Part 4

In our attempt to unravel the skein of Italian art in this collection and to sketch its history in strict chronological order we may now consider two small predella panels of (_a_) _St. Francis receiving the Stigmata_ and (_b_) _An Incident in the Life of St. Cosmo and St. Damian_ (No. 1414) by Francesco Pesellino (1422-1457). The former deals with a subject we have already met with in this Gallery (No. 1312); the latter is a new theme. St. Cosmo and St. Damian were wealthy men and spent their time in doing charitable works as doctors without monetary reward, and are thus sometimes known as “the Holy Money-despisers.” According to the legend here represented, a Christian was one day praying to these saints in the church dedicated to them in Rome in the fervent hope that he might be healed of cancer in the leg. While thus at prayer he imagined that his leg was amputated and replaced by that of a dead Moor. In this small panel the saints are shown in the act of placing the black man’s limb on the body of the Christian, who, no doubt, will before long be healed. St. Cosmo and St. Damian being patron saints of the Medici family are often met with in Florentine art. We have already in this collection looked at a picture (No. 1293) by Fra Angelico illustrating their martyrdom. Pesellino, who studied the art of Fra Angelico, Masaccio, and Domenico Veneziano, and followed somewhat closely in the steps of Fra Filippo Lippi, can hardly have painted the small three-panel picture officially ascribed to him of (_a_) _The Dead Christ_, (_b_) _A Cardinal supporting the Bodies of Two Men who have been hanged_, and (_c_) _A Cardinal appearing in a Vision to a Bishop_. This small work (No. 1415), which was formerly in the Campana collection, has been claimed by Dr. Venturi and Mr. Berenson to be by the Umbrian artist, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo.

The _Madonna and Child and St. Augustin, St. John the Baptist, St. Anthony, and St. Francis_ (No. 1661), which is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Florentine artist, and has been variously attributed to Andrea del Castagno, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Andrea Verrocchio, may be assigned to that nameless contemporary of Pesellino whose artistic personality was a few years ago constructed by Mrs. Berenson under the name of “Compagno di Pesellino.”

The art of the Umbrian artist, Piero dei Franceschi (1415?-1492), who is so well represented in the National Gallery, is not seen at the Louvre, where, however, a _Madonna and Child_ passes under his name. This panel (the official number of which is given in the Catalogue as 1300B and on the frame as 1300A) was formerly in the Duchâtel collection before passing into that of the Duc de la Trémoïlle, from whom it was purchased in 1898 for £5200 by the _Société des Amis du Louvre_. It was recognised over twelve years ago by M. Ary Renan as the work of Alessio Baldovinetti (14271499), who, like Piero dei Franceschi, was formed on Domenico Veneziano, and was also influenced by the discoveries and methods of Uccello.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle also had made that attribution before the question was taken up by Mr. Berenson, who on morphological and æsthetic grounds unhesitatingly ascribes it to Baldovinetti. “Compared with Baldovinetti,” writes Mr. Berenson, “Piero dei Franceschi is sterner and harder and more monumental. Piero’s Madonnas have a fixed and severe physiognomy, massive structure and immobile pose; never a smile, never a touch of tenderness.” How different from all this is the _Madonna_ by Baldovinetti before us, with her “refined features and her pensive gaze of adoration—a look that unveils her inner life, a look that will soon develop into the mystery which we feel in the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.” Vasari tells us that Baldovinetti was “extremely careful and exact in his work, and of all the minutiæ which Mother Nature is capable of presenting, he took pains to be the close imitator. He delighted in the representation of landscape, which he depicted with the utmost exactitude; thus we find in his pictures rivers, bridges, rocks, herbs, fruits, paths, fields, cities, castles, sands, and objects innumerable of the same kind.” A goodly number of these are included in the background of this picture.

With Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498) and his brother Piero (1443-1496) we enter on a more scientific era in Florentine art. Masaccio had already advanced the study of the nude, and the influence of Donatello (1386-1466) and other sculptors had drawn the attention of all art-workers to the fuller significance of the human form. A more serious attempt was now made by the rising generation of sculptors and painters, among whom Antonio Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio (1435-1488) now played the leading parts, to impart to the human figure a more exact physiological accuracy and so give it greater effectiveness. The advance made by Baldovinetti in landscape tended also to a more real sense of movement in a natural environment. The Louvre catalogues no picture under the name of either of the Pollaiuoli, but a _Madonna_ (No. 1367A) here credited to Bastiano Mainardi was probably executed by Piero, who frequently worked on his elder brother’s designs.

The influence of Alessio Baldovinetti is reflected in the pictures of Cosimo Rosselli (1437-1507). Nothing is officially ascribed to him in this collection, but the _Annunciation, with St. John the Baptist, St. Anthony, St. Catherine, and St. Peter Martyr_ (No. 1656), which is here catalogued as by an Unknown fifteenth-century Florentine painter, is apparently his work. It is inscribed with the date A.D.M.CCCCLXXIII.

THE GOLDSMITH PAINTERS

During the generation which preceded the activity of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) (who appears in the official Catalogue under the name of Grillandaio) the art of the painter had often been combined with that of the architect and sculptor. In time the influence of the goldsmith is seen in the inclination of the more prosaic painters, among whom Ghirlandaio holds an important place, to subordinate the pictorial qualities of their compositions to the gold-worker’s love of ornamental detail and fanciful jewellery. Paintings carried out in the goldsmith’s shop thus contained in the action of the figures, the treatment of the draperies, and the fanciful head-dresses, imitations of silver and bronze work. Domenico Bigordi owed the name of Ghirlandaio, by which he is now generally known, to his having been apprenticed to a goldsmith who acquired fame as a maker of the jewelled coronals (_ghirlande_) that became fashionable. This pupil of Alessio Baldovinetti, who was a craftsman quite as much as a painter, is to-day best known by the large number of frescoes he painted in Tuscany.

[Illustration: PLATE III.—DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO

(1449-1494)

FLORENTINE SCHOOL

No. 1322.—PORTRAIT OF AN OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON (“THE BOTTLE-NOSED MAN”)

(Portrait d’un Vieillard et de son petit-fils)

An old man, wearing a red robe edged with fur, looks down tenderly at his golden-haired little grandson who lifts up his face to be kissed. Through an open casement is seen a landscape.

Painted in tempera on panel.

2 ft. 0½ in. × 1 ft. 6¼ in. (0·62 × 0·46.)]

In Ghirlandaio’s _Visitation_ (No. 1321) the Virgin, her conventional robes fastened by a morse such as this goldsmith-painter repeatedly introduced into his pictures, stoops to greet St. Elizabeth. On the left is Mary Cleophas, and from the right Mary Salome trips lightly on to the scene. As always in a painting of this subject, the principal figures are silhouetted against the arch in the background, through which the sky is seen. Characteristic of Ghirlandaio’s paintings is the jewelled architecture which bears the date 1491, three years previous to his death. The Catalogue suggests that this large picture was finished by either Davide or Benedetto, the brothers and assistants of Domenico, but it is possible that his brother-in-law, Bastiano Mainardi, may have worked on it. The French, having pointed out to the Duke of Tuscany in 1815 that Florence possessed many better examples of this painter’s art, were allowed to retain this panel picture, which had been brought in 1806 from the Church of S. Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi at Florence.

The delightful _Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandson_ (No. 1322, Plate III.), which is usually known as _The Bottle-nosed Man_, is an admirable study from life. The winsome attitude of the little boy and the refined expression of the old man are very pleasing. It is an incontrovertible, but perhaps not obvious, fact that mere physiological ugliness can in the hands of an accomplished artist be transformed into a medium of beauty. The picture has unfortunately been damaged, notably in the forehead of the principal figure. The certainty of touch and the delicacy of the modelling indicate that this panel belongs to the last period of the artist’s activity, when he also executed the magnificent _Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi_, now in the collection of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan.

