CHAPTER III.

THE FRIENDSHIP AND INFLUENCE OF RAPHAEL, 1500-1506.

Ten or twelve years had now elapsed since Francia had devoted himself to painting, and in this comparatively short space of time he had produced many important works and obtained a wide reputation. More than this, his pictures during this period bear signs of a steady progress both in technical skill and power of expression; the old hardness and want of harmony had in a great measure disappeared, and his colouring had gained that force and richness which give him so high a place among oil-painters.

But in the first years of the sixteenth century we see him develop a new style, and paint in a manner altogether freer and grander than ever before. This marked improvement is especially visible in the composition of his pictures which, instead of depending on the expression of single heads, now acquire a grace of line and completeness that bring them near to the best Florentine works of the period.

The cause of this advance can only be ascribed to one influence—the friendship which Francia had formed with Raphael. It is evident from many of our master’s works at this time that he had studied Raphael’s pictures; but beyond this, both the presence of this new element and certain expressions which Raphael uses in his letter of September, 1508, seem to imply the existence of a personal acquaintance between the two masters.

He had formed, we know, the highest opinion of Francia’s merit, and gives expression in emphatic terms to his conviction that no Madonnas are so beautiful or so well calculated to inspire devotion as the creations of the Bolognese master. And on receiving Francia’s portrait he declares it to be so life-like that as he stands before it he feels himself in his friend’s presence and seems to hear his voice.

Everything points to more than a mere intercourse by letter, and there can be no reason to doubt the generally assumed fact that Raphael paid a visit to Bologna on his way from Florence to Urbino in 1506. But long before this they had a mutual object of interest in Timoteo Viti, a young painter of Urbino, who became one of Francia’s favourite pupils and was the first link between him and Raphael.

In July, 1490, Timoteo came to Bologna to perfect himself in the goldsmith’s art in Francia’s workshop. The date is recorded in a register kept by Francia, where we read the following entry:—

“Timoteo Viti da Urbino was taken into our shop. He will receive no salary during the first year, and sixty-six florins for three months in the second.”

In 1491 another entry records the settlement of accounts with Timoteo, and mentions that as he is desirous to become a painter he will now pass into the hall where the other artists work.

Four years later we find one more entry, which is as follows:—

“On the 4th day of April, 1495, my beloved Timoteo left us. God grant that all blessing and good fortune may be with him.”

Timoteo returned to Urbino, where he became Raphael’s assistant, and carried with him the fame of the master who remembered him so kindly. Soon Francia received commissions from the Duke of Urbino, for whom he painted a Lucrezia in the act of plunging the dagger into her breast, and a marvellous set of horse trappings decorated with gaily-coloured birds and foliage.

From Timoteo’s lips Raphael also heard of Francia’s paintings, and was perhaps first introduced by him to those Madonnas which inspired so unfeigned an admiration in his breast. Afterwards we hear of an exchange of pictures which passed between the two great masters, and at Francia’s recommendation Giovanni Bentivoglio employed Raphael to paint a “Nativity,” which has unfortunately perished. The Bolognese master was of too generous and loyal a nature to entertain the least feeling of envy towards the young painter, who had already surpassed all his contemporaries, and showed his warm appreciation of Raphael’s genius in the following sonnet, which he addressed to him in an outburst of enthusiasm:—

“Non son Zeusi nè Apelle, e non son tale, Che di tanti tal nome a me convegna; Nè mio talento, nè vertudo è degna Haver da un Raffael lodo immortale.

Tu sol, cui fece il ciel dono fatale, Che ogn’ altro excede, e sora ogn’ altro regna, L’excellente artificio à noi insegna Con cui sei reso ad ogn’ antico uguale.

Fortunato garxon, che nei primi anni Tant’ oltre passi; e che sarà poi quando In più provecta etade opre migliori?

Vinta sarà natura; e, da’ tuoi inganni Resa eloquente, dirà, te lodando, Che tu solo il pictor sei de’ pictori.”

“I am not Zeuxis nor Apelles, neither do I deserve that fame so great shall be mine, nor is my talent worthy to receive immortal praise from a Raffael.

