The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume III Part 16

Francesco Rubiales, a Spaniard, from his felicity of imitation called Polidorino, is likewise named in Naples among the scholars of Caldara, whom he a.s.sisted in painting for the Orsini, and singly conducted several works at Monte Oliveto, and elsewhere, the greater part of which are no more.

There are who cla.s.s with the scholars of Polidoro, Marco Cardisco, called Marco Calabrese.[113] Him Vasari prefers to all the natives of that epoch, and admires as a plant sprung from a soil not its own: he knew not, perhaps, that, of Magna Grecia, modern Calabria was the spot most favoured by the arts. Possessed of a dextrous hand and florid colour, Cardisco spread his labours over Napoli and the State: of what remains, the most praised is the Dispute of Saint Augustine at Aversa.

Gio. Batista Crescione and Lionardo Castellani are slightly mentioned by Vasari as his scholars.

Gio. Francesco Penni, called "Il Fattore," came to Naples some time after Polidoro; and, during the short time which he lived, for he died in 1528, contributed to the advancement of the art by leaving his great copy of Raffaello's Transfiguration and his pupil Lionardo Grazia, of Pistoia, behind him, a name more celebrated for colour, and far less for design, than might have been expected from a nurseling of the Roman School. He is said to have been one of the masters of Francesco Curia, who went to Rome to study the style of Raffaello, but returned with the manner of Zucchero. His composition is, however, praised for decorum and suavity, his angels and female countenances for beauty, and his colour for a tone of nature:--their full display distinguished that Circ.u.mcision at the Church della Pieta, which Ribera, Giordano, and Solimene placed among the masterpieces of Naples. Curia left a close imitator in Ippolito Borghese, of whom little is seen at home, where he seldom resided, but the a.s.sumption of Maria at the Monte della Pieta,--an extensive work, marked by equal vigour of execution.

Perino del Vaga, at Rome, instructed, and was a.s.sisted by, two Neapolitans, Giovanni Corso and Gianfilippo Criscuolo. The best that remains of Corso at Naples, is a Christ bearing his Cross, in S.

Lorenzo. Long a pupil of Sabbatini, Criscuolo, during the little time of his stay at Rome, studied the works of Raffaello with a perseverance which acquired him the name of the Studious Neapolitan; but without native vigour, timid, correct, and dry, he remained fitter to teach than to lead. Such were the princ.i.p.al followers of the Roman School at Naples; for neither Francesco Imparato, who abandoned the dry precepts of Criscuolo for the genial example of Tiziano, nor his son Girolamo, who long after followed the same principles with more pretence and less success, can properly be cla.s.sed among the pupils of Rome. About 1544[114] a Tuscan introduced at Naples, what is as commonly as impertinently called, the style of Michael Angiolo: a cold enumeration of sesquipedalian muscles, groups uninspired by thought, feeble in effect, and crude or faint in colour, methodized by manner and despatched by practice. Thus Giorgio Vasari filled the Refectory of Monte Oliveto, during one year of residence, with an enormous work, which he considered as the electric stroke that was to animate that indolent taste, till then vainly solicited by Raffaello and his school.

Whether he disgusted the national pride by such insolent civility, or provoked the indignation of those who, in Andrea Sabbatini, venerated a superior name, it appears that, so far from creating a school, he was discountenanced by the public, and incurred the perpetual censure of every Neapolitan writer on art. He ought to have known, that he who challenges a nation, courts an eternal feud.

Another, less pompous, but more effectual follower of Michael Angiolo, was Marco da Pino, or Marco da Siena: the date[115] of his arrival at Naples ought probably to be placed after 1560. He was well received, presented with the freedom of the city, and deserved the courtesy by the amenity of his manners and sincerity of character. With the reputation of the first artist, Marco was employed in the most conspicuous churches of the city and the state. Though he sometimes repeated his inventions, he approached Michael Angiolo nearer than any other Tuscan, because he affected less to do it. His forms are appealed to by Lomazzo as instances of just proportion, and, in keeping and aerial perspective, he is ranked with Lionardo and Robusti. As his design is less charged, so is his colour more vigorous and glowing than the usual tinge of the Tuscan School: sometimes, however, he is unequal, trusts to practice, and deviates into manner. He was an able architect, and of the good writers on that art.

