The Venetian School of Painting Part 16

Jacopo da Ponte was the son and pupil of his father, Francesco, who in his day had been a pupil of the Vicentine, Bartolommeo Montagna.

Francesco da Ponte's best work is to be found at Ba.s.sano, in the cathedral and the church of San Giovanni, and has many of the characteristics, such as the raised pedestal and vaulted cupola, which we have noticed that Montagna owed to the Vivarini. Francesco's son went when very young to Venice, and was there thrown at once among the artists of the lagoons, and attached himself in particular to Bonifazio.

In Jacopo's earliest work, now in the Museum at Ba.s.sano, a "Flight into Egypt," Bonifazio's tuition is markedly discernible in the build of the figures and, above all, in the form of the heads. A comparison of the very peculiarly shaped head of the Virgin in this picture with that of the Venetian lady in Bonifazio's "Rich Man's Feast," in the Venetian Academy, leaves us in no doubt on this score. Jacopo's "Adulteress before Christ" and the "Three in the Fiery Furnace" have Bonifazio's manner in the architecture and the staging of the figures. Only five examples are known of this early work of da Ponte, and it is all in Bonifazio's lighter style, not unlike his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery.

The house in which the painter lived when he returned to his native town, still stands in the little Piazza Monte Vecchio, and its whole facade retains the frescoes, mouldy and decaying, with which he decorated it. The design is in four horizontal bands. First comes a frieze of children in every att.i.tude of fun and frolic. Then follows a long range of animals--horses, oxen, and deer. Musical instruments and flowers make a border, with allegorical representations of the arts and crafts filling the s.p.a.ces between the windows. The princ.i.p.al band is decorated with Scriptural subjects, most of which are now hardly discernible, but which represent "Samson slaying the Philistines,"

"The Drunkenness of Noah," "Cain and Abel," "Lot and his Daughters,"

and "Judith with the Head of Holofernes." Between the two last there formerly appeared a drawing of a dead child, with the motto, "Mors omnia aequat," which was removed to the Museum in 1883, in comparatively good preservation.

Jacopo da Ponte lived a busy life at Ba.s.sano, where, with the help of his four sons, who were all painters, he poured out an inexhaustible stream of works, which, it is said, were put up to auction at the neighbouring fairs, if no other market was forthcoming. From time to time he and his sons went down to Venice, and with the help of the eldest, Francesco, Ba.s.sano (as he is generally known) painted the "Siege of Padua" and five other works in the Ducal Palace. His mature style was founded mainly upon that of t.i.tian, and it is to this second manner that he owes his fame. He makes use of fewer colours, and enhances his lights by deepening and consolidating his shadows, so that they come into strong contrast, and his technique gains a richer impasto. He has a marvellous faculty for keeping his colour pure, and his greens s.h.i.+ne like a beetle's wing. A nature-lover in the highest degree, his painting of animals and plants evinces a mind which is steeped in the magic of outdoor life. A subject of which he was particularly fond, and which he seems to have undertaken for half the collectors of Europe, was the "Four Seasons." Here was found united everything that Ba.s.sano most loved to paint: beasts of the farmyard and countryside, agriculturists with their implements, scenes of harvest-time and vintage, rough peasants leading the plough, cutting the gra.s.s, harvesting the grain, young girls making hay, driving home the cattle, taking dinner to the reapers. When he was obliged to paint for churches he chose such subjects as the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Sacrifice of Noah, the Expulsion from the Temple, into which he could introduce animals, painting them with such vigour and such forcible colour that t.i.tian himself is said to have had a copy hanging in his studio. He loved to paint his daughters engaged in household tasks, and perhaps placed his figures with rather too obvious a reference to light and shade, and to the sun striking full on sunburnt cheeks and buxom shoulders. A friend, not a rival, of Veronese and Tintoretto, Gianbattista Volpado, records that when he was one day discussing contemporary painters with the latter, Tintoretto exclaimed, "Ah, Jacopo, if you had my drawing and I had your colour I would defy the devil himself to enable t.i.tian, Raphael, and the rest to make any show beside us."

