Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/96

FRANCIA—FRANCIABIGIO. 65 head, and a more powerful objective tnith of representation. He also ma- naged his accessories with great ability : his landscape backgrounds are unusu- ally excellent. Francia is the greatest painter of the earlier School of Bologna, and probably in execution the most perfect of all the quattrocento masters. Tfia works are individual in their style of form, but in admirable taste, indicat- ing considerable power of generalisa- tion; and in colour, exactiy in that degree in which he is less positive, he is superior to the Venetians. Francia is the best exponent of that style termed Antico-modemo by Lanzi, in contradistinction to the fully-developed style of the cinquecento as exemplified in the works of Baphael, Titian, Cor- reggio, and other great masters of the sixteenth century. Francia was accord- ingly necessarily a fine portrait-painter. The excellent head of a meditative youth in the Louvre, long ascribed to Raphael, is now more appropriately at- tributed to Francia. His altar-pieces, equally highly finished, are of larger dimensions than those usually painted by Bellini and Perugino, and perhaps in eveiy respect show a more advanced state of art. Francia's son Giacomo was also an able painter : he imitated his father's style, and the works of the son have been not unfrequentiy con- founded with those of the father, from Malvasia downwards. Giacomo died in 1657. Francia's second son Giulio was likewise a painter, but he is only known as his brother's assistant. Bo- logna still possesses several works by Giacomo. Francia surpassed even Squarcione in the number of his scholars; they exceeded 200. Yasari relates that Francia died in conse- quence of finding himself so greatiy surpassed by the young Baphael, who had consigned to Francia his picture of St. Cecilia, destined for one of the ahurches of Bologna. The dates agree sufficiently, but the inference approaches the absurd : Kaphael and Francia were Mends; Francia knew the great powers of Baphael well; and it cer- tainly requires no extraordinary cir- cumstance to account for the death of a man close upon his seventieth year. Works. Bologna, Gallery of the Academy, the Madonna enthroned with Saints (1490) ; the Annunciation ; the Nativity, <fec. : San Giacomo Maggiore (altar-piece of the Bentivoglio chapel), Madonna enthroned, with four Saints and Angels. In the lunettes of the chapel, frescoes : St Cecilia, scene from the Life of that Saint. Florence, XJffizj, portrait of Evangelistade' Scappi. Mu- nich, Boyal Gallery, the Madoifna and Child ; and the infant Christ lying in a Garden of Boses, his Mother adorning him : Leuchtenberg Galleiy, Madonna and Child, St. Barbara, and St. Do- menic. Berlin Gallery, a Fieta; and four other sacred subjects. London, National Gallery, the Virgin with the infant Christ, and St. Anne, enthroned, surrounded by Saints ; and the Virgin and two Angels weeping over the Dead body of Christ ; a Fiet^, lunette of the preceding. {Vasari, Malvasia, Calvi,) FBANCLA.BIGIO, Marcantonio, b. at Florence, 1488, d, 1524. Tuscan School. He was the scholar of Alber- tineUi, and the friend and companion of Andrea del Sarto ; he completed his frescoes in the Scalzo. Vasari praises him for hid knowledge of anatomy and perspective, and also for softness and harmony of colouring, and expresses the extreme opinion that he surpassed all his contemporaries as a fresco- painter. He painted in competition with Andrea, in the court of the Annunziata, and represented, in fresco, the Marriage of the Virgin ; but the monks having uncovered this work before its completion, the in- censed painter struck the fresco seve- ral blows with a hammer, iii^uring the