CD UJ Ln a LU THE PAINTERS OF THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA EDMUND G. GARDNER THE PAINTERS OF THE SCHOOL OF FERRA RA I ••• • • • I • • • • a ••• • :» : •': ••• • ••• •• • • .IikIi rsdii Dos.so Doss I /•'roii/ispicff CIIJCK liniullt SI' (JjllllTV THE PAINTERS OF THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA BY EDMUND G. GARDNER, M.A. AUTHOR OF "DUKES AND POETS IN FKRRARA" "SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA" ETC. LONDON : DUCKWORTH AND CO. NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published 1911 . . • • '• • Printed bt BAl LANTYNE & COMPANY LTD AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS Tavistock Street Covent Garden London I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO FRANK ROOKE LEY 241413 PREFACE In the following pages I have attempted to give a brief account of the famous school of painting that originated in Ferrara about the middle of the fifteenth century, and thence not only extended its influence to the other cities that owned the sway of the House of Este, but spread over all Emilia and Romagna, produced Correcpcpio in Parma, and even shared in the makincr of Raphael at Urbino. Correggio himself is not included : he is too great a figure in Italian art to be treated as merely the member of a local school ; and he has already been the subject of a separate monograph in this series. The classical volumes of Girolamo Baruffaldi are still indispensable to the student of the artistic history of Ferrara. It was, however, Morelli who first revealed the importance and significance of the Ferrarese school in the evolution of Italian art ; and, although a few of his conclusions and conjectures have to be abandoned or modified in the light of later researches and dis- coveries, his work must ever remain our starting-point. vii vili PREFACE The indefatigable researches of Signor Adolfo Ventiiri have covered almost every phase of the subject, and it would be impossible for any writer now treating of Ferrarese painting to overstate the debt that he must inevitablv owe to him. I am also much indebted to the various writings of Campori and Cittadella ; to the substantial work of M. Gustave Gruyer ; and, more particularly, to the more recently published book of Mr. Berenson on the North Italian Painters of the Renaissance^ as also to his singularly suggestive charac- terisation of Dosso Dossi in the first volume of the Stiidy and Criticisni of Italian Art, For Francia, I have derived much assistance from Dr. Williamson's monograph. For many suggestions as to symbolism and iconography, it is a pleasant duty to express my gratitude to Mr. CarmichaePs admirable essay in inter- pretation, entitled FranMs Masterpiece. No explanation or apology is now needed for including Francia and his Bolognese followers in a volume on the Ferrarese painters. The masters of Bologna, at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, drew the principles of their art from Ferrara, and hardly formed an independent school — though their first and greatest master is probably better known and more loved by the general public than any genuinely Ferrarese artist. The true Bolognese school — the eclectic, coldly academic school of the Carracci — belongs PREFACE ix to a later epoch. We may, to some extent, connect this with the political vicissitudes that Ferrara and Bologna underwent. While the Bentivogli were the practical rulers of the State, Bologna, though nominally subject to the Holy See, was overshadowed by the dynastic influence and interests of the Estensian sove- reigns of Ferrara. But the Bentivocjli fell in Francia's lifetime ; the Ferrarese duchy was incorporated into the Papal States some ninety years later ; and Bologna then became a place of considerably more importance, socially and politically, than Ferrara. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the artistic relations of the two cities are reversed : Carlo Bononi, the last of the painters of the Ferrarese school, sits at the feet of the Carracci, and Guercino, born at Cento (one of the towns ceded to the Duke of Ferrara by Pope Alexander VI), ranks as an artist among the Bolognese. E. G. G. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. Early Masters of Ferrara and Modena 1 II. CosiMO Tura 16 III. Francesco del Cossa : The Frescoes of the SCHIFANOIA 32 IV. Baldassare d'Este : Ercole de' Roberti : Marco Zoppo : Francesco Bianchi : Do- MENICO PaNETTI 46 V. Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Raibolini : I. 69 VI. Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Raibolini : II. 97 VII. TiMOTEO ViTi and other Painters of the Early Cinquecento 119 VIII. Dosso and Battista Dossi 143 IX. Garofalo : Ortolano : Girolamo da Carpi l69 X. Later Painters of the School of Ferrara AND Bologna 192 List of More Important Works of Painters of the School of Ferrara and Bologna 203 Bibliography 253 Index 259 zi ILLUSTRATIONS Faoing Page Dosso Dossi. Circe. Borghese Gallery. Frontispiece Cosimo Tura, Madonna and Child. National Gallery 18 Cosimo Tura. Roverella and his Patron Saints. Palazzo Colonna 26 Cosimo Tura. Adoration of the Magi. Cambridge^ U.S.A. 28 School of Tura. Charity. Poldi Pezzoli Museinn 30 Francesco del Cossa. Detail from the Schifanoia Frescoes. Ferrara 36 Francesco del Cossa. Madonna and Child (with Alberto Catanei). Gallery, Bologna 44 Baldassare d'Este. Death of the Blessed Virgin. Massari Collection, Ferrara 48 Ercole Roberti. "Medea." Cook Collection, Richmond 52 Ercole Roberti. Deposition from the Cross. Blumen- slihl Collection, Rome 54 Ercole Roberti. The Concert. Naiional Gallery 58 Marco Zoppo. Madonna and Child. Cook Collection, Richmond 62 xiii xiv ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page Francesco Bianchi. The Annunciation. Galkiia Estense 64 Francesco Bianchi. Cupid and Psyche. Hertford House iS6 Domenico Panetti. Madonna and Child. Galieiia Estense 68 Lorenzo Costa. The Ghedini Altarpiece. San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna 74 Francesco Francia. St. George. Galleria Corsini 80 Francesco Francia. Portrait of Bartolommeo Bianchini. Natio?ial Gallery 82 Francesco Francia. The Nativity (with Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio and Girolamo Casio). Gallery^ Bologna S6 Francesco Francia. The Bentivoglio Altarpiece. San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna 90 Lorenzo Costa. Triumph of Poetry. Louvre 9^ Francesco Francia. Portrait of Evangelista Scappi. Uffizi 102 Lorenzo Costa. Portrait of Battista Fiera. National Gallery 112 Attributed to Timoteo Viti. Eurydice and Aristaius (majolica plate). Museo Civico, Venice 122 Timoteo Viti. St. Mary Magdalene. Gallery, Bologna 124 Ercole Grandi. Portrait of a Ciirl. Campidoglioy Rome 1 32 Pellegrino Munari. Madonna and Child. Gallery, Eerrara 134 ILLUSTRATIONS xv Facing Page Dosso Dossi. Nymph and Satyr, Pitti 146 Dosso Dossi. Tlie Jester. Galleria Kstense 150 Dosso Dossi. Matlonna and Child with St. George and St. Michael. Galleiia Estense 154 Battista Dossi. The Nativity. Galleria Estense l60 Battista Dossi. The Dream. Dresden l66 Benvenuto Garofalo. Head of the Madonna ('^ La Madonna del Pilastro "). Gallery, Ferrara 170 Benvenuto Garofalo. ^^ Our Lady of Sorrow." Dresden 176 Ben\enuto Garofalo. Mars and Venus. Dresden 180 Ortolano. Adoration of the Shepherds. Davis Col- lection, Newport, U.S.A. 182 Ortolano. Deposition from the Cross. Borghese Gallery 1 86 CHAPTER I EARLY MASTERS OF FERRARA AND MODENA The Ferrarese school of painting arose shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century, when that mildest and most genial of Renaissance despots, Borso d'Este, was ruling Ferrara as vicar of the Church with the title of INIarquis, and Modena, together with Reggio, as Duke under the Holy Roman Empire. A document, professedly of 1242, first cited by Borsetti, but apparently seen by no one since, declares that in that year a Ferrarese painter named Gelasio di Niccolo, who had studied under a Greek master in Venice, painted the Fall of Phaethon for Azzo Novello, the third Marquis of Este who held sway in Ferrara and a Madonna and Child at the bidding of the bishop of the city, I'ilippo Fontana, as also a banner bearing the figure of Saint George to head the procession that went forth to meet the Doge of Venice, Jacopo Tiepolo.^ I liistoria aluu Perrarice Gyni/tasU (Ferrara, 1735), ii. pp. -iifi, 447. Of. TiraLosclii, Storla ddia LetUratura Italiana, iv. pp. 733-736 (Milau, 1823) ; Baruffaldi, Vite de'Pitlori e ScuHori Ftrrarefi, i. pp. 6-8. I A «r « 2 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA This is clearly no more than a pious fiction, intended to connect Ferrarese art from the outset with both the mythological and religious traditions of the people. The Madonna still attributed to Gelasio, in the Pinacoteca Comunale of Ferrara, is some two centuries later in origin. Vasari tells us that, when Giotto was returning to Tuscany from ,_^ Verona, " he was constrained to stop in Ferrara, and to paint in the service of those Estensian lords, in their palace and in Sanf Agostino, certain things that are still seen there to-day/"*^ This must have been after July, 1S17, when Rinaldo d'Este and his brothers were restored to Ferrara after the prolonged struggle with the Holy See, and before the death of Dante, in September, 1321, if Vasari is right in his assertion that it was through the poet that Giotto was summoned thence to Ravenna. No trace of Giotto's work in Ferrara remains, and he seems to have had no infiuence upon the local painters. There is no reason for supposing that the frescoes at the abbey of Pomposa, " la casa di Nostra Donna in sul lito Adriano," ^ are by Ferrarese artists ; and indeed, during the whole Giottesque period, the painters of Ferrara were few in number and of slight importance. A Madonna lattante by an unknown hand in San 1 Vite, ed. Milanesi, I. p. 388. « Dante, Par. xxi. 132, 123. EARLY MASTERS 3 Domenico ; a figure of St. Anthony of Padua, attri- buted to Fra Donato Brasavola (a Franciscan friar who died in 1353), in San Francesco; the repainted fresco of the Madonna and Child, traditionally attributed to Laudadio Rambaldo, in the courtyard of the Castcllo Vecchio, and remains of frescoes in Sant' Andrea : these are the only notable paintings of the fourteenth century that survive in Ferrara to-day. Modena during the Trecento produced two painters of a higher order, a certain number of whose works are still extant : Tommaso Barisendi and Barnaba Agocchiari ; who, from the circumstance of their painting elsewhere than in their native city, were known as Tommaso da Modena and Barnaba da Modena, respectively. Tommaso da Modena has of late become recognised as one of the most important North Italian masters of the fourteenth century.^ He was born at Modena, in 1325 or 1326, and died in 1379. His father, Barisino de** Barisini, was a painter of some local reputation, and the son, who usually signs himself Thomas de Miit'ma, in one instance adds Barisini filius. Tommaso worked chiefly at Treviso, and in the castle 1 Julius von Schlosser, Tomoiaso da Modena unci die dltere Malerd in Treviso, Vienna, 1898 ; Giulio Bertoni and E. P. Vicini, Tonir>uao da Modena pittore modmnt del sfcolo XIV, Modena, 1904 ; Adolfo Venturi, Storia deWArte Itah'ana. V. pp. 958-077. 4 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA of Karlstein, near Prague, where he was employed by the Emperor Charles IV. His easel-pictures, such as the small polyptych at Modena (with its forged date and signature), and the Madonna and Child with St. Dalmatius and St. Wenceslaus (recently restored from Vienna to Karlstein) which he painted for the Emperor, show a certain affinity with the Bolognese miniature painters and with the early Sienese.^ In his frescoes he appears as a more original artist. The earliest and most interesting of these are a remarkable series in the chapter-house of San Niccolo at Treviso, commissioned by the Dominican prior of that Convent in 1352. They invite comparison with the frescoes of the so-called Cappella degli Spagnuoli, the former chapter-house of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, executed almost at the same time ; for in both cases, at an epoch when the order of Friars Preachers had sunk into a deplorable state of degeneration, its local rulers were thus exalting the Dominican ideal with all the resources of art.^ Tommaso's task was a simpler one than that of his Florentine contemporaries ; but the result is hardly less impressive. All round the spacious hall, sur- rounding an older fresco of the Crucifixion, are the 1 Venturi, op. clt., V. p. 931. 2 For lUc state of the Domiuicans after the pestilence of 134S, v.f, Movtier, Histoire des MaUres O^iiraux dc J'Ordre des Frirei Pricheurt, 111. (Paris, 1907), pp. 289-319. EARLY MASTERS 5 luminaries of the Dominican order, forty in number : Saints, Popes, Cardinals, INIasters of Tlieology, Doctors, and Preachers ; each at work in his cell, drawing inspiration from the solemn scene up to which the whole composition leads. Many of the figures, such as those of St. Benedict XI, Albertus Magnus, and John of Vicenza, are admirably characterised ; but the claim made for them, that they are in any sense authentic portraits, can hardly be sustained.^ A little later, Tommaso decorated the columns of the adjoining church with votive frescoes of the Blessed Virgin and other figures, partly allegorical, partly of saints, among which the stately figures of St. Jerome and St. Romualdus, and a curiously unconventional representation of the mystical marriage of St. Agnes, are especially conspicuous. Another series of frescoes from his hand, formerly in Santa Margherita in the same city, depicting the legend of St. Ursula, in which he appears as the precursor of Carpaccio, is now in the Museo Civico. In all these frescoes, we notice his rather eccentric types, with their accentuated features, thick lips, and staring eyes, as also a straining after realism and a certain tendency to humour in the episodes.* Without the high qualities of his Tuscan contemporaries, Tommaso da Modena is an original 1 Cf. Giovanni Milanese, La Chiesa monumentale di San Nicold in Trevito, Treviso, 1004, pp. 69-75. 2 Venturi, op. cit, V. p. 972. 6 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA and interesting master, with a strongly marked individuality. Barnaba da IModena, a younger contemporary of TommasOj was the son of a certain Ottonello di Barnaba da Milano, who came of a Milanese family which had settled in Modena, where they later ac(iuired or assumed the surname of Agocchiari, probably from the occupa- tion by which they lived.^ Before 1367, Barnaba migrated to Genoa, where he painted in the chapel of the Doge's palace ; a little later, he was painting in Turin ; and, in 1380, he was summoned from Genoa to Pisa, to work in the Campo Santo. His extant pictures, which are signed Barnabas de Mutina, are all altarpieces or votive pictures, brilliantly coloured and touched up with gold ; his Madonnas have much of the grace and charm of the early Sienese. Their dates range from 1367 to 1377. He was still in Genoa in November, 1383, after which we hear no more of him. Two other Modenese painters of this epoch are now only known each by a single work. Fra Paolo da Modena is the author of the Madonna deirUmiltd (a favourite subject for Dominican convents) : Our Lady seated on the ground and giving suck to the Divine Child, before whom a friar kneels in adoration. This 1 See Bcrtoni and Viciui, Barnaba da Modena, in the Jlaasegna d'ArU, Milan, August, 1903. EARLY MASTERS 7 picture, now in the Galleria Estense at Modcna, is signed and dated 1370; but it has been completely repainted, and may conceivably be simply a rifactviento of an earlier work/ A large polyp tych in the Duomo of Modena, of which the central panel represents the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin with two donors, is inscribed: Seraphhius dc Seraph'mis pinxit 1384 dit ioins xxiii marcii. It is a rather dull picture, without any distinction or individuality. There is documentary evidence of the activity of Serafino Serafini from 1348 to 1387, in which latter year he probably died.^ He also worked at Ferrara, where, in 1373, he decorated a chapel in San Domenico ; but, with the solitary ex- ception of the picture at Modena, nothing from his hand is extant. At the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century, we find a Cristoforo da Ferrara, who is said by Vasari to ha^e worked in the church of Mezzaratta at Bologna ; there are three small pictures attributed to him, one of which is signed, in the gallery at Ferrara. He appears as a primitive, utterly insig- nificant painter, who was probably a pupil of one of the Bolognese artists of the Trecento. The earliest Ferrarese master whose works survive in "xny appreciable quantity is Antonio Alberti, who signs 1 Cf. Venturi, op. cit., V. p. 957. * See Bertoni and Vicini, Serafino Serajtiii pittore modenete dtJ t€9olo XIV, in L'AHe, Rome, 1904. 8 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA himself Antonius de Ferraria. He is described by Vasari as a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi (which is chrono- logically impossible), and " an excellent painter of his time " (^assai biion pittore del tempo suo).^ All Antonio's dated works belong to the thirties of the fifteenth century, the earliest being a fresco of the Madonna and Child, dated 1433, in the chapel of the nuns of Sanf Antonio in Polesine at Ferrara. A series of frescoes from his hand, signed and dated 1437, representing the Annunciation, Visitation, Adoration of the Magi, with various Saints, has been discovered at Talamello, a small place in the province of Urbino and Pesaro.^ In the pinacoteca of Urbino, there is an altarpiece by him from the church of San Bernardino, signed and dated 1439 ; in the central panel Our Lady sits in a garden with the sleeping Child on her knees ; above is the Resurrection, while in separate panels, with gold backgrounds, are figures of Saints, among which those of the Baptist and St. Louis are rendered witli some individuality. M. Thode notes that in Antonio's work we find the influence of Gentile da Fabriano, combined 1 I. p. 641, IV. p. 492. Vasari probably confused him with an earlier Allerto Alberti, who painted a picture for the Duomo of Ferrara in 1397. Cf. Venluri, I primordi del rinascimento artistico I Ferrara, p. 598 ; Gruyer, VArt fcrrarais a V^poqtie des Princes d'Este, II. p. 5. 2 Cf. M. Henry Tliode, in Archivio Storieo dell" Arte, I. (1888), p. 189. The attention of students was first drawn to these frescoe^ by Signer Pina in Artee Storia (Florence), October, 1886. EARLY MASTERS 9 with a foretaste of the harshness and vigour that is characteristic of the later Ferrarese painters. It is stated that, some time between 1438 and 1441, the Marquis Niccolo III. commissioned Antonio to decorate the palace known as the Paradiso (the present seat of the University of Ferrara) with frescoes representing Christ in Paradise and the assembling of the Council of Ferrara in 1438.^ This is altogether doubtful, and, in any case, these decorations have entirely disappeared. In a room on the ground-floor we may see the remains of a fascinating fresco, either an allegory or a scene from some Carolingian or Arthurian romance, depicting the siege of a tower, from the battlements of which a woman in red, apparently a prisoner, is leaning ; but there are no grounds for assigning this work to Antonio. The painter seems to have passed most of his life at Urbino, where he was still living in 1464, when he gave his daughter Calliope in marriage to a certain Bartolommeo Viti, or della Vite, of that city, by whom she became the mother of a more famous artist, Timoteo Viti.^ Crowe and Cavalcaselle, followed by M. Gustave Gruyer and others, have attributed to Antonio da FeiTara the frescoes of the Cappella Bolognini in San Petronio at Bologna (which Vasari says were begun by Buonamico Buffalmacco) ; but, with M. Thode, I find it impossible 1 P.aruffaldi, 1. p. 6h 2 Vasari, IV. p. 492 ; Gruyer, II. pp. 10-12. 10 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA to accept these as his work.^ A curious httle picture of the death of St. Catherine of Siena is erroneously attributed to him in the pinacoteca of Ferrara. In the latter part of Niccolo's reign, and throughout the short reign of Leonello, many foreign masters found employment at Ferrara. Conspicuous among them were Pisanello of Verona, who was constantly in the citv between 1427 and 1447. and was on intimate terms with Leonello himself and his half-brother, Meliaduse d'Este ; Jacopo Bellini, who, in 1441, painted a portrait of Leonello in friendly competition with the profile (now in the Morelli collection at Bergamo) by Pisanello ; the then youthful Andrea Mantegna, who seems to have come to Ferrara in 1449 ; and Roger van der Weyden, by whom Leonello possessed a picture of Adam and Eve, and another representing the Deposition from the Cross, which he showed with great pride to the humanist and traveller, Ciriaco of Ancona, to whom they seemed " painted by divine rather than by human art." ^ A certain Angelo Macagnini da Siena became Leonello's official 1 The will of Bartolommeo della Seta, of the Eolognini family, executed in 1408, orders the chapel to be finished and painted, and prescribes the subjects of the frescoes as we now see them. (Milanesi's note in Vasari, I. p. 507.) This points to the employment of an earlier painter than Antonio, as such commissions were carried out promptly in the Quattrocento. 2 Cf. Campori, 1 pittori degli UsteJisi, pp. 535-554 ; and my Dukea and Poets in Ferrara, pp. 51-5G. EARLY MASTERS 1 1 court painter in 1447, and held the same position under Borso until 1456. By the latter he was in- vested with a fief, with the obligation of presenting every year as tribute a rose or a lily painted on parch- ment or panel.^ None of Angelo's works can now be identified, nor anv trace of Sienese uifluence be dis- cerncd in the productions of the subsequent Ferrarese school. In 1451, the year after Borso's accession, Piero de' Franceschi was invited to Ferrara, where he decorated several rooms in the palace and a chapel in Sant' Agostino with frescoes, all of which have perished." His influence, together with that of Pisanello and that of the famous school founded by Squarcione at Padua, was highly important in the development of Ferrarese painting. The two most notable precursors of the true Ferrarese school — Giovanni da Oriolo and Bono da Ferrara — are both direct imitators of Pisanello. The former seems not to have been a Ferrarese, but to have come from Oriolo, a small place near Faenza ; his family name is said to have been Calegari. A portrait of Elisabetta and Barbara, the daughters of Astorre II. Manfredi, lord of Faenza, which he painted about 1449, was highly praised by a local 1 Ventuli, 1 prirnordi, pp. 609, 610. 2 The palace in question -was not the Schifanoia, as frequently stated, but the Corte Veccliia, the present Palazzo Municipale, which >ffti rebuilt by Ercole I. in U79 and 1480. 12 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA poetaster. In 1461, he was still living and working at Faenza, where he is styled M agister Johannes de Oriolo pktor puhlwus} His admirable portrait of Leonello, in the National Gallery, signed Opns Johannis Orioli, was, perhaps, painted with the aid of the medal by Pisanello, and invites comparison with the latter''s picture of the Marquis, with its back- ground of wild roses, at Bergamo.^ Bono, in his finely coloured and carefully executed St. Jerome in the National Gallery, signs himself a pupil of Pisanello, Pisani discipulus} In the early fifties of the century, after working for Borso, he entered the school of Squarcione at Padua, where, in collaboration with Mantegna and the others, he painted, in the church of the Eremitani, the fresco of St. Christopher bearing the Divine Child across the stream — a work inferior to the rest of the cycle. A greater master was needed to give the Ferrarese school independent life, and, by fusing the character- istics of the native Ferrarese genius with the artistic impulses coming from without, to start it on the lines that it was to follow in order to rank among the great 1 Cf. F. Argnani, Sul inttore Giovanni da Oriolo, Faenza, 1899. Several pictures are attributed to him in the gallery at Faenza, 2 C/. G. F. Hill, Pisanello, p. 152. 3 Cf. G. F. Hill, op. cit., p. 91, where it is suggested that Bono may have aseibted riaanollo in the frescoes in Sant' Auastasia at Verona. EARLY MASTERS 13 schools of Renaissance painting. Such a master arose in the person of Cosimo Tura. Vasari represents a certain Galasso as the master of Cosimo Tura and the true founder of the Ferrarese school. In his first edition, he says that the sight of the honour and remuneration won by Piero de** Franceschi in Ferrara inspired Galasso to devote himself to painting, with such zeal that "he gained the reputation of a good and excellent master,"" and that he went to Venice and brought back thence the practice of painting in oils ; but, in his second edition, he makes this Galasso an earlier and less significant artist, who worked with Cristoforo and the Bolognese at Mezzaratta in 1404/ It seems probable, as Morelli first suggested, that two different artistic personalities are confused under the name of Galasso : an earlier painter, who may be the author of the Trinita, signed with a double G, in the pinacoteca at Ferrara, and the Adoration of the Magi, with a similar signature, belonging to Mr. Stogdon at Harrow ; and Galasso di Matteo Piva, who worked for the Ferrarese court from 1449 to 1453." The latter 1 rite, ed. cit, II. pp. 140-112, III. pp. 89-92. 2 Cf. Campori, op. cit.., pp. 545, 546. Various other pictures exist ■with the apparent signature of the interlaced G's. The cynical Btory concerning Galasso, in Ariosto's Satire to Annibale Malaguzzi, is well known (but the painter's name is not given in the earlier version). 14 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA afterwards went to Bologna, where, shortly before 1455, he painted for Cardinal Bessarion, then legate, a picture of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, in San Giovanni in Monte, with a life-like portrait of the Cardinal introduced. The painting no longer exists ; but the contemporary chronicler of Bologna, the Dominican friar, Girolamo Borselli, writing under 1455, describes the author of it as Galasms Fer- rariensis ingeniosus juvenis} He is said to have died before April 25, 1473.^ In the unsigned Pieta with Franciscan nuns and friars, attributed to him at Ferrara (a much restored, but still impressive picture, in spite of the repellent types of the chief figures, and the grimace which stands for religious emotion on the faces of the Saints), there is manifest a certain in- congruous blending of a purely primitive style with an anticipation of the uncouth vigour of the succeeding Ferrarese masters. The painter is evidently treading in the same path as Cosimo Tura, but without a trace of Tura's genius, and probably without the advantage of his Paduan training. Contemporaneous with Galasso di Matteo Piva, was Michele Ongaro, a Hungarian by birth, who worked in 1 Annales £ono)iienscs Fratris Hieronyml de Bursdlis {Rer. It. Script, xxiii), col. 888. 2 That is, if the •' Andreas de Galassio filius quondam Magistri Galasaii civis ferrariensis," in a document of that date, h his son (Cittadello, Kotizir relative a Ferrara, p. 57^). EARLY MASTERS 15 Fcrrara during the forties and fifties of the century, and who is mentioned as dead in a document of July 28, 1464/ In an allegorical picture representing Ceres, at Buda Pesth, signed Michele Payinonio, ap- parently painted for Borso, he seems, like Galasso, a painter striving, also with weaker powers, to tread in the path that Tura was to make his own. Several works of the same kind, evidently belonging to the Ferrarese school of the middle of the Quattrocento, are tentatively attributed to him. We may find traces of the same artistic spirit in the few extant, paintings of Suor Caterina Vigri, better known as St. Catherine of Bologna (where she died in 1463); a noble and inspired woman, who is more significant in the annals of mysticism than in the history of art. 1 Cf. Gruyer, II. pp. 37. 38. CHAPTER II COSIMO TURA CosiMO, or Cosme, Tura, who has been called the Mantegna of the Ferrarese school, was the son of Domenico di Tura, a shoemaker, and was born in 14S9 or 1430/ Nothing is known of his early training. We first hear of him in 1451, as working in Ferrara with Bono and Galasso.^ The vast expenses incurred by Borso in connection with his elevation by the Emperor to the rank of Duke of Modena and Reggio, in 1452, had probably exhausted his exchequer, and compelled him for some years to restrict his patronage of art. There was consequently a migration of Ferrarese painters to other cities. Bono went to Padua, Galasso to Bologna, and, after some un- important commissions from the Duke, Tura, between 1453 and 1456, seems to have followed Bono to Padua. At Padua the greatest of the realists, Donatello, had 1 Of, Venturi, in Arch. Sior. dell 'Arlc, VII, (1891), pp. 62. 53, for document showing that he was au infant in 1431. 2 Venturi, J prlmonU. p. 61 i. Cf. Campori, o/). cit., doc. 11, COSIMO TURA 17 but lately completed his mighty statue of Gattamelata and his monumental works in Sanf Antonio ; the school of Squarcione, with its passion for antique sculpture and its archaeological enthusiasm finding vent in rich decorative details, was at its zenith ; Mantegna and his colleagues were just beginning the frescoes of the Eremitani. To the young painter from Ferrara, Donatello must have come as a revelation of the meaning and the possibilities of art. In the severe training of Squarcione's school, with its founder's collection of treasures from the antique world, he found what he needed for the complete expression of his own personal bent in painting. He may possibly have taken some part in the minor decorations of the chapel in the Eremitani, where the figure of one of the four doctors of the Church, the St. Augustine, has been tentatively ascribed to him.^ There is reason to think that he made some stay in Venice as well, for, in after years, he left a portion of his goods to the poor of that city ; but Venetian influence has left no trace in his work. It is not necessary to suppose that the two pictures now at Venice — the richly coloured Pieta in the Museo Civico (in which the ape, so common in Ferrarese painting, is seen climbing a fruit-tree), and the Madonna with the sleeping Child in the Accademia — were painted at this time. But, indeed, there is 1 Cf. Venturi, in V ArU (1908), r- 422. 1 8 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA little progression to be traced in Tura's art. Fusing the inspiration caught from Donatello's sculptures, and the severe, would-be classical teaching of Squarcione, with the native robust and vigorous temper of the ^ Ferrarese people, not untouched by the influence of Mantegna's own earliest works, Tura formed for himself a style, lacking in charm and grace, with little appeal to merely sensuous pleasure, but original, austere, and strenuously virile. Mr. Berenson has finely noticed the strangeness of the destiny by which both Raphael and Correggio must be numbered among Tura's artistic descendants : — "Nothing could be more opposed to the noble grace of the one, or the ecstatic sensuousness of the other, than the style of their Patriarch. His figures are of flint, as haughty and immobile as Pharaohs, or as convulsed with suppressed energy as the gnarled knots in the olive tree. Their faces are seldom lit up with tenderness, and their smiles are apt to turn into archaic grimaces. Their claw-like hands express the manner of their contact. Tura's architecture is piled up and barocque, not as architecture frequently is in painters of the earlier Renaissance, but almost as in the proud palaces built for the Modes and Persians. His landscapes are of a world which has these many ages seen no flower or green leaf, for there is no earth, no mould, no sod, onlv the inliospitable rock every- » • • •• ».• • » • • * • ' »' » » COSIMO Tlra MAUONXA AND CHir>D National (iallcry Id ft ICC inigt 18 COSIMO TURA 19 where. He seldom finds place even for the dry cornel tree which other artists, trained at Padua, loved to paint." ^ Only the supreme genius of a Mantegna could give life to a world peopled with creations like these ; and Tura, with all his high artistic gifts and real artistic feeling, was a lesser man. Tura returned to Ferrara in 1456, and, in the following year, was appointed painter to the court in succession to Angelo da Siena. In 1458, he painted a Nativity for the Duomo, which is lost. To ap- proximately the same date belongs his St. Jerome, now in the National Gallery, for the Duke's new foundation, the Certosa of San Cristoforo. Borso himself cared less for art than his brother and pre- decessor, Leonello, had done, and regarded it as little more than a useful adjunct to the pomp and parade with which he loved to dazzle his subjects and impress the rest of Italy with his own magnificence. He at first employed Tura mainly in preparing designs for tapestries, in ephemeral decorations for court festivities, in painting pennons, bards and trappings for horses, ornamenting cloths and armour for use at state tourna- ments. And, indeed, throughout tlie history of 1 Xortk Italian Painters of the Rcnaiisance^ p. 56. But there are exceptions in his work ; we have th^ soa-bhore in his St. Anthony afc JfocIenR, and a pleasant city and cnnal scene in the background of his imaller AUdonnft iu th« Natioual Qalltrj. 20 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Ferrarese art, we find this a recognised part of the work of even the greatest painters. Between 1465 and 1467, Tiira was at Mirandola, working for Gian Francesco Pico, Count of Concordia (the father of the famous scholar and mystic), whose library he decorated with panels representing Poetry, the seated figure of a woman with her face visible beneath a transparent flame-coloured veil, surrounded by smaller figures of Orpheus, the Muses, and the chief poets of antiquity. Like so many other great decorative schemes carried out by Ferrarese painters, these works have perished. They are described at length by Lilius Gregorius Giraldus, in the dialogues on the history of the poets, which he represents as having been held in 1503 between himself, the younger Gian Francesco Pico (the Count's grandson), and the humanist Piso — the latter declaring that he had seen other paintings by Cosme in which he was thought almost to rival those of antiquity.^ N^ In the latter part of 1467, furious dissensions having broken out in the Pico family after Gian Francesco's death, the painter left Mirandola and returned to Ferrara, where he was henceforth con- tinuously engaged for the rest of his life. Commissions poured in upon him, and the few pictures from his 1 Zilii Qregorii Gyraldi Ferrariensis Hhtoriae Poeiayum, Dial, I, Opera (Bn?le, 15S0), TT. pp. 2, 3. COSIMO TURA 21 hand that have come down to us, mostly small in size and somewhat monotonous in subject, represent but a comparatively insignificant part of his achievement. We find him in 1468 painting frescoes for the Sacrati family in San Domenico, which, together with the Annunciation and the St. George slaying the Dragon, panels of large size executed in the following year for the organ-shutters of the Duomo (where they now hang in the choir), are the only works of his that Vasari seems to have known.^ In 1469, he undertook with the assistance of two pupils to decorate Borso's chapel in Belriguardo, one of the Estensian palaces a few miles outside the city : " to paint the chapel of Belriguardo in oil with the subjects that shall most please his Excellence "" ; the whole work to be finished within five years. The Duke sent him to Venice for gold and colours, and also to Brescia to study the chapel recently decorated by Gentile da Fabriano in the Broletto of that city.^ These paintings, with Belriguardo itself, have perished ; they were completed in 1472 for Borso's successor. On Borso's death in August, 1471, four months after he had obtained the longed-for title of Duke of Ferrara from Pope Paul II, Tura was engaged in the decorations for the funeral in 1 Vite, III. p. 92. 2 The whole agreement in Venturi, Cosma Tura genannt Oosmi {Jahrhuch der Tcoiiiglich prenssiichoi Kunstsainmlungen, IX.), pp. 13-16. 22 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA the Certosa, and painted the catafalque, over which the Bishop of Adria preached the funeral oration, while the new duke, Ercole L, and his courtiers stood around, and the mercenary soldiers kept the doors of the church and lined the way from the palace, for fear of an attempted coup cTetat on the part of the rival claimant to the throne, Leonello^s banished son Niccolo.