The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 3 (of 3)

The remaining scholars of this school, Paul Domenico Finoglia, Giacinto de' Popoli, and Giuseppe Marullo, all three of Orta, – Andrea Malinconico, and Bernardo Cavallino, were, if we except the last, with more or less felicity, imitators of their master. Cavallino, more original, is said to have provoked the jealousy of Massimo, who advised him to paint in small: this ought to be admitted with hesitation, for it is difficult to believe, that he who feels himself made for the grand, could be persuaded to waste his life on trifles.

Another convert to the Caracci School, was Andrea Vaccaro,123 the friend and competitor of Massimo, a man made for imitation, says Lanzi, and says too much; for, if he had no equal in that of Caravaggio, he was, when imitating Guido, inferior to Massimo: nor did he, till after the demise of Stanzioni, acquire that supremacy at Naples which remained undisputed till the arrival of Giordano, young, vigorous, and fraught with the novel style of Pietro Beretini. Both concurred for the great altar-piece of Sta. Maria del Pianto, both presented their sketches, and Vaccaro obtained preference by the verdict of Pietro da Cortona himself, who declared him equally superior in experience and correctness of style to his own scholar; but, when contending with Giordano in fresco, to which he had not been trained by early practice, Vaccaro lost the honours he had gained. The best of his school was Giacomo Farelli, whom Luca found no contemptible antagonist: had he been content to follow the style of his master, without aspiring at that of Domenichino, for which he was unfit, he might have deserved the historian's notice for more than one picture.

On the School of Domenichino, the Sicilians, Pietro, Giacomo, and Teresa del Po, cannot confer much honour. The father had more theory than practice, the son less evidence than ostentation, the daughter shone in miniature. Nearer to the master, both in style and temper, was Francesco di Maria: correct, slow, irresolute, author of few but eminent works, especially the subjects relative to S. Lawrence, at the Conventuals of Naples. He excelled in portraits, one of which, exhibited at Rome with one of Vandyk and another by Rubens, was, by Poussin, Cortona, and Sacchi, preferred to both. He often has been mistaken for his master, and commands high prices: the want of grace alone betrays him – of grace Nature had not been liberal to Francesco. Hence he became the proverb of Giordano, "that sickening over bone and muscle, he rendered beauty tame." He, in retort, held up Giordano's style as heresy in art, a flowery medley of incoherent charms.

Though the reputed master, Lanfranco was not the model of Massimo; his principal imitator was Giambatista Benaschi, or Bernaschi, numbered with Roman artists by Orlandi, but who fixed his residence at Naples, and opened a numerous school; a decided machinist, but with a grasp of fancy which never suffered him to repeat a figure in the same attitude. His points of sight from below upward, are correct, and his foreshortenings dextrously contrived. None ever approached a master nearer, and forsook him with less success.

Guercino never saw Naples, but Mattia Preti,124 commonly called Calabrese, smit with his novel style, went to study it at Cento; not indeed exclusively, for no Italian school escaped the attention of Preti. Unpractised in colour to his twenty-sixth year, he attended solely to design, less to form beauty or trace characters of delicacy, than to express robust and energetic ones: in such he often succeeded, but sometimes sunk to heaviness. His colour resembled his line, not soft and airy, but dense, cut into masses of chiaroscuro, and with a general tone of ashy hues, tints of sorrow, contrition, anguish, the favourite topics of his pencil. The frescoes of Calabrese at Modena, Naples, Malta, have a stamp of grandeur. At Rome, in S. Andrea della Valle, he appears to less advantage, too enormous for the place, and too ponderous at the side of Domenichino. Italy is filled with his oil pictures, for his life was long, his hand rapid, and every place he visited, a scene of exercise: what he painted for galleries consisted commonly of half figures, like those of Guercino. He long, and nearly alone, contested the field with Giordano, to whose captivating airiness his weight was at last forced to yield. He retired and died in Malta, a Knight of its order, without leaving a pupil who rose above mediocrity.

After this survey of the Bolognese School at Naples, the native one of Ribera claims attention. None ever swore more implicitly to a master's dictates: the energy of his style absorbed their eye, the atrocity of his character too often debauched their hearts. Inferiority alone discriminates the works of Giovanni Do and Bartolommeo Passante from those of Spagnoletto; though, in the advance of life, the first attempted to tinge with less vulgarity, and the second now and then affected a more select outline. Francesco Fracanzani had a certain grandeur of execution and bloom of colour: his "Transito," or Death of St. Joseph, at the Pellegrini, is among the first pictures of the city. But, by the pressure of poverty, he first became a dauber, then a criminal, and received sentence of death, which respect for his profession, from the public ignominy of the halter, mitigated to secret execution by poison.