Of many pupils reared in his school, none was comparable to Gio. Angiolo Criscuolo, brother of G. Filippo. Though bred a notary, he had practised miniature from his youth; emulation with his brother prompted him to attempt larger proportions; and, under the tuition of Marco, he became a good imitator of his style.[116]

To dwell circ.u.mstantially on the crowd of artists that fill the biographic pages of this period, humiliating as mere nomenclature may appear, is below the dignity of an art, which, like poetry, admits not of mediocrity. Reputation during life, the partiality of friends and countrymen, some single work which escaped to excellence from the insignificant productions of a long career, are but equivocal claims on the homage of posterity: and more legitimate ones in oil or fresco, have neither Silvestro Bruno, Simone del Papa, the younger Amato, Mazzolini, Cola dell' Amatrice, Pompeo dell' Aquila, Giuseppe Valeriani, Marco Mazzaroppi, Gio. Pietro Russo, Pietro Negrone of Calabria, nor the Sicilian Gio. Borghese. Pirro Ligorio, the favourite architect of Pio IV. in Rome, and the engineer of Alphonso II. at Ferrara, owes the preservation of his name more to his Augean collections of antiquarian lumber and the intrigues by which he perplexed the last years of M.

Angiolo, than to the flimsy exertions of his pencil.

Matteo da Lecce, of obscure education, displayed in Rome a perverse attachment to the manner of M. Angiolo by the usual conglobation of muscles and extravagance of action. He worked chiefly in fresco, and with a relief, which, in the phrase of Baglioni, makes some of his figures burst from the wall. Though many Florentines were then at Rome, he alone appeared capable of completing the plan of Buonarroti, in the Sistina, by facing the Last Judgement with the Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Matteo girt himself boldly for the work, and left it a lamentable proof of the ridicule that must attend the presumption of a mere craftsman to ally himself with a man of genius. He worked likewise in Malta and in Spain, and, pa.s.sing from thence to the Indies, became a thriving trader, till duped by the rage of digging for treasures, he dissipated his wealth, and died of penury and grief.

After the middle of the sixteenth century, the flame-like rapidity of Tintoretto's style at Venice, and soon after, the powerful contrast of Caravaggio's method at Rome, and the eclectic system of the Carracci, at Bologna, spread general emulation over Italy, and divided Naples into three parties, of nearly equal strength, led by Corenzio, Ribera, and Caracciolo, differing from each other, but ready to unite against all foreign compet.i.tion. During their flourish, Guido, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Artemisia Gentileschi were at Naples, and formed some pupils;--a period as enviable in the number of excellent artists and the progressive powers of execution, as disgraceful for the dark manuvres and the vile intrigues that fill it--intrigues and manuvres too closely interwoven with the history of Neapolitan art, and, unfortunately, too well attested, merely to be dismissed with silence and contempt.

Belisario Corenzio,[117] an Achaean Greek, after pa.s.sing five years in the school of Tintoretto, fixed his abode at Naples about 1590. A native stream of ideas and unparalleled celerity of hand placed him, perhaps, on a level with his master in the dispatch of a prodigious number, even of most extensive works; but his rage was too ungovernable often to admit of more distinguished comparisons with Robusti; though few excelled him in design, and his works abound in conceptions, att.i.tudes, and airs of heads confessedly inimitable to the Venetians themselves.

The work in which he has best succeeded as an imitator of Tintoretto, is the Miraculous Feeding of the Crowd by the Saviour, in the Refectory of the Benedictines, a huge performance, but, under his hands, a task of forty days. Though generally too much of a mannerist to sacrifice the readiest to the best, he still preserves a character of his own, an air of originality, in glories especially, which he embosomed in darkness and clouds pregnant with showers. With a decided turn for works of large dimension in fresco, which seldom allowed him to submit to the finish of oil colour, he contrived to please by various compositions of sacred history, in small proportions, and is even said to have enlivened the perspectives of the Frenchman Desiderio with diminutive figures admirably toned and adapted to the scenery.