^ Under Ercole, Tura still kept his place as chief court painter until a few years before his death. In this capacity one of his chief functions was painting por- traits of members of the ruling family — portraits which the etiquette of court life demanded should be presented, or exchanged, on occasions of betrothals and the like. When the Duke was about to marry Leonora of Aragon, the daughter of the King of Niples, we have the curious record, among the court expenses of 1472, of payment " for two heads designed and coloured by the hand of the painter Cosme, one of the most illustrious Duke our Lord, the other of Madama Lucrezia, daughter of his Excellence, the which heads were sent to Naples to the most illustrious Duchess, Madama Eleonora, consort of our foresaid Lord."*'^ ITiis Lucrezia was the illegitimate daughter of Ercole, by a certain Lodovica Cantelmieri, or 1 Of. Dulcca and Poets in Firrara, pp. 118-121. 2 Venturi, Varte ferraresf nd periodo d^£reolt I d*£at(\ H p. 356n. COSIiMO TURA 23 Condolmieri, and it is a strange reflection on the moral sense of the epoch that the Duke should have thought her portrait, as well as his own, a suitable present for his future wife. The marriage was celebrated at Ferrara, early in July, 1473, with extraordinary pomp and ceremony. Tura had designed the nuptial bed, with its coverings and canopy, which French and Flemish embroiderers interwove in wool and silk on a white field. For the same occasion he designed a sers'ice of silver plate, which was executed by Giorgio Alle- gretto da Ragusa, a \'enetian goldsmith, and which seemed to Lodovico Sforza to have such " una dignita a vederli cosi belli et ben lavorati '"* that he afterwards importuned Ercole for the design.^ In 1475, Tura painted an ancona for the Duke's private room, with small figures against a gold background, of which the central panel, the little Madonna with the Child in her arms, is now at Bergamo, and one of the side wings, a beautiful and nobly modelled figure of a Dominican friar in prayer, is in the Ufllzi.^ In 1477, the baby son of Ercole and Leonora (" il no.stro dolcissimo puttino,'' as the proud father calls him), Alfonso, not yet a year old, was betrothed to Anna Sforza, the sister of the young Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo, a 1 Venturi, op. cit, II. pp. 355-358. 2 C/. Campori, op. cit., doc. 15. The St. Antliony of Padua in the Louvre, and tho Saints Sebabtian and Christopher at Perlin. a'so foiiued pHii of tUi? picture. 24 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA little girl of two, and Tura had to paint the portrait of the baby bridegroom to give to the ambassadors of the Duchess Bona, the regent of Milan. A little later, we find him painting seven nude figures of women, possibly allegorical figures of the seven virtues, for Ercole's study/ He painted Lucrezia's portrait again in 1479, as a gift from Ercole to Giovanni Bentivoglio, the ruler of Bologna, to whose eldest son, Annibale, she was married a few years later. He likewise painted the portraits of the Duke's two legitimate daughters, Isabella and Beatrice, who were married to the Marquis of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, and Lodovico Sforza, titular Duke of Bari and afterwards Duke of Milan, in February, 1490, and January, 1491, respectively. Tura was closely in touch with the humanists in Ferrara. Lodovico Bigo Pittori, a disciple of Battista Guarin', who won renown first as a poet and then as a preacher, but whose conversion was said to have spoiled his art," addressed an epigram to him, rallying him on his reiterated professions of friendship which were unac- companied with deeds, and composed an inscription for one of his altarpieces.^ Tito Strozzi, the first Latin » Venturi, op. cit., 11. p. 363n. 2 Of. L. G. Gyra'dus, Be Poetis NoUrorum Temporum, Opera, ed. c'it., II. p. 389. 3 Lodovici Bigi Piclorii Ferrariensit poclae Tumult uariorum carmina (Modena, 1492): "Imago Virginis exoitantis Filium" (Lib. TIT.) ; "Ad Cosmum " (Lib. IV.). COSIMO TURA 25 poet of the age and one of the most influential servants of the court, whom the people " hated worse than the devil '^ for his extortions, sat to him for his portrait, and sent him a poem in elegiacs concerning another portrait of his, representing one of the fickle beauties of the city/ It is a grievous loss to the lover of art and the student of Ferrarese history alike that, with the solitary exception of the figure of Lorenzo Roverella (to be mentioned presently), no authentic portrait from Tura's hand has yet been discovered. The two most important extant works by Tura are altarpieces which were probably executed in the earlier years of Ercole's reign. In both we find in a marked degree the painter's chief characteristics : his vigorous but unlovely types, with their curious clawing fingers and over-emphasised knuckles ; his drapery with strongly marked folds like bent sheets of beaten metal ; his peculiarly rich, yet somewhat inharmonious and not entirely pleasing colouring. In both, too, we notice the composition that became traditional in Ferrarese art down to the pupils of Lorenzo Costa : the open space in the pedestal of the Blessed Virgin's throne, through which we catch a glimpse of the landscape beyond, in the Berlin picture, or gaze out into the unbroken expanse of pure sky, in the National Gallery example. In both, the decorations of the throne con- i Strozii jpoetae ]pat€r et Jilius (Venice, 1513), p. 66. 26 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA nect religion with classical mythology in the spirit of the early Renaissance, and the inscriptions in Hebrew remind us of Duke Ercole's broad-minded protection of the Jews in his dominions — a course which he abandoned later under the influence of Savonarola/ It is not possible to decide the exact date of the Berlin picture, which was painted for the church of San Lazzaro outside the walls of Ferrara. It shows Tura's usual Madonna with the sleeping Child across her lap, enthroned between St. Apollonia and St. Catherine of Alexandria (the latter an unusually beautiful type) on a richly ornamented tabernacle, with St. Lazzarus (as bishop of Marseilles) and St. Jerome below. The throne is adorned with painted basreliefs, tliree scriptural scenes with below them the labours of Hercules, clearly intended as a compliment to the Duke, while two prophets are seen in the spandrils above.^ The picture in the National Gallery is the central panel of an altarpiece painted for I^orcnzo Rovorella, the bishop of Ferrara, for the chapel of his family in San Giorgio (which, until the eleventh century, was the cathedral), some time before 1475.^ Our Lady is 1 Cf. Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, pp. 162, 15?., 325. 2 Cf. Bode, La Rcnaistance au Musie de Brrlin, in the Gazette (hi Beaux-Art.^, (1889), pp. 116. 117. ^ Cf. Venturi, in Arch. Utor. ddVArte, VII. pp. 90-93 ; Barotri, Scrie de' Vesmvi ed Arcivcacovi di Ferrara (Ferraru, 1781), pp. 91-9C. Lui'eiizo RoVerella died iu 1474. 1,. 5 » » Ati'li'raon COSIMO Tl KA IJOVEKELLA AND HIS I'ATKoN SAINTS To fuce paije 36 COSIMO TURA 27 enthroned with the Divine Child sleeping against her arm. The throne is decorated with bronze figures of the Evangelists and winged genii under an elaborately ornamented arch. The rich yet quaint combination of hues in the robes of the six angelic musicians is a delight to the eye, in spite of an unpleasing green that pervades the whole scheme of colour. The deep blue of heaven is above and below ; and, notwith- standing the austere ugliness of the types, the effect is singularly impressive and unearthly, as of a vision, seen on the ramparts of God's house, of the throne set up on some temple pinnacle in sheer ether. The right wing of the picture, now in the Colonna palace at Rome, shows Roverella himself kneeling^ (an admirable piece of realistic portraiture), under the patronage of St. Maurelius and St. Paul — the former a typical Italian prelate of the epoch. The left wing is lost. The whole was crowned by the Pieta, now in 1 For this picture, Lodovico Bigo Pittori wrote the following distich {Tumultuariorum carminnm Liber tertius) : Imago Virginis excitantis Filium; Surge, puer. Rovorella fores gens pulsat. Apertum Redde aditum. Pulsa, lex ait : intus eris. According to Baruffaldi, I. pp. 77-80, a slightly modified version of these lines was legible in his days on the base of the organ in the central panel ; but, if so, they must have i^ince been obliterated, n-< Ihey are invirtible in the picture as it hangs iu the National Gallery to-day. 28 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA the Louvre, in which the same pecuhar green is observable as in the National Gallery panel, and a slight tendency to exaggerate facial expression so as to border upon mere grimace. Another ancona of Tura's, formerly over the altar of St. Maurelius in San Giorgio and now likewise dis- persed, was composed of five to}uJi, representing the trial and martyrdom of the Saint, the Adoration of the Magi, the Circumcision, and the Flight into Egypt. The first two are in the pinacoteca of Ferrara ; the Flight into Egypt is in the possession of Mr. Benson ; while the remaining two, first identified by Signor A'enturi in private collections in Rome,^ have since crossed the Atlantic. In the Adoration of the Magi, the golden-haired Madonna has far more ideal charm and grace than we find in any other of Tura's pictures. From the Santini collection at Ferrara, there recently came to Modena the striking full-length figure of a Franciscan friar, usually called San Giacomo della Marca, but in reality St. Anthony of Padua. He is at Rimini, with his back to the sea, about to turn and preach to the fishes when the unbelievers would not hear him " dispute concerning the faith of Christ and the Holy Scripture."^ Painted almost in mono- 1 Cf. Arch. Star. delV Arte, VII. p. 94. 2 Fioretti dl San Francesco, cap. 40. - . ..* - • »' » *»t "» to* . / ntlergon COSIMO TURA ADORATION OF THE MAGI Cambridge, U.S.A. To face page 28 -•-'. COSIMO TURA 29 chronic, this appears to be one of Tura's latest works, and probably formed part of an altarpiece executed for Francesco Nasello, the ducal secretary, in 1484, for a chapel in San Niccolo in Ferrara. Tura's official connection with the court seems to have ended about 1485. Although his various wills point to his having become a comparatively wealthy man, we find him, on January 9, 1490, \mting to Duke Ercole, complaining that he is unable to support himself and that he is not being paid for his labours : — " I do not know how I can live and maintain myself in this fashion ; for I have no occupation or means to support me with my household, save what I have earned as payment, day by day, with my works and my profession of painting — especially now that I find myself ill of such a malady that I cannot re- cover without very great expense and length of time.'' Six years ago (he adds) he painted an altarpiece for Francesco Nasello, the secretary of his Excellence, in San Niccolo at his own expense, for which sixty ducats are owing, and likewise a St. Anthony of Padua for the Bishop of Adria, for which twenty-five ducats are due. He cannot get his money from either, and appeals to the Duke. " They are powerful and have easily the means to satisfy me, and I am poor and y 30 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA impotent, and cannot afford to lose the fruits of my labours." ^ Tlie painter died five years later. A Ferrarese chronicler of the beginning of the sixteenth century writes: "In the month of April, 1495, died the noble and excellent man, maestro Cosimo dal Tura, a most excellent painter. He was buried at San Lorenzo across the Po, in a tomb near the door of the campanile of that church." ^ Cosimo Tura is the true founder of the school of Ferrara and Bologna. His influence was supreme over all the painters of the dominions ruled by the House of Este in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and reached onwards even to Raphael and Correggio. Among the numerous pictures by unidentified followers of his, must be mentioned the Charity with three 'putt% in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli at Milan, a finely coloured work in which the chief figure, at least, has little of the master's characteristic uncouthness ; and the well- known Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, which, from the Guggenheim collection at Venice, was obtained for the Dresden Gallery in 1896. The latter picture was originally ascribed to Lorenzo Costa, by reason of an inscription which it bears, in Hebrew, declaring it the 1 Veuturi, Qotuia Tura genannt Come, p. 31 ; Varte ferrarese nel j)eriodo d-E/'cnh I, II. pp. 368, 360. He shows tliat the St. Anthony at l^Iodena \^ n part of the oUfirpieoe for San Niocol5. « CftmpoH, op. cit.j p. 562. 1 » » (> . » > AiififrHOH Scnooi. OK TURA ("HAUITV I'dl li I'lzzoli ^hisfuiii 7'« fail- j>ii!/i- 30 COSIMO TURA 31 work of that painter. It was first attributed to Tura by Morelli. It exhibits none of Tura's uncouth vigour ; its colouring is somewhat unHke his, and the treatment of drapery, as seen in the martyr'*s loincloth, is not the same. With Signor Venturi,^ I find it hard to recognise this curious picture as an authentic work of Tura's. It appears to me not impossible that it may be, after all, a very early work by Costa, painted when under the influence, perhaps actually in the school, of the older master. 1 Cf. Z'Jre<{1908), p. 422. CHAPTER III FRANCESCO DEL COSSA : THE FRESCOES OF THE SCHIFANOIA Comparatively little is known of the master who signs himself Francesco del Cossa, and who may be regarded as the second founder of the Ferrarese school. He was probably born in 1438, some eight or nine years after Tura, and was the son of Cristoforo del Cossa, a military architect in the service of the House of Este. Francesco del Cossa closely resembles Tura in the austere character of his art. It is clear that he was deeply influenced by his older contemporary, though there are no grounds for supposing that he was actually his pupil. Unlike Tura, he probably never studied at Padua, but drew his chief inspiration from the works of Piero de' Franceschi, then in their first freshness on the walls of the Corte Vecchia and Sanf Agostino. His feeling for movement and power of re- presenting it are considerably greater than Tura's ; his figures and types, though still lacking in charm and grace, arc generally less uncouth, and his drapery is 82 FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 33 disposed in less stiff and more natural folds; Indeed, Mr. Berenson seems to me to overstate the matter a little, when he says that " Cossa took over Tura''s world bodily, and, when possible, exaggerated it." ^ We first hear of Cossa in 1456, when a contract by which he pledges himself to paint three half-figures representing a Pieta, and other decorations in imitation of marble round the high altar of the Duomo, is drawn up with his father — he himself being not yet of age.^ Two of his works for Ferrarese churches are extant. One is the smaller St. Jerome in the pinacoteca at Ferrara, hitherto attributed to Tura, but which Signor Venturi has recently restored to the younger painter.^ The other is the dispersed altarpiece, perhaps painted for San Domenico, in honour of Saint Hyacinth, the Dominican evangelist of Poland. Of this the central panel, now in the National Gallery, represents the Saint preaching on the Redemption, while Christ appears above with Angels bearing the emblems of the Passion ; in the background are the ruins which Cossa loves, and other architectural details, with men in the costume of the period and soldiers keeping the gate of the city. In the predella, which has been identified 1 But cf. his whole fine characterisation of this painter, op. cU., pp. 60-63. 2 Cittadella, Kotizle, p. 52; Venturi, Varte a Ferrara nd periodo ill Borso (T Este, p. 722. a Cf. VArte (1908), p. 421. D 34 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA with the picture once ascribed to Benozzo Gozzoli in the Vatican, four of Hyacinth's miracles are depicted, with a reahsm and power of narrative which anticipates the frescoes of the Schifanoia. The two side-panels are in the Brera ; behind the stately figures of the Baptist and St. Peter, we see similar architectural details with pleasant episodes, doubtless direct transcripts from the Ferrarese life of the time. To see this life pictured on a larger scale, a veritable recreation of the hel vivere of the Quattrocento, we must turn to the frescoes of the Palazzo Schifanoia. The palace was built by the Marquis Alberto d'Este (Borso's grandfather) in 1391 as a hunting-lodge, and completed for Borso shortly after 1466, by the archi- tect, Pietro Benvenuti, who added the first floor. Borso used it as a kind of unofficial residence during part of the summer months. By his orders the walls of the chief hall on the first floor were covered, between 1467 and 1470, with a series of frescoes intended to represent the pacific and blissful state of a country ruled by a just and benevolent sovereign, with whose philanthropical labours the celestial influences were pro- pitious in bringing back the golden age for his fortunate subjects, as, month by month, the year moved through its course. Certain lines from Boiardo's CanrMuiere,, written during the very years in which these paintings were FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 35 executed, seem to express the spirit of the decorations of the Schifanoia : — " Piovea da tutti e cieli Amore in terra, E ralegrava I'anime gentili, Spirando in ogni parte dolcie foco ; E i giovanetti arditi e i cor virili, Sanza alcun sdegno e sanza alcuna guerra, Armegiar si vedean per ogni loco ; Le donne in festa, in alegreza, in gioco. In danze perregrine^ in dolci canti ; Per tutto leti amanti, Zente lezadre, e festegiar giocondo. Non sara piu (che io creda) e non fu avanti Fiorita tanto questa alma cittade, Di onor e di beltade, E di tanto piacer guarnita a tondo." ^ In three superimposed zones, which originally went all round the hall, these frescoes set forth the twelve months of the year, figured in the triumphal pageants of the presiding deities of antiquity, and illustrated in the occupations of men and women in each ; the signs of the zodiac and allegorical figures connected with them ; 1 Canz. cxlv. (ed. Solerti, Le poesie volgari e latine di M. M. Boiardo, p. 207). " Love rained on earth from all the spheres, and gladdened gentle souls, breathing sweet fire in every part ; and daring youths and manly hearts, without any wrath and without any war, were seen everywhere donning arms ; the ladies in festivities, in gladness, in sport, in winsome dances, in sweet songs ; everywhere happy lovers, gallant folk, jocund merrymaking. This goodly city will be no more, methinks, and never was before so flowering with honour and beauty, and decked round with such delight." 36 Tire SCHOOL OF FERRARA and scenes from the daily life of Borso himself, in which he is glorified as the ideal ruler, the father of his people. Only fragments remain of the paintings on the southern and western walls, representing October, November, December, Janueiry and February. Those to the east and north, dealing with the seven months from March to May, and from June to September, respectively, are better presened. Worked into this scheme of decoration are admirably rendered scenes from the Italian life of the epoch, in the country and the city, the camp and the court. We are shown the peasants pruning the vines, mowing the hay, ploughing, sowing, reaping, thrashing, and the like ; we watch the harvest and the vintage, follow the condottieri as they lead the ducal mercenaries (i provmonati di Sna Eccellenza) through the land to protect the ducal subjects from foreign aggression, or the courtly trains passing to and from the chase. A state marriage is celebrated — possibly that of Borso*'s half-sister, Bianca Maria d'Este, to Galeotto Pico della Mirandola — while ecclesiastics (under tlie shadow of Jupiter) exhort the soldiers to undertake a crusade against the Turk, or, it may Ix? (Borso not having yet obtained liis coveted ducal cap from tlic Pope), to take arms on behalf of the Holy See against Florence. Through all this pictured pageantry rides the old Duke himself, clad in cloth of gold, serene and gracious, on his way between Mm » • ^ .ttKli-raoii Francesco del Cossa DETAIL FllOil THE SCIIIFAXOIA FRESCOES F I' I vara To face page 36 FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 37 the palace and his beloved hunting-ground, or standing under a portico to administer justice or exchange courtesies with the ambassadors of the other potentates of Italy. Many of the courtiers that surround hira are doubtless portraits, but all the proposed identifications are conjectural — the only exception being that of the handsome young man with a falcon on his wrist, riding at the Duke's side in the month of March, as Borso's favourite, Teofilo Calcagnino, described by Francesco Ariosti as " the ducal delight, that worthy and gentle cavalier."" ^ The whole scheme was evidently devised by one of the humanists of the court — who, most probably, was Pellegrino Prisciano, astrologer, poet, and historian, who became tlie librarian and archivist of Borso's successor.^ There is still much question concerning the painters by whom the frescoes were executed. When first recovered from under the whitewash in 1840, they were attributed to Cosimo Tura, as the chief master of the epoch, the name of Francesco del Cossa being then almost unknown. Though his actual share in the execution is still disputed, it is now generally recognised that the younger painter is the leading spirit throughout. I Cf. Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, p. 111. * For Pellegrino Prisciano, see Bertoni, La BthlioU>ea TUsff^^e e la eoltwra ferrarese, passim, and LueIo and Reniw, Zu colPuru t. Lt rela:io7ii Utterurie di hahdla d'Este (xoit€aga, 2, pp. 252 et seq. 38 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA We find Francesco del Cossa, on March 25, 1470, addressing a letter to Borso, which is not only of the first importance for the question in hand, but a singular document as to the whole condition of artist life in Ferrara at the epoch : — " Most illustrious prince and most excellent lord, my very special master : " Some days ago, together with the other painters, I made supplication to your Excellence concerning the payment for the hall of Schifanoia; to which your lordship replied that we must await the reports. Most illustrious prince, I would not be the man to make myself troublesome to Pellegrino Prisciano or to others. Therefore I have decided to appeal alone to your lordship, because you perhaps think, or have been told, that I am one of those who can be quite con- tented and are overpaid at the rate of ten holognini ; and humbly to remind you that I am Francesco del Cossa, who, by myself, have painted those three fields towards the antechamber. If it were the will / of your most illustrious lordship not to give me more than ten holognini the foot, albeit I should lose continually forty or fifty ducats thereby, and I live by the work of my arms, I should be quite content and take it quietly. But, since there are other circum- stances, I should be greatly aggrieved and distressed inwardly ; especially considering that I, who have at FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 39 least begun to have some little reputation, should be treated and judged on the same level with the most worthless apprentice of Ferrara ; and that my con- tinual study and zeal should not at this time receive any greater reward, and especially from your most illustrious lordship, than one who has done nothing of the kind. Certainly, most illustrious prince, I could not fail to be distressed inwardly and aggrieved thereat, and, further, it would seem to me passing strange that my work, done on trust as I have done it, and my adorning with gold and good colours, should be deemed of the same price as certain parts of the others which have been executed without such labour and expense. And this I say, my lord, be- cause I have worked almost entirely in fresco, which is finished and good work, as is known to all the masters of the art. All the same, most illustrious lord, I place myself at your feet. You might, per- haps, object that you will not do this for me, because you would be obliged to do the same for the others ; but, my lord, you could easily say that the work had been so estimated. And, if you do not wish to follow the estimates, I beseech you to give me, of your grace and benignity, if not the whole which perchance would be due to me, at least what portion seems good to you ; and I will accept it as a gracious gift and speak of it as such. I commend myself to 40 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA your most illustrious lordship. Ferrara, March 25, 1470. " Your most illustrious lordship's servant, albeit the lowest, Francesco del Cossa."^ The three compartments mentioned, "those three fields towards the antechamber," are manifestly the spaces devoted to the months of March, April, and May : in short, the whole eastern wall. The first two of these are much the finest of the series. For March, we have the triumph of Minerva in her chariot drawn by unicorns, with women weaving at the looms, and the jurists and professors in council ; in the intermediate zone, the sign of the ram, and two figures perhaps symbolising activity and idleness ; while, in the lowest zone, Borso first administers justice, and then rides to the chase, and in the background the contadini prune the vines. The uppermost zone of April, where Venus triumphs in her barge drawn by swans and an armed warrior kneels before her, is like a page from Boccaccio. To the sound of lutes and vioLs, lovers meet and embrace, or linger in amorous dalliance. On either side of Taurus, maternal love 1 Letter first published by Venturi in Der Kunttfreund, no. 9 (Berlin, 188o), coll. 130, 131 ; also in Campori,op. cit., doc. 13. For the whole subject of the frescoes of the Schifanoia, with the various views as to their authorship, cf. especially Gruyer, I. pp. 419-468, II. pp. 575-596 ; F. Harck, QLi affrewhl del palazzo di Schifanoia in Ferrara; Venturi, in Atti e vnemorU della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per Roinayna. ?erie8 111. vol. 3. FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 41 (a charming group of mother and child) arid violent lust are contrasted. Below, on the return from the hunt, Borso unbends with his jester Scocola, that " nobile, facetissimo, e soavissimo bufFone '**' ^ ; while (corresponding with the pruning scene in the previous fresco) we see the races, both of horses and of men and women, with which the Ferrarese loved to celebrate the feast of St. George. "No Greek bas-relief or vase,'' writes Mr. Berenson, " can show a design more swift.'' ^ It is impossible to follow him, however, in restricting Cossa's handiwork to this single episode. Even if we do not take the painter's declaration to Borso quite literally, and admit the work of pupils in the portions that he claims to have executed, it is hard to believe that the master would have contented himself with one insignificant scene in the background. A large part of these March and April frescoes may, I think safely be regarded as Cossa's own. In those dealing with May, which represent the triumph of Apollo (the lowest zone has been destroyed), while the design is midoubtedly his, the execution is largely, if not entirely, that of his assistants. There is no external evidence as to the painters of the northern wall, and the ground is clear for conjecture. Mr. Berenson's theory, that they were 1 Cf. Bertoni, Buffom alia CorU di Ferrara (Rivista d' Italia, VI. fasc. iii-iv). 2 Op. eit., p. 62, 42 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA executed by artists under Cossa's influence, does not find favour with other students of the Ferrarese school. A general consensus of opinion recognises Cossa''s style in a small portion of the lowest zone of the month of July, in which Borso is apparently receiving petitions. For the rest, the comparative inferiority of the work, and the fact that he was at this time fully engaged elsewhere, seem to exclude all direct participation of Cosimo Tura himself. Most probably, they were executed by various minor painters of the day, Tura's pupils m Ferrara, of whom none, save a certain Ettore de' Bonacossi, an indifferent artist noticeable for the staring eyes of his figures, can be definitely identified.^ The least agreeable part of the whole, though by no means the worst executed, is the triumph of lust in a chariot drawn by monkeys (in September, the month devoted to Saturn), with its hideous children and bestial Cyclopes. The lowest zone of this month, representing the vintage, with Borso riding out with hawks and hounds, and then in his palace receiving ambassadors, is on a higher level, and may be assigned to one of Tura's better pupils. A noble figure in the foreground, clad in cloth of gold, is probably Borso's destined successor, Ercole I. Shortly after the completion of the work, the Duke''s half-brother, Baldassare d'Este, who had just 1 cy. Venturi, in L'Arlc (1908), p. 424. FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 43 come to Ferrara from Milan where he had won high renown as a portrait painter, was commissioned to re- paint the heads of Borso and some of the other figures throughout the room/ It is, therefore, probable that all the various representations of the Duke, and perhaps some of the other portraits, are his work. He may possibly also be the author of the remains of the frescoes, in a somewhat different style from the rest, on the southern wall. Borso''s answer to Cossa was, in effect, that he must be contented with the tariff fixed.^ The aggrieved painter promptly shook the dust of Ferrara off his feet, and retired to Bologna, where he spent the rest of his life. Here he found abundant employment, both from Giovanni Bentivoglio and from churches and confra- ternities among the citizens. His earliest work at Bologna is believed to be the Annunciation, for the Osservanza, now at Dresden, a carefully finished and brilliantly coloured picture, but somewhat uncharac- teristic and lacking his usual vigour. Two stained glass windows in San Giovanni in Monte have been recognised as from his design, and a St. Jerome in San Petronio is more questionably attributed to him. For Giovanni Bentivoglio, in 1472, he repainted tlie 1 Cf. below, p. 48. 2 " Quod velit esse contentus taxa facta, nam facta est per electos prospeciis singulis." 44 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA venerated Madonna del Baraccano, and added Angels and a frescoed background ; but the work, in its present condition, is perhaps more interesting from the historical than the artistic standpoint/ The most noteworthy production of Cossa's stay at Bologna, and in many respects the most important work of his that has come down to us, is the large picture in tempera on canvas painted for Alberto de** Catanei and Domenico degli Amorini, the judge and notary of the Foro de' Mercanti (what we should now call the Chamber of Commerce), in 1474, and signed Franciscus Cossa Ferrariensis. It is a stately and austere composition, in which the Madonna and the Divine Child are enthroned between St. Petronius and St. John the Evangelist, while Alberto de"* Catanei kneels at the side of the throne, and the Annunciation is seen above. The types are uncompromisingly grim and ugly, but the modelling of the heads of the two Saints is admirable, particularly that of St. Petronius, who is probably the portrait of some eminent church- \nan of the time. This is the last of Cossa's works that can be identified. He died in 1480 or thereabouts. Before his death he appears to have taken part in the decora- 1 Cf, Gruyer, II. pp. 116, 117; Ricci, Guida di Bologna, p. 51. It is doubtful whether the portraits of Bente Bentivoglio, the ori/rinal donor of the work, and Maria Vincij^uerra, who began the devotion to this Madonna, are by Cossa. • • . • J ,* J » » * • >;••;* f'»» •»»•'» O - S3 ! FRANCESCO DEL COSSA 45 tion of the palace of Giovanni Bentivoglio, doomed to popular destruction in 1507. A few portraits are attributed to him, but their authenticity is rightly disputed. Those of Giovanni Bentivoglio and his wife, Ginevra Sforza, in the possession of M. Gustave Dreyfus, ascribed to Cossa by Dr. Bode, are probably by a later hand. The youth in red, seen in profile, signed A. F. P., in the Museo Civico at Venice, like- wise ascribed to Cossa by Dr. Bode and tentatively accepted by Mr. Berenson, seems unlike his usual colour- ing, too weakly modelled and superficially characterised ; the tradition attributing it to Ansuino da Forli, one of the painters of the chapel of the Eremitani, may still be provisionally adopted. There remains the portrait of a young nobleman, belonging to Mr. Drury-Lowe, which was first attributed to our painter by Mr. Claude Phillips. It suggests the manner of Piero de"* Franceschi, while recalling the portraits introduced into the Schifanoia frescoes, and may plausibly be accepted as Cossa''s work. 1 Gazette des Beaux- Arts (Period 3, tome 9) (1893), p. 226. CHAPTER IV BALDASSARE D'ESTE : ERCOLE DE* ROBERTI : MARCO ZOPPO : FRANCESCO BIANCHI : DOMENICO PANETTI Contemporaneous with Cosimo Tura and Francesco del Cossa was a third Ferrarese painter, abready mentioned, more highly esteemed by the court than either of the other two, but of whom no work can now be identified with certainty. Baldassare d'Este, known also as Baldassare da Reggio from the place where he was born, was an illegitimate son of the Marquis Niccolo III, and therefore the half-brother of Dukes Borso and Ercole.^ The precise date of his birth is unknown, but he was evidently one of the children of Niccolo's old age. At an early age, he either went of his own accord, or was sent by his brothers, to try his fortunes in Lombardy. We first hear of him in 1461 as a painter, in a Milanese passport dated January 16 of that year ; but it is doubtful whether he was then going into Lombardy for the first time, or merely 1 cy. Venturi, in Arch. Stor. dell' Arte, I. pp. 42, 43, and my Pukes and Poets in Perrara, p. 9 In. 46 BALDASSARE D'ESTE 47 taking a temporary leave of absence/ At tlie Milanese court, he won renown and favour, and, early in 1469, painted portraits of the Duke and Duchess, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Bona da Savoia, in the castello of Pavia. In the June of the same year, he came to visit Borso at Ferrara, with a warm letter of recom- mendation from Galeazzo Maria, praising him highly as " acconza persona et da bene,'" who " is worth much in his art, in which in many things he has satisfied us right well, and has gained great commendation therein." 2 At Ferrara, he won the heart of Borso, who welcomed him as a brother and expressed the greatest delight at his presence. " We rejoice with your Excellence,'" wrote Galeazzo Maria, " over the brother- hood which you have at last found again with maestro Baldassare of Reggio.'' ^ So pleased was Borso that, on the painter's return to Milan, he prevailed upon Galeazzo Maria to allow him to transfer his services to himself, and, when the Milanese duke had reluctantly consented, he sent a ship to Pavia to convey Baldassare with his family and goods to Ferrara. Settling at Ferrara, Baldassare became the chief painter of portraits to the Duke, and is designated in documents as "nobil pittore e famigHare di Sua 1 Erailio Motta, 11 Pittore Baldassare da Ecggio, p. 404. 2 Letter of June 5, 1 169. Ihid., p. 405. 3 Letter dated Pavia, October 7, 1469. Ibid,, p. 406. 48 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Eccellenza/"' At Borso's orders, he was set to repaint or restore {acconciare) a number of the portraits in the recently executed frescoes of the Palazzo Schifanoia, including thirty- six heads of the Duke himself. He also painted a large picture of Borso with his half- brother Alberto d'Este, Count Lorenzo Strozzi, and Messer Teofilo Calcagnino, all on horseback ; and, among many smaller portraits, likewise for Borso, one of Teofilo''s wife, Madonna Marietta Strozzi, to be sent to Milan as a gift to Beatrice d'Este, the wife first of the elder Niccolo da Correggio, and then of Tristano Sforza.