Aniello Falcone125 and Salvator Rosa, who is to be mentioned more at large elsewhere, are the greatest boast of this school, though Rosa frequented it for a short time only, and chiefly profited by the instruction of Falcone. The strength of Falcone lay in battles, which he painted in all dimensions, from the Sacred books, history, or poems. Countenance, arms, dresses were in unison with the national character of the combatants. His expression was vivid, the figures and movements of his horses select and natural, and his tactics correct, though he had neither served in, nor seen a battle. He drew with precision, everywhere consulted the life, and laid his colour on with equal strength and finish. That he instructed Borgognone is not probable. Baldinucci, who published the Memoirs of that Jesuit, is silent on that head; but they knew and esteemed each other. He had a numerous set of scholars, and with them, and the assistance of some other painters, contrived to revenge the murder of some relative and of a pupil assassinated by the presidial Spaniards: for, at the revolutionary hubbub of Maso Aniello, he and his gang formed themselves into a troop, which they called "the Company of Death," and, protected by Ribera, who palliated their proceedings at court, spread horrid massacre, till, scared by the return of order, this band of homicides dispersed, and sought their safety in flight. Falcone himself retired for some years to France, which has many of his works; the rest escaped to Rome, or sought the usual asylums of revenge and murder.

A numerous set of various but inferior artists, in power and pursuit, fills the remaining period of this epoch and the Neapolitan catalogues of art: the best of these issued from the desperate School of Falcone, to whose method they adhered in all their diverging branches. Of these Domenico Gargiuoli, nicknamed Micco Spadaro, a character as fierce as pliant, leads the van – no contemptible figurist in large, but of endless combination in groups of small proportion. The perspectives of Viviano Codagora, his sworn brother, receive an exclusive lustre from his figures. The battles of their fellow scholar, Carlo Coppola, might sometimes be mistaken for those of Falcone, had he given less fulness to his horses. Paolo Porpora left battles to paint quadrupeds, but chiefly and best, fish and sea-shells: in fruit and flowers he was far surpassed by Abraham Brueghel, who at that time had settled at Naples. Giuseppe Recco and Andrea Belvedere, from the same school, excelled in game and birds; and the last still more in flowers and fruit, so as to contest superiority in that branch with Giordano, asserting that no figurist could reach the polish, or give the finish required in minute objects. Luca maintained, that the more implies the less, and, composing a picture of game, fruit, and flowers, gave it such an air of illusion, that Andrea, shrinking from his presence crestfallen, retired among the literati of the day, of whom he was not the least.

After the middle of the seventeenth century, the revolutionary style of Luca Giordano126 reversed every preceding principle, and, by the suavity of its ornamental magic, enchanted the public taste. A vast, resolute, creative, talent attended him from infancy: in his eighth year he is said to have painted, and not for the first time in fresco, two infant angels, for the church of Sta. Maria La Nuova.127 Struck with wonder, the Vice Rè Duke Medina de Las Torres placed him with Ribera, whose principles he studied for some time, but, aspiring to a more ample theatre of art, escaped to Rome, followed by his father, Antonio, a weak artist, but an unceasing monitor, and the more relentless because he placed all his hopes on the rapid success of his son. To insure it, he did not, if we believe one writer, suffer Luca to intermit his labours by regular meals, but fed him whilst at work, as birds their callow young, perpetually chirping into his ear, Luca, dispatch!128– Luca, dispatch! repeated his fellow-students, till the joke became nickname, by which he is oftener distinguished than by his own.

So brutal a method would have excited in a mind less vigorous nothing but weariness and despondency, but to the combining spirit of Luca gave with portentous velocity of hand the rudiments of that varied power, which, to a degree of deception, taught him to imitate the predominant air of every master's style in line and colour, which he was set or chose to copy,129 and he had in nearly endless repetition, copied the best of what Rome possessed of its own, the Lombard, Venetian, and foreign schools, when he entered that of Pietro da Cortona, whose wide-extended and ostentatious plans met most congenially his own.