The native country of Giuseppe Ribera[118] was a subject of dispute between the Spaniards and Neapolitans, till the production of an extract from the baptismal register of Xativa (Antologia di Roma, 1795) decided the claim in favour of Spain, and proved him a native of that place, now "San Felipe," in the district of Valencia. If the date of his birth, January 12, 1588, be correct, he must have come to Italy and entered the school of Caravaggio at a very early period. From him Ribera went to Rome, Modena, Parma, saw Raffaello, Annibale, Correggio, and in imitation of their works attempted to form a more luminous and gayer style, in which he had little success, dismissed it soon after his return to Naples, and once more embraced the method of Caravaggio, as more eminently calculated by its force, truth, and effect to fix the eye of the mult.i.tude, the object of his ambition; he soon became painter to the court, and by degrees the arbiter of its taste.

The studies he had pursued enabled him to go beyond Caravaggio in invention, mellowness, and design: the grand Deposition from the Cross at the Certosa proves the success of his emulation, a work, by the verdict of Giordano, alone sufficient to form a painter: the Martyrdom of S. Gennaro in the royal chapel, and the S. Jerome of the Trinita, excel his usual style, and possess t.i.tianesque beauties. S. Jerome was among his darling subjects; S. Jerome he painted, he etched in numerous repet.i.tion, in whole-length and in half figures. He delighted in the representation of hermits, anch.o.r.ets, apostles, prophets, perhaps less to impress the mind with gravity of character and the venerable looks of age, than to strike the eye with the imitation of incidental deformities attendant on decrepitude, and the picturesque display of bone, veins, and tendons athwart emaciated muscle. A shrivelled arm, a dropsied leg, were to Ribera what a breast-plate and a gaberdine were to Rembrandt. As in objects of imitation he courted meagreness or excrescence, so in the choice of historic subjects he preferred to the terrors of ebullient pa.s.sions, features of horror or loathsomeness, the spasms of Ixion, St.

Bartholomew under the butcher's knife. Nor are the few ideas of gaiety by which he endeavoured to soothe his exasperated fancy, less disgusting: Bacchus and his attendants are grinning Lazaroni or bloated wine-sacks; brutality under his hand distorts the feature of mirth.

Giambatista Caracciolo,[119] first attached to Franc. Imparato, then to Caravaggio, grew to manhood before he had produced any work of consequence: roused afterward by the fame and the impression made on his mind by some picture of Annibale, he went to Rome, and by a pertinacious study of the Farnese Gallery became one of the best imitators of that style. This was the basis of his fame on his return to Naples, and by this, whenever provoked to compet.i.tion, he maintained it: such are the Madonna of S. Anna de' Lombardi; S. Carlo, in the church of S. Agnello; and the Christ under the Cross, at the Incurabili. The rest of his performances, by their strength of chiaroscuro, betray the school of Caravaggio. From so considerate and finished an artist, haste and flimsiness were not to be feared, and yet there exist productions of his so feeble that his biographer[120] is reduced to account for them from the artist's wish of retaliating by paltry work for paltrier prices; or from suffering them to be finished by Mercurio d'Aversa, no very estimable pupil.

Such were the three leaders of that cabal which for some years persecuted every stranger of eminence in the art who freely came, or was invited to come, to Naples. Reputation, fiction, violence, had raised Belisario to the tyranny of fresco; the most lucrative commissions he considered as due to himself, the rest he distributed among his dependants, the greater number of whom possessed little merit. Ma.s.simo Santafede, though independent of him, remained neuter, afraid to interfere with a man who, to obtain his purpose, would stop at neither fraud nor crime; a proof of which he is said to have given, in administering poison to the gentlest and best of his pupils, Luigi Roderigo, whose growing powers he envied.

To maintain his primacy in fresco, the exclusion of every stranger who excelled in that branch became, of course, his princ.i.p.al object.

