Part 8

The glimpse Leonardo da Vinci has given us of his life charms us across the long shadow of four centuries and more:

“The painter describes himself as living in a fine house, full of beautiful paintings and choice objects surrounded by musicians and poets. Here he sits at his work, handling a brush full of lovely color, never so happy as when he can paint listening to the sound of sweet melodies. The spacious _atélier_ is full of scholars and apprentices employed in carrying out their master’s ideas, or making chemical experiments, but careless of the noise of tools and hammers, the fair-haired boy, Angelo, sings his golden song, and, Serafino, the wondrous _improvisatore_, chants his own verses to the sound of the lyre. Visitors come and go freely--Messer Jacopo of Ferrara, the architect, who was so dear to Leonardo as a brother, the courtly poet, Gaspare Visconti, and Vincenzo Calmeta, Duchess Beatrice’s secretary, or, it may be, the great Messer Galeaz himself, whose big jennet and Sicilian horse the master has been drawing as models for the great equestrian statue standing outside in the Corte Vecchia. There, among them all, the painter bends over his canvas seeking to perfect the glazes and scrumbles of his pearly tints, or trying to realize some dream of a face that haunts his fancy with its exquisite smile. He has, it is true, many labors--(_a tanta faccenda!_) as he wrote to the councillors of Piacenza--and at times he hardly knows which way to turn; but he is his own master, free to work as he will, now at one, now at another. He has no cares nor anxiety. He can dress as he pleases, wear rich apparel if he is so minded, or don the plain clothes and sober hues that he prefers. He has gold enough and to spare; he can help a poorer friend and educate a needy apprentice, or save his money for a rainy day; and, above all, he has plenty of books and leisure to meditate on philosophical treatises, or ponder over the scientific problems in which his soul delights. He can find time to jot down his thoughts on many things, to write his great treatise on painting, and to draw the wonderful interlaced patterns inscribed with the strange words which have puzzled so many generations of commentators. And he has friends, too, dear to his heart--Messer Jacopo and the wise Lorenzo da Pavia, that master of organs whose hands were as deft in fashioning lyres and viols as in drawing out sweet sounds--with whom he loved to commune of musical instruments and eternal harmonies, and the boy, Andrea Salai, with the beautiful, curling hair, whom he loved to dress up in green velvet mantles and shoes with rose-colored ribbons and silver buckles. ‘Such,’ he tells us ‘was I, Leonardo the Florentine, at the Court of the most illustrious Prince, Signor Lodovic.’”[14]

In such surroundings Leonardo da Vinci spent sixteen happy years, during which he exercised all his talents as architect, engineer, sculptor, musician, and painter, also designing ingenious settings for masques and tournaments and superintending decorations for weddings and for other festivities. Here, too, he painted the _Last Supper_ in the refectory of the Dominican Friars of S. Maria delle Grazie, which “Il Moro” had taken under his special protection; the _Virgin of the Rocks_ (now in the Louvre), originally for the Church of S. Francesco of Milan, and many portraits, including those of Ludovico Sforza and of his talented young wife, Beatrice d’Este. When the French entered Milan in 1499 Leonardo returned to Italy.

The presence of the supreme and superlative Leonardo in Milan for so long a time naturally stimulated art and artists of all kinds and even more particularly that of painting and painters. His style dominated the Milanese School of painters just as Richard Wagner dominated the musical composers of the Nineteenth Century; and we find, particularly in the case of Luini, some of the Master’s most engaging qualities appreciated and imitated (see page 110).

