them all runs the soft rich colouring peculiar to the Veronese school and which was inspired largely by the great miniature painters who helped to form that school. The faces in his pictures breathe a spirit of glad yet sober serenity, and the finished detail of trellis-work, lemon trees heavy with their golden fruit, and blossoming flowers which often surround the Madonna and Child bear witness to the training and taste of a skilled miniaturist. Many of his miniatures are in the Picture Gallery of Verona, where there are besides several of his pictures, others being in the churches of that town, others in London, in Berlin, and at Hamilton Palace in Scotland. Girolamo dai Libri died in 1556.
Liberale da Verona, born in Verona in 1451, was like Girolamo dai Libri educated as a miniaturist. Endowed perhaps with greater power than Girolamo he does not always possess such poetic feeling, nor is his colouring so harmonious and pleasant. His manner however underwent a marked change when he came under the influence of Andrea Mantegna. A broader and more forcible tone of feeling then makes itself apparent, and though intense finish and detail are still evident they are subservient to the subject represented in the picture, and in no way detract from the grand lines and colours that now employ his brush. The greater number of his paintings are to be found at Verona; but there is a grand S. Sebastian—perhaps his masterpiece—in the Brera, and other works by him in London, in several towns in Germany, and at Vienna. Liberale had also the merit of forming a goodly array of followers or pupils, whose talents carried on to all time the fame and honour of their master.
Before enlarging on them however it would be well to pause for a moment to speak of Paolo Morando, better known as Cavazzola, who was absolutely distinct from Liberale and Girolamo dai Libri, though living and working at the same time and in the same city. He was born at Verona in 1486, and died when only thirty-six years old. His early death cut short a career of great promise, for Cavazzola had little in common with the simple grave manner of the early Veronese masters, he moved along lines of his own creating, and showed as Burckhardt says in speaking of him a “transition from the realism of the fifteenth century to the noble free character of the sixteenth.” As a colourist Cavazzola is cold and hard; and though his tints are glowing as to brilliancy there is little in them that delights the eye or excites pathos or devotion. His drawing though is vigorous, his touch free, untrammelled and broad, with a power and grasp of treatment that caused his contemporaries to speak of him as the Veronese Raphael. Very fine are a series of his pictures, five in number, which treat of the Passion of our Lord in the gallery at Verona. There is in them a serious conception as to composition and vigour in the technique that cause one to realise a master’s thought and execution, and to feel what possibilities lay within his grasp when death cut short his career. Nearly all Cavazzola’s work is in Verona, though the National Gallery possesses two examples, and one is to be found at Dresden.
To return to Liberale’s pupils, Francesco Bonsignori, also called Francesco da Verona, is one of the first, being born at Verona in 1455. His early education, begun in his native town, was continued at Mantua, where he was patronised by the Gonzaghi, and where Mantegna’s influence developed his style considerably. He is chiefly known as a portrait painter, a fact that impressed Cosmo Monkhouse, who, ignoring or forgetting Torbido’s work in the same direction, speaks thus of Bonsignori: “At Verona, alone almost of all the cities of Italy, there seems to have been little demand for portraits. It produced no portrait painter of eminence, and though the fact does not prove much, it may be noted that the only fine portrait by a Veronese in the National Gallery (that by Bonsignori), is of a Venetian Senator.”