The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Louvre: Fifty Plates in Colour, by Paul G. (Paul George) Konody and Maurice W. Brockwell, Edited by T. Leman Hare

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/louvrefiftyplate00konorich

PLATE IV.—LEONARDO DA VINCI
(1452–1519)
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
No. 1601.—PORTRAIT OF MONA LISA
(La Joconde)

The portrait of Lisa di Anton Maria di Noldo Gherardini, third wife of Francesco di Bartolommeo de Zenobi del Giocondo. She is seated in a chair on which her left arm rests, her right hand superposed on the left. She is turned three-quarters to her right. Her hair, divided in the centre and seen under a transparent veil, falls in curls on her shoulders; her dark almond-shaped eyes look out at the spectator; the mouth is smiling. She wears a dark-green dress with golden-brown sleeves; a dark cloak is draped over her shoulders. The background is formed by a mountainous landscape full of incident.
Painted in tempera on panel, and restored in oil.
2 ft. 6½ in. × 1 ft. 9 in. (0·79 × 0·53.)

THE LOUVRE:
FIFTY PLATES IN COLOUR

By PAUL G. KONODY

AND

MAURICE W. BROCKWELL

JOINT-AUTHORS OF “THE NATIONAL GALLERY: ONE HUNDRED PLATES IN COLOUR”

Editor: T. LEMAN HARE

NEW YORK
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY
214–220 EAST 23RD STREET

PREFACE

THOSE who wish to make a thorough, comprehensive, and systematic study of the pictures of the great national collection contained in the Louvre, which extend from the early years of the fourteenth century down to almost the present day, will be well advised to deal with the artists by the countries, schools, and periods to which they belong. That is the scheme which we have followed here.

We do not hesitate to refer to painters, especially those of the Italian schools, under the names by which they are generally known to modern critics, as opposed to those under which they are officially catalogued by the Louvre authorities. Thus, Raphael, Titian, and Giulio Romano, and not Santi, Vecelli, and Pippi, are the names which we shall use in this book. Special attention is drawn to the fact that the official attributions of a certain number of the pictures, mainly of the Italian schools, and notably several by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian, are not accepted by us.

The authors of any critical book on a large national collection which includes several hundred Italian paintings of varying importance must of necessity be under heavy obligations to Mr. Berenson, whose scholarly, scientific, and constructive criticism, following on that of Morelli, has entirely revolutionised the study of Italian art.

It will be noticed that in many instances the dates used in these pages do not coincide with those given in the official Catalogues and repeated in a large number of text-books, while in a few cases it has been thought desirable to draw the attention of the student to the questionable accuracy of some of the titles and “pedigrees.”

The illustrations which have been selected represent, as far as possible, the whole range of the art of each country and school comprised within the limits of the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The Plates are arranged in the order in which reference is made to them in the text, but it has been found impossible to place them opposite the pages on which the critical remarks are given.

In the descriptions of the pictures the terms right and left are used in reference to the right and left of the spectator, unless the text obviously implies the contrary. Moreover, in the titles of pictures containing the Madonna and several Saints, the names of the Saints are given in the order they occupy in the composition regarded from left to right. The titles we have used are descriptive rather than mere translations of those contained in the official Catalogue. The official numbers are those marked in large figures and placed at the top of the frames; the numbers in small figures affixed to the bottom left corner of some of the frames are obsolete.

The surface measures of the pictures are for convenience given in feet and inches as well as in metres, the height preceding the width. The technical conditions as to panel or canvas and tempera or oil are also noted.

Most of the Rooms containing pictures are open:—

  1. On Sundays all the year round, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  2. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from April 1 to September 30, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
  3. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from October 1 to March 31, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  4. On Thursdays in the Summer Months, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and in the Winter Months, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
  5. Rooms IX.–XIII., which contain French pictures and Rooms XIX.–XXXV., which contain Flemish and Dutch pictures are not open before eleven o’clock.
  6. The Louvre is closed on Mondays all the year round, and on January 1, July 14, and Ascension Day; it is also closed on the Feast of the Assumption (August 15), All Saints Day (November 1), and Christmas Day, unless these last three days fall on a Sunday.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NO. ITALIAN SCHOOLS PLATE
1601 LEONARDO DA VINCI—
Portrait of Mona Lisa La Joconde [IV]
1383 SIMONE MARTINI—
Christ Bearing His Cross [I]
1344 FRA FILIPPO LIPPI—
Madonna and Child, with Angels, and Two Abbots [II]
1322 DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO—
Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandson
(“The Bottle-nosed Man”) 		[III]
1297 BOTTICELLI—
Giovanna Degli Albizzi and the Three Graces [V]
1566a PERUGINO—
St. Sebastian [VI]
1496 RAPHAEL—
La Belle Jardinière [VII]
1505 RAPHAEL—
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione [VIII]
1134 ANTONELLO DA MESSINA—
Portrait of a Condottiere [IX]
1136 GIORGIONE—
Pastoral Symphony [X]
1399 PALMA VECCHIO—
The Adoration of the Shepherds, with a Female Donor [XI]
1592 TITIAN—
The Man with a Glove [XII]
1584 TITIAN—
The Entombment [XIII]
1375 ANDREA MANTEGNA—
Parnassus [XIV]
1117 CORREGGIO—
The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine [XV]
FLEMISH SCHOOL
1986 JAN VAN EYCK—
The Virgin and Child, and the Chancellor Rolin [XVI]
[1] HANS MEMLINC—
Portrait of an Old Lady [XVII]
1957 GERARD DAVID—
The Marriage at Cana [XVIII]
2029 QUENTIN MATSYS-
The Banker and his Wife [XIX]
1997 JAN MABUSE—
Portrait of Jean Carondelet [XX]
2093 RUBENS—
Henry IV. leaves for the Wars [XXI]
2113 RUBENS—
Portrait of Hélène Fourment and two of her Children [XXII]
1967 VAN DYCK—
Portrait of Charles I. of England [XXIII]
GERMAN SCHOOL
2715 HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER—
Portrait of Erasmus [XXIV]
SPANISH SCHOOL
1731 VELAZQUEZ—
Portrait of the Infanta Margarita [XXV]
1709 MURILLO—
The Immaculate Conception [XXVI]
DUTCH SCHOOL
2384 FRANS HALS—
The Gipsy Girl [XXVII]
2385 FRANS HALS—
Portrait of a Lady in Black [XXVIII]
2539 REMBRANDT—
The Pilgrims at Emmaus [XXIX]
2547 REMBRANDT—
Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels [XXX]
2394 VAN DER HELST—
The Shooting Prize [XXXI]
2348 GERARD DOU—
The Dropsical Woman [XXXII]
2589 TERBORCH—
The Concert [XXXIII]
2580 JAN STEEN—
Bad Company [XXXIV]
2415 PIETER DE HOOCH—
Dutch Interior, with a Lady Playing Cards [XXXV]
2456 JAN VER MEER—
The Lace-Maker [XXXVI]
FRENCH SCHOOL
734 NICOLAS POUSSIN—
The Shepherds in Arcadia [XXXVII]
317 CLAUDE—
View of a Seaport [XXXVIII]
982 WATTEAU—
The Embarkation for the Island of Cythera [XXXIX]
36 BOUCHER—
Vulcan Presenting Arms to Venus [XL]
92 CHARDIN—
Grace before Meat [XLI]
291 FRAGONARD—
The Music Lesson [XLII]
372 GREUZE—
The Broken Pitcher [XLIII]
522 MME. VIGÉE LE BRUN—
Portrait of the Artist and her Daughter [XLIV]
199 DAVID—
Portrait of Mme. Récamier [XLV]
338 GÉRICAULT—
The Raft of the “Medusa” [XLVI]
207 DELACROIX—
Dante and Virgil [XLVII]
422 INGRES—
The Spring [XLVIII]
2801 COROT—
The Dell [XLIX]
2867 DUPRÉ—
The Pond [L]
2818 DAUBIGNY—
The Weir Gate at Optevoz [LI]
644 MILLET—
Women Gleaning [LII]
613a MANET—
Olympia [LIII]
ENGLISH SCHOOL
1809 CONSTABLE—
Hampstead Heath [LIV]

[ [1] This picture has not yet received an official number.

INTRODUCTION

TO form a just appreciation of the magnificent collection of paintings which the Louvre to-day contains would require an exhaustive study which might be spread over a term of years spent in the famous French capital itself. In the limited space at our disposal we can only touch lightly upon the historical events, the sociological causes, the grandeur of royalty, and the taste of the people, all of which contributed towards bringing about the formation of the great Musée National du Louvre as we now know it. It has been our endeavour to throw into prominent relief the outstanding features in the history of the Gallery and to sketch them in chronological order. The architectural claims of the building, its priceless collections of statuary and of objets d’art of every age do not here immediately concern us; it is to the formation of the superb collection of paintings that we primarily desire to call our readers’ attention.

A small part of the building which is to-day known as the Louvre was first occupied as a royal residence by Philippe-Auguste (reigned 1180–1223), who converted a hunting-seat of the early French kings on this site into a feudal fortress with a strong donjon or keep, the exact plan of which may still be traced by the white line marked since 1868 on the pavement in the southwest corner of the old courtyard. Charles v. (reigned 1364–80), who may be regarded as the first royal collector of art treasures in France, greatly enlarged the building of the Old Louvre as a residential palace; he is also said to have decorated the building with statues and paintings which have long since disappeared. The real foundations of the collection of la maison du Roi were laid by François i. (reigned 1515–47), who during his Italian campaigns acquired a respect for art that proved to be an honour to his taste and a dowry for his country. The æsthetic movement had developed rapidly by 1541, when he laid the foundations of the present palace[2] and had already begun to form a collection of easel pictures. François i. invited to his court the master-painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who in 1516 left his native land for France, where he did the king little more than the compliment of dying in his realm, although not, as an unveracious tradition recounts, in his arms. Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531) was also employed at the French court, at which he arrived in 1518. Giovanni Battista Rosso (1494–1541), a painter of little genius but great ability, was summoned by François i. in 1530 to decorate the Château at Fontainebleau. Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71), the Florentine goldsmith, having “determined to seek another country and better luck,” was yet one more artist who set out for France, where, between 1540 and 1544, he adorned the royal tables with objects precious in workmanship and material. Primaticcio (1504–70), who is known to have cleaned at Fontainebleau in 1530 four of the large reputed Raphaels now in the Louvre, remained at the French court until his death. The strict authenticity of these four pictures—The Holy Family of Francis I. (No. 1498), the St. Margaret (No. 1501), the large St. Michael (No. 1504), and the Portrait of Joan of Arragon (No. 1507)—does not here concern us. François i. also possessed at this date, among other notable pictures, Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière (No. 1496, [Plate VII.]), Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (No. 1599), and the same artist’s Mona Lisa or La Joconde (No. 1601, [Plate IV.]), while the art of Sebastiano del Piombo, Andrea del Sarto, and other painters, Flemish as well as Italian, was well represented in the royal collection during his reign.

[2] “François i. voulant avoir dans Paris un palais digne de sa magnificence et dédaignant le vieux Louvre et l’hôtel des Tournelles, amas irrégulier de tournelles (tourelles) et de pavillons gothiques, avait fait démolir, dès 1528, la grosse tour du Louvre, ce donjon de Philippe-Auguste duquel relevaient tous les fiefs du royaume. C’était démolir l’histoire elle-même; c’était la monarchie de la renaissance abattant la vieille royauté féodale.”—Martin, Hist. de France.

The example set by François i. was followed by his successor, Henri ii. (reigned 1547–59), for whom Niccolò dell’ Abbate (1515–71), an artist of secondary importance, was working from 1552 onwards. Henri ii.’s queen, Catherine de Médicis, was also a patron of art, being herself a collector of coins and medals. To her influence was due the decoration of the Château of Fontainebleau and the erection of the Palace of the Tuileries,[3] which was subsequently connected with the Louvre by means of the Long Gallery, now Room VI. Her eldest son, François ii. (reigned 1559–60), the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, first converted the new buildings of the Louvre into a royal residence. Henry iv. (reigned 1589–1610) enlarged the Tuileries, and almost completed the Long Gallery, which now contains such a large proportion of the pictures. Louis xiii. (reigned 1589–1610), his eldest son, seems to have taken little interest in the royal collection; but his mother, Marie de Médicis, invited Rubens (1577–1640) to Paris to decorate the Palace of the Luxembourg with that series of imposing canvases representing her own life-history which are to-day seen to their best advantage in the Salle Rubens (Room XVIII.) of the Louvre.

[3] An inscription on a tablet placed high up on the left of the Pavillon Sully records that François i. began the Louvre in 1541, and Catherine de Médicis the Tuileries in 1564.

No complete record has been found of the pictures which formed the royal collection previous to the year 1642. To that date belongs a meagre Catalogue of the objects of art which then remained at Fontainebleau, but it is supposed that when Louis xiv. (reigned 1643–1715) succeeded to the throne he inherited about one hundred pictures, the property of the Crown. With his accession a new era in the history of art in France began.

Meanwhile, across the water, a superb royal collection had been formed. Charles i. of England (reigned 1625–49) had begun his career as a patron of art before his accession, with the acquisition of the paintings and statues collected by his deceased brother, Henry. During his matrimonial visit to Madrid in 1623 he was presented by Philip iv. with Titian’s Venus del Pardo, now in the Louvre (No. 1587). Soon after his accession he began to collect systematically, employing trusty agents to buy for him in different parts of Europe. His most notable purchase was that of the collection of the Duke of Mantua, for which he paid £18,280 between 1629 and 1632. He is said to have possessed in all 1760 pictures by the date of his execution. Most of them were disposed of at auction by order of Cromwell between 1649 and 1652.

