Miniature painting[221] rapidly approached its highest development. Great illuminated church-books, antiphonaries, psalters, hours, breviaries, &c., had come forth from Benedictine, Camaldulensian, Dominican, and other convents, and were lodged in cathedrals and churches. The art of illumination was extended by Dante’s contemporaries, Oderigi of Gubbio and Franco of Bologna, to prayer-books for private use and to works of profane literature, when men of rank and citizens took to forming libraries and beautiful manuscripts became objects of luxury. The field for representation was correspondingly enlarged, and from figures of angels and saints the artists of the fifteenth century passed to scenes from the classic poets or the ‘Divine Comedy.’ In this century the Florentine churches were filled with the finest works of this kind, most of which are now in the National Library or that of San Marco. The Dominican order were especially rich in miniature painters after Giovanni Dominici had given an impulse to this branch of art. In Cosimo’s time, Fra Angelico and Fra Benedetto worked in San Marco under the eyes of St. Antonine. Don Bartolommeo della Gatta, Attavante degli Attavanti, Gherardo and Monti di Giovanni, Zanobi Strozzi, Francesco Rosselli, brother of Cosimo, and many others, distinguished themselves in this art, in which they were emulated by foreigners connected with Florence: Liberale of Verona, Girolamo of Cremona, several Sienese, and others. From the middle of the century miniature painting underwent the influence of the Van Eyck school. Many beautiful works found their way into the Medici collections. Lorenzo’s tastes and traditions were inherited by his son Giovanni, whom Raphael’s famous portrait represents with a book adorned with miniatures, and a glass for looking at them lying before him. Many miniatures went abroad, and foreign ones came to Italy. Gherardo, Attavanti, and others worked for Matthias Corvinus; and in the Burgundian Library at Brussels is preserved the mass-book painted for the king by the last-named artist in 1485, and brought to the Netherlands by Mary of Hungary, sister of Charles V. At Matthias’s death Lorenzo acquired several of the manuscripts, probably ordered at his own instigation, and some of which were still in hand. Lorenzo was deeply interested in the revival of mosaic. Vasari’s statement that Alesso Baldovinetti learned the long-forgotten principles of this art from a German pilgrim going to Rome must rest on its own merits; anyhow, the art was revived in Lorenzo’s latter years. In 1482-83, Baldovinetti undertook to restore the mosaics in the Baptistery. About 1490, Gherardo di Giovanni and Domenico Ghirlandajo began for Lorenzo the mosaic decoration of the chapel in the choir of the cathedral, where stands the shrine of St. Zanobi. This work was never finished. The same year Domenico executed the pleasing mosaic picture of the ‘Annunciation,’ over the side-door of the church, towards the Via de’ Servi. Baldovinetti’s pupil Graffione, and Ghirlandajo’s brother David, took part in these works; the latter, who busied himself with the technicalities of glass-making at Montaione, in the Elsa valley—where there are potteries and glass-houses to this day—afterwards worked both in Florence and in the cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto.[222]
Thus varied and fruitful was the development of art around Lorenzo, in a great measure stimulated and shared in by him. Like his grandfather, he was not content to profit by ripe talents and pluck the fruits, he sowed for the future; he, more than any one else, contributed to bring on the most brilliant period of art. He founded a nursery for choice spirits in the collection of works of art of all kinds, ancient and modern, which he laid out in his garden at San Marco and the neighbouring casino, and the superintendence of which he confided to Donatello’s pupil, Bertoldo. At a time when antique sculptures were rare, and the means of study limited, and when young men of talent had to remain for years in a dependent position which checked their individual development, advantages like these, offered to youth, were as unusual as they were invaluable. Lorenzo’s sound judgment was no less useful here than his goodwill. ‘It is no small matter,’ remarks Vasari in the ‘Life of Giovan Francesco Rustici,’[223] ‘that distinction was attained by all those who went to school in the Medici garden, and were assisted by the illustrious Lorenzo. This can only be ascribed to the uncommon perspicacity of that noble gentleman, who was a veritable Mæcenas, who knew how to recognise genius and merit, and to encourage them by rewards.’ The painters Francesco Granacci, Lorenzo di Credi, Niccolò Soggi; the sculptors Giovan Francesco Rustici, Pietro Torrigiano, Baccio of Montelupo, Andrea Contucci of Monte San Sovino—who on Lorenzo’s recommendation was summoned to Portugal, where he executed works of architecture and sculpture for King John II.—these, and others, came forth from the garden of San Marco. The variety of their gifts and accomplishments bears witness to the freedom they had there enjoyed in the development of the most diverse intellectual powers. But the one who gave to the Medicean garden a worldwide fame was Michelangelo Buonarotti. Before he was fifteen he passed from the school of Ghirlandajo into this new world. His sculptures soon disclosed the marvellous talent which his sympathetic teacher had foreboded when he recommended him and Granacci to Lorenzo; the latter having, as the story goes, expressed to his artist-friend a regret that sculpture did not keep pace with painting. The youth came of a good family, but without property.[224] During the few remaining years of Lorenzo, he enjoyed a sympathy and kindness which had a decided influence on his life up to the threshold of old age, although the independent spirit of the free citizen often rebelled against the attachment which, as artist, he continued to feel for the Medici.
It has been generally believed that the greatest Florentine artist of the second half of the fifteenth century—Leonardo da Vinci—was a stranger to Lorenzo. The fact appeared the more strange because Leonardo was the son of a chancellor or notary of the Republic, and a pupil of Andrea del Verocchio, who was in constant intercourse with the Medici. Newly discovered documents[225] show that Leonardo, if not among those admitted to study in the San Marco gardens, was at least acquainted with the Medici, and that it was Lorenzo who sent him, when thirty years old, to Lodovico il Moro, in company with one Atalante Migliorotti, famous for playing on the lyre. The date hitherto assigned to his first visit to Milan—1482 or 1483—is confirmed; but there is no explanation of the fact that his name is never mentioned during the war of 1478-79. He was then twenty-six, and might have done good service to his country by that knowledge of mechanics and hydraulics which he afterwards turned to such good account in Lombardy. On January 1 of the fatal year 1478, the Signoria commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the chapel dedicated to St. Bernard in the palace. This commission, like many of the same kind, was not executed, but was transferred after Leonardo’s departure for Milan to Filippino Lippi, whose beautiful Madonna (see p. 175) was placed not in the chapel, but in the council chamber. Under the rule of the two Sforzas—Gian Galeazzo and Lodovico il Moro—Leonardo founded at Milan a school of painting which gave a new direction to Lombard art. When he returned to Florence after the downfall of the Moro, Lorenzo had been seven years in his grave, and his sons were in exile.
FIFTH BOOK.
THE GROWTH OF THE MEDICEAN SUPREMACY.