 merchants sought for seals and signet-rings engraved 
 with their device : or men of fashion asked for me- 
 dallions of Leda and Adonis to fasten in their caps 
 all these commissions could be undertaken by a 
 workman like Cellini. He was prepared for all 
 alike by his apprenticeship to orfevria ; and to all he 
 gave the same amount of conscientious toil. The 
 consequence was that, at the time of the Renais- 
 sance, furniture, plate, jewels, and articles of per- 
 sonal adornment were objects of true art. The 
 mind of the craftsman was exercised afresh in every 
 piece of work. Pretty things were not bought, ma- 
 chine made, by the gross in a warehouse; nor was 
 it customary, as now it is, to see the same design re- 
 peated with mechanical regularity in every house. 
 
 In 1518 Benvenuto returned to Florence and 
 began to study the cartoon of Michael Angelo. He 
 must have already acquired considerable reputation 
 as a workman, for about this time Torrigiani invited 
 him to go to England in his company and enter the 
 service of Henry VIII. The Renaissance was now 
 beginning to penetrate the nations of the North, and 
 Henry and Francis vied with each other in trying 
 to attract foreign artists to their capitals. It does 
 not, however, appear that the English king secured
 
 TORRIGIANI. 445 
 
 the services of men so distinguished as Lionardo da 
 Vinci, II Rosso, Primaticcio, Del Sarto, and Cellini, 
 who shed an artificial luster on the Court of France. 
 Going to London then was worse than going to 
 Russia now, and to take up a lengthy residence 
 among questi diavoli . . . quelle bestie di quegli 
 Inglesi, as Cellini politely calls the English, did not 
 suit a Southern taste. He had, moreover, private 
 reasons for disliking Torrigiani, who boasted of 
 having broken Michael Angelo's nose in a quarrel. 
 4 His words,' says Cellini, 'raised in me such a hatred 
 of the fellow that, far from wishing to accompany 
 him to England, I could not bear to look at him.' 
 It may be mentioned that one of Cellini's best points 
 was hero-worship for Michael Angelo. He never 
 speaks of him except as quel divino Michel Agnolo, 
 il mio maestro, and extols la bella maniera of the 
 mighty sculptor to the skies. Torrigiani, as far as 
 we can gather from Cellini's description of him, 
 must have been a man of his own kidney and com- 
 plexion : ' he was handsome, of consummate assur- 
 ance, having rather the airs of a bravo than a sculp- 
 tor ; above all, his fierce gestures and his sonorous 
 voice, with a peculiar manner of knitting his brows, 
 were enough to frighten every one that saw him ; 
 and he was continually talking of his valiant feats 
 among those bears of Englishmen.' The story of 
 Torrigiani's death in Spain is worth repeating. A
 
 446 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 grandee employed him to model a Madonna, which 
 he did with more than usual care, expecting a great 
 reward. His pay, however, falling short of his ex- 
 pectation, in a fit of fury he knocked his statue to 
 pieces. For this act of sacrilege, as it was deemed, 
 to the work of his own brain and hand, Torrigiani 
 was thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition. 
 There he starved himself to death in 1522 in order 
 to escape the fate of being burned. This story helps 
 to explain why the fine arts were never well devel- 
 oped in Spain, and why they languished after the 
 introduction of the Holy Office into Italy. 1 
 
 Instead of emigrating to England, Benvenuto, 
 after a quarrel with his father about the obnoxious 
 flute-playing, sauntered out one morning toward the 
 gate of S. Piero Gattolini. There he met a friend 
 called Tasso, who had also quarreled with his 
 parents ; and the two youths agreed, upon the mo- 
 ment, to set off for Rome. Both were nineteen years 
 of age. Singing and laughing, carrying their bundle 
 by turns, and wondering ' what the old folks would 
 say,' they trudged on foot to Siena, there hired a 
 return horse between them, and so came to Rome. 
 This residence in Rome only lasted two years, which 
 were spent by Cellini in the employment of various 
 masters. At the expiration of that time he returned 
 
 1 See Yriarte, ' Vie d'un Gentilhomme de Venise,' p. 439, for a pro- 
 cess instituted by the Inquisition against Paolo Veronese.
 
 HOMICIDAL TEMPER. 44? 
 
 to Florence, and distinguished himself by the making 
 of a marriage girdle for a certain Raffaello Lapac- 
 cini. 1 The fame of this and other pieces of jewelry 
 roused against him the envy and malice of the elder 
 goldsmiths, and led to a serious fray, in the course 
 of which he assaulted a young man of the Guasconti 
 family, and was obliged to fly disguised like a monk 
 to Rome. 
 
 As this is the first of Cellini's homicidal quarrels, 
 it is worth while to transcribe what he says about it. 
 ' One day as I was leaning against the shop of these 
 Guasconti, and talking with them, they contrived 
 that a load of bricks should pass by at the moment, 
 and Gherardo Guasconti pushed it against me in 
 such wise that it hurt me. Turning suddenly and 
 seeing that he was laughing, I struck him so hard 
 upon the temple that he fell down stunned. Then 
 turning to his cousins, I said, That is how I treat 
 cowardly thieves like you ; and when they began to 
 show fight, being many together, I, finding myself 
 on flame, set hand to a little knife I had, and cried, 
 If one of you leaves the shop, let another run for the 
 confessor, for a surgeon won't find any thing to do 
 here/ Nor was he contented with this truculent 
 behavior ; for when Gherardo recovered from his 
 blow, and the matter had come before the magis- 
 
 1 He calls it ' un chiavaquore di argento, il quale era in quei tempi 
 chiamato cosi. Questo si era una cintura di tre dita larga, che alle 
 spose novelle s' usava di fare.'
 
 448 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 trates, Cellini went to seek him in his own house 
 There he stabbed him in the midst of all his 
 family, raging meanwhile, to use his own phrase, 
 ' like an infuriated bull.' * It appears that on this 
 occasion no one was seriously hurt ; but the affair 
 proved perilous to Cellini, since it was a mere acci- 
 dent that he had not killed more than one of the 
 Guasconti. These affrays recur continually among 
 the adventures recorded by Cellini in his Life. He 
 says with comical reservation of phrase that he was 
 ' naturally somewhat choleric ;' and then describes 
 the access of his fury as a sort of fever, lasting for 
 days, preventing him from taking food or sleep, 
 making his blood boil in his veins, inflaming his 
 eyes, and never suffering him to rest till he revenged 
 himself by murder or at least by blows. To enu- 
 merate all the people he killed or wounded, or 
 pounded to a jelly in public brawls or private quar- 
 rels, in the pursuit of deliberate vendetta or under a 
 sudden impulse of ungovernable rage, would take 
 too long. We are forced by an effort to recall to 
 mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in 
 order to understand how it is that he can talk with 
 unconcern and even self-complacency about his 
 homicides. He makes himself accuser, judge, and 
 executioner, and is quite satisfied with the goodness 
 of his cause, the justice of his sentence, anc 1 the 
 
 1 ' Si come un toro invelenitx).'
 
 BULLYING BRAVADO. 449 
 
 equity of his administration. In a sonnet written to 
 Bandinelli, he compares his own victims with the 
 mangled statues of that sculptor, much to his own 
 satisfaction. 1 
 
 There is the same callousness of conscience in 
 his record of spiteful acts that we should blush to 
 think of stabs in the dark, and such a piece of 
 revenge as cutting the beds to bits in the house 
 of an innkeeper who had offended him. 2 Nor does 
 he speak with any shame of the savage cruelty with 
 which he punished a woman who was sitting to him 
 as a model, and whom he hauled up and down his 
 room by the hair of her head, kicking and beating 
 her till he was tired. 3 It is true that on this occa- 
 sion he regrets having spoiled, in a moment of blind 
 passion, the best arms and legs that he could find 
 to draw from. Such episodes, to which it is impos- 
 sible to allude otherwise than very briefly, illustrate 
 with extraordinary vividness what I have already 
 had occasion to say about the Italian sense of 
 honor at this period. 4 
 
 The consciousness of physical courage and the 
 
 1 ' Living men have felt my blows : those many maimed and muti- 
 lated stones one sees attest to your disgrace: the earth hides my 
 bad work.' See the lines quoted by Perkins, 'Tuscan Sculptors,' vol. 
 ii. p. 140. 
 
 a Lib. i. cap. 79. 
 
 3 Lib. ii. cap. 34. The whole history of this woman Caterina, and 
 of the revenge he took upon her and his prentice Paolo, is one of the 
 most extraordinary passages in the life. 
 
 4 See 'Age of the Despots/ pp. 481-486.
 
 450 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 belief in his own moral superiority sustained 
 Cellini in all his dangers and in all his crimes. 
 Armed with his sword and dagger, and protected 
 by his coat of mail, he was ready to stand against 
 the world and fight his way towards any object 
 he desired. When a man opposed his schemes 
 or entered into competition with him as an artist, 
 he swaggered up with hand on hilt and threat- 
 ened to run him through the body if he did not 
 mind his business. At the same time he attrib- 
 utes the success of his own violence in quelling 
 and maltreating his opponents to the providence 
 of God. ' I do not write this narrative/ he says, 
 from a motive of vanity, but merely to return 
 thanks to God, who has extricated me out of so 
 many trials and difficulties ; who likewise delivers 
 me from those that daily impend over me. Upon 
 all occasions I pay my devotions to Him, call upon 
 Him as my defender, and recommend myself to His 
 care. I always exert my utmost efforts to extri- 
 cate myself, but when I am quite at a loss, and all 
 my powers fail me, then the force of the Deity 
 displays itself that formidable force which, unex- 
 pectedly, strikes those who wrong and oppress 
 others, and neglect the great and honorable duty 
 which God has enjoined on them.' I shall have 
 occasion later on to discuss Cellini's religious 
 opinions; but here it may be remarked that the 
 feeling of this passage is thoroughly sincere and
 
 RESIDENCE IN ROME. 451 
 
 consistent with the spirit of the times. The sepa- 
 ration between religion and morality was complete 
 in Italy. 1 Men made their own God and wor- 
 shiped Him; and the God of Cellini was one 
 who always helped those who began to help them- 
 selves by taking justice into their own hands. 
 
 From the date of his second visit to Rome in 
 1523, Cellini's life divides itself into three periods, 
 the first spent in the service of Popes Clement VII. 
 and Paul III., the second in Paris at the court 
 of Francis, and the third at Florence under Cosimo 
 de* Medici. 
 
 On arriving in Rome, his extraordinary abilities 
 soon brought him into notice at the Court. The 
 Chigi family, the Bishop of Salamanca, and the 
 Pope himself employed him to make various jewels, 
 ornaments, and services of plate. In consequence 
 of a dream in which his father appeared and 
 warned him not to neglect music, under pain of 
 the paternal malediction, he accepted a post in 
 the Papal band. The old bugbear of flute-playing 
 followed him until his father's death, and then we 
 hear no more of it. The history of this portion 
 of his life is among the most entertaining passages 
 of his biography. Drawing the Roman ruins, shoot- 
 ing pigeons, scouring the Campagna on a pony like 
 a shaggy bear, fighting duels, prosecuting love. 
 
 1 See ' Age of the Despots/ pp. 462-465.
 
 452 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 affairs, defending his shop against robbers, skir- 
 mishing with Moorish pirates on the shore by 
 Cerveterra, stabbing, falling ill of the plague and 
 the French sickness these adventures diversify 
 the account he gives of masterpieces in gold and 
 silver ware. The literary and artistic society of 
 Rome at this period was very brilliant. Painters, 
 sculptors, and goldsmiths mixed with scholars and 
 poets, passing their time alternately in the palaces 
 of dukes and cardinals and in the lodgings of gay 
 women. Bohemianism of the wildest type was 
 combined with the manners of the great world. 
 A little incident described at some length by Cel- 
 lini brings this varied life before us. , There was 
 a club of artists, including Giulio Romano and other 
 pupils of Raphael, who met twice a week to sup 
 together and to spend the evening in conversation, 
 with music and the recitation of sonnets. Each 
 member of this company brought with him a lady. 
 Cellini, on one occasion, not being provided for 
 the moment with an innamorata, dressed up a beau- 
 tiful Spanish youth called Diego as a woman, and 
 took him to the supper. The ensuing scene is 
 described in the most vivid manner. We see be-' 
 fore us the band of painters and poets, the women 
 in their bright costumes, the table adorned with 
 flowers and fruit, and, as a background to the whole 
 picture, a trellis of jasmines with dark foliage and
 
 DIEGO. 453 
 
 starry blossoms. Diego, called Pomona, with re- 
 gard doubtless to his dark and ruddy beauty, is 
 unanimously proclaimed the fairest of the fair. Then 
 a discovery of his sex is made ; and the adventure 
 leads, as usual in the doings of Cellini, to daggers, 
 midnight ambushes, and vendettas that only end 
 with bloodshed. 
 
 An episode of this sort may serve as the occa- 
 sion for observing that the artists of the late Re- 
 naissance had become absorbed in the admiration of 
 merely carnal beauty. With the exception of 
 Michael Angelo and Tintoretto, there was no great 
 master left who still pursued an intellectual ideal. 
 The Romans and the Venetians simply sought and 
 painted what was splendid and luxurious in the 
 world around them. Their taste was contented with 
 well-developed muscles, gorgeous color, youthful 
 bloom, activity of limb, and grace of outline. The 
 habits of the day, voluptuous yet hardy, fostered 
 this one-sided development of the arts ; while the 
 asceticism of the Middle Ages had yielded to a 
 pagan cult of sensuality. To draw un bel corpo 
 ignudo with freedom was now the ne plus ultra of 
 achievement. How to express thought or to indi- 
 cate the subtleties of emotion had ceased to be the 
 artist's aim. We have already noticed the pas- 
 sionate love of beauty which animated the great 
 masters of the golden age. This, in the less ele-
 
 454 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 vated natures of the craftsmen who succeeded them, 
 and under the conditions of advancing national cor- 
 ruption, was no longer refined or restrained by 
 delicacy of feeling or by loftiness of aim. It degen- 
 erated into soulless animalism. The capacity for 
 perceiving and for reproducing what is nobly beau- 
 tiful was lost. Vulgarity and coarseness stamped 
 themselves upon the finest work of men like Giulio 
 Romano. At this crisis it was proved how inferior 
 was the neo-paganism of the sixteenth century to 
 the paganism of antiquity it aped. Mythology pre- 
 served Greek art from degradation, and connected 
 a similar enthusiasm for corporeal beauty with the 
 thoughts and aspirations of the Hellenic race. The 
 Italians lacked this safeguard of a natural religion. 
 To throw the Christian ideal aside, and to strive to 
 grasp the classical ideal in exchange, was easy. But 
 paganism alone could give them nothing but its 
 vices ; it was incapable of communicating its real 
 source of life its poetry, its faith, its cult of nature. 
 Art, therefore, as soon as the artists pronounced 
 themselves for sensuality, merged in a skillful selec- 
 tion and reproduction of elegant forms, and nothing 
 more. A handsome youth upon a pedestal was 
 called a god. A duke's mistress on Titian's canvas 
 passed for Aphrodite. Andrea del Sarto's faithless 
 wife figured as Madonna. Cellini himself, though 
 sensitive to every kind of physical beauty as we
 
 SACK: OF ROME. 455 
 
 gather from what he tells us of Cencio, Diego, 
 Faustina, Paolino, Angelica, Ascanio has not at- 
 tempted to animate his Perseus, or his Ganymede, 
 or his Diana of Fontainebleau with a vestige of 
 intellectual or moral loveliness. The vacancy of 
 their expression proves the degradation of an art 
 that had ceased to idealize any thing beyond a fault- 
 less body. Not thus did the Greeks imagine even 
 their most sensual divinities. There is at least a 
 thought in Faun and Satyr. Cellini's statues have 
 no thought ; their blank animalism corresponds to 
 the condition of their maker's soul. 1 
 
 When Rome was carried by assault in 1527, and 
 the Papal Court was besieged in the castle of S. 
 Angelo, Cellini played the part of bombardier. It 
 is well known that he claims to have shot the 
 Constable of Bourbon dead with his own hand, and 
 to have wounded the Prince of Orange ; nor does 
 there seem to be any adequate reason for discrediting 
 his narrative. It is certain that he was an expert 
 marksman, and that he did Clement good service by 
 directing the artillery of S. Angelo. If we be- 
 lieved all his assertions, however, we should have to 
 suppose that nothing memorable happened without 
 his intervention. In his own eyes his whole life was 
 a miracle. The very hailstones that fell upon his 
 
 1 This might be further illustrated by analyzing Cellini's mode ol 
 loving. He never rises above animal appetite.
 
 456 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 head could not be grasped in both hands. His guns 
 and powder brought down birds no other marksman 
 had a chance of hitting. When he was a child, he 
 grasped a scorpion without injury, and saw a sala- 
 mander ' living and enjoying itself in the hottest 
 flames.' After his fever at Rome in 1535, he 
 threw off from his stomach a hideous worm hairy, 
 speckled with green, black, and red the like where- 
 of the doctors never saw. 1 When he finally escaped 
 from the dungeons of S. Angelo in 1539, a lumi- 
 nous appearance like an aureole settled on his head, 
 and stayed there for the rest of his life. 2 These 
 facts are related in the true spirit of Jerome Cardon, 
 Paracelsus, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Sir 
 Thomas Browne. Cellini doubtless believed in 
 them ; but they warn us to be cautious in accepting 
 what he says about his exploits, since imagination 
 and self-conceit could so far distort his judgment 
 
 It may be regretted that Cellini has not given a 
 fuller account of the memorable sack of Rome. Yet, 
 confining himself almost wholly to his own adven- 
 tures, he presents a very vivid picture of the sad 
 life led by the Pope and cardinals, vainly hoping for 
 succor from Urbino, wrangling together about the 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 85. ' Nel qual vomito mi usci dello stomaco ua 
 verme piloso, grande un quarto di braccio : e' peli erano grandi ed 
 il verme era bruttissimo, macchiato di diversi colori, verdi, neri e 
 rossi.' 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 128.
 
