The Correggio (427) is not one of the painter’s best works, but the graceful Madonna has his peculiar charm; the baby is strangely small. Two figures of saints (449) are characteristic, but rather conventional productions by Cossa, noticeable for their decoration and the ‘lacquer enamel’ quality of the colour. They are parts of a triptych, of which the centre, S. Vincenzo, is in the National Gallery.
The great Annunciation (448), by Francia, is a beautiful and spacious composition, with an exquisitely clear atmospheric effect and picturesque background; but in the over-elaborated Angel the painter comes perilously near the banal.
A little figure of the Crucified (447) by Cosimo Tura—a fragment probably of a picture of St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, is instinct with the great Ferrarese master’s intensity of feeling and devotion. Other and inferior painters of the school fill the rest of the room.
Sala XXI., Schools of the Romagna.—The three painters, Rondinelli, Marco Palmezzano—who was pupil of Melozzo da Forlì—and Cotignola, are well represented. Rondinelli has three pictures. One illustrates a legend in the life of Galla Placidia (452), in which St. John the Evangelist appears to her and leaves his shoe behind him as a relic. Cotignola’s (Francesco Zaganelli) pictures are decorative and pleasant in colour, but weak in drawing. He was assisted in Nos. 457 and 458 by his brother Bernardino. Marco Palmezzano is the best painter of the three. The Nativity (469) is a pleasing picture, and in the Coronation (470) the music-making angels are charming. The Madonna and SS. John Baptist, Peter, Domenico and Mary Magdalen (471) is a good picture, but rather mannered in the treatment of draperies and clouds.
Sala XXII. possesses the most famous picture of the collection—the Marriage of the Virgin, by Raphael (472). It is signed and dated 1504. This was painted when the artist was only twenty-one. It is an extraordinarily complete work for so young a painter. He did not set himself new and difficult problems to solve; he was content to take the composition of his master Perugino (fresco in the Sistine Chapel), and with perfect artistic instinct improve it into the exquisite picture we have before us. We cannot do better than quote Mr. Berenson. ‘Subtler feeling for space, greater refinement, even a certain daintiness, give this “Sposalizio” a fragrance, a freshness that are not in Perugino’s fresco. In presence of young Sanzio’s picture you feel a poignant thrill of transfiguring sensation, as if, on a morning early, the air cool and dustless, you suddenly found yourself in presence of a fairer world, where lovely people were taking part in a gracious ceremony, while beyond them stretched harmonious distances, line on line to the horizon’s edge.’[[21]] The picture is seen to full advantage, admirably placed as it is in a room by
[21]. B. Berenson, The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, p. 124.
itself, where it can be well seen and thoroughly studied and enjoyed.
Sala XXIII., Central Italian Painters.—Signorelli has two pictures here—Flagellation of Christ (476), and Madonna and Child between Cherubims (477). There is a predella picture (483) by Eusebio di San Giorgio, a Madonna (473) by Pacchiarotti, and other works of the Siennese school.
Sala XXIV. contains frescoes by Bramante of Urbino, representing Heraclites and Democritus, six men-at-arms and a singer, originally decorating the Baron’s Hall in Casa Panigarola at Milan. These paintings show a distinct connection with the art of Melozzo da Forlì. They are grand monumental figures, that one feels belong to a great architectural scheme, and cannot be properly appreciated in this small room.
Sala XXV., Painters of Umbria and the Marches.—Here we have several interesting works, especially the very fine picture by Piero dei Franceschi, Madonna and Saints, with Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (510). This is a stately composition, where the saints are grouped round the Madonna, and the great Duke of Urbino kneels at her feet, while she sits with the Child sleeping easily on her knee, grand and aloof, a being far above the passions and weakness of humanity. She is quite unlike any other Madonna, and though not exactly beautiful, holds one’s attention far more than many that are so. After Piero’s work most pictures look trivial; but one can turn with pleasure to Gentile da Fabriano’s exquisite Polyptych (497), whose flower-like beauty of colour and line transports us into another world. There is an Annunciation (503) by Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, which foreshadows the charm so highly developed later in his son. A Madonna and Angels, and various Saints (504) by Nicolò da Foligno. A Madonna with SS. Simon, Guida, Bonaventura and Francis (505), by Signorelli, signed and dated 1508. In one of Timoteo Viti’s pictures, Madonna with SS. Crescenzio and Vitale (508), the saint holding the banner is of that distinct Umbrian type one sees in the work of the young Raphael, whose first master Timoteo probably was.