Part 6
To the last period, when Botticelli had emerged from the Savonarola influence, the great painter produced _Calumny_ (in the Uffizi) and the _Nativity_ (in the National Gallery, London); and with these two works the career of Botticelli ends.
The theory that the _Birth of Venus_, _Mars and Venus_ and the _Primavera_ were painted for Lorenzo di Pier Francesco has been thoroughly examined and disproved by Col. G. F. Young in his splendid history of _The Medici_.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.
_Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510)._
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
Standing behind a balustrade and looking wistfully toward the observer, this handsome young Florentine appears at half-length with his head inclined towards the left.
How we should like to penetrate his secret and help him away from the melancholy mood that has overwhelmed him!
Although we see that he is a dreamer (and most probably a lute-player as his hands might seem to indicate), something has touched him very deeply--far too deeply to be classed as a momentary sorrow. We should also like to know his identity. It is unlikely that it will ever be revealed. But of one thing we can be well assured,--he is an aristocrat and a young gentleman of wealth, for he has all the air of _savoir faire_ and sureness of his position. We might make a guess that he is one of the Medici family. Could it be Giuliano? Look again at the _Madonna of the Magnificat_, at Giuliano immediately below the bending Angel! The resemblance is quite surprising and grows stronger as we study the two faces, only in the _Madonna of the Magnificat_ Giuliano is younger and is seen with the characteristic lock on his forehead.
His costume in this portrait shows up well from the black background: the coat is purplish brown edged with fur with white puffs at the shoulders; and a red cap contrasts well with his light-yellow hair.
This picture, a tempera painting on panel (15¾ × 11¾), was long in the Collection of Baron Arthur de Schickler in Martinvast, Normandy, where it was attributed to Masaccio.
“There can be no question,” Berenson thinks, “that this portrait is Botticelli’s own handiwork. The glamor it cast when I first saw it frightened me into doubts that were dispelled directly I could study the painting at my leisure. There is no one, using this formula and technique, but Sandro himself who has the sinuous line, the inevitable contours, the structural articulation, the firmness, convincingness, and delicacy of modelling this work possesses; nobody else who could produce a rhythm so subtly vibrant, or could give this limpid, radiant, and ethereal coloring.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
--_Sandro Botticelli_]
“True, it is more Botticellian than any other Botticelli in existence. He must have uttered this completest note of his own music just before he was seized by the Savonarolian madness, from which he never recovered, just at the moment when he was most peculiarly and poignantly, and, if I may say so, most extravagantly, himself. The isolation of this head, too, exaggerates the impression. Perhaps if we found it as an Angel in a _Magnificat_, or a _Madonna with the Pomegranate_, in a _Tobias_ or some Allegory, the other figures, the landscape and all the accessories would prevent our attention from concentrating on what is almost uncannily characteristic of the master’s style.”
Berenson also notes the important hand, which, by the way, is especially lighted as if to draw our attention to it most particularly.
“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this portrait,” he observes, “is the manifest competition of the hand with the face. The hand is studied just as carefully, drawn, and modelled with as much intention, as the face itself. Its action reveals the automatic nervous tension of an overstrung physique that the conscious mind, controlling the expression, tries to keep in order. It thus becomes, in a sense, the most important clue to understanding the character. If you think it away, the expression, of course, remains, but what makes it comprehensible disappears.”
It is this peculiar intelligence and sensitiveness of the hand that makes me suspect the musician.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510)._
_Collection of Mr. Max Epstein._
This picture is the latest Botticelli to have been brought to this country for it arrived only in May, 1928. It was painted in Botticelli’s early period, about 1470 or 1472. The Holy Child is handsome, although robust, and His embrace of the Madonna is touchingly affectionate and human. In this picture the Madonna would seem to have had a vision of the coming tragedy and she is not yet resigned. She loves her Child too well. That her eyes are full of tears we can feel in those heavily drooping lids. Her face is full of pain. But even in her suffering and quiet anguish this Madonna is beautiful and graceful; and we cannot fail to see in her face some little resemblance to Botticelli’s Venus in the _Primavera_ and Venus in her scallop-shell borne over the waves in the early morning in the _Birth of Venus_.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Max Epstein_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Sandro Botticelli_]
In this picture the Holy Child seems to have little or no consciousness of His Divinity. The Mother here is the enlightened one.
The picture is tempera on panel (35¾ × 23¼ inches) and came into possession of M. Féral in Paris in 1907. It has been accepted by Bode and Jashiro as a genuine and an early Botticelli.
The Madonna’s robe is deep blue with a lining of dull green, which shows at the left wrist and slightly down the front and on the left shoulder a star is embroidered. She wears a closely folded diaphanous veil and a red scarf, one end of which is gracefully thrown around the Holy Child. The sleeve of the dress has a band of golden embroidery at the wrist.
