The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 3 (of 3)
Luca Egidio Signorelli, of Cortona,54 less to be considered as the reviver of Masaccio's style than as the founder of that which distinguished the succeeding epoch, might have led its banners, as his life stretched beyond that of Raphael and Lionardo, had his principle been more uniform. The greater part of his works exhibit the evident struggle of his own perceptions with the prescriptive ones of his time, and a kind of coalition between the barbarity of the expiring and the emancipated taste of the rising æra. The best evidence of this is in the Duomo of Orvieto, where in the mixed imagery of final dissolution and infernal punishment, he has scattered ideas of original conception, character and attitude, in copious variety, but not without numerous remnants of Gothic alloy. The angels who announce the impending doom or scatter plagues, exhibit with awful simplicity bold foreshortenings, whilst the St. Michael presents only the tame heraldic figure and attitude of a knight all cased in armour. In the expression of the condemned groups and dæmons, he chiefly dwells on the supposed perpetual renewal of the pangs attending on the last struggles of life with death, contrasted with the inexorable scowl or malignant grin of fiends methodizing torture: a horrid feature reserved by Dante for the last pit of his Inferno, and far beyond the culinary abominations of Sandro Botticelli.55
Though Luca's style of design was no more that of Masaccio than Michael Agnolo's that of Raphael, less characteristic than grand, and fit to be the vehicle of those conceptions and attitudes which furnished hints of imitation to the painter of the Last Judgement in the Sistina, yet he was master of a grace in celestial scenery and angelic attitudes unapproached by his contemporaries, seldom equalled and never surpassed by his successors.
Luca Signorelli was a painter of much popularity. Urbino, Volterra, Florence, Rome, his native and many other towns, possess or possessed works of his. He was related to the family of the Vasari of Arezzo, and caressed and encouraged to the art his infant biographer.56
Another of the artists employed in the Sistina, inferior to Luca, but of no despicable (though, if we look at Masaccio, too highly rated) powers, was Domenico Bigordi, commonly called Del Ghirlandajo;57 this is he under whose auspices not only his son Ridolfo, but even Bonaroti and the best artists of the succeeding epoch, began their course. Precision of outline, decorum of countenance, variety of ideas, facility and diligence, distinguish his works. He is the first of Florentines, who gave depth and keeping to composition: if gold and tinsel glitter are not entirely banished from his colours, they appear at least less often. He was fond of introducing portraits among his actors, but with selection and of distinguished characters; though hands and feet had no part in his attention to physiognomy. The churches Degli Innocenti, Santa Trinità, and Sta. Maria Novella at Florence, possess his most celebrated productions, and many are scattered over Tuscany and the Ecclesiastic State. Of the two which he painted in the Sistina, the Resurrection of Christ perished; the Vocation of Peter and Andrew to the Apostolate Survives.
Cosimo Rosselli and Pier di Cosimo likewise employed at the Sistina, inferior in all essential parts to their competitors, owe the perpetuity of their names less to their parti-coloured glare and immoderate display of gold and azure, which attracted the vulgar eye of their employer the Pope, than to the luck of having been the masters of Bartolomeo della Porta, and Andrea del Sarto.
Piero and Antonio Pollajuoli, though employed only as statuaries in the same Chapel, possessed no inconsiderable powers as painters. Piero's pictures at S. Miniato discover the scholar of Castagno, austere countenances and deep and massy colour; but in novelty of composition and design he yields to his brother and pupil Antonio, whose Martyrdom of St. Sebastian in the Chapel Pucci of that church, though humble in style, crude in colour, and oddly rather than originally conceived, has been numbered with the first productions of the age, because with the earliest traces of legitimate anatomy it exhibits its application, and subordinates enumeration to function. Both the Pollajuoli died at Rome.
