PERIODICALS
JAHRBUCH DER KÖNIGLICH PREUSSISCHEN KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN, 1903, 2. HEFT.—The article of most general interest in the current number is that by Drs. Ludwig and Bode on the picture of the Resurrection recently acquired by the Berlin gallery from Count Roncalli of Bergamo. The assumption that this is by Giovanni Bellini himself rests on the following evidence: The church of St. Michael, on the cemetery island of Venice, was so ruined in 1469 that the abbot of the Camaldulensian house to which it belonged began to rebuild it. In the year 1475 the patrician Marco Zorzi, of the Bertucci family, obtained permission to build and furnish a family chapel in the church. The chapel was dedicated to the Virgin, but in his mother’s will, dated 1479, it is already referred to as the chapel of the Resurrection. Then follows the testimony of later writers. Sansovino, 1581, describing the church, says, ‘La risurrezzione a olio fu del medisimo Gian Bellino.’ Ridolfi, 1648, describes the picture fully, and attributes it to Bellini. Boschini, 1664, calls it a Cima, an attribution which clung to the picture in St. Michael’s till 1810, when it disappeared. It will be noted that there is hitherto no proof that the Roncalli picture stood once in the chapel in question. That a composition of this kind by Bellini existed was already to be guessed from various motives copied in other pictures. The question remains whether this is the identical picture, and not, as has been hitherto thought, a late version by Basaiti, Previtali or Bartolommeo Veneto. On the other hand it is noted that Ridolfi’s account of the picture is so minute that one may assume that the Roncalli picture is either the actual one that stood in Zorzi’s chapel or an exact copy. The problem therefore resolves itself into the question of whether the existing picture is a copy or not. Drs. Ludwig and Bode are agreed that it is an original, and in spite of some curious points which do not precisely agree with any other existing Bellini we think they are right. The picture with which it has most affinity is the Transfiguration at Naples, to which for various reasons we may assign a date just a year or two previous to 1478, the date of this work. If this is correct the likeness to Basaiti, Cima and Bartolommeo Veneto is to be explained by the fact that this work exercised a profound influence on the rising generation of Venetian painters. It is to be noted also that we have here already the peculiar honeycombed rock formation which the Vicentine painters, Montagna in particular, afterwards employed. Whatever be the final verdict as to the authorship of the work, the authorities of the Berlin gallery are to be congratulated upon having secured one of the most imaginative compositions in the whole range of Venetian art.—R. E. F.
Dr. Bode writes on the work of Hercules Segers, whose pictures, long forgotten or ascribed to other masters, Rembrandt, Van Goyen, or Vermeer of Haarlem, have recently been rediscovered, mainly through the insight of Dr. Bode himself. The Berlin gallery has possessed since 1874 the only signed picture hitherto known; another signed work is now in the possession of Dr. Hofstede de Groot. These two, a second landscape lately acquired by the Berlin gallery, and a picture exhibited in London in 1901 under the name of Vermeer, but now the property of Herr Simon, are reproduced. Other pictures discussed in the text are a landscape ascribed to Rembrandt in the Uffizi and another, also under Rembrandt’s name, in the National Gallery of Scotland. A great part of the article is devoted to the etchings, the true starting-point of all our knowledge of Segers. About sixty of these are known, of which the Amsterdam cabinet has fifty, while very few other collections possess any considerable number. Several admirable facsimiles in colour accompany the article, and the interesting announcement is made that a publication of the entire work of Segers is contemplated, under the editorship of Prof. Jaro Springer. Almost all the etchings are landscapes, generally printed in colour on a prepared ground, and often finished by the artist with the brush. Dr. Bode discusses the question whether the wild mountain scenery depicted in most of them was invented by the artist or true to nature, and decides for the latter alternative. A great curiosity is the etching in colours of the Lamentation for Christ, copied by Segers from a wood-cut by Hans Baldung. An excellent reproduction is given of the impression recently acquired by the Berlin cabinet. Dr. Bode does not mention the fact that an impression was already known in the collection of King Frederick Augustus II at Dresden, where it passed for a drawing by Baldung till its true character was discerned some years ago by Prof. Lehrs.