The cruciform _nimbus_ of the Holy Child foretells His destiny. The _nimbus_ of the Virgin is plain. The Angel wears a tunic of deep cream white ornamented with gold on the sleeves and a black band ornamented with gold at the throat. On the parapet stands a vase apparently of alabaster containing myrtle leaves and white star-shaped flowers, probably jasmine (see page 25). Through the open arch we see a gentle landscape, with a river winding around distant hills.
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI.
_Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494)._
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan._
With this picture, which is considered “one of the finest Italian portraits in existence,” we step back into the period of the Renaissance and into the very presence of one of the most gifted and celebrated of the younger women of the Fifteenth Century.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
“Art coulds’t thou but portray character and the mind, then there would be no picture in the whole world more beautiful than this.”
Such is the translation of the legend inscribed in capital letters on the cartel:
“_Ars ultinam mores animumque effingere posses Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret_”
with the date MCCCCLXXXVIII.
The charms of Giovanna degli Albizzi, who was married to Lorenzo Tornabuoni in 1486, were sung by all the poets of Florence. Giovanna came of the noted Albizzi family, famous for wealth and rank and for leading the party of Nobles (_Grandi_) against the Medici, whom they considered upstarts and enemies of the aristocratic faction in Florence. By a former marriage, however, the Albizzi had become connected with the Medici, for the wife of Piero de’ Medici (il Gottoso) was Lucrezia Tornabuoni, one of the most accomplished women of the age and whose portrait by Botticelli hangs to-day in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Giovanna’s husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni (Lucrezia Tornabuoni’s nephew), was, therefore, the first cousin of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici.
Subsequent to the ownership by the Tornabuoni and Pandolfini families, the portrait represented here passed to a private Collection in Paris and thence to the late Mr. Henry Willett of Brighton, England; to the famous Collection of Mr. Rodolphe Kann of Paris and, finally, to that of Mr. J. P. Morgan.
The picture is painted on a wooden panel (29¾ × 19½ inches).
Standing in profile to the left and against an architectural background, the lady appears at half-length. She wears a rich dress of gold brocade of a handsome and decorative pattern with square neck, the sleeves of a different material, dark-red in color and having yellow diamond-shaped compartments bearing a floral design in the centre. A handsome pendant, consisting of a ruby with three pearls, hangs from a fine black silk cord around her neck. Her hair falls in light, wavy tresses over her temples and covers her ears. In the recess at the back is placed a cluster of precious stones. On the right is a _Book of Hours_, and above is looped a necklace of coral beads. All of these things undoubtedly have some particular and sentimental association for Giovanna. Giovanna died the same year this portrait was painted; in this year her father-in-law, Giovanni Tornabuoni, also uncle of Lorenzo de’ Medici, commissioned Ghirlandaio to decorate the walls of the choir of Sta. Maria Novella with the _Lives of John the Baptist and the Virgin_; and here again the portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi appears. Let us turn to Mrs. Cartwright for a description of this remarkable series of frescoes:
“These twenty-one subjects have been much injured by damp and restoration and the hand of inferior assistants is plainly seen in many of the best preserved portions. But as a splendid illustration of Florentine life the whole series is of rare interest. On the one hand we have the public and official life of the Tornabuoni, their stately banquets and processions; on the other, we catch a glimpse of their private and domestic history. In the guests seated at _Herod’s Feast_, in the crowds who throng the temple court, we recognize the Tornabuoni and their kinsmen, the partners of the Medici bank, Gianfrancesco Ridolfi, Roderigo Sassetti, and Andrea de’ Medici. On one side we have a group of famous humanists--Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo’s tutor, Gentile de’ Becchi; on the other, we see the painter with his aged father and his brother, David, and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, the assistants who helped in the decoration of the choir. Giovanna degli Albizzi, the fair maiden who on the 16th of June, 1486, became the bride of Lorenzo Tornabuoni, is here in her stiff brocades and rich jewels with her young sister-in-law, Lodovica, and many noble dames on their way to visit the mother and new-born babe. These frescoes, which were finally completed in 1490, filled the Tornabuoni family with delight and wonder, and Ghirlandaio was next employed to paint the chapel of their _villa_ near Fiesole, which was unfortunately destroyed by floods in the next century.”