Ba.s.sano was invited to take up his residence at the Court of the Emperor Rudolph, but he refused to leave his mountain city, where he died in 1592. His funeral was attended by a crowd of the poorest inhabitants, for whom his charity had been boundless.

The "Journey of Jacob," to which we have already alluded, is among his most beautiful works. The brilliant array of figures is subordinated to the charm of the landscape. The evening dusk draws all objects into its embrace. The long, low, deep-blue distance stands out against a gleam of sunset sky. The tree-trunks and light play of leafy branches, which break up the composition, are from da Ponte's own country round Ba.s.sano.

The pony upon which the boy scrambles, the cows, the dog among the quiet sheep, are given with all the loving truth of the born animal-painter.

It is no wonder that Teniers borrowed ideas from him, and has more than once imitated his whole design.

The "Baptism of St. Lucilla" (in the Museum at Ba.s.sano) is one of his most t.i.tianesque creations. The personages in it are grouped upon a flight of steps, in front of a long Renaissance palace with cypresses against a sky of evening-red barred with purple clouds. The drawing and modelling of the figures are almost faultless, and the colour is dazzling. The bending figure of S. Lucilla, with the light falling on her silvery satin dress, as she kneels before the young bishop, St.

Valentine, is one of the most graceful things in art, and t.i.tian himself need not have disowned the little angels, bearing palm branches and frolicking in the stream of radiance overhead.

Ba.s.sano has a "Concert," which is interesting as a family piece. It was painted in the year in which his son Leandro's marriage took place, and is probably a bridal painting to celebrate the event. The "Magistrates in Adoration" (Vicenza) again gives a brilliant effect of light, and its stately ceremonial is founded on Tintoretto's numerous pictures of kneeling doges and procurators in fur-trimmed velvet robes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Jacopo da Ponte._ BAPTISM OF S. LUCILLA.

_Ba.s.sano._ (_Photo, Alinari._)]

Madonnas and saints are usually built into close-packed pyramids, but in the "Repose in Egypt," now in the Ambrosiana, Milan, his arrangement comes very close to Palma and Lotto. The beautiful Mother and Child, the attendants, above all the St. Joseph, resting, head on hand, at the Virgin's feet and gazing in rapt adoration on the Child, are examples of the true Venetian manner, while the exquisite landscape behind them, and the vigorously drawn tree under which they recline, show Ba.s.sano true to his pa.s.sion for nature.

Hampton Court is rich in his pictures. "The Adoration of the Shepherds,"

in which the pillars rise behind the sacred group, is an exercise in the manner of t.i.tian's Frari altarpiece. His portraits are fine and sympathetic, but hardly any of them are signed or can be dated. His own is in the Uffizi, and there is a splendid "Old Man" at Buda-Pesth.

Ariosto and Ta.s.so, Sebastian Venier, and many other distinguished men were among his sitters; most of them are in half-length with three-quarter heads. The National Gallery possesses a singularly attractive one of a young man with a sensitive, acute countenance, robed in dignified, picturesque black, relieved by an embroidered linen collar. He stands by the sort of square window, opening on a distant landscape, of which Tintoretto and Lotto so often made use, in front of which a golden vase, holding a branch of olive, catches the rays of light.

Ba.s.sano has no great power of design, and his knowledge of the nude seems to have been small, but his brushwork is facile, and his colour leaps out with a vivid beauty which obliterates other shortcomings.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS

Augsburg. Madonna and Saints.

Ba.s.sano. Susanna and Elders (E.); Christ and Adulteress (E.); The Three Holy Children (E.); Madonna, Saints, and Donor (E.); Flight into Egypt (E.); Paradise; Baptism of S. Lucilla; Adoration of Shepherds; St. Martin and the Beggar; St. Roch recommending Donor to Virgin; St. John the Evangelist adored by a Warrior; Descent of Holy Spirit; Madonna in Glory, with Saints (L.).

Duomo: S. Lucia in Glory; Martyrdom of S. Stephen (L.); Nativity.

S. Giovanni: Madonna and Saints.

Bergamo. Carrara: Portrait.

Lochis: Portraits.

Cittadella. Duomo: Christ at Emmaus.

Dresden. Israelites in Desert; Moses striking Rock; Conversion of S. Paul.