^ On September 19, 1471, a month after Borso's death, the Duke of Milan wrote to ask his successor for the portrait of the deceased sovereign, retracto al naturale per mano de maestro Baldassare, then in Castello Novo. Baldassare himself took the picture to Milan, and Galeazzo Maria, on November 4, addressed through his secretary a warm letter of thanks to Ercole, expressing his great delight at the gift : " And this because we have always desired to have some representation of that lord, whom we continually loved as a father, and we have striven to tread in his footsteps and imitate his customs, as being most praised and truly worthy of a prince. This portrait has been the 1 Venturi, L'arte ferrarcsc net perlodo d' Ercole T, II. p. 721n. To Marietta Stroi^zi, together -with her sister Ginevra, several of Hoiardo's lyrics are addressed. Cf. Le fonie roJgari e latine di M. M, Boiardo, ed. Solerti, pp. 114, 171. « • • • t • 3 1 ■» e B t T oo 5, C ei 1— 1 > g H o ^ fH r 1 « i£« ^ K r 'd r^i ^ a h^ • 1-^ -^ -i— t ^ X OQ ■T* c -i: o q JH < fe 7. -s^ O ■I. BALDASSARE D'ESTE 49 more dear to us inasmuch as it has been most worthily executed ; for, when we gaze on him thus depicted, we seem to see him ahve." ^ On his return to Ferrara, Baldassare found a change in the situation. The new Duke Ercole, representing the legitimate hne of the Estensi, was by no means so favourably disposed as Borso had been to the bastards of the house. Baldassare continued painting portraits, including one of Ercole himself to be sent to Naples, for which he was paid at a much higher rate than Cosimo Tura ; but, in 1472, he was no longer in receipt of a regular salary from the court. In this same year he executed two medals for Ercole, both signed with his name, neither of them remarkable for strength of portraiture nor vigour of design. Some time before 1489, he received the post of captain of the Porta Castello of Reggio, which he held for some years, under the poet, Matteo Maria Boiardo, w^ho was captain of the city and duchy of Reggio from 1487 to 1494. But Baldassare's sojourn in his native city (where he married a second wife, a lady of the noble Fogliani family) was an unhappy one. In 1493, his daughter Cassandra (a child of his first marriage with a woman of Como) was abducted and shamefully treated by three young Reggian noblemen. The injured father wrote passionately to the Duke, complaining bitterly that.. 1 Letter of November 4, 1471. Motia, op. eit., p. 408. i> so THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA although the three criminals are in prison, the authorities have done nothing, and that neither they nor their witnesses have been put to the question. " If Zampante had them in his hands,""' he exclaims, " as they deserved, they would have soon spoken. I am amazed that I do not kill myself, for, if I had been a traitor, they should not have done me such an outrage.""^ Ercole committed the whole matter to Boiardo. Two of the young men were tortured, the third confessed at the mere sight of the corda. There being extenuating circumstances, their lives were spared, and they were let off with a heavy fine — a hundred iucats each to Baldassare, and five hundred to the ducal exchequer.^ Disgusted with Reggio, the painter shortly afterwards returned to Ferrara, where, from 1497 onwards, he seems to have held the office of captain of Castello Tedaldo, the fortress then existing outside the Porta San Paolo. With the exception of the heads in the Schifanoia frescoes, none of Baldassare's portraits have survived. The outline of his portrait of the poet Tito Strozzi, Boiardo's father-in-law, formerly in the Costabili gallery, 1 Letter of November 3, 1493, in Venturi, op.cit., p. 381w. This Gregorio Zampante was the Duke's hated and dreaded captain of justice in Ferrara, for whom cf. Duhcx and Poets in Ferrara, pp. 326, 480, 481. 2 Letters of November 10, November 24, December 16, 1493, in Ltttere edits ed inedite di Mattto Maria Boiardo, ed. N. Canipauini, pp. 409-412. BALDASSARE D'ESTE 51 is preserved to us by Rosini.^ A like fate has befallen his religious pictures, such as the large altarpiece of St. ThoniJis Aquinas and St. Catherine of Siena, seen by BarufFaldi in the church of the Angeli and signed Baldassaris Estensis opus^ and that of St. Ambrose executed in 1472 for Simone Ruffini, a Milanese who had become a Ferrarese citizen, for a chapel of San Domenico, and of which Cosimo Tura was to estimate the cost.^ On the other hand, in the picture in the collection of Count Massari at Ferrara, representing the Death of Our Lady in the presence of the Apostles, a painting variously attributed to Francesco Bianchi, Michele Coltellini, and even to Mantegna, we probably possess an authentic work from Baldassare's hand. Although decidedly archaic in quality, Signor Venturi has given good reasons for holding that it is q^iella tavola de dodece apostoli mentioned by Baldassare himself in a letter to the Duke, dated April 29, 1502, as recently painted for the Suore di Mortara, a Piedmontese convent of nuns settled in Ferrara and attached to the church of S. Maria delle Grazie.'* It is somewhat confused in composition, but shows a certain power of expression in the heads of the Apostles. Its painter has a definite individuality 1 AStoria delta pitlura italiana, vol. III. (Pisa, 1841), p. 199. 2 Baruffaldi, I. p. 92. 3 Venturi, op. cit., p. 381. 4 Venturi, op. eit., pp. 384-386. 52 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA among the lesser masters of the Quattrocento, and seems, like Tura, to have felt the influence of the Paduan school of Squarcione. The letter just cited would appear an extraordinary one for a man of Baldassare''s standing to have addressed to his kinsman and sovereign — did we not know, from the example, not only of other painters, but even of so noble and illustrious a person as Boiardo himself,^ the exaggerated tone that was customary among the Ferrarese in making appeals to the Duke. Baldassare asks Ercole to give him some of his old clothes, in order that he may occasionally appear in his presence. " My most illustrious Lord,'' he Avrites, " I am ashamed to ask this alms. Nevertheless, necessity and my need constrains me to beg, for I have no means of living and lack clothes. I believe that your lordship does not know how I am paid my salary by your magnificent Fattori. In two years and a half, I have altogether received only two payments in cash."' Baldassare died in 1504 or thereabouts. He seems to have been by no means destitute, as he left substantial legacies to his widow, and to his daughters (it does not appear whether the hapless Cassandra was included) who had married in Ucggio. 1 Cf. Boiardo's letter of December 31, 1493, begging Ercole to con- firm him in his offices at Reggio. Campanini, op. cit., p. 413. « Vtrnturi, op. cit., p. 387n. ; Campori, doc. 20. ,iu(h-r(i(i<- 68 CHAPTER V LORENZO COSTA AND FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI I The partnership between Costa and Francia marks an epoch in the history of painting in the EmiHan cities. These two men held much the same ^josition in the school of Ferrara at the end of the Quattrocento and beginning of the Cinquecento as Cosimo Tura and Francesco del Cossa had done in the seventies and eighties of the fifteenth century; from the school which they founded in Bologna most of the later Ferrarese and Bolognese painters proceeded. I^orenzo Costa has been called the Perugino of the Ferrarese school. Not only does he occupy a place in northern Italian art somewhat analogous to that of the great master of Perugia among the painters of Central Italy, but with him a softer spirit, a feeling and sentiment nearly akin to that of the Umbrians, finds its way into the more robust creations of the FYTrarese. This he probably owed, in some part, to his intercourse with Francia. 00 70 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA There was a whole family of artists named Costa in the employment of the Estensi, beginning with Andrea di Gherardo Costa, originally a native of Vicenza, who painted a Coronation of the Blessed Virgin for Leonello in 1449;^ Ottavio Costa, Lorenzo's father, was, perhaps, a nephew or grandson of this earlier painter, of whom no works survive, l^orenzo was born in 1460.^ Most probably he studied painting in the workshop of Cosimo Tura. There is absolutely no evidence to support Vasari''s assertion that he went to Florence in his youth. While still young, he moved to Bologna, in the footsteps of Francesco del Cossa and Ercole Roberti, and probably became a pupil and assistant of the latter master. Vasari tells us that he began, for Domenico Garganelli, the frescoes in San Fietro which Ercole Roberti finished. Unless Vasari is confusing him with Cossa (as is very probable), this would be in 1482 or thereabouts. According to Cxhirardicci, Lorenzo was engaged with many other painters in 1483 on the decorations of the palace of Giovanni Bentivoglio, that treasure-house of Bolognese and Ferrarese art which was destined to speedy destruc- tion at the hands of the people ; and there " he painted certain rooms in a loggia opening out of the third cortile towards the Borgo della Paglia, where, 1 Cf. Caiiipori, op. cit.^ p. 550. « C. D'Arco, JJeUe Arti e deijli A/ieJici di MarUovaf I, p. 62. LORENZO COSTA 71 with very great skill, he depicted the Ruin of Troy — a tiling deemed miraculous by all in that time."" ^ Giovanni Bentivoglio was at the height of his power in Bologna, when Lorenzo Costa thus entered his service, and the marriage of his eldest son Annibale with Lucrezia d'Este, in 1487, strengthened the long- standing alliance with Ferrara. Unlike the Estensi in Modena and Ferrara, the " magnifico Giovanni " held Bologna by no imperial or papal investiture. He was simply prior ex antiunis, an unofficial head of the republic in a city nominally subject to the Holy See.* Besides the decorations of his palace, the family chapel, the Cappella Bentivoglio, in San Giacomo Maggiore, was a special object of his care, since each Renaissance prince, whatever his external life and conduct may have been, was fain to put his relations with the Church on a permanent artistic basis. And in this they were wise in their generation ; for, w^hereas every trace of the palace and its paintings has vanished, the pictures of the Cappella Bentivoglio, and the later series of frescoes in the adjacent oratory of Sta. Cecilia, remain almost the sole artistic record of the family in the city. The chapel was begun in 1445 by Giovanni's predecessor, Santi Bentivoglio, and already contained the equestrian 1 DrW Istoria di Bologna, III. lib. 36. 2 And therefore styled " Magnificence," not " Excellence," the title reserved in the fifteenth century for rulers of imperial or papal duchies or marciuisatea. 72 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA portrait of his own father, Annibale, attributed to Niccolo delPArca, when the paintings were commissioned. Costa was then twenty-eight, and the three paintings in tempera which he now executed are the earHest of his works that can be identified. On the right wall of the chapel, he represented the Madonna and Child on the usual Ferrarese throne, with its classical bas-reliefs and allegorical statuettes ; the Blessed Virgin is of the unlovely early Ferrarese type, and has a pagan sacrifice at her feet. On either side kneel Giovanni Bentivoglio himself, in the simple dress of a Bolognese citizen, and Ginevra, the cruel and violent wife whom he had inherited with the state from his predecessor, and whom Costa"'s art has not advanced far enough to flatter. Below stand their children : four sons on the side of the father, seven daughters in attendance on the mother.^ There is something pathetic in these vigorous, attractive if uncomely, youthful figures, whose subsequent lives history was to wrap round with tragedy. Annibale, the eldest son (whose rich robe bears the white eagle of Este in token of his recent marriage), was doomed to end life as an exile, dependent upon the charity of his 1 Venturi, Lorenzo Costa, pp. 242, 243, first pointed out the close connection of this picture with the beginning of Gynevera de le dare donne, the book written for Ginevra almost at the same time by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. " Hai anchora havuto de tanto marito, gloriosa Madonna, angelica sobole de sexdeci figliuoli"; five in Paradise, and the eleven living whom Costa represents (ed. C. Ilicci and A. l^acchi della Legu, Bologna, 1888, p. 4V. LORENZO COSTA 73 Ferrarese brother-in-law ; Anton Galeazzo, the young ecclesiastic next to him, already in the nionsignore''s purple, found shelter from his house's downfall in the bosom of the Church ; Alessandro, the lad with the plumed cap, lives, together with his wife, in Luini's frescoes in San Maurizio at Milan, and in Bandello's novelle ; while the fourth son, the little boy Ermete, grew up a monster of cruelty (the true son of his mother), and fell in battle. Of the six daughters, Bianca and Leonora, the two in the foreground more richly clad, were already the wives of Count Niccolo Rangoni of Modena and Giberto Pio of Carpi, respectively ; behind, between them, stands Francesca in widow''s weeds — she had murdered her husband, Galeotto Manfredi of Faenza, but a few months before. Violante, who is next to Leonora, was already betrothed to Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, whom she married in the following year, and with him was doomed to destitution when their petty lordship was absorbed by the temporal power of the Church. Next to her, on the right, the two younger girls are Laura, the future wife of Giovanni Gonzaga, and Isotta (with her childish con- fident bearing) — her betrothed husband, Ottaviano Riario, deprived of his states in 1500, became a priest and she entered a convent. On the extreme left, almost hid by her more worldly sisters, is one in nun's 1 NovdU^ I. 1, II. 54 (dedications). 74 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA dress with a rapt expression on her face ; she alone is looking up at the Blessed Virgin and the Divine Child. This is Camilla, who took the veil in the convent of the Corpus Domini at Ferrara,^ and was still living there in 1503, when her less fortunate sister Isotta joined her. The picture is inscribed in the name of Giovanni Bentivoglio : — '* Me patriam et dulces cara cum coniuge nates Comendo precibus^ Virgo Beata, tuis " ; with the painter"*s addition: MCCCCLXXXVIIl Augusti Laurentius Costa Faciehat. Costa afterwards painted the Triumphs of Death and of Fame, remotely suggested by the Triumphus Mwtis and Triumphus Famae of Petrarca, on the opposite wall. Here and there, isolated motives and individual figures are finely rendered, but the whole effect is somewhat confused. They were completed in 1490. These early works, together with tlie Madonna and Child with St. Sebastian and St. James, now in the gallery at Bologna, signed and dated 1491 (a very inferior picture), are stiff and tentative, strongly reminiscent of Ercole Roberti, and even, to some extent, 1 " Camilla egregia vergene, la quale a li eervitii del celeste principe nel raonastero de Bancta Clara se h renchisa, che a te fiia cumulo de divino thesauro" {Oynevera de h dare donne, p. 5). • « • • • • a • • • Jlitlrrsnil LoKEN/.o Costa THE GIlKhlNI ALTAUriECE San Oiovaniii in Mniite, I'mloi^na To/dtr }Ktgt 74 LORENZO COSTA 75 of Tura and Cossa, tlioiigh without their force and vigour. In the following year, he suddenly seems to have come into his own, with the noble altarpiece of the Cappella Bacciocchi in San Petronio, signed and dated 1492. 'ITie splendid colouring, the virile and finely characterised figures of the four Saints surrounding the Madonna's throne, the beauty of the three Angels making melody in the tympanum above, make this a masterpiece of fifteenth-century religious art. The Madonna and Child with St. Petronius and St. Thecla, of 1496, in the Bologna gallery, in which the influence of Cossa is observable, is inferior ; but in the following year, 1497, Costa surpassed himself with the altarpiece executed for the Cappella Ghedini (as it then was) of S. Giovanni in Monte. This, indeed, is the finest of all his works. It has that indefinable religious sentiment that we associate with the name of Perugino, but the colour is richer and the types are more virile, while the Madonna anticipates the early works of Raphael. Here, again, we have the typical arrangement of the throne, with the classical bas-reliefs in bronze on the capitals of the pillars and above the arches, while, through the open space below, we see the earliest of those beautiful landscapes for which the painter is justly renowned. The Child, too, has more of the divine than we find in any of Costa''s predecessors. 76 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA When these latter works were executed, Costa had already entered into partnership with Francia, who was some ten years older than himself, and who, although famous as a worker in metal, especially as a goldsmith, had only turned his skill to painting at a comparatively recent date. Francesco Raibolini was born about 1450, the son of Marco di Giacomo Raibolini, a Bolognese citizen who, besides being a wood-carver, took some part in the municipal affairs of the city, and belonged to an old family. He appears to have been called Francia, or // Francia^ from the goldsmith to whom he was apprenticed, and who was, perhaps, the Franze orefice digno living at the court of Naples in 1484, to whom the Duchess Leonora of Ferrara bade the Estensian ambassador, Bartolommeo Cavalieri, have recourse to find her a skilful goldsmith.^ Francia matriculated in the goldsmiths' guild of Bologna, the Societa degU Oreficiy on December 10, 1482,^ and he continued up to the end of his life to sign himself on his pictures a goldsmith : Francia Aurifcx, or Francia Anrifabtr. There has been much throwinir about of brains in the attempt to identify him with the famous type-founder and printer, Francesco da Bologna, the inventor of the 1 Cf. Venturi, L^Arte Emiliana del Hinascimento : il Francia, p. 7. 2 Kmilio Orioli, Se/itenza arbitrale pronuncida da Francesco Francia, doc. I. In the following year, 1483, Francia was elected masaarOy or steward, of the guild. FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 77 Italic type, " una nova forma de littera dicta cursiva, overo cancellaresca,'"* who, after working for Aldus at Venice and Girolamo Soncino at Fano, set up a press of his own at Bologna in 1516; but it seems now established, beyond the reach of question, that the latter was a totally different person.^ Francia worked much in niello, a kind of engraving upon silver or other metal, and there still remain from his hand in this kind two small silver paxes, enclosed in shrines, with representations of the Crucifixion and Resurrection respectively, in the gallery at Bologna, and a few prints taken from such niello plates, one of which is in the British Museum.^ His skill as a goldsmith was frequently requisitioned by the Estensi and Bentivogli. In 1485 we have record of payment to him for work for the Duchess Leonora, including a gold chain formed of linked hearts;^ and, in 1487, for the marriage of Annibale and Lu(Tezia, he wrought vessels and plate of gold and silver decked with jewels, richly 1 Cf. G. Manzoni, Studi di Bihliografia Analitica, I., Bologna, 1881 ; Adamo Rossi, in Atti e memone della H. B. di Storia Patria per Romagna (series III. vol. I.), pp. 412-417. The identification was first attempted by Panizzi, Chi era Francesco da Bologna^ London, 1858 and 1873. Rossi has shown that the printer is described in a Perugian document of 1512 as " Magister Franciscus Griffus de Bononia, incisor licterarum stampe." a Cf. A. M. Hind, A Short History of Engraving and Etching, pp. 42, 69 ; G. C. Williamson, Francesco FaiboHni called Francia, pp. 10-19. 3 Campori, op. cit., doc. 22. 78 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA worked candlesticks and the like, decorated shields for the j ousters, and bards for the horses, A cur\ed shield with St. George and the Dragon, executed in decorated cuir bouilli for one of the Bentivogli, is still attributed to him, and may belong to this date.* He appears, too, to have presided over the Bolognese mint, and executed the dies for the coins and medals of Giovanni Bentivoglio, several specimens of which are extant. Although Francia did not actually matriculate as a painter in the Societa delle Quuttro Arti (painters, saddlers, sheath-makers, and swordsmiths) until December 23, 1503,^ he was already painting in the eighties of the fifteenth century. In an Epithala- mium for the marriage of Annibale and Lucrezia, Angelo Salimbeni extols him as not only surpassing Phidias in sculpture and Maso Finiguerra with the graver, but also excelling Polygnotus in painting.' There is no affinity between Francia's art and the earlier Bolognese painting. Neither is it probable, as stated by Bolognese writers, that his first master was Marco Zoppo. As a painter, he is entirely Ferrarese in character, and it is not unlikely that he had been a 1 Cf. Williamson, op. cit., p. 3. 2 E. Orioli, op. cit., doc. 2. 3 It appears, however, that he was not the Francesco de Franza (Campori, op. cit., doc. 22) who painted an ancona for the Duchess Leonora in 14S8. FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 79 pupil of Francesco del Cossa during that master's residence in Bologna. About 1490, Francia opened a comprehensive school of arts and crafts in the city, and Lorenzo Costa entered into partnership with hiin. It is said that the workshop of the two masters was divided into two parts : Costa teaching painting in the one, while Francia presided over the casting of medals and the goldsmith's work in the other. But it seems clear that the teaching of painting was not confined to Costa, and that many of the young men, who began to throng to them, became the elder master's direct followers. Neither Costa nor Francia was in any sense the pupil of the other, though it is probable that, in their mutual action and reaction, the influence of Costa was at first the more powerful. But it has been observed that, in the works they executed to- gether, Francia was the leading spirit, and undertook the more important portions. Francia's earliest paintings, such as the Crucifixion in the library of the Archiginnasio at Bologna, and the small Madonna and Child with St. Joseph painted for Bartolommeo Bianchini, which is now at Berlin, with their high finish and minute execution, their rigid and angular drapery, enamel-like surface, and general stiffness, show that the painter was more accustomed to work in metal.^ A singularly beautiful 1 Cf. Williamson, op. eii., pp. 33-35. 8o THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA work of this earliest epoch is the St. Stephen of the Borghese gallery, commissioned, according to the inscription,|by one Vincenzo di Desiderio, which, though still hard and shadowless, is a masterpiece of religious feeling : " Few paintings,"' writes Morelli, " are so full of the essence of the purest art/' ^ In the inscription on this and on the Berlin Holy Family (and nowhere else in his extant works), the painter signs himself simply Francia, without the usual qualifica- tion of Aurifex. Somewhat later, but still very early, is the little St. George formerly attributed to Ercole Grandi, in the Corsini gallery ; a delightfully naive work with more atmosphere, and somewhat freer in technique. The Holy Family just mentioned, at Berlin, is signed in an elegiac couplet : — " Bartholomei sumptu Blanchini maxima Matrum, Hie vivit manibus, Francia, picta tuis." ^ This Bartolommeo Bianchini was a young Bolognese nobleman who had devoted himself to letters, and had studied at the University under two famous humanists, the elder Filippo Beroaldi and Antonio Codro Urceo, whose lives he wrote. A great friend of scholars, a J Ilulian FalnUrs, I. pp. 194, 195 (Miss Ffoulkes' trausl.). « •* At the charge of Bartolommeo Bianchini, the greatest of Motherg here lives, painted, Francia, by thy hands." • • • Ainhr-'ini Franc I A ST. GKOKGE ('(irsiiii (;.'illory I'li/dVC JXti/c gd FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 8t collector of antiquities, and a keen connoisseur of art, he gave promise in his youth of high achievement, which was never quite fulfilled. The only works of his that have come down to us are the two biographical sketches just mentioned, one of which — that of Antonio Codro Urceo — is, however, a masterpiece of its kind.^ A warm personal affection united him to Francia, who was considerably older than himself. Bianchini's curiously stiff and unattractive portrait by the latter's hand, one of Mr. Salting's bequests to the National Gallery, is evidently among the artist's earliest works, painted about the same time as the Holy Family at Berlin. At the beginning of 1498, Francia painted a portrait of Antonio Codro Urceo, at the request of Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio, then Archdeacon of Bologna, a genial and courtly young prelate, who was the centre of the artistic and literary life of the city.^ " His image and complete likeness,'"" writes 1 For Bianchini, c/. Fantuzzi, Notizie degli Scrittori Bolo'jnesi, II. pp. 178-180; Carlo Malagola, Delia vita e delle opere di Antonio Urceo dctto Codro (Bologna, 1878), pp. 296-300. The Codri Vita a BarthoLomaeo Blanchino Bononiensi condita ad 3/inum lioscium senatorem Bononiensem is appended to the volume of the works of Antonio Urceo, Opus Codri, edited by the younger Filippo Beroaldi, printed at Bologna in 1502 and Venice in 1506. In the dedication to Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio, Beroaldi speaks of Bianchini as "iuvenis ingenii perquara amoeni, qui dum eius vitam perscribit ilium vivere facit." 2 Cf. Opus Codri, ed. 1506, ff. xLir, XLVilr, and Malagola, op. eit., pp. 196-198. The portrait, which was in the Archdeacon's bed-chamber, was perhaps a portion of a fresco, as Filippo Boroaldi, 82 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Bartolommeo Bianchini, "hath been wondrously de- picted in the palace of the Bentivogli by our love and delight, Francia, that goldsmith of approved talent, whose unique height of genius all alike love and admire and worship as divine. He is the sovereign goldsmith of our age, and, as it were, the God of this art ; and in painting to be placed after no one. For neither pictures nor work in chased metal are to be seen, which take our eyes rather than his. Verily, I would extol thee, Francia, with most lengthy praise, were it not that 1 might seem to some to have fallen by excessive love into an immoderate semblance of adulation. But love and the sweetness of the man's character have withdrawn me too long from my theme.*" ^ This dulcedo viri, the sweetness of his character, seems to have deeply impressed Francia's contem- poraries, and is reflected in all his art. Francia'*s series of great altarpieces begins with the Madonna and Child with six Saints, painted in 1494, for the Felicini chapel in the Madonna della Miseri- cordia outside the Porta Castiglione of Bologna. Vasari (who wrongly dates it 1490) declares that this was Francia's first picture ; but it is evidently the work in hiB dedication of the volume to G. A. Bentivoglio, says : *' Eius imftginem intra cubiculum tuum habere voluisti, depictam in coetu papientum, ab aurifice nobilissimo Francia." This is probably the " di?puta di filoaofi," mentioned by Vasari, III. p. 539. 1 Codri Vita, ed. cit., f. LXixv. Antonio Urceo died in February, 1600. ■* ^ •> '-,• • I'KANrr A iMnrnjAiT of bautolom.meo BrAXCuixi Niitioual Giillery To I (((•<■ jiiiiit' 82 FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 83 of an accomplished and practised master. The por- trait of the kneehng donor, Bartolommeo Felicini, who commissioned the painting as a thankoffering for his recovery from ilhiess, is exceedingly fine, and the lute- playing Angel at the foot of the throne is a delightful motive, which became very characteristic of Francia for the next six years, but which he appears to have com- pletely abandoned in his later works. The most important and best preserved of Francia''s works of this epoch is the altarpiece painted for Giovanni Bentivoglio in 1499, for the Bentivoglio chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore, of which the walls were already decorated with Lorenzo Costa''s frescoes. This, the richest in colouring of all the painter's works, has much of the robust vigour of the Ferrarese school, with somewhat less of that peculiar religious sentiment which, now and then, tends to mannerism in his later pictures. Francia's Angels always have a unique charm of their own. The two here, Avith lute and viol at the foot of the throne, clad in the symbolical green and red of hope and love, are very typical ; while the two kneeling above on either side of the Blessed Virgin, in adoration, are said to be portraits of two of the magnifico Giovanni's children.^ 1 Probably two of the five already dead, who, as Sabadino degli Arienti has it, '* ornati de girlande de fronde de Gynepro per il materno nome, triumphando nel choro de li Angeli orano per te li\ Maie.std divina" {Oy/irrera, p. 4). 84 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Immediately afterwards, Francia and Costa together painted an altarpiece for Giovanni's second son, Mon- signor Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio, for the Madonna della Misericordia. It is said that the work was finished in two months, but it bears no trace of hasty execution. In the central panel, by Francia's hand, the Archdeacon is represented on Our Lady's right, adoring the Divine Child, in the habit of a Knight of Malta, while behind him stands his patron saint, St. Anthony of Padua, in whom tradition would have us see a portrait of Francia himself. The picture, which is colder in colour than any other work of Francia's and has suffered much from restoration, is now in the Bolognese gallery. Costa's share was confined to the figure of the risen Christ above, with the Arch- angel Gabriel and the Madonna of the Annunciation on either side, which are still in their place in the church, and the predella, now in the Brera, represent- ing the Adoration of the Magi, with a lovely landscape in which a winding river finds its way to the sea between low hills. On the right of Francia's picture, clad as a shepherd but crowned with the laurel wreath, stands a hand- some personage who played some part in the career of both painters. Girolamo Casio was the son of a 1 Cf. Calvi, Memoric dclla vita e delle nprre di Francesco Ralholini detto il Francia, p. 20. FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 85 certain March ione de"* Pandolfi of Casio, a castello in tlie Bolognese. He was a wealthy merchant and skil- ful goldsmith, a man of plebeian birth with an insatiable desire of being taken seriously as a political wire- puller, and of climbing the rungs of the social ladder ; a liberal and discerning patron of art in others, he was himself a copious writer of indifferent verse, which later procured him the laurel crown (here anticipated by Francia) from Leo X. and the ridicule of better judges of literature.^ His chief poetical work is contained in three small volumes printed at Bologna in the twenties of the sixteenth century : a book of religious verse, comprising a canzone on the Life and Death of Christ, imitated from Petrarca, and a collec- tion of poems in honour of the Saints, which have some value in illustration of the iconography of the Bolognese painters ; ^ Bellona, a heroic poem in ottava rima dedicated to Ercole Gonzaga ;^ and the Cronica, his best known work, including a copious series of epitaphs, together with La Gonzaga, a group of love- 1 Cf. Fautuzzi, op. cit., III. pp. 130-140; Lueio and Kenier, La coltura e h relazioni letterarie di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, 5. pp. 56- 64. Pietro Aretino {Cortigiana, act ii. sc. 11) couples Casio with the notorious Baraballo, the butt of Leo's courtiers. « Vita c nwrte di Miser Jesu Christo ad imitatione de una canzone di Miser Francesco Petrarcha : Vitc de' Santi : sonetti, cajtitoli, canzoni^ Utrastici, eglogd, tt mandrigaletti, composti a consolation de' fiddi. Bolo?na, 1524. s Libra Intitulalo Bellona net quale si tratta di Arme, di Letere, e di Anwre. Bologna, 1525. 86 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA sonnets, and Clementina, poems mainly in honour of Clement VII. ^ A devoted servant and flatterer of the Bentivogli and Gonzaga, Casio was a frequent cor- respondent of Isabella d''Este, who employed him as her intermediary with the artists of Bologna, In later life he was granted the surname "de"* Medici/"* ap- parently as a reward for services rendered to that family in exile — services which he exaggerates to a colossal degree in a letter addressed to Clement VIL (prefixed to the Clementina), in which he represents himself as a ruling spirit in the Romagnole politics of the early years of the sixteenth century. After this, he grandiloquently styles himself " the magnific-ent Girolamo Casio de' Medici, Bolognese patrician, knight, and poet laureate "' — though, in spite of papal briefs, the Bolognese steadily declined to recognise him as a nobleman. His self-composed epitaph sums up his career :- — " Visse il Casio mercante e zoilero Et con Appol' hebbe sua mente unita, A Terra Santa and6, scrisse la Vita Di Christo; hor qui 6 Poeta e Cavalero." ^ 1 Lihro ifitittUato Cronica ore at tratta di JEpitaphii, di Amore, t di Virtute. Bologna, 1528. Among the Epitaphs (most of them execrable) are those for Francia, Bartolommeo Bianchini, Bar- tolommeo Felicini, and the Milanese painter, BeltraflBo, with whom Casio was closely associated, as his portrait in the Brera and tha Madonna in the Louvre show. ft Op. eit., f. 40. " Casio lived a merchant and jeweller, and had hid . « • • • . > > > > » > » Anil< rsdii Francta THE NATIVITY With Auton Galeazzo Bentivoglio and Girolamo Casio) Boloi^uii 'I'll /'ilCr /Itlf/i' 8(; LORENZO COSTA 87 We SAW that Costa was working with Francia on the Bentivogho altarpiece for the Misericordia, of which his predella is signed and dated 1499. In the same year, he was temporarily at Ferrara, where it was proposed that he should take some part in the decoration of the newly completed choir of the Duomo.^ In September, he received payment for a picture which he had executed for Duke Ercole. It has been suggested that this may be the large altar- piece, once in the church of the Gesu in Ferrara and now in the possession of Lord Wimborne, in which the cloak of the Blessed Virgin is fastened by a brooch bearing the white eagle of Este ; but the style of the picture is thought to point to a later date in the artist's career.^ With the beginning of the sixteenth century, a change comes over the character of Costa'*s art. It " no longer shows the robust strength of the figures of the Bacciocchi and Ghedini chapels ; his personages seem to grow small, to lose substance, and to shrink, as though to leave more room for the expansion of the landscape, those luminous valleys of the background. mind united with Apollo. He went to the Holy Land, and wrote the life of Christ ; now he is here, Poet and Knight." He describes his remarkable adventures as a pilgrim in the dedication of the Clementina. 1 Cy. Cittadella, Documcnti ed ilhistrazioni, p. 70. « Cf. R. H. Benson, Introduction to Exhibition of Works of the School of Ferrara-Iiolo'jna, p. xx. 88 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA The figures no longer fill the space of the picture, but stand out on the green of the meadows and against the limpid horizons." A typical example is the Coronation of the Madonna behind the high altar of San Giovanni in Monte, painted about 1501, in which the Saints, who contem- plate the mystery from below, are entirely subordinated to the singularly beautiful landscape, and have lost the virile character of Costa'*s earlier paintings. The same, to a less degree, is true of his two pictures of 1505, the polyptych painted for a church at Faenza and now in the National Gallery, and the Espousals of the Blessed Virgin, which has passed from the Annunziata to the gallery at Bologna ; these admirably coloured works, with their fine landscapes, lack the life and vigour of the altarpieces of the preceding decade. Another picture of this epoch is at Bologna, signed and dated 1502, in which St. Petronius is enthroned between St. Francis and St. Dominic, two slender figures against a gold background, while, instead of a landscape, the space below the throne is occupied by a bas-relief of the Adoration of the Kings ; it is curiously feeble and uncharacteristic. In October, 1503, "Lorenzo Costa pittor famoso " accompanied the ambassadors sent to Rome by the republic of Bologna to congratulate Pius III. on his 1 V'euturi, Lorenzo UoxCa, p. 247. COSTA AND FRANCIA 89 elevation. The Pope died before the mission was accomplished, and the ambassadors were instructed to remain in Rome to congratulate his successor.