As in the case of so many Italian painters, the name by which Ghirlandaio is known is only a nickname: it means “Garland-maker,” and was given to him because his first reputation was derived from the beautiful gold and silver garlands and wreaths he made for the wealthy ladies of fashion. Ghirlandaio, son of Tommaso Bigordi, a silk merchant of Florence, was born in that city in 1449. He began his life as apprentice to a goldsmith--as so many superlative painters have done--and early showed talent for drawing and sketching. Before long he left the goldsmith and entered the studio of Alesso Baldovinetti (see page 48); and he undoubtedly owed much to this painter in his fondness for decorative effects. Ghirlandaio was tremendously industrious and always worked with the best artists of his time. At San Gimigniano in 1475 he worked with Pier Francesco Fiorentino and he assisted Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel in 1481. His own independent work was stupendous. Ghirlandaio devoted himself almost exclusively to sacred subjects and his frescoes are practically scenes of the Florentine world he knew so well. Whether he painted scenes from the life of St. Francis, or of the Virgin, or Herod, or St. Zenobius, the characters represented are members of the Medici, the Tornabuoni, the Sassetti, the Albizzi, and other important Florentine families. In fact, his attention to details and the careful way he rendered them, show that he had some knowledge of contemporary Flemish paintings; and consequently Ghirlandaio is regarded as chief of the Florentine realists. However, Ghirlandaio ranked in his day with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, and he enjoyed the patronage and friendship of the Medici. Ghirlandaio’s most important frescoes are those in Sta. Maria Novella representing _Lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist_, commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni, described above, and those in Santa Trinità depicting the _Life of St. Francis_, ordered by Francesco Sassetti described on page 72.
Ghirlandaio died in 1494 of the Plague, comparatively young, but having accomplished a vast amount of work and having trained a number of painters, the most important of whom was Michelangelo. Ghirlandaio’s son, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561), became a painter and was an intimate friend of Raphael.
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO.
_Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494)._
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache._
Francesco Sassetti, a wealthy banker and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s agent at Lyons, is shown here slightly under life-size, wearing a purple skull cap and a red robe lined with fur and held at the waist by a black cord, from which hangs a pouch, or purse. His right hand rests upon the arm of the chair in which he is seated. His eyes look downward upon his son, who stands at his left, in profile, gazing upward into his father’s face. His hands are clasped and he is wearing a costume of silvery grey brocade trimmed with white fur, undersleeves of dark-green and slashed, and a scarlet cap. Through the window we have an interesting view of an inlet of the sea (or a large river) with mountains and buildings. On the top of the window-frame there is an inscription: “_Franciscos Saxettvs Theodorus QVE_.” The picture is an oil painting on panel (29½ × 20½ inches) and is supposed to have been executed in 1487–1489. Francesco Sassetti was born about 1420 and died in 1491. Teodoro was born on March 11, 1479, and is seen here at about the age of eight or nine, which fixes the date of the picture. It is interesting to note that Teodoro Sassetti was the grandfather of Filippo Sassetti, an early traveller in India (see Marencci, _Lettere di Filippo Sassetta_, Firenze, 1855).
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
This picture comes from the Benson Collection and was formerly owned by Mr. William Graham. Francesco Sassetti also appears in the frescoes depicting the _Life of St. Francis_, which Ghirlandaio painted in the Sassetti Chapel in the Trinità in Florence. Ghirlandaio introduced into this series other members of the Sassetti family, as well as many of his illustrious contemporaries and friends, including Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Honorius, Maso degli Albizzi, Palla Strozzi, and Angelo Acciaiuoli. In the fifth fresco, where St. Francis is bringing a dead child to life, Ghirlandaio has painted his own portrait. He is conspicuous in a red cap and resting his hand upon his hip.
_THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL_
The Umbrian School occupied the relative place in the Early Renaissance that the Sienese School held in the Middle Ages. At first, Umbrian painting was the offspring of Siena, but it fell under and developed under the influence of Florence. Florentine artists came to Umbria and Umbrian artists went to Florence, and gradually the Umbrian School, which had certain qualities of its own, developed and reached full flower in the beloved of all the world,--Raphael.
The word Umbrian is used rather loosely by critics to include many Tuscan painters who have to be gathered into this group, which dates from the end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century. One particular quality of the Umbrians was their essentially deep religious feeling.
“Whereas the devotion of Sienese art had been hieratic, aristocratic, and akin to the ideals of Mediæval Byzantium, that of Umbria became ecstatically human. The Renaissance trend towards bringing to earth the regal Christian gods of the Middle Ages was nowhere so strong as in Umbria; and it is not an exaggeration to say that we owe to the Umbrians our modern visual images of the Eternal, the Madonna, and the other important members of the Christian Pantheon. The piety and humility of the figures was deepened and dignified by a specially emphasized space-composition, both architectural and landscape. Landscape backgrounds were given unusual importance and delicate beauty. The Umbrian School thus became the most charming, the tenderest, and the most intimately human of Renaissance Italy.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
The first great Umbrian painter was Gentile da Fabriano (1370?–1427), pupil of an earlier Umbrian painter, Allegretto Nuzi (active from 1346 to 1373), in turn a pupil of the Florentine Bernardo Daddi.