One of the most persistent bidders at the sale of Charles i.’s pictures was Eberhard Jabach, a native of Cologne, who settled in Paris and became a naturalised Frenchman in 1647. He was an enthusiastic buyer of pictures, and his collection soon surpassed that of the French king. It was known to all French connoisseurs, and was visited by all travellers of note. In time, however, Jabach’s energies as a buyer exceeded his financial resources, and when his debts amounted to 278,718 livres he offered his collection to Louis xiv., who was most anxious to distinguish his reign by the formation of a gallery of pictures which should be in all respects worthy of it. To this end he purchased Eberhard Jabach’s collection, paying 220,000 livres for the 5542 drawings and 101 pictures which it contained. The price originally asked by Jabach was 463,425 livres. Among the masterpieces thus acquired by the king were Titian’s Entombment (No. 1584, [Plate XIII.]), which Jabach had had the good fortune to purchase from the English royal collection for the absurdly small sum of £128, and Giorgione’s Pastoral Symphony (No. 1136, [Plate X.]), which had also been among the treasures of the English Crown.

To Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), who founded the French Academy in 1635, at one time belonged Andrea Mantegna’s Parnassus (No. 1375, [Plate XIV.]), the same painter’s Wisdom victorious over the Vices (No. 1376), Lorenzo Costa’s The Court of Isabella d’Este in the Garden of the Muses (No. 1261), and the same painter’s Mythological Scene (No. 1262), together with Perugino’s Combat of Love and Chastity (No. 1567).

Another important buyer at the sale of Charles i.’s collection was Cardinal Mazarin (1602–61), who acquired several valuable pictures, besides statuary, tapestries, and other fabrics. Of Mazarin’s pictures the Louvre now possesses Raphael’s small St. Michael (No. 1502) and a Holy Family (No. 1135), which is catalogued under the name of Giorgione, but it is more probably from the hand of Cariani.

It is said that Louis xiv. preferred the pictures of his own court-painter, Charles Le Brun, to those of the Venetian master, Paolo Veronese, whose large canvas, The Supper at Emmaus (No. 1196), was nevertheless acquired during his reign. Eight pictures by Annibale Carracci, all of which are not now publicly exhibited in the Louvre (Nos. 1218, 1220, 1222, 1226, 1231–34), Albani’s Diana and Actæon (No. 1111), nine compositions by Guido Reni (Nos. 1439–55 and 1457), and ten paintings by Domenichino (Nos. 1609–10 and 1612–19), also enriched the royal collection during Louis xiv.’s reign. Nor were the great French painters neglected. The four pictures (Nos. 736–39) of The Seasons, by Nicolas Poussin, which had been commissioned in 1660 by the Duc de Richelieu for the decoration of the Château de Meudon, together with four of the largest Claudes now in the Louvre (Nos. 312, 314, 316, 317), were obtained for the royal galleries by the ever-watchful Colbert (1619–83), who had been appointed Minister of Finance on the death of Mazarin (1602–61). Flemish art, as seen in the stately pictures of Van Dyck, was represented by seven examples (Nos. 1961–63, 1970, 1973–75). On the other hand, Louis xiv. is said to have failed altogether to appreciate the work of Teniers and to have exclaimed, when some of that artist’s pictures were brought to his notice, “Ôtez-moi ces magots-là!” Only one of the thirty-nine pictures by Teniers now in the Louvre, the Interior of a Cottage (No. 2162), passed into the Gallery at that date. The almost entire absence of Dutch pictures is also to be noticed.

An event of extreme importance in this pompous reign was the institution of the French Academy of Arts, in 1648, with Charles Le Brun (1619–90) as Director, the despotic power which he exercised in art matters bringing about his further appointment as Director of the Gobelins tapestry works in 1660.

In 1681 the Crown pictures and other royal art treasures were brought to the Louvre from Versailles and were temporarily exhibited there, the king paying a state visit to the capital on December 5 to see his cabinet de tableaux. We read that the walls of eleven rooms were covered up to the cornices. The collection, putting on one side all doubts as to strict authenticity, included six paintings by Correggio, ten by Leonardo da Vinci, eight by Giorgione, twenty-three by Titian, nineteen by A. Carracci, twelve by Guido Reno, and eighteen by Paolo Veronese. These treasures, however, did not remain long at the Louvre, but were “packed up, loaded on rough carts, and taken back over the paved roads to Versailles,” which had now taken precedence over Fontainebleau as a royal residence; and at Versailles the Court mainly resided until the Revolution, although Louis xiv. greatly enlarged the Louvre Palace and planted the Tuileries Gardens. At the death of le Roi Soleil the Crown pictures numbered 1500.

The energy of Louis xiv. was followed by the apathy of his degenerate successor, Louis xv. (reigned 1715–74), who, however, added 300 pictures to the royal collection. The Virgin with the Blue Diadem or Virgin with the Veil (No. 1497), which still passes under the name of Raphael, was among the pictures which then passed out of the collection of the Prince de Carignan into the possession of the Crown. It was now a sorry moment for the pictures which, “scattered through the interminable and then ill-kept country palaces of the French Crown, exposed to every injury of time, ignorance, and weather, regarded at best in the light of old furniture and too often in that of old lumber, pleaded in vain for respect and care. No public Catalogue told of their existence; the generation that had talked of them had passed away; it was nobody’s business to ask for them, and few actually knew where they were. Even the new-comers passed into the same void which had swallowed their predecessors.” Some of the pictures previously recorded now disappeared completely, without leaving a clue to their fate. Eventually, in 1746, M. de la Fonte de Saint-Yenne in a pamphlet directed public opinion to the fact that these Crown pictures had for fifty years been hidden and neglected in “une obscure prison de Versailles.” As a result of this, in 1750, by the king’s permission, 110 pictures selected from the different schools of painting were brought from Versailles to the Palais de Luxembourg, where the large canvases by Rubens (now in the Salle Rubens at the Louvre) were regarded as forming a centre d’études. Here for the first time, and for two days only in the week, they were shown under certain restrictions to a limited public. In 1785 they were again removed to Versailles.

Although Louis xiv.’s well-known grudge against Holland probably accounted for the almost entire absence of Dutch pictures from the Crown possessions, Louis xvi. had the good taste to acquire works by Aelbert Cuyp (No. 2341, Landscape); Jan van Goyen (No. 2375, Banks of a Dutch River, and No. 2377, A River in Holland); B. van der Helst (No. 2394, The Officers of the Arquebusiers of St. Sebastian); G. Metsu (No. 2461, The Alchemist); Adriaen van Ostade (No. 2495, The Painter’s Family[?], and No. 2496, The Schoolmaster); Isaac van Ostade (No. 2510, A Frozen Canal in Holland); Rembrandt (No. 2539, The Pilgrims at Emmaus, No. 2540, and No. 2541, The Philosopher in Meditation, No. 2555, Portrait of Rembrandt aged); Jacob van Ruisdael (No. 2559, Landscape, and No. 2560, Sunny Landscape); Terborgh (No. 2587, The Military Gallant); and Philips Wouverman (No. 2621, The Prize Ox, and No. 2625, The Stag Hunt). Five of the less important of Murillo’s pictures now in the Louvre (Nos. 1712–15 and No. 1717) were also acquired at this period, and the series of twenty-two large canvases illustrating Scenes from the Life of St. Bruno by Eustache Le Sueur were also purchased by Louis xvi.

From 1725 onwards the Salon held its Exhibitions in the Salon Carré (Room IV.), but after 1848 this room was used only for Paintings by the Old Masters.

In 1790 a Commission was appointed by the National Assembly “to register and watch over all that was most valuable,” and on May 26, 1791 a decree was made that the Louvre should be thenceforward dedicated to the conservation of objects of science and of art. On August 26 of the same year a further Commission was appointed by the National Convention to inspect and gather together the treasures of art scattered through les maisons royales. The Convention decided that the “Museum of the Republic” should be officially opened in the Long Gallery of the Louvre on August 10, 1793, and from November 8 of the same year the Museum was open to the inspection of the public three days in every ten. This, the first public exhibition of art treasures in the Louvre, was the foundation of the present institution. The Catalogue of this date contains reference to only 537 pictures, the greater number of which came from Paris churches and national buildings. The inhabitants of Versailles now petitioned that their town should not be despoiled of its pictures, “and so be deprived of its last attraction in the eyes of the world”!

The Louvre was now destined to become for a few years the temple of the spolia opima which the victorious French army brought home. “This system of levying pictures, statues, and other objects by means of treaties, so called, in which the conqueror dictated terms to those incapable of refusing them, was a dishonourable novelty in the annals of modern warfare. Disdaining the usages of Christian nations and overleaping especially the traditions of French courtesy and chivalry, Buonaparte turned back to the ages of pagan history for a precedent for his measures of spoliation.” By the Treaty of Bologna of June 23, 1796, and the Treaty of Tolentino of February 19, 1797, he became possessed of twenty pictures from Modena, twenty from Parma, forty from Bologna, ten from Ferrara, while Rome, Piacenza, Cento, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Ancona, Loreto, and Perugia also had to yield up a portion of their treasures.

The first exhibition of this booty was held in the Louvre in January 1798. Here, during the next few years, were gathered together many of the world’s most famous pictures, including Raphael’s St. Cecilia, now in the Bologna Gallery; Correggio’s St. Jerome and his Madonna della Scodella, now in the Parma Gallery; Raphael’s Transfiguration, now in the Vatican, and his Madonna della Sedia, now in the Pitti Palace at Florence; Domenichino’s Last Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Vatican; Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr, destroyed by fire in 1867, and his Assumption, now in the Venice Gallery; Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb, now dismembered and distributed between Ghent, Berlin, and Brussels; Paris Bordone’s Fisherman of St. Mark, now in the Venice Gallery; and Paul Potter’s Bull, now at The Hague. “Here was seen the unexampled sight of twenty-five Raphaels ranked together, the great master complete in every period and walk of his art. Here twenty-three Titians glowed in burning row. Here Rubens revelled in no less than fifty-three pictures and in almost as many classes of subject. Van Dyck followed his illustrious master with thirty-three works, while thirty-one specimens of Rembrandt’s brush shed a golden atmosphere upon the walls. The later Italians especially were magnificently represented—thirty-six pictures by Annibale Carracci, sixteen by Domenichino; twenty-three by Guido; including the largest altarpieces by each; and twenty-six by Guercino, were perhaps the most popular part of the wondrous show.”

However, in September 1815, the pictures and other valuable works of art which France had plundered from her foes had to be given back, and the spoliation of the Louvre began. In all, 5233 objects, of which 2065 were pictures, were taken away from the Royal Museum by the Allied Powers.

An event rare in the history of public galleries took place in 1813, when the Louvre received Carpaccio’s Preaching of St. Stephen (No. 1211), Boltraffio’s Madonna of the Casio Family (No. 1169), Marco d’Oggiono’s Holy Family (No. 1382), Moretto’s St. Bernardino of Siena and St. Louis of Toulouse (No. 1175), and the same artist’s St. Bonaventura and St. Anthony of Padua (No. 1176), in exchange for five pictures by Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and Jordaens.

It is curious to notice that at this period very little importance was attached to Italian primitives, which were, indeed, deemed “barbarous.” Many beautiful works of the very early Italian schools were actually not considered worth the trouble and expense of transport, and were therefore left for the lasting glory of the Louvre. Among them may be mentioned Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin (No. 1290); the Madonna and Child and Two Saints, (No. 1114), now officially ascribed to Albertinelli; Bronzino’s Christ and the Magdalene (No. 1183); the Madonna and Angels (No. 1260), which passes under the name of Cimabue; Gentile da Fabriano’s Presentation in the Temple (No. 1278); the Coronation of the Virgin (No. 1303), still officially ascribed to Raffaellino del Garbo; St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata (No. 1312), which still passes under the name of Giotto; Benozzo Gozzoli’s Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas (No. 1319); Fra Filippo Lippi’s Madonna and Child between Two Saints (No. 1344); Pesellino’s two small predella pictures (No. 1414); Piero di Cosimo’s Coronation of the Virgin (No. 1416); The Madonna in Glory between St. Bernard and St. Mary Magdalene (No. 1482), which is still assigned to Cosimo Rosselli; Lorenzo di Credi’s Madonna and Child with St. Julian and St. Nicholas (No. 1263); Cima’s Madonna and Child (No. 1259); Vasari’s Annunciation (No. 1575), which is now in one of the storerooms of the Louvre; the Ferrarese Madonna and Child with St. Quentin and St. Benedict (No. 1167), which is still assigned to Bianchi; Andrea Mantegna’s Calvary (No. 1373) and Virgin of Victory (No. 1374); Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Visitation (No. 1321); and Perugino’s St. Paul (No. 1566). Further proof of the slight regard in which certain pictures that we cherish to-day were then held is afforded by the readiness with which the authorities sent two panels of Mantegna’s altarpiece, the centre-part of which is now in the Church of San Zeno at Verona, to the Museum at Tours, and parted with Perugino’s altarpieces to the public galleries of Lyons and Marseilles.

Under Louis xviii. (died 1824) 111 pictures were purchased for the national collection at a cost of £26,730, but during the reign of Charles x. (1824–30) only 30 were acquired, £2511 being expended on them. An outlay of £2965 by Louis Philippe (reigned 1830–48) enriched the Louvre with 33 more pictures, but that king concentrated his efforts on the restoration and decoration of the Château of Versailles, on which he spent £440,000.

In the early years of the Second Republic a large number of improvements were effected in the Louvre, and in 1848 £8000 was spent on restoring several of the rooms now hung with pictures, which were first systematically arranged three years later. Although the Museum had at that period an annual grant of £2000 for the purchase of pictures, special grants in aid were made from time to time, notably on the occasion of the sale of Marshal Soult, pictures from whose collection were acquired in 1852 for £24,612. In this way Murillo’s Immaculate Conception (No. 1709, [Plate XXVI.]) passed to the Louvre from the “Plunder-master-General” of the Spanish campaign.

