CHAPTER I.

EARLY ART IN BOLOGNA, A.D. 1300-1450.

From the earliest days of the revival of Italian painting the city of Bologna was distinguished for the cultivation of art, and could boast a regular succession of native painters. The names of several of these men have been preserved by old writers, and we hear of a Guido, a Ventura, and Ursone, who flourished in the thirteenth century. But the honour of having been the real founder of the school is ascribed by the historian Malvasia to a miniaturist known by the name of Franco Bolognese, who lived in the time of Dante and Giotto. Since, however, none of his works have come down to the present day, we have no opportunity of studying his style, and all that we know is that he was a pupil of the miniaturist Oderisio da Gubbio, and is said by Dante to have eclipsed his master in the same way that Giotto surpassed Cimabue.

[Illustration: FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI.]

When Virgil and Dante meet Oderisio expiating the sin of pride in purgatory, he tells them mournfully that the pictures which Franco now paints are fairer than his own, and that the honour once his now belongs to his scholar. So it has been in Dante’s own city of Florence, where once Cimabue held undisputed possession of the field, and now the fame is all Giotto’s. For what after all is the voice of earthly fame? Nothing but an idle breath of wind that blows first from one quarter, then from another, ever fitful and inconstant.

But if Franco Bolognese’s only hope of immortality rests on Dante’s noble lines, the works of his pupils are still to be seen in Bologna, and afford us some idea of native art in these early times. Chief among them was Vitale, who painted in the first half of the fourteenth century, and whose few remaining pictures are marked by a softness and delicacy of workmanship which reveal the Umbrian origin of the school of Gubbio. A “Madonna and Angels,” painted by him in the year 1320 for the ancient church of the Madonna del Monte, and now preserved in the Gallery of Bologna, has a sweetness and humility of expression which approaches contemporary Sienese art, and the faces of his virgins are not unworthy precursors of Francia’s Madonna. The same manner was further developed in the paintings of his best scholar, Lippo Dalmasii, whose virgins acquired so wide a reputation as to win for him the surname of “Lippo delle Madonne.”

This artist, who lived at the close of the fourteenth century, and painted between 1376 and 1410, was held in universal respect for the holiness of his life and character. His devout habits are recorded by Malvasia, who tells us that, before commencing a picture of the Virgin, he invariably spent the night in prayer and fasting, and received communion on the morning of the day itself. In his lifetime he was the most popular artist of Bologna, and his pictures were so much in request that he could scarcely paint fast enough to supply the demand. “No family was considered rich in Bologna,” says Malvasia, “which did not possess one of his Madonnas.”

After Lippo’s death his Madonnas were revered as sacred images, and were only uncovered on festivals dedicated to the Virgin. Several are still to be seen in the ancient churches of Bologna, and a lunetto of the “Virgin between St. Sixtus and St. Benedict” over the portal of San Procolo, is pointed out as the very picture which excited the admiration of Pope Clement VIII. On returning from the conquest of Ferrara, he is said to have paused before Lippo’s “Virgin,” and, saluting it with the utmost devotion, to have exclaimed that no other images ever touched him as deeply as those painted by the old Bologna master. In later days, Guido professed an extraordinary veneration for Lippo’s Madonnas, and often declared that some supernatural influence must have guided the artist’s pencil, since no modern painter could ever succeed in designing a figure of so much purity and holiness.

In spite of these enthusiastic expressions it is impossible to give Lippo a high place among his contemporaries, and this Fra Angelico of Bologna is as far below the friar of St. Marco as the school of his native city is inferior to that of Florence.

One of Lippo’s pictures, originally in the Ercolani Palace at Bologna, is now in the National Gallery, and may be taken as a fair specimen of his style. The Virgin, embracing her child, appears in mid-air surrounded by a circular glory, angels hover above, and a flowery meadow lies below. There is a good deal of religious feeling and maternal tenderness in the Madonna’s face, and some attempt at rendering natural movement, without either beauty of type or skill of workmanship.

Side by side with the mystic traditions of the Madonna painter we trace a more vigorous vein in the early school of Bologna, and see decided proofs of the Giottesque influences which had already reached its artists. This Florentine tendency is prominent in the works of both Simone dai Crocifissi and Jacopo degli Avanzi, the only two other Bolognese painters of this period who deserve mention.

According to Malvasia, Simone executed nothing but crucifixes, and although other paintings at Bologna are attributed to him, this was no doubt the chief branch of art in which he was engaged. The best of his crucifixes are those in San Giacomo Maggiore, and in the fourth of the seven churches belonging to the ancient pile of San Stefano, in both of which he to a great extent follows Giotto’s example, but retains much of the bad taste of Byzantine art in the emaciation of the figure and the grimace of the attendant saints.

