Fig. 98. Domenico Veneziano. Madonna with St. Lucy.—Uffizi.
On the whole, Domenico is merely the shadow of a great name, for we have only a handful of works by him, and those perhaps unrepresentative. The altar-piece of St. Lucy, in the Uffizi, Figure [98], is novel only in its acid and original dissonance of deep rose and pale green. The rugged St. John the Baptist shows an attempt to obtain force of modelling without exaggerating the shadows. This tendency persists in such disciples of Domenico as Baldovinetti and Piero della Francesca, and rules in Florence until Leonardo’s definitive application of Masaccio’s methods. In the profile portraiture of the period Domenico was a master, as shown in an admirable female portrait in Mrs. John L. Gardner’s collection, Figure [99]. Many similar heads, which we can hardly ascribe to particular masters, seem to derive from Domenico. One of the most beautiful is in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum at Milan. All of Domenico’s pupils and imitators excel in a minute and topographical style of landscape of which he was probably the inventor. It may be studied in Piero della Francesca, in the Pollaiuoli, in Baldovinetti, and there is even a trace of it in the spacious Alpine background of the Mona Lisa.
Fig. 99. Domenico Veneziano. Portrait of a Girl.—Coll. Mrs. John L. Gardner, Boston.
Domenico died in 1461. By that time Florentine realism was emerging from its first phase, and was beginning to investigate with its new resources the facts of motion. It was the moment, too, when certain realists sought to regain the grace which had largely been sacrificed in the struggle for sheer knowledge.
Fig. 100. A. Baldovinetti. Madonna.—Louvre.
Alesso Baldovinetti[[38]] well represents this moment in a lovely Madonna in the Louvre, Figure [100], which shows in perfection the new topographical landscape and that juvenile graciousness which was to be the staple of the coming generation of artists. Baldovinetti was born in 1425, and this loveliest of all his pictures may represent him about the year 1460. He had been an assistant of Fra Angelico, but in a long career, he died in 1499, he fell behind the times. He taught Domenico Ghirlandaio his elements, and profoundly influenced Andrea Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiuolo. Thus he keeps a sure if modest place in the progress of Florentine art.
In this chapter we have been dealing in a rough way with the Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici. Under his astute and delicate rule from behind the political scenes, Florence developed in wealth, splendor, and worldliness. The old piety was waning or assuming merely æsthetic forms. Greek studies were beginning to pave the way for an enlightened and sceptical humanism and, withal, a revival of the pagan sense of beauty. And when the new beauty came, it was gratefully mindful of those who had made it possible. Leonardo de Vinci lauds Masaccio. He expresses the immense debt that art owes to the first conscious realists. They did good and harm, but to Florence at least they opened the only way of progress. For whatever art may be elsewhere, in Florence it was fruitful only as it was intellectualized. Good theory, good practice—such was the creed imposed by the early realists and later formulated by their great scion, Leonardo. I do not offer it as a universal formula, but in these days when pure spontaneity—that is no theory—and false theory divide the field, the old Florentine credo is at least worthy of consideration by all who produce art and by all who love it. Baldovinetti was untouched by these new stirrings which are associated with the rule of Lorenzo de’ Medici, but he dimly forecasts the grace that was soon to come. This new spirit and its exponents must be the theme of our next chapter.