During the Second Empire the Musée du Louvre acquired about 200 Italian primitives from the Campana collection, while seven years later it was further enriched by the important bequest by Dr. La Caze of 275 paintings of different schools. Since 1870, when the Palace of the Tuileries was destroyed, the permanent collection has been increased by the purchase in 1883 for £8000 of the Morris Moore “Raphael” (No. 1509), which has since come to be universally regarded as a work by Perugino; while about 300 other paintings of varying importance have also been acquired from time to time with Government funds. In recent years the national collection has benefited largely by the generosity of private donors, among whom we may mention MM. Duchâtel, Gatteaux, His de la Salle, Lallemant, Maciet, Rodolphe Kann, Sedelmeyer, Grandidier, Vandeul, and several members of the Rothschild family.

In 1896, by the sale of a large proportion of the Crown jewels, a Caisse des Musées was organised, and the annual income devoted to the purchase of pictures notably increased. A year later the Société des Amis du Louvre, which corresponds to the National Art-Collections Fund in England, was founded to assist in securing pictures and other works of art for the nation; by that means the Madonna and Child (No. 1300a or 1300b) which passes under the name of Piero dei Franceschi was acquired by the Louvre.

In May 1900, on the inauguration of the Exposition Universelle, the opportunity was taken to rehang a large part of the collection, and the Galerie de Médicis (Room XVIII.) and the eighteen small cabinets built round it were first used for the better exhibition of a large proportion of the Flemish and Dutch pictures. Shortly afterwards, by the death of M. Thomy Thiéry, an Englishman who had become a naturalised Frenchman, over 100 paintings, mostly of the school of Barbizon, became an exceedingly valuable addition to the Louvre, and filled a void in the history of French painting in the nineteenth century. During the last two years the most memorable purchases by the Government have been that of Chardin’s Child with a Top (No. 90a), which was acquired together with the same artist’s Young Man with a Violin (No. 90b) for £14,000, and Hans Memlinc’s Portrait of an Old Lady ([Plate XVII.]) for £8000.

The national collection of the Musée du Louvre now includes in its Catalogue nearly two thousand eight hundred oil and tempera paintings, about four hundred of which have not been exhibited for many years.

EARLY SIENESE SCHOOL

THIS school of painting, one of the earliest in the history of art in Italy and probably the earliest with which the ordinary student of art in Italy will concern himself, was affected throughout the whole range of its history by the influence of the miniaturists. It was characterised by naïveté, and in the hands of its earliest painter, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255–1319), strove to realise an effect of hieratic sumptuousness, its precision and grace being that of “a sanctuary swept and garnished.”

The Louvre possesses no picture by Duccio, who derived his technique from the Byzantine miniaturists, although he modified their methods. Standing between the old world and the new, Duccio occupied an important position at the head of the school of Siena, which in the early years of the fourteenth century set a noble example to the other towns and incipient schools of Tuscany. Passing reference may here be made to the artistic aims and religious aspirations of the cities of Rome, Pisa, and Arezzo, but it is Siena which stands out pre-eminently at this early date as interpreting scenes of quiet rapture and sacred peace, its own social life being bound up in “chivalry, the meat of the eye,” and “piety, the wine of the soul.” Both Duccio, who was first employed by the Government of his native city as early as 1278, and Cimabue, his senior by fifteen years (if we are to accept the much contested records), have alike been hailed as the author of the Rucellai Madonna which still hangs in the Church of S. Maria Novella in Florence. This picture was a generation ago almost unanimously accepted by responsible critics as the work of the Florentine painter, and those who still advocate the claims of “Florentinism” are loath to destroy their cherished illusions. It is not our duty here to bring forward the arguments in favour of its later ascription to Duccio, who, we are led to believe, painted it early in his career, before he had learnt to free himself from the stiff gestures and Byzantine types of a former tradition. Duccio, it must be conceded, never quite succeeded in giving to his compositions that sense of life, character, and design which we find in the works of Giotto, his junior by some twenty years, who was the first artist to accomplish vast schemes of monumental decoration. Duccio, however, was the bearer of that torch which was to kindle the flame of religious art both in Siena and Florence. Nevertheless, Sienese painting was destined, almost from the moment of its birth, to show signs of dwindling into a school of trite copyists and shallow quietists. Early in the fourteenth century the lofty ideals manifested by emotional Siena spread to scientific Florence, and by the beginning of the fifteenth century the city on the Arno gave unmistakable signs of becoming the leading art centre in Tuscany.

DUCCIO’S FOLLOWERS

The greatest of Duccio’s followers was Simone Martini (1285?–1344), who was also slightly influenced by Giotto. Simone, whose Christ bearing His Cross (No. 1383, [Plate I.]) is the earliest Sienese picture in the Louvre, has been well described as “a reactionary who made a whole beautiful world of his own.” In this small picture the colours stand out most clearly, although the drawing and perspective are, of course, faulty. It belongs to a series of which other panels are at Antwerp and in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. A Crucifixion (No. 1665) that is catalogued as being by an unknown Sienese artist may be attributed to Ugolino da Siena (fl. 1290–1320); it would seem to be the centre panel of a large and lost altarpiece.

PLATE I.—SIMONE MARTINI
(1285?–1344)
SIENESE SCHOOL
No. 1383.—CHRIST BEARING HIS CROSS
(Jésus-Christ marchant au Calvaire)

Christ, preceded by the executioner, soldiers, and two children, is bearing His Cross to Calvary. He is attended by a large crowd in which may be recognised the Virgin Mary, in blue robes, supported by St. John; St. Mary Magdalene in red, with her long hair falling over her shoulders, raises her hands in grief.

Painted in tempera on panel.

10 in. × 4 in. (0·25 × 0·10.)

Pietro Lorenzetti (fl. 1305–50) was probably a pupil of Duccio, and was influenced by Simone Martini, but Pietro and his younger brother, Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1285?–1348?), who represented a new movement and endeavoured to set forth the civic ideal, are not represented in this collection.

Simone Martini’s brother-in-law, Lippo Memmi (died 1357?), is possibly the author of the St. Peter (No. 1152), a poor picture which is officially assigned to Taddeo di Bartolo (1362?–1422). The art of the latter is, in the opinion of Mr. Berenson, seen in the small Crucifixion (No. 1622), which the Louvre authorities modestly catalogue as being by an unknown fourteenth-century Italian painter.

To Bartolo di Maestro Fredi (1330?–1410), who came under the influence of Lippo Memmi and the Lorenzetti, is given a Presentation in the Temple (No. 1151). Paolo di Giovanni Fei (fl. 1372–1410), whose pictures are rarely met with out of Italy, may be regarded as the author of the Madonna and Saints (No. 1314) which is officially held to be by an unknown Florentine painter of the school of Giotto. The Louvre possesses no example of the art of Sassetta (1392–1450), who, together with Paolo di Giovanni Fei, deeply impressed Giovanni di Paolo (1403?–1482). The latter may be credited with the small panel (No. 1659a) which is officially entitled The Entry of Pope Martin into the Castle of Saint Angelo, and included in the Catalogue as being by an unknown Florentine, but labelled “School of Masaccio.” There can be no doubt that this quaint little picture depicts Pope Gregory the Great’s Vision of the Archangel Michael sheathing his Sword over the Castle of Saint Angelo. According to the legend, Gregory had been indefatigable in nursing the plague-stricken in Rome in the sixth century, and while on his way at the head of a procession to offer up prayer for the cessation of the plague, saw “the warrior of God” in the attitude here shown. Gregory, after fleeing from those who wished to make him Pope, was elected to wear the papal tiara under the title of Gregory the Great. He is chiefly known to us as having sent missionaries to preach the gospel in England, having been moved to pity by seeing British captives exposed for sale in Rome, and for his arrangement of the music of the chants which are after him known as Gregorians. The official title of the picture, on the other hand, assumes that we have here Pope Martin v., a man of saintly character, making his entry into Rome in 1421 amid the acclamations of the people. He had been elected Pope in 1417 on the deposition of John xxiii.

By this time the art of Siena had progressed some distance on the road that its religious aspirations and technical accomplishments indicated, but it soon became evident that the more intellectual aims of Florentine art were shaping the course of all the painters of Italy.

THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL

ALTHOUGH we have begun our study of the art of Italy with a review of the Sienese School, which owes its importance to Duccio, the earliest Italian picture in the Louvre is the Madonna and Angels (No. 1260), which may be accepted as a characteristic example of the type of picture that passes under the name of Cimabue (1240?–1302).

Giovanni Cenni de’ Pepi, to give him his full name, has been hailed as “the father of modern painting.” The Louvre Madonna, which was formerly in the Church of San Francesco at Pisa, was carried off to Paris by Napoleon, but not considered worth the trouble of repacking when in 1815 the Allied Armies called upon the French to surrender the pictorial spoils of war. It is known that Cimabue was working at Pisa at the very end of his life, and, although he was engaged there as mosaicist rather than as a painter, the provenance of this large painting, which is executed in tempera on panel, has to be taken into account in any discussion as to its strict authenticity. It is certainly reminiscent of the Rucellai Madonna, and shares much of its character. The painter has repeated, with certain modifications, the Byzantine type of Madonna, whose almond-shaped eyes and long, bony fingers should be noticed. It has been freely restored.

From the same church in Pisa comes Giotto’s St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata (No. 1312). According to the descriptive account handed down to us by the unveracious Vasari, Giotto (1266–1337) was originally a shepherd boy whose latent talent was recognised by the discerning Cimabue, who forthwith took him as his pupil and taught him how to paint, the boy’s genius enabling him early to surpass his master. Although it would be rash unquestioningly to accept this archaic production as an authentic work by Giotto, it is one which any national collection would treasure. It depicts the supreme event in the life of St. Francis, when during his vision virtue passed from the wounded hands, the wounded feet, and the wounded side of the Christ into the same parts of the saint’s body. In the predella are three scenes from the life of St. Francis: (a) Pope Innocent III. dreaming that St. Peter reveals to him that unless the Franciscan Order is founded the Church (typified here by the Church of S. John Lateran in Rome) will fall down; (b) The Pope founding the Order; and (c) St. Francis, wearing the brown robes of his Order, and preaching to the birds: “Whenas St. Francis spake these words to them, those birds began all of them to open their beaks, and stretch their necks, and spread their wings, and reverently bend their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs to show that the Holy Father gave them joy exceeding great.”

THE GIOTTESQUES

Four school pictures (Nos. 1313, 1315–1317) illustrate the example set by Giotto, who influenced very strongly indeed all art-manifestation during the fourteenth century, an age when the human body was denied all intrinsic significance. His profound feeling, gay colour, high dramatic power, and sense of form mark the emancipation of Italian art from the rigid formalism of the Byzantine manner. He discovered a style which was admirably suited to the spirit of his time, and developed for his own purposes a sense of perspective which he employed with considerable effect, although he never really found a scientific statement of the artistic principles which he instinctively perceived. His indefatigable energy and innate genius enabled him to distance his rivals and to bequeath to his countrymen a heritage which profoundly affected the art of Italy.

Foremost among his followers, who imitated his mannerisms without understanding the full significance of his ideas, was Taddeo Gaddi (1300?–1366), to whom are assigned in the official Catalogue the predella pictures (No. 1302) of (a) The Death of St. John the Baptist, (b) Calvary, and (c) Judas Iscariot. Taddeo Gaddi, a painter and architect, was the godson and pupil of Giotto as well as the pupil of his father, Gaddo Gaddi. Taddeo’s desire to give suitable expression to each of his figures often resulted, as in that of the daughter of Herodias in the second of these panels, in exaggeration.

Taddeo’s son, Agnolo Gaddi (1333–1396), who was described by Ruskin as “rather stupid in religious matters and high art,” may be the painter of the Annunciation (No. 1301), in which we see the Virgin seated in a loggia to the right of the picture. The Archangel Gabriel announces, by the gesture of the right hand, that the Virgin shall be the Mother of the Christ. God the Father is shown in the heavens. Notice the gold background and the mosaics of the loggia. The mechanical methods and uninspired aims of the Giottesques, the artists who worked during the century which followed the death of Giotto, are well seen in the productions of Lorenzo di Bicci (fl. 1370–1409), his son Bicci di Lorenzo (fl. 1373–1424), and his grandson Neri di Bicci (1419–1491). Neri is represented by a Madonna and Child (No. 1397). He might justly be described as a mere manufacturer of Giottesque pictures to order. He brought art down to the level of a trade, his work being flat and his colour raw and inharmonious.

A Virgin and Infant Christ (No. 1563), inscribed “tvrinvs vannis de pisis me piqsit p,” is evidently by Turino Vanni (fl. 1390–1398), a rare artist of this group of Florentine painters. The brief list of his pictures might be increased by having added to it a few panels at Pisa and Assisi, which are erroneously ascribed to Buffalmacco.

Andrea Orcagna (1308?–1368?) and his brother Nardo are not represented in the Louvre, but we have a follower of Agnolo Gaddi in Lorenzo Monaco (1370?–1425), who is seen to advantage in his Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and his Holy Women preparing the Tomb (No. 1348a), which is inscribed “anno dñi 1408,” and was formerly attributed to Gentile da Fabriano. Lorenzo Monaco is officially credited with a triple picture (No. 1348) of (a) St. Agnes with her lamb and a martyr’s palm branch; (b) St. Lawrence, the artist’s name-saint, holding in his right hand a book and palm branch, and enthroned on a gridiron, the symbol of his martyrdom; and (c) St. Margaret, the patron saint of Woman as Mother, standing on the dragon. Lorenzo Monaco, who is reputed to have been the master of Fra Angelico, usually depicts long, slender, and sinuous bodies. Below this picture hangs a small panel, apparently part of the predella of an unidentified altarpiece. It does not seem to be included in the official Catalogue, and has neither a number by which to identify it nor a label to denote its subject or authorship! The picture has apparently never been referred to or described in any article or book. It certainly represents the Emperor Heraclius carrying the True Cross into Jerusalem. The picture appears to have been painted by Giovanni del Ponte (fl. 1385–1437).