Annibale Caracci arrived at Naples in 1609, to paint the churches "dello Spirito Santo" and "di Gesu Nuovo," and produced a small picture as a specimen of his style. The Greek and his a.s.sociates, called upon to give their opinion of it, unanimously condemned it as cold, and its master far too tame to manage an extensive work. Thus baffled, Annibale returned to Rome during the most oppressive heats of summer, and soon after died. But the work most contested with strangers was the royal chapel of S. Gennaro, which the deputies had reserved for Giuseppe d'Arpino, then painting the choir of the Certosa. Belisario, leaguing himself with Spagnoletto, not less fierce and arrogant, and with Caracciolo, who both aspired to that commission, attacked Cesari with a fury which forced him, before he could terminate his choir, to fly for safety, first to Monte Ca.s.sino, and then back to Rome. The commission was now given to Guido; but not long after, two men unknown cudgelled his servant and dismissed him with a message to his master immediately to depart or to prepare for death. Guido fled; but Gessi his pupil, not intimidated, having demanded and obtained the grand commission, repaired to Naples with two a.s.sistants, G. Batista Ruggieri and Lorenzo Menini; both were decoyed on board a galley, that immediately slipped its cable and transported them to some place which no researches could discover, and Gessi was obliged to return with his disappointment to Rome.

Dispirited by the violence of these manuvres, the deputies began to give way to the cabal of the monopolists, allotting the frescoes to Correnzio and Caracciolo, and flattering Spagnoletto with the hope of being intrusted with the altar-pieces; when all at once, repenting of their agreement, they ordered the two fresco painters to throw up their work, and transferred the whole of the chapel to Domenichino, at the splendid price of a hundred ducats for every entire, fifty for each half figure, and twenty-five for every head.[121] They likewise took measures for his personal safety, by obtaining the Viceroy's protection, but in vain. The faction, not content with crying him down as a cold insipid painter and discrediting him with those who see with their ears and fill every place, alarmed him with anonymous letters, threw down what he had painted, mixed ashes with his materials to crack the ground he had prepared, and, by a stroke of the most refined malice, persuaded the Viceroy to give him a commission of some pictures for the Court of Spain. These, when little more than dead-coloured, they carried from his study to court, where Ribera superciliously ordered what alterations he thought proper, and then, without allowing him leisure to terminate the whole, dispatched them to Spain. The insolence of the rival, the complaints of the deputies on the successive interruptions of their work, and hence the suspicion of mischief, induced Domenichino at last secretly to depart for Rome, in hopes of being able from thence to bring his affairs into a better train,--and not without success; the rumours of his flight subsided, new measures for his safety were taken, he returned to Naples, and, without more interruption, completed the greater part of the frescoes, and considerably advanced the altar-pieces.

Here death surprised him, accelerated, as some have suspected, by poison, certainly by repeated causes of disgust from his relations, compet.i.tors, and, above all, the arrival of his old adversary Lanfranco.

He succeeded to Domenichino in the remaining fresco, Spagnoletto in one of the oil pictures, and Stanzioni in another. Caracciolo was dead; Belisario, excluded by age from sharing in the spoil, soon after was destroyed by a ruinous fall from a scaffold. Nor had Ribera, if the prevailing fame be true,[122] a desirable end; dishonoured in his daughter, gnawed by remorse for the vile persecutions in which he had shared, odious to himself, and sick of light, he escaped to sea, and none tells where he perished.

Opposed at its onset by these three, the School of Bologna triumphed after their demise, and Naples was divided into its imitators; for the mannered style of Cesari, which approached that of Belisario, terminated with Luigi Roderigo, and his relative Gian Bernardino.

At the head of those who adopted Caracciesque principles with success, may be placed Ma.s.simo Stanzioni[123] a scholar of Caracciolo, and, as he himself a.s.serts, of Lanfranco in fresco, in portrait of Santafede. At Rome he strove to embody the forms of Annibale with the tints of Guido.

Thus equipped, he braved the foremost talents at Naples, and opposed at the Certosa a Dead Christ among the Maries to Spagnoletto, who, to escape comparisons, persuaded the friars to have the picture of his rival washed to recover its somewhat darkened tone, and with a corrosive liquor so defaced it, that Stanzioni, declaring so black a fraud ought to remain an object of public indignation, refused to retouch it; he left, however, other specimens of his powers at that repository of rival talents, and above all the masterpiece of S. Bruno. The ceilings of Gesu Nuovo and of S. Paolo give him a distinguished rank among fresco painters. His gallery pictures, though not rare at Naples, are seldom met with elsewhere. Whilst single, he sought and aimed at excellence, and courted the art for its own sake; after his marriage, with a woman of fas.h.i.+on, gain became necessary to maintain her in a state of splendour, and he sunk by degrees to mediocrity.