C. D.
L’ARTE. Parts I–IV. 1903.—The publication of L’Arte, suspended owing to a strike at Rome, has been resumed, and we have received the first four parts for the current year. Signor Venturi appears to have finally discovered the authorship of the small bronze doors which close the reliquary containing St. Peter’s keys in S. Pietro in Vincoli. These, which have been variously praised as Pollajuolo’s and disparaged as Filarete’s, are really not Florentine at all, but by the Milanese Caradosso, working doubtless under Florentine influence. There are two replicas of the two bas reliefs on the doors in question. Both, though alike in the general composition, are curiously modified in some essential particulars which render the subjects unintelligible. One of these replicas is in the Louvre, where it is attributed to the Florentine school; the other, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is more rashly ascribed to Lorenzo Ghiberti, to whose style it does not conform at all. ¶ M. Marcel Reymond solves satisfactorily a puzzling question connected with the tomb of Onofrio Strozzi in the church of Sta. Trinità in Florence. This has been ascribed on documentary evidence to Piero di Niccolò, who was supposed to have executed it in 1418. In 1423 Piero di Niccolò executed at Venice the essentially gothic monument of Doge Mocenigo, while Donatello himself only arrived at a conception like that of the Strozzi tomb in his monument of Giovanni de’ Medici in 1429. On stylistic grounds there can be no doubt that the Strozzi tomb is nearly a decade later than the Medici tomb, and yet the documentary evidence has been hitherto allowed as authoritative. On closer examination, however, this appears to be quite inconclusive; it is a warning of the necessity for re-examining documents in the light of the evidence afforded by style. The Strozzi tomb may be safely considered to be no earlier than the close of the fourth decade of the century. It is either, M. Reymond thinks, by Donatello himself, or by some sculptor who carried out a design by him. ¶ The remains of Pisan domination in Sardinia are the subject of researches by Signor Dionigi Scano, who has had the good fortune to discover at Oristano a signed statue by Nino Pisano, together with a number of bas reliefs in which he traces Pisan influence. The very crude architectural settings of most of these, however, betray a strain of northern influence. Far finer than these are the thirteenth-century lion-head door handles in bronze which he reproduces. ¶ Dr. Seidlitz returns to the question of Zenale and Buttinone à propos of Signor Malaguzzi Valeri’s interesting book on Lombard painters. He points out the impossibility of supposing, as Signor Valeri does, that the Castelbarco altarpiece in the Brera belongs to the fifties. The supposed 5 of the date must be a mutilated 8. In the main, however, he appears to have come independently to similar conclusions about the respective shares of Buttinone and Zenale in the great Treviglio altarpiece. He calls attention to the important picture by Zenale (the Circumcision) in the Louvre overlooked by the Italian writer, but by far the most interesting suggestion that he makes is that the strangely imaginative composition of the Adoration in the Ambrosian Library which Morelli described as an early Bramantino is by Buttinone himself. It must be admitted that in no other work does that artist display a freedom and originality of invention comparable to this, but the likenesses to his peculiarly uncouth style are certainly striking. We should like to call attention to the fact that most of these ideas were suggested some years ago by Mr. Herbert Cook in his catalogue to the Lombard exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Both Dr. Seidlitz and Signor Valeri are acquainted with this work, but neither has had the courtesy to make full acknowledgement of Mr. Cook’s priority. ¶ Signor Francesco La Grassa-Patti writes on the works of the Della Robbia in Sicily. The full-length Madonna at Trapani he attributes to Andrea, though the coarse vigorous forms suggest Giovanni while still working in his father’s style as more likely. The work is described as Giovanni’s by Miss Cruttwell. The second is a tondo at Messina (Sta. Maria della Scala) which Miss Cruttwell describes as a school piece. This also is attributed by Signor Grassa-Patti to Andrea, while the one work for which Andrea’s authorship might be claimed, the Madonna del Cuscino at Palermo, is called a school piece. A fourth work is the Adoration in the church of S. Niccolò lo Gurgo at Palermo. This M. Reymond considers to be one of many replicas of the motive. The author makes no mention of Miss Cruttwell’s exhaustive researches, although, with the exception of the last, all these works have been fully and critically treated by her. ¶ Signor Gino Fogolari describes some wooden sculptures of the twelfth century at Carsoli and Alatri. Those at the latter place comprise a magnificent Madonna and Child, one of the finest specimens of the type which was usual in Italian sculpture of this period, and twelve has reliefs of the doors which originally closed the Madonna’s shrine. These are of interest as still possessing some of the original colouring and for their similarity in technique to the ivory work of the period. ¶ Dr. Romualdi describes