^ Julius II. having been elected, after the shortest conclave in modem history, the ambassadors paid their homage, and Costa probably returned at once to Bologna. These were still the Pre-Raphaelite days in Rome, and there was little as yet to allure the painter's artistic allegiance. The year 1504 brought both Costa and Francia into touch with the Marchesana of Mantua. Isabella was full of a plan of having her studiolo or carnerino, her boudoir in the Castello, adorned with a series ot allegorical paintings drawn from classical mythology by all the chief painters of Italy ; ^ a uniform decorative scheme, of which the special subjects were devised by one of her favourite Mantuan scholars, Paride Ceresara, probably in the first instance with the assistance of that greatest of court painters, Andrea Mantegna. For this purpose, Mantegna had already painted his Parnassus, or " Triumph of Venus " (finished by July, 1497), and his Expulsion of the Vices, or "Triumph 1 Bolognese Chronicle of Antonio Ghiselli, cited by Venturi, op. cit., pp. 247. 248. 2 " Picture ad historia de li excellenti pictori che sono al presente iu Italia." Letter of September 16, 1502. W. Braghirolli, J\'ntizice documtnti inediti intorno a Pitro Vannncci dflto II J'rruginn, p. loy. 90 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA of Minerva *" (before November, 1502).^ But the other painters were more dilatory. Isabella had approached Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Bellini, and Perugino, with small results. Her method, for having her fantasie (as she called them) carried out, was to get a complicated storia or invenziojie devised by Paride Ceresara, and, in some cases, actually drawn by a local painter under his direction, and then to forward it to the master selected, with the most minute directions as to scenery, light, size, and measurements — leaving nothing but the execution to the artist. I^onardo was naturally too busy. Bellini did not like the subject proposed to him, and felt he could do nothing with it. After leaving him to his own devices (as long as he kept to an antique theme with an allegorical meaning), the Marchesana at last obtained a small picture of the Nativity.^ To Perugino she sent a long instruction, beginning : " Our poetic invention, which I greatly desire to be painted by you, is a Battle of Chastity against Lust, that is, Pallas and Diana fighting manfully against Venus and Love '"* ; a most complicated fantasia^ with a vast number of figures and innumerable details — the painter being allowed to reduce the number of figures, but forbidden 1 Cf. Kristeller, Andrea MafitegtM (ed. Strong), pp. 349, 350. a Cf. Mrs. Ady, hahella d'Ente, I. pp. 341-3"8. « • • • • • .iiid'-rsnn Francia THE be\tivo(;lio altakpikce San Giacomo Ma-yit)^', li<.l<>gna 'J'ojan l> 1 I .^ » ■> » .llllll'I'Sllll Fkancia I'OllTKAIT OF KVANGEMSTA SCAPIT UHizi To t'lin- liiii/c \[\'2 FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 103 and secure that it shall be sent to us with diligence. And, in order that we may know what courtesy to use with the said Francia, speak with Girolamo da Casio, or some one else who can tell you about it, and inform us, in order that we may know how to reward him." ^ The portrait was finished in three weeks, and sent to Mantua by August 10. The Marchesana wrote to Casio : " It could not be more like, nor better than it is ; and I am amazed that, in so short a time, he has been able to make a thing so excellent, but he has chosen to show the perfection of his art.'"* She sent thirty gold ducats to the painter, but wanted to have the hair retouched, as being too fair. This Francia did ; but the Marquis wished to show the picture to the Pope and his Cardinals, with the result that it fell into the hands of a certain Gian Pietro da Cremona, who attempted to appropriate it. Casio, informing Isabella of this on November 7, says : '* Francia would not make a replica of it for all the gold in the world." An emphatic letter from Isabella procured the restitu- tion of the treasure. On November 20, Casio wrote . " This morning the portrait has been recovered ; and I have to-day brought Francia to the house of the most illustrious lord Federigo, and made him compare the two together. Our conclusion was that it could 1 Luzio and Renier, op. clt., p. 63n. Matteo Ippolito's r«ply, July 29, 1510, i« in Luzio. Federico Oonzaga o$tagglo, p. 563. 104 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA not be better than it is, and I think that it will com- pletely satisfy your ladyship, because all has been done to it that you ordered me." ^ At the same time, through Girolamo Casio, Isabella was negotiating with Francia for the picture for her ca7?ierino, which had been suggested five years before. Writing to her on December 12, 1510, Francia thanks her for the thirty ducats, declaring that the trouble he had taken in executing the portrait of the lord Federigo did not merit such a gift, and adds that, if she is pleased to oraer the picture for her camerhio, he will begin after Christmas.^ But, al- though some correspondence passed between him and the Marchesana on the subject during the following January and February,^ the picture seems never to have been executed. In this same year, 1511, through Lucrezia d'Este Bentivoglio, who had returned to Bologna in the temporary overthrow of the papal government, Francia undertook to paint Isabella's portrait. A drawing was sent from Mantua for the purpose ; but, on September 7, Lucrezia wrote that the resulting portrait was not in the least like the Marchesana, and that she had urged the painter to go 1 Lu2io, Federico Oonzaga ostaggio, pp. 563, 564. Cf, Mrs. Ady, op. cit., I. pp. 880, 381. a Yriarte, Imbelle d'Ede et lei artiate» de son temps, 6. p. 841. 8 Letters of January 11 and Febuary 6, 1611. Luzio. op. oit., pp. 564, 56'! ; Luzio and Renier, op, cit.. 5. pp. 63, 64. COSTA AND FRANCIA 105 to Mantua to see her.^ To this, however, Isabella objected, pleading her great dislike to sitting for her portrait again, and her desire to avoid exciting Costa's jealousy : " Your ladyship has our likeness so well impressed upon vour memory that we hope you will be able to supply where the master fails. You must consider also that we should not know how to use such moderation in receiving Francia as not to offend Costa, and it would be difficult for us to keep the latter as a friend/''^ A second attempt proved more successful. " We send the portrait of your ladyship,""* wrote Francia on October 25, " which we have executed with all the diligence in our power, and with the counsel of our lady Lucrezia Bentivoglio, and, if it has not such perfection as your ladyship deserves, you will deign to pardon the author of the work." " We thank you," answered Isabella, " because, with your art, you have made me much more beautiful than nature has done." ^ In the following year, 1512, the Marchesana gave this portrait to Gian Francesco Zaninello, a Ferrarese gentleman who had done her a service. The original is lost ; but Signor Luzio has shown that the famous 1 Luzio, I ritratti d'hahdla d'Este, p. 42G. * Letter of September 11, 1511. Luzio, Federico Qonzaga ottaygio, p. 565 ; Venturi, Lorenzo Costa, p. 251n. * Letters of October 25 aud Novimbtr 26, 1511. Luzio, T ritratti d'lsabeUa d'Fste, p. 429. io6 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA portrait at Vienna, executed by Titian in 1536, is copied from Francia's work, which was lent by Zaninello's heirs for the purpose. In 1513, Isabella gave the portrait of Federigo to the same courtier, who wrote that his lowly dwelling was now exalted, and that he had become an object of wonder and envy, as possessing both Venus and Cupid in his room/ This picture, as Mr. Herbert Cook first pointed out, is now in England, in the possession of Mr. A. W. Leatham, and is in perfect condition. It '' shows us a young boy about ten years old, seen to the waist, holding a dagger in his right hand. He is dressed as a boy of distinction, and the long fair hair falls from beneath a cap placed jauntily on the side of the head. There is an elaborate landscape background of the usual Francia type."" ^ To the latest years ofFrancia'*s life belongs a striking and splendid series of altarpieces, several of which offer pcMnts of peculiar interest to the student of iconography. 1 Liizio, op. cit., pp. 430-432. 2 AtJienceum, February 7, 1903, pp. 183, 184. In the subsequent number, p. 216, Mrs. Ady observes : "The boy's brown eyes, golden hair, and bright intelligent face bear a marked likeness to his mother, Isabella d'Este. The long fair locks have clearly been repainted, as was done, we know, at the Marchesa's request, and the gold medallion in his cap — probably Oaradosso's work — is the game whicli Federigo wore when Raphael painted his portrait a yeai Inter in Rome. The very want of elaboration in some of the details bears witness to the amazing rapidity with which the portrait was painted." FRANCESCO RATBOLINI 107 One of tliese is the fine pictiuv in tlie Duonio of Ferrara, over the altar dedicated to xVll the Saints • the Coronation of the Madonna, with the inscription, Gloria hec est otnnibifs Sanctis, representing Our Lady under her title of Begina Sanctorum Omnium, The grouping of the figures below, tjpes of all the Saints gathered together in contemplation of the mystery, is somewhat crowded ; but the faces, more particularly of Christ and Mary above, are of the utmost beauty. The foreshortened figure of the little child in front, representing the Holy Innocents, is perfectly appropriate in such a picture, but seems to have strangely mystified not only Crowe and Cavalcaselle, but even Dr. Williamson.^ The altarpiece of St. Anne, now in the National Gallery, was painted, some time after 1510, for the chapel dedicated to the mother of the Blessed Virgin by Benedetto di Lorenzo Buonvisi, in the church of San Frediano at Lucca."^ This is the masterpiece of the painter's later epoch, as the Bentivoglio altarpiece in San Giacomo Maggiore had been of his earlier period. The vigour of the master's earliest work is here most 1 The former (.4 Histonj of Painting in Xorth Italy ^ I. p. 566/i) take it as "the infant Christ"; while the latter (Francia, p. 110) says: "The presence of the little child on the ground is quite unusual in a composition of Francia'*;, and there must have been Bouie special reason to account for it." =* U/. Williamson, op. cit., pp. Ill, 112. io8 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA happily united to tlie grace of his later compositions, the lovely motive of the little St. John at the foot of the throne now reappearing with enhanced beauty. The lunette, with which we English lovers of painting have grown up since our childhood, the Pieta, has no equal in the whole range of Italian art. J. A. Symonds w^ell wrote of it : " Deep religious feeling is combined with physical beauty of the purest type in a masterpiece of tranquil grace/' ^ Nor should the symbolism of the colouring pass unnoticed. The attendant Angels are robed in green and red, symbolising Hope and Love ; but the white of Faith is confined to the wimple of the Blessed Virgin, mystically representing the mishaken faith in the Resurrection that lived in her alone — which is typified also in the one candle left burning in the Church's office oi Tenebrae during the last days of Holy Week. Also for San Frediano, not earlier than the lattei part of 1511, Francia painted for Maddalena, the widow of Bartolommeo di Baldassare Stiatta, the altar- piece of the Immaculate Conception, still in that church though not in its original position.^ It is interesting to compare this with his earlier repre- sentation of the same mystery, executed for the Friars Minor of the Annunziata at Bologna in 1600. The I ITie H^iuiiteance in Italy : The Fine Arts, p. 303. « Curmichael, Fi-ancia't Masterpiece, p, 84. FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI 109 earlier picture, in which, next to the Blessed Virgin herself, the most prominent figure is San Bernardino of Siena, a strenuous defender of the doctrine, resembles in composition a certain type of Annunciation (such as Francia himself once painted for the oratory of San Girolamo di Miramonte in Bologna) ; but it is dis- tinguished from it by the apparition of the Divine Child above, bearing the Cross, and blessing His Mother in anticipation, in accordance with the collect for the feast, in which it is said that, by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, God prepared a worthy dwelling for His Son, and preserved her from all stain : ex morte ejusdem Filii praevisa. The later picture, on the other hand, closely resembles a Coronation, with Mhich it is frequently confused. Mr. Carmichael has shown that, in this case, Francia was simply following the composition of an earlier picture of the Immaculate Conception, which is now in the gallery at Lucca. In the sky the Blessed Virgin is already crowned, and the Eternal Father touches her head with the sceptre, the sceptre of Ahasuerus, in sign of her exemption from the genera] law that all mankind are bom in original sin.^ Below, holding scrolls, stand four Saints, regarded by Rome as bearing witness, under the old law and the I The older picture (painted about 1480) has this more expressly indicated, in the scroll with the words from the book of Esther (iv, 13): J\on mm pro te, sed pro omnibus haeo Ux fionftituta nt ; " For this law is not made for thee, but for all others." no THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA new dispensation, to the doctrine : David and Solomon, Anselm and Augustine ; while, kneeling before the horhis conclusus, the " garden inclosed '" of the So7ig of Solomon, a Franciscan friar, holding a fiery heart in his hand, sees the celestial mystery with the present eyes of faith.^ Alluring though this picture is to the lover of symbolism, I cannot quite agree with Mr. Carmichael in calling it the painter's masterpiece ; the scrolls carried by the Saints, with their mystical inscriptions, tend a little to remove it from the sphere of art into that of theology, while the execution is un- equal, and, in parts, so below Francia's usual level as to suggest the doubt whether it is from his own hand throughout. The year 1515 marks the close of Francia's artistic activity. In it he executed two dated and still extant altarpieces : the Entombment of Christ, painted prob- ably for a Carmelite church at Casale in Monferrato, now at Turin ; the enthroned Madonna and Child with the three chief Benedictine saints, St. Justina, 1 This kueeling Friar Minor is ostensibly St. Anthony of Padua in both pictures ; but Mr. Carmichael (op. fit., pp. 24-27) has most ingeniously and convincingly shown that he was originally intended for Duns Scotus. The position of St. Anselm, in the iconography of thf Immaculate Conception, is due partly to a sermon erroneously attributed to him, j)artly to a story in the Legenda Aurca. Mr. Carmichael has identified the four subjects in chiaroscuro, forming th'" predella of Francin'a picture, as four miracles wrought by the invocation of the Immaculate Conception {np. eit., Chap. IV.). FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI in and the child Baptist, for the Benedictine monks of the AnnunziatA at Parma. The latter appears to be his last work. Although its effect is somewhat marred by the obtrusive haloes (which are, perhaps, a later addition), and it has not the vigour of his masterpieces, it is a singularly winning picture, full of that devotional feeling which we associate with his name ; while the elaborate necklace of St. Justina and the richly jewelled cope of St. Maurus bear witness that the painter was still, as always, Fraiwia Aurifex, Attempts have been made to trace the influence of Raphael in some of Francia's later paintings, such as the beautiful little Adoration of the Magi, at Dresden ; but Morelli was unquestionably right in his emphatic rejection of this theory.^ The once famous letter, supposed to have been sent by Raphael to Francia, and the latter^s sonnet sent to the younger painter," are now universally recognised as mere for- geries of a later epoch, prol^ably suggested by Vasari\s statement that the two artists " saluted each other by letters.'' It is probable that when, in 1516, Raphael's Santa Cecilia arrived in Bologna, Francia super- intended its being placed in position in its destined chapel in S. Giovanni in Monte ; but he was un- questionably "made of sterner stuff" than to have t Italian Painters, 11. p. 77/?. « First published by Malrasia. Felsina Piilricc, T. pp. 47, 48. 112 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA been overwhelmed with mortification in the fashion detailed in Vasari's idle story. Apart from the testimony of his art, and the general witness of his contemporaries to his lovable disposition, we know little of Francia''s personality. His was evidently not a character to give rise to dramatic episodes or piquant anecdotes. It is clear that he stood high in the estimation of his fellow-citizens, and the tone of his correspondence with the Marchesana of Mantua shows the consideration in which he was held abroad. In 1511, he was elected one of the sixteen Gonfalonier! del Popolo in Bologna. In 1514, we find his name proposed for one of the ojfficia ufilitatis, the holders of which represented the government of Bologna in the Contado ; his proposed district being that of Castelfranco and Varignana.^ On June 27, 1516, together with the painter Domenico Cevola, he arbi- trated in a dispute between the guild of the united arts of Bologna, the " Honorevole Compagnia de le Quattro Arti," and Silvestro Orazi, who was leaving the office of Sindaco of the guild, concerning a sum of money which the latter claimed as due to him from the guild for ex- penses incurred during his term of office.^ Francia died on January 5, 1518 (new style). In the Bolog- 1 Orloli, op. eit., doc. 4. » Orioli, op. cU., doc. 3. lu 1514, Francia wan mcBtaro of the four arts for the first quarter of the year. ( « • '3 V * » Lorenzo Costa roltTKAIT OF I5ATTISTA FIKKA Niitinnal r,:illcr\ 'I'd I'ttfl- IKItJI 1 1 2 LORENZO COSTA 113 nese Chronicle of Niccolo Seccadenari, we read : " In 1517 died maestro Francesco Francia, the best gold- smith of Italy, and an excellent painter, an excellent jeweller ; he was a very handsome man, and most eloquent, albeit he was the son of a master carpenter." ^ Of his sons, Giacomo and Giulio, who carried on his traditions, something will be said in a later chapter. Comparatively few works of Costa's Mantuan period have come down to us, the majority having perished during the political storms that swept over the duchy in the succeeding centuries. One of his first tasks was to complete a picture, " La Storia di Como,"" which Mantegna had begun for Isabella's cavierino in the last vear of his life, and had left unfinished. In a letter addressed to the Marchesana, on January 13 of that year, 1506, Mantegna says: "I have almost finished designing the history of Comus for your Excellence, and I shall go on with it, when my imagination helps me.""'" On July 15, Giovanni Giacomo Calandra wrote to her : " I have wished to see the picture. These figures are drawn in it : the god Comus, two \^enuses, one draped, the other nude, two Loves, Janus driving out Envy, Mercury, and three other figures put to flight by Mercury. Some other figures are still want- ing, but the design of these is most beautiful." ^ Herr » Calvi, op. cit., pp. 41, 42. * Kristeller, op. cit., doc. 76 (previously in C. D'Arco). 3 Kristeller, doc. 77 (prenonsly in C. D'Arco). 114 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Kristeller has shown that this is the second of the pictures by Costa in the Louvre, which, in the Mantuan inventory of 1542, is described as "a picture from the hand of M°, Lorenzo Costa, in which is represented a triumphal arch and many figures making music, with a fable of Leda/' The triumphal arch is inscribed Comes, and the introduction of Orpheus and Arion, with Apollo, shows that it represents the " Triumph ot Music," a companion piece to Costa's former " Triumph of Poetry," to which, however, it is vastly inferior. " Costa has obviously painted over the whole picture, and yet in precisely those figures mentioned by Calandra, in the group of the Janus and of the Mercury [on the extreme right], there is an unmistakable, closei than customary, approximation on the part of Costa to the forms and movements of Mantegna." ^ Vasari describes at length the molte siorie executed by Costa in the palace of San Sebastiano, " in a room worked partly in tempera, and partly in oil." They were the usual courtly flatteries in honour of Francesco and Isabella, and, perhaps, it is not a very great lass to art that they have entirely perished. Later on, in the sala grande, where Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar hung, he was commissioned to paint two triumphs of the Gonzaga, as a suitable pendant or completion. 1 Kiisteller, pp. 358, 359. Vf. aUo Mrs. Ady, op. cit., I. pp. :{70, 371. LORENZO COSTA 115 " In the first,'' writes Vasari, " which is in tempera, are many nudes who offer fires and sacrifices to Hercules ; and in this is portrayed di iiaturale the Marquis [Francesco] with his three sons : Federigo, Ercole, and Ferrante ; who have since become such great and illus- trious lords. Likewise there are some portraits of noble ladies. In the other, which was executed in oil many years after the first, and which was one of the last things that he painted, is the Marquis Federigo grown to manhood, with the baton in his hand as general of Holy Church under Leo X., and around him are many noblemen, portrayed by Costa from the life.*" ^ The latter picture has been identified with a large work in the possession of Prince Clary- Aldringen at Teplitz in Bohemia.^ It was painted in 1522, the year after Federigo (who had succeeded his father as Marquis of Mantua in 1519) was made captain -general of the papal armies by Leo X., for the war against the French. Eight years later, he was raised to the rank of Duke by Charles V. No doubt Costa painted many portraits in the course of his life, though very few have been preserved. The finest of these is the Battista Fiera, now in the National Gallery. This personage was a distinguished physician and indifferent Latin poet, a member of the 1 III. pp. 1B4, 135. Cf. Kristeller, pp. 290, 292. 2 Cf. Venturi, in LArte (1908), p. 428. ii6 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Accademia di San Pietro, a sort of informal academy of artists and men of letters who gathered round the Marchesana at Mantua, and of whom Ariosto's friend and correspondent, Mario Equicola, was the leading spirit. " Your verses,'' wrote Isabella to Battista Fiera, in a letter which does more credit to her desire to please than to her literary criticism, " make us know what we had always supposed about you : that you are not less excellent as a poet than as a physician, but worthy of the highest praise and honour in both professions." ^ Costa's portrait of Battista is a veritable masterpiece, subtle in its analysis of character, un- compromising in its realism, and yet flavoured with a certain whimsicalness that reminds us of Dosso Dossi. Another excellent portrait, signed Laiirentms Costa, and perhaps dating from his Bolognese period, is the one questionably called Giovanni Bentivoglio in the Pitti : a man in the prime of life, of harsh features, wearing a red cap and heavy gold chain over a robe of dark velvet. About 1508, Costa painted a portrait of the Marchesana Isabella, of which a poor copy is now at Vienna. Another extant portrait from his hand, somewhat slight and wooden compared with those just considered, is the lady with the pet dog, at 1 Letter of January 29, 1503, Luzio and Uenier, La coltura e U relazioni leUerarie di Isabella (VFite, I. pp. 54-57. Of, L. G. Gyraldus, Ot I^uetla Nostroruf/i Ttniponim, ed. cit., p. 396. LORENZO COSTA 117 Hampton Court, in her i*ed bodice, with blue sleeves striped with violet. It bears a superficial resemblance to the Marchesana herself, as she appears in the Lou\Te " Triumph of Poetry." ^ Costa's active career closed with a large votive picture (now in Sant 'Andrea), presented by him to the church of San Silvestro in ]Mantua, in which he was to be buried. This represents St. Sylvester, in the presence of St. Sebastian and St. Roch (patrons against the pestilence) commending the people of Mantua to the jNIadonna and her Divine Child ; a noble religious composition, though altogether lacking the power and vigour of Costa's earlier work. It was painted in 1525, tlie fateful year of the battle of Pavia. when the pestilence was again appearing in various parts of Italy. With it Costa gave up painting, apparently worn out, and, perhaps, conscious that his style was out of date. In his Fragmaitum Trium Dialogorum, written in 1527, Paolo Giovio says: "The Mantuan Costa painted gracious figures of men and calm postures with pleasing colours, so that it is held that robed and armed images could be represented more agreeably by no one ; but skilled critics desire from him, especially in the nude, a sterner essay of art, which he cannot easily fulfil, seeing that he has been content with 1 Of. Mary Logan, Gvide to the Italim/n Pictures at Hampton Court p. 40. ii8 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA easier studies, and has been unable to devote a surer training to the practice of painting." ^ Lorenzo Costa died in 1635, leaving three sons who were also painters. One of them, the younger Lorenzo Costa, is perhaps the author of the striking picture of the mystical experience of the beata Osanna Andreasi in the parish church of Carbonarola. 1 Fragmentum Trium Dialogorurn Pauli Jovii Episcopi Nucerim, published by Tiraboschi, torn. ix. (Rome, 1785), pp. 123, 124. CHAPTER VII TIMOTEO VITI AND OTHER PAINTERS OF THE EARLY CINQUECENTO Among the young men, more particularly of the Emilian and Romagnole cities, who flocked to the workshop of Costa and Francia, was one from further south, who became the connecting link between the Ferrarese school and Raphael. It was Morelli who first revealed Timoteo Viti as a distinct artistic personality, and showed his impoi-tance (obscured by Vasari and, after him, by later writers) in the history of painting, and he has practically said the last word upon the subject ; ^ our knowledge of this peculiarly charming painter remains to-day much as he left it. Timoteo Viti, or della Vite, was born at Urbino, probably in 1469, the son of Bartolommeo di Pietro della Vite and his wife Calliope, who was the daughter of the Ferrarese painter, Antonio Alberti. His father died in 1476. Timoteo was intended for a goldsmith, and cAme to study that art in Bologna, at the invitation 1 Knnstkritischr Studien iiber italifniiche MaUrei : Die QaUric zu Btrlin. pp. 232-237. 119 120 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA of his brother, Pierantonio della Vite, a physician and poet who was a Bolognese citizen. In 1490, he entered Francia's workshop. In the supposed diary ot Francia cited by Malvasia (and still generally accepted as authentic), the master made the entry under July 8 of that year : " Timoteo Vite of Urbino received into our bottega, the first year without payment, for the second at the salary of sixteen florins a quarter, and the third and others following according to his work ; and he is to be free to go and stay according to agreement/' ^ Here Timoteo soon found that the true bent of his genius was for painting. In the following year, 1491, under September 2, Francia set down: " Accounts settled and concluded with Timoteo Vite of Urbino, to our mutual satisfaction. He wishes to be a painter, and is therefore placed in the Salone with the other pupils." He worked thus, under Francia and Costa, for nearly four years, and evidently won the former's heart; for, in 1495, Francia wrote: "On April 4, my dear Timoteo left us. May God give him every good and fortune." Vasari represents Timoteo as influenced and stimu- lated by the works of Raphael; but when, in 1495, at the age of twenty-six, the grandson of Antonio Alberti returned to Urbino, a fully trained painter, Raphael was a boy of twelve years old. His father, 1 Fflidna Pitt rice. T. p. 52, TIMOTEO VITI 121 Gio\anni Santi, had died in the previous year, and there can be little doubt that Morelli's suggestion is right, that, between 1495 and 1500, when he first left Urbino, Raphael became Timoteo's pupil, before passing on to the school of Perugino at Perugia. The influence of Timoteo, and, through him, of Costa and Francia, is strongly marked throughout RaphaePs earlier work ; and the older painter anticipates the peculiar grace and delicacy of the younger, the characteristics which we have grown accustomed to call Raphaelesque. Timoteo's personality, too, was of a kind to impress and attract a susceptible artistic youth : " He was a merry man,'' says Vasari, " and of a jocund and festive disposition, physically alert, and witty and facetious in his quips and talk. He delighted in playing every sort of musical instrument, but particularly the lyre, upon which he sang and improvised with extraordinary grace." ' The earliest important work which Timoteo executed at Urbino was the Madonna and Child with St. Vitalis and St. Crescentius, painted probably between 1496 and 1600, for the chapel of the Holy Cross in the Duomo ; in which, says Vasari, " there is a little Angel sitting on the ground, who plays the viola with truly angelic grace and with childlike simplicity." It was com- missioned by Mariano Spaccioli, whose niece, Girolama I IV. p. 498. 122 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA di Guido Spaccioli, Timoteo married in 1501. This picture, painted in tempera on canvas, now hangs, in a very damaged condition, in the Brera, where it was formerly attributed to Raphael. It is strongly re- miniscent in its types of Costa and Francia, while the figure of St. Vi talis no less markedly anticipates Raphael. Likewise early works of Timoteo are the St. Apollonia, now in the ducal palace of Urbino, and the little St. Margaret, in the Morelli collection at Bergamo — two single figures very similar to each other, and somewhat resembling the allegorical woman who symbolises Duty in Raphael's " Knight's Dream."" Of the St. Margaret, Morelli writes : " The head and attitude of the Saint involuntarily recall Francia to our mind, wliile the oval of the face resembles that of Raphael's Madonna del Gran Duca."" ^ To this epoch in Timoteo's career belongs also the small St. Sebastian, a rather feeble and insipid work, in the ducal palace of Urbino. Morelli was the first to regard as early works of Timoteo the seventeen ex- ceedingly beautiful paintings of mythological subjects, including the story of Orpheus, on the series of majo- lica plates, probably from the Castel Durante factory, in the Museo Civico at Venice ; they are certainly suggestive of the school of Francia ; but Morelli's 4 0/. cit., p. 219. > « s > Arulertion TiMOTEO VlTI (?) EURYDICE AND ARIST.EUS (Miijolic-a'plate) Miiseo Civico, Venice To face' page 122 TIMOTEO VITI 123 attribution, though highly plausible, is not universally accepted.^ After his marriage, Tinioteo settled down at Urbino, where, save for short visits to neighbouring towns, he seems to have spent the rest of his life. Vasari's story of his working under Raphael in the Madonna della Pace and elsewhere in Rome, though accepted unhesitatingly by Crowe and Cavalcaselle,^ is now almost universally rejected. Three fine altarpieces executed by Timoteo during the early years of the Cinquecento, and described by Vasari, have come down to us. For the altar of the Bonaventuri in San Bernardino, the church of the Osservanti outside Urbino, he painted quella tanto lodata opera, the Immaculate Conception, now in the Brera This picture, which is rather cold in colour, somewhat resembles Francia's representation of the same mystery at Bologna, painted in 1500, and was probably exe- cuted shortly after that date. Like its prototype, the composition closely approximates to that of an Annun- ciation, the Blessed Virgin receiving the angelical salutation between St. John Baptist and St. Sebastian, 1 According to Venturi, La Qalleria Crespi, p. 26, they ■^•:'ere designed by Francia himself. Federigo Argnani, on the other hand {II Riixascinxento delle Ceramiche Maiolicate in Faenza, pp. 41-48), regards them as of Faentine origin, and suggests Giovanni da Oriolu or Giovanni Millione. « History of Paint'uig in North Italy, T. p. 580. Cf. Deunistoun, Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, eU. Hutton, H. pp. 254-:J5y. 124 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA while its special subject is shown by the Child blessing from the glory above. The hilly landscape is taken from the neighbourhood of Urbino. Vasari especially praises the St. Sebastian, as " painted with so much diligence that it could not be better modelled, nor more beautiful in all its parts.*" In 1504, the Duchess of Urbino, Elisabetta Gonzaga da Montefeltro, and the Podesta, Alessandro Kuggieri, acting as the executors of the late bishop, Gianpietro Arrivabene (who had died in the March of that year), commissioned an altarpiece from Timoteo Viti, in accordance with the Bishop's bequest, for the decoration of the chapel he had founded in the Duomo in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Martin.^ The picture is now in the sacristy of the Duomo. The two mild -faced patron Saints are enthroned under an arch, beyond which is a beautiful landscape with a river- girdled city rather questionably said to be Mantua, with the deceased Bishop kneeling below on one side, and, on the other, Elizabetta's husband, the reigning Duke, Guidobaldo. It is a carefully finished work, very pleasant in colour. The portrait of Guidobaldo, that most pathetic of the Renaissance princes, is peculiarly interesting, but curiously unlike the one painted, prob- ably a year or two later, by Giovanni Francesco Caroto. 1 The frescoep were assigned to Genga, the altarpiece to Timoteo. Cf. Milunesi, Notes to Vasari, IV. p. 496. t jf^ .11 9JWm .lii(/n-sou T I. MOT KG Viri ST. MAUV MA(^1)ALEXE Bologna To face page 124 TIMOTEO VITI t25 Also for the Duomo of Urbino, Tiinoteo painted the famous Mary Magdalene now at Bologna. This was commissioned by Lodovico Amaduzzi, archpriest of the Cathedral, for the chapel of San Cipriano founded by him in 1508, and was probably executed then or in the following year. It is strange that no painter has ever given us an adequate or worthy representation of this most beautiful of all the Saints, she whom St. Catherine heard leading the music of Paradise, con voce alta e con grazia di singolar dolcezza. Timoteo's is a charming figure, conceived in the romantic spirit ; ^ but we miss just what Vasari finds specially to praise in it : " the divinity of her countenance, which verily shows in her expression the love which she bore to her Master."" The background has been considerably repainted. Guidobaldo died in 1508, and was succeeded by his adopted nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere. In ] 509, when the new Duke's bride, Leonora Gonzaga, came to him, Timoteo designed " certain triumphal arches like those of the ancients," which spanned the streets of the city through which the beautiful daughter of Isabella d'Este passed.^ Timoteo became the Duke's 1 It is inscribed : Deo optimo maximo et Marine Magdalenae Ludovicus Amatutius archipreshyter Sancti Cipriani dicavit. This winning red-robed figure curiously suggests comparison with the almost contemporary Chinese painting of a Fairy in a red cloak holding a flower, recently acquired by the British Museum from the Wegener collection. a Cf. Luzio and Renier, Mantoia e Urlino, p, 194. 