The History of Painting in Italy. Luigi Lanzi

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      It is true, that in process of time the Florentine and Venetian glass appeared to be not sufficiently transparent for such purposes; and that a preference was given to that of France and of England, the clearness and transparency of which was better adapted for receiving the colours, without too much obscuring the light. It had this other advantage, that the colours were burnt in the glass, in the manner described by Vasari, instead of being laid on with gums or other vehicles; hence they had greater brilliancy, and were more capable of resisting the injuries of time. This was a Flemish, or rather a French invention, and the Italians unquestionably received it from France. Bramante invited from that country the two artists above mentioned, who, besides the windows of the Vatican palace, that were wrought with colours burnt into the glass, and destroyed in the sack of Rome, in the time of Clement VII. ornamented two in the church of S. Maria del Popolo, with those scriptural histories that yet remain perfectly brilliant in colour, after the lapse of three centuries. Soon after this Claude died at Rome. William survived him many years, and from that time continued to reside in Arezzo. He there was engaged in the service of the capital, where one of his painted glass windows is preserved in the Capponi chapel, at the church of S. Felicità; and he taught the art to Pastorino of Siena, who exercised it very skilfully in the state saloon of the Vatican, after the designs of Vaga, and in the cathedral of Siena. This artist is reckoned the best scholar of his master. Maso Porro, Michelagnolo Urbani, both natives of Cortona, and Batista Borro of Arezzo, were trained in the same school, and were afterwards employed in Tuscany and elsewhere. In ornamenting the old palace, Vasari availed himself of the assistance of two Flemish artists, Walter and George, who wrought after his designs. Celebrated equal to any artist is Valerio Profondavalle of Louvain, who settled at Milan after the middle of the sixteenth century, a man of fertile invention, and a pleasing colourist in fresco painting, but chiefly eminent in painting on glass, as we are informed by Lomazzo. Orlandi celebrates Gerardo Ornerio Frisio, and his windows executed about 1575, in the church of S. Peter at Bologna. This art afterwards declined, when custom, the arbiter of arts, by excluding it from palaces and churches, caused it gradually to be forgotten.

Another method of painting on glass, or rather on crystal, was much in fashion in the last century, and was employed for ornamenting mirrors, caskets, and other furniture of the chambers of the great. Maratta and his contemporaries on crystal for such works in the same style that they employed in painting on canvass; and above all Giordano, who taught it to several pupils. Among these, the best was Carlo Garofalo, who was invited to the court of Charles II. of Spain, to practise this species of painting,[180] the era of which does not embrace a great number of years.

[128] Although Vasari, Borghini, and Baldinucci, have also treated of other schools, they have chiefly illustrated that of Florence, with which they were best acquainted. To them succeeded the respectable authors of the Florentine Museum, and of the Series of the most celebrated Painters, containing choice anecdotes of those masters, which are now republished, and accompanied by a print from the work of each painter, in the Etruria Pittrice of the learned Sig. Ab. Lastri. Other anecdotes are to be found in the work of P. Richa On the Churches of Florence, and in Sig. Cambiagi's Guide to that City. Pisa too, has its Guide by the Cav. Titi; to which has succeeded the much larger work of Sig. da Morrona, above noticed. Siena has one by Sig. Pecci, Volterra another by Ab. Giachi, and Pescia and Valdinievole by the Ab. Ansaldi. Sig. Francesco Bernardi, an excellent connoisseur in the fine arts, prepared a guide to Lucca after Marchiò; it remains inedited since his death, together with his anecdotes of the painters, sculptors, and architects of his native country. Meanwhile the Diario of Mons. Mansi affords considerable information.

[129] Condivi promised to publish them, but this was never performed. See Bottari's notes on the life of Michelangiolo, p. 152, in Florent. edit. 1772.

[130] See the fine eulogy on him by Sig. Durazzini, among his Panegyrics on illustrious Tuscans, where he corrects Vasari, his annotators and others, who have fixed the birth of Lionardo before this year. Tom. iii. n. 25.

[131] See Sig. Piacenza, in his edition of Baldinucci, t. ii. p. 252. He has dedicated a long appendix to Vinci, in which he has collected all the anecdotes scattered through Vasari, Lomazzo, Borghini, Mariette, and other modern authors.

[132] "Leonardo seems to have trembled whenever he sat down to paint, and therefore never finished any of the pictures he began; for by meditation on the perfection of art, he perceived faults in what to others appeared admirable." Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della pittura, page 114.

[133] Both have perished, after serving as models to the best painters of that age, and even to Andrea del Sarto. See what has been written by Vasari, and by M. Mariette, in the long letter concerning Vinci, which is inserted in tom. ii. of Lett. Pittoriche.

[134] It was on account of the same procrastinating disposition that Leo X. withdrew the patronage he had conferred on him, and which he was accustomed to bestow upon all men of genius.

[135] Vasari.

[136] Vasari, who published a life of him in 1550, and enlarged it in another edition; and Ascanio Condivi da Ripatransone, who printed one in 1553, ten years before the death of Bonarruoti.

[137] He was very partial to this poet; whose flights of fancy he embodied in pen-drawings in a book, which, unfortunately for the art, has perished; and to whose memory he wished to sculpture a magnificent monument, as appears from a petition to Leo X. In it the Medicean Academy requests the bones of the divine poet; and among the subscribers we read the name of Michelangiolo, and also his offer. Gori Illustraz. alla vita del Condivi, p. 112.

[138] He projected a tract on "All the movements of the human body, on its external appearances, and on the bones, with an ingenious theory, the fruit of his long study." Condivi, p. 117.

[139] "Zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id amplius et augustius ratus; atque ut existimant Homerum secutus, cui validissima quæque forma etiam in fœminis placet." Inst. Orat. lib. xii. c. 10.

[140] None however of these great men presumed to despise Michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of Christ, in the Minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the Arte di Vedere. Mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. Juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (See Satire iii. v. 100.)

      ——"rides? majore cachinno Concutitur; flet si lacrymam conspexit amici, Nee dolet: igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas Accipit endromidem; si dixeris: æstuo, sudat."

[141] Bottari confesses "that he shews somewhat of mannerism, but concealed with such skill that it is not perceptible;" an art which very few of his imitators possess.

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