“It has often been asked,” Marcel Reymond notes in a finely thought-out criticism of the Milanese painters, “how it came to pass that Leonardo left no disciples in Florence when he created such a strong School in Milan. The first cause, in my opinion, should be sought for in the laws that presided over the formation and development of the Florentine School of painting. This School, created by fresco-painters accustomed to works of vast dimensions, did not care to tarry over the _finesse_ of execution, or the enumeration of minute details; it simplified its vision, attaching itself particularly to the broad lines and only retaining of the forms what was essentially expressive in them. This character will be noticed at all periods of Florentine painting from Giotto, Masaccio, Ghirlandaio, and Andrea del Sarto. When the Florentine painters depart from this general conception, it is only by accident and almost always in consequence of foreign action, an action that will be sometimes that of Flemish painters, such as Van der Weyden, or Van der Goes, and sometimes that of the Florentine sculptors, who, at a given moment, about the middle of the Fifteenth Century, exercised so powerful an influence upon the painters who were their contemporaries. The action of Verrocchio in particular was such as to transform the style of the Florentine School of Painting and to give birth to the so entirely individual, and in certain respects so little Florentine, of Leonardo da Vinci.

“But the fact that this new style was outside the traditions of the Florentine School of Painting must have hindered its development, and in reality Leonardo had no disciple in Florence. With Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, it is the old character of the School that reappears to follow out its natural evolution through the whole course of the Sixteenth Century.

“In the North of Italy, on the contrary, the precision of line and observation of detail form a predominant character of those Schools of which Mantegna is the most illustrious representative. These Schools, therefore, found in Leonardo a teaching that responded to their ancient traditions; and we may thus understand how the seed planted by Leonardo in the soil of Milan struck such deep root and produced such beautiful flowers there.

“But however this may be and whatever may have been the causes of this admirable blossoming of Milanese Art in the early years of the Sixteenth Century, we may say that it represents in a highly learned form one of the researches that have the most occupied Italian genius,--I mean the seeking after beauty pursued in the harmonious accord between form and poetry.”

Francesco Squarcione (1394–1474), was a native of Padua, the son of a notary. Beginning life as a tailor and embroiderer, he chose to become a painter, but first he decided to travel. He made a tour through Italy and, it is said, visited Greece. It is in 1441 that his name first appears in the Paduan Guild of Painters. Squarcione achieved more reputation as a teacher than as a painter; and it seems that in executing what commissions came to him he either gave over his orders to his talented pupils, or had them, indeed, do most of the work under his name. It is now thought that it was Mantegna’s refusal to continue painting for Squarcione that led to the rupture between master and pupil and not Squarcione’s anger at Mantegna’s marrying Nicolosia Bellini, which has long been a favorite legend. Squarcione’s school, however, was the most famous of its time and brought him the title of “Father of Painters.” The list of his pupils runs to about a hundred and thirty-seven. One of the features of Squarcione’s workshop was his fine collection of fragments of statues which he used as models. It is also said on good authority that Squarcione was a dealer in antiquities.

In Padua also lived Jacopo Bellini, with whom Mantegna worked and whose daughter Nicolosia he married, a relation that made him, of course, brother-in-law to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. For a number of years--presumably from 1444 to 1460--Jacopo Bellini had a workshop in Mantua and, here, himself a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, he trained and worked with his two gifted sons and also Andrea Mantegna. This _bottega_ became quite a rival of Squarcione’s. Indeed such a combination as the three Bellini artists and Andrea Mantegna would certainly offer a formidable competition to any rival, at any time, or in any place.

The founder of the Ferrarese School was Cosimo Tura (1420?–1495), also a pupil of Squarcione, the first Ferrarese painter of eminence; and, from 1451, in permanent service of the Dukes at Ferrara. Tura had certain affinities for Carlo Crivelli, Melozzo da Forli, and Andrea Mantegna.

At Bologna, in 1485, Lorenzo Costa (1460?–1535), a supposed pupil of Tura, established himself, thus forming one of the main links between the Schools of Ferrara and Bologna; and it was another pupil--also a fellow-worker of Costa, Francesco Francia (1450?–1517), who is the chief glory of the Bolognese School (see page 107).

In Verona, first comes the Mediæval painter, Altichiero Altichieri and next the greater Antonio (or Vittore) Pisano (1397–1455), called Pisanello, worker in medals, painter of portraits, and mural decorator (see page 99).

