About 1483 Leonardo da Vinci came from Florence and settled in Milan. His art must have been a revelation to the Lombard painters. Not only was his technique infinitely superior to theirs, but his scope was so great, his imagination so profound, he created new forms, new types, a new world of light and shadow and perspective. His enterprises were gigantic, not in painting only, but in sculpture, architecture and engineering. The Milanese, who had little originality of their own and were always susceptible to outside influence, gathered round him, and a school of painting was formed in which we see his types imitated to such a degree that much of his pupils’ work has been attributed to the master himself, until modern criticism, headed by Morelli, has given it back to the true authors. The painters we shall now mention must all have felt more or less Leonardo’s influence.
Ambrogio de Predis was Court painter to Lodovico il Moro in 1482, and therefore was a painter of repute when Leonardo arrived in Milan; but that he became a close follower of the master is shown by the fact of his being associated with him in the altarpiece of the Virgin of the Rocks, of which de Predis painted the two side panels, the angels in the National Gallery, and many critics think he also executed the London version of the central part under the direction of Leonardo. Of the portraits attributed to him, some are very good, a profile of a girl in the Ambrosiana being the best. So much better is it than the coarsely-painted clumsy angels of the National Gallery, that it is difficult to recognise the connection between them; we can only suppose, however, that portrait painting was more congenial to him.
Bartolomeo Suardi, called Bramantino, painted at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He is said to have been a pupil of Foppa and of Bramante, working architecturally with the latter. His work is free and broad in manner, though often empty and wanting in drawing; the forms are full and the faces wide, with very regular features, particularly noticeable in the profiles. The blonde colouring of his flesh tones is unlike the usual low tones of the Milanese. There is little evidence in his work of Leonardo’s influence.
Andrea Solario, born about 1460, was an accomplished painter. Of his early training we know nothing; but his elder brother Cristoforo was a sculptor, and may have helped Andrea to arrive at the excellence of drawing which we see in his portraits. Some of his work shows the influence of Leonardo, but he was also affected by the Venetians, and especially by Antonello da Messina; his portraits also show affinity with the Flemish school, in their clear outlines and high finish. The landscape backgrounds to his subjects are fine in colour and effect. He was fond of painting half-length pictures of the Madonna and Child, and treated the subject with a tender realism that is very charming. Technically he reached a higher excellence than any of his fellow-Milanese painters. With the exception of the large altarpiece at the Certosa, his pictures are mostly small and unambitious in subject. He was, however, employed by Charles d’Amboise, in 1507, to decorate with frescoes the chapel in his Castle of Gaillon in Normandy. These have perished.
Boltraffio, Cesare da Sesto, Gianpietrino, Bernardino dei Conti, Marco d’Oggionno, Melzi and Salai were all close followers of Leonardo. Their work is not strong or original, nor is the drawing very good, but it has a charm nevertheless, that of earnest and conscientious effort, striving after the ideal of beauty their great master set before them, which degenerates in their hands, however, into a fatal prettiness. Their fault was an almost morbid exaggeration of the gradation of tones in the modelling of contours, by which they lost all freshness and vigour. Boltraffio, born 1467, was of noble family, and was a favourite pupil of Leonardo’s. His painting is highly finished and has distinction; his Madonnas, clad always in rich garments, are stately and beautiful, with oval faces and regular features. The painting is very smooth, which gives a cold and unnatural effect to the flesh. The fresco in St. Onofrio in Rome, formerly ascribed to Leonardo, is now given to him, and some critics consider him the author of the much-disputed Belle Ferronière of the Louvre.
Cesare da Sesto’s work was very Leonardesque to begin with; later on he was influenced by Raphael. His manner is lighter and more graceful than most of the Lombards. In Gianpietrino’s painting the Lombard greyness of flesh tones is carried to an almost gloomy extreme. His Madonnas and Magdalens often have charm, but in the former he imitated Leonardo too closely, and the execution is timid.
Bernardino dei Conti painted Madonnas in the Leonardesque manner, but the colour is peculiarly hot and the contours lumpy. His drawings, which are better than his paintings, have a great resemblance to those of Ambrogio de Predis, by whom, Morelli says, he was much influenced. Marco d’Oggionno’s pictures are lifeless imitations of the master, in which all the subtlety is lost, the chiaroscuro is too strong and the colours too intense. In his large canvases, such as the Archangels of the Brera, he fails signally. Of the work of Melzi and Salai we know little. Salai is mentioned by Vasari as a youth of singular grace and beauty with waving curly hair. He may have served as model for some of those Leonardesque drawings of youths with curling hair with which we are familiar.
Painters deriving still from Leonardo but who have achieved a great celebrity of their own are Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari. Luini is the most popular painter of the Lombard school, probably because his paintings are so numerous and therefore widely known. There is always a sweetness and charm in his work, though rather superficial and sentimental, and in the best examples he attains beauty and dignity; but his forms have the Lombard heaviness and his drawing is not good. There is want of imagination and a tameness in his pictures that make them very monotonous. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, nor is anything known of his early training. He certainly imitated Leonardo, but his best work has a character and individuality of its own. The frescoes of the Monastero Maggiore in Milan, of Saronno and Lugano are considered very fine.
Gaudenzio Ferrari was born about 1481 at Valduggia. Little is known of his early life; he must have felt the influence of Bramantino and Luini; his work is sometimes confused with that of the latter painter. He had much more inventive and dramatic power than Luini, as his frescoes show. He was a most prolific painter, and had too much energy and too little self-restraint. His colour is fiery and his compositions overcrowded. In spite of his ability he fell into bad taste and careless workmanship, showing unmistakable signs of that decadence which gradually overtook Italian art.
The most talented of all the Lombard painters was Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called il Sodoma, for though Tuscany and Rome were the scenes of his activity and possess his greatest works, yet he derives his artistic descent from Lombardy. He was born at Vercelli in Piedmont in 1477, and studied painting for two or three years at Milan before going to Siena, where we hear of him in 1501. His painting shows plainly his origin, and some of his works have great affinity to Leonardo, though he is not known to have been actually his pupil.