Don Bartolomeo of Arezzo, having nothing to add of his own to the works of the Sistina, is mentioned here only as the helper of Luca Signorelli and Pietro Perugino; nor is Filippino Lippi, the natural son of Frà Filippo, numbered among the companions of Sandro his master, though the perpetual recurrence of antique customs and dresses in his works makes it probable that he formed his juvenile studies at Rome. Inferior in real capacity to his father, he may be praised rather for the accessory than the substantial parts of his works: he filled with an unequal hand the remaining panels left by Masaccio al Carmine; and in the Minerva at Rome, yields the palm in expression and amenity of ideas to his own scholar Raffaelino del Garbo, whose early works at Monte Oliveto of Florence, and elsewhere, give sufficient evidence that he might have raised himself to the first artists of his day, had not the cravings of a numerous family crushed his powers, and poverty and dejection hastened his death. His contemporary Andrea Verocchio, though a celebrated statuary, and a designer of style, has deserved our notice as a painter, only because he was the master of Lionardo da Vinci, the first name in the annals of Tuscany's golden epoch.
Vinci, a burgh of Lower Valdarno, had the honour of giving a surname to Lionardo, the natural son58 of one Ser Piero, a state notary at Florence. Elevated by nature above the common standard of men, born to discover, he joined to boundless inquiry intrepidity of pursuit, and lofty conception to minute investigation, nor only in the arts connected with his own, music and poesy, but in science, philosophy, mathematics, mechanics, hydrostatics: this wide mental range, supported by equal vigour and gracefulness of body, was commended by every accomplishment of a gentleman. Such was the genius whom Nature had destined to establish art on elements, to open the realms of light and shade, to inspire the subject with its tone, and to poise expression between insipidity and caricature.
Notwithstanding the distractions of so many diverging inclinations, for powers they could not yet be called, an innate attachment to the art appears to have predominated at the earliest period to such a degree that Ser Piero determined to place Lionardo under his friend Verocchio, whom he soon excelled in painting,59 and in modelling equalled.
The obscurity which involves the life of Lionardo from his boyish years, through the bloom of youth, to the vigour of manhood, can only be accounted for by that independence of mind which made him prefer indulgence of his own various inclinations to a decided, steady, and if more confined, more lucrative pursuit of art. By what means he, whom Vasari describes as possessing "nothing,"60 was enabled to gratify studies and fancies equally expensive, no where appears; it appears not that he was patronized by the great and rich; he escaped the eye of the Medici;61 it was reserved for Lodovico Sforza to discover and to conduct the first citizen of Florence to Milano, and for aught we are told, rather from expectation of amusement than motives of homage. Lodovico was a dilettante in music, and wished to increase the harmony of his concerts with the silver tones of the lyre, invented and constructed by Lionardo, who, we are told, soon distanced all rival performers, and by the aid of his powers as an "Improvisatore," became the object of general admiration: it was then, and perhaps not till then, that the Duke cast a steadier eye on his superior accomplishments, and allowed the musician to become a benefactor to the public in adopting his plans for the establishment and direction of an academy; and granting the means for carrying into effect the still more important ones of conducting the Adda to Milano, and a navigable canal from Martisana to Chiavenna, and the Valteline, &c. plans and effects only interrupted by the fall of the Sforzas and the captivity of Lodovico.
THE SCHOOL OF FLORENCE
We are now arrived at the epoch which forms the distinctive character of the Tuscan school, the epoch of Michael Agnolo. In placing him here, chronology has been less attended to than the spirit of works; for Frà Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, and others, his contemporaries or juniors, belong more properly to the period of Lionardo than his; the elements of which he gave in the Cartoon of Pisa, and the consummation in the Capella Sistina, on which his school and the imitation of his style were founded; and to which the politics of his time, the splendid oligarchy of the Medici, and the fierce republican spirit of their opponents, gave an energy and produced efforts, unknown to society in repose.
Notwithstanding the insinuating arts by which the Medici had debauched public affection, and that undermining power which at last changed influence to tyranny, they were in less than a century62 three times exiled from their country. The first, the banishment of Cosmo, called the Father of his Country, lasted not above one year, and drew no consequences; for the interval between it and the next (1494) was marked with uniform success, and its last twenty years63 with the splendid administration and the extended patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His Garden near the church of S. Marco, which he opened as a repository and a school of art, has been little less celebrated than the Hesperian ones of old: it contained, if not all that had been discovered, what could be purchased of antique statues, basso-relievoes, and fragments of every kind; and the apartments were hung with pictures, cartoons, and designs of Donatello, Brunellesco, Paolo Uccello. Frà Giovanni da Fiesole, Masaccio, &c.; here the student was not only instructed, but, by the magnificence of the founder, supported; and it may without exaggeration be asserted, that whatever rose to eminence in the art at that period, was the offspring of Lorenzo's garden.