126 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA chief court painter, decorating rooms in his various palaces. Like other painters, he was also employed on minor tasks : " In company with Genga, he painted certain bards for horses, that were sent to the King of France, with figures of divers animals so fine that they seemed to the beholders as though they had movement and life/'^ In 1508 and 1513, he was one of the priors of the city. We do not know how he was affected by the expulsion of the della Rovere from Urbino in 1516, and the installation of Lorenzo de' Medici as Duke. He seems to have still resided for the most part at Urbino. Vasari speaks of frescoes painted by Timoteo, in collaboration with Genga, in a chapel in San Francesco at Forli ; these have been destroyed. The only extant fresco from his hands is the remains of an Annunciation, at San Domenico at Cagli, which is evidently a late work. If Morelli is right in attributing to him a Nativity, with St. Laurence and St. Nicholas of Bari, now in the sacristy of the Duomo of Urbino, Timoteo was disadvantageously influenced by his colleague, Genga. Timoteo's later works are feeble and mannered compared with those hitherto considered. That they were mainly executed for churches and confraternities outside the capital is probably due to the fact that the new Duke Lorenzo had little time for the patronage 1 VHsiri, IV. p. 498. TIMOTEO VITI 127 of art, while engaged in an intermittent stmggle to retain his usurped duchy, against the persistent attempts of Francesco Maria to recover his states by force of arms. One of his latest works, the only picture of his (so far as I know) that has his signature,^ is the altarpiece painted in 1518 for the confraternity or congregazione of Sanf Angelo Minore, at Cagli, and still in its original position. It represents the No/i me tongere, the risen Christ appearing to the Magdalene, with St. Michael and St. Anthony Abbot in front. The kneeling Magdalene has some of the charm of Francia's women, but tlie Christ is effeminate, and the two Saints rather tend to caricature. There is a signed drawing, in black chalk and gypsum, for the figure of the Magdalene, in the Lou^Te. Vasari speaks of the beauty of Timoteo's drawings, several of which were in his possession. Some singularlv lovely studies of women are now generally accepted as from his hand, such as the woman with the palm branch at Oxford, a profile of a young girl in the Uffizi, and three beautiful examples (two formerly attributed to Raphael) in the British Museum.' Among the portraits that have been questionablv attributed to Timoteo aie the fine pastel of a bearded man in the British Museum, and the young man in 1 It is signed : Timothl de Vile Urhiaat. opus. 2 Cf. ^lorelli, np. dt., pi-, 232, 233. 128 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA red in the Pitti Palace, the latter of which is now regarded as an early work of Raphael. "Maestro Timoteo de la Vite," as he is called in the official record of his death, died at Urbino on October 10, 152B, two years after the restoration of Francesco Maria to the duchy. He left two sons, Giovanni Maria, an ecclesiastic, and Pietro, who followed in his footsteps as a painter. The most important purely Ferrarese master who followed Costa and Francia is Ercole di Giulio Cesare Grandi, who first appears in the service of the House of Este in 1489. Vasari, as already stated, confuses him with Ercole di Antonio Roberti, who was probably his first master. Between 1489 and 1495, Ercole Grandi seems to have been working at Bologna, both in San Petronio and in the Cappella Bentivoglio of San Giacomo Maggiore, as an assistant of Lorenzo Costa, whose favourite pupil he became. In the latter chapel, a fresco in the lunette above Francia's altarpiece, representing the Apocalyptic vision of the woman of Babylon, may have originally been by him.^ We find him in Ferrara in 1495, acting as chief architect in carrying out Duke Ercole's plan for embellishing the city and rebuilding the churches. The facade and 1 Cf. Venturi, Ercole Oraiidi, in Arch. Stor. deWArte, I. (1888). The fresco has been much altered by restoration, and has a figure added. Other authorities, including Mr. Berenson, hold that it was originally by Costa. ERCOLE GRANDI 129 interior of Santa Maria in Vado were executed from his design by Biagio Rossctti and Bartolommeo Tristano ; he gave the sketch for the equestrian monu- ment of the Duke, which was to rise in the middle of the new quarter of Ferrara, the Addizione Erculea, of which the single column still standing supports the statue of Ariosto ; and Signor Venturi suggests that the Porta dei Leoni, the handsome entrance to the palace built by the Duke's physician, Francesco Castelli, and possibly the ornamentation of the pilasters of the Palazzo dei Diamanti, may be his. In the early years of Alfonso's reign, he worked with Lodovico Mazzolino and others on the decorations of the Castello, and painted in the private apartments of Lucrezia Borgia. None of the pictures ascribed to Ercole Grandi are signed or dated, nor, in any case, is the attribution confirmed by documents. True, the charming little St. George and the Dragon, in the Galleria Corsini at Rome, has the letters " G. E.'' on the hind-quarters of the horse, but this can hardly be his signature,^ and Morelli was probably right in recognising the picture as an early work of Francia's. In the pinacoteca of P'errara, the so-called " Apotheosis of St. Mary of 1 According to the fashion of the age, a man named Ercole would have called himself Hercules, or Hercole, with an H. " If Hercules had seen himself robbed of the first letter of his name," said Ariosto to G. B. Giraldi, •' he would have taken vengeance upon the thief with his club." 130 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Egypt" — the scene from that Saint's legend in which, in the desert, the Abbot Zosimus sees her uplifted from the ground — is, perhaps, an early work by Ercole Grandi. It was formerly attributed to Timoteo Viti. Also early, if authentic, is the Madonna and Child between St. Domenic and St. Catherine, belong- ing to Lady Layard, with the monkey — that favourite figure in Ferrarese art — usurping the place traditionally held by an Angel at the foot of the throne. These two pictures (together with a Crucifixion formerly in the Santini collection), which show traces of the influence of Ercole Roberti, may possibly be from the hand of another Ferrarese painter not yet identified. Undoubtedly by Ercole Grandi, and of an early date, is a series of tempera paintings representing scriptural scenes, formerly in the Costabili gallery, now divided between the Layard and Visconti-Venosta collections. In the recognised works of his maturity, we find some- thing of the grace and suavity of Costa and Francia, with more virility than is usual in the former, though Ercole never equalled him as a colourist at his best. J Typical works of his are the Annunciation in tlie possession of Sir Frederick Cook at Richmond ; the St. Sebastian at Ferrara, where the martyr is bound to a tree with St. Joseph and Job on either side, and three donors of the Mori family are kneeling below ; and tlie large altarpiece in the National Gallery, ERCOLE GRANDI 131 perhaps the painter^s masterpiece in this kind, with its glowing wealth of mosaics and its scenes in monochrome, in imitation of bas-reliefs, set in the throne. The predella to this latter work, a little exaggerated in expression, with St. Francis and another friar rapt in contemplation of Christ in His deposition from the Cross, is in the Massari collection at Ferrara. In the much discussed ceiling of the so-called Palazzo di Lodovico il Moro, Ercole Grandi, if the work be really his, appears as a decorative painter of a very high order. The palace was begun by Biagio Rossetti in 1502, for Antonio Costabili, who had been Ferrarese ambassador in Milan ; according to a tradition, hardly in accordance with strict chronology, it had been intended for Lodovico Sforza, II Moro, as a refuge in the imminent downfall of his throne (1500). Be that as it may, this magnificent building, never finished and now little more than a ruin, is one of the most splendid wrecks of the Renaissance. Two rooms on the ground floor have frescoed ceilings and lunettes, attributed to Garofalo. In the upper part of the palace, a ceiling with mythological stories and tran- scripts from the court life of the epoch, also formerly attributed to Garofalo, is now usually regarded as one of the latest works of Ercole Grandi. It shows the influence of Mantegna, and makes it probable that the 132 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA painter had studied that master's decorative work in the Camera degH Sposi at Mantua.^ The beautiful portrait of a young girl in the gallery of the Capitol, formerly attributed to Giovanni Bellini and, rather absurdly, said to represent Petrarca's Laura, is now generally acknowledged to belong to Ercole Grandi ; Signor Venturi has plausibly suggested that she may be the arnica of Antonio Tebaldeo, the poet and courtier, to whose picture he refers in one of his sonnets.^ Ercole Grandi died in 1535, the same year as his master, Costa. Vasari writes : Gli fu come fratello e Jigliuolo insino alT estremo della vita. It has been noticed that no authentic work of Lorenzo Costa exists at Ferrara. Two pictures were, until recently, attributed to him in the public gallery there ; but one of these has been recognised as by Pellegrino Munari, and the other, with less certainty, is now ascribed to Michele Coltcllini. Pellegrino Aretusi was a Modenese, the son of Giovanni Aretusi, a painter of Modena employed by the Estensi for painting shields, trappings for tourna- ments, coffers, and the like, in the last years of the fifteenth century. Both father and son, instead of 1 Cf. Venturi, op. cit., pp. 196-198 ; G. Agnelli, Ferrara e Pomposa, pp. 48-52 ; Gruyer, I. pp. 364, 365. Morelli, Italian Faintcrs, II. p. 138, was the first to dispute Garofalo's authorship and a.ssign the «'«^iling to Ercole Grandi. ^ Op. cit., p. 198. Aiuhrson Ercole Crandi POirrUAIT OF A GIKL Campidi>L;lio To face pdf/e 132 PELLEGRINO MUNARI 133 their surname, were called Munari, from a mill at Panzanello rented by the former. As early as 1483, Pellegrino is described by a local poetaster of Modena, Giovanni Maria Parenti, as giovane bcllo e degno ne la pittura} The pictures attributed to him are not very clearly distinguished from those of his slightly older fellow-townsman, Francesco Bianchi, whom, as an artistic personality, he somewhat resembles. It is curious to observe that, in each of the four, the figure of St. Jerome appears. His earliest extant work, according to Signor Venturi, is the Madonna and Child with four Saints in the Museum of Berlin, formerly attributed to the school of Padua, which has all the characteristics of Ferrarese painting in the Quattrocento. Next to this, if his, would come a picture in the Casa Rangoni at Modena, in which, under the patronage of the Baptist and St. Jerome, Count Niccolo Rangoni and his wife, Bianca Bentivoglio, are worshipping the Blessed Virgin and the infant Christ ; a work, at one time ascribed to Francia, which was evidently executed before 1500, the year of Count Niccolo's death. Another picture at Modena, attributed to Pellegrino by Signor Venturi, is the altarpiece in San Pietro, already described, which I find myself in agreement with Mr. Berenson in re- garding as the work of Francesco Bianchi. On the 1 Venturi, La Pltiura ^f dcnesc ncl sccolo XV., p. 390. 134 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA other hand, the picture at Ferrara, the Madonna and Child with St. Jerome and St. Geniinianus, is un- questionably by Pellegrino, and the only authenticated example of his art that has come down to us. It is mentioned in the chronicle of Tommasino de"* Bianchi as having been painted in 1509 for the church of the Battuti, afterwards Santa Maria della Neve, in Modena, and encased in a frame richly decorated by Bartolommeo Bonascia/ The picture, with its rich colouring, its bas- reliefs, its putti making music, and its types, is strongly reminiscent of Costa ; and it is highly probable that, after learning the rudiments of painting from his own father at Modena, Pellegrino studied under Costa and Francia at Bologna. According to Vasari, Pellegrino in later life went to Rome, and worked under Raphael in the decorations of the Loggie of the Vatican. He would seem to have executed frescoes in various Roman churches, of which no traces now remain. After Raphael's death, he returned to Modena, where, in 1523, he was assassinated by the relations of a certain Giuliano Bastardi, whom his son had killed in a street brawl.'^ Michele Coltellini, or Cortellini, is a very inferior Ferrarese painter of the same epoch, who had probably 1 Cronaca Modcnae dl Tommasino de" Bianchi^ I. p. 64. The frame had been made twelve years before. 2 Vasiu-i, iV. pp. G50, 651 ; Venturi, op. cit., p. 390. Anderson Pei.legrino Munari -MADONNA AND CHILD Ferrara Tu/uce pa(/e 134 MICHELE COLTELLINI 135 studied under Lorenzo Costa. The picture in five compartments at Ferrara, formerly attributed to Costa, is a feeble and somewhat archaic production, in which the little episode of St. Anthony and St. Paul dividing a loaf of bread has alone a certain naive attractiveness. Coltellini's figures are bony, flat, and badly propor- tioned ; his colouring usually poor. A Death of the Blessed Virgin, signed and dated 1502, has passed from the Santini collection into the public gallery of Bologna ; a picture of the risen Christ with adoring Saints, painted during the pestilence of 1503, pestis tempore,^ is at Berlin. The least unattractive of Coltellini's works is the Madonna and Child with St. Catherine, St. Michael, St. Jerome, and the Baptist, of 1506, formerly in the Santini collection, in which the types and general compostion imitate Costa with some success, and show, too, that the painter was influenced by Francia. A picture formerly in Sta. Maria in Vado, and now in the pinacoteca of Ferrara, more doubtfully attributed to Coltellini, has some effective colouring and a striking landscape background, and is altogether later in style ; its apparent date, 1542, may be a misreading for 1512. Coltellini was still living in 1535. Another unimportant painter of this epoch is Stefano Falzagalloni, by whom are several works in the 1 Cf. Frizzi, Storia di Ferrara, IV. p. 214. 136 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA pinacoteca of Ferrara, including a Madonna and Child with St. Roch and St. Anthony Abbot, painted for S. Maria in Vado in 1530.^ Benedetto Coda, who seems to have been a Ferrarese by birth, and is said to have died at Ferrara in 1520, worked mainly in Romagna and the Marches. He was probably a pupil of Niccolo Rondinelli, that rather mediocre disciple of Giovanni Bellini who brought the influence of the latter into those regions. Coda's pictures at Ravenna and Rimini, executed in the second decade of the sixteenth century, can hardly be ranked among the genuine productions of the Ferrarese school.^ The same applies to Francesco and Bernardino Zaganelli, the two painters of Cotignola, a town which Ercole I. had succeeded in annexing to the duchy of Perrara. Though Ferrarese subjects, their art is more akin to that of the provincial painters of Central Italy, and they are eclectics of a mediocre character. Francesco Zaganelli, the less unimportant of the two, probably studied under Rondinelli or Marco Palmezzano, and came later under the influence of Francia. His brother Bernardino was his assistant in some of his earlier works, and died 1 There was apparently anothar painter of this name, who died in 1500. Gf. Baruffaldi, I. pp. 155-157. Neither can be identified with the Stefano da Ferrara mentioned by Vasari (III. pp. 407, 638) as a friend of Mantegna, to whom Ercole Roberti's picture in the Brera was formerly ascribed. 2 Cf. Gruyer, II. pp. 355-357. NICCOLO PISANO 137 before him. Their earliest known picture is one painted in 1499 for the Osservanti of their native town, now in the Brera. Francesco was working as late as 1527, while Bernardino's activity seems to have ended in 1509. A painter who, though apparently a native of Pisa, must be regarded as belonging to the Ferrarese school, is Niccolo Pisano or Niccolo da Pisa.^ We find him at Ferrara in 1499, competing with Lorenzo Costa and others for the decoration of the choir of the Duomo. In the following years he was much employed by Duke Ercole ; but none of the pictures now attri- buted to him can be proved with certainty to be his, and they exhibit great variation in style. In 1502, una anemia a Suor Liicia, " an altarpiece for Suora Lucia,"*"* in honour of St. Catherine of Siena, was commissioned from him by the Duke. It is possible that this is the remarkable picture in one of the sacristies of the Duomo, representing St. Catherine taking under her protection two richly attired nobles and a number of Dominican nuns.^ Another picture, an ancona made at the Duke"*s orders in 1504, "a le suore de Santa Maria de Gratia"' (that is, for the 1 Cf. Venturi, L'artc fe/rarcse nel periodo di Ercolc I. d'Este, iii. pp. 393-395 ; Cittadella, Documenti ed illustrazioni, pp. 72, 73 ; Gruyer, II. p. 137. 2 Cf. Baruffaldi, II. (Appendix), p. 561. The picture look? Inter and is, perhaps, a copy. 138 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Mortara nuns already mentioned), cannot now be traced. A Deposition from the Cross, signed " Nicholo,*" in the Bologna gallery, and another representation of the theme with the forged signature " Ferancia " in the Corsini gallery at Rome, are usually attributed to him. Both these pictures are Ferrarese or Bolognese in types and colouring, but do not suggest the same painter ; in the latter, a woman, rushing in with outstretched arms, somewhat recalls similar figures in the later works of Francia, and the last gleam of sunset against the lowering sky after a day of tempest is well rendered. On the other hand, a rather characterless altarpiece in the Brera, from the oratory of the Compagnia della Morte at Ferrara, said to have been painted by Niccolo Pisano in 1512,^ suggests Venetian influences. Far finer than any of these is the great altarpiece painted, according to the inscription, in 1520, for the chapel of the Giraldoni family in San Niccolo at Ferrara, now in the possession of Lord Wim borne. This striking work, formerly attributed to Ortolano, has been assigned by Signor Venturi to Niccolo Pisano.'^ It represents St. Joseph presenting the infant Christ to the Blessed Virgin, attended by the " Quattro Santi Incoronati,'' the five martyred patrons of the stone-cutters'* craft : 1 Cf. Cittadella, o-p. cit., p. 73. 2 Exhibition of Works of the School of Ferrara- Bologna, Burling- ton Fine Arts Club, pp. 21, 22. Cf. Baruffaldi, I. pp. 173, 174 ; Luderchi, pp. 101, 102. LODOVICO MAZZOLINO 139 Castorius, Claudius;, Symphorianus, Nicostratus, and Siniplicius.^ The types somewhat recall those of Francia, but the landscape, the colouring, and the drapery suggest the later generation of Ferrarese painters, as also does the whole treatment of the scene. We have, perhaps, too little evidence to tell whether Niccolo Pisano was capable of producing so fine a work. If he did, we must take him as an artist who was trained like others in the school of Francia and Costa, and afterwards developed upon the lines of the mastei"s to whom we come in the following chapters. He was still working in 1528. We are on surer ground with the " glow-worm '' of Ferrarese painting, Lodovico Mazzolino, whose work, markedly personal and distinctive in character, belongs entirely to the sixteenth century. He was born at Ferrara about 1481, the son of a certain Giovanni Mazzolino. Vasari states that he studied under Costa at Bologna, and Baruffaldi adds that he left that 1 The painter has glossed over the difficulty, of how the four "Santi Incoronati" should actually be^te, by leaving the fifth un- crowned and alnnost hidden in a corner. This curious puzzle, which is already found in the seventh century, is due to a confusion or blending of two different legends : that of four unnamed Roman soldier?, coronati or "crowned with martyrdom" in Rome under Trajan ; and that of the five stone-cutters named above, who were put to death in Pannonia by Diocletian in 305, for refusing to make pagan idols, and whose cult was associated with thnt of the four earlier martyrs. Cf. Grisar, Roma aUafine del Mondo antico, pp. 163, 1G4. 140 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA master's school in consequence of the quarrels arising out of his rivalry in love with a fellow-pupil. Morelli, on the other hand, first suggested Domenico Panetti as his master, and Mr. Berenson more recently makes him a pupil of Ercole Roberti, afterwards " influenced by Costa and Dosso." We find his name for the first time in 1504, the last year of Duke Ercole's reign, when he was painting in the church of the Angeli, and in subsequent years he appears to have been a favourite painter of Lucrezia Borgia, in the decoration of whose rooms in the Castello he took a large share. The dates on his extant pictures range from 1509, that of the triptych in the Berlin Museum, to 1526, on the Circumcision at Vienna. The majority of Mazzolino"'s pictures, which are verv numerous and full of repetitions in subject, motives, and accessories, are small in size, very carefully finished, peculiarly rich in colour, and frequently fantastic in the types. They represent exclusively Holy Families, Sacre Conversazioni^ and scenes from the New Testament. The fiery complexions of his men are copperish red in hue ; the faces of his women are wax-like, with eyes usually half-closed. Their brilliant robes have violet shadows, and are often heightened with gold.^ More frequently, instead of landscapes, he gives us symmetrical 1 Cf. esrecially Venturi, Ludovico Mazzolino, in Arch. Stor. deW Arte, III. (1890). LODOVICO MAZZOLINO 141 architectural backgrounds, decorated with bronze or cream-toned marble bas-reliefs, which " at once enrich the composition, and add force and harmony to the deep tints of red, green, blue, orange, and murrey clustered in the raiment of the figures."" ^ His wonder- fully attired Angels, as notably in the Holy Family with St. Nicholas of Tolentino in the National Gallery, are a creation of his own, and seem the denizens of some romantic fairyland. Characteristic of his art are such motives as that of the little St. John defending his lamb from the advances of a monkey — an animal curiously dear to the Ferrarese painters. Almost the only picture of large dimensions, that has come down to us from his hand, is the Nativity in the pinacoteca at Ferrara, with a black and a white Abbot in attendance, an unattractive work in which his fiery colouring and eccentric types seem more incon- gruous on this larger scale ; the influence of Costa and Francia is apparent in the figure of the Divine Child blessing His Mother. His later pictures show that, naturally towards the end of his life, he was strongly influenced by Dosso Dossi. Mazzolino probably spent the greater part of his life at Ferrara ; but in 1524 he was working at Bologna, where he painted two important pictures, Christ among the Doctors (which Vasari extolled as the best 1 National Qallery ; Official Catalngvc. 142 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA of his productions) for the Caprara chapel in San Francesco, and the " Tribute Money " for the inde- fatigable Girolamo Casio. These works are now at Berlin and Posen/ He was painting again in Ferrara in 1526, and apparently died in the autumn of 1528, a victim to the pestilence that devastated the city. His last will and testament, dated September 27, 1528, couched in a singularly devotional spirit, shows that he left a widow, Giovanna, and two daughters, Claudia and Cornelia, and that he was to be buried in his parish church of San Gregorio.^ 1 The tympanum and predella of the picture for San Francesco, representing the Eternal Father and the Nativity, are in the gallery at Bologna. 2 Cittadella, Documenti ed iUustrazioni, p. 54. CHAPTER VIII DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI " Almost at the same time,'" writes Vasari, " that Heaven made a gift to Ferrara, nay, to the world, of the divine Lodovico Ariosto, the painter Dosso was born in the same city ; who, albeit he was not so rare among painters as Ariosto among poets, nevertheless bore himself in such wise in that art that, besides his works being held in high esteem in Ferrara, he also deserved that the learned poet, his familiar friend, should make honoured mention of him in his most famous writings. Whereby the pen of Messer Lodovico has given greater renown to the name of Dosso than did all the brushes and colours that he consumed in all his life." ^ Messer Giorgio is obviously alluding to the well- known stanza, among the additions made by the poet in the final edition (1532) of the Orlando Furioso, in which Dosso and his brother are named as two of the nine greatest painters of the Renaissance : 1 Vite. ed. cit., V. pp. 96, 97. 143 144 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA " E quei che furo a nostri di, o sono hora : Leonardo, Andrea Mantegna, Gian Bellino ; Duo Dossi ; e quel ch'a par sculpe e colora, Michel, piu che mortale Angel divino ; Bastiano ; Raphael ; Titian, c'honora Non men Cador che quei Venetia e Urbino ; E gli altri di cui tal I'opra si vede Qual de la prisca eta si legge e crede." ^ The spiritual kinship between Dosso Dossi and Ariosto, the painting of the one seeming the counter- part of the other's poetry, was noticed by their con- temporaries. Paolo Giovio, in his Fragmentimi Trium Dialogorum (written, as already stated, in 1527), characterises Dosso as urbanum ingenium — urbanUas being one of the qualities that he especially ascribes to the Orlando Furioso} Mr. Berenson well says : " The 1 "And those Tvho were in our days, or now are : Leonardo, Andrea Mantegna, Gian Bellini ; two Dossi ; and he who equally sculptures and paints, Michael, Angel divine more than mortal man ; Sebastian ; Eaphael ; Titian, who honours not less Cadore than they Venice and Urbino ; and the others of whom we see such work as is read and believed of the classic age." (Orlando Furioso, xxxiii. 2). 2 Giovio's words have a certain significance as the first contem- porary criticism of Dosso, written while he was still at the height of his career : " Doxi autem Ferrariensis urbanum probatur ingenium cum in justis operibus, tum maxime in illis quae parerga vocantur. Amaena namque picturae diverticula voluptario labore consectatus, praeruptas cautes, virentia nemora, opacas perfluentium ripas, florentes rei rusticae apparatus, agricolaruni laetos fervidosque labores, praeterea longissimos terrarum, marique prospectus, classes, ancupia, venationes, et cuncta id genus spectatu oculis jucunda, luxurianti, ac festiva manu exprimere consuevit " {op. cjY., p. 124). DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 145 court poet and tlie court painter were remarkably alike in the essence of their genius. They were both lovers of * high romance," and both had the power to create it — the one in verse, the other in colour — with a splendour that perhaps many other Italians could have equalled, but with a fantasy, a touch of magic, that was more characteristic of English genius in the Elizabethan period than of Italian genius at any time." ^ Giovanni di Niccolo Luteri, to give Dosso Dossi his proper name, was some five years younger than Ariosto, and was born about 1479. His brother Battista was born a few years later. They were the sons of Niccolo di Lutero, spenditore of Duke Ercole I., and Jacopina da Porto, his wife. It is a little doubtful whether their usual appellation is derived from the family having originally come from Dosso in the Trentino, or, as seems more probable, from the fact that they possessed property at another Dosso, a little place in the territory of Pieve di Cento. There seems no reason for questioning the tradition that Giovanni at least (if not both the brothers) received his first artistic training under Lorenzo Costa at Bologna. This apprenticeship under Costa was probably brief. BarufFaldi asserts that, finding Costa too much occupied with other pupils to give them individual attention, the brothers obtained leave from the Duke 1 The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, I. pp. 31, 32. hi 146 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA to travel, and spent six years at Rome and five at Venice.^ This would roughly correspond with the gaps in the documentary evidence concerning their activity, but seems contradicted by the complete absence of any Roman influences in Giovanni's pictures, save in the one or two instances when he is deliberately copying from Raphael. More plausible is the almost contemporary statement of Lodovico Dolce, in his Dialogo della Pittura, which is said to have been inspired by Titian himself, and in which he represents Pietro Aretino saying of the two Dossi : " One of them stayed here at Venice for some time to learn to paint with Titian, and the other in Rome with Raphael "" ; though he adds that " in- stead they adopted such a clumsy manner that they are unworthy of the pen of so great a poet as Ariosto.""^ It is possible, however, that, in the case of Battista, this refers to a later epoch, as there is documentary evidence that he was in Rome, apparently working under Raphael, in 1520, and he was there, most likely, from 1517 to 1524. Traces of Costa's influence may be discerned in the work of Dosso Dossi. In the former's admirable portrait of Battista Fiera in the National Gallery, we seem to find Dosso's whimsical but powerful style of 1 I. p. 251. 2 Dialogo della Pittura intitolato V Aretino (Venice, 1557), p. 9v. i : T. ■tl o Ci o m O ^* DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 147 portraiture in germ, and the figure of St. John in Costa^'s altarpiece, in the same collection, distinctly anticipates the pose and character of Dosso'*s similar presentment of the Evangelist in the great picture from Sanf Andrea now in the pinacoteca at Ferrara. We have no documentary evidence of Dosso**? pre- sence in his native city until 1517, when both he and Battista first appear in the ducal service.^ He may well have gone to Venice before 1506, when Costa's school was broken up. But, when the League of Cambrai bore fruit in war, and Duke Alfonso him- self, in 1510, took the field against the armies of the republic, Venice became an intolerable place of resi- dence for a subject of the House of Este, and Dosso joined his former master at Mantua. There is docu- mentary evidence of his presence there in 1511 and 1512. No traces remain of the work that he executed for the Gonzaga ; but his stay at Mantua has left its mark upon the history of art, for it was probably there that Correggio, then a youth of eighteen, fell under his influence.^ On the death of 1 The documents published by Venturi, 1 due Dossi, in the Arch Star. deU'Arte,Y. (1892), pp. 440, 441, show that the painter was called " maestro Dosso " as early as 1517, that is, from the beginning of his connection with the court of Ferrara. It is thus clear that the statement, occasionally made, that he did not adopt the name and style of "niagister Dossus" until 1532, is incorrect. His brother was similarly known as " maestro Baptista," or " M. Baptista di M. Dosso." 2 Cf. BorenBon, oj). cit., pp. 40, 41 148 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Julius II., in 1513, hostilities ceased. The Duke of Ferrara, released from his desperate struggle for the very existence of his duchy, had leisure to follow the traditions of his house as a patron of art. Dosso returned to Ferrara, and became Alfonso's chief court painter, his personal qualities and genial dis- position rendering him persona grata with his sovereign. In 1517, we find him going to Florence " per facende del Signore,""* and in Venice, on similar ducal business, in the following year, when he had dealings on behalf of the Duke with a " messer Luigi Vicentino,*" who was probably Luigi da Porto, tlie novelist to whom the world owes the ultimate source of Shakespeare''s Romeo and Juliet. From 1518 until 1541, he seems to have been kept in constant em- ployment, first by Alfonso and then by his successor, Ercole II., and, save for some frescoes executed in the early thirties of the century, for Cardinal Bernardo Clesio, at Trent, and for Francesco Maria della Rovere in the Villa of Monte Imperiale, near Pesaro, his work was mainly confined to the territories of the Estensi. Battista Dossi appears to have re- turned from Rome in 1524.^ Henceforth the two 1 Venturi, op. cit., docs. 2 and 12. * There is a gap in the record of dncal payments to him from November 13, 1517 (when he is first mentioned), to October 1, 1524 (when he renppears). Venturi, op. cit., docs. 2 and 48. A letter from JLlfonso Paolucci to Duite Alfonso shown that, at the beginning DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 149 brothers usually worked together at the commands of Alfonso, albeit most unwillingly, as the younger was of a jealous and malicious disposition, and so envied his elder's success and reputation, that the two were hardly on speaking terms with each other. The predominant influence in Dosso's earlier and better work is that of Giorgione, probably derived directly from that master at Venice. A little later, he was similarly impressed by Titian, both by personal contact and by the presence of several of his master- pieces at Ferrara. Afterwards he gave full scope to his own somewhat fantastic genius, not always with the purest taste, and, towards the end of his career, seems to have been slightly touched by his younger contemporary, Parmigianino. While remaining always essentially Ferrarese in his art, he developed into a colourist unrivalled out of Venice, and acquired a peculiarly poetical treatment of light and shadow, surpassed only by Correggio who learned it from him. Perhaps the most imaginative of the Italian painters of the Cinquecento, he handles religious and secular themes alike from the romantic standpoint. He is unequal, and strangely careless as a draughtsman, and of 1520, " il fratello di Dosso" was working under Raphael in Rome. D08SO himself seems to have been personally acquainted with Raphael, who, in March, 1520, wrote to ask him to make his excuses with the Duke for not having executed the picture he had promised him. Campori, Notizie incdite di Raffaello da Urbino, pp. 137, 138, 150 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA his treatment of the human form is uncertain and superficial. There is no really beautiful nude figure in all his work ; even the Circe, in Mr. Benson's picture, is ungraceful in her pose, and the sleeping woman in the so-called " Vertumnus and Pomona,"" belonging to Lord Northampton, is lacking in ideality. But his romantic treatment of landscape, with its play of light and shadow amidst the quivering foliage of woods and forests, fascinated his contemporaries even as it does ourselves. At times, the very trees seem imbued with a mysterious poetry, as though themselves impregnated with the fantastic or solemn nature of the scene over which they watch, taking life almost as in Rossetti's Song of the Bower, where : — ''The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell." Among Dosso'*s earliest pictures are the Nymph and Satyr of the Pitti, formerly attributed to Giorgione, and, perhaps, Mr. Benson's Circe already mentioned. The beautiful St. Sebastian, now in the Brera, was painted for a church in Cremona, possibly during the artist's residence at Mantua. Mr. Berenson is, I doubt not, right in regarding as a comparatively early work of Dosso's the smaller Immaculate Con- ception at Dresden (usually erroneously called the " Coronation of the Blessed Virgin," or, no less ques- tionably, the " Four Church Fathers ") : one of those » » . ' .titlfdS i-.i DOSSO Dossi THE JESTER To face page 15u DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 151 pictures in which, as very frequently with this painter, " the groups are so arranged that, in looking at the landscape, one seems to be looking out upon it from within a cavern." ^ In this beautiful picture, the golden-haired, white-robed Madonna kneels on the clouds before the Eternal Father, who is about to touch her head with the mystical wand, the sceptre of Ahasuerus. Below in a garden, beyond which is Dosso's characteristic landscape with its little Italian town, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose anticipate the discussion of the mystery, while St. Anselm, seated apart, actually beholds it with assured certitude.^ The whole rendering of the theme is far more poetical than in Dosso''s later treatment of the subject, the one unsatisfactory passage being the banal figure of the Eternal Father, who, as Signor Venturi remarks, has the attitude of a music-master.^ Accord- ing to Morelli, the gorgeous Circe of the Villa Borghese, in which the artist's romantic spirit is seen at its zenith, was probably painted in the second decade of the sixteenth century. I should be disposed to place it among the numerous paintings executed by Dosso for the ducal palace at a later epoch. In any case, while, 1 Berenson, op. cit., p. 33. 2 For the part played by St. Anselm in the iconography of the Immaculate Conception, cf. above, p. 110. 