Hampton Court. Portraits; Jacob's Journey; Boaz and Ruth; Shepherds (E.); Christ in House of Pharisee; a.s.sumption of Virgin; Men fighting Bears; Tribute Money.

London. Portrait of Man; Christ and the Money-Changers; Good Samaritan.

Milan. Ambrosiana: Adoration of Shepherds (E.); Annunciation to Shepherds (L.).

Munich. Portraits; S. Jerome; Deposition.

Padua. S. Maria in Vanzo: Entombment.

Paris. Christ bearing Cross; Vintage (L.).

Rome. Villa Borghese: Last Supper; The Trinity.

Venice. Academy: Christ in Garden; A Venetian n.o.ble; S. Elenterino blessing the Faithful.

Ducal Palace, Ante-Collegio: Jacob's Journey.

S. Giacomo dell' Orio: Madonna and Saints.

Vicenza. Madonna and Saints; Madonna; St. Mark and Senators.

Vienna. The Good Samaritan; Thomas led to the Stake; Adoration of Magi; Rich Man and Lazarus; The Lord shows Abraham the Promised Land; The Sower; A Hunt; Way to Golgotha; Noah entering the Ark; Christ and the Money-Changers; After the Flood; Saints; Adoration of Magi; Portraits; Christ bearing Cross.

Academy: Deposition; Portrait.

PART III

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE INTERIM

Many of the churches and palaces of Venice and the adjoining mainland, and almost every public and private gallery throughout Europe, contain pictures purporting to be painted by t.i.tian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and others of that famous company. Hardly a great English house but boasts of a round dozen at least of such specimens, acquired in the days when rich Englishmen made the "grand tour" and substantiated a reputation for taste and culture by collecting works of art. These pictures resemble the genuine article in a specious yet half-hearted way. Their owners themselves are not very tenacious as to their authenticity, and the visit of an expert, or the ordeal of a public exhibition tears their pretensions to tatters. In the Academia itself the Bonifazio and Tintoretto rooms are crowded with imitations. The Ducal Palace has ceilings and panels on which are reproduced the kind of compositions initiated by the great artists, which make an effort to capture their gamut of colour and to master their scheme of chiaroscuro, copying them, in short, in everything except in their inimitable touch and fire and spirit. It would have been impossible for any men, however industrious and prolific, to have carried out all the work which pa.s.ses under their names, to say nothing of that which has perished; but our surprise and curiosity diminish when we come to inquire systematically into the methods of that host of copyists which, even before the masters' death, had begun to ply its lucrative trade.

We must bear in mind that every great man was surrounded by busy and attentive satellites, helping him to finish and, indeed, often painting a large part of important commissions, witnesses of the high prices received, and alive to all the gossip as to the relative popularity of the painters and the requests and orders which reached them from all quarters. The painters' own sons were in many instances those who first traded upon their fathers' fame. From Ridolfi, Zanetti, or Boschini we learn of the many paintings executed by Carlotto Caliari and the vast numbers painted by Domenico Robusti in the style of their respective fathers. Domenico seems to have particularly affected the subject of "St. George and the Dragon," and the picture at Dresden, which pa.s.ses under Tintoretto's name, is perhaps by his hand. Of Ba.s.sano's four sons, Francesco "imitated his father perfectly," conserving his warmth of tint, his relief and breadth. Zanetti enumerates a surprising number of Francesco's works, seven of them being painted for the Ducal Palace.

Leandro followed more particularly his father's first manner, was a good portrait-painter, and possessed lightness and fancy. Girolamo copied and recopied the old Ba.s.sano till he even deceived connoisseurs, "how much more," says Zanetti, writing in 1771, "those of the present day, who behold them harmonised and accredited by time." No school in Venice was so beloved, or lent itself so well to the efforts of the imitators, as that of Paolo Veronese. Even at an early date it was impossible not to confound the master with the disciples; the weaker of the originals were held to be of imitators, the best imitations were a.s.signed to the master himself. "Oh how easy it is," exclaims Zanetti again, "to make mistakes about Veronese's pictures, but I can point out sundry infallible characteristics to those who wish for light upon this doubtful path; the fineness and lightness of the brushwork, the sublime intelligence and grace, shown particularly in the form of the heads, which is never found in any of his imitators."

Few Venetians, however, followed the style of only one man; the output was probably determined and varied by the demand. Too many attractive manners existed to dazzle them, and when once they began to imitate, they were tempted on all hands. It must also be remembered that every master left behind him stacks of cartoons, sketches and suggestions, and half-finished pictures, which were eagerly seized upon, bought or stolen, and utilised to produce masterpieces masquerading under his name.

As the seventeenth century advanced the character of art and manners underwent a change. Men sought the beautiful in the novel and bizarre, and the complex was preferred to the simple. Venetian art, in all its branches, had pa.s.sed from the stately and restrained to the pompous and artificial. Yet the barocco style was used by Venice in a way of its own; whimsical, contorted, and overloaded with ornament as it is, it yet compels admiration by its vigorous life and movement. The art of the sei-cento in Venice was extravagant, but it was alive. It escaped the most deadly of all faults, a cold and academic mannerism--and this at a time when the rest of Italy was given over to the inflated followers of Michelangelo and the calculated elaborations of the eclectics.

Many of the things we most love in Venice, such as the Salute, the Clock-Tower, the Dogana, the Bridge of Sighs, the Rezzonico and Pesaro Palaces, are additions of the seventeenth century. The barocco intemperance in sculpture was carried on by disciples of Bernini; and as the immediate influence of the great masters declined, painting acquired the same sort of character. The carelessness and rapidity of Tintoretto, which, in his case, proceeded from the lightning speed of his imagination and the unerring sureness of his brush, became a mechanical trick in the hands of superficial students. True art had migrated elsewhere--to the homes of Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt. As art grew more pompous it became less emotional. Painters like Palma Giovine spoilt their ready, lively fancy by the vice of hurry. The nickname of "Fa Presto" was deserved by others besides Luca Giordano, and Venice was overrun by a swarm of painters whose prime standard of excellence was the ability to make haste. Grandeur of conception was forgotten; a grave, ample manner was no longer understood; superficial sentiment and bombastic size carried the day. Yet a few painters, though their forms had become redundant and exaggerated, retained something of what had been the Venetian glory--the deep and moist colour of old. It still glowed with traces of its old l.u.s.tre on the canvases of Giovanni Contarini, or Tiberio Tinelli, or Pietro Liberi; and though there was a perfect fury of production, without order and without law, there can still be perceived the survival of that sense of the decorative which kept the thread of art. We discover it in the ceiling of the Church of San Pantaleone, where Gianbattista Fumiani paints the glorification of the martyred patron, and which, fantastic and extravagant as it is, with its stupendous, architectural setting, and its acutely, almost absurdly foreshortened throng, is not without a certain grandiose geniality, ample and picturesque, like the buildings of that date. In Alessandro Varotari (il Padovanino), whose "Nozze di Cana" in the Academia is a finely s.p.a.ced scene, in which a charming use is made of cypresses, we seem to recognise the last ray of the t.i.tianesque. The painting of the seventeenth century pa.s.sed on towards the eighteenth, and, from ceilings and panels, rosy nymphs and Venuses smile at us, att.i.tudinising and contorted upon their cloudy backgrounds.

Lackadaisical Magdalens drop sentimental tears, and the Angel of the Annunciation capers above the head of an affected Virgin, while violent colours, intensified chiaroscuro, and black greasy impas...o...b..tray the neighbourhood of the _tenebrosi_. When, towards the end of the seventeenth century, Gregorio Lazzarini set himself to shake off these influences, he went to the opposite extreme. Although a beautiful designer, he becomes cold and flat in colour, with a coldness and insipidity, indeed, that take us by surprise, appearing in a country where the taste for luminous and brilliant tints was so strongly rooted.

The student of Venetian painting, who wishes to fill up the hiatus which lies between the Golden Age and the revival of the eighteenth century, cannot do better than compare Fumiani's vault in San Pantaleone with Lazzarini's sober and earnest fresco, "The Charity of San Lorenzo Giustiniani," in San Pietro in Castello, and with Pietro Liberi's "Battle of the Dardanelles" in the Ducal Palace. In all three we have examples of the varied and accomplished yet soulless art of this period.

Not many of the scenes painted for the palaces of patricians in the seventeenth century have survived. They are to be found here and there by the curious who wander into old churches and palaces with a second-hand copy of Boschini in their hands; but in the reaction from the florid which took place in the Empire period, many of them gave place to whitewash and stucco. In the Ducal Palace, side by side with the masterpieces of the Renaissance, are to be found the overcrowded canvases of Vicentino, Giovanni Contarini, Pietro Liberi, Celesti, and others like them. Some of the poor and meretricious mosaics in St.

Mark's are from designs by Palma Giovine and Fumiani. Carlo Ridolfi, who was a painter himself, as well as the painter's chronicler, has an "Adoration of the Magi" in S. Giovanni Elemosinario, poor enough in invention and execution. Two pictures by obscure artists disfigure a corner of the Scuola di San Rocco. The Museo Civico has a large canvas by Vicentino, a "Coronation of a Dogaressa," which once adorned Palazzo Grimani. We hear of a school opened by Antonio Balestra, who was the master of Rosalba Carriera and Pietro Longhi, and the names of others have come down to us in numbers too numerous to be quoted. Towards the end of the seventeenth century more light and novelty sparkles in the painting of the Bellunese, Battista Ricci, and a.s.sures us that he was no mere copyist; and, as the eighteenth century opens, we become aware of the strong and daring brush of Gianbattista Piazetta. Piazetta studied the works of the Carracci for some time in Bologna, and especially those of Guercino, whose style, with its bold contrasts of light and shade, has served above all as his model. He paints very darkly, and his figures often blend with and disappear into the profound tones of his backgrounds. Charles Blanc calls him "a Venetian Caravaggio"; and he has something of the strength and even the brutality of the Bolognese. A fine decorative and imaginative example of his work is the "Madonna appearing to S. Philip Neri" in the Church of S. Fava. The erect form of the Madonna is relieved in striking chiaroscuro against the mantle, upheld by _putti_. Radiant clouds light up the background and illumine the form of the old saint, a refined and spirited figure, gazing at the vision in an ecstasy of devotion. Piazetta is a bold realist, and many of his small pictures are strong and forcible. Sebastiano Ricci, Battista's son, is described as "a fine intelligence," and attracts our notice as having forged special links with England. Hampton Court possesses a long array of his paintings. In the chapel of Chelsea Hospital the plaster semi-dome is painted by him, in oils, with very good effect. He is said to have worked in Thornhill's studio, and his influence may be suspected in the Blenheim frescoes, and even in touches in Hogarth's work.

By the eighteenth century Venice had parted with her old n.o.bility of soul, and enjoyment had become the only aim of life. Yet Venice, among the States of Italy, alone retained her freedom. The Doge reigned supreme as in the past. Beneath the ceiling of Veronese the dreaded Three still sat in secret council. Venice was still the city of subtle poisons and dangerous mysteries, but the days were gone when she had held the balance in European affairs, and she had become, in a superlative degree, the city of pleasure. Nowhere was life more varied and entertaining, more full of grace and enchantment.

A long period of peace had rocked the Venetian people into calm security. There was, indeed, a little spasmodic fighting in Corfu, Dalmatia, and Algiers, but no real share was retained in the struggles of Europe. The whole policy of the city's life was one of self-indulgence. Holiday-makers filled her streets; the whole population lived "in piazza," laughing, gossiping, seeing and being seen. The very churches had become a rendezvous for fas.h.i.+onable intrigues; the convents boasted their _salons_, where nuns in low dresses, with pearls in their hair, received the advances of n.o.bles and gallant abbes.

People came to Venice to waste time; trivialities, the last scandal, sensational stories, were the only subjects worth discussing. In an age of parodies and practical jokes, the more absurd any one could be, the more silly or witty stories he could tell, the more a.s.sured was his success in the joyous, frivolous circle, full of fun and laughter. The Carnival lasted for six months of the year, and was the occasion for masques and licence of every description. In the hot weather, the gay descendants of the Contarini, the Loredan, the Pisani, and other grand old houses, migrated to villas along the Brenta, where by day and night the same reckless, irresponsible life went gaily on. The power of such courtesans as t.i.tian and Paris Bordone had painted was waning. Their place was adequately supplied by the easy dames of society, no longer secluded, proud and tranquil, but "stirred by the wild blood of youth and stooping to the frolic." "They are but faces and smiles, teasing and trumpery," says one of their critics, yet they are declared to be wideawake, natural and charming, making the most of their smattering of letters. Love was the great game; every woman had lovers, every married woman openly flaunted her _cicisbeo_ or _cavaliere servente_.

