1203. MADONNA AND CHILD.
Cariani (Bergamese: about 1480-1541).
Of Giovanni Busi, called Cariani, no personal details are known. He was born near Bergamo, and many works by this fine colourist are in the galleries of that town. Others may be seen at the Brera in Milan. Cariani, who seems to have resided at Venice, is supposed to have been a pupil of his fellow-countryman, Palma Vecchio. Morelli thus distinguishes Cariani's style from that of Bonifazio Veronese (see 1202), who was also a pupil of Palma: "The type of the Madonna in Cariani is rustic, but more energetic and serious, less worldly than in Bonifazio, whose holy virgins and female martyrs, with their soft, sweet expression and gentle grace, often border on the sentimental. These masters also differ in the harmony of their colours: the Bergamese is pithy and powerful, but often heavy and dull; the Veronese, clear, lovely, and brilliant; Bonifazio's landscapes are the lightest among those of the Venetians, those in Cariani's pictures are brownish, and the lines far from beautiful" (Italian Masters in German Galleries, 1883, p. 193).
Notice the rustic type of the Madonna; she is a daughter of the mountains—the mountains above Bergamo, from which the painter came, and which figure in the background. The picture is a characteristic piece of provincial art; the expression of "a simple, sturdy, energetic mountain-folk who do not always know how to unite refinement and grace with their inbred strength and vigour" (Morelli, ibid. p. 4). The picture is "interesting mainly," says Mr. Monkhouse, "for its costumes, its light-heartedness and florid colour, and as another of those Sante Conversazioni of which his master, Palma, was the inventor, and which took the place of the more holy 'Holy Families' of an earlier art,—pictures in which the Virgin became a simple woman of a wholly mundane beauty, and the saints but her friends in rich costumes, enjoying themselves somewhat sadly in the open air" (In the National Gallery, p. 248).