No single master's manner did he, however, exclusively adopt. His first works exhibit the pupil of Ribera, with evident aims at the energy of that style; his subsequent and best manner is marked by the beauties and the faults of Pietro da Cortona, the same contrast of composition, the same masses of light, with equal monotony of expression, which in female features was often supplied by his wife; a predilection for the ornamental splendour of Paolo Veronese distinguishes with less advantage a third class of his works – in this, stuffs are mixed with draperies, the tints are less vigorous, the chiaroscuro less decided, the execution heavier. It has been observed, that his works, when compared with the finished masterpieces of the classic schools, are little better than embryos, that he carried nothing to perfection, and that the delusive power alone, by which he united a number of jarring parts in one pleasing whole, can save him from sinking to the mediocrity which overwhelmed his imitators. But it ought likewise to be considered, what was the object of his exertions, and the end which he pursued; – they were, by conquering the eye, to become the favourite of the public, and he was made for both. Others see by degrees, arrange, reject, select; – into the fancy of Giordano, the subject with its parts showered at once; the picture stood complete before him. In colour, little solicitous about the dictates of art, or the real hues of Nature, he created an ideal and arbitrary tone, which represented the air of things without diving into their substance, and, content with absolute dominion over the eye, left it to others to inform the mind. If his method was compendiary; none ever knew better how to improve an accident to a beauty, and give to the random strokes of haste the look of deliberate practice. That he knew the laws of design, we know, but debauched by facility and the rage of gain, neglected the toil of correctness: hence likewise the superficial manner in which he often laid on his colours, diluted, unembodied, and unable to retain the fugitive imagery of his pencil.

Naples is full of Giordano – few, if any in so vast a metropolis, are the churches that want his hand. In that of the P.P. Girolamini, the Expulsion of the Venders is one of his most admired works; but the best of his frescoes, in which he seems to have concentrated his powers, are those in the treasury of the Certosa. The cupola of S. Brigida, rapidly painted in competition with Francesco di Maria, exhibits the first specimens of that flattering tone which baffled the learning of his rival, intoxicated the vulgar, and corrupted the growing taste. The admired picture of St. Xavier, of copious composition and the most seductive colour, was the work of one day and a half. Among the public and private paintings at Florence, the chapel Corsini and the gallery Riccardi are by the hand of Luca; nor was he unemployed by the Sovereign; and Cosmo III., in whose presence he invented and coloured a large composition with momentary velocity, declared him a painter formed for princes. He obtained the same praise from Charles II. of Spain, whom he served for thirteen years, but from the multitude of his works might be supposed to have served during a long life. There he continued the series of pictures begun by Cambiasi, in the church of the Escurial, on the most extensive plan, but inferior in style and execution to the frescoes of Buon-Ritiro. Of his oil pictures, that of the Nativity, for the Queen Mother, has shared unlimited praise, as combining with superior felicity of execution, a research and a depth of study seldom found in his other works.

Grown old, he returned to Naples, loaded with riches and honours, and soon after died, regretted as the first painter of his time.

Though Giordano did not propose his process as a model of imitation to his scholars, it may easily be guessed that his success made a deeper impression on them than his precepts, and that without previously submitting to the labours of his education, they attempted to snatch with the charms the profits of his manner. Hence a swarm of bold craftsmen and mannerists was let loose upon the public, who with gay mediocrity overwhelmed what yet was left of principles in art. Of these, his favourites were Aniello Rossi, and Matteo Pacelli, who accompanied him to Spain, returned well pensioned, and continued to live in obscure ease. Niccolo Rossi, Giuseppe Simonelli, Andrea Miglionico and Ramondo de Dominici, came nearer their master; and the Spaniard Franceschitto, as he had raised the hopes, might have excited the jealousy of Luca, had he not been intercepted by death. He left a specimen of his powers in the picture of S. Pasquale, at Sta. Maria del Monte.

