The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume III Part 17

Lapis had too much originality of conception and too much solidity of taste to adopt the flowery style of his master. The public works he left at home, and the Birth of Venus in a ceiling of the Borghese Palace, as correct as graceful, deserved and would have attained more celebrity, had not self-contempt and diffidence intercepted the fortune which his talent might have commanded. The two Sicilians, complete machinists, shared with the imitation the success of their master.

Next to Conca, the most successful pupil of Solimene was Francesco de Mura, surnamed Franceschiello, born at Naples and greatly employed in its churches and private galleries: the works, however, to which he owes most of his celebrity, were the frescoes painted in various apartments of the royal palace at Torino, in compet.i.tion with Claudio Beaumont, who was then at the height of his vigour. Mura ornamented the ceiling of some rooms, chiefly filled with Flemish pictures, with subjects widely different, Olympic games, and actions of Achilles.

Corrado Giaquinto of Molfetta, may conclude what yet deserves to be recorded of this school. He too left Naples, came to Rome, and attached himself to Conca, whose maxims he made nearly all his own; as resolute, as easy, but less correct. Rome, Macerata, and other parts of the Roman state, are acquainted with his works. He painted in Piemont, was employed by Charles III. in Spain, appointed Director of the Academy of S. Fernando, pleased and continued to please the greater part of the public, even after the arrival of A.R. Mengs.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] Dominici.

[104] "Le opere superst.i.ti ne deon decidere; e secondo queste Marco da Siena, ch'e il padre della Storia pittorica Napolitana, giudic _che in grandezza di fare_ Cimabue prevalepe."--Lanzi, ii. I. 580.

[105] Tommaso had a brother Pietro de' Stefani, who professed painting, but practised sculpture: of his works the monuments of Pope Innocenzio IV., who died at Naples 1254, of Charles the First and Second, are the most eminent. The two sitting statues of these two kings are still seen over the small gates of the Episcopal palace.

[106] Signorelli Vicende della Coltura delle due Sicilie,--t. iii. 116.

[107] The Vatican alone is sufficient to prove that gold-grounds were still recurred to in the best years of the sixteenth century.

[108] In the life of Giuliano da Majano. They are the first painters of the Neapolitan schools mentioned by him, though with an ambiguity which might induce us to believe that he meant to give them for Tuscany.

[109] In the forty-first sonnet, addressed to King Federigo: "Vedi invitto Signor come risplende," &c.

[110] Some call him Giacomo, some Andria, most, and with greater probability, Bernardo.

[111] See the remarks relative to Antoniello, in the history of Venetian art; but it is in place here to observe on the a.s.sertions of the Neapolitan writers, that, if the tradition of a Greek picture in oil at the Duomo of Messina be not fabulous, Antoniello could not have remained ignorant of it. If Colantonio was in possession of oil painting, how is the astonishment to be accounted for, which the method of John ab Eyk excited at Naples? How came the name of an obscure Fleming to fill in a short period all Europe, every prince to solicit his pencil, every painter to submit to his dictates or those of his scholars? Who, on the contrary, who out of Naples or its state, knew then Colantonio? who courted Solario? a man so apt, the son-in-law and scholar of the former, and before of Lippo Dalmasio--how forgot he to learn, or why did he neglect a method they are said to have practised so well, for the vulgar one of distemper? Either they knew nothing of the mystery at all, or in a degree too insignificant to affect the authority of Vasari, and the claims of John ab Eyk and Antoniello.

[112] A. Sabbatini from 1480 to 1545.

[113] 1508 to 1542.

[114] Vasari.

[115] Said to be in 1587.

[116] These two laid the foundation of a History of Neapolitan Art. The transient manner in which Vasari had mentioned Marco in the new edition of his Lives, his silence on many Sienese, and omission of most Neapolitan painters, were probably the causes that provoked the literary opposition of Marco. His pupil, the Notary, furnished him with materials, from the archives and domestic tradition, for the Discourse which he composed in 1569, the year after the edition of Vasari; though it remained in MS. till 1742, when, jointly with the Memoirs of Criscuolo, in the Neapolitan dialect, &c., the greater part of it was, published by Dominici.

[117] B. Corenzio, 1558 to 1643.