 DOMESTIC AFFECTION. 457 
 
 causes of the tragedy, sewing the crown jewels into 
 their doublets, and running the perils of the siege 
 with common soldiers on the ramparts. When 
 peace at last was signed, Cellini paid a visit to 
 Florence, and found that his father and some other 
 relatives had died of plague. 1 His brother Cec- 
 chino, however, who was a soldier in the Bande 
 Nere of Giovanni de Medici, and his sister Lipe- 
 rata survived. With them he spent a pleasant 
 evening ; for Liperata having ' for a while lamented 
 her father, her sister, her husband, and a little son 
 that she had been deprived of, went to prepare 
 supper, and during the rest of the evening there 
 was not a word more spoken of the dead, but much 
 about weddings. Thus we supped together with 
 the greatest cheerfulness and satisfaction imagi- 
 nable.' In these sentences there is no avowal of 
 hard-heartedness ; only the careless familiarity with 
 loss and danger, engendered by war, famine, plague, 
 and personal adventures in those riotous times. 2 
 Cellini gladly risked his life in a quarrel for his 
 friends ; but he would not sadden the present by 
 reflecting on inevitable accidents. This elastic temper 
 permeates his character. His affections were strong, 
 but transient. The one serious love-affair he de- 
 
 1 Notice, lib. i. cap. 40, p. 90, the dialogue between Cellini and the 
 old woman, on his return to the paternal house: 'Ohdimmi, gobba 
 perversa,' etc. 
 
 * ' Per essere il mondo intenebrato di peste e di guerra,' is a phrase 
 of Cellini's, i. 40.
 
 458 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 scribes, among a multitude of mere debaucheries, 
 made him miserable for a few days. His mistress, 
 Angelica, ran away, and left him ' on the point of 
 losing his senses or dying of grief.' Yet, when he 
 found her again, a short time sufficed to satisfy his 
 longing, and he turned his back with gibes upon her 
 when she bargained about money. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that, at the same time, he 
 was an excellent son and brother. His sister was 
 left a widow with two children ; whereupon he took 
 them all into his house, without bragging about 
 what appears to have been the best action of his life. 
 In the same spirit he conscientiously performed 
 what he conceived to be his duty to Cecchino, mur- 
 dered by a musketeer in Rome. After nursing his 
 revenge till he was nearly mad, he stole out one 
 evening and stabbed the murderer in the back. 1 
 So violent was the blow that he could not extricate 
 his dagger from the man's spine, but had to leave it 
 sticking in his nape. Next to his own egotism the 
 strongest feelings in Cellini were domestic ; and he 
 showed them at one moment by charity to his 
 sister's family, at another by a savage assassination. 
 
 After killing the musketeer, Cellini retired for 
 refuge to the house of Alessandro de' Medici, Duke 
 of Civita di Penna, who had been his brother's 
 patron. The matter reached the Pope's ears, for 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 51.
 
 PROTECTION OF ASSASSINS. 459 
 
 whom Benvenuto was at work upon crown jewels. 
 Clement sent for him, and simply said : ' Now you 
 have recovered your health, Benvenuto, take care of 
 yourself.' This shows how little they thought of 
 homicide in Rome. After killing a man, some 
 powerful protector had to be sought, who was 
 usually a cardinal, since the cardinals had right of 
 sanctuary in their palaces. There the assassin lay in 
 hiding, in order to avoid his victim's friends and rel- 
 atives, until such time as a pardon and safe-conduct 
 and absolution had been obtained from his Holiness. 
 When Cellini, soon after this occurrence, stabbed a 
 private enemy, by name Pompeo. two cardinals were 
 anxious to screen him from pursuit, and disputed 
 the privilege of harboring so talented a criminal. 1 
 
 The Pope, with marvelous good-humor, observed : 
 
 - 1 
 
 ' I have never heard of the death of Pompeo, but 
 often of Benvenuto's provocation ; so let a safe-con- 
 duct be instantly made out, and that will secure him 
 from all manner of danger.' A friend of Pompeo's 
 who was present ventured to insinuate that this was 
 dangerous policy. The Pope put him down at 
 once by saying, 'You do not understand these 
 matters ; I would have you know that men who are 
 unique in their profession, like Benvenuto, are not 
 Subject to the laws.' Whether Paul really said these 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 74. Clement was dead, and Paul III. had just been 
 elected, r 534. Paul sent Cellini a safe-conduct and pardon for Pom- 
 peo's murder to Florence in 1535. Lib. i. cap. 81.
 
 460 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL V. 
 
 words may be doubted ; but it is clear that much 
 was conceded to a clever workman, and that the 
 laws were a mere brutum fulmen. No man of spirit 
 appealed to them. Cellini, for example, was poisoned 
 by a parish priest near Florence j 1 yet he never 
 brought the man to justice ; and in the case of his 
 own murders, he only dreaded the retaliation of his 
 victim's kinsmen. On one occasion, indeed, the civil 
 arm came down upon him : when the city guard 
 attempted to arrest him for Pompeo's assassination. 
 He beat them off with swords and sticks ; and after 
 all, it appeared that they were only acting at the 
 instigation of Pier Luigi Farnese, whom Benvenuto 
 had offended. 
 
 During his residence at Rome, Cellini witnessed 
 an incantation conducted in the Colosseum by a 
 Sicilian priest and necromancer. The conjurer and 
 the artist, accompanied by two friends, and by a boy, 
 who was to act as medium, went by night to the 
 amphitheater. The magic circle was drawn ; fires 
 were lighted, and perfumes scattered on the flames. 
 Then the spirit-seer began his charms, calling in 
 Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or what passed for such, 
 upon the leaders of the hosts of hell. The whole 
 hollow space now filled with phantoms, surging up 
 by legions, rushing down from the galleries, issuing 
 from subterranean caverns, and wheeling to and 
 
 1 Lib. ii. cap. 104.
 
 INCANTATION IN COLOSSEUM. 461 
 
 fro with signs of fury. All the party, says Cellini, 
 were thrown into consternation, except himself, who, 
 though terribly afraid, kept up the fainting spirits of 
 the rest. At last the conjurer summoned courage to 
 inquire when Cellini might hope to be restored to 
 his lost love, Angelica for this was the trivial object 
 of the incantation. The demons answered (how we 
 are not told) that he would meet her ere a month 
 had passed away. This prophecy, as it happened, 
 was fulfilled. Then they redoubled their attacks ; the 
 necromancer kept crying out that the peril was most 
 imminent, until the matin bells of Rome swung 
 through the darkness, freeing them at last from fear. 
 As they walked home, the boy, holding the Sicilian 
 by his robe and Benvenuto by his mantle, told them 
 that he still saw giants leaping with fantastic gestures 
 on their path, now running along the house roofs, 
 and now dancing on the earth. Each one of them 
 that night dreamed in his bed of devils. 1 
 
 The interest of this incident is almost wholly 
 picturesque. It throws but little light upon the 
 superstitions of the age. 2 The magnitude of the 
 Colosseum, the popular legends concerning its magi- 
 cal origin, and the terrible uses of blood to which it 
 
 I Lib. i. cap. 64. 
 
 II See, however, what is said about the mountain villages of 
 Norcia being good for incantations. That district in Roman times 
 was famous for such superstitions. Burckhardt, ' Die Cultur der 
 Renaissance in Italien,' pp. 427-428, gives curious information on this 
 topic.
 
 462 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 had been put, invested this building with peculiar 
 mystery. Robbers haunted the huge caves. Rub- 
 bish and weeds choked the passages. Sickly trees 
 soared up from darkness into light among the 
 porches, and the moon peered through the empty 
 vomitories. If we call imagination to our aid, and 
 place the necromancers and their brazier in the 
 center of this space ; if we fancy the priest's 
 chanted spells, the sacred names invoked in his 
 unholy rites, the shuddering terror of the con- 
 science-stricken accomplices, and Cellini with defiant 
 mien but quailing heart, we can well believe that he 
 saw more than the amphitheater contained. Wheth- 
 er the specters were projected by the conjurer from 
 a magic lantern on the smoke that issued from his 
 heaps of blazing wood, so that the volumes of 
 vapor, agitated by the wind and rolling in thick 
 spirals, showed them retreating and advancing, and 
 varying in shape and number, is a matter for conjec- 
 ture. Cellini firmly believed that he had been en- 
 vironed by living squadrons of the spirits of the 
 damned. 
 
 The next four years were spent by Cellini chiefly 
 in Rome, in peril of his life at several seasons, owing 
 to the animosity of Pier Luigi Farnese. One journey 
 he took at this period to Venice, passing through 
 Ferrara, where he came to blows with the Florentine 
 exiles. It is interesting to find the respectable his-
 
 JOURNEY TO FRANCE. 463 
 
 torian Jacopo Nardi involved, if only as a peace- 
 maker, in this affray. 1 He also visited Florence and 
 cast dies for Alessandro's silver coinage. It was 
 here that he found opportunities of observing the 
 perilous intimacy between the Duke of Civita di 
 Penna and his cousin quel pazzo malinconico 
 filosofo di Lorenzino? In April, 1537, having quar- 
 reled with the Pope, who seems to have adopted 
 Pier Luigi's prejudice against him, Cellini set out for 
 France with two of his workmen. They passed 
 through Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Padua, 
 staying in the last place to model a medallion por- 
 trait of Pietro Bembo ; 3 then they crossed the 
 Grisons by the Bernina and Albula passes. We 
 hear nothing about this part of the journey, except 
 that the snow was heavy, and that they ran great 
 danger of their lives. Cellini must have traversed 
 some of the most romantic scenery of Switzerland at 
 the best season of the year ; yet not a word escapes 
 him about the beauty of the Alps or the wonder of 
 the glaciers, which he saw for the first time. The 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 76. 
 
 * Lib. i. cap. 88. 'That mad melancholy philosopher Lorenzino.' 
 Cf. i. 80 and 81. ' Molte volte lo trovavo a dormicchiare dopo desinare 
 con quel suo Lorenzino, che poi I'ammazzo, e non altri ; ed io molto mi 
 
 maravigliavo che un duca di quella sorte cosi si fidava il duca, 
 
 che lo teneva quando per pazzericcio, e quando per poltrone.' Cf. 
 again, cap. 89. 
 
 * This glimpse of Bembo in his Paduan villa is very pleasing. Lib. 
 L cap. 94.
 
 464 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 pleasure we derive from contemplating savage 
 scenery was unknown to the Italians of the six- 
 teenth century ; the height and cold, the gloom and 
 solitude of mountains struck them with a sense of 
 terror or of dreariness. On the Lake of Wallenstadt 
 Cellini met with a party of Germans, whom he 
 hated as cordially as an Athenian of the age of 
 Pericles might have loathed the Scythians for their 
 barbarism. 1 The Italians embarked in one boat, 
 the Germans in another ; Cellini being under the 
 impression that the Northern lakes would not be so 
 likely to drown him as those of his own country. 
 However, when a storm swept down the hills, he 
 took a terrible fright, and compelled the boatmen at 
 the point of the poniard to put him and his com- 
 pany ashore. The description of their struggles to 
 drag their heavily-laden horses over the uneven 
 ground near Wesen is extremely graphic, and gives 
 a good notion of the dangers of the road in those 
 days. 2 That night they 'heard the watch sing at 
 all hours very agreeably ; and as the houses of that 
 town were all of wood, he kept bidding them to take 
 care of their fires.' Next day they arrived, not with- 
 out other accidents, at Zurich, ' a marvelous city, as 
 
 1 ' Quei diavoli di quei gentiluomini tedeschi. ' This is, however, 
 the language he uses about nearly all foreigners Spaniards, French, 
 and English. 
 
 9 Lib. i. cap. 96. ' lo ero tutto armato di maglia con i stivali grossi 
 e con uno scoppietto in mano, e pioveva quanto Iddio ne sapeva man- 
 dare,' etc.
 
 CHARGE OF THEFT. 465 
 
 clear and polished as a jewel/ Thence by Solothurn, 
 Lausanne, Geneva, and Lyons, they made their way 
 to Paris. 
 
 This long and troublesome journey led to noth- 
 ing, for Cellini grew weary of following the French 
 Court about from place to place ; his health too 
 failed him, and he decided that he would rather die 
 in Italy than France. 1 Accordingly he returned to 
 Rome, and there, not long after his arrival, he was 
 arrested by the order of Pope Paul III. 2 The charge 
 against him, preferred by one of his own prentices, 
 was this : During the siege of Rome, he had been 
 employed by Clement to melt down the tiaras and 
 papal ornaments, in order that the precious stones 
 might be conveyed away in secrecy. He did so ; and 
 afterward confessed to having kept a portion of the 
 gold filings found in the cinders of his brazier during 
 the operation. For this crime Clement gave him 
 absolution. 3 Now, however, he was accused of 
 having stolen gold and jewels to the amount of 
 nearly eighty thousand ducats. ' The avarice of the 
 Pope, but more that of his bastard, then called Duke 
 of Castro,' inclined Paul to believe this charge ; and 
 Pier Luigi was allowed to farm the case. Cellini was 
 examined by the Governor of Rome and two assess- 
 ors ; in spite of his vehement protestations of inno- 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 98 a Ib. cap. 101. 
 
 * See lib. i. cap. 38, 43.
 
 466 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 cence, the absence of any evidence against him, and 
 the sound arguments adduced in his defense, he was 
 committed to the castle of S. Angelo. When he 
 received his sentence, he called heaven and earth to 
 witness, thanking God that he had ' the happiness 
 not to be confined for some error of his sinful 
 nature, as generally happens to young men.' Where- 
 upon ' the brute of a Governor replied, Yet you 
 have killed men enough in your time.' This remark 
 was pertinent ; but it provoked a torrent of abuse 
 and a long enumeration of his services from the 
 virtuous Cellini. 
 
 The account of this imprisonment, and espe- 
 cially of the hypochondriacal Governor who thought 
 he was a bat and used to flap his arms and squeak 
 when night was coming on, is highly entertaining. 1 
 Not less interesting is the description of Cellini's 
 daring escape from the castle. In climbing over the 
 last wall, he fell and broke his leg, and was carried 
 by a waterman to the palace of the Cardinal Cornaro. 
 There he lay in hiding, visited by all the rank and 
 fashion of Rome, who were not a little curious to 
 see the hero of so perilous an escapade. Cornaro 
 promised to secure his pardon, but eventually ex- 
 changed him for a bishopric. This remarkable pro- 
 
 1 The Governor, perplexed by Cellini's vaunt that if he only tried 
 he was sure he could fly, put him under strict guard, saying, ' Ben- 
 venuto e un pipistrello contrafatto, ed io sono un pipistrello da 
 dovero.'
 
 IMPRISONMENT. 467 
 
 ceeding illustrates the manners of the Papal Court 
 The cardinal wanted a benefice for one of his 
 followers, and the Pope wished to get his son's 
 enemy once more into his power. So the two ec- 
 clesiastics bargained together, and by mutual kind 
 offices attained their several ends. 
 
 Cellini with his broken leg went back to languish 
 in his prison. He found the flighty Governor 
 furious because he had ' flown away,' eluding his 
 bat's eyes and wings. The rigor used toward 
 him made him dread the worst extremities. Cast 
 into a condemned cell, he first expected to be flayed 
 alive ; and when this terror was removed, he per- 
 ceived the crystals of a pounded jewel in his food. 
 According to his own account of this mysterious 
 circumstance, Messer Durante Duranti of Brescia, 
 one of Cellini's numerous enemies, had given a dia- 
 mond of small value to be broken up and mixed 
 with a salad served to him at dinner. The jeweler 
 to whom this charge was intrusted kept the diamond 
 and substituted a beryl, thinking that the mferior 
 stone would have the same murderous properties. 
 To the avarice of this man Cellini attributed his 
 escape from a lingering death by inflammation of 
 the mucous membrane. 1 
 
 During his first imprisonment he had occupied 
 a fair chamber in the upper turret of the castle. He 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 125.
 