Neither Starnina (1354–1408), who took the traditions of Early Florentine painting to Spain, Masolino (fl. 1383–1435), who is rarely met with out of Italy, nor Masaccio (1401–28), who may be said to have vitalised Italian art, is represented in the Louvre. Tommaso Masaccio, the “Hulking Tom” of Browning, gave to Italy and the world the magnificent series of frescoes which still decorate the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine Church in Florence. He imparted to his figures such natural movement, vivacity of expression, free attitudes, simple draperies, and excellent modelling that he entirely revolutionised the art of Florence. His figures are, as Vasari said, “so lifelike that they seem to live and breathe.” This series of frescoes was studied with enthusiasm by all the great Florentine painters; Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and innumerable other artists derived the greatest possible benefit from them.

FRA ANGELICO

On the threshold of the Renaissance stands Fra Angelico (1387–1455), who was trained in the school of miniaturists and influenced by Lorenzo Monaco and Masaccio. His life was devoted to “the service of God, the benefit of the world, and his duty towards his neighbour,” as Vasari says. He regarded painting as one of the duties of the monastic life, and never began to paint without first kneeling in prayer. His pictures are aspirations towards heaven, while the figures with which he peoples his saintly compositions have faces which show peace, joy, hope, and communion with God. They are clothed in draperies of the purest colours, crowned with glories of burnished gold, but are never dramatic in their action. One of his best easel paintings outside Florence, where alone his art can be adequately studied, is his early Coronation of the Virgin (No. 1290). This imposing, if overcrowded, composition is painted to the glory of God and in honour of the Dominican Order, to which the painter belonged. In the right bottom corner we see St. Agnes with her lamb, next to her St. Catherine with her wheel, above is St. Lawrence with his gridiron, and to the latter’s right St. Peter Martyr in Dominican robes and with wounded head. In the foreground kneels St. Mary Magdalene in red, her box of ointment in her left hand. St. Nicholas with the three golden balls at his feet, St. Thomas Aquinas in Dominican robes and holding the theological book from which rays of golden light issue, St. Louis (Louis ix., King of France), and St. Dominic himself—all help to swell the heavenly company. In the predella, or lower part, of this panel picture are depicted Scenes from the Life of St. Dominic, the founder of Fra Angelico’s own Order: (a) Pope Innocent iii. in his vision sees St. Dominic supporting the falling Church; (b) the Pope receives, through the agency of St. Peter and St. Paul who hand him a staff and the Gospel, Divine authority to found the Dominican Order; (c) the Saint brings back to life a young noble named Napoleon who had been trampled under foot by a horse; (d) Christ in the tomb, the Virgin and St. John; (e) St. Dominic challenges heretics whose books are consumed in the fire, while his own book of the true Gospel issues forth unhurt by the action of fire; (f) angels descend from heaven to feed the starving monastery of St. Sabina at Rome immediately after St. Dominic has asked a blessing; these two blue-clad figures are among the loveliest of all Fra Angelico’s angelic beings, and perhaps the most inspiring figures in the whole of the Louvre collection; (g) the death of the Saint at Bologna and the passing of his soul up to heaven in accordance with the vision of the monk at Brescia. This early Cinquecento panel picture, which was formerly in the Church of S. Domenico at Fiesole, near Florence, was painted before the Beato went to beautify the cells of S. Marco with frescoes. It is one of the best of the primitive pictures in the Louvre.

From the hand of the same saintly painter are the Adoring Angel (no No.), which until 1909 was in the Victor Gay collection, the Martyrdom of St. Cosmo and St. Damian (No. 1293), part of the predella of a dismembered altarpiece, and the large fresco painting of the Crucifixion (No. 1294) which hangs on the Escalier Daru. The latter was purchased, together with Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Bottle-nosed Man (No. 1322, [Plate III.]), in 1879 for £1960. The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (No. 1291) and the Resurrection (No. 1294a) are unauthentic.

In Benozzo Gozzoli (1420–1498) we have an assistant and follower of Fra Angelico. He worked at different towns in Italy, notably at Montefalco, Orvieto, Florence, San Gimignano, Rome, and Pisa, where he died. Although his earlier work reminds us of Fra Angelico, than whom he is much more dramatic and much less spiritual, in later life he depicts the costumes and life of his time in a more realistic and objective manner. His Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas (No. 1319), which originally hung in the Cathedral at Pisa, deals with a subject often met with in the art of the period. The great Dominican teacher, whom the heathen philosophers, Aristotle on the left, and Plato on the right, recognise as their master in philosophy, is enthroned, his books of theological learning on his knees. At his feet, subdued, is Guillaume de St. Amour, the author of a book entitled De Periculis Novissimorum Temporum, in which he exposed the various abuses then prevalent among the mendicants. The dramatic action seen in the lower part of the panel embraces Pope Alexander iv. presiding over the religious council of Agnani, and the envoys of St. Louis (Louis ix. of France) who took steps to end the religious conflicts of 1256. A large altarpiece (No. 1320) representing the Madonna and Child Enthroned, St. Cosmo, St. Damian, St. Jerome, St. John the Baptist, St. Francis d’Assisi, and St. Lawrence in the central panel is also assigned to Benozzo. The frame also contains seven predella pictures, and at either end is the coat of arms of the Medici family.

The great French Museum, which is weaker than the National Gallery, the Berlin Gallery, and certain other national collections in Italian primitives, affords us no example of the art of Andrea del Castagno (fl. 1410–1457), whose compositions are characterised by harsh colour, hard lines, and crude forms. Nor do we find here any painting by that very rare artist, Domenico Veneziano (1400?–1461), who, it has been said, was the first Tuscan artist to work in an oil medium.

PAOLO UCCELLO

Prominent among the masters who were influenced by Donatello, the sculptor, and Lorenzo Ghiberti, the first metal-worker in elegant forms, is Paolo di Dono, generally known as Uccello. His profound study and ultimate discovery of the laws of linear perspective was enhanced by the inquiries into the laws of aerial perspective that Fra Angelico studied so deeply. Paolo Uccello (1397–1475) was a pupil and assistant of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who made the bronze doors for the East Side of the Baptistery at Florence. He gave himself up to the scientific study of perspective, the principles of which he was one of the first to apply to painting, thus rendering incalculable services to art. In his Battlepiece (No. 1273) is seen a mounted soldier in armour with his sword drawn; on the left are horsemen about to charge with couchant lances, while on the right cavalry-men are drawn up awaiting orders, their lances in rest. The correctness of the perspective and the justice of the foreshortenings and the movements of the foot-men in the intervals of the cavalry mark an epoch in art. This is the third and right-hand panel of the series of three battle-pictures which Uccello painted for the Casa Medici (now the Riccardi Palace) in Florence for Cosimo de’ Medici about the year 1457, and not, as the official Catalogue asserts, for the Bartolini family. The best preserved of these three large panel pictures illustrating the Rout of San Romano in 1432 is that in the National Gallery (No. 583), while the second or centre panel of the series is now in the Uffizi (No. 52). The Louvre panel is in a deplorable condition, caused by long neglect.

Uccello’s Portraits of Giotto, Paolo Uccello, Antonio Manetti, and Filippo Brunelleschi (No. 1272), whose names are in this order on the panel, is a work of considerable importance, as marking an early stage in the development of portraiture. This picture, which is referred to at some length by Vasari, constitutes a historical document. The Italian chronicler tells us that Uccello “was a person of eccentric character and peculiar habits, but he was a great lover of ability in those of his own art, and, to the end that their memory should remain to posterity, he drew with his own hand on an oblong picture the portraits of five distinguished men, which he kept in his house as a memorial of them. The first of these portraits was that of the painter Giotto, as one who had given light and new life to the art; the second was Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, for architecture; the third was Donatello, for sculpture; the fourth was himself, for perspective and animals; the fifth was his friend Giovanni (sic) Manetti, for mathematics. With this philosopher Paolo conferred very frequently, and held continual discourse with him concerning the problems of Euclid.” Manetti’s real Christian name, Antonio, is correctly inscribed on the panel, but is inaccurately given as Giovanni by Vasari and on the official label.

The St. John the Baptist as a Child (No. 1274), which hangs in the Long Gallery, is labelled as a picture of the Florentine school, and catalogued as being by Uccello. It is perhaps by Piero di Cosimo.

We enter on the first period of the coming Renaissance with Fra Filippo Lippi (1406–1469), who was trained in the best school of Florentine painting. He was a pupil of Lorenzo Monaco, came under the influence of Fra Angelico, and was affected by the magic spell of Masaccio, whom he must have seen at work in the Brancacci Chapel. In the latter half of the Quattrocento the cult of love and beauty was rapidly dethroning the more austere ideals of an earlier age. Filippo Lippi’s stormy and romantic career passes into a new phase with his residence at Prato in 1452. Four years later he was appointed Chaplain to the nuns of S. Margherita in that town. The year before his arrival in Prato, Lucrezia and Spinetta, the orphan daughters (aged eighteen and seventeen respectively) of Francesco Buti, had, apparently much against their will, been placed in the Convent, the abbess of which commissioned the Frate to paint a picture of the Madonna della Cintola. Lucrezia posed to the painter-chaplain for the figure of the Madonna in that picture. On May 1, 1456, on the occasion of the exhibition of the Holy Girdle of the Virgin, a precious relic still preserved at Prato, the painter bore off Lucrezia out of the safe keeping of the convent. A short summary of these well-known facts is suggested by the view which is put forward in the official Catalogue of the Louvre, to the effect that the Madonna della Cintola is to be identified with the Nativity (No. 1343) in this Gallery. The weight of evidence is against this theory; in fact, this large panel picture has little claim to be regarded as the work of Fra Filippo. One critic has given it as his opinion that the Nativity was begun by Fra Filippo and completed by Fra Diamante, who succeeded him as Chaplain at Prato. Others have attributed the picture to Pesellino, Baldovinetti, and Stefano da Zevio respectively. It seems to show the influence of Andrea del Castagno. The official Catalogue does not indicate the provenance of the picture, although it implies that it came from the Convent at Prato at the time when it was brought to Paris by Napoleon. There can be little doubt that the Madonna della Cintola is the painting thus named which still hangs in the place of honour in the Municipal Gallery at Prato.

The Louvre does, however, possess in the Madonna and Child with Angels and Two Abbots (No. 1344, [Plate II.]) one of the best of the Frate’s creations, although the colouring has suffered considerably. It is an early work, and was painted about 1437 for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito. It contains beauty of line, freshness of colour, and much variety in the composition. The cast of the draperies is ample and the motives are novel and bold, the Renaissance background throwing into prominent relief the soulful and ideal figure of the Madonna. The predella panels of this dismembered altarpiece, for which Fra Filippo received forty gold florins, are now in the Accademia at Florence. They depict (a) St. Frediano deviating the Course of the River Serchio; (b) The Virgin receiving the Announcement of her Coming Decease; and (c) St. Augustine in his Study. The Madonna and Child (No. 1345) is only a school picture.

PLATE II.—FRA FILIPPO LIPPI
(1406–1469)
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
No. 1344.—MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS AND TWO ABBOTS
(La Vierge et l’Enfant Jésus entre deux abbés)

The Virgin stands before the throne holding the Infant Christ to the adoration of two kneeling abbots and surrounded by six angels carrying lilies. To the left a monk leans over the balustrade, and two small child-angels flank the composition on either side.

Painted in tempera on panel.

7 ft. 1½ in. × 8 ft. 0¼ in. (2·17 × 2·44.)

In 1457, the year that Fra Filippo’s son Filippino was born, his household effects and box of colours were seized for debt. He lived on until October 4, 1469, when he died of a sudden and somewhat mysterious illness. The Frate, who is the connecting link between Masaccio, the first blossom, and Raphael, the full flower of Florentine painting, was the master of Botticelli. A small Madonna and Child (No. 1345) has little claim to be regarded as the work of Fra Filippo.

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.

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.

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.

7 ft. 3 in. × 9 ft. 4 in. (2·12 × 2·84.)

The Madonna and Child and St. John (No. 1296), which was formerly put forward by one critic as a “work of Botticelli’s early years, but showing collaboration,” and which is still catalogued as being by the master himself, is now generally recognised as a school picture only. The background is formed by cypresses and rosebushes. The circular panel (No. 1295), which is still credited officially to Sandro, is only a copy of the Madonna of the Magnificat now in the Uffizi at Florence (No. 1267 Bis).

Authenticity cannot be claimed for the Fragment of a Predella (No. 1300), containing the figures of St. Peter Martyr, the Virgin, St. Elizabeth, Christ and the Magdalene, David, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. John the Baptist. The Scene from the History of Virginia (No. 1662a or No. 1662 Bis), a cassone front, and the Portrait of a Young Man (No. 1663), which was purchased in 1882 for £600, are catalogued as being by an unknown Florentine painter. These have, however, been included by Mr. Berenson among the numerous pictures painted by the nameless imitator of Botticelli, whom the eminent critic has identified under the significant name of “Amico di Sandro,” i.e. “The friend of Sandro Botticelli.” The Madonna and Child adored by Angels (No. 1300a), bequeathed by the Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild, is regarded by the same high authority as a copy by Jacopo del Sellaio (1442?–1493), a pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi and an imitator of Botticelli, of a lost picture by “Amico di Sandro.” The unbeautiful Venus (No. 1299) from the Cardinal Fesch and Campana collections (which is very similar to a picture (No. 916) in the National Gallery), the Esther crowned by Ahasuerus (No. 1643a), and the St. Jerome (No. 1658), must also be included among the mediocre works of Sellaio. In the same group of Florentine painters is placed Francesco Botticini (1446–1497), who worked under and was influenced by Cosimo Rosselli (1437?–1507); the Virgin in Glory between the Magdalene and St. Bernard (No. 1482) is by Botticini although placed under the name of Rosselli in the Catalogue. Many pictures by Botticini pass in public galleries under the more illustrious name of Botticelli.

