Fra Giovanni da Fiesole had spent the years which other youths wasted on stormy pleasures in acquiring the art of miniature painting, and its sacred representations took such hold of his feelings, that, abjuring the world, he assumed the habit of St. Dominic. But finding that his art, far from interfering with the holy sentiments which a tender conscience considered as inseparable from his new profession, tended directly to spiritualise them, the neophyte continued to exercise it; and upon settling himself in the convent of S. Marco, he extended his style to fresco, ever adhering to those pure forms of celestial bliss which no one before or since has equalled. It is related of him that, regarding his painting in the light of a God-gift, he never sat down to exercise it without offering up orisons for divine influence, nor did he assume his palette until he felt these answered by a glow of holy inspiration. His pencil thus literally embodied the language of prayer; his compositions were the result of long contemplation on mystic revelations; his Madonnas borrowed their sweet and sinless expression from ecstatic visions; the passion of our Saviour was conceived by him in tearful penitence, and executed with sobs and sighs. Deeming the forms he thus predicted to proceed from supernatural dictation, he never would alter or retouch them; and though his works are generally brought to the highest attainable finish, the impress of their first conception remains unchanged. To the unimaginative materialism of the present day, these sentences may seem idle absurdities, but they illustrate the character of Fra Giovanni, and no painter ever so thoroughly instilled his character into his works. Those who have not had the good fortune to see any of these cannot form an idea of the infantine simplicity, the immaculate countenances, the unimpassioned pathos apparent in his figures, nor of the transparent delicacy of his flesh-tints, and the gay and cheerful colouring which he introduces into the details, without injury to the angelic grace of the whole. These qualities procured for their author the epithet of Angelico; his personal virtues were acknowledged by an offer of the see of Fiesole, which his humility declined and by the posthumous honour of beatification; his paintings, to borrow the words of Vasari, elevated the utmost perfection to the ideal of art, by improving without abandoning its original type; and, in the characteristic language of Michael Angelo, he must have studied in heaven the faces which he depicted on earth.[136]
Such was the instructor with whom, although his junior, Gentile thought it no disparagement to place himself,[*137] and his works testify to his having caught much of the spirit as well as the elaborate finish of his master. But whilst Angelico passed his time in decorating the cells of his convent with frescoes, whose holy beauties have confirmed the faith and purified the secret contemplations of many a recluse, his pupil returned to the world, to follow up a successful career. Called to Orvieto about 1423, he there painted two altars, which, though not his best works, are peculiarly interesting in contrast with the grand productions which at a later period his master executed for that cathedral.[*138] In the registers of the fabric, he is, in 1425, designated as "master of the masters"; and the fame which he thus acquired brought him successive commissions at Florence and Siena, after which he was extensively employed in enriching the cities of Umbria and La Marca with works of which no trace now exists.[*139] Among these towns were Gubbio and Urbino; but still more interesting to our immediate subject,—the development of art under the Feltrian dukes,—is the altar-piece executed by him at Romita, near Fabriano, and now plundered and scattered by the French, part of which adorns the Brera Gallery at Milan. The Madonna is crowned by her Son, the Dove fluttering between them, the Father rising pyramidally behind, amid a choir of cherubim; below, in the empyrean void, is an arch spanning the sun and moon, on which stand eight angels, making melody of praise on various instruments. So extended was the reputation of this work, that Raffaele is believed to have been attracted thither in his youth, to imbibe that devotional sentiment which he was destined to advance to its culminating point of excellence. Another fountain of his early inspiration was the famous, but now defaced, Madonna of Forano, near Osimo, whose angelic beauty is described as well-fitted to have left an indelible charm upon minds less pure and enthusiastic than his. On the mere evidence of its ecstatic loveliness, it was generally ascribed to Beato Angelico; but as there is no account of the Frate having visited La Marca, it may probably have been produced by Gentile, when his return to his native mountains had freed him for a season from mundane impressions, and had restored him to the sanctifying influence of its legendary abstractions.
Alinari
MADONNA DEL SOCCORSO
After the gonfalone by a pupil of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo in S. Francesco Montone
From thence he proceeded to Venice, where many of his most brilliant performances were achieved; but these, too, are nearly all lost to us. There, in contact with the busy world, and sharing its honours, distracted, it may be, by the bright tints and smiling landscapes just then imported from northern lands, his devotional inspirations were gradually tinged by naturalism. His principal commission was a fresco of the naval victories of the Republic; and I have seen a small picture by him of the rape of the Sabines, whose feeble paganism belongs, no doubt, to his later years, and sadly proves how essential were these inspirations to his success. At Venice he opened a school, which enjoyed high reputation, and which probably numbered among its pupils Pisanello, the Vivarini, and Bellini, although chronology throws a doubt upon some of Vasari's assertions as to this point. A new field of glory opened before Gentile, when invited by Eugene IV. to decorate with mural paintings the since rebuilt church of the Lateran, where he painted four prophets in chiaroscuro, and placed below them the life of the Baptist,—works unfinished at his death in 1450, and now destroyed, but which Michael Angelo, little qualified as he was to appreciate the delicacies of religious art, characterised as worthy the gentle name of their author.
On quitting the cloister of S. Marco, Gentile had carried with him a portion of the devotional feeling which hung around the studio of Fra Giovanni, and along with it much of the taste for rich ornaments, for gold and brocades, for fruit and flowers, in which both of his instructors delighted. But whilst Allegretto and Angelico kept such foreign aids in subservience to the predominating sentiment of their works, their pupil caught from the great world, in which he freely mingled with credit and applause, an admiration of mundane grandeur which, in his later compositions, is singularly combined with the spirit of religious art. His immaculate Madonnas are worshipped less by angelic choirs of cherubim and seraphim, than by the great ones of the earth in their trappings of dignity; and of all sacred themes, the Epiphany, or adoration of the Magi kings at the stable of Bethlehem, was his choice. Such is the magnificent altar-panel which he wrought in 1423, for the church of the S. Trinità at Florence, now one of the most precious monuments in the Belle Arti there. Still more gorgeous is his crowded composition painted for the Zeni of Venice; but there he has contaminated the purist spirit of Christian painting, for in the suite of the eastern kings is portrayed the patron of the picture, with all the gallant company who attended his embassy from the Republic to Usamkassan, sovereign of Persia. The unequalled variety of groups, the elaborate splendour of oriental costumes, the crowd of horsemen in contrasted attitudes, the lavish adoption of gold, form a dazzling but harmonious whole, which has scarcely any parallel in painting. It is not improbable that this and similar works, besides introducing a new element into the semi-Byzantine practice of the Venetian school, may have spread to Albert Durer and other Germans, who long after visited that
"Ruler of the waters and their powers,"