His death was followed by the expulsion of his sons, Pietro, Giovanni, afterwards Leo X., and Julian, in the sequel Duke of Nemours. An immediate anarchy succeeded the expulsion; the populace broke into their houses, destroyed or carried off their furniture, and demolished the residence of Giovanni, the garden of Lorenzo, and the palace on the Via Larga,64 at once. The numerous partisans of the family, however, contrived to save much.65
Other circumstances conspired to render this interval of anarchy pernicious to art, till the return of the Medici in 1512. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, the Dominican Frà Girolamo Savonarola, of enthusiastic memory, by prophecies and sermons, loaded with democratic principles, gained gradually such an ascendancy over the minds of the people, that the Signoria found themselves forced to adopt a senate at large; in other words, to submit to a democracy. But Savonarola, not content with political victory, aimed at a total revolution in morals, and continued to lash the profligacy of public manners, overflowing in voluptuous song and music, or gazing at the lascivious nudities of statues and pictures, as irresistible incentives to vice. It had been customary during carnival, to erect certain cabins in the market-place, to set them on fire on the eve of Ash-Wednesday, and bid them farewell amid the shouts of convivial mirth and the frolic of amorous dalliance. Savonarola instituted in 1497 a public festival of another kind: a large scaffold was erected in the market-place, a vast number of the finest specimens in painting and sculpture, offensive from their nudities, were collected; the pictures placed on the first step; the sculptures, especially when portraits of first-rate Florentine belles, disposed on the second; the whole inclosed by foreign precious tapestry, and that, with great solemnity, set on fire. The scaffolding of the next year excelled the first in magnificence; its gorgeous apparel invested the busts of the most celebrated beauties of former years; those of the Bencina, Lena Morella, Bina and Maria de'Lenzi, works of the most eminent sculptors; on it was placed a copy of Petrarca, decorated with gold, missal-painting, and miniatures, estimated at fifty scudi d'oro; and to prevent theft, the whole was constantly guarded. The procession approached, surrounded the scaffold, and amid a concert of consecrating hymns, bells, trumpets, cymbals, and the acclamations of the Signoria and the people, the victims, sprinkled with holy water, were delivered to flame by the torches of the guards.66 Such was the epidemic influence of this enthusiasm, that even artists, the gentle Frà Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and many more caught the infection, and contributed to the sacrifice, till the death of Savonarola and the return of the Medici extinguished the furor.67
The democracy, however, gave origin to two works, which not only atoned for the ravages it had committed, but whose splendour no subsequent æra of art has been able to eclipse, or perhaps to equal: the two Cartoons of Lionardo da Vinci and M. Angelo Buonarroti, destined to decorate the senatorial hall, by order of Pietro Soderini. They produced an immediate revolution in art, but disappeared like meteors in the tumult that attended the reinstatement of the Medici and the fall of the Gonfaloniere, 1512.
The third expulsion of the Medici – Hippolyto and Alessandro, the sons of Giuliano the Magnificent, and all their relatives – was the consequence of the sack of Rome, 1527, and the Pontificate of Clemente VII. The Medici, pressed by the moment, consigned part of their technic treasure, their bronzes, cameos, &c. to the care of their client Baccio Bandinelli.68 During the havoc, Michael Angelo's statue of David lost an arm,69 and the waxen figures of Leo X. and Clemente VII. in the church of the "Annunciata," were mutilated and carried off; and perhaps much more was lost in the demolition of the suburbs, which took place to secure the town itself against the siege of 1529. But active resistance and lampoons proved equally ineffectual; the destiny of the Medici prevailed, and Florence paid ducal homage in 1530 to Alessandro; whose assassination, indeed, by Lorenzo his relative, commonly called Lorenzino, produced, six years afterwards, another sedition and farther damage to their stores of art by the soldiers, who, at the instigation of Alessandro Vitelli, broke into and plundered both their houses. Cosmo the First succeeded Alessandro, and left uninterrupted dominion to his heirs: but if the consolidation of monarchy prevented the momentary devastations of insurrection, it failed to re-produce the splendid period that flashed athwart the storms of democracy.
MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI1474 – 1564M. Angelo was born at Castel Caprese, and showed such early proofs of a decided attachment to art, that he was put into the school of Domenico del Ghirlandaio. Here he soon advanced beyond the principles of the master, who, jealous of a rival in his pupil, recommended him to Lorenzo de Medici, for admission among the students of sculpture in his garden; where, under the tuition of Bertoldo,70 an ancient scholar of Donatello, he soon mastered the elements, and, equally conspicuous for his superiority and diligence, attracted the attention and gained the patronage of Lorenzo, but excited the envy of his fellow-students, one of whom, Torrigiano, on some slight provocation, with a blow of the fist shattered his nose, which left him with a mark for life.
That predilection for sculpture imbibed from his earliest days and now invigorated by the incessant study of the antique with practice, the successful specimens mentioned in copies and productions of his own,71 leave little authority to the tradition that he studied much after Masaccio.
His mind appears to have anticipated the expulsion of the Medici, and he left Florence for Bologna, where he found a protector in Aldrovandi, for whom he executed two small statues, of an Angel and of a St. Petronius on the tomb of S. Dominico. After his return to Florence he continued to work in sculpture, and a legend, less probable than amusing, of an Amor sold for an antique to Cardinal Riario, has been fondly repeated by his biographers. He now went to Rome and produced two of his most surprising works – the Bacchus of the Museo Fiorentino, and the Madonna della Pietà in one of the chapels of the Basilica of S. Pietro. On his return to Florence, Pietro Soderini tried his powers on a huge block of marble, mutilated by the ignorance of one Maestro Simone: he contrived to rear from it the statue of David, which, in 1504, was placed, and still remains in front of the old palace. These works, not less discriminated by peculiarity of character, than connected by propriety of style and energy of finish, were produced within the short period of six years, and equally prove the wide range of his powers, and the perseverance of his application to sculpture.
What he did as painter, during, or soon after this period, is for us reduced to the single specimen which he executed for Angelo Doni; for the far-famed Cartoon of Pisa, of which we soon shall have occasion to speak, begun in contest with Lionardo da Vinci, but not finished till after his second return from Rome, perished, as a whole, long before the middle of the sixteenth century.
Soon after his election to the Pontificate, Giulio II. smitten with the wish of a sepulchral monument, called M. Angelo to Rome for that purpose. His first plan was to make it colossal, and on all sides detached, but the obstacles which were thrown in its way for a number of years, reduced it at length to the form in which it now appears at S. Pietro in Vincoli, with probably one figure only by M. Angelo's own hand, the celebrated statue of Moses in front. The attachment of Giulio to M. Angelo was great, but the independent spirit of the artist greater. Indignant at being refused access once to the Pontiff, whose mind was worried by the disturbances at Bologna, he fled, and though pursued by five messengers with letters pressing him to come back, obstinately went on to Florence; nor could his three breves72 addressed to the Signoria, draw him from his asylum; till Pier Soderini guaranteed his safety by investing him with the title of envoy from the Republic. Thus equipped, and accompanied by Cardinal Soderini, brother to the Gonfaloniere, he set out for Bologna, was reconciled to the Pope, and made his statue in bronze. It was placed over the gate of S. Petronio, but was thrown down in 1511 by the party of the Bentivogli, and, with the exception of the head, said to have been preserved by Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, converted into a piece of heavy artillery.
Scarcely returned to Rome, M. Angelo, by command of Giulio, instigated as it is supposed by Bramante and Giuliano da Sangallo, found himself forced to try his powers on a novel theatre of art, the decoration of the ceiling and lunette of the Capella Sistina. Whatever were the motives of the two architects, whether private pique, or envy of M. Angelo's influence over the Pontiff, or friendship for Raffaello, and the desire of showing his superiority over one whom they deemed a novice in fresco, they deserved the thanks of their own and every succeeding epoch, for the most eminent service ever rendered to art. Vasari owns that M. Angelo, conscious of his want of practice, endeavoured to escape from the commission, and even proposed Raffaello as fitter for the task; but his powers soon supplied what circumstances had refused, and single conquered with every obstacle Time itself; for, nearly fabulous to relate, the whole, though interrupted more than once by the Pontiff's impatience, was sufficiently finished to be exhibited to the public in one year and ten months.
This task finished, M. Angelo, eager to resume his labours on the monument, was disappointed by the sudden death of Giulio, (1513,) and the election of Leo X. produced a total change in his situation; he was ordered to Florence to construct the front of the Laurentian Library.