From Cosimo Rosselli we naturally pass to his pupil Piero di Cosimo (1462–1521), who derived great pleasure from the painting of such scenes from classic fable as enabled him to depict grotesque monsters, strange animals, and fantastic costume. At first sight it might be assumed that the Nuptials of Thetis and Peleus (No. 1416a and No. 1416b) were from his brush; but although these two panels pass under his name in the Catalogue, they are, as we have seen, by “Alunno di Domenico.” Piero is represented in the Louvre exclusively by religious pictures, the most imposing of which is the Coronation of the Virgin, with St. Jerome, St. Francis, St. Bonaventura, and St. Louis of Toulouse (No. 1416). An unpleasing Madonna (No. 1662) has long ago been assigned to Piero di Cosimo, who is also the author of a St. John the Baptist as a Child (No. 1274), which is labelled with the name of Uccello. The two last pictures hang in the Long Gallery on either side of the door leading into Room VII.

The authorities catalogue as the work of Raffaelino del Garbo (1466–1524) the large Coronation of the Virgin, with St. Benedict, St. Salvi, St. John Gualberto, and St. Bernard degli Uberti (No. 1303), which is in reality the centre part of a large altarpiece by Raffaelle dei Carli (1470–1526?), who worked with Garbo and his group.

The great French Museum does not possess one of the only three easel paintings which are now assigned by the safest critics to Michelangelo (1475–1564), who as a painter is best known for his fresco paintings in Rome. This collection is, however, fortunate enough to own the two sculptures of the Slaves, represented as fettered and overcome by grief at the death of Pope Julius ii., for whose tomb they were intended.

ALBERTINELLI

By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence had become the æsthetic capital of Italy, and painters innumerable were plying their trade within her walls. As they worked in close contact and unconsciously reflected the influences which beset them on every side, it becomes increasingly difficult to assign to any given artist the execution of certain works. The task becomes even more difficult, and indeed thankless, when one is brought face to face with such a composite picture as the Madonna and Child, St. Jerome and St. Zenobius (No. 1114), which is officially ascribed to Albertinelli (1474–1515). The leading authority on Italian art has given it as his opinion that this large canvas, which is inscribed:

MARIOCTI DEBERTINELLIS OPUS
Ā. D̄. M̊. DVI,

was “begun by Filippino Lippi, who laid in the St. Jerome, while Albertinelli was assisted by Bugiardini in the execution of the rest, especially in the child and landscape.” Albertinelli was the intimate friend of Fra Bartolommeo, whose partner he eventually became. When it is remembered that Albertinelli worked in the studio of Cosimo Rosselli with Piero di Cosimo, who was the master of Fra Bartolommeo and had some influence on Filippino Lippi, it will be recognised that it is only the discerning critic of wide experience and consummate flair that can detect the hand of various painters in a composite picture of this kind, as Mr. Berenson has done.

The Christ appearing to the Magdalene (No. 1115), which passes officially as the work of Albertinelli, was most probably an early picture by Fra Bartolommeo (1472–1517), who, having like Botticelli come under the spell of Savonarola, took the vows of a Dominican in July 1500, and temporarily relinquished the professional activity of a painter. The Frate took up his brush again and, while working between 1509 and 1512 as the partner of Albertinelli, achieved the large and imposing Holy Family, with St. Peter, St. Vincent, St. Stephen, and St. Catherine of Siena on the left, and St. Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Bartholomew on the right (No. 1154). It is signed on the base of the throne, in characteristic manner:

ORATE PRO PICTORE
MDXI
BARTHOLOME FLOREN̄.
OR. PRAE.

Four years later he also completed his Annunciation (No. 1153), which is inscribed:

F. Barto Florens oris pre.
1515.

The introduction of St. Paul, St. John the Baptist, and St. Margaret on the left, and St. Mary Magdalene and St. Francis on the right, tends to destroy the full significance of the principal theme. Fra Bartolommeo’s pictures helped to emancipate Raphael from the mannerisms he had acquired from Perugino; they mark a late period in the Renaissance art of Florence. He lived until 1517, when Florentine painting was on the verge of a fast approaching decadence.

Equally influential in the art of this period was Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), whose tendency to over-ornamentation became more advanced in his later years. In his fascinating pictures spiritual significance is at times sacrificed to a love of mere display, the baroque flutterings of his draperies and the air of affectation that he sometimes imparted to his figures. The Louvre exhibits no example of the art of Filippino which in its latest phase shows the early, although unmistakable, signs of decline.

ANDREA DEL SARTO

The highly technical skill and mellow colouring of Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531) have long been known in France, where he was invited by François i. For that monarch he executed the Charity (No. 1514), which, having been transferred from panel to canvas by Picault in 1750 when the process was little understood, suffered accordingly. In its present state we can get little idea of the former brilliance of the picture which secured to the “faultily faultless painter” in 1518—the year he arrived in France—a very considerable income. It is inscribed:

ANDREAS SARTUS
FLORENTINTUS ME PINXIT
MDXVIII.

A Holy Family (No 1515), by the same facile painter, has been said by some to portray in the features of the Virgin those of his own infamous wife Lucrezia del Fede. It has been enlarged, and has suffered in the operation. Less authentic are the Holy Family (No. 1516), which is said to bear the inscription:

ANDREA DEL SARTO FLORENTINO FACIEBAT

followed by a monogram, and a lunette of the Annunciation (No. 1517). The Portrait of Andrea Fausti, which is given in the Catalogue under the name of Sarto, and described as being the work of a pupil, is held by some critics to have been painted by Franciabigio (1482–1525), who came under the influence of Andrea.

The insignificant Portrait of a Young Man (No. 1506), which since 1709 has passed under the quite fictitious title of the Portrait of Raphael, and is indeed still catalogued under his name, is an ill drawn and badly coloured production. It seems to issue from the influences we have just outlined. Morelli regarded it as the work of Bacchiacca (1494–1557), who churned up reminiscences of Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, and Perugino. Mr. Berenson has tentatively assigned it to Sogliani, who imitated Albertinelli and many other Florentines.

An unattributed Florentine Portrait of a Young Man (No. 1644), which has been enlarged about three inches all round, had at one time or another been ascribed without much discrimination to Raphael, Giorgione, Sebastiano del Piombo, Francesco Francia, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and Franciabigio! It is apparently from the hand of Giuliano Bugiardini (1475–1554), a mediocre artist who endeavoured to appropriate all the conflicting influences that he came under. It has long been hung to the left of Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière.

A Florentine painter of no great accomplishment or originality in the first half of the sixteenth century was Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557), who painted the Portrait of an Engraver of Precious Stones (No. 1241) and the large Holy Family (No. 1240). The Visitation (No. 1242) is a copy by a pupil of his fresco in the Annunziata, Florence. By another pupil, Agnolo Bronzino (1502–1572), are the Christ and the Magdalene (No. 1183), not now exhibited, and the Portrait of a Sculptor (No. 1184); the Holy Family (No. 1183a or No. 1183b) which was formerly in the Vandeuil collection is only a copy. Giovanni Battista Rosso (1496–1541), who is called Rosso Fiorentino to distinguish him from Francesco Rosso (Il Salviati), came to work at the French Court about 1530; he painted a Pietà (No. 1485), and a Challenge of the Pierides (No. 1486), which are hung among the French pictures. The Portrait of a Musician (No. 1608), by Paolo Zacchia; the Madonna, St. John and St. Stephen (No. 1133), by Michelangelo Anselmi; the David overcoming Goliath (No. 1462), a repulsive production painted by Daniele da Volterra (Ricciarelli) on both sides of a large piece of slate; a Flight into Egypt (No. 1209), by Lodovico Cardi (Il Cigoli), and Matteo Rosselli’s Triumph of David (No. 1483), are unworthy of comment. They show unmistakably the characteristics of the Decadence in full operation.

THE LATER SIENESE SCHOOL

WE have already sketched the earliest period of the art of Siena, and seen how for a brief space of time it dominated that of Tuscany. The greater precision of the Florentine technique, and the wider mental outlook of its artists in the fifteenth century, placed it in the van before long.

Sano di Pietro (1406–1481), a pupil of Sassetta, undoubtedly painted the five small characteristic panels (No. 1128–32), which illustrate scenes from the Life of St. Jerome, and at one time formed the predella of a large altarpiece. St. Jerome, with others of his order who run away, kneels under a portico of the monastery he founded at Bethlehem, and is extracting a thorn from the lion’s paw. According to the legend, the lion was afterwards placed in charge of an ass which the monks employed to carry wood; we see here that while the lion was asleep in the heat of the day under a clump of trees, the ass was stolen by merchants. St. Jerome naturally believed that the ass had not been carried off by a passing caravan, but eaten by the lion, who subsequently saw his old friend the ass in the possession of the same merchants that chanced to pass that way again. The lion is here seen (No. 1130) in the act of compelling, one might almost say pushing, the ass and the other beasts of burden laden with provisions back into the monastery, while the merchants flee away in terror.

The Louvre does not contain any work by Vecchietta (1412–1480), who was architect as well as painter. A Birth of the Virgin (No. 1660), catalogued as being by an unknown Florentine artist, is most probably from the hand of Matteo di Giovanni (1435?–1495), who was most likely at one time a pupil of Vecchietta. Another of the latter’s pupils, Francesco di Giorgio (1439–1502), perhaps executed the panel of the Rape of Europa (No. 1640a or No. 1640 Bis), which the cataloguer relegates to the lengthy list of unattributed Florentine works.

From these influences spring Girolamo di Benvenuto (1470–1524), whose Judgment of Paris (No. 1668) passes in the Catalogue as a late fifteenth century Bolognese picture. Bernardino Fungai (1460–1516), who trod in the steps of Giovanni di Paolo, Francesco di Giorgio, and the Umbrian artist Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and yet evinced no real signs of development from within, is unrepresented in this collection.

This rapid survey of the School of Siena shows that it is not well exemplified in the Louvre. The third-rate painters, Pacchiarotto (1474–1540) and Beccafumi (1486–1551), will not detain us. Another accomplished late Sienese eclectic, Girolamo del Pacchia (1477–1535?), has been credited with a Crucifixion (No. 1642), but not by the official cataloguer. Sodoma (1477–1551) also worked in Siena. Towards the year 1501 other artists of the various schools of Central Italy, including Pinturicchio, Signorelli, and Perugino, visited the city, their advent bringing about an artistic revolution. Before long the religious fervour, the delicate ornamentation, the gesso-embellishment, the drawing in the flat, and the miniature-like delicacy of an earlier age became extinct. The artistic glory of Siena was dimmed, and rapidly passed into a period of decadence.

Among the last Sienese artists of any distinction were Baldassare Peruzzi (1481–1536), an architect and painter, and Matteo Balducci (fl. 1509–1553), to whom we may perhaps ascribe the Judgment of Solomon (No. 1571) and the Judgment of Daniel (No. 1572). In any case these pictures belong to the Umbro-Sienese period of Central Italian art; they are officially regarded as being by Perugino himself. When all originality had passed out of Sienese painting, Francesco Vanni (1563?–1609) produced his Repose on the Flight into Egypt (No. 1561) and the Martyrdom of St. Irene (No. 1562).

THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

AT the head of the various local centres of painting which form the school of Umbria we must place Alegretto Nuzi (died 1385), whose works are very rarely met with in museums north of Italy. He inherited the best Giottesque traditions, and became the teacher of Gentile da Fabriano (1360?–1428), an early master whose influence was more far-reaching and inspiring than we can to-day trace in any detail. The Louvre has the good fortune to contain a precious little predella panel of the Presentation in the Temple (No. 1278), which is very decorative and exhibits a strongly marked appreciation of architecture. It is the only separated panel from the predella of Gentile’s large and magnificent altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, of 1423, which was seized by Napoleon but was returned in 1815. It is now in the Accademia at Florence.

The Miracle of St. Nicholas giving a Dowry to the Three Daughters of a Nobleman (No. 1659), which is officially classed among the unattributable works of the Florentine school, is now considered to be by Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, while the Madonna and Child (No. 1300a or 1300b) which is officially ascribed to Piero dei Franceschi, the leading painter of his generation in the school of Umbria, must, as we have seen, be given to Alessio Baldovinetti of the Florentine school.

Again, the three-panel picture (No. 1415) which is credited to Pesellino of Florence is in reality from the hand of the Umbrian artist Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521). The collection is not rich in the works of the earliest painters of this school, but the Birth of the Virgin (No. 1525), a detached panel from a lost or unidentified altarpiece by Luca Signorelli (1441–1523), gives us some idea of the great power of this influential master, whose knowledge of composition and anatomy is best seen in his frescoes at Orvieto. Signorelli’s sense of complicated movement and crowded action mark an epoch in the art of Umbria. The Fragment of a Large Picture (No. 1527) seems to be imbued with his spirit, but the large Adoration of the Magi (No. 1526) which comes from Città di Castello, and a Madonna and Child with St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Catherine, and other Saints (No. 1528), contain none of the vigorous originality of that master from whom even Michelangelo did not disdain to borrow on occasion. Three predella panels (No. 1120) have been dismembered from a large altarpiece by Niccolò da Foligno, and were originally painted for a side altar in the Church of S. Niccolò at Foligno. In the art of this over-emotional Umbrian, what is meant for deep religious feeling is by exaggeration almost transformed into grimacing passion.

PERUGINO

Niccolò’s most illustrious contemporary in this school was Pietro Perugino (1446–1523). Over fifty of the religious pictures of this influential and accomplished master were carried off from Central Italy by Napoleon. He is well represented in this Gallery. The contemplative and deeply impressive pictures of his less mannered style are among the best pictures which Umbria has given us, but there is a tendency, notably towards the end of his career, to repeat his compositions, only altering the attitude of a single figure, and so exhibiting a marked lack of originality. His early Holy Family with St. Rose and St. Catherine (No. 1564), painted about 1491, is a little cramped; the tondo hardly provides sufficient space to contain the rather stiff figures, and the treatment is unpleasantly conventional. It also recalls the art of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The St. Sebastian (No. 1566a, [Plate VI.]), which is inscribed:

SAGITTÆ TVÆ INFIXÆ SVNT MICHI,

is a favourite subject with this master, who painted it at least eight times on a large scale, as well as in a miniature now lent to the National Gallery by Mr. H. Yates Thompson. The Holy Family with St. Catherine (No. 1565) is said to bear the characteristic signature:

PETRUS PERVSINUS PINXIT.

