[102] 1560-1640.
THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES.
Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum, Stabiæ, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom of the middle ages.
But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage, on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[103] avails himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[104] who from them, judged him inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.
The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli, named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has reached our time.[105]
About 1325, Giotto was invited by King Robert to Naples, for the purpose of painting the church of Sta. Chiara; he came and filled it with Gospel history, and apocalyptic mysteries, from inventions, said in the time of Vasari to have been formerly communicated to him by Dante. These works, because they darkened the church, were whitewashed in the beginning of the last century, with the exception of a Madonna called della Grazia, and some other sainted image, preserved by female piety. Giotto conducted other works in Sta. Maria Coronata, and still others, which no longer exist in the Castle dell' Uovo. Maestro Simone, a Cremonese, according to some, but more probably a native of Naples, was the chosen partner of these works, and from so distinguished a choice, acquired some celebrity himself: from the resemblance of his style to Tesauro and to Giotto, he might have been the pupil of either, and was perhaps of both. Certain it is, that after the departure of Giotto, he received from Robert and Queen Sancia, many important commissions for various churches, and especially that of S. Lorenzo; there he painted Robert receiving the crown from his brother Lewis, Bishop of Toulouse, but died before he could finish the compartment of the chapel dedicated to that prelate after his demise and canonization. Though confessedly inferior in invention, character, and suavity of tone, he has nearly reached Giotto in some of his works: such as the dead Christ supported by his mother, in the church dell' Incoronata, and the Madonna with the Infant, on a gold-ground, now in the convent of the church della Croce, supposed by some to have been painted in oil.[106]
Simone had a son, Francesco di Simone, who died in 1360. His works are not numerous, but what has reached our days in the Capitolo di S. Lorenzo, is distinguished by an air of superior dignity and grace. Two other pupils of Simone, Gennaro di Cola and Stefanone, a similarity of manner associated in several public works, such as the chapel of S. Lewis, begun by Simone, and what still exists in S. Giovanni da Carbonara of subjects relative to our Lady. They are similar, however, without monotony. Gennaro, impressed by the difficulties of his art, and bent to overcome each obstacle by labour, appears precise, studied, and hard. Stefanone, guided by a spirit which in better days might have been called genius, boldly executed what he had conceived with warmth.