3 La Qalleria Crespi, p. 35. But I cannot follow him in attri* butiug the picture to Battista Dossi, 152 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA perhaps, lacking the fresh poetry of Mr. Benson''s example, it far surpasses it in sohdarity of execution, bearing much the same relation to it as the larger and later Immaculate Conception at Dresden does to the smaller picture of the same subject just considered. One of the most fascinating of Dosso's works, and probably of comparatively early date, is the huffone, or jester, at Modena, which may be said, to some extent, to hold the same position in his art as the "Monna Lisa" does in Leonardo's. Against a tree trunk, with an idyllic landscape beyond, a young man with long dark hair, in red dress and feathered cap, is cuddling a lamb, and all his face breaks out into a laugh of perfect delight. It is like the laugh of Shakespeare in As You Like It and Twelfth Night. This is no idealised Gonnella,^ the historical buffoon of an earlier sovereign of Ferrara, but a jester of a poet's dream, to stand by Feste and Touchstone. A rare fellow, indeed, doubtless as swift and sententious as the motley-minded gentleman whom Jacques met in the Forest of Arden. Gonnella was but " a barren rascal,"" one of " these set kind of fools,*" but Dosso's jester was I Cf. Leandro Alberti, Descrittione ditutta Italia, f. 312 ; Baruffaldi, I. pp. 285, 286 ; Bertoni, Buffoni alia Corte di Ferrara (in Jiivista d'ltalia, vi. fasc. iii-iv). The inscription has been alternatively read Rs Sic Gienius and Ser Gierius. A young man is likewise cuddling a lamb in Bernardino Loschi's fresco of Alberto Pio and his Court at Carpi, and we find a similar motive in Costa's " Triumph of Poetry '* iu the Louvre. DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 153 never met with out of an enchanted forest. Surely, if we gaze long enough into that background, we shall discover Rosalind with her Orlando, Phebe timidly wooed by Silvius. There Amiens will be singing and Jacques moralising over the wounded deer, while the banished Duke's merry men " fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world."" Generally, Dosso's religious pictures represent little more than the heroes and heroines of this fantastic golden world, parading in devotional garb. The St. Sebastian of the Brera, and the St. William of Hampton Court, are conceived in the spirit of Ariosto's Paladins. In the Brera, we see with surprise, almost with incredulous wonder, that the arrows are doing their cruel work indeed, and that the Saint is really suffering mart}Tdom ; one would have expected him to prove invulnerable, like Orlando in Messer Lodovico's epic. At Hampton Court, St. William is laying aside his armour ; but his renunciation scarcely carries back our thoughts to the canonised Count of Orange in Dante's Paradiso, but rather to the gloomy Frederick of Js You Like It, " converted both from his enterprise and from the world."" It is the kind of conversion to be effected in Arcadian regions ; and, while Dosso does not exactly make us question the genuineness of the religious life that his hero is going to put on, he lets us feel, with Jacques, that we 1 54 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA s'^iould like to know more about it : " Out of these convertites there is much matter to be heard and learned."" In the Holy Family with the Cock in the same collection (a much later work in which Dosso was probably assisted by Battista), with its splendid landscape and once gorgeous colouring now blackened by restoration, the Madonna wears a magic robe not milike Circe's, and her whole countenance and bearing tempt the beholder to believe that the sorceress herself has taken upon her this sacred disguise for the con- fusion of the faithful. The fantastic St. John the Evangelist, in the picture from Sta. Maria in Vado at Ferrara, records his vision like a court painter about to sing his patron'*s praises, or, at the best, one of those young humanists thronging the halls of the Ferrarese Studio, where the professor "readeth Plato in the TimaeiLS on feast-days with a very great audience."'' ^ He naturally grew into the old man whom Ariosto'*s Astolfo met in the Moon, still taking the part of men of letters in Paradise :— *' Gil scrittori amo, e fo il debito mio ; Ch' al vostro mondo fui scrittore anch* io. » • >> <» Perhaps the finest of Dosso's altarpieces is the 1 Letter from Ariosto to Aldus Manutius. Cappelli, LetUre di Lodovico Ariosto, lett, I. 2 " 1 love writers, and so I should, seeing that I, too, was a writer iu your world " {Orlando /'()ssi THE NATIVITY >Io(leiia To/ace paijc 16U DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI i6i others but for the varnish, and is as romantic in treatment. The god of song, laurel-crowned, is seated in an autumnal landscape, playing the violin in an erotic frenzy, while, far away, the white-robed Daphne becomes a laurel. The very trees seem to have caught the hopeless passion of a god, who strikes the last note of his music before the storm, which is already breaking over the little town in the background : — " For \o, the thunder Imshing all the grove. And did Love live, not even Love could sing." Some details of the decorations of a hall, probably in the Castello Vecchio, are preserved in the pictures at Dresden. They are late works, executed under Ercole IL, in which Dosso was assisted not only by Battista, but by various pupils and apprentices, among whom was Girolamo da Carpi. The St. Michael and the St. George, apparently from the designs of Raphael, several of which had been for many years in Ferrara, were painted in 1539 or 1540; the former is entirely from Dosso's hand, and translates RaphaePs Roman style into romantic Ferrarese.^ In 1 I take it that these are the " quadii grandi de 8*°. Michiele c de Sto. Zorzo" specified in Venturi, ojj. cit., doc. 241 (March 13, 1510). Morelli regarded the St. George as a much earlier work of Dosso, while Mr. Berensoii ascribes it to Girolamo da Carpi. Tho Dukes of Ferarra possessed several of the cartoons for Raphael's pictures, but that of St. George is not mentioned among them. Id tending the cartoon of the St. Michael to Duke Alfonso, in J- i62 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA the allegorical figures of the Virtues, there is less of Dosso''s own work, save, perhaps, in that of the Justice.^ Remains of another decorative scheme, in large part by Dosso himself, survives in the Galleria Estense at Modena, in the diamond-shaped panels with groups of half figures of men and women, the subjects of which cannot now be distinguished. Vasari speaks with high praise of a Bacchanalian revel painted by Dosso for Alfonso, in a room of the Castello Vecchio where the similar pictures by Giambellino and Titian hung.^ Three small Bacchanals are still shown on the wall of a cabinet in the Castello, representing the Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, the Vintage, and the Triumph of Bacchus, respectively, of which the first and third are generally attributed to Dosso. It seems, however, that this cabinet was constructed after the fire of 1554, which would make the attribu- tion to Dosso impossible, unless they were transported from another part of the palace, of which, owing to the way in which they are framed into the wall, it is 1518, Kaphael had particularly asked the Duke "not to have it coloured, since the King of France has had it coloured by his hand." (Letter from Beltrando Costabili, September 21, 1518, in Campori, Notizie inedite dl Raffaello da Urhino, p. 120). 1 Battiata Dossi painted "uno quadro de una Justitia," for the Corte Vecchia, in 1544 (Venturi, op. cit., doc. 333). a " Una Baccanaria d'uomini tanto buona, che, quando non avesse mai fatto altro, per questa merita lode e nome di pittore eccellente' ( VI. p. 474), It does not seem that this is the Bamhoceiata no^ in the Pitti. DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 163 impossible to judge.^ The Triumph of Bacchus is precisely the same composition that Garofalo painted on a large scale in the picture now at Dresden, which Vasari declares to have been from a design of Raphael, and the attribution to Dosso of any of these three works seems, from every point of view, questionable. There is documentary evidence that Dosso and Battista, with their assistants, were painting in the Torre di Santa Caterina in the Castello in 1536.^ Three large halls, in this and the adjoining tower, have ceilings covered with frescoes which are at least of their school. Those in the Sala de' Giganti (or Sala del Consiglio), representing the athletic sports of the an- cients, are too coarsely painted to be attributed to Dosso. In the Sala di Napoli, the central scene, with the Dance of the Hours, may well be from his hand. In the third, the Sala delP Aurora, we see an allegory of Time in the centre, and round beneath it the four divisions of the day. Dawn, Noon, Evening, and Night. This ceiling, though by no means among his best creations, was probably entirely Dosso's in design, and, to some extent, his in execution.^ Below, running all round, is a lovely frieze of putti driving little chariots 1 Cf. Cittadella, 11 Castello di Ferrara, pp. 46 et seq. 2 Venturi, op. cit., docs. 177, 178. 3 Cf. Cittadella, op. cit.f pp. 42-15 ; Ella ^Noyes, 27ie Story of Perrara, pp. 290-'J94. i64 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA to which all manner of strange beasts and birds are harnessed. A tiny room in the Corte Vecchia, the older palace of the Estensi, probably the so-called "camerino adorato " or *' gilded cabinet,"" is covered with paintings on panel with a gold background. These are attributed to Dosso's pupil, Camillo Filippi, and the latters son, Bastianino ; ^ but the hand of Dosso himself is universally recognised in the beautiful figure of Apollo over a window, and may, I think, be traced elsewhere, as in the similar figure representing Ceres, or Fertihty, on the left wall. Dosso was employed on several occasions to paint the scenery for the comedies, performed before the Duke and his court, in the sala grande of the Corte Vecchia.'^ In this he was closely associated with Ariosto, who, in the later years of his life, was the chief oriraniser of such entertainments. Under the poet's direction, a permanent stage was erected in imitation of the supposed fashion of the ancients, with a fixed scene, probably by Dosso himself, which seems to have represented an ideal city of the epoch. This scene was used for the performance of the Captivi of Plautus and the Cassaria of Ariosto in the carnival of 1 Of. Cittadella, op. cit.t p. 11. 2 e.g., in February, 1526, and February, 1528, Venturi, op. eit., docs. 62 and 121. DOSSO AND BATTISTA DOSSI 165 1531, and Giroldmo da Sestula wrote of it to Isabella d'Este : ** The scene is so beautiful that it makes everything appear beautiful."*' ^ It was destroyed by fire in the night of December 31, 1532, causing such distress to the poet that he never recovered from the illness that ensued. We have lost many portraits from Dosso's hand, such as those of the two daughters of the dispossessed Queen of Naples, painted in 1524;^ two of the hereditary prince, afterwards Ercole II., of 1 527 ; and one of his son, the little Don Alfonso, afterwards Alfonso II., painted in 1540.^ The posthumous portrait of Duke Ercole I. at Modena, a fine reconstruction of a noble personality, pro- bably from contemporary materials, was executed in 1524.* Thatof Alfonso I. in the Uffizi, probably after the lost original of Titian, was ascribed to Dosso by Morelli, but is now given by Mr. Berenson to Girolamo da Carpi. The portrait of the Venetian admiral, Giovanni Moro, at Berlin, is a masterpiece. At Dresden, the much damaged portrait of a scholar, once known as " Correggio's physician," was tentatively assigned to Dosso by Morelli, and is more definitely accepted as his 1 Cf. Fontana, lienata di Francla, I. (Rome, 1889), pp. 152, 153, and my King of Court Poets, pp. 239, 343. « Venturi, op. cit., doc. 27. For the story of these two unhappy princesFCs, Pee King of Court Poets, pp. 218, 243, 244, 255. 3 Venturi, op. cit.^ docs. 110, 242. * Ibid., doc. 33. 1 66 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA by Mr. Berenson. If the representation of " Don Checchin," the turbulent and impetuous Francesco d'Este, the youngest son of Alfonso I., as St. George — the wing of an altarpiece from a church in Massa Lombarda^ — be really by Dosso, it must be one of his last works ; for that prince, who was born in 1516, appears therein as a bearded man in the flower of life. The last recorded payment to Dosso in the ducal accounts is dated June 11, 1541.^ In spite of the assertions of Vasari and Baruffaldi that he retired on a pension some years before his death, Dosso was working up to the last, and died in the summer of 1542, leaving three daughters. Battista Dossi died in the latter part of 1548, bequeathing his goods to the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole II. It is uncertain whether he was the father of an indifferent artist, Evangelista Dossi, who was murdered by his own wife in 1586. Although far inferior to his brother, Battista is by no means a negligible quantity in the history of Ferrarese art. His landscapes are admirable, and many of his smaller pictures, like the Holy Family with an Angel, in the Villa Borghese, and the Madonna and Child with St. George and St. Geminianus (usually attributed to Dosso) at Bergamo, have a peculiar idyllic charm. 1 Cf. Ricci, in Rassegna d'Arte, April, 1904. 8 Venturi, op. cit,, doc. 280. • • » :3 l-H ft: e •A « 'ii/e 1 70 GAROFALO 171 with so much snow that it is unendurable. I kiss your hands. From Cremona, January 29, 1499. Yours as a brother, Boccaccino. ""^ ^ It is uncertain whether this is an authentic docu- ment with an apocryphal date attached to it, or (as, on the whole, seems more probable) a sheer fabrication based upon Vasari's narrative. In any case, Boccaccino was himself at Ferrara during these years. The famous master of Cremona, whose sacra conversazione in the Accademia at Venice is one of the most fascinating pictures of the age, was the son of Antonio di Boccaccino, a Cremonese citizen, who worked for the Ferrarese court as embroiderer during the last thirty years of the fifteenth century. Boccaccino was, per- haps, born at Ferrara, but had served his art apprentice- ship at Venice under either Alvise Vivarini or Cima. In 1497, having been released from prison at Milan by the intervention of the Ferrarese ambassador, Antonio Costabili, he entered the service of Ercole I. as court painter, pictor Excellentie sue, in succession to Ercole Roberti — Costabili writing to the Duke that he was reputed " one of the first masters of his art that there are in Italy, and I hold that he is not only as good as Ercole was, but even much better.*" ^ From 1497 until 1 Baruffaldi, I. pp. 315, 316. 2 Venturi, Uarte ferrarese net periodo d' Ercole /, III. pi 382 ; La Galleria Crespi, pp. 115-120 ; ArcJi. Stor. deW Arte, VII. p. 55 ; Campori, I pittori degli Estetiti, p. 576. 172 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA the beginning of 1 5 00, he was living in a house at Ferrara rented for him by the Duke, and in 1499 he took part with Lorenzo Costa and Niccolo Pisano in the competi- tion for the decoration of the choir of the Duomo. In the latter year, he killed his wife, who had been un- faithful to him. He seems to have retired to Cremona shortly after 1500, and there, in 1506, he began the frescoes of the Duomo. His influence is very marked in the later work of Panetti and the earlier pictures of Garofalo ; indeed, whether the latter was ever actually his pupil or not, his art is largely a development of that of Boccaccino, traces of the Cremonese painter''s peculiar types and sentiment, though modified by other influences, remaining with him to the end. Garofalo may thus well have been influenced by Boccaccino in Ferrara before setting out on his travels. According to Vasari, he spent fifteen months in Rome, working under a certain Florentine, Giovanni Baldini, and then, becoming restless again, wandered about Italy, finally settling at Mantua under I^orenzo Costa. Returning to Ferrara, he worked there, partly on his own account, partly with the Dossi, until 1505, when, at the instigation of Girolamo Sagrati, one of the Ferrarese agents at the papal court, he went again to Rome. There, still according to Vasari, after seeing the works of Michelangelo and Raphael, " he cursed the manner of Lombardy, and what he had learned with so GAROFALO 173 much study and labour at Mantua," and s^t to work afresh. Vasari states that he contracted an intimate friendship with Raphael, and, after two years in Rome, returned finally to Ferrara. There is documentary evidence that " Benvegnu da Garofalo" was working for Lucrezia Borgia in the ToiTe Marchesana of the Castello, together with Panetti and Mazzolino, in 1506.^ After that, we have no record of his activity until 1512, the date inscribed on his Neptune and Minerva at Dresden. It is probable that his wanderings, recorded by Vasari, in reality fell between these two dates ; that he was with Boccaccino at Cremona, when the latter was painting in the Duomo, in 1506 and the following years; that he may possibly have worked under Costa at Mantua, and have been in Rome when Michelangelo was engaged upon the ceiling of the Sistina and Raphael upon the walls of the Stanze. There is another gap in the record of Garofalo's work, between 1514 and 1517, which may be the date of the second visit to Rome ; since it is precisely in those years that Girolamo Sagrati was there, as agent for the elder Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, and, in 1517, Garofalo executed an altarpiece at Sagrati's commission for the parish church of San Valentino in the district of Reggio.^ 1 Venturi, in Arch. Stor. ddV Arte, VII. p. 305. « See Arch. Stor. delVArte (1892), p. 363 174 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Though doubtless influenced by Raphael, Garofalo was not so overwhelmed by him as were his Romagnole contemporaries, Bartolommeo da Bagnacavallo and Innocenzo da Imola. In his earlier works, the types and composition recall Panetti and Boccaccino, and even at times Mazzolino, while, in his middle period, he was strongly influenced by his direct association with Dosso Dossi. To the last he remains an independent and unique personality in Italian art, and thoroughly Ferrarese in his types and his^colouring. His somewhat monotonous religious compositions are undeniably wearisome, in spite of their manifest sincerity and high technical qualities ; but his colouring, until his eyesight began to fail him, is always rich and splendid, full of romantic suggestion. The higher gifts of imagination and originality alone were denied him. The stiff*, rather naive, but attractive Minerva and Neptune of 1512 is Garofalo's earliest dated picture; it shows, as Morelli pointed out, the influence of Costa. Probably earlier than thi:3 are some of his Madonnas, like the one in the Villa Borghese, in the manner of Boccaccino. To 1513 belongs the first of his great altarpieces, the Madonna and Child enthroned be- tween Lazarus and Job, painted for the Madonna della Celletta at Argenta. Finer than this is the picture of 1514, once over the altar of the Immaculate Conception in Santo Spirit© at Ferrara, in which the GAROFALO 175 Ma(lonna and Child (the former curiously unlike his usual fair-haired, rather conventionally beautiful type) are surrounded by angel musicians in the clouds, while below, with a fine landscape background, stand St. Jerome and St. Francis, and two donors of the Susena family kneel in prayer. This composition, with various slight modifications, is the one to which the painter adheres throughout the long series of his large altar- pieces, whatever be the ostensible subject. Now comes the gap in the record until 1517, when he painted the San Valentino altarpiece for Girolamo Sagrati, and, for the church of San Guglielmo in Ferrara, the enthroned Madonna with St. William and the Franciscan Saints, now in the National Gallery — a serious, but rather commonplace work. To the follow- ing year belongs the much damaged altarpiece in the Accademia at Venice, painted for the parish church of Ariano. From 1517 until 1550, we find Garofalo almost continuously employed in Ferrara, hardly a year passing without some extant work to mark it ; although we naturally possess but a portion of the innumerable paintings, in fresco or on canvas, that he executed. There is hardly a church in Ferrara that did not possess one or more works from his hand. As they now hang, for the most part in galleries, the total effect is monotonous and dispiriting ; but even the copies, substituted for them in the chapels for 176 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA which they were painted, let us realise how much they lose by being thus wrenched from the altars, and shorn of the conditions of light, position, and association for wu.ch they were intended by the painter. Among the earlier and more noteworthy are the enthroned Madonna with St. Sylvester and other Saints, painted in 1524 for the church of San Silvestro, now in the Duomo ; the " Madonna del Pilastro," for the Trotti chapel in San Francesco, with a portrait of the donatrix, Lodovica Trotti ; ^ the " Madonna del Riposo,"*' painted in 1526 for the cappella del parto in the same church, in which Leonello dal Pero, the patron of the chapel, is introduced ; the Vision of St. Bruno, at Dresden, from the Certosa ; the " Mater Dolorosa," also at Dresden. The latter is a striking and deeply felt work, showing more originality of con- ception than is usual with this painter. The Blessed Virgin is praying over the sleeping Child, while a kneeling Angel presents to her the crown of thorns and the napkin of Veronica ; behind her is a ruined temple, with a bas-relief representing a pagan sacrifice. Angels gather above on the clouds, with the emblems of the Passion, while, higher still, another group of spirits I In this picture, the Divine Child holds a carnation {garofalo)^ a flower which the painter frequently introduces as a kind of signa- ture. His upual signature is Bcnvegnu de Garofalo, but he has several variants, such as Benvenut. Garofalo. No other Ferrarese («ave Panetti and Costa) so constantly signs his work. Renvenuto Garofalo "OUR LADY OF SORROW" Dresden '/)) /'tier /'",'/<' 17G GAROFALO 177 bears a tablet with the inscription : Tuaui ipsius an'nnam gladius pertranslbit. Garofalo was likewise frequently employed in decorating the palaces of the Ferrarese nobles. One of his earliest works in this kind was the painting of two ceilings in the Palazzo Trotti, now the Seniinario, in 1519. The better preserved of the two shows the influence both of Raphael and of Mantegna'*s famous ceiling in the Camera degli Sposi at Mantua. Mytho- logical and scriptural scenes are mingled with ideal portraits of philosophers and groups of naked children, all being in grisaille save the men and women, among whom are a negro and an ape, who look down from the parapet. There is an air of grave and gracious pro- fusion about the whole composition, above which the rather plebeian heads, with their note of colour, peep tlirough like a sudden intrusion of reality. '" Few buildings in Italy," wrote Morelli, " are decorated with equal taste and intelligence." ^ It is doubtful what share, if any, Garofalo had in the somewhat similar decorations of the Palazzo di Lodovico il Moro. BarufTaldi attributes all the existing frescoes to him. The two ceilings on the ground floor, with scenes from the life of Moses and the story of Joseph in grisaille, the prophets and sibyls, the frieze of Roman heroes, and the beautiful arabesques on a I Morelli, Italian Painters, I. p. llln, Cf. Grnyer, I. pp. 390-39:i. M 178 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA blue ground, are at least works of his school, and probably in part from his hand. The ceiling on the upper floor, already described in speaking of Ercole Grandi, is now more generally assigned to the latter painter, but his authorship is by no means established.^ The vast allegory of the triumph of Christianity over Judaism was painted in 1523, for the refectory of the Augustinian friars of Sant' Andrea, and is now, trans- ferred to canvas, in the pinacoteca at Ferrara ; certain details, as that of the Christian priest celebrating Mass, are admirably rendered. In the following year, Garofalo executed the fresco of the Betrayal of Christ, with a magnificent but somewhat melodramatic captain of mercenaries, in a chapel of San Francesco, with other frescoes of which only the portraits of the donor and his wife, members of the Guidotti family, now remain. The latter are powerfully rendered figures, with something of the large manner of the Florentines of the previous century. About 1531, when fifty years old, Garofalo married Caterina di Ambrogio Scoperti. In the same year, he lost the sight of one of his eyes. Believing that the sight of the other had been preserved to him by a miracle, he vowed ever after to dress in gray, and painted a votive picture in honour of St. Lucy, Dante's 1 Cf. Baruflfaldi, I. p. 322 ; and works cited in chap. VII. of present volume, p. 132. GAROFALO 179 type of illuminating grace, Lucia nimica di ciascun crudele^ in the church of the Trinita, which was stolen by a knight commander of Malta in the seventeenth century.^ We find the virgin martyr of Syracuse, the patron Saint of all who are threatened with blindness, in an interesting altarpiece painted by Garofalo in 1533, now in the Galleria Estense, in which the Madonna and Child are worshipped by the blessed Contardo d'Este in the garb of a pilgrim — one of the numerous Saints claimed by the Dukes of Ferrara among the ancestors of their house. Garofalo's later works, which are still very numerous, naturally show a considerable decline in freshness and power ; his mannerisms increase upon him ; and, in his latest pictures, even the harmony and brilliancy of his colour- ing has departed ; but Vasari can still say of the Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1537 for the Olivetani of San Giorgio, that it is "one of the best works that he ever did in all his life." His last picture appears to be the deplorable Annunciation of 1550, in the Brera, for the church of Santa Monica in Ferrara. Besides the Neptune and Minerva, Garofalo painted other mythological pictures for the Dukes of Ferrara. An excellent example, also at Dresden, is 1 Inf. II. 100. < Barullaldi, I. pp. 355, 356. i8o THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA the Wounded Venus with Mars before Troy,* in which the Venus in her flame- coloured robe has the features of the painter's golden-haired Madonnas, and the Mars is an idealised Italian soldier of the epoch ; there is a fine romantic feeling about the landscape. The Diana and Endymion, ascribed to Garofalo in the same collection, appears to be a work of some pupil of the Dossi.^ A stately, somewhat Raphaelesque, Sacrifice to Ceres, dated 1526, is in the Mond col- lection. Much later, painted in 1542 or 1543, is the large Triumph of Bacchus at Dresden, of which the composition is precisely the same as that of the little picture attributed to Dosso Dossi in the Castello at Ferrara. Vasari states that this and a " Calumny of Apelles " (which cannot now be traced) were painted by Garofalo at the age of sixty-five from drawings by Raphael, and hung over chimney-pieces in the ducal palace ; Ercole II. showed them to Pope Paul III., upon which " that pontiff was amazed that a man of those advanced years, with only one eye, should have executed such large and beautiful works."' ^ These classical themes, however, were clearly less congenial 1 Iliad, Bk. V. 2 It was, possibly, executed from a design of Garofalo by Girolamo da Carpi. 3 Vasari, VI. p. 467. A small design for the "Triumph of Bacchus in India" had been sent by Raphael to Duke Alionso in 1617. Cf. letter of Beltrando Coatabili (September 11, 1517), in Campori, Notitie inedite di JRnfaello, p. 115. » » » J J ) > o o < O o H D o 00 a. q a PS GAROFALO i8i to the painter ; Mr. Benson well notes that Garofalo was one " who, in appropriating a classic myth, failed to transmute it, and left it cold and conventional."' ^ Far more attractive are his smaller religious pictures, of which so many are scattered through the public galleries and private collections of Europe. The Vision of St. Augustine in the National Gallery, a singularly poetical conception, reminiscent alike in colouring and in types of Dosso Dossi, and the romantic Holy Family with St. Elisabeth and the little St. John, at Padua, with its Raphaelesque infant Saviour and peculiarly lovely landscape, have a freshness and a charm that we seldom find in his more ambitious works. Vasari tells us that, for twenty years, Garofalo painted on every feast-day, " for the love of God,^ in the monastery of the nuns of San Bernardino (a house destroyed in 1823), with the same care and diligence that he used in his other works. Although invariably kind and painstaking with his pupils, he received nothing save annoyance from them in return : " where- fore he was wont to say that he had never had any enemies, save his disciples and apprentices." In 1550, he became totally blind, and lived on for nine years in Christian patience and resignation. " At last, having reached the age of seventy-eight years, it seeming to him » Introduction to the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition. 1 82 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA that he had lived only too long in that darkness, and rejoicing at death with hope of enjoying the eternal light, he ended the course of his life in the year 1559, on the sixth of September ; leaving a son named Girolamo, who is a right gracious person, and a daughter (Antonia). Benvenuto was a most excellent man, full of japes, affable in conversation, and patient and quiet in all his adversities. In his youth he delighted in fencing and in playing the lute, and he was very obliging and boundlessly affectionate in friendships. He was a friend of the painter Giorgione da Castelfranco, of Titian of Cadore, and of Giulio Romano, and, in general, most amicably disposed to all men connected with the art ; and I can bear witness thereto, for twice, when I was at Ferrara in his time, I received infinite kindnesses and courtesies from him." ^ Garo- falo was buried in Santa Maria in Vado. His son, Girolamo di Benvenuto Tisi, more usually called Girolamo Garofalo, became a distinguished man of letters, and wrote the excellent life of Ariosto which was first published in 1584, prefixed to the edition of the Orlando Furioso brought out by Francesco de** Franceschi in that year at Venice. There has come down to us a group of Ferrarese pictures, belonging to the first quarter of the sixteenth century, which suggest a master proceeding directly or 1 Vasari, VI. pp. 468, 4C9. 04 QO C: y. < ORTOLANO 183 indirectly from the school of Lorenzo Costa, who was influenced slightly by Mazzolino, and who finally takes a place intermediate between Dosso and Garofalo. He recalls Dosso in the brilliant and jewel-like colouring of his best works, while at times resembling Garofalo in his types ; less imaginative and more formal than Dosso, he is more expressive and far less conventional and stereotyped than Garofalo, with whom, on the whole, he shows greater affinity. These pictures are, somewhat hypothetically, ascribed to Giovanni Battista Benvenuti, known as TOrtolano, probably because his father was a market-gardener. Baruffaldi represents Giovanni Battista Benvenuti as the nephew of the famous architect of the Estensi, Pietro di Benvenuto. He speaks of a book of sketches made by the painter from the works of Raphael and Bagnacavallo, and of a letter written by him from Bologna to his uncle, both of which are manifestly spurious. According to his story, Ortolano first worked at Bologna, where, in consequence of a quarrel with the local painters, he killed one of them in the street ; through the offices of Pietro di Benvenuto and the intercession of the Duke of Ferrara, he was released from prison, and thereafter resided at Ferrara under the protection of the House of Este.^ All this, however, is probably unhistorical ; and the alleged I Baruffaldi, T. pp. 165-171. 184 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA relationship with Pietro di Benvenuto is due, as Cittadella first showed, to a confusion between the painter and one Giovanni Battista di Benvenuto, a builder who was working on the campanile of the Duomo in Ferrara in the second half of the fifteenth century, and who appears to have been a brother of the architect.^ Laderchi first questioned the existence of any such painter as Giovanni Battista Benvenuti or Ortolano (who, for the rest, is not mentioned by Vasari), and his doubts were emphasised by Morelli, who suggested that the works attributed to him are, in reality, early and excellent paintings of Garofalo.^ There is, however, documentary evidence of a painter, *^ Magister Joannes Baptista filius quondam Francisci de Benvenuto," who was over twenty-five years of age in 1512, and who is mentioned in Ferrarese documents of 1520 and 1524. Also, among the records of expenses of the ducal household, an allusion has been found to a Madonna by " Ortolano *" in the private chapel of the Estensi, which was restored by Sebastiano Filippi in 1588.^ It does not follow that this Giovanni Battista Benvenuti and Ortolano are one and the same, nor that either was certainly the painter of the works under consideration, though the dates of the 1 Documenti ed illustrazionl, pp. 48-51. 2 La Pittura Ferrarese, pp. 94, 95 ; Italian Painters. I. pp. 212-214. a Cittadella, op. cit., p. 49. ORTOLANO 185 documents concerning; Benvenuti make it at least a plausible hypothesis ; but, in any case, we have to deal with a distinct artistic personality, the identifica- tion of whom with Garofalo, at any stage of the latter's career, is no longer accepted by any student of the Ferrarese school.^ He died after 1528. It is just possible that the rather feeble Annuncia- tion, wrongfully attributed to Dosso Dossi, in the pinacoteca at Ferrara, may be a very early Ortolano. More certainly among his earlier works are the Adora- tion of the Shepherds, formerly in the Borghese Gallery, and the Nativity, with St. Francis, St. Mary Magdalene, and the little St. John, in the Palazzo Doria. These seem to show the influence of Mazzolino ; but the peculiar landscape, with its little town, and curiously shaped hills rising up into tooth-shaped promontories, are characteristic of Ortolano himself and occur likewise in his later works. The masterpiece of this painter, and, indeed, one of the most beautiful Ferrarese pictures of the sixteenth century, is the St. Sebastian with St. Roch and St. Demetrius, painted for the parish church of Bondeno, and now in the National Gallery. Baruffaldi well calls it "la reina delle opere sue."*"'^ The noble 1 See especially Venturi, in Arch. Stor. dell'Arte, VII. (1894), pp. 9G et teq, and the introduction to the Burlington Fine Ari» Club Exhibition. 2 I. p. 179. 1 86 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA figures of St. Sebastian and St. Demetrius are creations of a high order, and it is delightful to wander with the eye through the alluring landscape, in which a party of travellers are watering their horses outside a little mountain village. Almost equally fine is the Deposition from the Cross in the Villa Borghese, with St. Christopher fording a river with the Divine Child in the background, and the donor kneeling on the right. These two pictures, which in their brilliant colouring (especially in the Borghese example) have a close affinity with Dosso, represent the painter at the height of his powers. Signor Venturi notes as characteristic of Ortolan o that his colours are usually pale in the background, but gradually revive, and acquire a jewel-like splendour in the reds and greens, and that his trees have large and sparse leaves tending to yellow. He calls attention to the way in which the houses are planted on stakes in the National Gallery picture, as also in the background of the half-length figure of St. Anthony of Padua in the Visconti-Venosta collection.^ Apparently a late work of Ortolano is the powerful and impressive Picta in San Pietro at Modena, in which the Blessed Virgin is standing alone over the body of the Saviour, appealing to all the world : " O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite et I Loc. cit. Anderson Ortolano DEPOSITIOX V\{Oy\ THE CROSS Horjfhese Gallery Tofm-c jHtyc 186 ORTOLANO 187 videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus." ^ The colouring and landscape of the predella, two scenes from the legend of St. Sebastian, again recall Dosso. A beautiful example of Ortolano's work, on a smaller scale, is the little St. Sebastian, formerly ascribed to Garofalo, at Naples. None of the pictures universally accepted as by Ortolano are signed or dated. BarufFaldi ascribes to him the picture of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph adoring the Divine Child, dated 1513, from San Francesco, in the pinacoteca of Ferrara, in which the Madonna somewhat recalls Costa. This picture is generally taken as an early Garofalo. The same historian of Ferrarese art cites as Ortolano's Lord Wimborne's great altarpiece of the Quattro Incoronati, painted in 1520, for San Niccolo at Ferrara; which, as we have seen, is tentatively assigned by Signor Venturi to Niccolo Pisano. There remains the altar- piece, dated 1523, in the Palazzo Chigi, representing St. Anthony Abbot between St. Cecilia and St. Anthony of Padua, which is traditionally attributed to Garofalo. Signor Venturi has shown a good case for regarding it as a work of Ortolano. The figure of St. Cecilia, freely adopted from Raphael's picture at Bologna, is yet another instance of a Roman motive rendered into the more richly coloured artistic language of Ferrara. ^ LaiueutatioQS, I. 12 (Vulgate). 