The Combat of Love and Chastity (No. 1567) was commissioned by Isabella d’Este, Duchess of Mantua, in 1505, and removed at the sack of that city in 1630 to the Château of Richelieu, where it remained down to the Revolution. The St. Paul (No. 1566) is a very late and not very attractive work. In his best pictures Perugino loved to paint a purist landscape with its buoyant spaciousness of view, but too frequently his figures are insufficiently dramatic and have a tendency towards sentimentality. A very late St. Sebastian (No. 1668a), which is on a much smaller scale than the subject of our illustration ([Plate VI.]), is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Umbrian painter. The Apollo and Marsyas (No. 1509), which was purchased at Christie’s in 1850 for £70 by Morris Moore, with an ascription to Mantegna, was in 1883 sold to the Louvre for £8000. It long hung in the Salon Carré as a Raphael, but is now only attributed to him by the cataloguer. This gem of Umbrian art has successively been ascribed by critics to Pintoricchio, Timoteo Viti, Francesco Francia, and others, but is to-day generally regarded as a very fine example of the art of Perugino. Two pictures (No. 1573 and No. 1573a) of the Madonna and Child are by unidentifiable pupils of Perugino.

One of the most recent acquisitions is a Madonna by Antoniazzo Romano (1440?–1508), the gift of M. Lucien Delamarre. The art of Pintoricchio (1454–1513) is shown in the Madonna and Child with St. Gregory and another Saint (No. 1417), while Lo Spagna (1475?–1528?), a pupil of Perugino, is represented by a Nativity (No. 1539), a Madonna and Child (No. 1540), and by three small pictures illustrating the Dead Christ, the Virgin, and St. John (No. 1568), St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata (No. 1569), and St. Jerome in the Desert (No. 1570).

A mediocre pupil of Perugino and Pintoricchio, Giannicola Manni (fl. 1493–1544), is doubtless responsible for the Baptism of Christ (No. 1369), the Assumption (No. 1370), the Adoration of the Magi (No. 1371), and the Holy Family (1372) which pass under his name. The last-mentioned panel was attributed by Villot, apparently without much reason, to L’Ingegno.

RAPHAEL

The majority of the thirteen pictures which in the Louvre are unreservedly catalogued under the great name of Raphael (1483–1520) certainly belong to his third or Roman period, and in many of them he obviously received a large amount of assistance from his pupil, Giulio Romano. It is this fact, no doubt, which has led the compiler of the Catalogue to place the “Divine Urbinate” in the Roman school. It will, however, be readily admitted that such a classification is both arbitrary and misleading.

PLATE VI.—PERUGINO
(1446–1523)
UMBRIAN SCHOOL
No. 1566a.-ST. SEBASTIAN
(Saint Sébastien)

The Saint stands with his hands behind his back bound to a pillar, with his head raised towards heaven. An arrow pierces his right arm and another his left breast. The body is nude, but for a white loin cloth striped with red and blue. In the background is a rounded arch supported by two highly ornamented pillars. Through the archway is seen a beautiful landscape.

Painted in tempera on panel.

Signed:—“sagittæ tvæ infixæ svnt michi.”

5 ft. 7 in. × 3 ft. 10 in. (1·70 × 1·17.)

Although he lived but thirty-seven years, Raphael gave to the world a vast amount of art treasure. Brought up in Urbino, where his father, Giovanni Santi, was poet as well as painter, he passed before he was fifteen under the direct influence of Timoteo Viti, who had worked at Bologna under Francesco Francia. Raphael became the pupil of Perugino at Perugia about 1500, and also worked as the assistant of Pintoricchio. His art being thus formed on the best Umbrian tradition, Raphael in October 1504 left Perugia for Florence, and it was only at that date that he began to acquire a distinctive style of his own. During his second or Florentine period he painted the St. George and the Dragon (No. 1503), in which is seen the chivalrous knight mounted on a pure white steed; his lance is broken in his combat with the monster, and he is forced to use his sword, while the little Princess Cleodolinda flees in abject terror into the background. The very small panel of St. Michael (No. 1502), which is a chessboard on the back, was painted for Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, and eventually passed into the collections of Cardinal Mazarin and Louis xiv. The Madonna and Child which has come to be known as La Belle Jardinière (No. 1496, [Plate VII.]) is rather later than the Madonna del Gran’ Duca in the Pitti Palace, the Cardellino Madonna in the Uffizi, and the Ansidei Madonna in the National Gallery. It is one of the most famous of Raphael’s saintly and ideal Madonnas; the pose of the figures is easy, the treatment simple, the colour exquisite. The landscape background is poetic in feeling, and conveys the mood which makes this one of Raphael’s most pleasing creations. The thin feathery trees and the treatment of the Virgin’s hair are still Peruginesque, but the superiority of the pupil to the master is gradually making itself felt. The Infant Christ is standing on the right foot of His mother. Tradition says that Raphael entrusted to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio the task of painting in the blue of the Virgin’s garment. The drapery is apparently inscribed:

VRB. RAPHAELLO MDVII.

After working for four years in Florence, Raphael went in the summer of 1508 to Rome, where he achieved such a vast amount of work for Popes Julius ii. and Leo x. His work was increased by his appointment, on the death of Bramante in 1514, as Architect of St. Peter’s and Inspector of Antiquities.

About 1515–16 Raphael delighted to paint the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (No. 1505, [Plate VIII.]), who was his lifelong friend and adviser as well as the author of Il Cortegiano. This picture, which is eloquent testimony to Raphael’s skill as a portrait painter, was originally on wood, but it was long ago transferred to canvas, which has unfortunately abraded, the paint having peeled off the hands. After the death of Castiglione in Spain, this picture which he had taken with him passed into the possession of the Duke of Mantua, and thence into the collection of Charles i., where it seems to have been copied by Rubens. It subsequently became the property of a Dutch amateur named Van Asselen, and was copied by Rembrandt. Later, it was sold for 3500 florins to Don Alfonso Lopez, a collector at Amsterdam, and after figuring in the collection of Mazarin was acquired by Louis xiv.

The Holy Family of Francis I. (No. 1498) was commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici and presented to the Queen of François i. by Pope Leo x. It was originally painted on wood, and was forwarded to Lyons on April 19, 1518. During the reign of Louis xiv. it hung in the grand appartement at Versailles, and having been placed near a fireplace had to be relined. It then had wings, but they were destroyed at the time of the Revolution. Although it is very ostentatiously signed

RAPHAEL VRBINAS PINGEBAT MDXVIII

on the edge of the robe of the kneeling Madonna, there can be no question that it was only designed by Raphael, the execution being wholly or in great part carried out by the master’s best pupil, Giulio Romano. In the Sistine Madonna and such works as Raphael painted at this period entirely with his own hand we see that his technique had become masterly and his powers of composition had developed to the utmost. Compared with La Belle Jardinière of a decade earlier, a greater knowledge of craftsmanship has been accompanied by a loss of purity and simplicity.

PLATE VII.—RAPHAEL
(1483–1520)
UMBRIAN SCHOOL
No. 1496.—LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE
(La Vierge dite La Belle Jardinière)

The Virgin is seated in a flowery meadow. She wears a red tunic edged with black, yellow sleeves and a blue mantle; a book is on her knees; her fair hair is confined under a transparent veil. She looks down to the left at the Infant Jesus, who leans tenderly against her knee and draws her attention to the little St. John the Baptist who kneels to the right, his reed cross in his right hand. The background shows a landscape containing a small town with its church, and a lake surrounded by mountains.

Painted in oil on panel.

The signature seems to be:—“vrb. raphaello mdvii.”

3 ft. 8 in. × 2 ft. 7½ in. (1·22 × 0·80.)

Two years before his death Raphael had designed the large but by no means imposing St. Michael overcoming Satan (No. 1504), the execution of which on panel was certainly due to Giulio Romano. It was a gift from Lorenzo de’ Medici to François i., the original cartoon being presented by Raphael to the Duke of Ferrara. This picture, like the Holy Family of Francis I., was originally protected by folding wings, the inner sides of which were lined with green velvet, while the outer were gilded and painted with arabesques. The two pictures arrived at Fontainebleau in July 1518, having been carried on the back of mules by way of Florence and Lyons. As early as 1530 the St. Michael was restored by Primaticcio and by many others subsequently, notably in 1752. The picture was transferred to canvas by Picault, who received for his labours the large sum of 11,500 livres, a sum quite out of proportion to its æsthetic or financial value to-day. It was again restored in 1776, 1800, and 1850. It is signed in gilt characters on the edge of the Archangel’s tunic:

RAPHAEL VRBINAS PINGEBAT MDXVIII.

The Demon is not shown, as in the early and small picture of the same subject (No. 1502), as a dragon, but as a half-human monster with horns and tail. The foreshortening is undoubtedly clever, but the picture is too instantaneous in its dramatic action. In the course of time the high lights have gone down and the shadows darkened in the metallic-looking figure of the Archangel.

The Virgin with the Blue Diadem or the Virgin with the Veil (No. 1497) is one of at least ten pictures in this collection which were carried out by Giulio Romano (1492?–1546). It is here credited to Raphael. It has been repeatedly restored. A very large number of replicas, variants, and old copies of this panel exist. The following “Raphaels” may be regarded as the work of Giulio: the Small Holy Family with St. Elizabeth (No. 1499); the much restored Saint Margaret (No. 1501); the Portrait of Joan of Arragon (No. 1507), whom Raphael apparently never saw; and the Portraits of Two Men seen to the Bust (which has been called Raphael and his Fencing Master) (No. 1508). Giulio certainly painted the Triumph of Titus and Vespasian (No. 1420), the Venus and Vulcan (No. 1421), and the Portrait of a Man (No. 1422), which are catalogued under his name, and in all probability the three large Cartoons entitled A Triumph, The Triumph of Scipio, and The Taking and Burning of a City, which hang on the Escalier Daru. The Circumcision (No. 1438) which figures officially under the name of the Bolognese painter Bartolommeo Ramenghi (Il Bagnacavallo) (1484–1542) is by Giulio Romano.

The fresco painting of The Eternal Father (No. 1512), which is now inserted over the door of the Salle des Primitifs (Room VII.), was certainly executed during the lifetime of Raphael, and probably under his supervision. It was painted for the chapel attached to the Villa Magliana, a favourite hunting-box of Pope Leo x., who commissioned it. It was purchased in 1873 for the large sum of £8280.

From the hand of Giannicola Manni (fl. 1493–1544) come the Baptism of Christ (No. 1369), the Assumption (No. 1370), the Adoration of the Magi (No. 1371), and a Holy Family (No. 1372), while a fully signed Dead Christ supported by Two Angels (No. 1400) is by the mediocre Umbrian artist Marco Palmezzano (fl. 1456–1538). The latter’s pupil, Zaganelli da Cottignola (1460?–1531), may have painted the Christ bearing His Cross (No. 1641) which is catalogued as an unattributable Italian work.

PLATE VIII.—RAPHAEL
(1483–1520)
UMBRIAN SCHOOL
No. 1505.—PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
(Portrait de Balthazar Castiglione, ambassadeur et littérateur)

He is seen nearly in full face. He wears a white linen under-garment, an over-dress of black velvet with grey sleeves, and a cap.

Painted in oil on canvas.

2 ft. 0½ in. × 2 ft. 2½ in. (0·62 × 0·67.)

THE VENETIAN SCHOOL

THE conquest of Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade by Doge Enrico Dandolo in 1204, an epoch-making event in the history of Venice and Venetian art, strengthened the intercourse between the East and the City of the Lagoons. At the same time it riveted the fetters of Byzantinism on to the nascent art of Venice, to which it also imparted a sense of intense Oriental colour.

The frescoes painted in Tuscany on the lines of Giottesque tradition and the environment under which its painters worked, in time gave to the Florentines a sense of line and form which produced a school of idealists: on the other hand, the colour-impressions created on the mind of the Venetian painter by the relics from the East and the brilliant mosaics which he saw around him resulted eventually in the formation of a school of colourists with a realistic tendency.

It will cause little surprise that the Louvre contains no polyptych by the very early Venetians, Niccolò Semitecolo (fl. 1351–1400), Jacobello del Fiore (died 1439), and Michele Giambono (fl. 1420–1462). The Gallery possesses, however, a fourteenth-century Venetian arched panel of the Madonna and Child (No. 1541) which is attributed to Stefano Veneziano.

In the early fifteenth century the dominating influence exerted on the painters of Venice was that of Jacopo Bellini (1400?–1470), whose sons, Gentile and Giovanni, and son-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, were to shape the destinies of the school throughout the Renaissance. Jacopo’s drawing is seen in its full maturity in the Sketch-book of about 1450 which belongs to the Louvre but is not publicly exhibited. Another Sketch-book by him of about 1430 is one of the treasured possessions of the British Museum. Jacopo had in early life been the pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, who, together with Alegretto Nuzi, stands at the head of the Umbrian school, and of Antonio Pisanello (1397–1455), the medallist-painter who played such an important part in the art of Verona. Both Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello worked for a time at Venice. Under the circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising to find that a Madonna and Child with a Donor (No. 1159a, formerly No. 1279 and No. 171), which is now justly ascribed in the Catalogue to Jacopo Bellini, was long assigned officially to Gentile Bellini, although held by some critics to have been painted in the school of Pisanello. The name of the Donor in this picture is given in the Catalogue as Leonello d’Este and on the frame as Pandolfo Malatesta; it would, however, seem to be the portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta.

Four small triptychs (Nos. 1280–83) from the Campana collection still pass officially under the ambiguous designation of “School of Gentile da Fabriano”; they may, however, without much doubt be ascribed to Antonio Vivarini, who remained outside the Bellini sphere of influence, and died about 1470.