“Thou alone, on whom heaven has bestowed the fatal gift that thou shouldest excel all others and reign over all, teachest us the admirable art by which thou art become equal to the ancients.

“Fortunate boy, who in thy earliest years hast already advanced so far, what wilt thou not be when in maturer age thou shalt achieve yet greater things? Then nature shall own herself conquered, and rendered eloquent by thy charms, shall exclaim in thy praise, that thou alone art the painter of painters.”

[Illustration: DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS. BY FRANCIA.

_In the Accademia, Parma._]

The original manuscript of this sonnet was first published by the historian Malvasia, who discovered it among the papers of a member of the Lambertini family, and gave the accompanying inscription, which proves Francia to have been its author. _All’excellente pictore Raffaello Sanxio, Zeusi del nostro secolo. Di me Francesco Raibolini decto il Francia._ Even without these convincing proofs of Raphael’s friendship with Francia, it would have been difficult not to assume the existence of some similar connection from the strong marks of the great painter’s influence that meet us in Francia’s later works.

In the “Deposition,” painted soon after 1500 for the Benedictines of Parma, his style is already powerfully affected by this contact with Raphael, which can alone account for a vigorous action and dramatic character here displayed. A deep emotion is visible on the faces of the St. John, who supports the head, the Magdalen, who embraces the feet, and the Virgin, who gazes at the dead face of her son with the grief-stricken look which the “Pietà” of the National Gallery has stamped upon our minds. Salome, who stands behind, flings aloft her arms in an energy of despair unlike anything else that Francia ever conceived, while in the background the cross lifts its gaunt form against the glowing tints of an evening sky and a soft distance of cypress-grown rocks and far-away hills.

Not many years afterwards Francia was asked by a noble of Lucca to supply an altar-piece for the church of San Frediano in that city, and after painting a “Madonna and Saints” as the principal subject, took the Pietà as the motive of the lunette below. This time he returned partly to his former conception, and represented the Dead Christ laid in his mother’s arms in the same attitude as in the larger Deposition at Parma, but with two angels instead of attendant saints at the head and feet.

In later years the altar-piece passed into the Duke of Lucca’s hands, and coming to England in 1840 with the rest of the collection, became one of the chief ornaments of the National Gallery.

It is difficult to approach this Pietà in a critical spirit. We have known it all our lives, every form, almost every line of the well-known group is familiar. To many of us it is associated with memories of days long ago when it formed a part of our earliest religious ideas; and when much of the faith of childhood has undergone change, it still recalls all that was purest and best in those first impressions.

[Illustration: THE VIRGIN AND TWO ANGELS WEEPING OVER THE DEAD BODY OF CHRIST. A PIETÀ. BY FRANCIA.

_In the National Gallery._]

What is it, we ask, which touches us in this “Pietà,” that has appealed to thousands in a way which no other picture has ever done? Surely, not only the grace of its composition, the tender brightness of its colouring, but more than all of these the deep human pathos which we find there blended with a real and living hope. It is the contrast between the mother mourning over her dead son with a grief that cannot be comforted and the angels who fold their hands in lowly adoration, and by their presence transform the saddest of all scenes into a divine mystery full of hope and love. Mary, in the bitterness of her sorrow, is unconscious of these heavenly attendants, her eyes, fixed on the dead face of her son, are closed to that vision of angels, but we see them and realise what Francia meant us to feel, all the promise of that horizon which was opening beyond, all the great future that was to grow out of the suffering and death which she mourned.

“The wave Of love which set so deep and strong By Christ’s yet open grave.” [_Matthew Arnold._]

Unlike Mantegna and Gian Bellini, Francia has not attempted to give any impression of the physical agony which has passed over the corpse, but has concentrated all his force in the endeavour to give the deep repose and peace of death without sacrificing anything of majesty of form. There are other points in the drawing which might be criticised, and a degree of stiffness in the position of the right arm has been often observed, but no minor defects can prevent Francia’s Pietà from being, in refinement of conception and tenderness of feeling, the highest ideal representation of the subject in the whole range of art.

