A name then still more conspicuous, though now nearly obliterated, is that of Jacopo, or as he is styled Jacobello, or as he wrote himself, Jacometto del Fiore, whose father Francesco del Fiore, a leader of art in his day, was honoured with a monument and an epitaph in Latin verse at S. Giovanni and Paolo: of him it is doubtful whether any traces remain, but of the son, who greatly surpassed him, several performances still exist, from 1401 to 1436. Vasari has wantonly taxed him with having suspended all his figures, in the Greek manner, on the points of their feet: the truth is, that he was equalled by few of his contemporaries, for few like him dared to represent figures as large as life, and fewer understood to give them beauty, dignity, and that air of agility and ease, which his forms possess; nor would the lions in his picture of Justice at the Magistrato del Proprio, have shared the first praise, had not the principal figures, in subservience to the time, been loaded with tinsel ornament and golden glitter.
Two scholars of his are mentioned: Donato, superior to him in style, and Carlo Crivelli, of obscure fame, but deserving attention for the colour, union, grace, and expression, of the small histories in which he delighted.
The ardour of the capital for the art was emulated by every town of the state; all had their painters, but all did not submit to the principles of Venice and Murano. At Verona the obscure names of Aldighieri and Stefano Dazevio, were succeeded[140] by the vaunted one of Vittore Pisanello, of S. Vito: though accounts grossly vary on the date in which he flourished, and the school from which he sprang, that his education was Florentine is not improbable, but whoever his master, fame has ranked him with Masaccio as an improver of style. His works at Rome and Venice, in decay at the time of Vasari, are now no more; and fragments only remain of what he did at Verona. S. Eustachio caressing a Dog, and S. Giorgio sheathing his Sword and mounting his horse, figures extolled to the skies by Vasari, are, with the places which they occupied, destroyed: works which seem to have contained elements of truth and dignity in expression with novelty of invention, and of contrast, style, and foreshortening in design: a loss so much the more to be lamented, as the remains of his less considerable works at S. Firmo and Perugia, far from sanctioning the opinion which tradition has taught us to entertain of Pisano, are finished indeed with the minuteness of miniature, but are crude in colour, and drawn in lank and emaciated proportions. It appears from his works, that he understood the formation, had studied the expression, and attempted the most picturesque attitudes of animals. His name is well known to antiquaries, and to the curious in coins, as a medallist, and he has been celebrated as such by many eminent pens of his own and the subsequent century.[141]
From the crowd[142] of obscure contemporary artists, which the neighbouring Vicenza produced, the name of Marcello, or as Ridolfi calls him Gio. Battista Figolino, deserves to be distinguished: a man of original manner, whose companion, in variety of character, intelligence of keeping, landscape, perspective, ornament, and exquisite finish, will not easily be discovered at Venice, or elsewhere in the State, at that period; and were it certain that he was anterior to the two Bellini, sufficiently eminent to claim the honours of an epoch in the history of Art: in proof of which Vicenza may still produce his Epiphany in the church of St. Bartolommeo.
But the man who had the most extensive influence on Art, if not as the first artist, as the first and most frequented teacher, was Francesco Squarcione,[143] of Padova; in whose numerous school perhaps originated that eclectic principle which characterised part of the Adriatic and all the Lombard schools. Opulent and curious, he not only designed what ancient art offered in Italy, but passed over to Greece, visited many an isle of the Archipelago in quest of monuments, and on his return to Padova formed, from what he had collected, by copy or by purchase, of statues, basso-relievos, torsos, fragments, and cinerary urns, the most ample museum of the time, and a school in which he counted upwards of 150 students, and among them Andrea Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, Girolamo Schiavone, Jacopo Bellini.
Of Squarcione, more useful by precept than by example, little remains, and of that little, perhaps, not all his own. From the variety of manner observable in what is attributed to him, it may be suspected that he too often divided his commissions among his scholars; such as some stories of St. Francis, in a cloister of his church, and the miniatures of the Antifonario in the temple della Misericordia, attributed by the vulgar to Mantegna. Only one indisputably genuine, though retouched work of his, is mentioned by Lanzi; which, in various compartments, represents different saints, subscribed 'Francesco Squarcione,' and conspicuous for felicity of colour, expression, and perspective.
These outlines of the infancy of Venetian art show it little different from that of the other schools hitherto described; slowly emerging from barbarity, and still too much busied with the elements to think of elegance and ornament. Even then, indeed, canvass instead of panels was used by the Venetian painters; but their general vehicle was, a tempera, prepared water-colour: a method approaching the breadth of fresco, and friendly to the preservation of tints, which even now retain their virgin purity; but unfriendly to union and mellowness. It was reserved for the real epoch of oil-painting to develope the Venetian character, display its varieties, and to establish its peculiar prerogative.
Tiziano, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, was born at Piave, the principal of Cadore on the Alpine verge of Friuli, 1477.[144] His education is said to have been learned, and Giov. Battista Egnazio is named as his master in Latin and Greek;[145] but his proficiency may be doubted, for if it be true that his irresistible bent to the art obliged the father to send him in his tenth year to the school of Giov. Bellini at Venice, he could be little more than an infant when he learnt the rudiments under Sebastiano Zuccati.[146]
At such an age, and under these masters, he acquired a power of copying the visible detail of the objects before him with that correctness of eye and fidelity of touch which distinguishes his imitation at every period of his art. Thus when, more adult, in emulation of Albert Durer, he painted at Ferrara[147] Christ to whom a Pharisee shows the tribute money, he out-stript in subtlety of touch even that hero of minuteness: the hair of the heads and hands may be counted, the pores of the skin discriminated, and the surrounding objects seen reflected in the pupils of the eyes; yet the effect of the whole is not impaired by this extreme finish: it increases it at a distance, which effaces the fac-similisms of Albert, and assists the beauties of imitation with which that work abounds to a degree seldom attained, and never excelled by the master himself, who has left it indeed as a single monument, for it has no companion, to attest his power of combining the extremes of finish and effect.