 468 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 was now removed to a dungeon below ground where 
 Fra Fojano, the reformer, had been starved to 
 death. The floor was wet and infested with crawl- 
 ing creatures. A few reflected sunbeams, slanting 
 from a narrow window for two hours of the after- 
 noon, was all the light that reached him. Here he 
 lay, alone, unable to move because of his broken 
 leg, with his hair and teeth falling away, and with 
 nothing to occupy him but a Bible and a volume 
 of Villani's Chronicles. His spirit, however, was 
 indomitable ; and the passionate energy of the man, 
 hitherto manifested in ungoverned acts of fury, 
 took the form of ecstasy. He began the study 
 of the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis, and, 
 trusting firmly to the righteousness of his own cause, 
 compared himself to all the saints and martyrs of 
 Scripture, men of whom the world was not worthy. 
 He sang psalms, prayed continually, and composed 
 a poem in praise of his prison. With a piece of 
 charcoal he made a great drawing of angels sur- 
 rounding God the Father on the wall. Once only 
 his courage gave way: he determined on suicide, 
 and so placed a beam that it should fall on him like 
 a trap. When all was ready, an unseen hand took 
 violent hold of him, and dashed him on the ground 
 at a considerable distance. From this moment his 
 dungeon was visited by angels, who healed his 
 broken leg and reasoned with him of religion. 
 
 The mention of these visions reminds us that
 
 VISIONS IN THE DUNGEON. 469 
 
 Cellini had become acquainted with Savonarola's 
 writings during his first imprisonment. 1 Impressed 
 with the grandeur of the prophet's dreams, and 
 exalted by the reading of the Bible, he no doubt 
 mistook his delirious fancies for angelic visitors, 
 and in the fervor of his enthusiasm laid claim to 
 inspiration. One of these hallucinations is particu- 
 larly striking. He had prayed that he might see 
 the sun at least in trance, if it were impossible that 
 he should look on it again with waking eyes. But, 
 while awake and in possession of his senses, he 
 was hurried suddenly away and carried to a room, 
 where the invisible power sustaining him appeared 
 in human shape, ' like a youth whose beard is but 
 just growing, with a face most marvelous, fair, 
 but of austere and far from wanton beauty.' In 
 that room were all the men who had ever lived and 
 died on earth ; and thence they two went together, 
 and came into a narrow street, one side whereof was 
 bright with sunlight. Then Cellini asked the angel 
 how he might behold the sun ; and the angel pointed 
 to certain steps upon the side of a house. Up these 
 Cellini climbed, and came into the full blaze of the 
 sun, and, though dazzled by its brightness, he gazed 
 steadfastly and took his fill. While he looked, the 
 rays fell away upon the left side and the disk shone 
 like a bath of molten gold. This surface swelled, 
 
 1 Lib. i. cap. 105.
 
 470 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 and from the glory came the figure of a Christ upon 
 the cross, which moved and stood beside the rays. 
 Again the surface swelled, and from the glory came 
 the figure of Madonna and her Child ; and at the 
 right hand of the sun there knelt S. Peter in his 
 sacerdotal robes, pleading Cellini's cause ; and ' full 
 of shame that such foul wrong should be done to 
 Christians in his house.' This vision marvelously 
 strengthened Cellini's soul, and he began to hope with 
 confidence for liberty. When free again, he modeled 
 the figures he had seen in gold. 
 
 The religious phase in Cellini's history requires 
 some special comment, since it is precisely at this 
 point that he most faithfully personifies the spirit of 
 his age and nation. That he was a devout Catholic 
 there is no question. He made two pilgrimages to 
 Loreto, and another to S. Francis of Vernia. To 
 S. Lucy he dedicated a golden eye after his recovery 
 from an illness. He was, moreover, always anxious 
 to get absolution from the Pope. More than this ; 
 he continually sustained himself at the great crises 
 of his life, when in peril of imprisonment, while 
 defending himself against assassins, and again on 
 the eve of casting his Perseus, by direct and pas- 
 sionate appeals to God. Yet his religion had but 
 little effect upon his life ; and he often used it as 
 a source of moral strength in doing deeds repug- 
 nant to real piety. Like love, he put it off and
 
 CELLINPS RELIGION. 471 
 
 on quite easily, reverting to it when he found him- 
 self in danger or bad spirits, and forgetting it again 
 when he was prosperous. Thus in the dungeon of 
 S. Angelo he vowed to visit the Holy Sepulchre 
 if God would grant him to behold the sun. This 
 vow he forgot until he met with disappointment at 
 the Court of Francis, and then he suddenly deter- 
 mined to travel to Jerusalem. The offer of a salary 
 of seven hundred crowns restored his spirits, and 
 he thought no more about his vow. 
 
 While he loved his life so dearly and indulged 
 so freely in the pleasures of this earth, he made 
 a virtue of necessity as soon as death approached, 
 crying, ' The sooner I am delivered from the prison 
 of this world, the better ; especially as I am sure 
 of salvation, being unjustly put to death.' His 
 good opinion of himself extended to the certainty 
 he felt of heaven. Forgetting his murders and 
 debaucheries, he sustained his courage with devo- 
 tion when all other sources failed. As to the 
 divine government of the world, he halted be- 
 tween two opinions. Whether the stars or Prov- 
 idence had the upper hand he could not clearly 
 say ; but by the stars he understood a power an- 
 tagonistic to his will, by Providence a force that 
 helped him to do what he liked. There is a similar 
 confusion in his mind about the Pope. He goes to 
 Clement submissively for absolution from homicide
 
 472 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 and theft, saying, ' I am at the feet of your Holi- 
 ness, who have the full power of absolving, and I 
 request you to give me permission to confess and 
 communicate, that I may with your favor be re- 
 stored to the divine grace/ He also tells Paul that 
 the sight of Christ's vicar, in whom there is an awful 
 representation of the divine Majesty, makes him 
 tremble. Yet at another time he speaks of Clement 
 being ' transformed to a savage beast,' and talks of 
 him as 'that poor man Pope Clement.' 1 Of Paul he 
 says that he ' believed neither in God nor in any 
 other article of religion ; ' he sincerely regrets not 
 having killed him by accident during the siege of 
 Rome, abuses him for his avarice, casts his bastards 
 in his teeth, and relates with relish the crime of 
 forgery for which in his youth he was imprisoned in 
 the castle of S. Angelo. 2 Indeed, the Italians 
 treated the Pope as negroes treat their fetishes. If 
 they had cause to dislike him, they beat and heaped 
 insults on him like the Florentines who described 
 Sixtus IV. as 'leno matris suse, adulterorum minister, 
 diaboli vicarius,' and his spiritual offspring as ' simo- 
 nia, luxus, homicidium, proditio, hgeresis.' On the 
 other hand, they really thought that he could open 
 heaven and shut the gates of hell. 
 
 At the end of the year 1539, the Cardinal Ippo- 
 
 1 ' II Papa diventato cosi pessima bestia,' lib. i. 58 ; ' II Papa entrato 
 in un bestial furore,' ib. 60 ; ' Quel povero uomo di Papa Clemente,' 
 ib. 103. 
 
 8 Ib. 36, 101, in.,
 
 COURT OF FRANCIS. 473 
 
 lito d'Este appeared in Rome with solicitations from 
 Francis I. that the Pope would release Cellini 
 and allow him to enter his service. 1 Upon this 
 the prison door was opened. Cellini returned to 
 his old restless life of violence and pleasure. We 
 find him renewing his favor.te pastimes killing, 
 wantoning, disputing with his employers, and work- 
 ing diligently at his trade. The temporary saint 
 and visionary becomes once more the bravo and 
 the artist. A more complete parallel to the con- 
 sequences of revivalism in Italy could not be found. 2 
 Meanwhile the first period of his history is closed 
 and the second begins. 
 
 Cellini's account of his residence in France has 
 much historical interest besides the charm of its 
 romance. When he first joined the Court, he found 
 Francis traveling from city to city with a retinue of 
 eighteen thousand persons and twelve thousand 
 horses. Frequently they came to places where no 
 accommodation could be had, and the suite were 
 lodged in wretched tents. It is not wonderful that 
 Cellini should complain of the French being less 
 civilized than the Italians of his time. Francis among 
 
 1 The scene is well described, lib. i. 127. The Pope was wont to 
 have a weekly debauch, and the cardinal chose this favorable 
 moment for his appeal : ' Gli usava una volta la settimana di fare una 
 
 crapula assai gagliarda, perche da poi la gomitava Allora il 
 
 papa, sentendosi appressare all' ora del suo vomito, e perche la troppa 
 abbundanzia del vino ancora faceva 1'ufizio suo, disse,' etc, 
 
 9 See ' Age of the Despots,' p. 619.
 
 474 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 his ladies and courtiers, pretending to a knowledge of 
 the arts, sauntering with his splendid train into the 
 goldsmith's workshop, encouraging Cellini's violence 
 with a boyish love of mischief, vain and flattered, 
 peevish, petulant, and fond of show, appears upon 
 these pages with a life-like vividness. 1 When the 
 time came for settling in Paris, the king presented 
 his goldsmith with a castle called Le Petit Nesle, 
 and made him lord thereof by letters of naturaliza- 
 tion. This house stood where the Institute has since 
 been built ; of its extent we may judge from the 
 number of occupations carried on within its pre- 
 cincts when Cellini entered into possession. He 
 found there a tennis-court, a distillery, a printing 
 press, and a factory of saltpetre besides residents 
 engaged in other trades. Cellini's claims were re- 
 sisted. Probably the occupiers did not relish the 
 intrusion of a foreigner. So he stormed the place 
 and installed himself by force of arms. Similar 
 violence was needed in order to maintain himself 
 in possession; but this Cellini loved, and had he 
 been let alone, it is probable he would have died of 
 ennui. 
 
 Difficulties of all kinds, due in part to his un- 
 governable temper, in part to his ill-regulated life, 
 in part to his ignorance of French habits, gathered 
 round him. He fell into disfavor with Madame 
 
 1 See especially the visit to the Paris workshop, lib. ii. cap. 1 5, and 
 the scene in the Gallery at Fontainebleau, ib. 41.
 
 ADVENTURES IN PARIS. 475 
 
 d'Estampes, the mistress of the King ; and here it 
 may be mentioned that many of his troubles arose 
 from his inability to please noble women. 1 Proud, 
 self-confident, overbearing, and unable to command 
 his words or actions, Cellini was unfitted to pay 
 court to princes. Then again he quarreled with his 
 brother artists, and made the Bolognese painter, 
 Primaticcio, his enemy. After being attacked by 
 assassins and robbers on more than one occasion, he 
 was involved in two lawsuits. He draws a graphic 
 picture of the French courts of justice, with their 
 judge as grave as Plato, their advocates all chatter- 
 ing at once, their perjured Norman witnesses, and the 
 ushers at the doors vociferating Paix, paix, Satan 
 allez, paix. In this cry Cellini recognized the 
 gibberish at the beginning of the seventh canto of 
 Dante's Inferno. But the most picturesque group 
 in the whole scene presented to us is that made by 
 Cellini himself, armed and mailed, and attended by 
 his prentices in armor, as they walked into the 
 court to browbeat justice with the clamor of their 
 voice. If we are to trust his narrative, he fought 
 his way out of one most dangerous trial by simple 
 vociferation. Afterward he took the law, as usual, 
 into his own hands. One pair of litigants were 
 beaten ; Caterina was nearly kicked to death ; at?d 
 the attorneys were threatened with the sword. 
 
 1 His quarrels, for example, with the Duchess of Florence.
 
 4?6 RENAISSANCE JN ITALY. 
 
 In the midst of these disturbances, Cellini began 
 some important works for Francis. At Paris the 
 King employed him to make huge silver candelabra, 
 and at Fontainebleau to restore the castle gate. For 
 the chateau of Fontainebleau Cellini executed the 
 nymph in bronze, reclining among trophies of the 
 chase, which may still be seen in the Louvre. It is a 
 long-limbed, lifeless figure, without meaning a snuff- 
 box ornament enlarged to a gigantic size. Francis, 
 who can not have had good taste in art, if what 
 Cellini makes him say be genuine, admired these 
 designs above the bronze copies of the Vatican 
 marbles he had recently received. He seems to 
 have felt some personal regard for Benvenuto, and 
 to have done all he could to retain him in his service. 
 The animosity of Madame d'Estampes, and a grudge 
 against his old patron, Ippolito d'Este, however, 
 determined the restless craftsman to quit Paris. 
 Leaving his castle, his unfinished works, and other 
 property behind him in the care of Ascanio, his 
 friend and pupil, he returned alone to Italy. This 
 step, .taken in a moment of restless pique, was ever 
 after regretted by Cellini, who looked back with 
 yearning from Florence to the generosity of Francis. 
 
 Cosimo de' Medici was indeed a very different 
 patron from Francis. Cautious, little-minded, med- 
 dling, with a true Florentine's love of bargaining 
 and playing cunning tricks, he pretended to protect
 
 CELLINI AT FLORENCE. 477 
 
 the arts, but did not understand the part he had 
 assumed. He was always short of money, and 
 surrounded by old avaricious servants, through whose 
 hands his meager presents passed. As a connoisseur, 
 he did not trust his own judgment, thus laying him- 
 self open to the intrigues of inferior artists. Hence- 
 forward a large part of Cellini's time was wasted in 
 wrangling with the Duke's steward, squabbling with 
 Bandinelli and Ammanati, and endeavoring to over- 
 come the coldness or to meet the vacillations of his 
 patron. Those who wish to gain insight into the 
 life of an artist at Court in the sixteenth century 
 will do well to study attentively the chapters devoted 
 by Cellini to his difficulties with the Duchess, and 
 his wordy warfares with Bandinelli. 1 This atmos- 
 phere of intrigue and animosity was not uncongenial 
 to Benvenuto ; and as far as words and blows went, 
 he almost always got the best of it. Nothing, for 
 example, could be keener and more cutting than the 
 very just criticism he made in Bandinelli's presence 
 of his Hercules and Cacus. ' Quel bestial buaccio 
 Bandinello,' as he delights to name him, could do 
 nothing but retort with vulgar terms of insult. 8 
 
 1 Lib. ii. cap. 83, 84, 87, 70, 71. 
 
 a ' That beastly big ox, Bandinelli.' Cf. cap. 70 for the critique. 
 It may be said here, in passing, that the insult of Bandinelli, ' Oh 
 sta cheto, soddomitaccio,' seems to have been justified by Benvenuto's 
 conduct, though of course he carefully conceals it in his memoirs. 
 After the charge brought against him by Cencio, for instance, he 
 thought it better to leave Florence. Ib. cap. 61, 62.
 
 478 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 The great achievement of this third period was 
 the modeling and casting of the Perseus. No epi- 
 sode in Cellini's biography is narrated with more force 
 than the climax to his long-protracted labors, when 
 it last, amid the chaos and confusion of innumerable 
 accidents, the metal in his furnace liquefied and filled 
 the mold. After the statue was uncovered in the 
 Loggia de' Lanzi, where it now stands, Cellini 
 achieved a triumph adequate to his own highest ex- 
 pectations. Odes and sonnets in Italian, Greek, and 
 Latin were written in its praise. Pontormo and Bron- 
 zino, the painters, loaded it with compliments. Cellini, 
 ruffling with hand on hilt in silks and satins through 
 the square, was pointed out to foreigners as the great 
 sculptor who had cast the admirable bronze. It was, 
 in truth, no slight distinction for a Florentine artist 
 to erect a statue beneath the Loggia de' Lanzi in 
 the square of the Signory. Every great event in 
 Florentine history had taken place on that piazza. 
 Every name of distinction among the citizens of 
 Florence was connected with its monuments. To 
 this day we may read the course of Florentine art 
 by studying its architecture and sculpture ; and 
 not the least of its many ornaments, in spite of 
 all that may be said against it, is the Perseus of 
 Cellini. 
 
 Cellini completed the Perseus in 1554, His 
 autobiography is carried down to the year 1562,
 
 CELLINI AND HIS AGE. 479 
 
 when it abruptly terminates. It appears that in 
 1558 he received the tonsure and the first ecclesias- 
 tical orders ; but two years later on he married a 
 wife, and died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving three 
 legitimate children. He was buried honorably, 
 and a funeral oration was pronounced above his bier 
 in the Chapter House of the Annunziata. 
 