The School of Brescia is represented by Alessandro Bonvicino, called Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), influenced by Titian and Raphael and considered the greatest provincial painter in Northern Italy of his time. Moretto is also famous for having formed Moroni, the great portrait-painter (1520–5–1578). Moretto and Moroni are regarded as ranking among the greatest portrait-painters of the Sixteenth Century. In mode and technique they closely follow the greatest Venetian Masters; but the Brecians have a more silvery and a much “cooler” tone than Titian and Tintoretto (see page 112).

We have now come to the High Renaissance, where Antonio Allegri, called Il Correggio, from his birthplace, a small town near Modena (1494–1534), is the dominating personality of the School of Parma. Francesco Bianchi (1457–1510), of Ferrara, is his traditional master; but he was influenced by Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia, and Andrea Mantegna. Correggio has been called “an isolated phenomenon in Italian art--we look in vain, after his earliest years of practice for any true affinity between him and other masters. In his treatment of light and shades and of atmosphere he contributed something new to Italian art.”

As the Sixteenth Century progressed the North Italians fell more and more under the spell of the Venetians. Dosso Dossi (1479–1541), for instance, a painter of Ferrara and a pupil of Lorenzo Costa, went to Venice and was charmed by Giorgione and Titian before he became court-painter of Alphonso I, Duke of Ferrara, and his wife, Lucrezia Borgia.

Northern Italy also claims Paolo Caliari, better known as Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), a native of Verona, whence his name; but classed with the Venetian School, as he spent the greater part of his life in Venice, gorgeously decorating its palaces, churches, and monasteries.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

_Pisanello (1397–1455)._

_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._

This is a particularly rare picture as it is one of only three portraits of this painter so far known, the other two being a female portrait in the Louvre and a male portrait in Bergamo. Berenson says of this portrait: “It is in the most mature and the most sumptuous manner of this greatest master of the fascinating epoch between Gothic and Renaissance. It has all the direct simplicity of that happy moment when art had recovered from the mannerisms of the late Gothic style and was still far from the modishness of the ripe Renaissance. How fascinating are its qualities of pure decoration!”

The lady is dressed in dark-blue velvet with a curious collar of white lawn and grey fur with another collar at its base of spangled embroidery and around the waist a narrow girdle to match. The dress is profusely decorated with gold filigree beads.

Gold pins are placed in her blonde hair, over which is a head-dress of curiously puffed and twisted material decorated by blue and gold sequins.

The background is black.

This portrait, painted in tempera on a panel (20¾ × 14¾), was purchased by M. Veil-Picard of Paris at the Villeroy Sale in Paris in 1922. Adolfo Venturi writes in _L’Arte_ (April, 1925): “The Mackay portrait cut off below the waist, rises in the canvas with Gothic grace. Picturesqueness is the keynote. The relief, even in its slightest parts, has an ideal softness of planes. But in this picture Pisanello’s genius has attained its maximum of expression. Everything shows an advance on the Louvre picture--the eye sunk deep in its socket; the eyebrow like the valve of a shell molded over the round, while in the Louvre picture it is a mere silken strip; the ear, no longer a mere piece of cartilage, is downy velvet; above all, the superb decorative effect of the oval face between the strange volutes of the turban and the chains of perforated gold beads.

“In the other portraits the decorative effect is helped by the fantastic blossoms standing out against the dark background of the hedge, making a greater contrast with the background than with the face. In the Mackay portrait the background is equally dark throughout. The interest of the face itself is accentuated by the myriad gold lights in the gilded trefoils on the dress and in the golden beads of the chains (light as balls of silk) and in the nebulous phosphorescence of the little balls which adorn the neck of the dress and the dark enamel of the ivy on the turban of Oriental splendor. The effect, carefully prepared to isolate the face from the surrounding shadow, acquires an intensity of refinement. The contrast between the dark background and the phosphorescent dress is repeated in that between the dark blue material of the dress and in the high lights of this; the icy brilliance of the collar cuts into the softness of the fur with unexpected suddenness; and the ivory of the flesh contrasts sharply with the delicate softness of tone.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_

PORTRAIT OF A LADY

--_Pisanello_]

“The highest pictorial and decorative value in the art of Pisanello as a colorist is reached in this Mackay portrait, which represents, moreover, one of the most acute character-readings of the penetrating eye of the medallist. The proud carriage accentuated by the rigid cut of the high velvet collar; the clear-cut outlines of the profile; the ram’s horn head-dress; the splendid cap; the well-defined lips, from which one expects to hear the sibilant breath issue; above all, the keen glance directed downwards under the heavy-veiled eyelids render this a picture of frigid haughtiness. The fine lines of the mouth and the narrow opening of the eyes are executed with an extraordinary penetrating observation and the contour of the face is drawn with a delicacy that does all honor to this great master of the silhouette.