an admirable plan which has been formed for making a complete catalogue raisonné of all publications on the history of Italian art. The scheme is to treat the subject by means of regional committees, whose work will be united and revised by central committees at Florence and Rome. The importance of such a catalogue in a subject of which the literature has become so unwieldy cannot be overrated: the scheme deserves every encouragement. ¶ Signor Venturi replies at length to Dr. Julius von Schlosser’s views concerning the sketch-book attributed to Giusto of Padua in the National Gallery of Engravings at Rome, maintaining the correctness of his original attribution. ¶ Among the ‘miscellanea’ there are descriptions of a fourteenth-century pastoral staff in the cathedral at Treviso, which Signor Biscaro attributes to a Venetian goldsmith. He seems scarcely to explain the peculiarly French character of most of the forms. ¶ Signor Venturi gives a description with a collotype reproduction of the newly-discovered Jacopo di Barbari at Naples. It is evidently a striking picture in which the influence of Antonello da Messina strongly predominates. The two men represented in it are Luca Pacioli, the celebrated mathematician, and the artist himself, whose apparent age agrees with that indicated by the inscription, namely, twenty years. This, since the picture bears the date 1495, throws a new light on Barbari’s position in Venetian art. Signor Venturi also reproduces a drawing in the Piancastelli collection at Rome, which appears to be the original work by Timoteo Viti of which the head in the Taylorian at Oxford, hitherto thought to be an original, is a replica. If the reproductions are to be trusted, there can be no doubt about the superiority of the Roman drawing. Signor Toesca attributes the coarse picture of the Coronation of the Virgin in the Naples gallery (there ascribed to Matteo di Giovanni) to Christoforo Scacco. He also reproduces an Antoniazzo Romano in the depôt of the Uffizi. Signor Venturi maintains in a vehement but unconvincing argument his former opinion that the Resurrection which the Berlin gallery acquired recently from Count Roncalli at Bergamo is not by Giovanni Bellini, but by Bartolommeo Veneto. ¶ Signor P. D’Achiardi publishes a picture which is in the house of the cathedral chaplains at Pisa which has hitherto been supposed to be merely a school piece of Benozzi Gozzoli’s atelier, but which a recent restoration has shown to be worthy of the master. It is dated 1470, and is therefore one of the earliest of his Pisan works. Signor Manceri adduces a document which shows that Pietro di Bontate, who was supposed to have assisted Laurana in his works at Palermo, was not an artist but a stonemason.
GAZETTE DES BEAUX ARTS, June.—M. Henri Cochin begins, in ‘Some reflections on the Salons,’ a delightful article which is none the worse for containing very little about the pictures and a good deal of general speculation about the aims which modern art has proposed to itself. He regrets that the present moment is one in which the public has to some extent lost confidence in its own omniscience, and that the artists are without any clearly formulated ideals to arouse their devotion or hatred. ¶ Owing to the activity of M. Paul Meurice, Paris is going to have yet another museum, that of Victor Hugo. In what was once the poet’s house in the Place Royale, there have been collected and arranged all kinds of records and mementos of the poet-politician’s career. Not the least important of these are the pen-and-ink drawings in which he often made the first record of scenes, elaborated afterwards in prose or verse. It is to these slight but by no means insignificant performances that M. Emile Berteaux devotes a serious study. There was, in fact, a time when Victor Hugo nearly turned artist; he got so far as to master the processes of etching and to produce one successful plate. But he realized the danger of this parergon interfering with his real work and never repeated the experiment. Nevertheless, to the end of his life he noted ideas or striking effects in pen-drawings of astonishing force and brilliance, on which he smudged a melodramatic chiaroscuro with a finger dipped in ink or coffee. The results cannot be treated as great works of art, but none the less every one of them proclaims the man of genius; nor are they unimportant for the understanding of Victor Hugo’s development, since the sombre mood of his later poems was already foreshadowed in these hasty improvisations. ¶ M. Moreau-Nélaton describes the genesis of one of Corot’s late works, the view of Sin-le-noble, now forming part of the Thomy-Thiéry bequest to the Louvre. M. Denis Roche begins an account of Dmitri Grigorévitch Lévitski, a little-known Russian portraitist of the eighteenth century, whose works have decided merit. A certain influence of contemporary Venetian art is apparent in his composition, but for the most part he was formed under the influence of French artists like Tocqué, whom the Empress Elizabeth invited to Russia in the middle of the century. The portrait of Diderot by Lévitski, which is reproduced here, shows that his feeling for character was keener than the average run of West European painters of his time. It is comparable to a Chardin rather than any of the more mannered masters of the day.