The School of Ma.s.simo is celebrated for the number and excellence of its pupils, but the two who promised most, Muzio Rossi and Antonio de Bellis, perished in the bloom of life. The first, who had entered the School of Guido at Bologna, was at the age of eighteen thought worthy to face at the Certosa men of the first ability, and shrinks from no comparison, but scarcely survived his work. The second, whose style is nearly balanced between Guido and Guercino, began at the church of S.

Carlo various pictures from the life of that Saint, which he lived not to finish.

Francesco di Rosa, called Pacicco, another pupil of that school, gave himself up to the imitation of Guido, by Ma.s.simo's own advice. Pacicco is one of the few artists mentioned by Paolo de Matteio in a MS. which admits no name of mediocrity. His forms, his colour, the elegance of his extremities, the grace and dignity of his characters, are equally commended. He had models of beauty in three nieces, one of whom, Aniella di Rosa, in charms, talents, and manner of death has been compared to Elizabeth Sirani: poison, administered by the malignity of strangers, swept the Bolognese--a dagger and a husband's jealousy, the Neapolitan: he was Agostin Beltrano, her fellow pupil, and frequent partner of her works.

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

Another convert to the Caracci School, was Andrea Vaccaro,[124] the friend and compet.i.tor of Ma.s.simo, a man made for imitation, says Lanzi, and says too much; for, if he had no equal in that of Caravaggio, he was, when imitating Guido, inferior to Ma.s.simo: nor did he, till after the demise of Stanzioni, acquire that supremacy at Naples which remained undisputed till the arrival of Giordano, young, vigorous, and fraught with the novel style of Pietro Beretini. Both concurred for the great altar-piece of Sta. Maria del Pianto, both presented their sketches, and Vaccaro obtained preference by the verdict of Pietro da Cortona himself, who declared him equally superior in experience and correctness of style to his own scholar; but, when contending with Giordano in fresco, to which he had not been trained by early practice, Vaccaro lost the honours he had gained. The best of his school was Giacomo Farelli, whom Luca found no contemptible antagonist: had he been content to follow the style of his master, without aspiring at that of Domenichino, for which he was unfit, he might have deserved the historian's notice for more than one picture.

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

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

Guercino never saw Naples, but Mattia Preti,[125] commonly called Calabrese, smit with his novel style, went to study it at Cento; not indeed exclusively, for no Italian school escaped the attention of Preti. Unpractised in colour to his twenty-sixth year, he attended solely to design, less to form beauty or trace characters of delicacy, than to express robust and energetic ones: in such he often succeeded, but sometimes sunk to heaviness. His colour resembled his line, not soft and airy, but dense, cut into ma.s.ses of chiaroscuro, and with a general tone of ashy hues, tints of sorrow, contrition, anguish, the favourite topics of his pencil. The frescoes of Calabrese at Modena, Naples, Malta, have a stamp of grandeur. At Rome, in S. Andrea della Valle, he appears to less advantage, too enormous for the place, and too ponderous at the side of Domenichino. Italy is filled with his oil pictures, for his life was long, his hand rapid, and every place he visited, a scene of exercise: what he painted for galleries consisted commonly of half figures, like those of Guercino. He long, and nearly alone, contested the field with Giordano, to whose captivating airiness his weight was at last forced to yield. He retired and died in Malta, a Knight of its order, without leaving a pupil who rose above mediocrity.

After this survey of the Bolognese School at Naples, the native one of Ribera claims attention. None ever swore more implicitly to a master's dictates: the energy of his style absorbed their eye, the atrocity of his character too often debauched their hearts. Inferiority alone discriminates the works of Giovanni Do and Bartolommeo Pa.s.sante from those of Spagnoletto; though, in the advance of life, the first attempted to tinge with less vulgarity, and the second now and then affected a more select outline. Francesco Fracanzani had a certain grandeur of execution and bloom of colour: his "Transito," or Death of St. Joseph, at the Pellegrini, is among the first pictures of the city.

But, by the pressure of poverty, he first became a dauber, then a criminal, and received sentence of death, which respect for his profession, from the public ignominy of the halter, mitigated to secret execution by poison.

Aniello Falcone[126] and Salvator Rosa, who is to be mentioned more at large elsewhere, are the greatest boast of this school, though Rosa frequented it for a short time only, and chiefly profited by the instruction of Falcone. The strength of Falcone lay in battles, which he painted in all dimensions, from the Sacred books, history, or poems.

Countenance, arms, dresses were in unison with the national character of the combatants. His expression was vivid, the figures and movements of his horses select and natural, and his tactics correct, though he had neither served in, nor seen a battle. He drew with precision, everywhere consulted the life, and laid his colour on with equal strength and finish. That he instructed Borgognone is not probable. Baldinucci, who published the Memoirs of that Jesuit, is silent on that head; but they knew and esteemed each other. He had a numerous set of scholars, and with them, and the a.s.sistance of some other painters, contrived to revenge the murder of some relative and of a pupil a.s.sa.s.sinated by the presidial Spaniards: for, at the revolutionary hubbub of Maso Aniello, he and his gang formed themselves into a troop, which they called "the Company of Death," and, protected by Ribera, who palliated their proceedings at court, spread horrid ma.s.sacre, till, scared by the return of order, this band of homicides dispersed, and sought their safety in flight. Falcone himself retired for some years to France, which has many of his works; the rest escaped to Rome, or sought the usual asylums of revenge and murder.

A numerous set of various but inferior artists, in power and pursuit, fills the remaining period of this epoch and the Neapolitan catalogues of art: the best of these issued from the desperate School of Falcone, to whose method they adhered in all their diverging branches. Of these Domenico Gargiuoli, nicknamed Micco Spadaro, a character as fierce as pliant, leads the van--no contemptible figurist in large, but of endless combination in groups of small proportion. The perspectives of Viviano Codagora, his sworn brother, receive an exclusive l.u.s.tre from his figures. The battles of their fellow scholar, Carlo Coppola, might sometimes be mistaken for those of Falcone, had he given less fulness to his horses. Paolo Porpora left battles to paint quadrupeds, but chiefly and best, fish and sea-sh.e.l.ls: in fruit and flowers he was far surpa.s.sed by Abraham Brueghel, who at that time had settled at Naples. Giuseppe Recco and Andrea Belvedere, from the same school, excelled in game and birds; and the last still more in flowers and fruit, so as to contest superiority in that branch with Giordano, a.s.serting that no figurist could reach the polish, or give the finish required in minute objects.

Luca maintained, that the more implies the less, and, composing a picture of game, fruit, and flowers, gave it such an air of illusion, that Andrea, shrinking from his presence crestfallen, retired among the literati of the day, of whom he was not the least.

After the middle of the seventeenth century, the revolutionary style of Luca Giordano[127] reversed every preceding principle, and, by the suavity of its ornamental magic, enchanted the public taste. A vast, resolute, creative, talent attended him from infancy: in his eighth year he is said to have painted, and not for the first time in fresco, two infant angels, for the church of Sta. Maria La Nuova.[128] Struck with wonder, the Vice Re Duke Medina de Las Torres placed him with Ribera, whose principles he studied for some time, but, aspiring to a more ample theatre of art, escaped to Rome, followed by his father, Antonio, a weak artist, but an unceasing monitor, and the more relentless because he placed all his hopes on the rapid success of his son. To insure it, he did not, if we believe one writer, suffer Luca to intermit his labours by regular meals, but fed him whilst at work, as birds their callow young, perpetually chirping into his ear, Luca, dispatch![129]--Luca, dispatch! repeated his fellow-students, till the joke became nickname, by which he is oftener distinguished than by his own.

So brutal a method would have excited in a mind less vigorous nothing but weariness and despondency, but to the combining spirit of Luca gave with portentous velocity of hand the rudiments of that varied power, which, to a degree of deception, taught him to imitate the predominant air of every master's style in line and colour, which he was set or chose to copy,[130] and he had in nearly endless repet.i.tion, copied the best of what Rome possessed of its own, the Lombard, Venetian, and foreign schools, when he entered that of Pietro da Cortona, whose wide-extended and ostentatious plans met most congenially his own.