1 88 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA The only one of Garofalo's pupils who made a name for himself was Girolamo Sellari, better known as Girolamo da Carpi. He was born at Ferrara in 1501, the son of a painter of Carpi named Tommaso, who had settled in Ferrara and was much employed in minor decorative work by the court. After studying under his father and then under Garofalo, Girolamo went to Bologna, where he acquired a reputation as a portrait painter, was inspired by the study of Raphael's St. Cecilia, and finally so impressed by the sight of a picture by Correggio that he went to Modena and thence to Parma, to copy the latter's works. " All these particulars,"" says Vasari, " I learned from Girolamo himself, who was very friendly with me in the year 1550 at Rome; and he often lamented with me that he had consumed his youth and his best years at Ferrara and Bologna, instead of Rome, or some other place, where he would doubtless have succeeded much better.'' ^ Mr. Berenson has recognised as an early work of Girolamo da Carpi the brilliantly coloured little Madonna and Child surrounded with angel musicians, now ascribed to Ortolano, as formerly to Dosso, in the gallery at Bologna. Also an early work, somewhat Raphaelesque and dated 1530, is the Adoration of the Magi in San Martino in the same city : a finely 1 VI. p 472. GIROLAMO DA CARPI 189 coloured and well composed picture, but with rather commonplace types with awkward and nerveless hands. His Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Alex- andria, damaged and darkened, but highly praised by Baruffaldi, is in San Salvatore. For a short time at Bologna, Girolamo entered, much to his disadvantage, into a partnership with Biagio Pupini, a mediocre painter who had been a pupil of Francia. According to Vasari, Girolamo was first brought to the notice of the Ferrarese court by Titian. He appears to have entered the service of the Estensi in the thirties of the century, after the accession of Ercole H. He worked with Garofalo and the two Dossi in the Duke's palaces of Copparo and Belriguardo, and in the former place painted the sixteen rulers of Ferrara, from the Marquis Azzo VI. to Duke Ercole IL, in a loggia : a work enthusiastically praised by Ariosto's disciple, the poet and novelist Giovan Battista Giraldi,^ but of which no traces now remain. He seems to have assisted in the execution of Dosso''s paintings in the Castello and elsewhere, and several of the pictures formerly attributed to Dosso at Dresden are now recognised as coming from Girolamo*'s hand. The influence of Parmigianino is noticeable in his works, and, indeed, his masterpiece, the allegory entitled 1 De Ferraria et Atestinis Principihus Commentariolum (In Graenus, T/iea. Ant. et Hist Ituliae, VII. I), coll. 39, 54. 190 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA " Opportunity and Patience," which Vasari describes as his, was at one time ascribed to the painter of Parma ; it was executed for Ercole II. in 1541. Another of his better works is the Venus drawn in a shell by swans, and attended by nymphs, at Dresden ; the North Italian landscape, bounded by low mountains, is decidedly impressive. In fresco, some indifferent figures of Saints by him are still to be seen at Ferrara in San Francesco (where remains of similar works by his father also exist), with a frieze running round the church, agreeably decorative, but hardly meriting Vasari's panegyric.^ He likewise worked with the Dossi at the villa of Monte Imperiale, where the Coronation of Charles V., and the scenes from the life of Francesco Maria della Rovere, seem in great part to be his. Girolamo constructed the stage and painted the scenery for the performances of the plays of his friend, Giovan Battista Giraldi : his tragedy, the Orbecche, which was presented in the author's house in 1541, in the presence of the Duke and a distinguished company ; and the Egle, a pastoral play similarly produced in 1645. He also won renown as an architect, in which capacity he accompanied Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, the second of that name, in 1549 to Rome; where he constructed for him a villa with gardens on Monte I VI. p. 476. GIROLAMO DA CARPI 191 Cavallo, where the palace of the Quirinal now stands. He also worked for a short time in the Vatican for Julius III. After the disastrous fire of February, 1554, he rebuilt a portion of the Castello for Duke Ercole. Among the rooms then restored or remodelled was the cabinet in which the three Bacchanals, already mentioned, are attributed to Dosso Dossi ; the one in the centre, the Vintage, is probably the work of Girolamo himself; and he was, perhaps, the author of the other two as well. In any case, as already stated, the best of the three, the Triumph of Bacchus, is hardly an original work, but simply the composition, painted on a larger scale by Garofalo, which Vasari declares to have been from a design of Raphael. Girolamo da Carpi died in 1556. With him the school of Ferrara, which had run an unbroken course from Tura and Cossa to the Dossi and Garofalo, may be said to have come to an end. CHAPTERX LATER PAINTERS OF THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA AND BOLOGNA There remain a few words to be said concerning the immediate followers of Francia at Bologna. To discriminate between the various more or less mediocre painters who carried on his traditions, and produced the countless Madonnas and Holy Families in his manner, which are scattered through Europe to-day, would be a task as thankless as difficult. Many of these works are probably due to his sons, Giacomo and Giulio Francia.^ To Giacomo Francia, who was bom in 1485, may be attributed the beautiful little Madonna and Child with the young Baptist at Dresden, and he is, most likely, also the author of the Madonna with St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua, ascribed to his father in the Accademia at Florence. Several paintings with Francesco's signature, such as Lord Northbrook's 1 A document published by Milanesi, Vasari, III. p. 558, shows that Giulio was a son of Francesco Francia, and born on August 20, 1487. 192 LATER PAINTERS 193 Holy Family, and the Madonna in the gallery at Verona, seem to have been executed bv him. His pictures lack the devotional repose of his father's workj and are heavier in colour, but the heads are frequently very beautiful — as, for instance, that of St. Martha, who, in his admirable altarpiece in the Bologna gallery, is presenting six girls to the Blessed Virgin. Later, particularly in the works executed in collaboration with Giulio Francia (which are usually signed /. /. Francia), he is strongly influenced by Dosso Dossi. On the strength of its resemblance with the warrior saints, Gervasius and Protasius, in one of his altarpieces in the Brera, Morelli tentatively attributed to Giacomo Francia the spirited and romantic portrait of a soldier, errone- ously supposed to represent Cesare Borgia, at Bergamo/ Giacomo Raibolini died in 1557. Giulio is hardly known as an independent artist ; a son of his, Giambattista Francia, also practised as a painter at Bologna. Little is known of Giovanni Maria Chiodarolo and Cesare Tamaroccio, who, between 1504 and 1506. worked under Francia and Costa in Santa Cecilia. Both were pupils and imitators of Costa rather than of his partner. Chiodarolo executed the fresco in which an Angel crowns the kneeling Cecilia and Valerian with garlands, a poetically conceived work which was 1 Italian Painters^ i. p. 134, 194 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA afterwards imitated by Domenichino, and the Trial of St. Cecilia before the Roman Prefect, for which a design by him is in the Uffizi. He is named by Leandro Alberti as one of the most worthy represen- tatives of the Bolognese school ; ^ but very few paintings can be identified as from his hand. Several pictures ascribed to Costa are attributed to him, such as the Assumption (once called Perugino's) in San Martino at Bologna, and the Baptism of Christ in the collection of Mr. Benson ; but there is documentary evidence that payment for the former was made to Costa in 1506.^ By Tamaroccio, who appears as a weaker painter than Chiodarolo, there is a signed picture in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum ; the usual com- position of the Madonna with the Child Saviour and the little St. John. His frescoes in Santa Cecilia — the Baptism of St. Valerian and the Martyrdom of St. Cecilia — are suggestive of Costa in types and manner. Morelli first attributed to Tamaroccio the fresco of St. Augustine with four friars in the church of the Misericordia at Bologna, and the half-length figure of a female Saint bearing a cross, even more closely resembling Costa, at Hampton Court, may provisionally be accepted as his. 1 " Fu anche degno pittore Giovan Maria Chiodarolo " (^Desoritttonc di tutta Italia^ f. 300). 2 F. Malaguzzi-Valeri, in Emj^orium, XIT. p. 267. LATER PAINTERS 195 On the other hand, such painters as Giacomo Boateri, by whom is a signed Madonna in the Pitti, show themselves mere feeble imitators of Francia. To Francia's school belong the two painters of Carpi, Marco Meloni and Bernardino Loschi. By the former is an altarpiece of 1504 in the Galleria Estense, and a noteworthy St. Anthony of Padua in the Villa Borghese, only distinguishable from a work of Francia by its more opaque colouring and its red- dish flesh tints. 1 Bernardino Loschi was the favourite painter of Alberto Pio, the stormy petrel of sixteenth- century politics. An ornate but uninteresting altar- piece, which he executed for that prince in 1515, is in the Galleria Estense, and there are remains of his frescoes, including a representation of Alberto himself surrounded by his court in the brief heyday of his glory, in the palace at Carpi. Another pupil of Francia's was Biagio Pupini, known as Biagio dalle Lame, whom Vasari describes as " persona molto piu pratica nelP arte che eccellente."*' There are several uninteresting pictures by him at Bologna (the best being the St. Ursula in San Giacomo Maggiore), and some drawings in the Uffizi. He was closely associated with the group of painters, Amico Aspertini, Bartolommeo da Bagnacavallo, Giro- lamo da Cotignola, and Innocenzo da Imola, who 1 Of. Venturi, 11 3fuseo e la GalUria Borghese (Rome, 1893), p. 63 196 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA filled the gap in Bolognese art during the twenties and thirties of the sixteenth century, and, according to Vasari, were all eaten up by vanity and madly envious of each other : types, according to him, " di coloro che hanno il capo pieno di superbia e di fumo." Amico di Giovanantonio Aspertini was an older man than the others, having been born about 1475. He probably entered the school of Francia and Costa when very young. His earliest work, the Divine Child adored by the Blessed Virgin and a number of Saints, a crowded and unattractive picture in the Bologna gallery, is signed : Amici Pictori Bonon, Tirocinium. In his two frescoes in Santa Cecilia, the Martyrdom of St. Valerian and St. Tiburtius, and their Entombment, we already find his characteristic abuse of classical details and introduction of in- congruous accessories for supposed decorative effect. Aspertini wandered all over Italy, drawing indis- criminately the things that took his fancy ; these he introduced, without rhyme or reason, into his paint- ings, thereby acquiring " quella maniera cosi pazza e strana'"" of which Vasari speaks. Here and there, in his works, we encounter attractive passages and even finely rendered figures ; but, in the main, they strike us as an eccentric conglomeration of motives and tran- scripts, with little charm and no ra'ison d'etre. His LATER PAINTERS 197 personal character niatclicd his painting, and he seems for a while to have been really insane. His wild pranks and mad ways are described at length by Vasari, who tells us that they greatly entertained Francesco Guicciardini, when that staid and serious historian was governor of Bologna from 1531 to 1534. Aspertini died in 1552 or the following year. Much of his energy was wasted on the decoration of facades and the like. " There is not a church or a street in Bologna,"" writes Vasari, " that has not some muddle {imbratto) from his hand." His best works are the frescoes in the chapel of the Holy Cross (dedicated to St. Augustine) in San Frediano at Lucca, early works executed shortly after 1506, when he was still under the influence of Francia. Mr. Berenson attributes to him the fine portrait at Canford iManor of Annibale Saracco, the major-domo of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, dated 1520, which, when in the Costabili collection, was regarded as a work of Dosso Dossi. Girolamo di Antonio Marchesi was born at Cotignola, about 1481. He was the pupil of his fellow-townsmen, Francesco and Bernardino Zaganelli, but afterwards studied under Francia at Bologna, and was later influenced by Raphael, with whom he may very possibly have worked in the Vatican. He was an eclectic, of very slight importance or significance. His 1 BurufiaJdi, I. p. 293. 198 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA pictures range in date from 1513 to 1526. One of the earliest and best is the Immaculate Conception, worshipped by the child Costanzo II Sforza, the son of Lucrezia Borgia's first husband, and his mother, Ginevra Tiepolo. This altarpiece was painted in 1513, for the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Pesaro, and, from the Ashburnham collection, has recently found its way to the Brera. At Bologna, he worked with Biagio Pupini in San Michele in Bosco. At Rome he is said to have painted the portrait of Paul III. After a residence at Naples, he died in Rome, about the middle of the century, having been the victim of a heartless practical joke on the part of his companions, who induced him to marry a woman of abandoned life.i The two remaining painters were, like Girolamo Marchesi, provincial Romagnoles who entered Francia's school, and afterwards received other artistic influences. Bartolommeo Ramenghi was, as Marchesi, a Ferrarese subject by birth, having been bom at Bagnacavallo in 1484. He is usually known as II Bagnacavallo. He worked at Rome under Raphael, and then, returning to Bologna, acquired considerable local reputation, and was regarded as the greatest master of his time. As well as by Raphael, he was largely influenced by Dosso Dossi. His best work is the altarpiece at Dresden, 1 Vasari, V. p. 181. LATER PAINTERS 199 painted for the church of the Servitcs at Bologna, in which the influence of Dosso is particularly noticeable. He died at Bologna in 1542, Innocenzo Francucci da Imola entered the school of Francia in 1508.^ He afterwards went to Florence, and worked, Vasari says for many years, with Mariotto Albertinelli. Like the other Bolognese painters of this epoch, he unsuccess- fully attempted to imitate Raphael. His works range from 1517 to 1539, and are usually horribly crude in colouring, with strident greens and reds. One of the least mipleasing is the portrait of a florid, rather coarse- looking woman, somewhat flashily dressed, in the Villa Borghese. As a man, according to Vasari, he was in all respects an estimable character. Duke Ercole II. of Ferrara died in October, 1559, a month after the death of Garofalo. The long reign of his son and successor, Alfonso II., in spite of the display and magnificence of his court, illumined by the genius of Tasso and Guarini, is a gloomy period in Ferrarese history. Three successive marriagei produced no heir, to save the duchy from its imminent absorption into the dominions of the Holy See ; and all the diplomatic ability of the Duke failed to secure him success in a single one of his undertakings, whether 1 In Francia's Bupposed diary, Malvasia read: "1608, alii 7 di maggio, preso in mia scola Noccentio Fraocuccio imolese" (i?^»wia Piit ice, p. 119). 200 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA to establish his rights of precedence over the Medicean rulers of Tuscany, the descendants of the former bankers of his house, or to obtain for himself the coveted crown of Poland/ His vast expenditure compelled him to grind down his subjects with taxation, and his whole method of government and administration gained him the hatred of high and low alike. When, on his death in 1597, the blow fell, and Pope Clement VIII. refused to recognise his chosen successor, Cesare d'Este, as Duke of Ferrara, the populace exult- antly tore down or effaced the white eagle of Este throughout the city, and acclaimed the entrance of the papal legate, Pietro Aldobrandini, as the coming of a deliverer. Carducci's famous stanzas on the ora tiefanda, when the wolf of the Vatican scents her prey from the Tiber and hunts out the Ferrarese nightingales, are a magnificent lyrical flight, but must not be read as sober history.^ Ferrarese painting was in its full decline during the closing years of the duchy. None of the immediate pupils of the Dossi, such as Gabriele Cappellini and Giuseppe Mazzuoli, called Bastaruolo, exhibit any talent. 1 Cf. especially A. Solerti, Ferrara e la Corte Estense nella seconda metd, del secolo decimosesto (Citt4 di Castello, 1900), pp. xxii-xxxiv. 2 AUa Cittd di Ferrara. It need hardly be said that the above remarks are not intended to justify either the papal conquest of Ferrara or the papal goveniinent of the city. LATER PAINTERS 201 Sebastiano Filippi, known as Bastiaiiiiio (1532—1602), the son of Dosso"'s assistant, Camillo Filippi, is a mediocre painter, without charm or distinction. A far better artist was Ippolito Scarsella (1551—1620), called Scarsellino, who studied at Venice, and imitated the Bassani and Paolo Veronese. A prolific and unequal painter, he is seen to considerable advantage in the Nativity with adoring Angels in the Galleria Estense, and in the altarpiece in the Brera, repre- senting the Madonna and Child with Angels above, while the Doctors of the Church, bishops, and con- temporary ecclesiastics gather below. There is much charm in some of his smaller works, in spite of their cold colouring, such as the Flight into Egypt and the youthful Saviour in the workshop of the Carpenter at Dresden, and, in another vein, the Bath of V^enus in the Villa Borghese. When Clement VIII. made his solemn entry into Ferrara in 1598, Scarsellino painted the scenes on the triumphal arches under which the Sovereign Pontiff passed. The appearance of San Carlo Borromeo in several of his pictures reminds us that we have left the Renaissance behind, and are in the epoch of the Catholic Reaction, of which the fall of the essentially Renaissance duchy of Ferrara was one of the outward signs in the political field. Scarselh'no^s younger 202 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA contemporary, Carlo Bononi (1569-1632), with whom the story of Ferrarese painting closes, is an imitator of the Carracci, and closely in touch with Guido Reni and Guercino. Henceforth it is no longer to Ferrara, but to Bologna, that the new generation of painters will look for light and guidance. LIST OF MORE IMPORTANT WORKS OF PAINTERS OF THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA AND BOLOGNA TOMMASO DA MODENA MoDENA Galleria Estense, 489; Small ancona in six compartments. Treviso San Niccold. Chapter-house. Frescoes : Seated figures of forty Dominicans in their cells, 1352. Church. Frescoes on the pilasters : Madonna and Child with St. Nicholas ; St. Jerome in his study; St. Romualdus; Mystical Marriage of St. Agnes ; St. Thomas Aquinas offering his work to the Divine Wisdom ; and other subjects. Museo Civico. The Legend of St. Ursula (frescoss from Santa Margherita). Karlstein (Bohemia) Schloss. Madonna and Child with lapdog, between St. Dalmatius and St. Wenceslaus. Madonna and Child. PietA. 203 204 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA BARNABA DA MODENA MODENA Galleria Estense. 486^ Polyptych : Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and Baptist ; Crucifixion and Annun- ciation. Pisa Museo Civico. Madonna lattante (from San Francesco). Madonna and Child with Angels (from San Giovanni del Fiero). Turin Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child, 1370. Berlin Gallery. 1171, Madonna and Cliild with bullfinch, 1 S69. Frankfort Staedel Gallery. Madonna and Child, 1S67. England National Gallery. 1437, Descent of the Holy Ghost. The Earl of Carlisle, Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, 1374. ANTONIO DA FERRARA Ferrara Sanf Antonio in Polesine. Fresco : Madonna and Child, 1433. LIST OF WORKS 203 Talamello Chapel near Camjwsanfo. Frescoes ; Annunciation, Visitation, Adoration of the Magi, 1437. Urbino Palazzo Ducale. 114, Altarpiece from San Bernardino, 1439. GIOVANNI DA ORIOLO England National Gallery. 770, Portrait of Leonello d'Este. BONO DA FERRARA Padua Eremilani. Fresco : St. Christopher. England National Gallerij. 771, St. Jerome. GALASSO DI MATTEO PIVA Ferrara Pinacoieca. Entombment of Christ with Franciscan Saints (?). England Mr, StogdoV) Harrow, Adoration of the Magi (?). 2o6 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA MICHELE ONGARO BuDA Pesth Museum. Ceres. BEATA CATERINA DE' VIGRI Bologna Pinacoteca. 202^ St. Ursula with her companions. 265, Christ bearing the Cross (}). Corpus Domini. Church. Madonna del Porno. Conve?it. Madonna and Child. Salvator Mundi and Annunciation (Miniature). Venice S. Giovanni in Bragora. The Virgin Martyrs. ^ Accademia. 54, St, Ursula with four Saints and kneeling Nun. COSIMO TURA Bergamo Galleria Lochis, 223, Madonna and Child; 1475. Ferrara Duotno. Choir. St. George and the Dragon ; Annuncia- tion. 1469. Pinacoteca. Two tondi : Condemnation and Martyrdom of St. Maurelius (from San Giorgio). 1 Of. Laura Tfagg, The Women Artiats of Bologna (London, 1907), chap. vlii. LIST OF WORKS 207 Florence Uffizi. 1557, Dominican Saint, 1475. Dnining. 2068 An Apostle or Evangelist. Milan Brera. 447, Christ appearing to St. Francis. Museo Poldi PezzoH. 600, A Bishop blessing. MoDENA Galleria Estense. St. Anthony of Padua; circa 1484 (from the Santini collection). Rome Palazzo Colonna. Lorenzo Roverella with St. Maurelius and St. Paul (from San Giorgio, Ferrara). Madonna and Child. Madonna of the Annunciation. Venice Accademia. 628, Madonna and sleeping Child, inscribed Sviglia el iuo Figlio dolce Madre pia. Museo Civico. 10, Deposition from the Cross. Berlin Gallery. Ill, Madonna and Child enthroned with Sts. Apollonia, Catherine, Augustine and Jerome. 1170b, 1170c, St. Sebastian and St. Christopher; 1475. Paris Loiivre. 1557, St. Anthony of Padua; 1475. 1556, Pieta (from San Giorgio, Ferrara). 2o8 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA England Natio?ial Gallery. 772, Madonna and Child with Angels (from San Giorgio, Ferrara). 773, St. Jerome (from the Certosa). 905, Madonna orante. British Museum. Drawing. Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. Dominic, St. Sebastian and St. Agatha. Mr. R. H. Benson. Tondo: Flight into Egypt (from San Giorgio, Ferrara).^ Cook Collection, Bichmond. Madonna of the Annunciation, St. Gabriel^ St. Francis, and St. Maurelius. FRANCESCO DEL COSSA Bologna San Giovanni in Monte. Two stained glass windows. Madonna del Baraccano. Fresco round the miraculous Madonna, 1472. San Petronio. St. Jerome {^). Pinacoteca. 64, Madonna and Child with St. Petronius, St. John Evangelist, and Alberto de' Catanei; 1474. Feuraua Palazzo Schifanoia. Frescoes: March and April; part of May ; and probably a small part of July. Pinacoteca. St. Jerome (\^enturi). 1 Portion of the St. Maurelius altarpiece. The remaiuiug toudi, the Circumcision and the Adoration of the Magi, are now in the possession of Mrs. J. L. Gardner, at Boston, and the Fogg Museum, Oambridge, U.S.A., respectively (Berenson, North Italian Paintera, p. 297). LIST OF WORKS 209 Milan Brcra. 449, St. John Baptist and St. Peter. Rome Gnlleria Valicana. Four miracles of St. Hyacinth (predella of National Gallery picture). Berlin Gallery. 113a, Atalanta. 115a, Autumn, Dresden Gallei-y, 43, Annunciation ; circa 1471. England National Gallery. 597, Mission of St. Hyacinth. Mr. Druiy-Lowe. Portrait of a young man. BALDASSARE D'ESTE Ferrara Count Massari. The Death of the Blessed Virgin (>) ; 1501 (.?). ERCOLE DE' ROBERTI Bergamo Galleria Morelli. 31, St. John Evangelist. Bologna Pinacoteca. St. Michael (from the Santini collection). 210 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Milan Brera. 428, Madonna and Child enthroned with Pietro degli Onesti and three other Saints ; Massacre of Innocents, Adoration of Magi, and Presentation in Temple, in pre- della; 1480 (from Santa Maria in Porto, Ravenna). MODENA GaUerla Estense. 50, Death of Lucrezia, Padua Pinacoteca, 1387, Hercules and the Argonauts (?), Florence Uffisi. Drawings. 1448, Arrest of the Saviour. 1444, Woman leading Child. Rome Count Blumenstihl. Deposition from the Cross (from San Domenico, Ferrara). Venice Museo Civico. 1 , Battle-scene in chiaroscuro Q). Berlin Gallei-y. 112a, Madonna and Child with St. Francis, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, and St. George. 112c, St. Jerome. Herr von Beckerath. Drawings. Justice of Trajan and PietA. LIST OF WORKS 211 Dresden Gallery. 45, Christ on the way to Calvary. 46, Agony in the Garden and Betrayal (Predella scenes from San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna). Paris Louvre. l677, St. Apollonia and St. Michael. England National Gallery. 1217, Israelites gathering Manna. 1411, Adoration of the Shepherds; Pieta with St. Francis and St. Jerome. 2486, Concert (Salting bequest). Mr. R. H. Benson. St. Jerome and St. Catherine, Cook Collection, Richmond. Medea and her Children (or the Wife of Hasdrubal) (?). Liverpool, Royal Institution. 28, Pieta (from San Giovanni in Monte). British Museum. Drawing. Pieta. MARCO ZOPPO Bologna Pinacoteca. IIS, St. Jerome. Collegio di Spagna, Polyp tych. Museo di Sa7i Petromo, Madonna. Florence Uffizi. Drawing. 397, Madonna adoring the Divine Child. Pesaro Ateneo. Head of St. John Baptist. PietA. 212 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Berlin Gallery. 1170, Madonna and Child with the Baptist^ St. Francis, St. Paul, and St. Onuphrius; 1471. Vienna Imperial Gallery. 598, Dead Saviour with two Angels. England National Gallery. 590, The dead Christ with the Baptist and a Hermit. British Museiim. Eight studies of Madonna and Child. Cook Collection, Richmond. Madonna and Child. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.. St. Paul. CRISTOFORO DA LENDINARA MODENA Galleria Estense. 485, Our Lady of the Rosary ; 1482. BARTOLOMMEO BONASCIA MoDENA Galleria Estense. 480, Pieta ; 1485. FRANCESCO BIANCHI FERRARI MODKNA Duomo Fir.^l chapel on right. Frescoes : Last Judgment; Madonna with San Bernardino and other LIST OF WORKS 213 Saints. Sacristy. Frescoed tondi on ceiling : Mudonnn and Cliild ; St. Geminianus ; 1507 San Pietro, Madonna and Child with St. Sebastian, St. Jerome, and three Angel musicians ; scenes from life of St. Jerome in predella; the Eternal Father in tympanum. GalUna Estense. 282, Pieta. 442, Crucifixion with St. Francis and St. Jerome. 476, Annunciation, 1506- 1510 (finished by Gian Antonio Scaccieri). Rome Galleria Corsini, 2570, Agony in the Garden. England WalUwe Collection, Hertford House. Cupid and Psyche DOMENICO PANETTI Ferrara Duomo. Saciisty. Madonna and Child enthroned with kneeling donor. Pinacoieca. Annunciation. Annunciation in two parts, with St. Andrew and St. Augustine. Visitation (from S. Maria in Vado). St. Andrew (from S. Maria in Vado). St. Stephen. St. Helen. St. Paul (Iresco). Milan Brera. 450, Visitation. MODENA Galleria Estense. Madonna and Child. 214 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA RoVIGO Palazzo Comunale. 152, Deposition from the Cross. Berlin Gallery, 113, Pieta with Saints and donor. Herr von Kaufmann. Madonna and Child enthroned with Job, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Vitalis, and St. Peter Martyr (from San Giobbe, Ferrara) ; 1 503. FRANCESCO FRANCIA Bergamo Galleria Lochis. 221, Christ bearing the Cross (almost identical with similar figure in predella of altarpiece in San Martino, Bologna). Bologna Santa Cecilia. Frescoes : Espousals of CeciUa and Valerian; Burial of St. Cecilia. 1504-1506. San Giaco?no Maggiore. Cappella Bentivoglio. Madonna and Child with four Angels, St. Petronius, St. Florian, St. Sebastian, and St. John Evangelist. 1499. San Martino Maggiore. Madonna and Child enthroned with Sts. Roch, Bernardino, Anthony Abbot, and Sebastian ; Dead Christ with two Angels above ; Christ bearing the Cross below. Shortly after 1506. SS. Viiale e Agricola. Angels and landscape round the older miraculous Madonna. Bihlioteca Comunale (Archiginnasio). Crucifixion. Palazzo Comunale^ Fresco : Madonna del Terremoto. 1505. LIST OF WORKS 215 Pinacoteca. 78, Madonna and Child with lute-playing Angel, Sts. Augustine, Monica, John Baptist, Francis, Proculus, Sebastian, and donor, Bartolommeo Felicini (from the Misericordia) ; 1494. 79, Annunciation with St. Jerome and the Baptist (from San Girolamo di Miramonte). 80, Madonna and Child with Angel bearing lily, Sts. Augustine, George, Stephen, and Baptist (the Mazzuoli altarpiece from the Misericordia). 81, Nativity with St. Augustine, St. Anthony of Padua, Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio, and Girolamo Casio (from the Misericordia) ; 1499- 82, Madonna and Child with little St. John, St. Augustine, and Christ crucified : a predella (from the Misericordia); 1499.^ 83, PietA (from the Misericordia). 371, Immaculate Conception, with St. John Evangelist, St. Francis, St. Bernardino, and St. George (from the Annunziata); 1500. 372, Madonna and Child with St. Paul, St. Francis, and little Baptist (the Scappi altarpiece from the Annunziata). 373, Crucifixion (from the Annunziata). 499, Madonna and Child with St. Francis. Brescia San Giovanni Evangelista. The Blessed Trinity. Pinacoteca, Madonna and Child with the Baptist. Cesena Pinacoteca. Presentation in the Temple, 1506. Ferrara Duomo. Our Lady Queen of all Saints. 1 Dr. Williamson'; {Francia, pp. 51-53) has shown reasons for believing that this was the predella to a votive picture in the Cappella Gozzadini, coramisaioned in 1499 in gratitude for the escape of the family from fire. 2i6 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Florence Uffizi. 1124, Portrait of Evangelista Scappi. Drawings. 578, Holy Family (?). 579, Angel of the Annunciation. 1430, cartoon for the Madonna of the rose garden (?). 1445, Alessandro Achillini (?). 1446, portrait of a man (r). 1447, Holy Family (?). FoRLi Pinacoteca. 98, Adoration of the Divine Child. Lucca San Frediano. Immaculate Conception, with David, Solomon, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and St. Anthony of Padua (or Duns Scotus) ; four Miracles of the Madonna Immaculate in predella. Milan Brera. 448, Annunciation. Museo Poldi Pessoli. 601, St. Anthony of Padua. Dr. Fiizzoni. St. Francis. Galleria Crespi. St. Barbara. Parma Pinacoteca. 123, Deposition from the Cross. ISO, Madonna and Child with Sts. Justina, Benedict, Scholastica^ Placidus, and child Baptist; 1515. 359, Madonna and Child with Baptist. Rome Filla Borghese. 6l, Madonna and Child in rose-garden (painted for Suor Dorotea Fantuzzi, a nun of the Maddalena in Bologna). 65, St. Stephen (votive picture for Vincenzo di Desiderio). Galleria Corsini. 712, St. George and the Dragon. LIST OF WORKS 217 Turin Pinacoteca. \55, Deposition from the Cross, with St. Albert the Carmelite ; 1.515. Berlin Gallery. 122, Madonna and Child in glory, St. Geminianus and five other Saints below (painted for Santa Cecilia, Modena) ; 1502. 125, Madonna and Child with St. Joseph (for Bartolommeo Bianchini). Dresden Galleiy. 48, Baptism of Christ ; 1509. 49, Adoration of the Magi. Munich Galleiy. 10S9, Madonna of the Rose Garden. 1040, Madonna and Child with two Angels. Pressburg Count Palffy. Holy Family (painted for Jacopo Gam- baro); 1495. Vienna Imperial Gallery. 213, Madonna and Child with St. Francis, St. Catherine, and little Baptist. Albertina. Drawings. Fluteplayers. Judgment of Paris. St. Petersburg Hei-mitage. 69, Madonna and Cinld with St. Lawrence, St. Jerome, and two Angels (painted for Lodovico Calcina); 1500. 2i8 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Paris Louvre. \AtS5, Nativity of Christ. 1436, Crucifixion with Job (from San Giobbe, Bologna). Chantilly Musee Conde. 17, Annunciation with St. Albert the Carmelite (probably from the Carmine, Modena). England National Gallefy. 179? Madonna and Child with St. Anne enthroned ; Sts. Sebastian, Paul, Benedict, and little Baptist (from San Frediano, Lucca); circa 1511. 1 80, Blessed Virgin and two Angels tending the body of the Saviour (lunette of the above). 638, Madonna and Child with two Saints. 2487, Portrait of Bartolommeo Bianchini (Salting bequest). 2671, Deposition from the Cross (Salting bequest). Hampton Court. 394, Baptism of Christ with Carmelites in background (probably from the Carmine, Modena). Mond Collection. Madonna and Child with two Angels. Mr, R. H. Benson. Madonna and Child with St. Francis. Mr. A. W. Leatham. Federigo Gonzaga aged ten ; 1510. Mr. Fairfax Murray. Drawings. Judith slaying Holo- fernes. Four classical figures representing a Sacrifice. Glasgow Corporation Gallerif. Adoration of the Shepherds. LIST OF WORKS 219 LORENZO COSTA Bologna Sanla Cecilia. Frescoes: Conversion of St, Valerian; St. Cecilia giving alms; 1504-1506. San Giacomo Maggiore. Cappella Bentivoglio. Madonna and Child with the Bentivoglio Family; 1488. Triumph of Fame and Triumph of Death ; 1 490. San Giovanni in Monte. Madonna and Child enthroned with four Saints; 1497. The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin; circa 1502. S. Maria della Misericordia. Risen Christ, Archangel Gabriel, and Madonna of the Annunciation ; 1 199. San Mariino Maggiore. Assumption with Resurrection above; 1506 (perhaps executed by Chiodarolo). San Petronio. Cappella Bacciocchi. Madonna and Child enthroned with four Saints, three Angels in tympanum above; 1492. Pinacoteca. 65, St. Petronius with St. Francis and St. Domenic ; 1502. 215, Madonna and Child with St. Petronius and St. Thecla; 1496. 376, Espousals of the Blessed Virgin (from the Annunziata) ; 1505. 392, Madonna and Child with St. Sebastian and St. James; 1491. Florence Pitti. 376, Portrait called Giovanni Bentivoglio. Uffizi. Drawings. 178, sketch for the Coronation in San Giovanni in Monte. 182, a Saint (.''). 2072, head of woman. 2074, head of youth. Mantua Sahf Andrea. Madonna and Child with St. Sylvester, 220 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA St. Rochj and two other Saints, taking the city under their protection; 15^5. Milan Brera, 429, Adoration of the Magi (predella from the Misericordia, Bologna) ; 1499. Venice Layard Collection. The Nativity. Berlin Gallery. 112, Presentation in the Temple, 1502. 115, Pieta, 1504. Dresden Gallery. 42A, St. Sebastian (? attributed to Tura). Paris Louvre. 1 26 1 , Triumph of Poetry, 1506. 1262, Triumph of Music (begun by Mantegna), i507. Teplitz (Bohemia) Prince Clary- Aldringen. Triumph of Federigo Gonzaga, 1522. England National Gallery, 629, Madonna and Child with two Angels, the two St. Johns, St. Peter and St. Philip (from the Oratorio delle Grazie, Faenza) ; 1505. 2088, Portrait of Battista Fiera. Hampton Court. 120, Portrait of a Lady (Isabella d'Este }). Mr. R. H. Benson. PietA. LIST OF WORKS 221 Lord Wimhome. Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels (large altarpiece from Ferrara.) Dublin National Gallery of Ireland. 526, Holy Family TIMOTEO VITI Beroamo Galleria MorelU, 30, St. Margaret, Bologna Pinacofeca. 204, St. Mary Magdalene (from the Duomo, Urbino); 1508 or 1509. Brescia Pinacoieca, Head of a young man (from the I'alazzo Tosio). Cagli Sant' Avgelo Minor e. Noli Me Tangere, with St. Michael and St. Anthony Abbot; 1518 (signed). San Domenico. Fresco : Annunciation. Florence Uffizi. Drawing. 57, half figure of girl in profile. Piili. 4.4, Portrait of a youth in red (? according to Mr. Berenson and others, an early Raphael). Palazzo Corsini. 407, a Muse ; 409, Apollo (from the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino). GUBBIO Duomo. Apotheosis of St. Mary Magdalene. 222 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Milan Brera. 507, Immaculate Conception with the Baptist and St. Sebastian (from San Bernardino, Urbino). 508, Madonna and Child with an Angel, St. Crescentius, and St. Vitalis (from the Duomo, Urbino) ; probably before ] 500. 509, Blessed Trinity, with St. Jerome, and donor (from the Trinita, Urbino), Urbino Duo7no. Sacristy. St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Martin with Gianpietro Arrivabene and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro ; 1 504. Adoration of the Divine Child with St. Nicholas and St. Lawrence (?). Palazzo Ducale. 25, St. Apollonia (from San Bernar- dino). 110, St. Sebastian. Rome Galleria Corsini. Cartoon for the Immaculate Con- ception (}), Venice Museo Civico. Seventeen majolica plates with story of Orpheus and other subjects Q), Munich Gallery. Head of St. Michael (Frizzoni). Vienna Alhertina. Drawing. Head of a woman. Paris Louvre, Drawing. St. Mary Magdalene. LIST OF WORKS 223 England Oxford. Taylor Institution. Drawing. Woman with a palm branch. British Museum. Drawings. Study of woman's head. Sketch for Urbino altarpiece of 1504 (Malcolm Coll., 1 69). Two drawings of women (Malcolm Coll., 174, 175). Portrait of bearded man in pastel (.'') ERCOLE GRANDI Bkrgamo Galleria Morelli. 58, Cain and Abel. Bologna San Giacomo Maggiore. Cappella Bentivoglio. Lunette : Apocalyptic Vision of Woman of Babylon (?). Pinacoteca. 780, Portrait of Alessandro Ferruffino (? Cf. Orlando Furioso, xxxvi. 6, 7). Ferrara Pinacoteca. Adoration of the Shepherds. Pieti (attributed by Mr. Berenson to Ortolano). St. Mary of Egypt (.'*). St. Sebastian with Job and St. Joseph, and three donors of the Mori family. Count Massari. Deposition from the Cross with St. Francis and St, Bernardino (predella to National Gallery picture). Palazzo di Lodovico il Moro. Ceiling with mythological and decorative frescoes. ROMK Catnpidoglio. I'ortrait of a young girl. 224 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Fisconti- Fenosta Collection. Four tempera scenes from Old Testament. Venice Layard Colledioji. Madonna and Child with St. Dom- enic and St. Catherine of Siena (Madonna della Scimia) (?). Triumph of Miriam. Israelites gathering Manna, England National Gallery. 1119, Madonna and Child enthroned with St. John Baptist and St. William. Cook Collection, Richmond. Annunciation. Hon. A. E. Gaihorne-Hardy. Drawing. A Sacrifice. PELLEGRINO MUNARI Ferrara Pinacoteea. Madonna and Child with St. Jerome and St. Geminianus (from Santa Maria della Neve^ Modena), 1509. MODKNA Casa Rangoni, Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St. Jerome worshipped by Niccolo Rangoni and Bianca Bentivoglio. Berlin Gallery, 1182, Madonna and Child with Sts. Francis, Ambrose, Jerome, and Baptist (Venturi). MICHELE COLTELLINI Bologna Pinacofeca. 588, Madonna and Child with St. John LIST OF WORKS 225 Evangelist. Death of the Blessed Virgin (from the Santiui collection); 1502. Ferrara Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St. Jerome ; St. Jerome ; St. Mary of Egypt ; Annun- ciation ; St. Paul and St. Anthony. Madonna and Child with little Baptist, Virgin Martyrs and other Saints, and donor and his wife (from Santa Maria in Vado) ; 1512 or 1542. Formerly in Santini Collection. Madonna and Child with Sts. Michael, Catherine, John Baptist, and Jerome ; 1 506. Berlin Gallery. 1 1 1 5a, Risen Christ with the Baptist, St Jerome, St. Stephen, and St. Domenic ; 1503. 119^ Circumcision (?) ; 151 6. STEFANO FALZAGALLONI Ferrara Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child with St. Roch and St. Anthony Abbot (from Santa Maria in Vado) ; 1530. Resurrection. Descent of Holy Ghost. Twelve Apostles. BENEDETTO CODA Ravenna San Domenico. Madonna and Child with Sts. Joseph, Jerome, Domenic, and Francis. 226 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Rimini San Francesco. Espousals of the Blessed Virgin ; 1515 Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. Domenic; 1513. FRANCESCO AND BERNARDINO ZAGANELLI i Ferrara Pinacoteca. St. Sebastian (Francesco) ; 1513. FoRLi Pinacoteca. The Immaculate Conception, with St. Bonaventura and other Saints (Francesco) ; 1513. Milan Brera. 455, Madonna and Child with St. Francis, St. Nicholas, and donor, Pietro da Marinazzo (Francesco) ; 1505. 457, Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St. Florian (from church of the Osservanti, Cotignola) ; 1499. 458, Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St. Francis (from S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna) ; 1 504. Parma Annunziata. Polyptych with portraits of Rolando and Domitilla Pallavicino (Francesco) ; 1518. Ravenna Pinacoteca. 10, Nativity (Francesco). 13, Crucifixion (Francesco). 1 See Berenson, Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, second edition pp. 264-267. LIST OF WORKS 227 Berlin Galien/. 1 164, Annunciation with St. Anthony of Padua, the Baptist, and donor ; 1509. England National Gallery. 1092, St. Sebastian (Bernardino). Dublin National Gal/en/ of Ireland. 106, Adoration of the Divine Child; 1509. NICCOLO PISANO Bologna Pinacoteca, 122, Deposition from the Cross. Ferrara Duomo. Sacristy. St. Catherine of Siena and her Clients (?). Milan Brera. 430, Madonna and Child with St. Helen and St. James (from the Oratorio della Morte, Ferrara); 1512. Rome Galleria Corstni. 644, Deposition from tlie Cross (?). England Lord Wimbome. Holy Family with the *' Quattro Incoronati" (.?) ; 1520.1 1 Cf, pp. 138, 139. 228 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA LODOVICO MAZZOLINO Bergamo GaUeria Morelli. \, Adoration of the Shepherds (repainted). Bologna Pinacoteca. 117, Adoration of the Shepherds ; 118, the Eternal Father (predella and typanum of picture painted for San Francesco in 1 524). Ferrara Pinacoteca. Nativity of Christ with St. Benedict and St. Romualdus (or St. Alberic). (From San Bartolo). Florence Pitti. 1 29, Christ and the woman taken in adultery. Uffizi. 995, Massacre of the Innocents. 1030, Nativity. 1032, Madonna and Child with Sts. Anne, Joachim, and John Evangelist. 1034, Circumcision. Milan GaUeria Crespi. Raising of Lazarus. Sig7ior G. Frizzoni. Madonna and Child with St. Sebastian, St. Francis, St. Anthony, and a pilgrim. Rome Campidoglio. Christ among the Doctors. Nativity. Villa Borgkese. 218, Adoration of the Magi. 223, Christ and St. Thomas. 247, Nativity with adoring Shepherd. 451, Christ and the woman taken in adultery LIST OF WORKS 229 Palazzo Chigi. Adoration of the Magi ; 1512. Palazzo Doria. 120, Massacre of the Innocents. Turin Pinacoteca. 154, Madonna and Saints. Venice Layard Collection. Adoration of the Shepherds. Berlin Gallery. 266, Christ among the Doctors (from San Francesco, Bologna); 1524. 270, Holy Family with St. Anne, St. Elisabeth, and the child Baptist. 273, Christ among the Doctors. 275, Madonna and Child with gold- finch, St. Anthony Abbot and the Magdalene; 1509. Dresden Gallery. 123, Ecce Homo. Munich Gallery. 1024, Holy Family; 1516. 1025, Madonna and Child with Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Elisabeth, St. Zacharias, and donors. PosEN Prifice Racsynski. The Tribute Money (painted for Girolamo Casio) ; 1524. Vienna Imperial Gallery. 302, Circumcision ; 1526. The Hague Museum. Slaughter of the Innocents (1528 .'*). 230 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Paris Louvre. 1387, Holy Family. 1388, Christ preaching to the Multitude. Chantilly Musee Conde. SQ, Ecce Homo. 37, Madonna and Child with St Anthony; 1525. England National Gallery. 82, Holy Family with St. Elisabeth, the child Baptist, and St. Francis of Assisi. l69. Holy Family with St. Nicholas of Tolentino; the Eternal Father and the Angels above. 641, Christ and the woman taken in adultery. 1495, Christ among the Doctors (?). Bridgewater Hotise. Circumcision. Lord Wivihome. Holy Family with St. Roch and St. Sebastian. DOSSO DOSSI CODIGORO Duonio. Madonna and Child with the two St. Johns (Berenson). Ferrara Castello. Sala di Napoli. Ceiling : Dance of the Hours. Sala dell' Aurora. Ceiling : Allegory of Time, Apollo and Aurora, Noon, Evening, Night (prebably all designed by Dosso and executed mainly by his pupils). Cabinet : Marriage of Ariadne and Triumph of Bacchus (? cf. pp. 162, 163, 191). Corte Vecchia. Sala Dorata. Apollo, and perhaps Ceres and other figures. LIST OF WORKS 231 Pinacoteca. Large altarpiece from Saiit' Andrea : Ma- donna and Child with two St. Johns, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and others, and a glory of Angels ; Resurrection, St. Ambrose, and St, Augustine, above ; St. Sebastian and St. George in the wings. Florence Pitti. 147, Nymph and Satyr. 148, Bambocciata (?). 311, Portrait of Alfonso I. Q). 380, St. John Baptist. 487, Repose on Flight into Egypt. Uffizi. 6*27, Portrait of a warrior. Drawings. 2076, head of a young woman (.''); 2080, 2081, portraits ot woman and man, the latter dated 1512. Milan Brera. 431, Don Francesco d'Este as St. George; 432, St. John Baptist (wings of altarpiece from a church in Massa Lombarda). 433, Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (from the Annunziata, Cremona). MODENA Galleria Eslense. 189, 190, 197, 198, 367, 368, panels with half figures of men and women (mainly by pupils). 457, Madonna and Child with St. George and St. Michael (from San Guglielmo, Modena). 471, Duke Ercole l ; 1524. 473, Portrait of a man. 474, the Jester of Ferrara. Carmine (San Biagio). St. Albert the Carmelite over coming the Tempter; 1530. Duomo. Madonna and Child with St. Lawrence and St. James above, St. Sebastian between the Baptist and St. Jerome below ; 1522. 232 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Naples Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child with St. Jerome. Parma Pinacoteca. 39 1^ Adoration of the Magi. 398, Holy Family. Pesaro P^illa Monte hiiperiale. Sala delle Cariatidi. Frescoes : Nymphs and landscape panorama (partly by Battista). PoRTOMAGGIORE Palazzo Comunale. Madonna and Child with the Baptist and another Saint. ^ Rome Villa Borghese, \, Apollo and Daphne. 23, Sts. Cosmas and Damian (from Santa Anna, Ferrara) (?). 181, Knight and Squire with head of Giant.^ 211, Madonna and Child. 217, Circe. 220, Nativity. 311, The Woman taken in Adultery (.''), Campidoglio. Holy Family. Palazzo Chigi. St. John Evangelist, with St. Bartholo- mew, Pontichino della Sala and another donor (from the Duomo, Ferrara); 1527. Palazzo Doria. 170, Portrait of a man. 41 1, Red-robed heroine with helmet (Dido or Bradamante). 1 Cf. A. Beltramelli, Da Comacchio ad Argenta (Bergamo, 1905), pp. 57, 61. 2 According to Venturi, La OaUeria Crespi, p. 42, this is a copy of the original at Stuttgart. LIST OF WORKS 233 Trent Castello del Buon Consiglio. Decorative frescoes ; 1532- 1534. Berlin Gallery. l6l, Portrait of Giovanni Moro. Dresden Gallerif. 124, St. George (?), 1539-1540. 125, St. Michael, 1539-1540. 126, Justice. 128, Immaculate Conception contemplated by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and St. Bernardino of Siena (from the Duomo, Modena); 1532. 129, Immaculate Conception contemplated by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Anselm. 130, an Hour with the horses of Apollo (.^). 155, Portrait of a Scholar (Morelli and Berenson). Vienna Imperial Gallery. 68, St. Jerome. Academy. Hercules and the Pigmies (Berenson). England National Galleiy. 1234, "A Muse instructing a Court Poet." Hampton Court. 60, Portrait of a young man. 192, Renunciation of St. William. 420, Holy Family with the Cock. Mr. R. H. Benson. Circe. Lord Northampton. " Vertumnus and Pomona," or Jupiter and Antiope (background by Battista). Alnnick Castle. " Pianto, Riso, Ira." Lord Wimhorne. St. John the Baptist. Mond Collection. Adoration of the Magi. 234 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA BATTISTA DOSSI Bergamo Galleria Lochis. 218^ Madonna and Child with St. George and St. Geminianus (Venturi). Ferrara Pinacoteca. Vision of St. John Evangelist (from Santa Maria in Vado). Mod EN A Galleria Estense. 440, Nativity with supposed portraits of Alfonso I. and Ercole II., 1536. 446, Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. Anthony, the confraternity of S. Maria della Neve below. 450, Portrait of Alfonso I, 1534. Rome Villa Borghese. 6, Knights and ladies in a landscape. 8, Fantastic monsters (The Realm of Alcina?). 184, Psyche. 215, Nativity. 245, Holy Family with little Baptist and Angel. 304, Diana and Calisto. ROVIGO Pinacoteca. 135, Madonna and Child with Saints. Dresden Gallery. 127, Peace. 131, The Dream. Oldenburg Grafidiical Gallery. Holy Family with little Baptist (Venturi). LIST OF WORKS 235 England Naiiotiat Gallery. 640, Adoration of the Magi. Hampton Court. 80, Portrait of a man (Venturi). Lord Brownlon\ Orlando and Rodomonte. Lord Wimhorne. Holy Family. Alfonso II. as a boy, 1541. BENVENUTO DA GAROFALO Argenta Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child with Lazarus and Job (from the Madonna della Celletta) ; 1513. Bergamo Galleria Lochis. 228, Madonna and Child with St. Roch and St. Sebastian. Galleria Morelli. 8, Madonna and Child. 39, Portrait of a man. Bologna San Salvatore. Baptist taking leave of his parents, with portrait of donor ; 1 542. Pinacoteca, 563, Holy Family with St. Elisabeth and the Baptist. Ferrara Duomo. Madonna and Child with St. Sylvester and five other Saints (from San Silvestro) ; 1524. La Madonna Liberatrice; 1532. St. Peter and St. Paul (frescoes on either side of western entrance). Sacristy. Annunziata and St. Gabriel, St. Peter and St. Paul (from San Silvestro). San Fraficesco. Frescoes: Betrayal of Christ; two 236 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA donors of the Guidotti family; 1522-1524. Frescoes: Adoration of the Shepherds and Flight into Egypt (repainted). Santa Monica. Lunette over door : Madonna and Child. Seminario {Palazzo Trotti). Frescoed ceiling ; 1519. Palazzo di Lodovico il Moro, Two frescoed ceilings on ground floor (probably executed with pupils). Pinacoteca. Madonna and Child with St. -Jerome, St. Francis, and two donors of the Sussena family (from Santo Spirito), 1514. Massacre of the Innocents (from San Francesco), 1519. Triumph of Christianity over Judaism (fresco transferred to canvas, from Sant' Andrea), 152S. Madonna del Riposo (or. Madonna del Parto), with portrait of Leonello dal Pero (from San Francesco), 1526. Madonna and Child with St. Jerome, the Baptist, St. Anthony of Padua, another Saint, and Lodovica Trotti (Madonna del Pilastro, from San Francesco). Resurrection of Lazarus (from San Francesco), 1532. Finding of the True Cross (from San Domenico), 1536. Death of St. Peter Martyr (from San Domenico). Adoration of the Magi (from San Giorgio), 1537. Flight into Egypt (lunette). Return from Egypt (tondo). St. Nicholas ot Tolentino celebrating Mass (from Sant' Andrea). Prayer in the Garden (from San Silvestro, repainted). Four scenes in grisaille from the legend of Constantine and St. Sylvester (from San Silvestro). Adoration of the Magi with St. Bartholomew (from San Bartolo), 1 549. Florence Pitti, 195, Augustus and the Sibyl. Uffizi. 1038, Annunciation. Drawings. 2082, Holy Family (?). 2083, figure of woman. 388, head of man. LIST OF WORKS 237 Milan Brera. 438, Deposition from the Cross (from Sant' Antonio, Ferrara), 1527. 439^ Crucifixion with little St. Vito adoring (from San Vito, Ferrara). 440, Annuncia- tion (from Santa Monica, Ferrara), 1550. MODENA Galleria Estense. 185, Deposition from the Cross, 1527. 454, Madonna and Child enthroned with Angels, the Baptist, St. Lucy, and beato Contardo d'Este, 1533. Padua Museo Civico. Holy Family with St. Elisa])eth and little Baptist. Parma Pinacoteca. 369^ Madonna in glory. Reggio San Valenlino. Parish church. Madonna and Child with St. Stephen and St. Eleucadius, 1517. Rome Galleria Vaticana. Holy Family with St. Catherine. Villa Borgkese. 204, Marriage at Cana. 205, Deposition from the Cross. 210, Madonna and Child; early. 213, Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Paul. 224, Adoration of the Shepherds. 236, St. Peter walking on the Sea. 237, Scourging of Christ. 240, Madonna and Child with St. Michael, St. Joseph, and two other Saints. 347, Conversion of St. Paul, 1545. Carnpidoglio. Annunciation, 1528. Madonna and Child 238 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA on stone parapet. Madonna and Child with Angels above, St. Francis and St. Anthony in landscape below. Madonna lattantewith St. Jerome. Holy Family with the little Baptist^ St. Zacharias, and St. Elisabeth. Palazzo Corsini. 627, Christ bearing the Cross. Palazzo Doria. 144, Holy Family with little Baptist, St. Elisabeth, St. Zacharias, and choir of Angels above ; St. Francis and St. Bernardino worshiping in landscape below. Turin Pinacoteca. 153, Christ among the Doctors. Venice Accademia, 56, Madonna and Child with the Baptist, St. Augustine, St Peter, and St. Paul (from parish-church of Ariano), 1518. Layard Collection. A Virgin Martyr. Berlin Gallery. 24.S, St, Jerome. 26 1, Adoration of the Magi. Dresden Gallery. 132, Minerva and Neptune, 1512. 133, Our Lady of Sorrow (or, the Nativity, from San Girolamo, Ferrara). 134, Vision of St. Bruno, with St. Peter and St. George (from the Certosa, Ferrara), 1530. 135, Mars and Venus before Troy. 136, Holy Family with Sts. Joachim, Anne, Elisabeth, and child Baptist. 137, Ma- donna and Child with St. Cecilia, Sts. Anthony, Bernardino, LIST OF WORKS 239 and Geminianus. 138, Triumph of Bacchus (c/. p. 180). 139, Diana and Endymion (? perhaps designed by Garofalo and executed by pupil). Munich Gallery. 1080^ Pieta with Sts. Jerome, Francis, Augus- tine, and Monica, 1530. 1081, Madonna and Child with St. Michael and Baptist. St. Petersburg Hermitage. Marriage at Cana, 1531. Paris Louvre. 1550, Circumcision. 1553, Our Lady drawing veil from sleeping Child. 1554, Madonna and Child. England National Gallerij. 81, Vision of St. Augustine, with St. Catherine of Alexandria. 170, Holy Family with the little Baptist, St. Elisabeth, and two other Saints. 642, Agony in the Garden. 671, Madonna and Child with St. William, St. Francis, St. Anthony of Padua, and St. Clare (from San Guglielmo, Ferrara), 1517. Mond Collection. Sacrifice to Ceres, 1526. J.ord Wimborne. Annunciation. Lord Northhrook. Holy Family with St. Anne. St. James with donatrix. Captain Holford. Madonna and Child with Angels. Duke of Bucdeuch. Holy Family with St. Catherine of Alexandria. Mr. G. T. CloHg/t. Drawing for altarpiece. 240 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA ORTOLANO Ferrara Pmacoteca. Annunciation (? early). Adoration of the Divine Child ; 1513 (from San Francesco, now usually held to be an early Garofalo). Agony in the Garden. Milan Brera. 735, Crucifixion (from the Santini collection). MoDENA Sa?i Pietro. Piet^; two scenes from legend of St. Sebastian in the predella. Naples Pi?tacoteca. St. Sebastian. Rome Villa Borghese. 390, Deposition from the Cross. ^ Campidoglio. St. Sebastian. St. Nicholas of Bari. Palazzo Chigi. St. Anthony Abbot with St. Cecilia and St. Anthony of Padua (attributed by Mr. Berenson to Garofalo); 1523. Palazzo Doria. 1 65, Nativity of Christ with little Baptist, St. Francis, and St. Mary Magdalene. Prince Pallavicini. Holy Family. Fisconti' Venosta Collection. St. Anthony of Padua. 1 I take it that the Adoration of the Shepherds, an earl)' Ortolano, once in the Borghese Gallery and afterwards in a private collection at Florence, is the picture mentioned by Mr. Berenson as in the possession of Mr. Theodore M. Davis at Newport, U.S.A. LIST OF WORKS 241 London National Gallery. 669, St. Sel)astian with St, Roch and St. Demetrius (from parish-church of Bondeno). GIROLAMO DA CARPI Bologna San Martino Maggiore. Adoration of the Magi, 1530. San Salvatore. Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Pinacoteca. 564, Madonna and Child with Angel Musicians (Berenson). Ferrara Duomo. Sacristy, Imaginary portrait of Guglielmo Adelardi (d. 1146), the founder. San Francesco. Frescoes : half figures of Saints in the nave and decorative frieze in grisaille. San Paolo. St. Jerome. Castello. Cabinet. Marriage of Ariadne (i*) ; Vintage : Triumph of Bacchus Q)* Pifiacoteca. St. Catherine of Alexandria (fresco), 1549. St. Anthony of Padua giving speech to an infant to defend the honour of its mother (from San Francesco: "The miracle of Casa Obizzi"). Florence Pilti. 36, Portrait of Onofrio Bartolini Salimbeni, Archbishop of Pisa. MODENA Galleria Esteme. 195, Portrait of Ercole II. Q 242 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Rome Campidoglio. Holy Family. Dresden. Gallery. 14^, Opportunity and Patience, 1541. 143 Venus in a shell drawn by swans. 144, Judith. 145^ Rape of Ganymede. 299, St. Margaret (doubtfully ascribed to him by Mr. Berenson). The execution of ISO, an Hour with the horses of the Sun, and 139, Diana and Endymion, probably designed by Dosso and Garofalo respectively^ may be his. GIACOMO FRANCIA Bergamo Galleria Lochis, 157, Portrait of a soldier (Morelli). Bologna San Domenico. Christ with St. Michael, St. Francis, and St. Dominic. San Salvatore. Crucifixion. SS. Vitale e Agricola. Fresco : Adoration of the Shepherds. Pinacoteca. 84, Madonna and Child with little Baptist, St. Sebastian, St. George, St. Franis, St. Bernardino, and Angels (from San Francesco), 1526. 85, Madonna and Child with little Baptist, St. Paul and the Magdalene. 86 (with Cjiulio Francia), St. Fredianus with St. James, St. Lucy, St. Ursula, and donor (from Santa Maria delle Grazie). 87, Madonna and Child above, St. Peter, St. Francis, the Magdalene, St. Martha and six maidens below. LIST OF WORKS 243 Florence Accndemia. 6'4, Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua. Milan Brera. 436, Madonna and Child with Baptist and four other Saints (from San Barbaziano, Bologna). 437, Madonna and Child with St. Gervasius and St. Protasius, St. Catherine and St. Justina, and four nuns (from SS Gervasio e Protasio, Bologna) ; 1544. MODENA Galleria Estense. 447 (with Giulio Francia), Assumption. Parma San Giovanni Evangelis/a. Adoration of the Shepherds, 1519. Verona Pinacoteca. 155, Madonna and Child with two Saints and an Angel (early work with Francesco Francia's signature). • Berlin Gallery. 271, Allegory of Chastity. 281, Madonna and Child with the little Baptist and four other Saints. 293, Madonna and Child with St. Francis. 187 (with Giulio Francia), Madonna in glory with Saints below (from the Osservanza, Bologna), 1525. Dresden Gallery. 50, Madonna and Child with little Ba})tist. 2H THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Paris Louvre. 14S6a, Madonna and Child with four Saints and lute-playing Angel (?). England Lord Northbrook. Holy Family with St. Anthony of Padua (signed F. Francia), 1512. Mr. Charles Butler. Madonna and Child with the Baptist. GIOVANNI MARIA CHIODAROLO Bologna Santa Cecilia. Frescoes : Angel crowning St. Cecilia and St. Valerian; St. Cecilia before the Prefect; 1504-1506. SS. Vitale e Agricola. Nativity, with St. Roch and St. Sebastian. Pinacoteca. 60, Nativity (from SS. Gervasio e Protasio). 171, Pieta (from the Annunziata) (.''). Florence Uffisi. Drawings. l66, St. Cecilia before the Prefect (sketch for the Bologna fresco). 1440, St. Martin {?). London Mr. R. H, Benson. Baptism of Christ (Venturi). CESARE TAMAROCCIO Bologna Santa Cecilia. Frescoes : Baptism of St. Valerian ; Martyrdom of St. Cecilia; 1504-1506. LIST OF WORKS 245 Santa Maria della Miseiicordia. Fresco ; St. Augustine and four Friars. Florence Uffisi. 1559, St. Sebastian (? or, perhaps, by Chiodarolo. Ascribed to Costa). Rome Villa Borghese. 34, Madonna and Child (?). England Hampton Court. 422, Woman Saint bearing Cross attributed to Costa by Mr. Berenson). GIACOMO DE' BOATERI Florence Piiti. 362, Holy Family (signed). MODENA Galleria Estense. 56, Madonna and Child with St. John Evangelist (?) MARCO MELONI Bologna Galleria delP Opera Pia. St. Sebastian, 1500. MoDENA Galleria Estense. 483, Madonna and Child with St. Bernardino, St. Francis, the Baptist, and another Saint ; Angels and Sphinxes ; 1504. 246 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Rome J^illa Borghese. 51, St. Anthony of Padua. BERNARDINO LOSCHI Carpi Castello Pia. Fresco : Alberto Pio and his Court. MODENA Gallena Estense. 477, Madonna and Child enthroned with two Saints and two Angels : 1515. AMICO ASPERTINI Bergamo Gallena Lochis. ^01, Battle Scene (Berenson. Attri- buted to Perugino). Bologna Sajita Cecilia. Frescoes : Martyrdom of Valerian and Tiburtius; their Entombment ; 1506. San Giacomo Maggiore. Cappella Bentivoglio. Fresco over Costa's Madonna : Madonna and Child with Angels and six Apostles (Berenson). San Martino Maggiore. Madonna and Child with St. Martin, St. Lucy, and St. Nicholas. San Petronio. Piet^, 1519. Pinacoteca. 9, Adoration of the Magi (perhaps by his brother, Guido Aspertini). 297, Adoration of the Divine Child. LIST OF WORKS 247 Florence Uffizi. Drawings. 1383, Centaurs. 1384, sketch for a martyrdom. l641, monsters. Lucca San Frediano. Fresco : Madonna and Child with Saints. Cappello di Sanf Agostino. Frescoes : Finding of the Santo Volto, Baptism of St. Augustine, Nativity, St. Augustine giving his rule, St. Fredianus turning the course of the Serchio, &c. Pinacoteca. 37, Madonna and Child with Saints. Rome Pahizxo Corsini. 648, figure of a Saint. Hanover Kestner Museum. Disputation of St. Augustine, 1523 (Berenson). England * Lord Wimborne. Portrait of Annibale Saracco, 1520 Berenson). BIAGIO PUPINI Bologna San Giacomo Maggiore. Madonna and Child with St. Ursula and her Companions. San Michele in Bosco. Sacristy. Remains of frescoes (with Bagnacvallo). Pinacoteca. 333, Nativity of Christ. 581, Madomiaand Child. 248 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Florence Ujffixi. Drawings. 1389, Presentation in the Templ«. 147S, Mystical MaiTlage of St. Catherine (Signed} BARTOLOMMEO RAMENGHI DA BAGNACAVALLO Bagnacavallo San Francesco. Madonna and Child with St. Roch and St. Sebastian. San Michele. St. Michael and other Saints. Pieve, Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Paul^ 1540. Bologna Duomo. Crucifixion, 1522. San Michele in Bosco. Sacristy. Remains of freicoes (with Biagio Pupini). SS. Vitale e Agricola. Fresco : Visitation. Finacoteca. 133, Holy Family with the Magdalene and other Saints. 609, Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine. Milan Brera. 462, Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Siena. Rome Galleria Corsini. 589, Holy Family, Berlin Gallery. 253, Madonna and Child with Saints. LIST OF WORKS 249 Dresden Gallery. US, Madonna and Child with Cherubs; Stg. Petronius, Peter, Paul, and Filippo Benizzi below. Paris Louvre. 1438, Circumcision. GIROLAMO MARCHESI DA COTIGNOLA. Bologna Pinacoteca. 108, Espousals of the Blessed Virgin (with predella, 288). 278, Madonna and Child with little Bap- tist, St. Francis, and St. Bernardino. Ferrara Santa Maria in Vado. Justice and Fortitude. MODENA Galleria Estense. 482, Nativity (? School of Dosso) Milan Brera. Immaculate Conception with Costanzo Sforza and Ginevra Tiepolo, 1513. Parma Annunsiata. Madonna and Child enthroned, 1518. San Marino San Francesco. Immaculate Conception. Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels. 250 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Berlin Gallery. 268, St. Bernard giving his Rule. Paris Louvre. 1381, Christ bearing the Cross. INNOCENZO FRANCUCCI DA IMOLA Bologna San Giacomo Maggiore. Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandra, 1536. S. Maiia cle Servi. Annunciation and predella. S. Michele in Bosco. Frescoes : Annunciation, Deatli and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, Resurrection, St. Michael; 1517. San Salvatore. Crucifixion, 1 539. Pinacoteca. S^, Madonna and Child with St. Michael, St. Peter, and St. Benedict (from San Michele in Bosco), 1517. 90, Madonna and Child with little Baptist and St. Elisabeth, and two donors of the Felicini family. 21 6, Our Lady of Mercy. 292, Madonna and Child with little St. John, St. Francis, and St. Clare. Faenza Duomo. Holy Family, 1526. Modkna. GaUerla Estense. 20, Holy Family. 29, St. Mary Magdalene. LIST OF WORKS 251 Rome Villa Borghese. 416, Portrait ot a woman. 438, Madonna and Child with St. Anthony and St. Jerome. 466, Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Galleria Corsini. 640, Holy Family. Munich Gallery. 1060, Madonna and Child with St. Petroniiis and other Saints (from the Corpus Domini, Bologna). SEBASTIANO FILIPPI Ferrara Duomo. Fresco : Last Judgment. San Paolo, Annunciation. Pinacoleca. Portrait of Alfonso II. MODENA Galleria Estense. 81, Portrait of a woman. 210 Allegory of Endurance. IPPOLITO SCARSELLA Ferrara San Benedetto. Assumption. St. Carlo Borommeo. Many other pictures in the churches and pinacoteca. MoDENA Galleria Estense. 350, Nativity with adoring Angels. 252 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Milan Brer a, 435, Madonna and Child with Angels above ; Doctors of the Churchy Bishops,, and contemporary ecclesi- astics below (from San Bernardino, Ferrara). Rome Villa Borghese. 219, Bath of Venus. 214, Diana and Endymion. 222, Holy Family. Dresden Gallery, 146, Flight into Egypt. 147, Holy Family in the carpenter's workshop. 148, Holy Family with St. Barbara and St. Carlo Borommeo. 149, Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. Clare, St. Domenic and St. Catherine of Siena. BIBLIOGRAPHY Agnelli, G. Ferrara e Pomposa. Bergamo^ 1902. D'Arco, C. Delle Arti e degli Aiiefici di Mantova. 2 vols., Mantua, 1857-59. Argnani, F. Sul pittore Giovanni da Oriolo. Faenza, 1899. Argnani, F. // Rinascimejito delle Ceramiche Maiolicate in Faenza. Faenza, 1898. Baruffaldi, Girolamo. Vite de'Pittori e Scultori Ferraresi. 2 vols. Ferrara, 1844, 1846. Berenson, B. The Study and Criticism of Italian Art. I. London, 1901. Berenson, B. The North Italian Painters of the Re- naissance. London and New York, 1907. Bertoni, G. La Biblioteca Estense e la coltura ferrarese ai tempi del duca Ercole I. Turin, 1903. Bertoni, G., and Vicini, E. P. Tommaso da Modena pittore modenese del secolo XIV. (Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie Modenesi. Series V, vol. iii.) Modena, 1904. Cronaca Modenese di Jacopino de' Bianchi detto de Lancellotti. Ed. C. Borghi. Parma, 186l. Cronaca Mode?iese di Tommasino de' Bianchi detto de' Lancellotti. Vols. I. to V. Ed. C. Borghi. Parma, 1862-1867. 258 254 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Bode, W. La Renaissance au Musee de Berlin. (Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Third period. Vol. I.) Paris, 1889. Braghirolli, W. Notizie e documenti intorno a Pietro Vannucci detto II Perugino. (Giornale di Erudizione Artistica, II.) Perugia, 1873. Burlington Fine Arts Club. Exhibition of Works of the School of Ferrara-Bolog7ia. London, 1 894?. Calvi, J. A. Memorie della vita e delle opere di Francesco Raibolini delto il Francia. Bologna, 1812. Campori, G. Notizie inedite di Raffxtello da Urhino. (Atti e memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di Storia Patria per le Provincie Modenesi e Parmensi. Series I, vol. i.). Modena, 1863. Campori, G. La Cappella Esiense nel Duomo di Modena. (Ibid., New Series, vol. v. part 1.) Modena, 1880. Camport, G. I pittori degli Estensi nel secolo XV. (Ibid., Series III, vol. iii.) Modena, 1885. Carmichael, Montgomery. Francia s Master'jnece. Lon- don, 1909. Cartwright, Julia (Mrs. Henry Ady). Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua. 2 vols. London, 1903. Cittadella, L. N. Notizie relative a Ferrara. Ferrara, 1864. Cittadella, L. N. Documenti ed illustrazioni risgiiardantl la Storia Artistica Ferrarese. Ferrara, 1868. Cittadella, L. N. // Castello di Ferrara. Ferrara, 1 875. Crowe, J. A., and Cavalcaselle, G. B. A New Histojy/ of Painting in Italy. Ed. S. A. Strong and Langton Douglas. Vol. iii. London, 1908. Crowe, J. A., and Cavalcaselle, G. B. A New Histoi-y of Painting in Jtaly. Ed. E. Hutton. Vol. ii. London, 1909. BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 Crowe, J. A., and Cavalcaselle, G. B. A History of Painting in North Italy. 2 vols. London, 1871.' Frizzi, a. Memorie per la Storia di Ferrara. With additions and notes by C. Laderchi. 5 vols. Ferrara, 1847, 1848. Frizzoni, G. Arte Italiana del Binascuncnlo. Milan, 1891. Gardner, E. G. Dukes and Poets in Ferrara. London, 1904. Gardner, E. G. The King of Court Poets. London 1906. GozzADiNi, G, Memorie per la vita di Giovanni II Bentivoglio. Bologna, 1839. Gruyer, G. U Art ferrarais a l^Epoque des Princes d'Este. 2 vols. Paris, 1897. Harck, F. GH affreschi del palazzo di Schifanoia in Ferrara. Trans. A. Venturi. Ferrara, 1886. Hill, G. F. Pisanello. London, 1905. Kristeller, Paul. Andrea Mantegna. English edition by S. Arthur wStrong. London, 1901. Laderchi, C. La Pittura Ferrarese. Ferrara, 1856. Luzio, A., and Renier, R. La coltiira e le relazioni Ictterarie di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga. (Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, vols, xxxiii-xl.) Turin, 1899- 1902. Luzio, A. Federico Gonzaga ostaggio alia Corte di Giulio IL (Archivio della R. Societa Romana di Storia Patria, vol. ix.) Rome, 1886. Luzio, A. / riiralli d' Isabella d'Este. (Emporiuin, XL) Bergamo, 1900. ; "; Mal\ouzzi-Valeri, F. Una Corte Italiano ncl Quattro- cento. (Emporium, XII.) Bergamo, 1900. 256 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Malvasia, G. C. Felsina Pittrice. 2 vols. Bologna, 1841. MoRELLi, G. Kunstkritische Studien uber italienische Malerei : Die Galerie zu Berlin. Leipzig, 1 893. MoRELLi, G. Italian Painters. Borghese and Doria- Pain/ili Galleries : Munich and Dresden Galleries. Trans. C. J. Ffoulkes. 2 vols. London, 1892. MoTTA, E. // Pittore Baldassare da Reggio (1461-1471). (Archivio Storico Lombardo, vol. 6, anno l6.) Milan, 1889. NoYES, Ella. The Story of Ferrara. London, 1907. Orioli, E. Sentenza arbitrale pronunciafa da Francesco Francia. (Archivio Storico dell' Arte, Anno v.) Rome, 1892. Phillips, C. The Picture Gallery oj Charles I. London, 1896. Ricci, C. Gnida di Bologna. Bologna, 1907. Ricci, C. La pala p>ortuense d'Ercole Roberti. (Rassegna d'Arte.) Milan, 1904. Rossi, A. U ultima parola sulla questione del cognome di M^ Francesco da Bologna. (Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le provincie di Romagna. Series III, vol. i.) Bologna, 1883. ScHLossER, Julius von. Tommaso da Modena und die ciltere Malerei in Treviso. ( Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhochsten Kaiserhauses. xix.) Vienna, 1898. Thode, H. Die Villa Monte Imperiale hei Pesaro. (Jahrbuch der koniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, ix.) Berlin, 1888. Vasari, G. Le Vite de piu eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architettori. Ed. Gaetano Milanesi. Florence, 1878 &c. BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 Venturi, a. / primoriU del nuascimenio artisfiro a Fetrara. (Rivista Storica Italiaiia, 1), Turin, 1884. Venturi, A. L'arte a Fervara nel periodo di Bnrso d'Este. (Ibid., II.). Turin, 1885. Venturi, A. Gli nffreschi del Palazzo di Schifanoia in Ferrara. (Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per Romagna. Series III., Vo]. iii.). Bologna, 1885. Venturi, A. L'arte ferrarese nel periodo d' Ercole I. d'Este. (Ibid., Series III., Vols. vi. and vii.). Bologna, 1888, 1889. Venturi, A. Cosma Tura genannt Cosme. (Jahrbuch der koniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, IX). Berlin, 1888. Venturi, A. L'Arte Emiliana del Rinasclmento : II Francia ; Francesco Bianchi Ferrari : Ludovico MazzoUno. (Rassegna Emiliana, I. and II.). Modena, 1888, 1889- Venturi, A, La Galleria Estense in Modena, Modena, 1890. Venturi, A. Ercole Grandi ; Loi'enzo Costa. (Arehivio Storico deir Arte, Anno I.). Rome, 1888. Venturi, A. La Pitlura Bolognese nel Secoh XV ; La Pittnra Modenese nel Secolo XF; Ludovico MazzoUno. (Ibid., Anno III). Rome, 1890. Venturi, A. Amico Aspertini. (Ibid., Anno IV.). Rome, 1891. Venturi, A. / diic Dossi : documenti. (Ibid., Anni V. and VI). Rome, 1892, 1893. Venturi, A. Pittori della Corte ducale a Ferrara nella prima decade del secolo XVL (Ibid., Anno VII). Rome, 1894. Venturi, A. La Galleria Crespi iuMilano. Milan, 1900. 258 THE SCHOOL OF FERRARA Venturi, a. Stor'ia delT Arte Itcdiana, Vol. V. Milan, 1907. Venturi, a. Le opere de Pittori Ferraresi del Qiiatlro- cento. (L'Arte, Anno XI). Rome, 1908. Williamson, G. C. Francesco Raibolini called Francia. London, 1901. WoERMANN, K. Katalog der k'dniglichen Gemakle-Galerie zu Dresden. Dresden, 1908. Yriarte, C. Isabelle d'Este e les Artistes de son Temps. (Gazette des Beaux- Arts. Third period, Vols. XIII, XIV, XV). Paris, i895, 1896. INDEX A AcHiLLiNi, Alessandro and Giovanni Filoteo^ 101 Adria, Bishop of (Tito Novello), 22, 29 Agocchiari, Barnaba. See Barnaba da Modena Alberti^ Antonio. See Antonio da Ferrara Alberti, Leandro, 55, 152n, 194< Albertinelli, Mariotto, 199 Aldobrandini^ Cardinal Pietro^ 200 Aldus Maniitius, 77^ I54?' / - ^4 / / 241413 (\^OJUjU>r\Qj\.