[118] In an inscription on one of his pictures, mentioned by Palomino, he styles himself "Jusepe de Ribera Espanol de la Ciutad de Xativa, e reyno de Valencia, Academico Romano, ano 1630;" but the Neapolitans, who maintained that he was born of Spanish parents in the neighbourhood of Lecce, ascribe this and similar subscriptions on his works rather to his ambition of ingratiating himself with the government, which was Spanish, than to a genuine desire of acquainting posterity with his native country.

Lo Spagnoletto 1588, vivo in 1649.

[119] Caracciolo di Batistiello, died 1641.

[120] Dominici.

[121] As it is evident that the deputies broke a formal contract with Correnzio and Batistiello, it is not easily discovered on what principle Lanzi has praised their conduct.

[122] It is contradicted only by the unsupported a.s.sertion of Bermudez, who tells that Ribera died rich and honoured 1656 at Naples.

[123] M. Stanzioni, 1585 to 1656.

[124] Vaccaro, 1598 to 1671.

[125] M. Preti, 1613 to 1699.

[126] A. Falcone, 1600 to 1665.

[127] Born 1632, died 1705.

[128] The a.s.sent of Carlo Celano (Giornata IV.) seems to authenticate this tradition.

[129] Luca, fa Presto!

[130] He used to tell, that then he had drawn twelve times the Stanze and the Loggia of Rafaello, and nearly twenty the Battle of Constantine, without mentioning his copies from the Sistina, Polidoro, A. Caracci, &c.; hence, some one has called him by a bold but pertinent allusion "The Thunderbolt of Art," as others its Proteus, from the singular talent of mimicking the manner and touch of every master. Many are the pictures painted by him, which pa.s.sed for works of Albert Durer, Ba.s.sano, Tiziano, and Rubens, not only with connoisseurs, a task less difficult, but with his rivals, whose eyes malignity as well as discernment might have sharpened: these deceptions fetched at sales doubly and trebly the price of an ordinary Giordano. Specimens are still to be found in the churches of Naples; for instance, the two altar-pieces in that of S. Teresa, which have all the air of Guido, especially that which represents the Nativity of the Saviour.

[131] Born 1657; died 1748.

[132] Il Calabrese ringentilito.

[133] Mengs.

THE SCHOOL OF VENICE.

The conquests, commerce and possessions of Venice in the Levant, and thence its uninterrupted intercourse with the Greeks, give probability to the conjecture, that Venetian art drew its origin from the same source, and that the first inst.i.tution of a company, or, as it is there called, a School (Schola) of Painters, may be dated up to the Greek artists who took refuge at Venice from the fury of the Iconoclasts at Constantinople. The choice of its Patron, which was not St. Luke, but Sta. Sophia, the patroness of the first temple at that time, and prototype of St. Mark's, distinguishes it from the rest of the Italian Schools. _Anchona_, the vulgar name of a picture in the technic language, the statutes,[134] and doc.u.ments of those times, is evidently a depravation of the Greek _Eikon_. The school itself is of considerable antiquity; its archives contain regulations and laws made in 1290, which refer to anterior ones; and though not yet separated from the ma.s.s of artisans, its members began to enjoy privileges of their own.

In various cities of the Venetian State we meet with vestiges of art anterior in date[135] to the relics of painting and mosaic in the metropolis, which prove that it survived the general wreck of society here, as in other parts of Italy. Of the oldest Venetian monuments, Zanetti has given a detailed account, with shrewd critical conjectures on their chronology; though all attempts to discriminate the nearly imperceptible progress of art in a ma.s.s of works equally marked by dull servility, must prove little better than nugatory; for it does not appear that Theophilus of Byzantium, who publicly taught the art at Venice about 1200, or his Scholar Gelasio[136], had availed themselves of the improvements made in form, twenty years before, by Joachim the Abbot, in a picture of Christ. Nor can the notice of Vasari, who informs us that Andrea Tafi repaired to Venice to profit by the instructions of Apollonios in mosaic, prove more than that, from the rivals.h.i.+p of Greek mechanics, that branch of art was handled with greater dexterity there than at Florence, to which place he was, on his return, accompanied by Apollonios. The same torpor of mind continued to characterise the succeeding artists till the first years of the fourteenth century, and the appearance of Giotto, who, on his return from Avignon 1316, by his labours at Padua, Verona, and elsewhere in the state, threw the first effectual seeds of art, and gave the first impulse to Venetian energy and emulation[137] by superior example.