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

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

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

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

But the best of his pupils, and heir of his dispatch, was Paolo de'

Matteis, a name that ranks with the foremost of that day, not unknown to France or Rome; his chief abode was, however, Naples, where his frescoes are spread over churches, galleries, halls and ceilings; if unequal to those of his master in merit, nearly always produced with equal speed.

It was his unexampled vaunt to have painted the enormous Cupola del Gesu Nuovo in sixty-six days, a boast which Solimene checked with the cool reply, that the work told its own tale without a.s.sistance: and yet it possesses beauties, especially in the parts that imitate Lanfranco, which excite wonder, considering the fury of execution. Nor, if he chose to work with previous study and with diligence, as in the church of the 'Pii Operai,' in the gallery Matatona, and in many private pictures, was he dest.i.tute of composition, grace of outline, or beauty of countenance, though little varied. His colour at the onset was Giordanesque; in the sequel he increased the force of his chiaroscuro, though not without delicate gradation of tints: particularly in Madonnas and Infants, which give an idea of Albano's suavity, and the Roman style. A school more numerous than distinguished by talent, contributes little to his celebrity.

Francesco Solimene,[131] called "L'Abate Ciccio," born at Nocera de'

Pagani, took the elements of art from his father Angelo, formerly a pupil of Ma.s.simo, and went to Naples. He successively frequented the schools of Francesco di Maria and of Giac. del Po, and left both to follow his own inclination, which at first exclusively led him to imitate the style of Pietro da Cortona, and even to adopt his figures.

He next formed a manner which, of all others, approached next to Preti; the design, indeed, is less exact, the colour less true, but the faces handsomer, now in imitation of Guido, then nearer to Maratta, and often picked from life: hence the byname of "the Gentler Calabrese."[132] To Preti he joined Lanfranco, whom he surnamed the "Master," and from him borrowed and exaggerated that serpentine sweep of composition: his chiaroscuro, balanced between both, lost some of its vigour and became softer with the advance of life. He drew and revised his forms from Nature with much accuracy before he painted, but often sacrificed his outline to the fire of execution in the process. The facility and elegance which distinguish him in poetry, mark his invention in painting, to no branch of which he could be called a stranger, and might have excelled singly in each. His works are scattered over Europe, for he lived to the age of ninety, and yielded in velocity of hand to Giordano only, his compet.i.tor and friend, at whose demise he succeeded to the Primacy of taste.

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

Of that most numerous band of pupils whom he let loose upon the public, the most celebrated was, no doubt, Sebastiano Conca, a native of Gaeta, generally cla.s.sed with the Roman school, for Rome became his residence and the theatre of his talent. After having served a pupilage of sixteen years under Solimene, and persevered in the practice of that style for several years at Rome, he ominously proved the futility of attempting at an advanced period to escape from the tyranny of early habits. At forty he dared to leave his brushes, became once more a student, and spent five years in drawing after the antique and the masters of design: but his hand and eye, debauched by manner, refused to obey his mind, till, wearied by hopeless fatigue, he followed the advice of the sculptor Le Gros, and returned to his former practice, though not without considerable improvements, and nearer to Pietro da Cortona than to his master. Conca had fertile brains, a rapid pencil, and a colour which at first sight fascinated every eye by its splendour, contrast, and the delicacy of its flesh-tints. His dispatch in fresco and in oil was equal to his employment, and there is scarcely a collection of any consequence without its Conca. He was courted by sovereigns and princes, and Pope Clement XI. enn.o.bled him at a full a.s.sembly of the academicians of St.

Luke. He was a.s.sisted in his labours by his brother Giovanni, a man of similar taste, but less power, and an excellent copyist. The maxims of Conca are considered[133] as having completed the ruin of art; but every school had its own canker, and his influence did not extend to all.

Without deviating into a catalogue of mediocrity, it may be sufficient to name three of his princ.i.p.al scholars, Gaetano Lapis of Cagli, Salvator Monosilio, a Messinese, and Gaspero Serenari, a Palermitan.