But the best of his pupils, and heir of his dispatch, was Paolo de' Matteis, a name that ranks with the foremost of that day, not unknown to France or Rome; his chief abode was, however, Naples, where his frescoes are spread over churches, galleries, halls and ceilings; if unequal to those of his master in merit, nearly always produced with equal speed. It was his unexampled vaunt to have painted the enormous Cupola del Gesù Nuovo in sixty-six days, a boast which Solimene checked with the cool reply, that the work told its own tale without assistance: and yet it possesses beauties, especially in the parts that imitate Lanfranco, which excite wonder, considering the fury of execution. Nor, if he chose to work with previous study and with diligence, as in the church of the 'Pii Operai,' in the gallery Matatona, and in many private pictures, was he destitute of composition, grace of outline, or beauty of countenance, though little varied. His colour at the onset was Giordanesque; in the sequel he increased the force of his chiaroscuro, though not without delicate gradation of tints: particularly in Madonnas and Infants, which give an idea of Albano's suavity, and the Roman style. A school more numerous than distinguished by talent, contributes little to his celebrity.

Francesco Solimene,130 called "L'Abate Ciccio," born at Nocera de' Pagani, took the elements of art from his father Angelo, formerly a pupil of Massimo, and went to Naples. He successively frequented the schools of Francesco di Maria and of Giac. del Po, and left both to follow his own inclination, which at first exclusively led him to imitate the style of Pietro da Cortona, and even to adopt his figures. He next formed a manner which, of all others, approached next to Preti; the design, indeed, is less exact, the colour less true, but the faces handsomer, now in imitation of Guido, then nearer to Maratta, and often picked from life: hence the byname of "the Gentler Calabrese."131 To Preti he joined Lanfranco, whom he surnamed the "Master," and from him borrowed and exaggerated that serpentine sweep of composition: his chiaroscuro, balanced between both, lost some of its vigour and became softer with the advance of life. He drew and revised his forms from Nature with much accuracy before he painted, but often sacrificed his outline to the fire of execution in the process. The facility and elegance which distinguish him in poetry, mark his invention in painting, to no branch of which he could be called a stranger, and might have excelled singly in each. His works are scattered over Europe, for he lived to the age of ninety, and yielded in velocity of hand to Giordano only, his competitor and friend, at whose demise he succeeded to the Primacy of taste.

Of the public works that most distinguish Solimene, are the stories of the sacristy in S. Paolo Maggiore de' P.P. Teatini, nor less the pictures substituted for those of Giacomo del Po on the arches of the Chapels in the Church de' S.S. Apostoli. Specimens of his high finish may be seen in the Chapel of S. Filippo in the Church dell' Oratorio; he painted the principal altar-piece of the Nuns di "S. Gaudioso," and the four large histories in the choir of the church at Monte Cassino. Of private works, the gallery of Sanfelice is the most conspicuous at Naples; at Rome, some stories in the Albani and Colonna palaces; and at Macerata, in the Buonacorsi collection, among several mythologic subjects, the Death of Dido, a picture of large dimensions and striking effect. In the refectory of the Conventuals of Assisi, the Last Supper of our Lord, a polished performance, is by his hand.

Of that most numerous band of pupils whom he let loose upon the public, the most celebrated was, no doubt, Sebastiano Conca, a native of Gaeta, generally classed with the Roman school, for Rome became his residence and the theatre of his talent. After having served a pupilage of sixteen years under Solimene, and persevered in the practice of that style for several years at Rome, he ominously proved the futility of attempting at an advanced period to escape from the tyranny of early habits. At forty he dared to leave his brushes, became once more a student, and spent five years in drawing after the antique and the masters of design: but his hand and eye, debauched by manner, refused to obey his mind, till, wearied by hopeless fatigue, he followed the advice of the sculptor Le Gros, and returned to his former practice, though not without considerable improvements, and nearer to Pietro da Cortona than to his master. Conca had fertile brains, a rapid pencil, and a colour which at first sight fascinated every eye by its splendour, contrast, and the delicacy of its flesh-tints. His dispatch in fresco and in oil was equal to his employment, and there is scarcely a collection of any consequence without its Conca. He was courted by sovereigns and princes, and Pope Clement XI. ennobled him at a full assembly of the academicians of St. Luke. He was assisted in his labours by his brother Giovanni, a man of similar taste, but less power, and an excellent copyist. The maxims of Conca are considered132 as having completed the ruin of art; but every school had its own canker, and his influence did not extend to all. Without deviating into a catalogue of mediocrity, it may be sufficient to name three of his principal scholars, Gaetano Lapis of Cagli, Salvator Monosilio, a Messinese, and Gaspero Serenari, a Palermitan. Lapis had too much originality of conception and too much solidity of taste to adopt the flowery style of his master. The public works he left at home, and the Birth of Venus in a ceiling of the Borghese Palace, as correct as graceful, deserved and would have attained more celebrity, had not self-contempt and diffidence intercepted the fortune which his talent might have commanded. The two Sicilians, complete machinists, shared with the imitation the success of their master.