One of Domenico’s brothers, Benedetto Ghirlandaio (1458-1497) is credited with a _Christ on the Way to Calvary_ (No. 1323). His own son, Ridolfo (1483-1561), painted the _Coronation of the Virgin_ (No. 1324) in 1503, the date being inscribed on the panel. Mainardi (fl. 1482-1513), the brother-in-law, pupil, and imitator of Domenico, painted many pictures which usually pass under the name of his more illustrious relation. This pupil has painted in the tondo of the _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1367) a morse somewhat similar to that seen in the _Visitation_ (No. 1321). In this same group of artists must be placed a nameless assistant of Domenico. His pictures have been grouped by Mr. Berenson, who calls him by the descriptive name of “Alunno di Domenico,” and tentatively identifies him with Bartolommeo di Giovanni, of whom very little is known. Alunno di Domenico is thus credited with having executed the companion pictures (No. 1416A and No. 1416B) of the _Nuptials of Thetis and Peleus_, a pagan subject which suggests the advent of the decadence in Florentine art. These two panels are officially catalogued under the name of Piero di Cosimo.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

We now have to pass from the mediocre artists who worked in the school of Domenico Ghirlandaio to that great master, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), whose work in the oil medium can nowhere be studied so profitably as in the Louvre. This many-sided genius was the natural and first-born son of a country notary, and became a pupil of the sculptor-painter, Andrea del Verrocchio, in whose workshop he met Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, and many less distinguished Florentine painters. His interests and occupations were so various that a detailed study of his life-work reveals him as scientist, philosopher, architect, sculptor, military engineer, mathematician, botanist, and musician. The _Annunciation_ (catalogued as No. 1602A and labelled No. 1265), which in the official Catalogue is now only attributed to him after having long passed under the name of Lorenzo di Credi, is doubtless an early work of about 1472 by Leonardo. Some ten years later Leonardo entered the service of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, in which city he shortly afterwards painted the _Virgin of the Rocks_ (No. 1599). This fine painting—whose virtues are concealed under a thick coat of chilled varnish—is reputed to have been in the collection of François I., although it has no continuous pedigree earlier than the year 1625, when it was in the royal collection at Fontainebleau. It is very similar to the painting of the same subject which the National Gallery (No. 1093) purchased in 1880 for £9000. The points of difference between the two versions are numerous but trifling. The nimbi in the National Gallery picture were added much later and are not found in the Louvre panel, which in the greater perfection of detail, in the treatment of the foreground and the brushwork, prove it to be an earlier and more authentic work. A careful examination of the documents which came to light in the year 1893 shows that a dispute arose as to the price to be paid by the Brotherhood of the Conception of Milan for the picture now in the Louvre, and that Ambrogio da Predis and Leonardo da Vinci petitioned the Duke of Milan to intervene. It would seem that the National Gallery picture was executed in great part by Ambrogio, who worked under the supervision of the great Florentine master, in 1494, about twelve years later than the version in this collection. Leonardo’s greatest contribution to Florentine art consisted in his practice of the science of _chiaroscuro_, the laws of which he was the first to fully investigate.

Having begun his celebrated “Treatise on Painting” and recommenced his work on the colossal equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, which at the moment of its destruction by the French bowmen in 1500 had earned him lasting fame as a sculptor, Leonardo undertook his _chef d’œuvre_, _The Last Supper_, at Milan. Executed in tempera on a badly prepared stucco ground, the painting unfortunately soon began to perish, and although it was restored in 1908 with great success by Professor Cavenaghi, only a faint idea of its pristine beauty remains. The Louvre possesses a contemporary copy (No. 1603A) of this fresco by Marco d’Oggiono, which was commissioned by the Constable de Montmorency and long hung in the Château d’Ecouen. A similar copy of Leonardo’s _Last Supper_ was purchased from a grocer in Milan in 1793 for £600, and is now in the Royal Academy, London.