“The lines of the face are in complete harmony with the contours of the whole figure. The curves repeat themselves in the fantastic coiffure, in the fur border of the collar, in the lines of the arm and in the chains hanging from the shoulders. And, contrarily, these general sweeping curves of coiffure and costume lead up to the finely concentrated line of the profile which stands out sharply against a black background, as in Pisanello’s painting of _Saint Eustace_, in London (National Gallery). The artist has understood perfectly the value of contrast between the plastic and the decorative elements. The flat planes of the delicate ivory-like face are emphasized by the sculpturesque coiffure with its gold ornaments; and just where we would naturally look for an accentuation of the physical attributes--on the bust and arms--the artist has, through the broad curves of the chains and the spacing of the patterns of the dress, emphasized the decorative design. Finally, the color of this most decorative masterpiece is of the greatest charm. There are tiny lines recalling the delicate technique of a piece of Satsuma-ware on the surface of the ivory-tinted face that rises from a white collar resting on grey fur while a delightful blue predominates in the coiffure and the costume, which is enhanced with yellow and gold ornaments.

“The dress itself is of no little charm and belongs to a period when costume and figure were attuned to a harmonious whole as has seldom happened in the history of costume design. By plucking out the hair from her forehead and eyebrows this young woman has created a high-domed brow for herself and further emphasized the up-sweeping lines by high-arched eyebrows applied with cosmetic. What a burden that towering coiffure must have been and how uncomfortable the high collar and the girdle drawn tight beneath the breast! Nevertheless she suffers these discomforts in the name of fashion with dignity and equanimity.”

Pisanello (whose real name was Antonio Pisano), born about 1397 (some authorities say 1380 and some 1385), was a renowned painter of portraits and religious pictures of highly decorative character as well as a famous medallist. Pisanello was a follower of Altichiero and was also greatly influenced by Gentile da Fabriano. Of his early life little or nothing is known; but the rest of his days he spent wandering throughout Italy, now in Mantua, now in Verona, now in Venice, now in Rome, now in Naples, and now in Ferrara, cutting medals and painting portraits of distinguished personages. In 1439 he was in Mantua as an intimate friend of the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, whom he followed at the capture of Verona. Therefore he had to come under the Tribunal of the Council of Ten at Venice in 1442. Pisanello’s career coincides almost precisely in date with Fra Angelico, Donatello, Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi. As a medallist Pisanello was unexcelled. In his paintings he shows the spirit of a miniaturist rather than that of a mural decorator. He shares with Gentile da Fabriano the charming quality of chivalric grace and attention to interesting detail. Pisanello must have been especially fond of animals, as his rarely beautiful drawings of them preserved in various galleries would seem to prove; and, moreover, he was fond of introducing them into his pictures. In the _Vision of Saint Eustace_, for instance (National Gallery, London), in addition to the stag bearing the cross upon his horns, there are various animals and birds as well as the fine horse with its gay trappings, on which the handsome Eustace is mounted.

“Altichiero had scarcely ceased covering wall-spaces with pomp and circumstance of Mediæval life,” writes Berenson, “when the task was taken up by his better-known Renaissance follower, Vittorio Pisanello. The larger part of this artist’s work, in fact all his decoration of great houses and public palaces, has perished. Even now, after earnest efforts to gather together the strewn limbs of his art, only six paintings of his can be discovered: two frescoes, two sacred subjects, and two portraits. His renown as a painter has, therefore, been eclipsed by his fame as a medallist. And, in truth, never, since the days when Greek craftsmen modelled coins for proud city states, has there been such a moulder of subtle reliefs in miniature. Yet Pisanello himself never signed his name without the addition of the word _Pictor_ and it was as a painter that he received the stipends of princes and the adulation of poets.