THE BELLINI

The sunny splendour of Venetian painting reached its zenith in the bottega of the Bellini. Gentile, who was sent to Constantinople with the authority of the Republic in 1479, painted portraits, ceremonial, religious, and historical pictures, many of which are on a large scale, while Giovanni was for many years the greatest teacher and the most influential painter in Venetian territory. Giovanni executed a large number of panels and canvases which in the period of his maturity exhibit a profound sense of dignity, beauty, religious feeling, and rich deep colour. Most of those which are signed in a cartellino “ioannes bellinus” (in capitals and, of course, in pigment of the period) are authentic works from his own hand. The majority of those which bear what to the unpractised eye might be taken for his personal signature, but are only signed in uncials (“Ioannes Bellinus”), must be regarded as mere studio productions. In the sixteenth century no one was misled by these alternative methods of personal signature and studio-mark. Although the Louvre authorities catalogue two pictures under the name of Gentile and three under that of Giovanni, none of them is from the hand of either of these brothers.

Bartolommeo Vivarini of Murano (fl. 1450–1499) was the pupil of Giovanni d’Allemagna, who worked in Venice, and Antonio Vivarini. He painted a large panel of St. John of Capistrano (No. 1607), which is signed and dated

OPVS BARTHOLOMEI VI[V]ARINI DE MURAHO—1459.

Alvise or Luigi Vivarini (fl. 1461–1503), the nephew of Bartolommeo, was the last and most distinguished painter in the Murano school. He carried on the old traditions of Early Venetian art until the day when the rival school of the Bellini had become supreme in Venice, and so had begun to prepare the way for the triumphs of the Giorgionesque period—the golden age of Venetian painting. The Portrait of a Man (No. 1519), catalogued under the name of Savoldo (1480?–1548?) is by Alvise. This magnificent bust-length picture represents Bernardo di Salla, who holds in his gloved right hand a paper inscribed “Dono Bnardo di Salla.” It vividly recalls the Portrait of a Man with a Hawk at Windsor, which, although it traditionally but erroneously bears the name of Leonardo da Vinci and has been ascribed to Savoldo, is in all probability another of the rare portraits by Alvise.

From the Vivarini group issues Carlo Crivelli (1430?–1493?). His morosely ascetic compositions, with their elaborate draperies, jewelled ornamentation, and at times grotesque anatomy, distinguish his polyptychs, all of which are painted in tempera, from those of any other painter in the whole range of art. His large panel picture of St. Bernardino of Siena (No. 1268) is inscribed

OPUS CAROLI CRIVELLI VENETI, 1477.

It belongs to his middle period, and was painted nine years earlier than his magnificent Annunciation, now one of the gems of the National Gallery (No. 739); both these pictures came from the Church of the Annunziata at Ascoli.

Another painter who carried on the Vivarini tradition but was influenced by Giovanni Bellini, was Giovanni Battista Cima (1460?–1517?), whose art is adequately shown in the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Mary Magdalene (No. 1259). The signature

IOANIS BAPT.
CONEGLANES.
OPVS.

as well as the internal evidence of the picture show it to be an authentic work.

One of the best, but until recent years one of the least known, members of that brilliant group of painters who flourished at Venice in the early half of the sixteenth century was Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556). He practised his art in many parts of Italy, and for that reason has been less generally known than many of his contemporaries. He was a pupil of Alvise Vivarini, but benefited largely by the example of Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. His art is not well seen in the small St. Jerome (No. 1350), which is signed and dated “lotvs 1500” and must therefore be one of his earliest and least ambitious works, nor in his Holy Family (No. 1351) which was formerly attributed to Dosso Dossi. Replicas have been found of his Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (No. 1349).

PLATE IX.—ANTONELLO DA MESSINA
(1430–1479)
VENETIAN SCHOOL
No. 1134.—PORTRAIT OF A CONDOTTIERE
(Portrait d’homme dit le Condottiere)

Bust portrait, turned three-quarters to the left. He wears a black doublet, above the collar of which is visible the edge of a white linen under-garment. Under his cap is seen his zazzara of red-brown hair.

Painted in oil on panel.

Signed:

“1474
Antonellus Messaneus me
pinxit.”

1 ft. 1 in. × 11 in. (0·33 × 0·28.)

Although we possess very detailed records of Antonello da Messina (1430–1479), his movements and his life’s work, it is only in recent years that they have been studied with any care. This Sicilian-born artist obviously cannot have set out for Flanders and there have learnt from Jan van Eyck (who died in 1441) the “discovery” of oil as a medium in painting, as Vasari tells us. But he may have seen in Italy a picture by the great Northern artist and from it have acquired some facility in the use of oil and in finishing with glazes of oil panels which had been begun in tempera. He was certainly in Venice in 1475–76, if not earlier, and his Portrait of a Condottiere (No. 1134, [Plate IX.]), which is characteristically signed and dated

1474
Antonellus Messaneus me
pinxit

belongs to that period of his full maturity. It was purchased at the Pourtalès-Gorgier sale in 1865 for £4767. In any case, the discoveries with which Antonello is credited within a few years completely revolutionised the methods of painting throughout Italy, and prepare us for the wonderful achievements of the later Venetians, who followed and improved upon the Bellini tradition.

Vittore Carpaccio (1455?–1526) was, like Gentile Bellini, a painter of Venetian fêtes, pageantry, and religious pictures on an imposing scale. Nothing is known of Carpaccio’s artistic descent, but his work shows traces of the influence of Jacopo Bellini and of Lazzaro Bastiani, who was the head of a group of artists whose art was based on the tradition of such early painters as Jacobello del Fiore. Carpaccio’s Preaching of St. Stephen at Jerusalem (No. 1211) is one of the series of five incidents from the Life of St. Stephen which were painted by this artist between 1511 and 1520 for the Scuola di S. Stefano at Milan. The others of the series are now in the Milan Gallery (No. 170—signed and dated 1513), at Berlin (No. 23), and at Stuttgart. The Louvre obtained this canvas, which varies from the others in size, from the Milan Gallery in 1813, when together with Boltraffio’s Madonna of the Casio Family (No. 1169) and other pictures it was exchanged for works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens.

To Vincenzo Catena (14..?–1531?) may be assigned, on stylistic grounds, the Reception of a Venetian Ambassador at Cairo in 1512 (No. 1157). In any case, it cannot have been executed by Gentile Bellini, as alleged in the Catalogue, as the audience here depicted did not take place until five years after that master’s death!

Another Bellinesque painter was Bartolommeo Veneto (fl. 1505–1555). We shall, following the suggestion of Venturi, assign to him the excellent but officially unattributed Portrait of a Lady (No. 1673) which hangs to the right of Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière.

GIORGIONE

Although a large number of really representative examples of the great lyricist Giorgione (1477–1510) have not come down to us, he is to be regarded as the greatest of the Venetian artists, and perhaps the most romantic painter that Europe has ever known. He was, together with his illustrious contemporary Titian, a pupil of Giovanni Bellini. His Pastoral Symphony (No. 1136, [Plate X.]) is one of the most beautiful idyllic groups in the whole range of painting, and shows that Giorgione could naively reveal the inner depths of thought and feeling and depict “passionate souls in passionate bodies.” Early in the sixteenth century the austere traditions of the Bellinesque era were passing away. Giorgione now began to unseal the eyes of his contemporaries, among whom Titian occupied an important place, to the “life-giving and death-dealing waters of love,” making the landscape background of his lyrical compositions respond to the mood of the incident illustrated. The Pastoral Symphony was acquired by Charles i. from the collection of the Duke of Mantua; it then passed to Jabach, and subsequently to Louis xiv. Although it has been slightly restored and has from time to time been without any reason ascribed to Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo and a large number of Venetian artists, it is to-day recognised on all sides as an excellent example of Giorgione.

PLATE X.—GIORGIONE
(1477?–1510)
VENETIAN SCHOOL
No. 1136.—PASTORAL SYMPHONY
(Concert Champêtre)

Two young men are seated on the grass; the one, wearing a green tunic with red sleeves, a red cap and parti-coloured hose, is playing on the lute; his companion bends over to listen to him. Before them a nude woman, her back turned to the spectator, is seated holding a flute. To the left another nude woman, with a drapery across her left hip, is drawing water at a fountain. In the background to the right is seen a shepherd with his flock. In the centre background are some houses.

Painted in oil on canvas.

3 ft. 7½ in. × 4 ft. 6½ in. (1·10 × 1·38.)

The same influences which formed the art of Giorgione inspired the pictures of Palma Vecchio (1480–1528), whose Adoration of the Shepherds with a Female Donor (No. 1399, [Plate XI.]) is brilliant in colour. The signature in the right foreground of this canvas, tician, is false. Palma left a large number of pictures unfinished at his death.

The Visitation (No. 1352) is an admirable example of the art of Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547), and is signed

SEBASTIANVS VENETVS FACIEBAT
ROMAE MDXXI.

It was purchased in the year indicated in the inscription by François i., who added it to his collection at Fontainebleau, whence it was removed by Louis xiv. to Versailles. The canvas, which has been a good deal injured, has at some time been cut into three pieces. The name by which this artist is generally known was derived from the office which he held late in life at the Papal Court. There he forsook the traditions of his native school and gradually came under the influence of Michelangelo. In Rome he also met Raphael, who was much impressed by his colour schemes: the St. John the Baptist in the Desert (No. 1500), here catalogued under the name of Raphael, and a few pictures similarly attributed in other galleries, were painted by Sebastiano in his Roman manner.

A prominent place among the less important artists generally included in this school must be accorded to Cariani (1480?–1547?). A large proportion of the pictures of this Bergamask painter usually pass under more imposing names, and it is a remarkable fact that we do not find any work attributed to him in the official Catalogue. He, however, painted a Holy Family (No. 1135), here assigned to Giorgione, as well as the Madonna and Child and St. Sebastian (No. 1159) given to Giovanni Bellini. The Portrait of Two Men (No. 1156), which for no very apparent reason was once regarded as the portraits of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, must be by Cariani, although still placed to the credit of Gentile.

Another of the less efficient pupils of Giovanni Bellini was Niccolò Rondinelli (fl. 1480–1500), whose Madonna and Child, St. Peter, and St. Sebastian (No. 1158) masquerades as a work by Giovanni Bellini, whose full name, ioannes bellinvs, is inscribed in capitals (not, however, placed in a cartellino) on the parapet which runs across the front of the panel.

TITIAN

Although we have only limited space to deal with the differences of the critics as to the probable date of Titian’s birth, we may point out that it was, until recent times, placed in the year 1477. Mr. Herbert Cook has, however, put forward a very strong case in favour of the year 1489, pointing out the remarkable fact that there is no record of Titian earlier than Dec. 2, 1511, or, according to the usual chronology, until he was thirty-five years of age! Again, L. Dolce, in 1557, wrote that Titian was “scarcely twenty years old when Giorgione was painting the façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi”; and we know that Titian was his assistant on that work in 1507–8. Vasari also asserts, as Mr. Cook reminds us, that the famous Venetian was “about seventy-six years old in 1566–67,” when he visited him in Venice. No reliance is to be placed on the date contained in the well-known letter which Titian addressed to Philip II. in 1571, as he evidently had a motive in referring to himself as “an old servant of ninety-five.” There is, however, no doubt that Titian died in 1576.

PLATE XI.—PALMA VECCHIO
(1480–1528)
VENETIAN SCHOOL
No. 1399.—THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS, WITH A FEMALE DONOR
(L’Annonce aux Bergers)

The Virgin is seated and holds the Infant Jesus on a cradle formed of basket-work; she wears a red robe with blue and green draperies and a white veil, under which her brown hair is seen. To her right St. Joseph is seated leaning on his staff; before him a shepherd boy kneels in adoration to the Infant Christ. To the left kneels the donatrice, her hands folded. In the ruined shed behind the Holy Family are the ox and ass. To the right of the composition is a landscape background in which several figures appear. A small group of angels in the sky.

Painted in oil on canvas.

4 ft. 7 in. × 6 ft. 11 in. (1·40 × 2·10.)

Titian, who was a native of Cadore, left his home at an early age for Venice. He was first placed as a pupil of Sebastian Zuccato, a mosaicist and perhaps a painter; he then seems to have worked in the studio of Gentile Bellini before passing into that of Giovanni, where he met Giorgione. Titian, like Giotto, has been called “the Father of modern painting.” The early Florentine had provided his countrymen with a set of fundamental principles of art, but it remained for the illustrious Venetian to endow his contemporaries and artistic descendants with a more complete equipment and a new sense of pictorial effect. The profound impression exerted by Giorgione on the youthful Titian inspired him to achieve those idyllic compositions and “poesies” which stand out so prominently among the world’s pictures.

Titian’s earliest picture in the Louvre is the Virgin and Child, with St. Stephen, St. Ambrose, and St. Maurice (No. 1577), of about 1508–1510. It is very reminiscent of a picture by Titian in the Vienna Gallery (No. 166), in which he has substituted St. Jerome for St. Ambrose.

No doubt can exist as to the authenticity of the so-called Portrait of Alfonso da Ferrara and Laura de’ Dianti (No. 1590), but the title under which it has passed for many years is probably incorrect. It was in the collection of Charles I., and was then described as “Tytsian’s Mrs., after the life by Tytsian.” In the collection of Jabach it was called La Maîtresse du Titien, and as such was sold to Louis xiv. for £100. This picture would correctly be described under the less ambitious title of A Woman at her Toilet and a Man holding Two Mirrors. Laura was the daughter of a hatter of Ferrara. She was persona grata at the court of Alfonso i., Duke of Ferrara (reigned 1505–1534), and there held the title of Illustrissima Donna Laura Eustochia d’Este. The Duke’s first wife, Anna Sforza, died in 1497, when he was twenty-one years old. In 1501 he married, as his second wife, Lucrezia Borgia (died 1519), the natural daughter of Pope Alexander vi. It seems probable that shortly afterwards the Duke took Laura as his third wife, and that she was painted by Titian a little later. The Louvre picture (No. 1590) appears on stylistic grounds to be a work of about 1515–1517. A portrait which can be more certainly identified as that of Laura is the single figure picture, painted by Titian about 1523, in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Richmond.

The influence of Giorgione is still clearly seen in Titian’s Man with a Glove (No. 1592, [Plate XII.]). It is a noble portrait of an unknown man; the colour is rich, and the light and shade are contrasted with great mastery; the bare right hand and the gloved left holding the second glove are admirably modelled. The canvas, which seems to have been painted about 1518, is signed “ticianvs f.” Soon afterwards Titian must have painted the Portrait of a Man in Black with the Thumb of his Left Hand in the Belt of his Doublet (No. 1591), the Madonna with the Rabbit (No. 1578), which is inscribed Ticianus F., and the magnificent Entombment (No. 1584, [Plate XIII.]). This priceless picture, which was painted not later, than 1523 for Federigo Gonzaga, passed from Mantua into the collection of Charles i. It was sold off by Cromwell for £128 and, after being one of the masterpieces for a few years in the collection of Jabach, was acquired by Louis xiv. The deep religious feeling and the rich, sonorous harmony of colour make this one of the world’s most precious pictures. Notice the sunburnt arm of Joseph of Arimathæa; it is significant of the art of Venice.

PLATE XII.—TITIAN
(1489?–1576)
VENETIAN SCHOOL
No. 1592.—THE MAN WITH A GLOVE
(L’homme au Gant)

He is standing and seen nearly in full face, the head turned three-quarters to the right, the eyes directed to the right. He wears a black costume with a white pleated under-garment, a gold chain round his neck, and white frills in his sleeves. His right hand, with a ring on the forefinger, holds his girdle. His left hand, gloved and holding the second glove, rests on a stone plinth.

Painted in oil on canvas.

Signed on the plinth:—“ticianvs. f.”

3 ft. 3½ in. × 2 ft. 11 in. (1·00 × 0·89.)

At an interval of about eight years we come to the St. Jerome (No. 1585), a religious scene set, curiously enough, in a moonlight landscape, which has darkened. The exact interpretation to be placed upon the Allegory in honour of Alfonso d’Avalos (No. 1589), of about 1533, has been much discussed; it is supposed to represent Alfonso bidding farewell to his wife on his departure for the wars, and entrusting her to the safe keeping of Chastity, Cupid, who bears a sheaf of arrows, and a third figure. The Portrait of Francis I. (No. 1588), whom Titian never saw, appears to have been painted about 1536 from a medal, and represents the King in profile. François i. died in 1547. It belongs to the same period as the Portrait of a Man in Damascened Armour with a Page holding his Helmet in the collection of Count Potocki. Another portrait, painted about 1543, represents a Man with a Black Beard resting his Hand on the Ledge of a Pilaster (No. 1593). By this time Titian’s art was rapidly maturing, as we see from his magnificent and imposing Supper at Emmaus (No. 1581) of the same year. It had passed from Mantua to England before being acquired by that excellent connoisseur, Jabach. It is said to be signed Ticianus f., while the Christ Crowned with Thorns (No. 1583), which was painted for a church in Milan about 1550, is inscribed titianvs f. When Charles i., as Prince of Wales, visited Madrid in 1623, he was presented with the Jupiter and Antiope (No. 1587), which has the alternative title of the Venus del Pardo. It had been painted for Philip ii., and had already escaped the fire which broke out in the Prado. Jabach acquired it for 600 guineas, and passed it on to Cardinal Mazarin, from whom it was acquired for 10,000 livres tournois by Louis xiv. It escaped destruction by fire in the Old Louvre in 1661. It has been very much repainted from time to time.

TITIAN’S FOLLOWERS

The Madonna and Child, with St. Catherine (? St. Agnes), and St. John the Baptist as a Child (No. 1579), which has been enlarged by the addition of a strip of canvas down the left side, contains a glimpse of the country near Pieve di Cadore, the native place of Titian. Fourteen of the twenty pictures here officially credited to him are to be regarded as authentic. Polidoro Lanzani (1515?–1565), an imitator of Titian, however, painted the Holy Family with St. John the Baptist (No. 1580), and the Holy Family and Saints (No. 1596) in the La Caze Room; while Andrea Meldolla (Schiavone), who was a pupil of Titian, no doubt executed the Ecce Homo (No. 1582) credited to the great Venetian artist, as well as the St. John the Baptist (No. 1524) which is rightly assigned to him.

The German painter Johan Stephan von Calcar, who to Italian biographers is known as Giovanni Calcar (1499–1546), was a pupil of Titian. He painted the imposing Portrait of a Man (No. 1185). He is seen at half length standing, and holding a letter in his right hand; his left hand to his waist. On a column in the background is painted the coat of arms, reputed to be that of the Buono family of Venice, which is repeated on the bezel of the ring on the forefinger of his left hand. Below his right hand is the inscription:

ANNO 1540
ÆTATIS 26.

Paris Bordone (1500–1570), who “painted women with more of an eye on the fashion-plate than on the expression of their features,” is not the author of a Portrait of a Lady (No. 1180a), nor of the Portrait of a Man and a Child (No. 1180), which seems to be a Flemish rather than a Venetian picture. His Vertumnus and Pomona (No. 1178) is less representative than his Portrait (so called) of Jeronimo Croft (No. 1179). It takes its title from the inscription, “Spss. Domino Jeronimo Crofft ... Magior suo semper obsero ... Augusta,” which is written on the letter held in the right hand.

The last dying echo of the “fire” and poetry of Giorgione is seen in some of the works of Bonifazio Veronese (1487–1553), who was also a pupil of Palma. Bonifazio is now regarded as a single individual, although formerly the varying differences in his style of painting led certain critics to regard him as three different members of the same family. The varied grouping seen in the large canvas entitled Holy Family, with St. Francis, St. Anthony, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Elizabeth, and St. John the Baptist (No. 1171), and the colouring of this canvas, seem to prove its authenticity. The smaller picture of a Holy Family (No. 1172), with a similar pedigree and a Greek inscription, which includes the same saints, is a mediocre work. The Madonna and Child, with St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist, St. Paul, and St. Ursula (No. 1674d) is a poor picture.

From the studio of Bonifazio issued Jacopo Bassano (1510?–1592), whose Vintage (No. 1428) shows his predilection for introducing animals and kneeling peasants into genre pictures, the treatment of which is apt to be rugged. This did not prevent his at times painting striking and vigorous portraits. The Louvre contains a good example of this branch of his art in the Portrait of Giovanni da Bologna (No. 1429), which is at present not exhibited. The Animals entering the Ark (No. 1423), Moses striking the Rock (No. 1424), Cana of Galilee (No. 1425), Christ bearing His Cross (No. 1426), and the Descent from the Cross (No. 1427) are also credited to him in the Catalogue.

Leandro Bassano (1558–1623), his son, is represented in the La Caze collection by an Adoration of the Magi (No. 1430) and a Rustic Labour (No. 1431).

The vigorous, ambitious and late Venetian painter Tintoretto (1518–1594), who painted portrait-groups, religious subjects, and mythological compositions on a large scale, and brought his achievements to completion with extraordinary rapidity, is not adequately represented in this Gallery, in which, however, no fewer than eleven works pass under his name. His Susanna and the Elders (No. 1464) testifies to the increasing frequency with which painters or their patrons at that period preferred the representation of sensational incidents from the Apocrypha. The subject is unattractive, but the picture, which is in a very dirty state, is wonderfully painted.

The Paradise (No. 1465) is but a preliminary sketch for the colossal painting, measuring 84 ft. × 34 ft.,—the largest oil-painting by an old master in existence,—which Tintoretto painted for the end wall of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace at Venice. The Portrait of a Man holding a Handkerchief in his Hand (No. 1467) reveals his great power as a portrait painter.

The Portrait of Pietro Mocenigo (No. 1470), signed petrus mocenio senator, and the Portrait of a Venetian Senator (No. 1471), inscribed anno ætatis lvii mvii iacomo tentoreto . f, are among the pictures of the La Caze collection.

In Room XV., which is given up to self-portraits by artists, hangs a picture which passes as an authentic Portrait of Tintoretto (No. 1466) by himself. It is inscribed jacobvs tentoretvs pictor venetivs and ipsivs. f.

PAOLO VERONESE

The harmonious colour, the sense of material magnificence, and the masterly draughtsmanship of Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) are seen to the greatest advantage in his Marriage at Cana (No. 1192). He signed a contract in June 1562, to paint this large picture, which measures 21 ft. × 32 ft., for the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, and completed it by September 8, 1563. According to the agreement, Paolo was to receive 324 ducats, a sum equal to-day to about £200; to be fed during the time he was engaged on the work; to be repaid the cost of the materials; and to receive a pipe of wine. The picture was seized by Napoleon during his victorious campaign of 1797, and brought by road to Paris. In accordance with the terms of the Peace of Campo Formio of 1814, it should have been returned. As it had proved a very difficult matter to take it to Paris, where it had to go into the restorer’s hands, the French urged that it was too vast and too dilapidated to bear a second journey. Astonishing as it may seem to us to-day, the Italians accepted the suggestion and in exchange took Charles Le Brun’s large but mediocre Magdalene at the Feet of Jesus, perhaps because it measured 12 ft. 6 in. × 10 ft. 4 in. Le Brun’s picture now hangs in the Venice Gallery (No. 377), the Catalogue of which pointedly remarks that “the exchange is much to be regretted.”

PLATE XIII.—TITIAN
(1489?–1576)
VENETIAN SCHOOL
No. 1584.—THE ENTOMBMENT
(La Mise au Tombeau)

The dead body of the Christ is borne on a white cloth by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathæa. Nicodemus is seen from the back wearing a pale red tunic and a parti-coloured scarf; Joseph of Arimathæa in green robes is in profile towards the right. St. John in a red robe supports the right arm of the Christ. To the left St. Mary Magdalene, with her arms around the Virgin, gazes in profound grief at the Christ. The Virgin with clasped hands bends forward to look at her Son.

Painted in oil on canvas.

4 ft 10½ in. × 7 ft. 1 in. (1·48 × 2·15.)

Paolo Veronese’s masterly work contains no devotional feeling. The Scriptural story merely serves as a pretext for depicting a scene of Venetian festivity and material magnificence with imposing architectural background. The grouping of the figures is varied, dexterously disposed and stately, while the colour is harmonious and sparkling. The changing of the water into wine is, however, merely incidental. It is a significant fact that a work of this description, in which Art in Venice begins to trick herself out in meretricious embellishments, should have been regarded as a seemly decoration for the refectory of a convent. An additional but frankly worldly interest is imparted to the work by the introduction of a portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos (whose portrait by Titian we have already seen) as the bridegroom, on the extreme left of the composition; to his left is the bride, with the features of Eleonora of Austria. The other figures include François i., dressed in blue and wearing a curious headdress; Mary of England, sister of Henry viii. and widow of Louis xii., in yellow; the Sultan Soliman, in green, at the side of a negro prince who addresses a servant. On the left of the next figure sits Vittoria Colonna, whom Michelangelo described as “a man within a woman,” plying her toothpick! At the end of the table, speaking to a servant, is the Emperor Charles v., seen in profile and wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece. The introduction of the fool with the bells in the centre of the picture is perhaps intended to express the pomp and pleasure of the world pursued without thought of Christ, who, however, occupies the place of honour in the centre of the composition. The couple of dogs in leash, one gnawing a bone, and a cat, lying on her back as she scratches at one of the vases which hold the wine on the right of the composition, may stand for merely brutal nature.

The painter’s personal interest in the scene is depicted in the group of four artists in the foreground. Paolo himself is playing a viol; just behind him is Tintoretto with a similar instrument; while on the right are Titian, in red with a bass viol, and Bassano playing the flute. The theory put forward by Mr. Herbert Cook that Titian was born as late as 1489, and so would be seventy-four years old in 1562–63, the year in which this picture was painted, certainly seems to find corroboration in the features here given to Titian by Paolo Veronese. He certainly does not look eighty-seven years of age, as he should do if he had been born as early as 1476.

In the Catalogue sixteen pictures are assigned to Paolo Veronese. The Portrait of a Lady and a Child playing with a Dog (No. 1199) is an early work. The Disciples at Emmaus (No. 1196), which is signed “paolo veronese,” is another of the master’s imposing canvases, as also is the Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee (No. 1193), which was presented to Louis xiv. by the Venetian Republic in 1665, and was for many years hung at Versailles. This artist is also officially credited with the Burning of Sodom (No. 1187), a Holy Family, with St. George, St. Catherine, and a Male Donor (No. 1190), a Holy Family, with St. Elizabeth and St. Mary Magdalene, and a Female Donor (No. 1191), a Christ heeding Peter’s Wife’s Mother (No. 1191a), a Christ fainting under the weight of the Cross (No. 1194), a Calvary (No. 1195), and an Esther fainting before Ahasuerus (No. 1189). The Susan and the Elders (No. 1188) is a replica of a picture in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire. The St. Mark crowning the Theological Virtues (No. 1197), and the Jupiter hurling Thunderbolts on Criminals (No. 1198), were originally executed as ceiling paintings for the Doge’s Palace. The Christ with the Terrestrial Globe (No. 1200) and the Portrait of a Lady in Black (No. 1201) are only studio pictures.

Little artistic ability is shown in the empty abstractions, and at times meaningless productions, of many of the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century Venetian artists. Felice Riccio (Il Brusasorci the Younger) (1540–1605) is given as the painter of a Holy Family (No. 1463); Alessandro Turchi (Orbetto) (1582–1648) of three pictures (Nos. 1558–1560); Sebastiano Ricci (1659?–1734) of four compositions (Nos. 1458–1461); Antonio Pellegrino (1675–1741) of an Allegory (No. 1413); Alessandro Varotari (1590–1650) of an utterly uninspired Venus and Cupid (No. 1574); and Pietro della Vecchia (1605–1678) of a dull Portrait of a Man (No. 1576).