MONA LISA

When Lodovico Sforza was conquered by the French and his city occupied by them, Leonardo set out for Mantua and Florence. It may have been in the spring or summer of 1500 that he began to work on the _Portrait of Mona Lisa_ (No. 1601, Plate IV.) which officially passes under the title of _La Joconde_. Vasari says that Leonardo worked on this picture for four years, and finally left it unfinished. The words of Vasari must not be taken too literally. We know, in fact, that Leonardo did not work in Florence for four consecutive years during the period to which the Louvre’s treasured picture belongs, but in 1502 visited Orvieto, Pœsaro, and Rimini, acting as engineer to Cesare Borgia. He probably began it in 1500, resumed work on it in 1503, and did not complete it until the following year. This would make Vasari’s statement substantially correct. The subject of this world-famous portrait was Lisa di Anton Maria di Noldo Gherardini, the third wife of Francesco di Bartolommeo de Zenobi del Giocondo, whom she married in 1495. It is from the surname of her husband that she derives the name of “_La Joconde_” by which her portrait is now officially known. (The title has nothing to do with any reference to her jocund outlook on life.) A French critic has shown that Mona Lisa’s child died while this portrait was being painted. “Whoever shall desire to see how far Art can imitate Nature,” says Vasari, “may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been faithfully reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and slightly livid circles also proper to Nature. The nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be easily believed to be alive; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips uniting the rose tints of their colour with those of the face, in the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to be painted, but truly flesh and blood.” This eulogistic criticism may seem to-day to be somewhat excessive, but allowance must be made for the drastic restorations to which the panel has been subjected from time to time. As early as 1625 it is recorded to have been in a bad condition. Tradition says that it was purchased by François I. for 4000 _écus d’or_, equal to-day to about £1800, and hung in the _Cabinet doré_ at Fontainebleau. Cassiano del Pozzo has left it on record that the Duke of Buckingham, in 1625, when he was sent to escort Henrietta Maria to England as the bride of Charles I., expressed the hope that he might be permitted to take the picture back with him as a present from Henri IV. of France, who was with difficulty prevented by his courtiers from acting on the suggestion. The picture was at Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV.., and appeared in the Louvre for the first time at the Revolution. In recent years it has been placed in an excellent frame of the period.

By May 1506 Leonardo had returned to Milan, and there entered the service of the French king. About 1508-12 he seems to have worked upon the _Madonna, Infant Christ, and St. Anne_ (No. 1598), which appears to have been in part executed by an assistant, possibly Salaino. This large panel was purchased by Cardinal Richelieu in 1629. A sketch by Leonardo for part of this picture is in the Louvre (Drawing No. 391); other sketches are in the Venice Academy and in the Royal Library, Windsor. The name of Andrea Salaino (fl. 1495-1515) has been put forward as the painter of the mysterious picture entitled _St. John the Baptist_ (No. 1597), which was evidently painted from a female model. It is difficult to accept the view put forward by Théophile Gautier that in this androgynous figure we have “another portrait of _La Joconde_, more mysterious, more strange, freed from material likeness, and showing the soul through the veil of the body.” The picture passed into the collection of Charles I. from Louis XIII. in exchange for Holbein’s _Portrait of Erasmus_ (No. 2715, Plate XXIV.) and a now unrecognisable _Holy Family_ by Titian, but on the dispersal of the English king’s collection was purchased for £140 by Jabach, from whom it ultimately passed to Louis XIV. It is a Milanese production, but not, in all probability, from the hand of Leonardo himself, although officially so regarded. The same criticism applies to the so-called _Portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli_ (No. 1600). Lucrezia was a lady-in-waiting to Beatrice d’Este, and in 1496 Lodovico Sforza became enamoured of her, a historical event which has no bearing on the identity of this portrait or on its official, although uncertain, claim to strict authenticity. It has also been described under the misleading title of _La Belle Ferronnière_, apparently in reference to the wife of one Ferron, a blacksmith, who had according to tradition been the mistress of François I., but was already dead when Leonardo passed into the service of that king and came to France in 1516. The picture’s pedigree cannot be traced further back than 1645, and the theories put forward in connection with it are largely conjectural. It is, however, a Milanese production of the school of Leonardo. _The Profile Portrait of a Woman_ (No. 1605) was also a century ago loosely described as the _Portrait of La Belle Ferronnière_; it is catalogued as a school picture, but is regarded by Mr. Berenson as the work of Bernardino de’ Conti. The same critic is of the opinion that the _Bacchus_ (No. 1602) is “based no doubt on a drawing by Leonardo,” but the Catalogue accepts it unhesitatingly. It seems to have been originally intended as a St. John the Baptist with a staff, and subsequently altered into a Bacchus with a thyrsus. The _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1603A), an attributed work, is only an old Flemish copy of a slightly warped panel picture of the _Madonna with the Carnation_ (No. 1040A) at Munich. The _Madonna of the Scales_ (No. 1604), which still passes as a school picture, has long been regarded by responsible critics as being by Cesare da Sesto, a pupil of Leonardo. _The Holy Family_ (No. 1606), which was formerly in the His de la Salle collection, is not now exhibited.

