[CHAPTER XXVIII]
Giovanni Sanzi of Urbino—His son the immortal Raffaele—Early influences on his mind—Paints at Perugia, Città di Castello, Siena, and Florence—His visits to Urbino, and works there.
WITH Giovanni Sanzi[*161] we have already made acquaintance as an epic poet. The patient labour of the Abbé Pungeleoni, and the critical acumen of Passavant, have amply refuted Malvasia's spiteful, and Lanzi's careless but often quoted assertions, that the father of Raffaele was an obscure potter, or, at best, an indifferent artist, from whom his son could learn little.[162] Those only who have traced out his pictures in the remote townships and villages of his native duchy, and who estimate his works by coeval productions, can appreciate his real merits. Giovanni Sanzi was of a humble family in the village of Colbordolo, a few miles east of Urbino, for whose fictitious ancestry of artists there has been substituted by his painstaking but most puzzle-headed eulogist, a pedigree of peasantry from the middle of the fourteenth century. The son of one Sante, he assumed the patronymic Santi or Sanzi, which was subsequently euphonised by Bembo for his son into Sanzio. His grandfather Peruzuolo, after his losses by the Malatesta forays already alluded to,[163] had sold the petty holdings he possessed at Colbordolo, and removed his family to Urbino, where Sante became a retail dealer in various wares, and where he seems to have died in easy circumstances in 1485, nine years before his son. The inquiries of Pungeleoni have failed to ascertain the time of Giovanni's birth, but it was probably to these losses that the poet thus touchingly alludes, in his dedication,[164] as the impulse under which he became a painter:—"It would be tedious to relate the many straits and headlong precipices through which I have steered my life since fate devoured in flames my paternal nest, wherein was consumed all our substance; but arriving at the age when perhaps inclination would have led me to some more useful exercise of talent, of the many lines by which I might have gained a living, I devoted myself to the marvellous art of painting, which indeed (in addition to the round of domestic cares, of all human concerns the most ceaseless torment) imposes a burden heavy even to the shoulders of Atlas, and in which distinguished profession I blush not to be enrolled." Neither are we enabled to throw any light upon the lessons to which Giovanni resorted for instruction in the calling which he thus, at some sacrifice of material interests, had adopted. The catalogue of contemporary artificers introduced into his Chronicle, including all that was eminent from Gentile da Fabriano to Leonardo da Vinci, shows a most extensive acquaintance with their respective styles, as well as their names.[165] Mantegna is one of them whom he specially extols; there is, however, no similarity between their productions. Yet, though we know nothing of Sanzi's artistic education, the works which Nelli, Gentile da Fabriano, and Piero della Francesca left in Urbino must have influenced his early impressions; and it is singular that nothing is said by them of these, and others who painted in the duchy, beyond the passing notice bestowed with little discrimination on all his contemporaries. The marked exclusion from this list of Justus of Ghent is plausibly conjectured by Passavant to indicate a professional jealousy of one who treasured as his secret the so-called oil painting brought by him from Flanders, and certainly never attained by Giovanni. Sanzi's manner partakes generally of the Umbrian character,—grave, reflective, self-possessed, without aiming at dramatic effect or artificial embellishment, yet not deficient in variety, or graceful expression. More severe than Perugino, he approaches the serious figures of Melozzo da Forlì, but subdues their naturalism by an infusion of devotional sincerity and simple feeling. He is partial to slender forms and delicately drawn feet and hands, but the contours are dark and hard, the flesh-tints dull and heavy, tending to cold gray in the shadows, and generally deficient in middle tints and reflections. His female faces are oval, often of a dusky complexion, and their foreheads singularly full. In the nude, he was in advance of his age, and in landscape he attained great proficiency. Pungileone enumerates about twenty of his pictures, many of them still in their original sites, and exhibiting considerable inequality of merit. But his capo-d'opera, and one of the most important monuments of Umbrian art, is the fresco in the Tiranni chapel, at S. Domenico of Cagli. In the recess over the altar is the Madonna, enthroned between two angels, in one of whom is understood to be portrayed the young Raffaele, then a child of eight or nine years old. At the sides stand Saints Peter, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and John Baptist. On the lunette above, Christ has just emerged from his tomb in the mountain rock: a glorious Deity, the conqueror of death, he bears in his left hand the banner of salvation, while his right is raised to bless a redeemed world, and scattered around lie six guards asleep, foreshortened in various and difficult attitudes. The vaulted roof displays a choir of angelic children, sounding their instruments and chanting songs of glory to the Saviour, who occupies its centre, holding the book of life: and on the external angles are small medallions of the Annunciation. There is, perhaps, no contemporary painting superior to this in grandeur of composition and stately pose of the figures; nor is it less admirable for novelty of composition and variety and ease of movement. The design is at once correct and flowing, and the expression, though fervid, oversteps not truth and nature. Passavant well observes that the breadth, vigour, and dexterous treatment of this painting proved its author to have been well practised in fresco, although but one other such work of his has escaped destruction or whitewash. In his house at Urbino, there is a small mural painting, removed many years since from the ground-floor to the first story, which tradition fondly claims as a boyish production of Raffaele, but which Passavant ascribes to Sanzi, conjecturing it to represent his wife and child. It is impossible to pronounce a satisfactory judgment as to the master, from the load of over-painting in oil. Though called a Madonna and Child, it seems rather a gentle mother, who, having hushed her babe to sleep upon her knee, reads from the breviary on a stand by her seat, and the composition and attitudes present a charming naïveté and natural expression. Connoisseurs agree in rejecting its claims as a work of Raffaele; nor does it quite resemble his father's usual type, though it is difficult to substitute any more plausible theory for the conclusion of Passavant. The reader may form his own judgment from the accompanying outline, bearing in mind that much of the drapery belongs to the pencil of a merciless restorer.
Rafaello Sanzi di Anni Sei nato il dì 6 apr. 1483 Sanzi Padre dipinse
Gio. Sanzi pinx. L. Ceroni sculp.
RAPHAEL, AGED SIX YEARS