The other portion of this altar-piece, a Virgin enthroned with the Child, St. Anna at her side between two arches, and the Saints Sebastian, Paul, Lawrence and Romualdo below, hangs next to Perugino’s Certosa altar-piece in the National Gallery. An excellent opportunity is thus afforded of comparing the styles of the two painters, and Francia’s work does not show to disadvantage even by the side of Perugino’s masterpiece. In depth and richness of colour he is at least his equal, and although his types are less ideal they are fresher and more natural, and there is less affectation in the attitude of his figures.

For the same church of San Frediano at Lucca, Francia painted another large altar-piece the “Coronation of the Virgin,” which is still to be seen there. Here again he gives the subject a mystical character and introduces the patriarchal ancestors of Mary and the chief advocates of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception among the figures who stand below in devout contemplation. Each bears a scroll in his hand: David points to a verse of Psalm xxvii, “_In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me_;” Solomon, a noble, kingly profile, gazes earnestly upwards, showing us a text from his song, “_Thou art all fair, my love_;” while Anselm and Augustine bear scrolls on which we read passages from their own writings relating to the Virgin, and Antony of Padua kneels at the empty tomb where lilies and roses have blossomed. This altar-piece, although less known than Francia’s other masterpieces, yields to none of his works in grandeur and finish. The kneeling Madonna who, robed in purple and gold, receives her crown from the hands of the Eternal, retains the same expression of sweet humility touched with sadness which marks all his Virgins, and the scenes from the History of the Augustinian order on the predella are painted with exquisite taste and delicacy.

Another large Coronation, commonly called the altar-piece of All the Saints from the multitude of figures grouped below, is still in the Duomo of Ferrara; while Cesena retains the “Presentation” mentioned by Vasari, although the beauty of colouring to which he alludes has lost much of its freshness.

A “Nativity,” painted for his intimate friend Paolo Zambeccaro at Bologna, is now in the Picture Gallery of Forli, but the frescoes with which he adorned Zambeccaro’s villa have all perished. The same fate has been shared by the other frescoes which he painted in different palaces of Bologna, and what is most of all to be regretted, the “Judith” and “Dispute of Philosophers” which he executed for Giovanni Bentivoglio were destroyed in the sack of the tyrant’s palace by the mob, on his expulsion in 1507. Vasari, speaking from the testimony of eyewitnesses, declares the Judith to have been the finest work which Francia ever painted, and describes minutely the splendour of the surroundings introduced, the horses, banners, and armed guards brought on the scene as belonging to the camp of Holofernes. The fame of this fresco had also reached the ears of Raphael, who begged for a sketch of the work, but unfortunately not even a drawing remains to give us an idea of the manner in which Francia treated a theme so unlike his usual objects.

A “Lucrezia” by his hand, perhaps the very panel which he painted for Guido Baldo, Duke of Urbino, is now in England,[8] but has nothing classical in character. The Roman matron raising her eyes to heaven as she plunges the dagger into her breast is in feature and expression the exact counterpart of Francia’s saints, and but for the uplifted hand might be a St. Catharine or St. Agnes with perfect propriety. On the other hand drawings in the style of ancient bas-reliefs by Francia, which in type and character admit no doubt as to their genuineness, meet us occasionally both in foreign galleries and London exhibitions, and show a much truer appreciation of classical art. Such are the “Judgment of Paris” in the Albertina collection, Vienna, and that beautiful group of Greek youths before an altar exhibited by Mr. J. O. Robinson in the Grosvenor Gallery of 1879, in which, the grace of antique art is delicately blended with the yearning expression of Christian devotion. These and others that resemble them were designs for engravings probably intended for the use of Marc Antonio Raimondi, who served his first apprenticeship in Francia’s workshop, and engraved several of his master’s pictures before he left for Venice in 1509.

More than one of this celebrated artist’s engravings bear marks of this early training in the school of Francia, an influence soon to be effaced by the very different associations and examples of the Roman world, in the midst of which his later years were spent.

[Illustration]