A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools. National Gallery (Great Britain)

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СКАЧАТЬ developments of this genius are well illustrated in this room, with the important exception that Dosso Dossi, the greatest colourist amongst the Ferrarese masters, is very incompletely represented. His best works are to be seen at Ferrara, Dresden, Florence, and the Borghese Palace. He has been called "the Titian of the Ferrarese School," just as Lorenzo Costa has been called its Perugino and Garofalo its Raphael. Such phrases are useful as helping the student to compare corresponding pictures in different schools, and thus to appreciate their characteristics.

      The early Bolognese School does not really exist except as an offshoot of the Ferrarese. Marco Zoppo (590) was "no better," says Morelli, "than a caricature of his master, Squarcione, and besides, he spent the greater part of his life at Venice;" whilst Lippo Dalmasii (752) was very inferior to contemporary artists elsewhere. The so-called earlier Bolognese School was really founded by the Ferrarese Francesco Cossa and Lorenzo Costa, who moved to Bologna about 1480, and the latter of whom "set up shop" with Francia in that town (see under 629). Remarks on the later "Eclectic" School of Bologna, formed by the Carracci, may more conveniently be deferred (see p. 35)

      THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

      "More allied to the Tuscan than to the Venetian spirit, the Umbrian masters produced a style of genuine originality. The cities of the Central Apennines owed their specific quality of religious fervour to the influences emanating from Assisi, the headquarters of the cultus of St. Francis. This pietism, nowhere else so paramount, except for a short period in Siena, constitutes the individuality of Umbria" (J. A. Symonds: Renaissance in Italy, iii. 133).

      Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth

      The Urbinate…

      Well, I can fancy how he did it all,

      Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,

      Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,

      Above and through his art…

Browning: Andrea del Sarto.

      The Umbrian School, unlike the Florentine, was distinctively provincial; painting was not centralised in any great capital, but flourished in small towns and retired valleys – in Perugia, Foligno, Borgo S. Sepolcro, S. Severino, Rimini (see 2118), etc. Hence the older traditions of Italian art held their ground, and the religious feeling of the Middle Ages survived long after it had elsewhere been superseded. This tendency was confirmed by the spirit of the district. The little townships of Umbria begirdle the Hill of Assisi, the hallowed abode of St. Francis, and were the peculiar seats of religious enthusiasm. Art followed the current of life, just as it did in Florence or Venice or Padua; and Umbria – "the Galilee," as it has been called, "of Italy" – thus produced a distinct type in painting, marked by a quality of sentimental pietism. The influence of Siena, whose artists worked at Perugia, must have made in the same direction, and it is interesting to notice in this room one picture of St. Catherine of Siena (249), and two of her namesake of Alexandria (693, 168). It is interesting, further, to notice how the "purist" style of landscape, identified with this pietistic art (see under 288), is characteristic of the district itself. "Whoever visits the hill-town of Perugia will be struck," says Morelli, "with two things: the fine, lovely voices of the women, and the view that opens before the enraptured eye, over the whole valley, from the spot where the old castle stood of yore. On your left, perched on a projecting hill that leans against the bare sunburnt down, lies Assisi, the birthplace of S. Francis, where first his fiery soul was kindled to enthusiasm, where his sister Clara led a pious life, and finally found her grave. Lower down, the eye can still reach Spello and its neighbouring Foligno, while the range of hills, on whose ridge Montefalco looks out from the midst of its gray olives, closes the charming picture. This is the gracious nook of earth, the smiling landscape, in which Pietro Perugino loves to place his chaste, God-fraught Madonnas, and which in his pictures, like soft music, heightens the mood awakened in us by his martyrs pining after Paradise" (German Galleries, p. 252). "All is wrought," says another writer, "into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is one of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle and of the early painters before him: the faces of the Madonnas are beyond the discomposure of passion, and their very draperies betoken an Elysian atmosphere which wind never blew" (Letters of Edward FitzGerald, i. 45). Such were the local circumstances of the art which, beginning with the almost grotesque pietism of Niccolò da Foligno (1107), led up to the "purist ideal" of Perugino and to the first manner of Raphael.

      The scattered character of Umbrian art above referred to makes it impossible for us to trace its course historically. From that point of view each of the local schools would have to be treated separately. Of the local schools which were the earliest to develop – Gubbio, Fabriano, and S. Severine – the first two are not represented here at all, and the third has only one picture (249). The taste for art amongst the people of Perugia was much later in developing itself. Even up to 1440 they had to rely on Sienese artists; and later still they sent for Piero della Francesca, of Borgo S. Sepolcro, who had studied at Florence and had greatly advanced the science of perspective. Many of the Umbrian masters – Melozzo, Palmezzano, Fra Carnovale, Giovanni Santi, and even perhaps Perugino, were pupils of his. The earliest native artist of Perugia in the gallery is Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1103), who, however, owed much to the Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli. This Fiorenzo was probably the master of Pinturicchio. The latter worked for some time under Perugino, who had studied under Piero della Francesca and afterwards himself went to study in Florence. Perugino in his turn was the master, after Timoteo Viti, of Raphael. The development of Raphael's art, leading in its later periods to directions far removed from the Umbrian ideal, is traced under the biographical notice of that master (1171). We have thus completed the circle of the principal Umbrian masters. They are allied, as it will have been seen, by teaching, to the Florentines, but they retained a distinctive character throughout. The one exception in this respect is Luca Signorelli, who, though he was apprenticed to Piero della Francesca, was born nearer to Florence, and whose affinities are far more with the Florentine than with the Umbrian School.

       THE VENETIAN AND ALLIED SCHOOLS 23

      "The Venetian School proposed to itself the representation of the effect of colour and shade on all things; chiefly on the human form. Here you have the most perfect representation possible of colour, and light, and shade, as they affect the external aspect of the human form, and its immediate accessories, architecture, furniture, and dress. This external aspect of noblest nature was the first aim of the Venetians, and all their greatness depended on their patience in achieving it" (Ruskin: Two Paths, §§ 20, 22).

      Diego answered thus: "I saw in Venice

      The true test of the good and beautiful;

      First, in my judgment, ever stands that school,

      And Titian first of all Italian men is."

Velazquez, reported by Boschini, in curious Italian verse thus translated by Dr. Donaldson.

      The general characteristics of the Venetian School, as defined by Mr. Ruskin in the passage above quoted, may be traced both to historical circumstances and to physical surroundings. Thus the first broad fact to be noticed about the Venetian School of painting is that it is later than the Florentine by some hundred years or more. From the point of view of art, Venice, from her intimate connection as a trading power with the East, was almost a Byzantine colony. St. Mark's is a Byzantine church, her earliest palaces are Byzantine palaces. And so, too, for painting she relied exclusively on a Byzantine supply. It was not till the latter end of the fourteenth century that the influence of Giotto's works in the neighbouring town of Padua began to rouse Venice to do and think for herself in art, instead of letting her Greek subjects do all for her.24 But by the time Venetian painters had acquired any real mastery over their art, Venice was already in a state of great magnificence; her palaces, with their fronts of white marble, porphyry, and serpentine, were the admiration of every visitor. Painters paint what they see around them, and hence at the outset we СКАЧАТЬ