Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/813

PAINTING 799 in color. Aside from portraiture, in which he had no rival, he was perhaps greatest in his representations of the nude female form. Among his contemporaries or imitators were Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone, who is thought to have rivalled Titian as a color- ist, Palma Vecchio, Paride Bordone, Andrea Schiavone, and Alessandro Bonvicino, called II Moretto di Brescia. In the latter half of the century flourished three other painters scarce- ly less illustrious than Titian, viz., Jacopo Ro- busti, called Tintoretto, Paolo Cagliari, called Veronese, and Giacomo da Ponte, called Bas- sano ; the first one of the most vigorous and rapid of painters, but unequal in his perform- ances; the second a consummate master of color, delighting in scenes of festive pomp and splendor, with rich costumes and architecture ; and the third the t earliest and one of the best of the Italian painters of genre. The true Ve- netian style of these masters deteriorated in the hands of their successors, and the subse- quent history of the school is unmarked by a single great name, though artists of merit were not uncommon. Intimately connected with the history of the early Venetian school was that of Padua, to which a fresh impulse was given in the first half of the 15th century by Fran- cesco Squarcione, whose collection of drawings and casts from the antique greatly promoted the cultivation of form, and influenced the art throughout northern Italy. Jacopo Bellini of Venice acquired there his peculiar dry man- ner, and Andrea Mantegna, the greatest painter that had appeared in the north of Italy up to the middle of the 15th century, was its most eminent pupil. The latter, distinguished for his severely classic and statuesque design, found- ed the Mantuan school, which produced many of the most famous painters of Lombardy. The Roman school may be said to have sprung directly from the Umbrian, so called from the ancient district of Umbria, within the limits of which its artists practised their vocation. The region was secluded and the inhabitants remarkable for religious enthusiasm; whence perhaps the severe, ascetic style of its early painters. The most distinguished among these were Pietro Cavalliui, Gentile da Fabriano (whose style Michel Angelo declared was like his name, gentile), and Piero della Francesca, after whom came Pietro Perugino, by far the best painter of his school up to his time, and whose style, though wanting in vigor, was dis- tinguished by naivete, grace, and tenderness of expression. His pupils were numerous, inclu- ding Pinturicchio, Andrea Luigi, called L'ln- gegno, and above all Raphael (Raffaelle San- zio d'Urbino), whose fame has overshadowed the rest. He has been described as " the first of painters, for moral force in allegory and history unrivalled ; for fidelity in portrait un- surpassed ; who has never been approached in propriety of invention, composition, or ex- pression ; who is almost without a rival in de- sign ; and in sublimity and grandeur inferior 028 VOL. xii. 51 to Michel Angelo alone." In separate qualities he may have been equalled by some contempo- rary painters, and in color, which he regarded as a means and not an end in painting, he was inferior to the Venetians ; but his frescoes in the Vatican, his Madonnas and holy families, his great altarpieces, and his cartoons never- theless represent the highest efforts of modern art, and have made his style not that of Rome alone, but of the world. Raphael had nu- merous pupils, who imitated him, and some of whom assisted him in the execution of his fres- .coes. But after his death (1520) most of those who had original genius deviated into exagger- ations and insipidities, and soon lost all traces of the noble grace and power of their master. The sack of Rome by the constable de Bour- bon in 1527 caused the dispersion of his fol- lowers then in the city, who carried into all parts of Italy a spurious style, miscalled the " Raphaelesque." His best pupils were Giu- lio Romano, the most distinguished of all for original power, but of a far lower order of mind than his master ; Gian Francesco Penni, called II Fattore ; Perino del Vaga ; Giovanni da Udine ; Polidoro da Caravaggio ; Pellegrino da Modena; Bartolommeo Ramenghi, called Bagnacavallo ; and Benvenuto Tisi, called II Garofalo. Primaticcio, Nicol6 dell' Abbate, and Tibaldi also acquired the Roman style of Raphael, which they carried into France and Spain. The execution by Michel Angelo of the " Last Judgment " in the Sistine chapel in 1541 produced a crowd of feeble imitators of his style ; after whom came Giuseppe Cesari d'Ar- pino and Michel Angelo Caravaggio, the for- mer representing the machinisti and the lat- ter the tenelrosi or naturalist^ whose style, though not deficient in power, was founded on mere natural imitation, and was characterized by coarseness and vulgarity. These were suc- ceeded by the Carracci and their followers, who flourished during the 17th century; and in the 18th the history of the art closes with Andrea Sacchi, Carlo Maratti, and Raphael Mengs, the first a painter of merit, the last two academic and mannered. The Bolognese school, though claiming to share with those of Tuscany, Rome, and Venice the honor of bringing about the revival of painting, pre- sents no name of great importance until the close of the 15th century, when Francesco Francia, a painter of genuine religious senti- ment, and the friend of Raphael, flourished. His influence was only temporary, and it was not until about 1585 that the school witnessed its most brilliant epoch in the establishment by Ludovico, Agostino, and Annibale Carracci of their celebrated academy, called, from the principles on which it was conducted, the ec- lectic school of Bologna, and the fundamen- tal idea of which was to combine the closest study of nature with the imitation of the best qualities of the old masters. The Carracci and their chief pupils, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Lanfranco, Albani, and Guercino, extended