RASSEGNA D’ARTE, June.—Signor Carlo Gamba describes two works of art in the royal villa of Castello; one, a Florentine picture (a Nativity) of about 1460, in which the influence of Baldovinetti is most apparent; the other a polychrome stucco attributed to Agostino di Duccio. The composition is undoubtedly his, but the type of face is longer and more accented than is usual with that master. ¶ Signor Antonio Gobbo points out the great differences between the ancient methods of mosaic work and those which obtain in the modern factories at Venice and elsewhere. He insists rightly on the necessity of doing the mosaic in situ, instead of reversed on a cartoon, on the desirability of a restricted colour-scheme and of a less mechanically even fabrication of the tesserae. It is interesting to have explained thus the extreme discomfort one experiences in front of most modern mosaics. ¶ Signor Annoni describes some remains of fifteenth-century work in the northern suburb of Milan, the most interesting being a fresco which he attributes to Borgognone at Garignano. ¶ Signor Antonio della Rovere endeavours to prove by Morellian methods that a feeble and late sixteenth-century Venetian picture, representing St. Jerome, is by none other than Giorgione. As he relies for his proof on the attribution to Giorgione of the Three Ages in the Pitti, and a well-known Torbido in the Venice academy, his extraordinary result is not entirely the fault of the method he employs. ¶ The Antonello da Messina of Christ at the Column in the museum at Piacenza is reproduced in this number. It is evidently a work of the highest importance for our knowledge of this great and still scarcely understood master. In conception and execution alike it surpasses all the numerous works by Solario and others that it inspired.
THE ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, June, contains an account of Orvieto cathedral by Mr. Langton Douglas. He effectively disparages Commendatore Fumi’s theory that the original design for the church which follows the plan of a Roman basilica was by Arnolfo di Cambio, and attributes it to ‘some mediocre master of the conservative Roman school.’ With regard to the façade and the importance of Lorenzo Maitano’s work at Orvieto he is in accordance with Burckhardt and Bode. He has done a real service to students in reproducing the two beautiful designs of the façade by the great Sienese master. In discussing the sculptures of the façade he shows excellent reasons for assuming, as was already done by Burckhardt and Bode, that Maitano was the master sculptor. We are rather surprised to find him however admitting M. Marcel Reymond’s contention that Andrea da Pontedera also had a hand in the work, though at a much earlier date than that writer supposed. The work, we think, is throughout thinner, slighter, and of a more facile elegance than the known works of Andrea Pisano. Mr. Langton Douglas tends to exaggerate the indifference of previous writers to Sienese sculpture: the list of works which he gives, with the remark that they have ‘entirely escaped the notice of M. Reymond and other writers upon Tuscan sculpture,’ is more completely given in Bode’s ‘Italienische Plastik’. ¶ For the rest the Architectural Review is devoted to contemporary works, among which we may call attention to Mr. Gilbert Scott’s remarkable designs for the Liverpool Cathedral competition. We may hope that even now it is not too late for the committee to revise their verdict and give us the chance of seeing the execution of a really vital and original gothic design.
The May number of the Emporium (Bergamo) which did not reach us in time for our last issue contains an interesting account by Signor Frizzoni of the Tadini gallery at Lovere. The gallery which, with the immense modern palace that contains it, was left to the remote little town of Lovere by Count Tadini, has, it must be admitted, a very small proportion of notable works, but since Signor Frizzoni has rearranged it, its value for the lover of art is considerably enhanced. It is no longer necessary to wander through innumerable seventeenth-century copies in order to pick out the few works that demand serious attention. And these few are indeed of such excellence that no one need regret the time spent in coasting up the winding shores of the Lake of Iseo in order to visit it. By far the most remarkable of these is the incomparable Jacopo Bellini of the Madonna and Child, perhaps the finest existing work of this rare master. Besides this there is Bordone’s greatest masterpiece, a Madonna and Child enthroned with SS. Christopher and George below—a work of almost Giorgionesque splendour, though it is needless to say more florid in taste and more agitated in line. The curtain suspended behind by flying putti reminds one for a moment of Lotto’s S. Bernardino altarpiece. Another fine picture is the portrait of a knight by Parmigiano, while in a picture which the catalogue describes as ‘un bellissimo quadro di Pietro Perugino,’ it is possible to recognize the forms of an early Veronese master, probably Domenico Morone himself. We can only hope that the trustees of the Tadini bequest will carry out Signor Frizzoni’s suggestion and have this picture, which has suffered from clumsy repainting, restored so far as possible to its original condition. An early Venetian picture, falsely signed Cornelio Fiore, and attributed, quite rightly we think, to Lorenzo Veneziano by the author, and a crudely-painted Pietà, signed by Girolamo da Treviso, are other original works.
R. E. F.