The next important Umbrian was Piero della Francesca or Pier dei Franceschi (1416?–1492), pupil of Domenico Veneziano of Florence, important in his own work and important as a master, forming Luca Signorelli, who in turn influenced Michelangelo. Piero della Francesca was also influenced by the Florentine, Paolo Uccello, whose scientific leanings towards perspective he shared. As a colorist, as a painter of light and atmosphere, and as a master of composition, Piero della Francesca ranks with the greatest Italian masters of the Early Renaissance.
By this time Perugia had become the most important centre of painting in Umbria. Among its conspicuous artists was Benedetto Bonfigli (1425–1496); Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521), the supposed master of Perugino and Pintoricchio; Perugino, whose real name was Pietro Vannucci (1446–1523); Bernard Pintoricchio “the little painter” (1454–1513), whose real name was Bernard di Betto, or Biagio; and the great Raphael (1483–1520), son of the painter Giovanni Santi of Urbino; and with this painter of the world’s favorite Madonnas the Umbrian School practically ends.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Gentile da Fabriano (1370–1427)._
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman._
No little suggestion of the Giotto Madonna (shown on page 27), appears in the _Madonna and Child_ by Gentile da Fabriano, which, according to Colosanti, was painted in the best period of the artist, shortly before he produced the _Adoration of the Kings_, now in the Uffizi. In comparing it with the Giotto _Madonna_, we see that the arch has become slightly more pointed than the one in the Giotto picture and we find also a gold background; but in the Fabriano painting a _graffito_ design of two winged Angels with flowing robes on either side is slightly visible. As in the Giotto picture the two _nimbi_ are different; the Virgin’s _nimbus_ having an Arabic inscription and the _nimbus_ of the Holy Child having a Gothic foliage. The Virgin is seated on a _cassone_, or chest (a not unusual but hardly very comfortable seat in the Fourteenth Century), covered with a dark-brown cloth with floral figure behind which a tiled floor is seen. The Virgin wears a long tunic of claret-colored damask with gold border, on which appears the motto “_Ave Maria Plena Dom---- Tecu---- Ben_.” On the border around the neck the word “_Mater_” appears. The mantle is slit at the sides through which the arm protrudes in a long sleeve of rich gold brocade with the pomegranate pattern. A scarf of thin yellow woollen material, decorated with red and blue flowers and red fringe, is worn around her head and neck. The Holy Child has on a little dress, very neatly made and fitting very snugly, of dark-blue trimmed with a border of red and gold. He is standing with His left foot on His mother’s knee and is stepping forward with the other. He has raised His right hand as if to emphasize the words He is speaking and to which His mother is listening with rapt admiration. This movement of the Child takes something away from the solemnity of the picture and the Virgin’s maternal pride shows her to be more of this earth than the Giotto _Madonna_ whose calm, impassive yet tender beauty, proclaims her to belong to a higher sphere than does the Fabriano.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Gentile da Fabriano_]
The picture, tempera on panel (38 × 22½ inches), belonged to the Alexander Baker Collection, London, and to the Collection of Madame E. J. Sartoris, Paris.
Gentile da Fabriano’s full name was Gentile di Nicola di Giovanni di Masso and he was born at Fabriano about 1370. He was a pupil of Allegretto Nuzi and possibly of Ottaviano Nelli. Vasari says, too, that he studied under Fra Angelico. He worked in Fabriano, Brescia, and Venice; and in 1422 he became a member of the Guild in Florence. Later he painted in Orvieto, Siena, and Rome, where Pope Martin V called him to paint in San Giovanni Laterano. Subsequently Gentile painted in Venice, Florence and other places, learning all that was new from other painters he met and everywhere attracting followers; but never forgetting his early Sienese inheritance in his love for beauty and for decoration.
Gentile da Fabriano became so much of a traveller and cosmopolitan that he has to be classed as an “Internationalist” as well as a Sienese painter. Gentile had a marvellous talent for presenting brilliant and beautiful pictures of the courtly life he saw around him and which was fast passing away for the styles and fashions of the approaching Renaissance. His _Adoration of the Magi_, now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence, is a gorgeous representation of a procession such as the painter had doubtless many times witnessed. It is while thinking of this brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_ that Berenson exclaims: “Fair knights and lovely ladies, spurs of gold, jewelled brocade, crimson damasks, gorgeous trains on regal steeds ride under golden skies wherein bright suns flatter charmed mountain tops. All the faces are aglow with blitheness. Why are they so happy? Have they waked from nightmare hauntings of Purgatory and Hell? So it would seem; and they rejoice in the blood tickling their veins, in the cool breezes, in the smell of flowers. And what a love of flowers! Gentile fills with them even the nooks and crannies of the woodwork enframing his gorgeous Epiphany.”
Gentile died in 1427,--the one great Umbrian of the Middle Ages.
Michelangelo remarked of Gentile that his name was in perfect harmony with the tone of his works.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.
_Benedetto Bonfigli (1425–1496)._
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn._