A history of Italian painting

by Frank Jewett Mather

CHAPTER V.—BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI

[46]. Botticelli. The standard work is Herbert P. Horne, Sandro Botticelli, London, 1908. A little additional information may be found in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy, Hutton Ed. Vol. II, and in Venturi, Storia dell’ Arte Italiana, Vol. VII, pt. 1.

Walter Pater’s essay in The Renaissance offers beautifully a one-sided view. The essays, the Soul of a Fact, and Quattrocentisteria, in Maurice Hewlett’s Earthwork out of Tuscany are poetically illuminative. Mr. Berenson’s analysis in Florentine Painters of the Renaissance is important. I have written more fully on Botticelli in Estimates in Art, New York, 1912.

Botticelli’s Dante illustrations are published in a cheaper and more sumptuous form by Friedrich P. Lippmann. Botticelli, Zeichnungen von Sandro Botticelli, Berlin, 1896.

Lists of Botticelli’s works differ considerably. I incline to accept a number of early paintings which are neglected by such exclusive critics as Berenson and Horne. My own list, which for reasons of space cannot be given here, would not differ much from that of A. Venturi, in Storia VII, i, 588–642.

[47]. Filippino Lippi. I. B. Supino, Les deux Lippi, Firenze, 1904.

[48]. Piero di Cosimo. Fritz Knapp, Piero di Cosimo, Halle, 1899. As usual later information in Venturi, Storia, Vol. VII, pt. 1.

[49]. This extraordinary series of which four have been recovered is fully discussed and somewhat differently interpreted by Roger E. Fry, in Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 131f. See also letter on page 257.

[50]. Leonardo da Vinci. The standard life is by W. von Seidlitz, Leonardo da Vinci, Berlin, 1909. The early work of Leonardo and his relations with Verrocchio have been thoroughly and lucidly analyzed by Jens Thys, Leonardo da Vinci, London, 1913. Amid the confusingly rich bibliography, the student may do well to stick to Vasari’s admirable Life in any of the translations, to Dr. O. Sirén’s scholarly and cautious book Leonardo da Vinci, New Haven, and London, 1916 and to the late Dr. J. P. Richter’s incomparable work “The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci,” London, 1883, obtainable only in libraries. Giovanni Poggi, Leonardo da Vinci, Firenze, 1919, has thoroughly edited Vasari’s Life, and should be consulted for latest views and for illustrations. My own view on the early development of Leonardo, a most disputed matter, is set forth more fully in Art and Archæology, Vol. IV. pp. 111–122.

For literary side-lights Walter Pater’s essay, in The Renaissance; for an iconoclastic view Berenson in Study and Criticism of Italian Art, Fourth Series, New York, 1920. Edward McCurdy’s selected translations from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, New York, 1906, are valuable for those to whom Richter is inaccessible. Leonardo’s drawings, which are no less important than his paintings, may best be approached through Mr. Berenson’s monumental work, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, New York and London, 1903, while the drawings before 1480 are clearly and ably discussed by Dr. Thys.

[51]. The capital mistake of the more exclusive critics of Leonardo’s early work is that they set this delightful little masterpiece at the beginning of the series in an impossibly early date. There is no such manipulation of paint and no such feeling for unity of landscape before 1475 or so. Being a revision of the design of the Uffizi Annunciation, it is necessarily later.

My list of Leonardo’s would include, in approximate order:

1. In Verocchio’s Baptism. The landscape at left and distance, the Angel kneeling to right, about 1470, Uffizi. 2. Madonna and Child with an Angel, design by Verrocchio, London. 3. The Annunciation, design mostly by Verrocchio, about 1475, Uffizi. 4. Portrait of a Girl, possibly a Verrocchio, Prince Liechtenstein, Vienna. 5. Annunciation, Louvre. 6. Benois Madonna, about 1478–9, Petrograd. 7. St. Jerome, unfinished, Vatican, Rome. 8. Adoration of the Magi, left unfinished about 1481, Uffizi. 9. Cartoon of St. Ann, Burlington House, London. 10. Madonna of the Rocks, between 1480–83, Paris. 11. So-called Belle Ferronnière, perhaps bottega piece, about 1490, Paris. 12. Girl with an Ermine, perhaps a bottega piece, about 1495, Cracow. 13. Clay model of the Sforza horse, destroyed in 1500. 14. Last Supper, 1498, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. 15. Cartoon for a St. Ann, lost but represented by sketches at Venice, 1503. 16. Madonna of the Distaff, represented by old copies. 17. Cartoon for Battle of Anghiari, only central group painted, partly represented by sketches and old copies, 1504. 18. Portrait of Mona Lisa, Paris. 19. Cartoon for a standing Leda, probably only the figure, since numerous old copies have widely varying accessories. 20. Madonna of the Rocks, 1507, London. 21. Cartoon for a Kneeling Leda, the figure only. Sketches and old copies. 22. Madonna and St. Ann, Paris. 23. St. John, half-length, Paris.

All Leonardo’s main activity as a painter lies from 1470–1500. He painted a picture about every two years.

Various sculptures have been ascribed to Leonardo. Of these only two, which will have been made in Verrocchio’s bottega and under his direction, seem to me to deserve the distinction. A terra cotta Madonna and Child in the Metropolitan Museum, there ascribed to Verrocchio’s school, may represent Leonardo’s modelling about 1465. A stucco Madonna owned by Mr. George Diblee, at Oxford, is perhaps ten years later. The first is discussed by me in Art and Archaeology, Vol. IV, p. 122; the second is reproduced and accepted as a Leonardo by Prof. A. Venturi in L’ Arte, Vol. XXV, p. 131.

[52]. The best study of this picture and of its contemporary influence is that of George Gronau in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst. N. F. Vol. XXIII, pp. 253–259. He fails to perceive that so primitive a picture as late as 1478 furnishes the best reason for accepting most of the rejected early Leonardos.

[53]. In all this matter Jens Thys’s admirable studies are indispensable. See note 5 above.

[54]. The Lady and the Ermine and the Belle Ferronnière are thoroughly discussed by H. Ochenkowski, Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXIV, p. 186 f., where a full bibliography will be found.

[55]. This error which has persisted since Vasari was finally corrected by the great restorer Cavenaghi in his report of the last restoration. Malaguzzi Valeri in Milano, Bergamo, 1906, pt. 2, p. 14, first advanced the correct view that the painting was done in tempera.

[56]. Kenyon Cox, Concerning Painting, New York, 1917, p. 73.

[57]. Fra Bartolommeo. The standard work is Fritz Knapp’s Fra Bartolommeo della Porta, Halle, 1903. H. v. d. Gablentz, Fra Bartolommeo in 2 vols., Leipzig, 1922.

[58]. Andrea del Sarto. H. Guinness, Andrea del Sarto, London and New York, 1901. Andrea’s drawings are finely analyzed by Bernard Berenson in The Drawings of the Florentine Painters.

[59]. Bronzino. Hans Schulze, Die Werke Angelo Bronzino’s, Strassburg, 1911.

[60]. Pontormo. We have two admirable books by the same writer, Dr. F. M. Clapp; Les Dessins de Pontormo, Paris, 1914; Pontormo, his Life and Work, New Haven, 1916.

Pontormo’s supreme masterpiece of portraiture, The Halberdier, is published by myself in Art in America, Vol. X, p. 66.