 As a man, Cellini excites more interest than as 
 an artist ; and for this reason I have refrained from 
 entering into minute criticism of his few remaining 
 masterpieces. It has been well said that the two 
 extremes of society, the statesman and the crafts- 
 man, find their point of meeting in Machiavelli and 
 Cellini, inasmuch as both recognize no moral autho- 
 rity but the individual will. 1 The virtu extolled by 
 Machiavelli is exemplified by Cellini. Machiavelli 
 bids his prince ignore the laws ; Cellini respects no 
 tribunal and takes justice into his own hands. The 
 word conscience does not occur in Machiavelli's 
 phraseology of ethics ; conscience never makes a 
 coward of Cellini, and in the dungeons of S. Angelo 
 he is visited by no remorse. If we seek a literary 
 parallel for the statesman and the artist in their 
 idealization of force and personal character, we find 
 it in Pietro Aretino. In him, too, conscience is ex- 
 tinct ; for him, also, there is no respect of King or 
 Pope ; he has placed himself above law, and substi- 
 
 1 Edgar Quinet, ' Les Revolutions d'ltalie,' p. 358.
 
 480 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 tuted his own will for justice. With his pen, as 
 Cellini with his dagger, he assassinates ; his cynicism 
 serves him for a coat of armor. And so abject is 
 society, so natural has tyranny become, that he ex- 
 torts blackmail from monarchs, makes princes trem- 
 ble, and receives smooth answers to his insults from 
 Buonarroti. These three men, Machiavelli, Cellini, 
 and Aretino, each in his own line, and with tne 
 proper differences that pertain to philosophic genius 
 artistic skill, and ribald ruffianism, sufficiently indi- 
 cate the dissolution of the social bond in Italy 
 They mark their age as the age of adventurers, 
 bandits, bullies, Ishmaelites, and tyrants.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE EPIGONI. 
 
 Full Development and Decline of Painting Exhaustion of the old 
 Motives Relation of Lionardo to his Pupils His Legacy to thfc 
 Lombard School Bernardino Luini Gaudenzio Ferrari The De- 
 votion of the Sacri Monti The School of Raphael Nothing left 
 but Imitation Unwholesome Influences of Rome Giulio Romano 
 Michael Angelesque Mannerists Misconception of Michael 
 Angelo Correggio founds no School Parmigianino Macchinisti 
 The Bolognese After-growth of Art in Florence Andrea del 
 Sarto His followers Pontormo Bronzino Revival of Painting 
 in Siena Sodoma His Influence on Pacchia, Beccafumi, Peruzzi 
 Garofalo and Dosso Dossi at Ferrara The Campi at Cremona 
 Brescia and Bergamo The Decadence in the second half of the 
 Sixteenth Century The Counter-Reformation Extinction of the 
 Renaissance Impulse. 
 
 IN the foregoing chapters I have not sought to 
 write again the history of art so much as to keep in 
 view the relation between Italian art and the leading 
 intellectual impulses of the Renaissance. In the 
 masters of the sixteenth century Lionardo, Raphael, 
 Michael Angelo, Correggio, and the Venetians the 
 force inherent in the Italian genius for painting 
 reached full development. What remained was but 
 an after-bloom, rapidly tending to decadence. To 
 surpass those men in their own line seemed impos- 
 sible. What they had achieved was so transcendent
 
 482 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 that imitation satisfied their successors ; and if they 
 refused imitation, originality had to be sought by 
 deviating into extravagances. Meanwhile no new 
 stock of thoughts had been acquired ; and students 
 of history are now well aware that for really great 
 art ideas common to the nation are essential. The 
 motives suggested by mediaeval Christianity, after 
 passing through successive stages of treatment in 
 the quattrocento, had received the grand and humane 
 handling of the golden age. The motives of revived 
 paganism in like manner were exhausted, and at 
 this time the feeling for antiquity had lost its primal 
 freshness. It might seem superfluous to carry this 
 inquiry further, when we have thus confessedly 
 attained the culminating point of painting. Yet the 
 sketch attempted in this volume would be incom- 
 plete and liable to misinterpretation, if no account 
 were taken of the legacy bequeathed to the next 
 generation by the great masters. 
 
 Lionardo da Vinci formed, as we have seen, a 
 school at Milan. It was the special good fortune of 
 his pupils that what he actually accomplished bore 
 no proportion to the suggestiveness of his teaching 
 and the fertility of his invention. Of finished work 
 he left but little to the world ; while his sketches 
 and designs, the teeming thoughts of his creative 
 brain, were an inestimable heritage. The whole of 
 this rich legacy of masterpieces, projected, but not
 
 LION ARDORS PUPILS. 483 
 
 executed, was characterized by a feeling for beauty 
 which has fallen to no other painter. When we ex- 
 amine the sketches in the Royal Collection at Wind- 
 sor, we perceive that the exceeding sense of loveli- 
 ness possessed by Lionardo could not have failed to 
 animate his pupils with a high spirit of art. At 
 the same time the extraordinary variety of his draw- 
 ing sometimes reminding us of German method, 
 sometimes modem in the manner of French and 
 English draughtsmen by turns bold and delicate, 
 broad and minute in detail afforded to his school 
 examples of perfect treatment in a multiplicity of 
 different styles. There was no formality of fixed 
 unalterable precedent in Lionardo, nothing for his 
 scholars to repeat with the monotony of mannerism. 
 It remained for his disciples, each in his own 
 sphere, with inferior powers and feebler intellect, to 
 perpetuate the genius of their master. Thus the 
 spirit of Lionardo continued to live in Lombardy 
 after he was dead. There alone imitation was really 
 fruitful, because it did not imply mere copying. 
 Instead of attempting to give a fresh and therefore 
 a strained turn to motives that had already received 
 consummate treatment, Lionardo's successors were 
 able to execute what he had planned but had not 
 carried to completion. Nor was the prestige of his 
 style so oppressive through the mass of pictures 
 painted by his hand as to check individuality or to
 
 484 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 prevent the pupil from working out such portions of 
 the master's vein as suited his own talent. Each 
 found enough suggested, but not used, to give his 
 special faculty free scope. This is in fact the reason 
 why the majority of pictures ascribed to Lionardo 
 are really the production of his school. They have 
 the excellence of original work, but not such excel- 
 lence as Lionardo could have given them. Their 
 completion is due, as searching criticism proves, to 
 lesser men ; but the conception belongs to the 
 greatest. 
 
 Andrea Salaino, Marco d'Oggiono, Francesco 
 Melzi, Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio, and Cesare da 
 Sesto are all of them skilled workmen, losing and 
 finding their individuality, as just described, in the 
 manner of their master. Salaino brings exquisite 
 delicacy of execution ; d'Oggiono, wild and bizarre 
 beauty ; Melzi, the refinements of a miniaturist ; 
 Beltraffio, hard brilliancy of light and color ; Cesare 
 da Sesto, somewhat of effeminate sweetness; and 
 thus the qualities of many men emerge, to blend 
 themselves again in what is Lionardo's own. It is 
 surely not without significance that this metempsy- 
 chosis of genius should have happened in the case of 
 Lionardo, himself the magician of Renaissance art, the 
 lover of all things double-natured and twin-souled. 
 
 Two painters of the Lombard school, Bernardino 
 Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, demand separate
 
 L UINI. 485 
 
 notice. Without Lionardo it is difficult to say what 
 Luini would have been : so thoroughly did he ap- 
 propriate his teacher's type of face, and, in oil-paint- 
 ing, his refinement. And yet Luini stands on his 
 own ground, in no sense an imitator, with a genius 
 more simple and idyllic than Da Vinci's. Little con- 
 ception of his charm can be formed by those who 
 have not seen his frescoes in the Brera and S. Mau- 
 rizio Maggiore at Milan, in the church of the Angeli 
 at Lugano, or in the pilgrimage church of Saronno. 
 To the circumstance of his having done his best 
 work in places hardly visited until of late years may 
 in part perhaps be attributed the tardy recognition 
 of a painter eminently fitted to be popular. Luini 
 was essentially a fresco-painter. None, perhaps, of 
 all the greatest Italian frescanti realized a higher 
 quality of brilliancy without gaudiness, by the scale 
 of colors he selected and by the purity with which 
 he used them in simple combinations. His frescoes 
 are never dull or heavy in tone, never glaring, never 
 thin or chalky. He knew how to render them both 
 luminous and rich, without falling into the extremes 
 that render fresco-paintings often less attractive than 
 oil-pictures. His feeling for loveliness of form was 
 original and exquisite. The joy of youth found 
 in Luini an interpreter only less powerful and even 
 more tender than in Raphael. While he shared 
 with the Venetians their sensibility to nature, he
 
 486 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 had none of their sensuousness or love of pomp 
 In idyllic painting of a truly great type I know ol 
 nothing more delightful than his figures of young 
 musicians going to the marriage-feast of Mary, 
 nothing more graceful than the genius ivy-crowned 
 and seated at the foot of the cross. 1 The sentiment 
 for naive and artless grace, so fully possessed by 
 Luini, gave freshness to his treatment of conven- 
 tional religious themes. Under his touch they ap- 
 peal immediately to the most untutored taste, without 
 the aid of realistic or sensational effects. Even S. 
 Sebastian and S. Rocco, whom it is difficult to rep- 
 resent with any novelty of attitude or expression, 
 became for him the motives of fresh poetry, un- 
 sought but truly felt 2 Among all the Madonnas 
 ever painted his picture of Mary with the espalier of 
 white roses, and another where she holds the infant 
 Christ to pluck a purple columbine, distinguish them- 
 selves by this engaging spontaneity. The frescoes 
 of the marriage of the Virgin and of S. Catherine 
 carried by angels to Mount Sinai might be cited for 
 the same quality of freshness and unstudied poetry. 3 
 When the subject demanded the exercise of grave 
 emotion, Luini rose to the occasion without losing 
 his simplicity. The Martyrdom of S. Catherine and 
 
 1 Frescoes in the Brera, and at Lugano. 
 
 1 S. Maurizio, on the Screen, inner church. Lugano in the Angeli. 
 1 In the Brera. See also the Madonna, with Infant Christ, S. 
 John, and a Lamb at Lugano.
 
 TENDERNESS AND TRUTH. 487 
 
 the fresco of Christ after the Flagellation are two 
 masterpieces, wherein the depths of pathos have 
 been sounded, and not a single note of discord is 
 struck. 1 All harsh and disagreeable details are 
 either eliminated or so softened that the general 
 impression, as in Pergolese's music, is one of pro- 
 foundest and yet sweetest sorrow. Luini's genius 
 was not tragic. The nearest approach to a dramatic 
 motive in his work is the figure of the Magdalen 
 kneeling before the cross, with her long yellow hair 
 streaming over her shoulders, and her arms thrown 
 backward in an ecstasy of grief. 2 He did well to 
 choose moments that stir tender sympathy the piety 
 of deep and calm devotion. How truly he felt them 
 more truly, I think, than Perugino in his best period 
 is proved by the correspondence they awake in us. 
 Like melodies, they create a mood in the spectator. 
 
 What Luini did not learn from Lionardo was the 
 art of composition. Taken one by one, the figures 
 that make up \usMarriageof the Virgin at Saronno 
 are beautiful ; but the whole picture is clumsily con- 
 structed ; and what is true of this may be said of 
 every painting in which he attempted complicated 
 grouping. 3 We feel him to be a great artist only 
 
 1 Side chapel of S. Maurizio at Milan. These frescoes are, m my 
 opinion, Luini's very best. The whole church is a wonderful monu- 
 ment of Lombard art. 
 
 3 ' Crucifixion ' at Lugano. 
 
 8 See, for example, the oil-paintings in the cathedral of Como, so 
 fascinating in their details, so lame in composition.
 
 488 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 where the subject does not demand the symmetrical 
 arrangement of many parts. 
 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari was a genius of a different 
 order, more robust, more varied, but less single- 
 minded than Luini. His style reveals the influences 
 of a many-sided, ill-assimilated education ; blending 
 the manners of Bramantino, Lionardo, and Raphael 
 without proper fusion. Though Ferrari traveled 
 much, and learned his art in several schools, he, 
 like Luini, can only be studied in the Milanese dis- 
 trict at his birthplace Varallo, at Saronno, Vercelli, 
 and Milan. It is to be regretted that a painter of 
 such singular ability, almost unrivaled at moments 
 in the expression of intense feeling and the repre- 
 sentation of energetic movement, should have lacked 
 a simpler training, or have been unable to adopt a 
 manner more uniform. There is a strength of wing 
 in his imaginative flight, a swiftness and impetu- 
 osity in his execution, and a dramatic force in his 
 conception, that almost justify Lomazzo's choice of 
 the eagle for his emblem. Yet he was unable to 
 collect his powers, or to rule them. The distrac- 
 tions of an age that had produced its masterpieces 
 were too strong for him ; and what he failed to find 
 was balance. His picture of the Martyrdom oj 
 S. Catherine, where reminiscences of Raphael and 
 Lionardo mingle with the uncouth motives of an 
 earlier style in a medley without unity of composi-
 
 GAUDENZIO FERRARI. 489 
 
 tion or harmony of coloring, might be chosen as a 
 typical instance of great resources misapplied. 1 
 
 The most pleasing of Ferrari's paintings are 
 choirs of angels, sorrowing or rejoicing, some of 
 them exquisitely and originally beautiful, all ani- 
 mated with unusual life, and poised upon wings 
 powerful enough to bear them veritable ' birds of 
 God.' 3 His dramatic scenes from sacred history, rich 
 in novel motives and exuberantly full of invention, 
 crowd the churches of Vercelli ; while a whole 
 epic of the Passion is painted in fresco above the 
 altar of S. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo, covering 
 the wall from basement to ceiling. The prodi- 
 gality of power displayed by Ferrari makes up for 
 much of crudity in style and confusion in aim ; 
 nor can we refuse the tribute of warmest admira- 
 tion to a master who, when the schools of Rome 
 and Florence were sinking into emptiness and bom- 
 bast, preserved the fire of feeling for serious themes. 
 What was deadly in the neo-paganism of the Re- 
 naissance its frivolity and worldliness, corroding 
 the very sources of belief in men who made of art 
 a decoration for their sensuous existence had not 
 penetrated to those Lombard valleys where Ferrari 
 and Luini worked. There the devotion of the 
 Sacri Monti still maintained an intelligence between 
 
 1 In the Brera. 
 
 * Frescoes at Saronno and in the Sacro Monte at Varallo,
 
 490 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 the people and the artist t far more fruitful of results 
 to painting than the patronage of splendor-loving 
 cardinals and nobles. 1 
 
 Passing from Lionardo to Raphael, we find ex- 
 actly the reverse of what has hithe^o been noticed 
 Raphael worked out the mine of his own thought 
 so thoroughly so completely exhausted the motives 
 of his invention, and carried his style to such per- 
 fection that he left nothing unused for his followers. 
 We have seen that he formed a school of subor- 
 dinates in Rome who executed his later frescoes 
 after his designs. Some of these men have names 
 that can be mentioned Giulio Romano, of whom 
 more hereafter ; Perino del Vaga, the decorator of 
 Genoese palaces in a style of over-blown but gor- 
 geous Raphaelism ; Andrea Sabbatini, who carried 
 the Roman tradition down to Naples; Francesco 
 Penni, Giovanni da Udine, and Polidoro da Cara- 
 
 1 The whole lake-district of Italy, where the valleys of Monte Rosa 
 and the Simplon descend upon the plain of Lombardy, is rich in 
 works of this school. At Luino and Lugano, on the island of San 
 Giulio, and in the hill-set chapels of the Val Sesia, may be found 
 traces of frescoes of incomparable beauty. One of these sites deserves 
 special mention. Just at the point where the pathway of the Colma 
 leaves the chestnut groves and meadows to join the road leading to 
 Varallo, there stands a little chapel, with an open loggia of round Re- 
 naissance arches, designed and painted, according to tradition, by 
 Ferrari, and without doubt representative of his manner. The har- 
 mony between its colors, so mellow in their ruin, its graceful arcades 
 and quiet roofing, and the glowing tones of those granite mountains, 
 with their wealth of vineyards and their forests of immemorial chest- 
 nut trees, is perfect beyond words.
 
 SCHOOL OF RAPHAEL. 491 
 
 vaggio. Their work, even while superintended by 
 Raphael himself, began to show the signs of deca- 
 dence. In his Roman manner the dramatic element 
 was conspicuous; and to carry dramatic painting 
 beyond the limits of good style in art is unfortu- 
 nately easy. The Hall of Constantine, left un- 
 finished at his death, still further proved how little 
 his pupils could do without him. 1 When Raphael 
 died, the breath whose might sustained and made 
 them potent ceased. For all the higher purposes of 
 genuine art, inspiration passed from them as color 
 fades from eastern clouds at sunset, suddenly. 
 