Though the death of Leo, or rather the accession of Adrian VI. had paralysed art, Michael Angelo employed the dull interim by adding some statues to the monument of Giulio; till, in 1523, Clemente VII. reappointed him to the superintendence of the new sacristy and library of S. Lorenzo. It was about this time that he finished and sent to Rome the statue of Christ, still placed in the Minerva.
The arts received a new shock from the sack of Rome, 1527, and the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, at which crisis the Signoria conferred on Michael Angelo, who was a warm Republican,73 the superintendence of the fortifications and the defence of Monte Miniato, on which the safety of the city depended. Meanwhile what time he could save from his public trust, he secretly74 employed to finish or advance the symbolic and monumental statues of S. Lorenzo, and from the cartoon to paint in distemper a Leda for the Duke of Ferrara. Finding, however, that no defence could save the city, he saved himself by the secret paths of S. Miniato, and escaped to Venice, 1529; from whence he only returned to find the dominion of the Medici once more established, himself pardoned, again employed by Clemente at S. Lorenzo, and soon after sent for to Rome on a plan of painting two central frescoes, the Last Judgement and the Fall of Lucifer, for the Sistine Chapel, – long favourite ideas of the artist,75 but with the works at Florence for that time checked by the death of Clemente, 1534. He now with redoubled ardour applied to the monument of Giulio, urged by his devotion to the house of De Rovere, the considerable pecuniary advance he had received, and the threats of the executors and the Duke of Urbino; but the accession of Paul III. again frustrated his exertions: the Pontiff resolved to have the exclusive boast of powers he had so long admired, interposed his authority, and obliged the executors and agents of the Duke to give up the original circumambient plan, and content themselves with the storied front which exists now.
This adjusted, Michael Angelo immediately proceeded to comply with the wishes of the Pope: if Paolo was inferior to Giulio in impetuosity, he was his equal in fervour of attachment to art, and excelled him, if not every other name which patronage has distinguished, in personal respect and public homage to the artist. No work ever received countenance and honours equal to those conferred on the Last Judgement of Michael Angelo, from its plan to its ultimate finish by Paolo Farnese. His first visit to the artist was attended by a train of ten cardinals:76 though ambitious to have the work consecrated to his own name, in deference to Michael Angelo's attachment to the memory of Giulio, he submitted to his refusal of displacing the arms of De Rovere at the top of the picture, in favour of the Farnesian.77 Induced by the specious sophistry of Sebastian del Piombo to prefer oil to fresco in the execution of the work, he permitted the wall to be prepared for that purpose, but on Michael Angelo's declaring oil painting an art for women only and sedentary tameness, he yielded to the decision, and patiently saw the whole apparatus dashed to the ground. When, before its final disclosure to the public, he took a private view of the whole composition at the Chapel, less convinced than irritated by the bigoted philippic of an attendant prelate against the daring display of immodest nudity, he acquiesced in the artist's well-known revenge, and refused to revoke or mitigate the punishment inflicted on the unlucky critic.78
The first conception of the Last Judgement, which completes the plan originally laid down for the decoration of the Chapel, notwithstanding the obstacles which protracted the execution, must find its date in the Pontificate of Giulio, from the Cartoons probably begun under Clemente. M. Angelo proceeded to the fresco itself at an early period, if not immediately after the accession of Paolo, 1534, and finished it in 1541, or perhaps 1542; for both these years are mentioned by Vasari; who, if not present at the removal of the scaffolding, attended its immediate display to the public. The completion of this 'multitudinous' work, M. Angelo, at an age of 68, or somewhat beyond, might justly consider as the consummation of his public career in painting: but the Pontiff, still ambitious to possess exclusive specimens of his powers in a fabric built by his own orders and consecrated to his own name, obliged him to continue his labours in two huge frescoes of the Capella Paolina, representing the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter. The lassitude inseparable from the waste of so much energy on the Last Judgement, the mental and bodily fatigue attendant on the arrangement and execution of new plans, if less enormous less congenial, protracted their ultimate completion to his 75th year, proved them children of necessity rather than choice, and confirmed the truth of his observation to Vasari, that painting in fresco, the union of powers required for a great public work, is not an art of old age.
