Fig. 310. Giulio Romano. Battle for Troy. Fresco.—Palazzo del Tè. Mantua.
Indeed patronage had changed. It is no longer spontaneous but organized. We now have academies, art schools, art criticism, exhibitions, archæologists, picture dealers. Art no longer rests on generally accepted ideas and broad approbations, but is a game between experts.
To enumerate the followers of Michelangelo and Raphael and allot to each his due dispraise would be in no way profitable. Giulio Romano may represent them all. With extraordinary powers as a draughtsman of the figure, and with paradoxical taste in minor decoration, we know him already as the vulgarizer of Raphael’s designs in the Stanza of Heliodorus and of the Burning City. Later (1524–46) removed from Raphael’s influence, at Mantua, he develops a coarse titanism. The old Castello of the Gonzagas and the Palazzo del Tè, Figure [310], are tediously full of sensational and occasionally obscene mythologies which are done with amazing energy and facility, but are as restless and undecorative in design as they are hot and foxy in color. And the immoderations and indecencies have not even the excuse of naturalness, they are coldly calculated and studied. Such talented Florentine imitators of Michelangelo as Pontormo and Bronzino we have already considered. At Rome, he left at least one disciple of talent, Daniele da Volterra, in the composition of whose masterpiece the Deposition in the Convent of the Trinità, at Rome, the master himself may have had a hand. Rather than delay over these complacent epigones we do well to pass to those few more intelligent artists who saw that something was amiss.
Michelangelo Amerighi, (1569–1608), called from his Lombard birthplace Caravaggio, and Annibale Carracci of Bologna are here the outstanding names. The former bitterly fought the grand style in the name of naturalism, the latter attempted to reintegrate it through a critical eclectism. Their influence is dominant from the last decade of the sixteenth century.
Caravaggio[[88]] had carefully studied the impressionistic manner of late Titian but finally adopts a harsh and resolute chiaroscuro with the light restricted and the canvas mostly black. Thus his modelling is both brutal and academic. His real fight was with the nobility of Raphael. His saints are taken from the streets and often from the gutters. He loves character above all, and wants it proletarian. Within his chosen limitations he is a powerful and sincere artist. His masterpieces are the Entombment in the Vatican, and the Death of the Virgin in the Louvre, Figure [309], which created so much disapproval that it had to be removed from its altar. Both pictures take the theme out of the realm of legend, making it drastic and contemporary. Both, while rejecting all grandeur in the figures, preserve the tradition thereof in the composition. One gets Caravaggio in epitome in The Peter denying his Lord of the Vatican. Figure [311]. It is a powerful character study from low life. Indeed character is his watchword. One finds it extravagantly over-emphasized in his famous pothouse and gambling scenes, a revolutionary innovation. The most famous and one of the best is The Card Players, at Dresden, Figure [312]. It is the symbol of the painter’s love of low life. He killed his man in a duel, and died himself when turned out of prison into the August sun.
Before that fitting end he had fled to Naples where amid the corruption of the Spanish overlordship his proletarian ideals became generally contagious. They were taken up eagerly by the Valencian, José Ribera, who with an equal sense for character and a more genuine religious feeling transmitted the manner to Seville and eventually to Velasquez. So Caravaggio became the founder of the modern realistic and impressionistic schools, a precursor of Courbet and Manet. Except for a surplusage of too emphatic character studies, smiling and weeping philosophers, Ribera was a true and most skilful artist. Having no quarrel with an earlier grand style, he had the grace of simplicity.
Fig. 311. Caravaggio. St. Peter denying his Lord.—Vatican.