Much of the same ugliness of type, accompanied by greater truth and character, is visible in the curious “Crucifixion” on gold ground, ascribed to Jacopo degli Avanzi, in the Colonna Gallery at Rome, and in the other altar-pieces which bear his name at Bologna. The personality of this artist has been a cause of endless controversy, but at least it has been shown that Vasari is clearly wrong in confusing him with d’Avanzo of Verona, who assisted Altichieri in painting the chapel of St. George at Padua. Whether Avanzi of Bologna is identical with the Jacobus Pauli who painted the “Coronation of the Virgin” in San Giacomo Maggiore, is a matter of small importance; but what we know for certain is, that a Bolognese painter by name Jacopo, whom Vasari probably rightly calls Avanzo, was the best of all the different artists who painted in that most interesting of all Bologna churches, the Madonna della Mezzaratta. This small chapel, called by Lanzi the Campo-Santo of Bologna, was built in the twelfth century outside the Porta San Mammolo, and decorated with frescoes in the fourteenth by a succession of native painters. Vasari alludes to it more than once in his “Lives” as the _Casa di Mezzo_, and speaks of the series painted there by Jacopo d’Avanzo, Cristofano, Simone, and at a later period by Galassi of Ferrara.

The frescoes of the Mezzaratta were no doubt the most important works of art achieved by early Bolognese painters, and—although their execution is too rude, and their present condition too imperfect to allow of comparison with the productions of Giotto and his scholars at Padua and Assisi—the scanty fragments that remain are still of the deepest interest to the student.

The most celebrated artists of later ages who had the advantage of seeing these frescoes in a comparatively good state of preservation are said to have held them in the highest esteem. Michelangelo himself visited the chapel and praised its paintings in the warmest terms, while the Carracci exerted themselves strenuously to save them from destruction. Unfortunately, later generations have been less mindful of their condition. The roof of the church was taken off some years ago and the upper part used as a granary, while most of the frescoes were whitewashed and many entirely obliterated.

At the present moment the chapel of Mezzaratta is attached to a villa, which was for many years the property of the Italian Minister, Cavaliere Minghetti. This accomplished statesman took every possible means to save these relics of early art from further destruction, and by his care several frescoes were recovered from the coat of whitewash which concealed them.

The site of the chapel itself is so picturesque, and the views from the hill of Mezzaratta are so full of beauty, that no traveller should leave Bologna without making a pilgrimage to this shrine. A steep ascent along a path lined with acacias leads from the gate of San Mammolo to the garden of Villa Minghetti, and on a summer’s day, when nightingales are singing in the acacia thicket and the air is sweet with myrtle and orange-blossom, there is not a pleasanter spot in all Bologna. Below, the domes and spires of the ancient city rise above its arcaded streets, and the eye is at once arrested by the quaint forms of the twin leaning towers, Garisenda and Asinelli, which were already old in Dante’s lifetime. All around the plains stretch their vast expanse, softly shadowed by passing clouds, far away towards Ferrara and Modena, excepting where some rocky spur descends from the Apennines, and looking up an opening valley we catch a glimpse of a jagged peak crowned with snow. Mezzaratta itself has an additional claim on our interest from having been the favourite resort of the Franciscan monk, Bernardino da Siena, whose religious revival at Bologna was one of the most important events in the early part of the fourteenth century, and who frequently preached in this humble sanctuary, which could scarcely hold the crowds that flocked to hear him.

Bernardino’s preaching and his affection for the spot may have been one cause of the celebrity which the church of Mezzaratta acquired in those days, but the oldest painting on the walls takes us back a whole century before his time. It is a large “Nativity” painted over the door by Vitale and signed with his name. The composition chiefly adheres to the Byzantine type, with a few variations, as in the action of Joseph, who is represented pouring water into the bowl for the washing of the Child. Its execution is feeble, as is the case with most early Bolognese paintings, but in the graceful type of the Virgin’s head and in the kneeling angels we recognise Vitale’s striving after a more ideal form.

On the southern wall an artist named Cristofano, whose style as far as it is possible to judge more resembles that of the Ferrara school, painted scenes from the book of Genesis. Below these we have a series of subjects from the history of Joseph, Moses, and the Life of Christ, all painted by the same hand, and bearing in one corner the name of Jacobus, and the date 1404.

