CARLO CRIVELLI
VI
Carlo Crivelli
Among the more interesting pictures acquired by the Metropolitan Museum within the past two years are the panels by Carlo Crivelli, representing respectively St. George and St. Dominic.
Crivelli is one of the fifteenth century Italian masters who show their temperament in their work with extraordinary clearness. His spirit was ardent and his moods were varying. With far less technical skill than his contemporary, Mantegna, he has at once a warmer and more brilliant style and a more modern feeling for natural and significant gesture. His earliest known work that bears a date is the altar-piece in S. Silvestro at Massa near Fermo; but his most recent biographer, Mr. Rushworth, gives to his Venetian period before he left for the Marches, the Virgin and Child now at Verona, and sees in this the strongest evidences of his connection with the School of Padua. Other important pictures by him are at Ascoli, in the Lateran Gallery, Rome, in the Vatican, in the Brera Gallery at Milan, in the Berlin Gallery, in the National Gallery at London, in Frankfurt (the Städel Gallery), in the Museum of Brussels, in Lord Northbrook's collection, London, in the Boston Museum, in Mrs. Gardiner's collection at Boston, and in Mr. Johnson's collection at Philadelphia. The eight examples in the National Gallery, although belonging for the most part to his later period, show his wide range and his predominating characteristics, which indeed are stamped with such emphasis upon each of his works that despite the many and great differences in these, there seems to be little difficulty in recognizing their authorship. No. 788, The Madonna and Child Enthroned, surrounded by Saints, an altarpiece painted for the Dominican Church at Ascoli in 1476, is the most elaborate and pretentious of the National Gallery compositions, but fails as a whole to give that impression of moral and physical energy, of intense feeling expressed with serene art, which renders the Annunciation (No. 739) both impressive and ingratiating. The lower central compartment is instinct with grace and tenderness. The Virgin, mild-faced and melancholy, is seated on a marble throne. The Child held on her arm, droops his head, heavy with sleep, upon her arm in a babyish and appealing attitude curiously opposed to the dignity of the Child in Mantegna's group which hangs on the opposite wall. His hand clasps his mother's finger and his completely relaxed figure has unquestionably been studied from life. At the right and left of the Virgin are St. Peter and St. John, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Dominic, whole-length figures strongly individualized and differentiated. St. John in particular reveals in the beauty of feature and expression Crivelli's power to portray subtleties and refinements of character without sacrificing his sumptuous taste for accessories and ornament. The Saint, wearing his traditional sheep skin and bearing his cross and scroll, bends his head in meditation. His brows are knit, his features, ascetic in mold and careworn, are eloquent of serious thought and moral conviction. By the side of St. Peter resplendent in pontifical robes and enriched with jewels, he wears the look of a young devout novice not yet so familiar with sanctity as to carry it with ease. He stands by the side of a little stream, in a landscape that combines in the true Crivelli manner direct realism with decorative formality. The St. Dominic with book and lily in type resembles the figure in the Metropolitan, but the face is painted with greater skill and has more vigor of expression. Above this lower stage of the altarpiece are four half-length figures of St. Francis, St. Andrew the Apostle, St. Stephen and St. Thomas Aquinas, and over these again are four pictures showing the Archangel Michael trampling on the Dragon, St. Lucy the Martyr, St. Jerome and St. Peter, Martyr, all full length figures of small size and delicately drawn, but which do not belong to the original series. The various parts of the altarpiece were enclosed in a splendid and ornate frame while in the possession of Prince Demidoff in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the whole is a magnificent monument to Crivelli's art. The heavy gold backgrounds and the free use of gold in the ornaments, together with the use of high relief (St. Peter's keys are modeled, for example, almost in the round, so nearly are they detached from the panel) represent his tendency to overload his compositions with archaic and realistic detail, but here as elsewhere the effect is one of harmony and corporate unity of many parts. The introduction of sham jewels, such as those set in the Virgin's crown and in the rings and medallions worn by Peter, fails to destroy the dignity of the execution. It may even be argued that these details enhance it by affording a salient support to the strongly marked emotional faces of the saints and to the vigorous gestures which would be violent in a classic setting.