The older portion of the middle cla.s.s was still moderate and temperate, contented to live in the old fas.h.i.+on, eschewing all interest in politics, with which it was dangerous for the ordinary individual to meddle; but the new leaven was creeping through every level of society.

The sons and daughters of the _bourgeoisie_ tried to rise in the social scale by aping the pleasant vices of the aristocracy. They deserted the shop and the counting-house to play cards and strut upon the piazza.

They mimicked the fine gentleman and the gentildonna, and made fas.h.i.+onable love and carried on intrigues. The spirit of the whole people had lost its elevation; there were no more proud patricians, full of n.o.ble ambitions and devoted zeal of public service; it was hardly possible to get a sufficient number of persons to carry on public business. It is a contemptible indictment enough; yet among all this degenerate life, we come upon something more real as we turn to the artists. They were very much alive. In music, in literature, and in painting, new and graceful forms of art were emerging. Painting was not the grand art of other days; it might be small and trivial, but there grew up a real little Renaissance of the eighteenth century, full of originality and fire, and showing a reaction from the pompous and ba.n.a.le style of the imitators.

The influence of the "lady" was becoming increasingly felt by society.

Confidential little boudoirs, small and cosy apartments were the mode, and needed decorating as well as vast salas. The dainty luxury of gilt furniture, designed by Andrea Brustolon and upholstered in delicate silks, was matched by small, attractive works of art. Venice had lost her Eastern trade, and as the East faded out of her scheme of life, the West, to which she now turned, was bringing her a different form of art. The great reception rooms were still suited by the grandiose compositions of Ricci, Piazetta, and Pittoni, but another genre of charming creations smiled from the brocaded alcoves and more intimate suites of rooms.

It is impossible to name more than a fraction of these artists of the eighteenth century. There is Amigoni, admirable as a portrait-painter; Pittoni, one of the ablest figure-painters of the day; Luca Carlevaris, the forerunner of Ca.n.a.le; Pellegrini, whose decorations in this country are mentioned by Horace Walpole and of which the most important are preserved in the cupola and spandrils of the Grand Hall at Castle Howard. Their work is still to be found in many a Venetian church or North Italian gallery. Some of it is almost fine, though too often vitiated by the affected, exaggerated spirit of their day. When originality a.s.serts itself more decidedly, Rosalba Carriera stands out as an artist who acquired great popularity. In 1700, when she was a young woman of twenty-four, she was already a great favourite with the public. She began life as a lace-maker, but when trade was bad, Jean Steve, a Frenchman, taught her to paint miniatures. She imparted a wonderfully delicate feeling to her art, and, pa.s.sing on to pastel, she brought to this branch of portraiture a brilliancy and freshness which it had not known before. Rosalba has perhaps preserved for us better than any one else, those women of Venice who floated so lightly on the dancing waves of that sparkling stream. There they are: La Cornaro; La Maria l.a.b.i.a, who was surrounded by French lovers, "very courteous and very beautiful"; La Zen.o.bio and La Pisani; La Foscari, with her black plumes; La Mocenigo, "the lady with the pearls." She has pinned them all to the canvas; lovely, frail, light-hearted b.u.t.terflies, with velvet neck-ribbons round their snowy throats and coquettish patches on their delicate skin and bouquets of flowers in their high-dressed hair and sheeny bodices. They look at us with arch eyes and smile with melting mouths, more frivolous than depraved; sweet, ephemeral, irresponsible in every relation of life. Older men and women there are, too, when those artificial years have produced a succession of rather dull, sodden personages, kindly, inoffensive, but stupid, and still trifling heavily with the world.

Of Rosalba we have another picture to compare with those of her sitters.