He was succeeded by Giusto, surnamed of Padova, from residence and city rights, but else a Florentine and of the Menabuoi. To Padovano, Vasari ascribes the vast work of the church of St. John the Baptist; incidents of whose life were expressed on the altar-piece. The walls Giusto spread with gospel history and mysteries of the Apocalypse, and on the Cupola a glory filled with a consistory of saints in various attire: simple ideas, but executed with incredible felicity and diligence. The names 'Joannes & Antonius de Padova,' formerly placed over one of the doors, as an ancient MS. pretends, related probably to some companions of Giusto, fellow pupils of Giotto, and show the unmixed prevalence of his style, to which Florence itself had not adhered with more scrupulous submission, beyond the middle of the century, and the less bigoted imitation of Guarsiento, a Padovan of great name at that period, and the leader of Ridolfi's history. He received commissions of importance from the Venetian senate, and the remains of his labours in fresco and on panel at Ba.s.sano and at the Eremitani of Padova, confirm the judgment of Zanetti, that he had invention, spirit, and taste, and without those remnants of Greek barbarity which that critic pretends to discover in his style.

Of a style still less dependant on the principles of Giotto, are the relicks of those artists whom Lanzi is willing to consider as the precursors of the legitimate Venetian schools, and whose origin he dates in the professors of miniature and missal-painting, many contemporary, many anterior to Giotto. The most conspicuous is Niccolo Semitecolo, undoubtedly a Venetian, if the inscription on a picture on panel in the Capitular Library at Padova be genuine, viz., _Nicoleto Semitecolo da Venezia_, 1367. It represents a Pieta, with some stories of S.

Sebastian, in no contemptible style: the nudities are well painted, the proportions, though somewhat too long, are not inelegant, and what adds most to its value as a monument of national style, it bears no resemblance to that of Giotto, which, though it be inferior in design, it equals in colour. Indeed the silence of Baldinucci, who annexes no Venetian branch to his Tuscan pedigree of Art, gives probability to the presumption, that a native school existed in the Adriatic long before Cimabue.

A fuller display of this native style, and its gradual approaches to the epoch of Giorgione and Tizian, were reserved for the fifteenth century: an island prepared what was to receive its finish at Venice. Andrea da Murano, who flourished about 1400, though still dry, formal, and vulgar, designs with considerable correctness, even the extremities, and what is more, makes his figures stand and act. There is still of him at Murano in S. Pier Martire, a picture, on the usual gold ground of the times, representing, among others, a Saint Sebastian, with a Torso, whose beauty made Zanetti suspect that it had been copied from some antique statue. It was he who formed to art the family of the Vivarini, his fellow-citizens, who in uninterrupted succession maintained the school of Murano for nearly a century, and filled Venice with their performances.

Of Luigi, the reputed founder of the family, no authentic notices remain. The only picture ascribed to him, in S. Giovanni and Paolo, has, with the inscription of his name and the date 1414, been retouched.[138]

Nor does much more evidence attend the names of Giovanni and Antonio de'

Vivarini, the first of which belonged probably to a German, the partner of Antonio,[139] who is not heard of after 1447, whilst Antonio, singly or in society with his brother Bartolommeo Vivarini, left works inscribed with his name as far as 1451.

Bartolommeo, probably considerably younger than Antonio, was trained to art in the principles before mentioned, till he made himself master of the new-discovered method of oil-painting, and towards the time of the two Bellini became an artist of considerable note. His first picture in oil bears the date of 1473; his last, at S. Giovanni in Bragora, on the authority of Boschini, that of 1498; it represents Christ risen from the grave, and is a picture comparable to the best productions of its time.

He sometimes added A Linnel Vivarino to his name and date, allusive to his surname.

With him flourished Luigi, the last of the Vivarini, but the first in art. His relics still exist at Venice, Belluno, Trevigi, with their dates; the princ.i.p.al of these is in the school of St. Girolamo at Venice, where, in compet.i.tion with Giovanni Bellini, whom he equals, and with Vittore Carpaccia, whom he surpa.s.ses, he represented the Saint caressing a Lion, and some monks who fly in terror at the sight.

Composition, expression, colour, for felicity, energy, and mellowness, if not above every work of the times, surpa.s.s all else produced by the family of the Vivarini.