ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER IX
On the Eclectic Ideal
The nearly contemporary account of Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, Bologna, 1841, Tom. I. p. 263 is instructive.
“Lodovico ... was the first who supplied a firm prop to tottering painting and was able to save it from imminent harm and ruin. He was the one who courageously opposed that vainglorious time, which succeeded the most perfect age, and liberating it from the common ills of those erroneous mannerisms which dared to tyrannize that fair profession that had been raised so high, not only wished to restore it to its first vigor, but also to a state still more perfect and sublime.... Taking the best from all the best artists, one sees him, with a facility no longer used and valued, form from them a brief compendium, rather a precious extract, outside of and beyond which little more remained for the studious to desire. And coupling and uniting with the discretion of Raphael the intelligence of Michelangelo, and adding withal with the color of Titian the angelic purity of Correggio, he succeeded in forming from all these manners a single one, which had nothing to envy in the Roman, Florentine, Venetian and Lombard manners.”
A Sonnet supposed, without complete evidence, to have been addressed by Annibale Carracci to the painter Niccolò d’Abate gives an even more complete and correct account of the elements that blended in the style of the Carracci. I quote it from Rouchès, La Peinture Bolonaise, Paris, 1913, p. 123, note 1.
“To make a good painter let him have
At ready and eager hand the drawing of Rome,
The movement with the shading of Venice,
And the dignified coloring of Lombardy.
The terrible manner of Michelangelo