Of these the two most striking are the “Miracle of the Pool of Bethesda” and the “Healing of the Paralytic.” In the former, a sick man stands in the middle of the pool lifting his hands in prayer, and the cripple who sits up in bed by the side of the healing waters looks towards Christ with an air of helpless entreaty. In the latter, the roof of the house in which the Saviour is teaching his disciples is uncovered, and the sick of the palsy is being let down by cords. To the right he is seen, walking away healed, bearing a mattress on his shoulders. In both of these scenes—indeed all through the series—the head of Christ is strikingly noble and dignified, while not even the artist’s ignorance of the simplest elements of drawing and colouring can detract from the originality and life of the representations. Each head is individual in expression and character, and the whole composition is marked by the pleasing naïveté of very early art, and an evident anxiety to shake off the fetters of conventional types.

Simone is said by Vasari to have painted the later scenes of the Passion below Jacopo’s frescoes, and may have been the artist of the “Last Supper,” which is still visible, but most of his work has perished, and whatever else has escaped destruction belongs to the middle of the fifteenth century, and owes its existence to Galasso Galassi, or other Ferrarese painters.

The most remarkable point in the frescoes of Mezzaratta, and the real cause of their value, is that, in spite of all the injury they have sustained, they are decidedly superior in merit to the contemporary panel-pictures in the Gallery and churches of Bologna, and thus enable us to form a better judgment of early Bolognese art. Here we see it inferior, it is true, in every respect to the schools then flourishing at Florence and Siena, but still possessing a force and individual character which inspires interest and promises well for the future.

During the greater part of the fourteenth century no native painter of any genius arose, and the pictures of this date in the Bologna Gallery are principally by unknown followers of Lippo Dalmasii. The only names preserved there are those of Pietro Lianori and Michele di Matteo Lambertini, who painted between 1450 and 1470, and in whose work we trace some likeness to the contemporary Siena school, as well as a marked difference from Avanzi’s manner. The same may be said of the picture of “St. Ursula and her Companions,” a weak but not unpleasing work, painted by Santa Caterina Vigri, a Bolognese nun, chiefly remarkable as the only woman-artist who over attained the honours of canonization.

Towards the middle of the fifteenth century a new element was introduced into Bolognese art by the Ferrarese masters, whom the patronage of the Bentivoglio family attracted from the neighbouring city. The court of the Este princes was already one of the most brilliant in Italy, and had become a favourite centre for artists, who were employed to decorate the different palaces of the ducal house in the same way that Mantegna was engaged on the castles of the Gonzagas at Mantua.

Piero della Francesca had himself painted in Duke Borso’s Schifanoia (Sans-Souci) palace, and both his presence and the all-pervading influence of Mantegna, who had known several of the best Ferrarese artists, had contributed in a large measure to mould the school of native artists. These different elements were now imported to Bologna by the Ferrara painters who migrated there. One of the first was Galasso Galassi, who painted the later scenes from the Passion in the church of Mezzaratta about the year 1450, and who may have been the painter of the graceful “Sposalizio,” which is one of the best-preserved frescoes still to be seen there. About the same time an artist of greater merit, Francesco Cossa, was commanded by Giovanni Bentivoglio to restore an ancient picture of Lippo known as the “Madonna del Baraccano,” and Ercole Grandi was employed on the frescoes of the Garganelli chapel in the church of San Pietro.

With these Ferrara masters came a Paduan artist, also one of the painters of the Schifanoia, who had been trained in the school of Squarcione and had worked with Mantegna in the Eremitani. This was Marco Zoppo, who moved to Bologna in 1471, and remained there twenty years, during which period he painted many of his principal works, and probably became acquainted with the goldsmith, Francia, whose first master he is said, by some, to have been.[4]

But the most important of all the painters who came to Bologna from Ferrara was Lorenzo Costa, whose friendship with Francia was productive of rich results, and with whom he lived for many years in a constant interchange of artistic ideas. Born at Ferrara in 1460, Costa came as a young man to Bologna and entered the service of Giovanni Bentivoglio II., who employed him to decorate his palace with scenes from the Iliad. During the next twenty years Costa was actively engaged in Bologna. In 1488 he finished an altar-piece for the chapel of the Bentivogli in the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, and a few years later painted the allegorical compositions representing “The Triumph of Life and Death,” and various other works in the great Basilica of San Petronio.

In many of those we already see signs of new and higher qualities which were the direct fruit of Francia’s influence, although in technical acquirements the Bologna master was at that time still inferior to Costa.

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We have so far traced the rise of early Bolognese art throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and watched the gradual development of a school of painters who remained far behind their contemporaries in Florence and Siena, and at the best never rose above mediocrity. But in Francia, Bologna was for the first time to have an artist of the highest order, and who would take his place among the best Florentines of the day, rivalling even Perugino’s genius, and winning the praise of Raphael; an artist not indeed of great inventive faculty or wide range of powers, but who, in pure and tender feeling, in elevation of aim and thought, in the expression of the deepest religious emotion, was to find few equals in the history of art.

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