“Although he was much more modern than his master, there was nothing in his paintings to startle princes and poets, or even less distinguished persons, whose education in art consisted then, no doubt, as it does now, in confirming a fondness for the kind of picture to which their eyes had grown accustomed during childhood and youth. Pisanello, although counting as one of the great geniuses of the Renaissance, by no means broke with the past. He went, it is true, as far beyond Altichiero as Altichiero had gone from his immediate precursors, but he betrays no essential difference of intention or spirit. In him art-evolution produced a painter most happily fitted to hold up an idealizing mirror to a parallel product of social evolution, the sunset of Chivalry. No wonder that he was employed along with the kindred Gentile da Fabriano by the rich and noble and that he was chosen to continue the courtly Umbrian’s tasks.”

ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

_Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506)._

_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._

It is more than likely this is the picture described in 1586 as “_Presepe_” (manger) in the Este Palace, Ferrara. At all events it is an early work.

The Virgin surrounded by cherubs is kneeling in adoration before the Holy Child, who is asleep on the bottom of her gown. Near her St. Joseph is seated, fast asleep. On the right two Shepherds are approaching and, behind them, a Man and a Woman are crossing a bridge. High up on the rocks, on the right, two Angels are watching over the scene. Behind the simple wooden building, which shelters the group, stretches a landscape.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_

ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS

--_Andrea Mantegna_]

The panel transferred to canvas (15 × 21½ inches), was formerly in the Collection of Mr. C. A. Rouse-Boughton-Knight of Downton Castle, Ludlow, Herefordshire, England.

Andrea Mantegna was born in Vicenza in 1431. He was inscribed in the Guild at Padua as pupil and adopted son of Squarcione (see page 97) in 1441 and made the most extraordinary progress in his studies, perfectly fascinated with “the antique”. “At a little more than ten years of age,” Berenson writes, “Mantegna was adopted by a contractor named Squarcione. How much of a painter Squarcione was, we do not know, but we do know that he undertook designing and painting to be executed by people in his employ. He was also a dealer in antiquities and his shop was frequented by the distinguished people who passed through Padua, and by the Humanists teaching in the famous University. It happened to be a moment when in Italy Antiquity was a religion, nay, more, a mystical passion, causing wise men to brood over fragments of Roman statuary as if they were sacred relics, and to yearn for ecstatic union with the glorified past. To complete the spell, this glorified past happened to be the past of their own country.”

Another influence was Donatello, who was working in Padua in 1750 and after; and still another was Jacopo Bellini. After his marriage to Bellini’s daughter and his break with Squarcione, Mantegna went to Venice to have his contract with Squarcione cancelled in the Law Courts; and, returning to Padua, he continued his work on important frescoes. In 1460 Mantegna removed to the Court of Mantua at the invitation of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga and in addition to his painting he designed for pageants and festivals, and decorated villas and palaces, just as Leonardo da Vinci was destined to do a few years later for another Lodovico,--“Il Moro,” Regent and, later, Duke of Milan. Mantegna also at this period designed for goldsmiths. When Francesco Gonzaga succeeded his father, Mantegna remained at the Court of Mantua and became the supreme arbiter of the taste of the day. For Francesco’s wife, Isabella d’Este (sister of “Il Moro’s” wife, Beatrice d’Este) and for her mother, the Duchess of Ferrara, Mantegna painted some of his most famous pictures, such as the _Triumph of Cæsar_ (now at Hampton Court Palace) and the _Madonna and Child with Singing Cherubs_ (now in the Brera). On leaving for Rome in 1788 Mantegna was knighted. In Rome he decorated the Belvedere Chapel for Pope Innocent VIII. To his last period belong delicate and lovely mythological pieces, including the _Parnassus_ (now in the Louvre) and the strong and decorative painting of _Judith with the Head of Holofernes_ (now in the Widener Collection).