 It has been customary to account for this rapid 
 decline of the Roman school by referring to the sack 
 of Rome in 1527. No doubt the artists suffered 
 at that moment at least as severely as the scholars ; 
 their dispersion broke up a band of eminent painters, 
 who might in combination and competition have 
 still achieved great things. Yet the secret of their 
 subsequent failure lay far deeper; partly in the full 
 development of their master's style, already de- 
 scribed ; and partly in the social conditions of Rome 
 itself. Patrons, stimulated by the example of the 
 Popes, desired vast decorative works ; but they 
 expected these to be performed rapidly and at a 
 
 1 This, the last of the Stanze, was only in part designed by Raphael. 
 In spite of what I have said above, the ' Battle of Constantine,' planned 
 by Raphael and executed by Giulio, is a grand example of a pupil's 
 power to cany out his master's scheme.
 
 492 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 cheap rate. Painters, familiarized with the execu- 
 tion of such undertakings, forgot that hitherto the 
 conception had been not theirs but Raphael's. Mis- 
 taking hand-work for brain-work, they audaciously 
 accepted commissions that would have taxed the 
 powers of the master himself. Meanwhile moral 
 earnestness and technical conscientiousness were 
 both extinct. The patrons required show and sen- 
 sual magnificence far more than thought and sub- 
 stance. They were not, therefore, deterred by the 
 vacuity and poor conceptive faculty of the artists 
 from employing them. What the age demanded 
 was a sumptuous parade of superficial ornament, 
 and this the pupils of Raphael felt competent to 
 supply without much effort. The result was that 
 painters who under favorable circumstances might 
 have done some meritorious work became mere 
 journeymen contented with the soulless insincerity 
 of cheap effects. Giulio Romano alone, by dint of 
 robust energy and lurid fire of fancy flickering amid 
 the smoke of his coarser nature, achieved a triumph 
 in this line of labor. His Palazzo del Te will 
 always remain the monument of a specific moment 
 in Renaissance history, since it is adequate to the 
 intellectual conditions of a race demoralized but 
 living still with largeness and a sense of grandeur. 
 
 Michael Angelo formed no school in the strict 
 sense of the word. Yet his influence was not the
 
 INFLUENCE OF MICHAEL ANGELO. 493 
 
 less felt on that account, nor less powerful than 
 Raphael's in the same direction. During his man- 
 hood the painters Sebastian del Piombo, Marcello 
 Venusti, and Daniele da Volterra had endeavored 
 to add the charm of oil-coloring to his designs; 
 and long before his death, the seduction of his 
 mighty mannerism had begun to exercise a fatal 
 charm for all the schools of Italy. Painters inca- 
 pable of fathoming his intention, unsympathetic to 
 his rare type of intellect, and gifted with less than 
 a tithe of his native force, set themselves to reproduce 
 whatever may be justly censured in his works. To 
 heighten and enlarge their style was reckoned a 
 chief duty of aspiring craftsmen ; and it was thought 
 that recipes for attaining to this final perfection of 
 the modern arts might be extracted without trouble 
 from Michael Angelo's masterpieces. Unluckily, in 
 proportion as his fame increased, his peculiarities 
 grew with the advance of age more manneristic and 
 defined ; so that his imitators fixed precisely upon that 
 which sober critics now regard as a deduction from 
 his greatness. They failed to perceive that he owed 
 his grandeur to his personality ; and that the audaci- 
 ties which fascinated them became mere whimsical 
 extravagances when severed from his terribilita and 
 somber simplicity of impassioned thought. His 
 power and his spirit were alike unique and uncom- 
 municable, while the admiration of his youthful wor-
 
 494 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 shipers betrayed them into imitating the externals 
 of a style that was rapidly losing spontaneity and 
 sense of beauty. Therefore they fancied they were 
 treading in his footsteps and using the grand manner 
 when they covered church-roofs and canvases with 
 sprawling figures in distorted attitudes. Instead of 
 studying nature, they studied Michael Angelo's 
 cartoons, exaggerating by their unintelligent disciple- 
 ship his willfulness and arbitrary choice of form. 
 
 Vasari's and Cellini's criticisms of a master they 
 both honestly revered may suffice to illustrate the 
 false method adopted by these mimics of Michael 
 Angelo's ideal. To charge him with faults proceed- 
 ing from the weakness and blindness of the deca- 
 dence the faults of men too blind to read his art 
 aright, too weak to stand on their own feet without 
 him would be either stupid or malicious. If at the 
 close of the sixteenth century the mannerists sought 
 to startle and entrance the world by empty exhibi- 
 tions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a 
 braggadocio display of meaningless effects crowd- 
 ing their compositions with studies from the nude, 
 and painting agitated groups without a discernible 
 cause for agitation the crime surely lay with the 
 patrons who liked such decoration, and with the 
 journeymen who provided it. Michael Angelo him- 
 self always made his manner serve his thought. We 
 may fail to appreciate his manner and may be in-
 
 CORREGGIESQUE MANNERISM. 495 
 
 capable of comprehending his thought ; but only 
 insincere or conceited critics will venture to gauge 
 the latter by what they feel to be displeasing in the 
 former. What seems lawless in him follows the 
 law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, 
 whether we like it or not, we must reckon. His 
 imitators were devoid of thought and too indifferent 
 to question whether there was any law to be obeyed. 
 Like the jackass in the fable, they put on the dead 
 lion's skin of his manner, and brayed beneath it, 
 thinking they could roar. 
 
 Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said 
 to have founded a school, was destined to exercise 
 wide and perilous influence over a host of manner- 
 istic imitators. Francesco Mazzola, called II Par- 
 migianino, followed him so closely that his frescoes 
 at Parma are hardly distinguishable from the mas- 
 ter's ; while Federigo Baroccio at Urbino endeav- 
 ored to preserve the sensuous and almost childish 
 sweetness of his style in its integrity. 1 But the real 
 attraction of Correggio was only felt when the new 
 barocco architecture called for a new kind of deco- 
 ration. Every cupola throughout the length and 
 breadth of Italy began then to be painted with rolling 
 clouds and lolling angels. What the wits of Parma 
 had once stigmatized as a ragout of frogs now 
 
 1 Baroccio had great authority at Florence in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, when the cult of Correggio had overspread all Italy.
 
 496 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 
 
 seemed the only possible expression for celestial ec- 
 stasy ; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those 
 multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of 
 religious etiquette. False lights, dubious foreshort- 
 enings, shallow colorings, ill-studied forms, and mo- 
 tiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy 
 brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for 
 their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism 
 that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of 
 the figure in feather-beds of vapor, requiring neither 
 effort of conception nor expenditure of labor on 
 drawing and composition. At the same time, the 
 Caracci made Correggio's style the object of more 
 serious study ; and the history of Bolognese painting 
 shows what was to be derived from this master by 
 intelligent and conscientious workmen. 
 
 Hitherto, I have had principally to record the 
 errors of artists copying the external qualities of 
 their great predecessors. It is refreshing to turn 
 from the epigoni of the so-called Roman school to 
 masters in whom the flame of the Renaissance still 
 burned brightly. Andrea del Sarto, the pupil of 
 Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to 
 Fra Bartolommeo than to any other of the elder 
 masters, was himself a contemporary of Raphael 
 and Correggio. Yet he must be noticed here ; 
 because he gave new qualities to the art of Tuscany, 
 and formed a tradition decisive for the subsequent 
 history of Florentine painting. To make a just
 
 ANDKEA DEL SARTO. 497 
 
 estimate of his achievement is a task of no small 
 difficulty. The Italians called him ' il pittore senza 
 errori,' or the faultless painter. What they meant by 
 this must have been that in all the technical require- 
 ments of art, in drawing, composition, handling of 
 fresco and oils, disposition of draperies, and feeling 
 for light and shadow, he was above criticism. As a 
 colorist he went further and produced more beau- 
 tiful effects than any Florentine before him. His 
 silver-gray harmonies and liquid blendings of hues 
 cool, yet lustrous, have a charm peculiar to himself 
 alone. We find the like nowhere else in Italy. And 
 yet Andrea del Sarto can not take rank among the 
 greatest Renaissance painters. What he lacked was 
 precisely the most precious gift inspiration, depth 
 of emotion, energy of thought. We are apt to feel 
 that even his best pictures were designed with a 
 view to solving an aesthetic problem. Very few 
 have the poetic charm belonging to the S. John of 
 the Pitti or the Madonna of the Tribune. Beauti 
 ful as are many of his types, like the Magdalen in 
 the large picture of the Pieta^ we can never be sure 
 that he will not break the spell by forms of almost 
 vulgar mediocrity. The story that his wife, a worth- 
 less woman, sat for his Madonnas, and the legends 
 of his working for money to meet pressing needs, 
 seem justified by numbers of his paintings, faulty 
 
 'Pitti Palace.
 
 498 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 in their faultlessness and want of spirit. Still, after 
 making these deductions, we must allow that Andrea 
 del Sarto not unworthily represents the golden age 
 at Florence. There is no affectation, no false taste, 
 no trickery in his style. His workmanship is always 
 solid ; his hand unerring. If nature denied him the 
 soul of a poet and the stern will needed for escap- 
 ing from the sordid circumstances of his life, she 
 gave him some of the highest qualities a painter 
 can desire qualities of strength, tranquillity, and 
 thoroughness, that in the decline of the century 
 ceased to exist outside Venice. 
 
 Among Del Sarto's followers it will be enough to 
 mention Franciabigio, Vasari's favorite in fresco- 
 painting, Rosso de' Rossi, who carried the Florentine 
 manner into France, and Pontormo, the masterly 
 painter of portraits. 1 In the historical pictures of 
 these men, whether sacred or secular, it is clear how 
 much was done for Florentine art by Fra Barto- 
 lommeo and Del Sarto independently of Michael 
 Angelo and Lionardo. Angelo Bronzino, the pupil 
 of Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his portraits. 
 Hard and cold, yet obviously true to life, they form a 
 gallery of great interest for the historian of Duke 
 Cosimo's reign. His frescoes and allegories illus- 
 
 1 Franciabigio's and Rosso's frescoes stand beside Del Sarto's in the 
 atrium of the Annunziata at Florence. Pontormo's portraits of Cosimo 
 and Lorenzo de' Medici in the Uffizzi, though painted from busts and 
 medallions, have a real historical value.
 
 IL SODOMA. 499 
 
 trate the defects that have been pointed out in those 
 of Raphael's and Buonarroti's imitators. 1 Want of 
 thought and feeling, combined with the presump- 
 tuous treatment of colossal and imaginative subjects, 
 renders these compositions inexpressibly chilling. 
 The psychologist, who may have read a poem from 
 Bronzino's pen, will be inclined to wonder how far 
 this barren art was not connected with personal 
 corruption. 2 Such speculations are, however, apt to 
 be misleading. 
 
 Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received 
 a fresh impulse at the same time as Florence. Gio- 
 vanni Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called II Sodoma, 
 was born at Vercelli about 1477. He studied in his 
 youth under Lionardo da Vinci, training his own 
 exquisite sense of natural beauty in that scientific 
 school. From Milan, after a certain interval of time, 
 he removed to Rome, where he became a friend 
 and follower of Raphael. These double influences 
 determined a style that never lost its own originality. 
 With what delicacy and naivete, almost like a second 
 Luini, but with more of humor and sensuousness, 
 he approached historic themes may be seen in his 
 frescoes at Monte Oliveto. 3 They were executed 
 
 1 The ' Christ in Limbo ' in S. Lorenzo at Florence, and the detesta- 
 ble picture of ' Time, Beauty, Love, and Folly' in our National 
 Gallery. 
 
 5 ' Opere Burlesche,' vol. iii. pp. 39-46. 
 
 8 Near Siena. These pictures are a series of twenty-four subjects 
 from the life of S. Benedict.
 
 500 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 before his Roman visit, and show the facility of a 
 most graceful improvisatore. One painting repre- 
 senting the Temptation of Monks by Dancing Women 
 carries the melody of fluent lines and the seduction 
 of fair girlish faces into a region of pure poetiy. 
 These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in 
 the Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by 
 the monumental character of Rome, and fired by 
 Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy 
 and idyllic style for one of greater majesty and full- 
 ness. The delicious freshness of his earlier manner 
 was sacrificed ; but his best efforts to produce a 
 grandiose composition ended in a confusion of indi- 
 vidually beautiful but ill-assorted motives. Like 
 Luini, Sodoma was never successful in pictures re- 
 quiring combination and arrangement. He lacked 
 some sense of symmetry, and sought to achieve mas- 
 siveness by crowding figures in a given space. When 
 we compare his group of .5*. Catherine Fainting under 
 the Stigmata with the medley of agitated forms that 
 make up his picture of the same saint at Tuldo's 
 execution, we see plainly that he ought to have 
 confined himself to the expression of very simple 
 themes. 1 The former is incomparable for its sweet- 
 ness ; the latter is indistinct and wearying, in spite 
 of many details that adorn it. Gifted with an ex- 
 quisite feeling for the beauty of the human body 
 
 1 In the church of S. Domenico, Siena.
 
 SIENESE PAINTERS. 501 
 
 Sodoma excelled himself when he was contented with 
 a single figure. His S. Sebastian, notwithstanding 
 its wan and faded coloring, is still the very best 
 that has been painted. 1 Suffering, refined and spir- 
 itual, without contortion or spasm, could not be 
 presented with more pathos in a form of more sur- 
 passing loveliness. This is a truly demonic picture 
 in the fascination it exercises and the memory it 
 leaves upon the mind. Part of its unanalyzable 
 charm may be due to the bold thought of combining 
 the beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian 
 sentiment of martyrdom. Only the Renaissance 
 could have produced a hybrid so successful, because 
 so deeply felt. 
 
 Sodoma's influence at Siena, where he lived a 
 picturesque life, delighting in his horses and sur- 
 rounding himself with strange four-footed pets of all 
 sorts, soon produced a school of worthy masters. 
 Girolamo del Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi, and 
 Baldassare Peruzzi, though they owed much to the 
 stimulus of his example, followed him in no servile 
 spirit. Indeed, it may be said that Pacchia's paint- 
 ings in the Oratory of S. Bernardino, though they 
 lacked his siren beauty, are more powerfully com- 
 posed ; while Peruzzi's fresco of Augustus and the 
 Sibyl, in the church of Fontegiusta, has a monu- 
 
 1 In the Uffizzi. See also Sodoma's ' Sacrifice of Isaac' in the ca- 
 thedral of Pisa, and the ' Christ Bound to the Pillar ' in the Academy at 
 Siena.
 
 502 RENAISSANCE JN ITALY. 
 
 mental dignity unknown to Sodoma. Beccafumi is 
 apt to leave the spectator of his paintings cold. 
 From inventive powers so rich and technical excel- 
 lence so thorough we demand more than he can 
 give, and are therefore disappointed. His most in- 
 teresting picture at Siena is the Stigmatization of 
 S. Catherine, famous for its mastery of graduated 
 whites. Much of the paved work of the Duomo 
 is attributed to his design. Both Beccafumi and 
 Peruzzi felt the cold and manneristic Roman style 
 of rhetoric injuriously. 
 
 To mention the remaining schools of Italy in 
 detail would be superfluous. True art still flourished 
 at Ferrara, where Garofalo endeavored to carry on 
 the Roman manner of Raphael without the neces- 
 sary strength or ideality, but also without the soul- 
 less insincerity, of the mannerists. His best quality 
 was coloring, gem-like and rich ; but this found little 
 scope for exercise in the dry and labored style he 
 affected. Dosso Dossi fared better, perhaps through 
 having never experienced the seductions of Rome. 
 His glowing color and quaint fancy give the attrac- 
 tion of romance to many of his pictures. The Circe, 
 for example, of the Borghese Palace, is worthy to 
 rank with the best Renaissance work. It is per- 
 fectly original, not even suggesting the influence of 
 Venice by its deep and lustrous hues. No painting 
 is more fit to illustrate the Orlando Innamorato.
 
 FERRARA, CREMONA, BRESCIA. 503 
 
 Just so, we feel in looking at it, did Dragontina show 
 herself to Boiardo's fancy. Ariosto's Alcina belongs 
 to a different family of magnificent witches. 
 
 Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painters, 
 influenced almost equally by the Venetians, the Mi- 
 lanese, and the Roman mannerists. The Campi 
 family covered those grave Lombard vaults with 
 stucco, fresco, and gilding in a style only just re- 
 moved from the barocco. 1 Brescia and Bergamo 
 remained within the influence of Venice, producing 
 work of nearly first-rate quality in Moretto, Roma- 
 nino, and Lorenzo Lotto. Moroni, the pupil of 
 Moretto, was destined to become one of the most 
 powerful character painters of the modern world, 
 and to enrich the studies of historians and artists 
 with a series of portraits impressive by their 
 fidelity to the spirit of the sixteenth century at 
 its conclusion. Venice herself at this period was 
 still producing masterpieces of the genuine Renais- 
 sance. But the decline into mannerism, caused by 
 circumstances similar to those of Rome, was not far 
 distant. 
 