Next to Conca, the most successful pupil of Solimene was Francesco de Mura, surnamed Franceschiello, born at Naples and greatly employed in its churches and private galleries: the works, however, to which he owes most of his celebrity, were the frescoes painted in various apartments of the royal palace at Torino, in competition with Claudio Beaumont, who was then at the height of his vigour. Mura ornamented the ceiling of some rooms, chiefly filled with Flemish pictures, with subjects widely different, Olympic games, and actions of Achilles.

Corrado Giaquinto of Molfetta, may conclude what yet deserves to be recorded of this school. He too left Naples, came to Rome, and attached himself to Conca, whose maxims he made nearly all his own; as resolute, as easy, but less correct. Rome, Macerata, and other parts of the Roman state, are acquainted with his works. He painted in Piemont, was employed by Charles III. in Spain, appointed Director of the Academy of S. Fernando, pleased and continued to please the greater part of the public, even after the arrival of A.R. Mengs.

THE SCHOOL OF VENICE

The conquests, commerce and possessions of Venice in the Levant, and thence its uninterrupted intercourse with the Greeks, give probability to the conjecture, that Venetian art drew its origin from the same source, and that the first institution of a company, or, as it is there called, a School (Schola) of Painters, may be dated up to the Greek artists who took refuge at Venice from the fury of the Iconoclasts at Constantinople. The choice of its Patron, which was not St. Luke, but Sta. Sophia, the patroness of the first temple at that time, and prototype of St. Mark's, distinguishes it from the rest of the Italian Schools. Anchona, the vulgar name of a picture in the technic language, the statutes,133 and documents of those times, is evidently a depravation of the Greek Eikon. The school itself is of considerable antiquity; its archives contain regulations and laws made in 1290, which refer to anterior ones; and though not yet separated from the mass of artisans, its members began to enjoy privileges of their own.

In various cities of the Venetian State we meet with vestiges of art anterior in date134 to the relics of painting and mosaic in the metropolis, which prove that it survived the general wreck of society here, as in other parts of Italy. Of the oldest Venetian monuments, Zanetti has given a detailed account, with shrewd critical conjectures on their chronology; though all attempts to discriminate the nearly imperceptible progress of art in a mass of works equally marked by dull servility, must prove little better than nugatory; for it does not appear that Theophilus of Byzantium, who publicly taught the art at Venice about 1200, or his Scholar Gelasio135, had availed themselves of the improvements made in form, twenty years before, by Joachim the Abbot, in a picture of Christ. Nor can the notice of Vasari, who informs us that Andrea Tafi repaired to Venice to profit by the instructions of Apollonios in mosaic, prove more than that, from the rivalship of Greek mechanics, that branch of art was handled with greater dexterity there than at Florence, to which place he was, on his return, accompanied by Apollonios. The same torpor of mind continued to characterise the succeeding artists till the first years of the fourteenth century, and the appearance of Giotto, who, on his return from Avignon 1316, by his labours at Padua, Verona, and elsewhere in the state, threw the first effectual seeds of art, and gave the first impulse to Venetian energy and emulation136 by superior example.

He was succeeded by Giusto, surnamed of Padova, from residence and city rights, but else a Florentine and of the Menabuoi. To Padovano, Vasari ascribes the vast work of the church of St. John the Baptist; incidents of whose life were expressed on the altar-piece. The walls Giusto spread with gospel history and mysteries of the Apocalypse, and on the Cupola a glory filled with a consistory of saints in various attire: simple ideas, but executed with incredible felicity and diligence. The names 'Joannes & Antonius de Padova,' formerly placed over one of the doors, as an ancient MS. pretends, related probably to some companions of Giusto, fellow pupils of Giotto, and show the unmixed prevalence of his style, to which Florence itself had not adhered with more scrupulous submission, beyond the middle of the century, and the less bigoted imitation of Guarsiento, a Padovan of great name at that period, and the leader of Ridolfi's history. He received commissions of importance from the Venetian senate, and the remains of his labours in fresco and on panel at Bassano and at the Eremitani of Padova, confirm the judgment of Zanetti, that he had invention, spirit, and taste, and without those remnants of Greek barbarity which that critic pretends to discover in his style.