In 1516, within three years of his death, the great Florentine left Italy for the Manor House of Cloux, near Amboise, in Touraine, to enter the service of the French king. His right hand was paralysed—he was left-handed and wrote from right to left—and his health was failing fast. The end of that great life came on May 2, 1519, when every one lamented the loss of a man and a painter “whose like Nature cannot produce a second time.”

The _Madonna and Child, St. Julian, and St. Nicholas_ (No. 1263) is perhaps the masterpiece of Lorenzo di Credi (1456?-1537), who was another pupil of Verrocchio. He also painted the _Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene_ (No. 1264). The _Annunciation_ (No. 1602A), which was formerly assigned to Lorenzo in the Catalogue (No. 1265), is, as has already been pointed out, an early work by Leonardo da Vinci.

BOTTICELLI

The ever-increasing regard in which pictures by Botticelli (1444-1510) are held is traceable to the fact that they show the mystic spirit of mediæval times mingled with a fantasy that is almost modern. He was a pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi, and studied the more scientific methods which Antonio Pollaiuolo adopted in his treatment of the human figure. Painting in an age when poets penned canzones to many mistresses, and lovelorn gallants spoke in impassioned verse of the great platonic emotions which stirred them to the depth of their love-tormented souls, Botticelli stands forward as the representative of the later years of the Medicean age. The mystic tendency of his genius, his poetic imagination, his highly developed sense of linear design, and the charm of his colour impart to his works a delicacy and refinement which distinguish them from the works of his contemporaries, pupils, and imitators. His fame had long been in eclipse when half a century ago Ruskin rescued it from oblivion. Botticelli, who now has become the object of a cult at the hands of fervent enthusiasts, is, however, not to be ranked as a supreme master. He cannot be placed on the same plane as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Giorgione.

Botticelli is inadequately represented at the Louvre, which possesses only two authentic paintings from his hand. Neither of these is on panel or canvas, but in fresco. He was commissioned in 1486, the year following his _Mars and Venus_ in the National Gallery (No. 915), to execute two wall paintings (No. 1297, Plate V., and No. 1298) in the hall on the _piano nobile_ of the Villa Lemmi, at Chiasso Macerelli, between Fiesole and Florence, to commemorate the marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna degli Albizzi. These exquisite, but much injured, frescoes were covered over with whitewash until 1873, and in 1882 they were removed from the wall and sold to the Louvre for £1860. In the first (No. 1298) of the series _Lorenzo Tornabuoni, as Bridegroom, is admitted into the Circle of the Liberal Arts_, who give a gracious welcome to this friend of all the Muses. This fresco, curiously enough, is in the official Catalogue regarded as only a school picture. The second of these wonderful creations depicts _Giovanna Tornabuoni and the Three Graces_ (No. 1297, Plate V.). We see the Three Graces bringing to Giovanna their gifts of Chastity, Beauty, and Love, depicted symbolically as flowers. A tragic fate awaited the loving pair, as Giovanna died within a few years in childbirth, while Lorenzo was condemned to death in 1497 for conspiracy.

[Illustration: PLATE V.—BOTTICELLI

(1444-1510)

FLORENTINE SCHOOL

No. 1297.—GIOVANNA DEGLI ALBIZZI AND THE THREE GRACES

(Giovanna Albizzi et les Trois Grâces ou les Vertus)

To the right Giovanna, a young woman in a red-brown dress, wearing a white veil on her golden hair and a necklace of pearls round her neck, advances towards four lovely maidens clad in delicately-tinted robes. She holds in her outstretched hands a white linen cloth into which the four maidens throw flowers symbolic of the Virtues.

Fresco painting detached from the wall.