 It may seem strange to those who have visited 
 the picture-galleries of Italy, and have noticed how 
 very large a number of the painters flourished after 
 1550, that I should have persistently spoken of the 
 
 1 The church of S. Sigismondo, outside Cremona, is very interest- 
 ing for the unity of style in its architecture and decoration.
 
 504 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 last half of the sixteenth century as a period of de- 
 cadence. This it was, however, in a deep and true 
 sense of the word. The force of the Renaissance 
 was exhausted, and a time of relaxation had to be 
 passed through before the reaction known as the 
 Counter-Reformation could make itself felt in art. 
 Then, and not till then, a new spiritual impulse pro- 
 duced a new style. This secondary growth of 
 painting began to flourish at Bologna in accordance 
 with fresh laws of taste. Religious sentiments of a 
 different order had to be expressed ; society had 
 undergone a change, and the arts were governed by 
 a genuine, if far inferior, inspiration. Meanwhile, 
 the Renaissance, so far as Italy is concerned, was 
 ended. 
 
 It is one of the sad features of this subject, that 
 each section has to end in lamentation. Servitude in 
 the sphere of politics ; literary feebleness in scholar- 
 ship ; decadence in art to shun these conclusions is 
 impossible. He who has undertaken to describe the 
 parabola of a projectile can not be satisfied with trac- 
 ing its gradual rise and determining its culminatioa 
 He must follow its spent force, and watch it slowly 
 sink with ever-dwindling impetus to earth. Intel- 
 lectual movements, when we isolate them in a special 
 country, observing the causes that set them in motion 
 and calculating their retarding influences, may, not 
 unreasonably, be compared to the parabola of a pro-
 
 DECLINE OF ART. 505 
 
 jectile. To shrink from studying the decline of 
 mental vigor in Italy upon the close of the Renais- 
 sance would be therefore weak ; chough the task 
 of tracing the impulse communicated by her pre- 
 vious energy to other nations, and their stirring 
 under a like movement, might be more agreeable,
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello. 
 
 HAVING tried to characterize Niccola Pisano's relation to 
 early Italian art in the second chapter of this volume, I 
 adverted to the recent doubts which have been thrown by 
 very competent authorities upon Vasari's legend of this 
 master. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, while discussing 
 the question of his birthplace and his early training, ob- 
 serve, what is no doubt true, that there are no traces of 
 good sculpture in Pisa antecedent to the Baptistery pulpit 
 of 1260, and remark that for such a phenomenon as the 
 sudden appearance of this masterpiece it is needful to 
 seek some antecedents elsewhere. 1 This leads them to 
 ask whether Niccola did not owe his origin and education 
 to some other part of Italy. Finding at Ravello, near 
 Amalfi, a pulpit sculptured in 1272 by Niccola di Barto- 
 lommeo da Foggia, they suggest that a school of stone- 
 carvers may have flourished at Foggia, and that Niccola 
 Pisano, in spite of his signing himself Pisanus on the 
 Baptistery pulpit, may have been an Apulian trained in 
 that school. The arguments adduced in favor of that 
 hypothesis are that Niccola's father, though commonly 
 
 1 ' History of Painting in Italy,' vol. i. chap. iv.
 
 $o8 APPENDIX 7. 
 
 believed to have been Ser Pietro da Siena, was perhaps 
 called Pietro di Apulia, 1 and that meritorious artists cer- 
 tainly existed at Foggia and Trani. Yet the resemblance 
 of style between the pulpits at Ravello [1272] and Pisa 
 [1260], if that indeed exists (whereof hereafter more must 
 be said), might b^ used to prove that Niccola da Foggia 
 learned his art from Niccola Pisano, instead of the con- 
 trary ; nor again, supposing the Apulian school to have 
 flourished before 1260, is it inconsistent with the tradition 
 of Niccola's life that he should have learned the sculptor's 
 craft while working in his youth at Naples. For the rest, 
 Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle dismiss the story of Pi- 
 sano's studying the antique bass-reliefs at Pisa with con. 
 tempt ;" but they omit to notice the actual transcripts 
 from those marbles introduced into his first pulpit. Again, 
 they assume that the lunette at Lucca was one of his 
 latest works, giving precedence to the pulpits of Pisa and 
 Siena and the fountain of Perugia. A comparison of style 
 no doubt renders this view plausible ; for the lunette at 
 Lucca is superior to any other of Pisano's works as a 
 composition. 
 
 The full discussion of these points is rendered impos- 
 sible by the want of contemporary information, and each 
 student must, therefore, remain contented with his own 
 hypothesis. Yet something must be said with regard to 
 the Ravello pulpit that plays so important a part in the ar- 
 gument of the learned historians of Italian painting. Un- 
 less a strong similarity between it and Pisano's pulpits can 
 be proved, their hypothesis carries with it no persuasion. 
 
 The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello is formed like 
 an ambo of the antique type. That is to say, it is a long 
 parallelogram with flat sides, raised upon pillars, and ap- 
 
 1 Loc. cit. p. 127, note. * Loc. cit. p. 127.
 
 THE PULPITS OF PISA AND RA VELLO. 509 
 
 preached by a flight of steps. These steps are inclosed 
 within richly-ornamented walls, and stand distinct from 
 the pulpit; a short bridge connects the two. The six 
 pillars supporting the ambo itself are slender twisted 
 columns with classic capitals. Three rest on lions, three 
 on lionesses, admirably carved in different attitudes. A 
 small projection on the north side of the pulpit sustains 
 an eagle standing on a pillar, and spreading out his wings 
 to bear an open book. On the arch over the entrance to 
 the staircase projects the head of Sigelgaita, wife of Nic- 
 cola Rufolo, the donor of the pulpit to the church, sculp- 
 tured in the style of the Roman decadence, between two 
 profile medallions in low relief. 1 The material of the 
 whole is fair white marble, enriched with mosaics, and 
 wrought into beautiful scroll-work of acanthus leaves and 
 other Romanesque adornments. An inscription, 'Ego 
 Magister Nicolaus de Bartholomeo de Fogia Marmorarius 
 hoc opus fed ; and another, ' Lapsis millenis bis centum 
 bisque trigenis XPI. bissenis annis ab origine plenisj indi- 
 cate the artist's name and the date of the work. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how any one could trace 
 such a resemblance between this rectangular ambo and 
 the hexagonal structure in the Pisan Baptistery as would 
 justify them in asserting both to be the products of the 
 same school. The pulpit of Niccola da Foggia does not 
 materially differ from other ambones in Italy from several, 
 for instance, in Amalfi and Ravello ; while the distinctive 
 features of Niccola Pisano's work the combination of 
 classically-studied bass-reliefs with Gothic principles of 
 
 1 Mr. Perkins, following the suggestion of Panza, in his 'Istoria 
 dell' Antica Republica d' Amalfi/ is inclined to think that this head rep- 
 resents, not Sigelgaita, but Joanna II. of Naples, and is therefore 
 more than a century later in date than the pulpit. See ' Italian Sculp- 
 tors,' p. 51.
 
 5io APPENDIX I. 
 
 construction, the feeling for artistic unity in the compo- 
 sition of groups, the mastery over plastic form, and the 
 detached allegorical figures are noticeable only by their 
 total absence from it. What is left by way of similarity 
 is a sculpturesque refinement in Sigelgaita's portrait, not 
 unworthy of Pisano's own chisel. This, however, is but 
 a slender point whereon to base so large a pyramid of 
 pure conjecture. Surely we must look elsewhere than at 
 Ravello or at Foggia for the origin of Niccola Pisano. 
 
 Why then should we reject tradition in this instance ? 
 Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle reply ; because the sculp- 
 ture of no Tuscan city before his period is good enough to 
 have led up to him. Yet this may be contested ; and at all 
 events it will not be easy to prove from the Ravello head 
 of Sigelgaita that a more advanced school existed in the 
 south. The fact is that the art of the stone-carvers or 
 marmorarii had never entirely died out since the days of 
 Roman greatness ; nor was Niccola without respectable 
 predecessors in the very town of Lucca, where he produced 
 the first masterpiece of modern sculpture. The circular 
 font of S. Frediano, for example, carved with figures in 
 high relief by a certain Robertus of the twelfth century, 
 combines the Romanesque mannerism with the naivett of 
 mediaeval fancy. I might point in particular to two 
 knights seated on one horse in what I take to be the com- 
 pany of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, as an instance of a 
 successful attempt to escape from the formalism of a de- 
 cayed style. At the same time the general effect of the 
 embossed work of this font is fine ; nor do we fail to per- 
 ceive that the artist retained some portion of the classic 
 feeling for grandiose and monumental composition. Far 
 less noteworthy, yet still not utterly despicable, is the bass- 
 relief of Biduinus over the side-door of S. Salvatore at
 
 THE PULPITS OF PISA AND RA VELLO. 511 
 
 Lucca. What Niccola added of indefeasibly his own to 
 the style of these continuators of a dead tradition was feel- 
 ing for the beauty of classical work in a good age, and 
 through that feeling a more perfect sympathy with nature. 
 It is just at this point that the old tale about the sar- 
 cophagus of the Countess Beatrice conveys not only the 
 letter but the spirit of the fact. Niccola's genius, no less 
 vivid and life-giving than that of Giotto, infused into the 
 hard and formal manner of his immediate predecessors 
 true nature and true art. Between the bass-relief of S. 
 Salvatore and the bass-relief over the north door of the 
 Duomo at Lucca there is indeed a broad gulf, yet such as 
 might have been passed at one bound by a master into 
 whose soul the beauty of a fragment of Greek art had sunk, 
 and who had received at his birth the gift of a creative 
 genius.
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Michael Angela s Sonnets. 
 
 AFTER the death of Michael Angelo, the manuscripts of 
 his sonnets, madrigals, and other poems, written at various 
 periods of his life, and well known to his intimate friends, 
 passed into the hands of his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti. 
 From Lionardo they descended to his son, Michael Angelo, 
 who was himself a poet of some mark. This grand-nephew 
 of the sculptor prepared them for the press, and gave them 
 to the world in 1623. On his redaction the commonly 
 received version of the poems rested until 1863, when 
 Signor Cesare Guasti of Florence, having gained access to 
 the original manuscripts, published a critical edition, pre- 
 serving every peculiarity of the autograph, and adding a 
 prose paraphrase for the explanation of the text. 
 
 The younger Michael Angelo, working in an age of 
 literary pedantry and moral prudery, fancied that it was 
 his duty to refine the style of his great ancestor, and to 
 remove allusions open to ignorant misconstruction. In- 
 stead, therefore, of giving an exact transcript of the original 
 poems, he set himself to soften down their harshness, to 
 clear away their obscurity, to amplify, transpose, and muti- 
 late according to his own ideas of syntax, taste, and rhet- 
 oric. On the Dantesque ruggedness of Michael Angelo 
 he engrafted the prettiness of the seventeenth Petrarchisti ; 
 and where he thought the morality of the poems was ques-
 
 MICHAEL ANGELaS SONNETS. 513 
 
 tionable, especially in the case of those addressed to Cava- 
 lieri, he did not hesitate to introduce such alterations as 
 destroyed their obvious intention. In order to understand 
 the effect of this method, it is only necessary to compare 
 the autograph as printed by Guasti with the version of 
 1623. In Sonnet xxxi., for example, the two copies agree 
 in only one line, while the remaining thirteen are distorted 
 and adorned with superfluous conceits by the over-scrupu- 
 lous but not too conscientious editor of 1623.' 
 
 Michael Angelo's poems, even after his grand-nephew 
 had tried to reduce them to lucidity and order, have always 
 been considered obscure and crabbed. Nor can it be pre- 
 tended that they gain in smoothness and clearness by the 
 restoration of the true readings. On the contrary, instances 
 of defective grammar, harsh elisions, strained metaphors, 
 and incomplete expressions are multiplied. The difficulty 
 of comprehending the sense is rather increased than dimin- 
 ished, and the obstacles to a translator become still more 
 insurmountable than Wordsworth found them." This 
 being undoubtedly the case, the value of Guasti's edition 
 for students of Michael Angelo is nevertheless inesti- 
 mable. We read now for the first time what the greatest 
 man of the sixteenth century actually wrote, and are able 
 to enter, without the interference of a fictitious veil, into 
 the shrine of his own thought and feeling. His sonnets 
 form the best commentary on Michael Angelo's solitary 
 
 1 See Guasti's ' Rime di Michel Agnolo Buonarroti,' Firenzi, 1863, 
 p. 189. The future references will be made to that edition. 
 
 a ' I can translate, and have translated, two books of Ariosto at the 
 rate nearly of one hundred lines a day ; but so much meaning has 
 been put by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning 
 sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating 
 him insurmountable.' Note to Wordsworth's English version of 
 some sonnets of Michael Angelo.
 
 5 U APPENDIX II. 
 
 life and on his sublime ideal of art. This reflection has 
 guided me in the choice of those now offered in English, 
 as an illustration of the chapter in this volume devoted 
 to their author's biography. 
 
 Though the dates of Michael Angelo's compositions 
 are conjectural, it may be assumed that the two sonnets on 
 Dante were written when he was himself in exile. We 
 know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco 
 Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of his 
 time in reading Dante aloud to his protector ; l and the in- 
 dignation expressed against Florence, then as ever fickle 
 and ungrateful, the gente avara, invidiosa, e superba, to use 
 Dante's own words, seems proper to a period of just 
 resentment. Still there is no certainty that they belong to 
 1495 ; for throughout his long life Michael Angelo was 
 occupied with Dante. A story told of him in 1506, 
 together with the dialogues reported by Donate Gian- 
 notti, prove that he was regarded by his fellow-citizens as 
 an authority upon the meaning of the Divine Comedy.* In 
 1518, when the Florentine Academy petitioned Leo X. to 
 transport the bones of Dante from Ravenna to Florence, 
 Michael Angelo subscribed the document and offered to 
 erect a statue worthy of the poet." How deeply the study 
 of Dante influenced his art appears not only in the lower 
 part of the Last Judgment : we feel that source of stern 
 and lofty inspiration in his style at large ; nor can we reckon 
 what the world lost when his volume of drawings in illus- 
 tration of the Divine Comedy perished at sea. 4 The two 
 following sonnets, therefore, whenever written, may be 
 
 1 See above, p. 389. 
 
 a See Gold's Life, p. 48, and Giannotti's works (Firenze, Le Mon- 
 nier, 1850), quoted by Gotti, pp. 249-257. 
 * See Appendix to Gold's Life, No. 25. 
 4 See Gold's Life, p. 256.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS. 515 
 
 taken as expressing his settled feeling about the first and 
 greatest of Italian poets : * 
 
 DAL CIEL DISCESE. 
 
 From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay 
 
 The realms of justice and of mercy trod, 
 
 Then rose a living man to gaze on God, 
 That he might make the truth as clear as day. 
 For that pure star that brightened with his ray 
 
 The ill-deserving nest where I was born, 
 
 The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn ; 
 None but his Maker can due guerdon pay. 
 
 I speak of Dante, whose high work remains 
 Unknown, unhonored by that thankless brood, 
 Who only to just men deny their wage. 
 
 Were I but he ! Born for like lingering pains, 
 Against his exile coupled with his good 
 I'd gladly change the world's best heritage ! 
 
 QUANTE DIRNI SI DE'. 
 
 No tongue can tell of him what should be told, 
 
 For on blind eyes his splendor shines too strong ; 
 
 'Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong, 
 Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold. 
 He to explore the place of pain was bold, 
 
 Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song ; 
 
 The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along, 
 Against his just desire his country rolled. 
 
 Thankless I call her, and to her own pain 
 The nurse of fell mischance ; for sign take this, 
 That ever to the best she deals more scorn : 
 
 Among a thousand proofs let one remain ; 
 Though ne'er was fortune more unjust than his, 
 His equal or his better ne'er was born. 
 
 About the date of the two next sonnets there is less 
 doubt. The first was clearly written when Michael Angelo 
 was smarting under a sense of the ill-treatment he received 
 
 1 Guasti, pp. i53-i55v_
 
 5i6 APPENDIX II. 
 
 from Julius, The second, composed at Rome, is interesting 
 as the only proof we possess of the impression made upon 
 his mind by the anomalies of the Papal rule. Here, in the 
 capital of Christendom, he writes, holy things are sold for 
 money to be used in warfare, and the pontiff, quel nel 
 manto, paralyzes the powers of the sculptor by refusing 
 him employment. * 
 
 SIGNOR, SE VERO t. 
 
 My Lord ! if ever ancient saw spake sooth, 
 
 Hear this, which saith : Who can, doth never will. 
 
 Lo ! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still, 
 Rewarding those who hate the name of truth. 
 I am thy drudge and have been from my youth 
 
 Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill ; 
 
 Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill : 
 The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth. 
 
 Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height ; 
 But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword 
 Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need. 
 
 Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite 
 Here on the earth, if this be our reward 
 To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed. 
 
 QUA SI FA ELMI. 
 
 Here helms and swords are made of chalices : 
 The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart : 
 His cross and thorns are spears and shields ; and short 
 
 Must be the time ere even His patience cease. 
 
 Nay let Him come no more to raise the fees 
 Of fraud and sacrilege beyond report ! 
 For Rome still slays and sells Him at the court, 
 
 Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase. 
 
 Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure, 
 Seeing that work and gain are gone ; while he 
 Who wears the robe is my Medusa still. 
 
 Perchance in heaven poverty is a pleasure : 
 But of that better life what hope have we, 
 When the blessed banner leads to naught but ill ? 
 
 Guasti, pp. 156, 157.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELCTS SONNETS. 517 
 
 A third sonnet of this period is intended to be half 
 burlesque, and, therefore, is composed a coda, as the Ital- 
 ians describe the lengthened form of the conclusion. It 
 was written while Michael Angelo was painting the roof 
 of the Sistine, and was sent to his friend Giovanni da 
 Pistoja. The effect of this work, as Vasari tells us, on his 
 eyesight was so injurious that, for some time after its 
 completion, he could only read by placing the book or 
 manuscript above his head and looking up. 1 
 
 I* HO GIA FATTO UN GOZZO. 
 
 I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den 
 
 As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy, 
 
 Or in what other land they hap to be 
 Which drives the belly close beneath the chin : 
 My beard turns up to heaven ; my nape falls in, 
 
 Fixed on my spine : my breast-bone visibly 
 
 Grows like a harp : a rich embroidery 
 Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin. 
 My loins into my paunch like levers grind ; 
 
 My buttock like a crupper bears my weight ; 
 
 My feet unguided wander to and fro ; 
 In front my skin grows loose and long ; behind, 
 
 By bending it becomes more taut and strait ; 
 
 Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow : 
 
 Whence false and quaint, I know, 
 
 Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye ; 
 
 For ill can aim the gun that bends awry. 
 Come then, Giovanni, try 
 
 To succor my dead pictures and my fame ; 
 
 Since foul I fare and painting is my shame. 
 
 The majority of the sonnets are devoted to love and 
 beauty, conceived in the spirit of exalted Platonism. They 
 are supposed to have been written in the latter period of 
 his life, when he was about sixty years of age ; and though 
 we do not know for certain to whom they were in every case 
 
 1 Guasti, p. 1 58.
 
 5i8 APPENDIX II. 
 
 addressed, they maybe used in confirmation of what I have 
 said about his admiration for Vittoria Colonna and Tom- 
 maso Cavalieri. 1 The following, with its somewhat ob- 
 scure adaptation of a Platonic theory of creation to his 
 own art, was probably composed soon after Vittoria 
 Colonna's death.* 
 
 SE 'L MIO ROZZO MARTELLO. 
 
 When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone 
 Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will, 
 Following his hand who wields and guides it still, 
 
 It moves upon another's feet alone. 
 
 But He who dwells in heaven all things doth fill 
 With beauty by pure motions of His own ; 
 And since tools fashion tools which else were none, 
 
 His life makes all that lives with living skill. 
 
 Now, for that every stroke excels the more 
 
 The closer to the forge it still ascend, 
 
 Her soul that quickened mine hath sought the skies : 
 Wherefore I find my toil will never end, 
 
 If God, the great artificer, denies 
 
 That tool which was my only aid before. 
 
 The next is peculiarly valuable, as proving with what 
 intense and religious fervor Michael Angelo addressed 
 himself to the worship of intellectual beauty. He alone, in 
 that age of sensuality and animalism, pierced through the 
 form of flesh and sought the divine idea it imprisoned :* 
 
 PER RITORNAR LA. 
 
 As one who will reseek her home of light. 
 
 Thy form immortal to this prison-house 
 
 Descended, like an angel piteous, 
 To heal all hearts and make the whole world bright. 
 Tis this that thralls my heart in love's delight, 
 
 Not thy clear face of beauty glorious ; 
 
 For he who harbors virtue still will choose 
 To love what neither years nor death can blight. 
 
 1 See above, pp. 433-435. * Guasti, p. 226. 
 
 1 Ib. p. 218.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S SON ATE TS. $19 
 
 So tares it ever with things high and rare, 
 Wrought in the sweat of nature ; heaven above 
 Showers on their birth the blessings of her prime 
 
 Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere 
 More clearly than in human forms sublime ; 
 Which, since they image Him, compel my love. 
 
 The same Platonic theme is slightly varied in the two 
 following sonnets i 1 
 
 SPIRTO BEN NATO. 
 
 Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see, 
 Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate, 
 What beauties heaven and nature can create, 
 
 The paragon of all their works to be ! 
 
 Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety, 
 
 Have found a home, as from thy outward state 
 We clearly read, and are so rare and great 
 
 That they adorn none other like to thee ! 
 
 Love takes me captive ; beauty binds my soul ; 
 Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes 
 Wake in my heart a hope that can not cheat. 
 
 What law, what destiny, what fell control, 
 What cruelty, or late or soon, denies 
 That death should spare perfection so complete ? 
 
 DAL DOLCE PIANTO. 
 
 From sweet laments to bitter joys, from peace 
 
 Eternal to a brief and hollow truce, 
 
 How have I fallen ! when 'tis truth we lose, 
 Mere sense survives our reason's dear decease. 
 I know not if my heart bred this disease, 
 
 That still more pleasing grows with growing use ; 
 
 Or else thy face, thine eyes, in which the hues 
 And fires of Paradise dart ecstasies. 
 
 Thy beauty is no mortal thing; 'twas sent 
 
 From heaven on high to make our earth divine : 
 
 Wherefore, though wasting, burning, I'm content; 
 For in thy sight what could I do but pine? 
 
 If God himself thus rules my destiny, 
 
 Who, when I die, can lay the blame on thee ? 
 
 'Guasti, pp. 182, 210.
 
 520 APPENDIX II. 
 
 The next is saddened by old age and death. Love has 
 yielded to piety, and is only remembered as what used to 
 be. Yet in form and feeling this is quite one of the 
 most beautiful in the series supposed to refer to Vittoria 
 Colonna :* 
 
 TORNAMI AL TEMPO. 
 Bring back the time when blind desire ran free, 
 
 With bit and rein too loose to curb his flight ; 
 
 Give back the buried face, once angel-bright, 
 That hides in earth all comely things from me ; 
 Bring back those journeys ta'en so toilsomely, 
 
 So toilsome-slow to him whose hairs are white ; 
 
 Those tears and flames that in one breast unite ; 
 If thou wilt once more take thy fill of me ! 
 
 Yet Love ! Suppose it true that thou dost thrive 
 
 Only on bitter honey-dews of tears, 
 
 Small profit hast thou of a weak old man. 
 My soul that toward the other shore doth strive, 
 
 Wards off thy darts with shafts of holier fears ; 
 
 And fire feeds ill on brands no breath can fan. 
 
 After this it only remains to quote the celebrated sonnet 
 used by Varchi for his dissertation, the best known of all 
 Michael Angelo's poems." The thought is this: just as a 
 sculptor hews from a block of marble the form that lies 
 concealed within, so the lover has to extract from his lady's 
 heart the life or death of his soul. 
 
 NON HA L'OTTIMO ARTISTA. 
 
 The best of artists hath no thought to show 
 Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell 
 Doth not include : to break the marble spell 
 
 Is all the hand that serves the brain can do. 
 
 1 Guasti, p. 212. 
 
 a Delivered before the Florentine Academy in 1 546. See Guasti, 
 p. 173, for the sonnet, and p. Ixxv. for the dissertation. See also 
 Gotti, p. 249, for Michael Angelo's remarks upon the latter.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS. $21 
 
 The ill I shun, the good I seek, even so 
 In thee, fair lady, proud, ineffable, 
 Lies hidden : but the art I wield so well 
 
 Works adverse to my wish, and lays me low. 
 
 Therefore not love, nor thy transcendent face, 
 Nor cruelty, nor fortune, nor disdain, 
 Cause my mischance, nor fate, nor destiny ; 
 
 Since in thy heart thou earnest death and grace 
 Inclosed together, and my worthless brain 
 Can draw forth only death to feed on me. 
 
 The fire of youth was not extinct, we feel, after reading 
 these last sonnets. There is, indeed, an almost pathetic 
 intensity of passion in the recurrence of Michael Angelo's 
 thoughts to a sublime love on the verge of the grave. Not 
 less important in their bearing on his state of feeling are 
 the sonnets addressed to Cavalieri ; and though his modern 
 editor shrinks from putting a literal interpretation upon 
 them, I am convinced that we must accept them simply as 
 an expression of the artist's homage for the worth and 
 beauty of an excellent young man. The two sonnets I 
 intend to quote next * were written, according to Varchi's 
 direct testimony, for Tommaso Cavalieri, 'in whom,' the 
 words are Varchi's, ' I discovered, besides incomparable 
 personal beauty, so much charm of nature, such excellent 
 abilities, and such a graceful manner, that he deserved, and 
 still deserves, to be the better loved the more he is known.' 
 The play of words upon Cavalieri's name in the last line of 
 the first sonnet, the evidence of Varchi, and the indirect 
 witness of Condivi, together with Michael Angelo's own 
 letters,* are sufficient in my judgment to warrant the ex- 
 planation I have given above. Nor do I think that the 
 doubts expressed by Guasti about the intention of the son- 
 
 1 Guasti, pp. 1 88, 189. 
 
 * See Archivio Buonarroti,' and above, p. 434, note 2.
 
 52i APPENDIX II. 
 
 nets, 1 or Gotti's curious theory that the letters, though 
 addressed to Cavalieri, were meant for Vittoria Colonna, 1 
 are much more honorable to Michael Angelo's reputation 
 than the garbling process whereby the verses were ren- 
 dered unintelligible in the edition of 1623. 
 
 A CHE pit) DEBB' 10. 
 
 Why should I seek to ease intense desire 
 With still more tears and windy words of grief, 
 When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief 
 
 To souls whom love hath robed around with fire? 
 
 Why need my aching heart to death aspire 
 When all must die ? Nay, death beyond belief 
 Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brie 
 
 Since in my sum of woes all joys expire ! 
 
 Therefore because I can not shun Inc. blow 
 I rather seek, say who must rule my breast, 
 Gliding between her gladness and her woe ? 
 
 If only chains and bands can make me blest, 
 No marvel if alone and bare I go 
 And armed Knight's captive and slave comessed,, 
 
 VEGGIO CO' BEI VOSTRI OCCHI. 
 
 With your fair eyes a charming light I see, 
 
 For which my own blind eyes would peei- in vain ; 
 
 Stayed by your feet the burden I sustain 
 Which my lame feet find all too strong for me; 
 Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly ; 
 
 Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain ; 
 
 E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again, 
 Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky. 
 
 Your will includes and is the lord of mine; 
 
 Life to my thoughts within your heart is given ; 
 
 My words begin to breathe upon your breath: 
 Like to the moon am I, that can not shine 
 
 Alone ; for lo ! our eyes see naught in heaven 
 
 Save what the living sun illumineth. 
 
 1 Rime, p. riv. * Gotti's Life, pp. 231-235.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS. 523 
 
 Whether we are justified in assigning the following pair 
 to the Cavalieri series is more doubtful. They seem, how- 
 ever, to proceed from a similar mood of the poet's mind : ' 
 
 S'UN CASTO AMOR. 
 
 If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill, 
 If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, 
 If either at the other's grief despond, 
 
 If both be governed by one life, one will ; 
 
 If in two bodies one soul triumph still, 
 Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond, 
 If love with one blow and one golden wand 
 
 Have power both smitten breasts to pierce and thrill ; 
 
 If each the other love, himself foregoing, 
 With such delight, such savor, and so well, 
 That both to one sole end their wills combine ; 
 
 If thousands of these thoughts all thought outgoing 
 Fail the least part of their firm love to tell ; 
 Say, can mere angry spite this knot untwine ? 
 
 COLUI CHE FECE. 
 
 He who ordained, when first the world began, 
 Time that was not before creation's hour, 
 Divided it, and gave the sun's high power ^ 
 
 To rule the one, the moon the other span : 
 
 Thence fate and changeful chance and fortune's ban 
 Did in one moment down on mortals shower : 
 To me they portioned darkness for a dower ; 
 
 Dark hath my lot been since I was a man. 
 
 Myself am ever mine own counterfeit ; 
 
 And as deep night grows still more dim and dun, 
 
 So still of more misdoing must I rue : 
 Meanwhile this solace to my soul is sweet, 
 
 That my black night doth make more clear the sun 
 
 Which at your birth was given to wait on you. 
 
 A sonnet written for Luigi del Riccio on the death of his 
 friend Cecchino Bracci is curious on account of its conceit. 1 
 
 1 Guasti, pp. 190-202. * Ib. p. 162.
 
 SH APPENDIX II. 
 
 Michael Angelo says : ' Cecchino, whom you loved, is 
 dead ; and if I am to make his portrait, I can only do so by 
 drawing you, in whom he still lives.' Here, again, we trace 
 the Platonic conception of love as nothing if not spiritual, 
 and of beauty as a form that finds its immortality within 
 the lover's soul. This Cecchino was a boy who died at 
 the age of seventeen. Michael Angelo wrote his epicedion 
 in several centuries of verses, distributed among his 
 friends in the form of what he terms polizzini, as though 
 they were trifles. 
 
 A PENA PRIMA. 
 
 Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes 
 Which to thy living eyes are life and light, 
 When closed at last in death's injurious night 
 
 He opened them on God in Paradise. 
 
 I know it and I weep, too late made wise : 
 Yet was the fault not mine ; for death's fell spite 
 Robbed my desire of that supreme delight, 
 
 Which in thy better memory never dies. 
 
 Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine 
 
 To make unique Cecchino smile in stone 
 Forever, now that earth hath made him dim, 
 
 If the beloved within the lover shine, 
 
 Since art without him can not work alone, 
 Thee must I carve to tell the world of him. 
 
 In contrast with the philosophical obscurity of many of 
 the sonnets hitherto quoted, I place the following address 
 to Night, one, certainly, of Michael Angelo's most beau- 
 tiful and characteristic compositions, as it is also the most 
 transparent in style : * 
 
 o NOTT', o DOLCE TEMPO. 
 
 O Night, O sweet though somber span of time ! 
 All things find rest upon their journey's end 
 Whoso hath praised thee well doth apprehend ; 
 
 And whoso honors thee hath wisdom's prime, 
 
 1 Guasti, p. 205.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS. 525 
 
 Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime, 
 For dews and darkness are of peace the friend ; 
 Often by thee in dreams upborne I wend 
 
 From earth to heaven, where yet I hope to climb. 
 
 Thou shade of Death, through whom the soul at length 
 Shuns pain and sadness hostile to the heart, 
 Whom mourners find their last and sure relief! 
 
 Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength, 
 Driest our tears, assuagest every smart, 
 Purging the spirits of the pure from grief. 
 
 The religious sonnets have been reserved to the last. 
 These were composed in old age, when the early impres- 
 sions of Savonarola's teaching revived, and when Michael 
 Angelo had grown to regard even his art and the beauty 
 he had loved so purely as a snare. If we did not bear in 
 mind the piety expressed throughout his correspondence, 
 their ascetic tone, and the remorse they seem to indicate, 
 would convey a painful sense of cheerlessness and disap- 
 pointment. As it is, they strike me as the natural utter- 
 ance of a profoundly devout and somewhat melancholy 
 man, in whom religion has survived all other interests, and 
 who, reviewing his past life of fame and toil, finds that the 
 sole reality is God. The two first of these compositions 
 are addressed to Giorgio Vasari. 1 
 
 GIUNTO E GlX. 
 Now hath my life across a stormy sea 
 
 Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all 
 
 Are bidden ere the final judgment fall, 
 Of good or evil deeds to pay the fee. 
 Now know I well how that fond fantasy 
 
 Which made my soul the worshiper and thrall 
 
 Of earthly art is vain ; how criminal 
 Is that which all men seek unwillingly. 
 
 1 Guasti, pp. 230-232.
 
 $26 APPENDIX //. 
 
 Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed, 
 What are they when the double death is nigh ? 
 The one I know for sure, the other dread. 
 
 Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest 
 My soul that turns to His great love on high 
 Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread. 
 
 LE FAVOLE DEL MONDO. 
 
 The fables of the world have filched away 
 
 The time I had for thinking upon God ; 
 
 His grace lies buried 'neath oblivion's sod, 
 Whence springs an evil crop of sins alway. 
 What makes another wise, leads me astray, 
 
 Slow to discern the bad path I have trod : 
 
 Hope fades ; but still desire ascends that God 
 May free me from self-love, my sure decay. 
 
 Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth ? 
 
 Dear Lord, I can not even half-way rise, 
 
 Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage : 
 Teach me to hate the world so little worth, 
 
 And all the lovely things I once did prize ; 
 
 That endless life not death may be my wage. 
 
 The same note is struck in the following, which 
 breathes the spirit of a Penitential Psalm : * 
 
 CARICO D* ANNI. 
 
 Burdened with years and full of sinfulness, 
 With evil custom grown inveterate, 
 Both deaths I dread that close before me wait, 
 
 Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. 
 
 No strength I find in mine own feebleness 
 To change or life or love or use or fate 
 Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late, 
 
 Which only helps and stays our nothingness. 
 
 1 Guasti, pp. 244, 245.
 
 MICHAEL ANGELAS SONAETS. $27 
 
 Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn 
 For that celestial home, where yet my soul 
 May be new made, and not, as erst, of naught : 
 
 Nay, ere Thou strip her mortal vestment, turn 
 My steps toward the steep ascent, that whole 
 And pure before Thy face she may be brought. 
 
 In reading the two next, we may remember that, at the 
 end of his life, Michael Angelo was occupied with designs 
 for a picture of the Crucifixion, which he never executed, 
 though he gave a drawing of Christ upon the cross to 
 Vittoria Colonna ; and that his last work in marble was 
 the unfinished Pietti in the Duomo at Florence. 1 
 
 SCARCO D* UN IMPORTUNA. 
 
 Freed from a burden sore and grievous band, 
 
 Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied, 
 
 Like a frail bark I turn me to Thy side, 
 As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land. 
 Thy thorns, Thy nails, and either bleeding hand, 
 
 With Thy mild gentle piteous face, provide 
 
 Promise of help and mercies multiplied, 
 And hope that yet my soul secure may stand. 
 
 Let not Thy holy eyes be just to see 
 My evil past, Thy chastened ears to hear 
 And stretch the arm of judgment to my crime : 
 
 Let Thy blood only lave and succor me, 
 Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer, 
 As older still I grow with lengthening time. 
 
 NON FUR MEN LIETI. 
 
 Not less elate than smitten with wild woe 
 To see not them but Thee by death undone, 
 Were those blest souls, when Thou above the sun 
 
 Didst raise, by dying, men that lay so low : 
 
 Elate, since freedom from all ills that flow 
 
 From their first fault for Adam's race was won ; 
 Sore smitten, since in torment fierce God's son 
 
 Served servants on the cruel cross below. 
 
 1 Guasti, pp. 241-245.
 
 528 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Heaven showed she knew Thee, who Thou wert and whence, 
 
 Veiling her eyes above the riven earth ; 
 
 The mountains trembled and the seas were troubled : 
 He took the Fathers from hell's darkness dense : 
 
 The torments of the damned fiends redoubled 
 
 Man only joyed, who gained baptismal birth. 
 
 The collection of his poems is closed with yet another 
 sonnet in the same lofty strain of prayer, and faith, and 
 hope in God :' 
 
 MENTRE M' ATTRISTA. 
 
 Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer 
 
 In thinking of the past, when I recall 
 
 My weakness and my sins and reckon all 
 The vain expense of days that disappear : 
 This cheers by making, ere I die, more clear 
 
 The frailty of what men delight miscall ; 
 
 But saddens me to think how rarely fall 
 God's grace and mercies in life's latest year. 
 
 For though Thy promises our faith compel, 
 Yet, Lord, what man shall venture to maintain 
 That pity will condone our long neglect ? 
 
 Still, from Thy blood poured forth we know full well 
 How without measure was Thy martyr's pain, 
 How measureless the gifts we dare expect. 
 
 From the thought of Dante, through Plato, to the 
 thought of Christ: so our study of Michael Angeio's 
 sonnets has carried us. In communion with these highest 
 souls Michael Angelo habitually lived ; for he was born 
 of their lineage, and was like them a life-long alien on 
 the earth, 
 
 1 Guasti, p. 246.
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 Chronological Tables of the Principal Artists mentioned 
 in this Volume. 
 
 THE lists which follow have been drawn up with a view 
 to assisting the reader of my chapters on Architecture, 
 Sculpture, and Painting. I have only included the more 
 prominent names ; and these I have placed in the order of 
 their occurrence in the foregoing pages. In compiling 
 them, I have consulted the Index to Le Monnier's edition 
 of Vasari (1870), Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History of 
 Painting, and Milizia's Dictionary of Architects. 
 
 ARCHITECTS. 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Arnolfo di Cambio 
 
 1240 
 
 13" 
 
 62 
 
 Giotto di Bondone 
 
 1276 
 
 1337 
 
 63 
 
 Andrea Orcagna . 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1369 
 
 63 
 
 Filippo Brunelleschi . 
 
 1377 
 
 1446 
 
 73 
 
 Leo Battista Albert! 
 
 1405 
 
 1472 
 
 74 
 
 Michellozzo Michellozzi 
 
 I39 1 
 
 1472 
 
 76 
 
 Benedetto da Majano . 
 
 1442 
 
 1497 
 
 76 
 
 Giuliano da San Gallo. 
 
 1445 
 
 1516 
 
 76 
 
 Antonio da San Gallo . 
 
 1455 
 
 1534? 
 
 76 
 
 Antonio Filarete . 
 
 
 
 1465 ? 
 
 77
 
 530 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 ARCHITECTS continued. 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 i 
 
 Page 
 
 Bramante Lazzari 
 
 1444 
 
 ISI4 
 
 8l 
 
 Cristoforo Rocchi 
 
 .... 
 
 ... 
 
 82 
 
 Ventura Vitoni . 
 
 .... 
 
 .... 
 
 83 
 
 Raffaello Santi 
 
 1483 
 
 1520 
 
 83 
 
 Giulio Romano . 
 
 1499 
 
 1546 
 
 84 
 
 Baldassare Peruzzi 
 
 1481 
 
 1536 
 
 8 4 
 
 Jacopo Sansovino 
 
 1477 
 
 '570 
 
 85 
 
 Michele Sanmicheli 
 
 1484 
 
 1559 
 
 86 
 
 Baccio d'Agnolo . 
 
 1462 
 
 1543 
 
 86 
 
 Michael Angelo Buo- ) 
 
 
 
 r> 
 
 t 
 
 !475 
 
 154 
 
 87 
 
 narroti . . \ 
 
 
 
 
 Andrea Palladio . 
 
 1518 
 
 1580 
 
 94 
 
 Giacomo Barozzi. 
 
 i57 
 
 1573 
 
 95 
 
 Vincenzo Scamozzi 
 
 1552 
 
 1616 
 
 96 
 
 Galeazzo Alessi . 
 
 1500 
 
 1572 
 
 96 
 
 Bartolommeo Amma- / 
 
 
 
 
 [ 
 
 1511 
 
 *59 2 
 
 96 
 
 nati \ 
 
 
 
 
 SCULPTORS. 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Niccola Pisano 
 
 after 1200 
 
 1278 
 
 IOI 
 
 Giovanni Pisano . 
 
 about 1240 
 
 1320 
 
 no 
 
 Lorenzo Maitani . 
 
 
 
 1330 
 
 117 
 
 Andrea Pisano . 
 
 about 1273 
 
 about 1349 
 
 119 
 
 Giotto di Bondone 
 
 1276 
 
 1337 
 
 119 
 
 Nino Pisano 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1360 
 
 123 
 
 Giovanni Balduccio 
 
 about 1300 
 
 about 1347 
 
 123
 
 SCULPTORS. 
 SCULPTORS continued. 
 
 531 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Filippo Calendario 
 
 .... 
 
 1355 
 
 I2 3 
 
 Andrea Orcagna . 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1369 
 
 124 
 
 Lorenzo Ghiberti . 
 
 1378 
 
 1455 
 
 127 
 
 Giacomo della Quercia 
 
 '374 
 
 1438 
 
 127 
 
 Filippo Brunelleschi . 
 
 1377 
 
 1446 
 
 127 
 
 Donatello 
 
 1386 
 
 1466 
 
 136 
 
 Andrea Verocchio 
 
 '435 
 
 1488 
 
 141 
 
 Alessandro Leopardi . 
 
 
 
 after 1522 
 
 143 
 
 Antonio Pollajuolo 
 
 1429 
 
 1498 
 
 145 
 
 Piero Pollajuolo . 
 
 1441 
 
 1489 ? 
 
 147 
 
 Luca della Robbia 
 
 1400 
 
 1482 
 
 148 
 
 Agastino di Duccio 
 
 
 
 after 1461 
 
 150 
 
 Antonio Rossellino 
 
 1427 
 
 1478? 
 
 153 
 
 Matteo Civitali. . 
 
 M35 
 
 1501 
 
 156 
 
 Mino da Fiesole . 
 
 1431 
 
 1484 
 
 158 
 
 Desiderio da Settignano 
 
 1428 
 
 1464 
 
 159 
 
 Guido Mazzoni . 
 
 .... 
 
 1518 
 
 163 
 
 Antonio Begarelli 
 
 1479 
 
 about 1565 
 
 164 
 
 Antonio Amadeo . 
 
 1447 ? 
 
 about 1520 
 
 164 
 
 Andrea Contucci . 
 
 1460 
 
 1529 
 
 166 
 
 Jacopo Sansovino 
 
 1477 
 
 1570 
 
 167 
 
 Michael Angelo Buo- / 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 J 475 
 
 1 564 
 
 171 
 
 narroti . . i 
 
 
 
 
 Raffaello da Montelupo 
 
 1505 
 
 1 567 
 
 172 
 
 Giovonni Anerelo/ 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 Montorsoli . \ 
 
 1507 
 
 1563 
 
 172 
 
 Baccio Bandinelli 
 
 1493 
 
 1560 
 
 173
 
 532 
 
 APPENDIX .TIT. 
 SCULPTORS continued. 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Bartolommeo Amma- / 
 nati \ 
 
 IS 11 
 
 I59 2 
 
 173 
 
 Benvenuto Cellini 
 Gian Bologna 
 
 1500 
 1524 
 
 1571 
 1608 
 
 176 
 176 
 
 PAINTERS. 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Giovanni Cimabue 
 
 1240? 
 
 1302 ? 
 
 I8 7 
 
 Giotto di Bondone 
 
 1276 
 
 '337 
 
 189 
 
 Andrea Orcagna . 
 
 
 
 about 1369 
 
 I 99 
 
 Ambrogio Lorenzetti . 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1348 
 
 2OO 
 
 Pietro Lorenzetti 
 
 
 about 1350 
 
 200 
 
 Taddeo Gaddi 
 
 about 1300 
 
 1366 
 
 205 
 
 Francesco Traini . 
 
 .... 
 
 after 1378 
 
 2O7 
 
 Duccio di Buoninsegna 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1320 
 
 215 
 
 Simone Martini . 
 
 1285? 
 
 1344 
 
 217 
 
 Taddeo di Bartolo 
 
 about 1362 
 
 1422 
 
 218 
 
 Spinello Aretino . 
 
 . 
 
 1410 
 
 219 
 
 Masolino da Panicale . 
 
 1384 
 
 1447? 
 
 229 
 
 Masaccio 
 
 1402 
 
 1429 
 
 229 
 
 Paolo Uccello 
 
 1397 
 
 1475 
 
 231 
 
 Andrea del Castagno . 
 
 1396 
 
 1457 
 
 232 
 
 Piero della Francesca . 
 
 1420? 
 
 1506? 
 
 254 
 
 Melozzo da Forli 
 
 about 1438 
 
 1494 
 
 235 
 
 Francesco Squarcione . 
 
 1394 
 
 1474 
 
 236 
 
 Gentile da Fabriano . 
 
 about 1370 
 
 about 1450 
 
 238
 
 PAINTERS. 
 PAINTERS continued. 
 
 533 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Fra Angelico 
 
 1387 
 
 '455 
 
 239 
 
 Benozzo Gozzoli . 
 
 1420 
 
 1498 
 
 241 
 
 Lippo Lippi .; 
 
 1412? 
 
 1469 
 
 244 
 
 Filippino Lippi .< . 
 
 1457 
 
 I54 
 
 247 
 
 Sandro Botticelli . 
 
 1447 
 
 1510 
 
 249 
 
 Piero di Cosimo . 
 
 1462 
 
 1521? 
 
 255 
 
 Domenico Ghirlandajo 
 
 1449 
 
 before 1498 
 
 258 
 
 Andrea Mantegna 
 
 1431 
 
 1506 
 
 269 
 
 Luca Signorelli . 
 
 about 1441 
 
 i5 2 3 
 
 279 
 
 Pietro Perugino . 
 
 1446 
 
 1524 
 
 294 
 
 Bernardo Pinturicchio 
 
 1454 
 
 i5!3 
 
 301 
 
 Francesco Francia 
 
 I45o 
 
 1517 
 
 3<>3 
 
 Fra Bartolommeo 
 
 1475 
 
 1517 
 
 304 
 
 Mariotto Albertinelli . 
 
 1474 
 
 I5i5 
 
 305 
 
 Lionardo da Vinci 
 
 I45 2 
 
 i5 J 9 
 
 313 
 
 Raffaello Santi 
 
 1483 
 
 1520 
 
 328 
 
 Antonio Allegri da i 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 Correggio . \ 
 
 1494? 
 
 1534 
 
 339 
 
 Michael Angelo Buo- ) 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 1475 
 
 I5 6 4 
 
 342 
 
 narroti . . \ 
 
 
 
 
 Bartolommeo Vivarini 
 
 .... 
 
 after 1499 
 
 361 
 
 Jacopo Bellini 
 
 1400? 
 
 1464? 
 
 362 
 
 Gentile Bellini . 
 
 1426 
 
 i57 
 
 363 
 
 Vittore Carpaccio 
 
 .... 
 
 after 1519 
 
 364 
 
 Giovanni Bellini 
 
 1427 
 
 1516 
 
 365 
 
 Giorgione . 
 
 1478 
 
 15" 
 
 367 
 
 Tiziano Vecelli . 
 
 1477 
 
 1576 
 
 369 
 
 Paolo Veronese . 
 
 1530 
 
 1588 
 
 369
 
 534 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 PAINTERS continued. 
 
 Names 
 
 Born 
 
 Died 
 
 Page 
 
 Tintoretto . 
 
 1512 
 
 1594 
 
 369 
 
 Giovanni Antonio) 
 
 
 
 
 f. 
 
 Belttraffio . J 
 
 1467 
 
 1516 
 
 484 
 
 Marco d'Oggiono 
 
 about 1470 
 
 153 
 
 484 
 
 Cesare da Sesto . 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1524 
 
 484 
 
 Bernardino Luini 
 
 about 1460 
 
 after 1530 
 
 485 
 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari 
 
 1484 
 
 1549 
 
 488 
 
 Giulio Romano . 
 
 1499 
 
 1546 
 
 490 
 
 Giovanni da Udine 
 
 1487 
 
 iS 6 4 
 
 490 
 
 Perino del Vaga . 
 
 1499 
 
 1547 
 
 490 
 
 Marcello Venusti 
 
 .... 
 
 about 1584 
 
 493 
 
 Sebastian del Piombo . 
 
 1485 
 
 1547 
 
 493 
 
 Daniele da Volterra . 
 
 about 1509 
 
 1566 
 
 493 
 
 11 Parmigianino . 
 
 i54 
 
 154 
 
 495 
 
 Federigo Baroccio 
 
 1528 
 
 1612 
 
 495 
 
 Andrea-del Sarto . 
 
 1487 
 
 I53 1 
 
 497 
 
 Jacopo Pontormo 
 
 1494 
 
 1557 
 
 498 
 
 Angelo Bronzino 
 
 1502 
 
 IS72 
 
 499 
 
 11 Sodoma . 
 
 1477 
 
 1549 
 
 499 
 
 Baldassare Peruzzi 
 
 1481 
 
 1536 
 
 5i 
 
 Domenico Beccafumi . 
 
 1486 
 
 i55i 
 
 SGI 
 
 Benvenuto Garofalo . 
 
 1481 
 
 IS59 
 
 502 
 
 Dosso Dossi 
 
 about 1479 
 
 1542 
 
 502 
 
 11 Moretto . 
 
 about 1500 
 
 after 1556 
 
 5>3 
 
 Giovanni Battista) 
 
 
 A 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
 1510 
 
 1578 
 
 53 
 
 Moroni . . 1 
 
 
 
 
 Giorgio Vasari . 
 
 1511 
 
 IS74 
 
 ...
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 SEP 41968 
 
 ^ 
 
 - 
 
 DEC 1 
 
 
 1972 
 
 Book S]ip-35m-7,'63(D863484)4280
 
 UCLA-CO" 6 ** 
 
 D65M8J. 
 
 005 761 465 3