Anderson
Verrocchio was the master of Lorenzo di Credi and of Leonardo, while, as it is said, Perugino passed through his bottega. There are many works here given to Lorenzo, who seems to have been a better painter than he was a sculptor: the Madonna and Child (24), the Annunciation (1160), the Noli me Tangere (1311), and above all, the Venus (3452), are beautiful, but less living than one might expect from the pupil of Verrocchio. Verrocchio's true pupil, if we may call him a pupil of any master at all who was an universal genius, wayward and altogether personal in everything he did, was Leonardo da Vinci. Of Leonardo's rare work (Mr. Berenson finds but nine paintings that may pass as his in all Europe) there is but one example in the Uffizi, and that is unfinished. It is the Adoration of the Magi (1252), scarcely more than a shadow, begun in 1478. Leonardo was a wanderer all his life, an engineer, a musician, a sculptor, an architect, a mathematician, as well as a painter. This Adoration is the only work of his left in Tuscany, and there are but three other paintings from his hand in all Italy. Of these, the fresco of the Last Supper, at Milan, has been restored eight times, and is about to suffer another repainting; while of the two pictures in Rome, the St. Jerome of the Vatican is unfinished, and the Profile of a Girl, in the possession of Donna Laura Minghetti, is "not quite finished" either, Mr. Berenson tells us. It is to the Louvre that we must go to see Leonardo's work as a painter.
Tuscan painting at its best, its most expressive, in the work of Botticelli, fails to convince us of sincerity in the work of his pupil Filippino Lippi, the son of Fra Filippo. Of all his pictures here in the Uffizi, the two frescoes—the portrait of himself (286), the portrait of an old man (1167), the Adoration of the Magi (1217), painted in 1496, the Madonna and Saints (1268), painted in 1485, it is rather the little picture of Madonna adoring her Son (1549) that I prefer, for a certain sweetness and beauty of colour, before any of his more ambitious works. Ghirlandajo too, that sweet and serene master, is not so lovely here as in the Adoration of the Shepherds at the Accademia. In his so-called Portrait of Perugino (1163), [ [122] ] the Adoration of the Magi (1295), and the Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels (1297), his work seems to lack sincerity, in all but the first, at any rate, to be the facile work of one not sufficiently convinced of the necessity for just that without which there is no profound beauty.
But the age was full of misfortune; it was necessary, perhaps, to pretend a happiness one did not feel. Certainly in the strangely fantastic work of Pier di Cosimo, the Rescue of Andromeda (1312), for instance, there is nothing of the touching sincerity and beauty of his Death of Procris, now in the National Gallery, which remains his one splendid work. His pupil Fra Bartolommeo, who was later so unfortunately influenced by Michelangelo, may be seen here at his best in a small diptych (1161); in his early manner, his Isaiah (1126) and Job (1130), we see mere studies in drapery and anatomy. His most characteristic work is, however, in the Pitti Gallery, where we shall consider it.
Much the same might be said of his partner Albertinelli, and his friend Andrea del Sarto, whom again we shall consider later in the Pitti Palace. It will be sufficient here to point out his beautiful early Noli me Tangere (93), The Portrait of his Wife (188), the Portrait of Himself (280), the Portrait of a Lady, with a Petrarch in her hands (1230), and the Madonna dell' Arpie (1112), that statuesque and too grandiose failure that is so near to success.
Michelangelo, that Roman painter—for out of Rome there are but two of his works, and one of these, the Deposition in the National Gallery, is unfinished—has here in the Uffizi a very splendid Holy Family (1139), splendid perhaps rather than beautiful, where in the background we may see the graceful nude figures which Luca Signorelli had taught him to paint there. Luca Signorelli, born in Cortona, the pupil of Piero della Francesca, passes as an Umbrian painter, and indeed his best work may be found there. But he was much influenced by Antonio Pollaiuolo, and is altogether out of sympathy with the mystical art of Umbria. Here in the Uffizi are two of his early works, the Holy Family (1291) and a Madonna and Child (74), where, behind the Virgin holding her divine Son in her lap, you may see four naked shepherds, really the first of their race. This picture was painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, and doubtless influenced Michelangelo when he painted his Holy Family for Messer Angelo Doni, who haggled so badly over his bargain.
It is really the decadence, certainly prophesied in the later work of Andrea del Sarto, that we come to in the work of that pupil of his, who was influenced by what he could understand of the work of Michelangelo. Jacopo Pontormo's work almost fails to interest us to-day save in his portraits. The Cosimo I (1270), the Cosimo dei Medici (1267), painted from some older portrait, the Portrait of a Man (1220), have a certain splendour, that we find more attenuated but still living in the work of his pupil Bronzino, who also failed to understand Michelangelo. Fine though his portraits are, his various insincere and badly coloured compositions merely serve to show how low the taste of the time—the time of the end of the Republic—had fallen.
Thus we have followed very cursorily, but with a certain faithfulness nevertheless, the course of Florentine Art. With the other schools of Italy we shall deal more shortly.
II. THE SIENESE SCHOOL
It is as a divine decoration that Sienese art comes to us in the profound and splendid work of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the delicate and lovely work of Simone Martini, the patient work of the Lorenzetti. The masterpiece, perhaps, of Duccio is the great Rucellai Madonna of S. Maria Novella. There is none of his work in the Uffizi; but one of the most beautiful paintings in the world, the Annunciation of Simone Martini (23), from the Church of S. Ansano in Castelvecchio, is in the first Long Gallery here. On a gold ground under three beautiful arches, in the midst of which the Dove hovers amid the Cherubim, Gabriel whispers to the Virgin the mysterious words of Annunciation. In his hand is a branch of olive, and on his brow an olive crown. Madonna, a little overwhelmed by the marvel of these tidings, draws back, pale in her beauty, the half-closed book of prayer in her hands, catching her robe about her; between them is a vase of campanulas still and sweet. Who may describe the colour and the delicate glory of this work? The hand of man can do no more; it is the most beautiful of all religious paintings, subtle and full of grace. Simone was the greatest follower of Duccio. Born in 1284, in 1324 he married Vanna di Memmo, and his brother, Lippo Memmi, sometimes assisted him in his work. Lippo's hand cannot be discerned in the Annunciation—none but Simone himself could have achieved it; but the two saints, who stand one on either side, are his work, as well as the four little figures in the frame.