Alinari
ST. SEBASTIAN
From the picture by Timoteo Viti in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
Few of this painter's early works are identified, and no frescoes from his designs appear to survive; but his altar-picture painted for the Bonaventura chapel in the church of S. Bernardino at Urbino, and now by the hazards of war in the Brera at Milan, offers one of the most remarkable compositions of the age. The Annunciation, that graceful theme of Christian art, had hitherto been treated upon one uniform type, and though ever attractive was generally trite. The Virgin surprised by her heavenly visitor was a subject requiring, in contrast, the purest earthly and celestial beauty which the painter could invent. The early masters sought not to introduce any other character than that of hallowed loveliness, refined from worldly sentiment; their successors added what was meant for grace of manner, which in their hands generally fell into affected mannerism. Timoteo held a middle course, giving play to his fancy, but restraining its flight by the spell of holy reverence. Amid a fine and far-stretching landscape stands the Virgin, nobly beautiful, gazing with prayerful aspect upon an angel, whose demi-figure issues from a cloud. Far above her head the infant Saviour, supported by a dove in a triangular halo of dazzling splendour, descends from the skies to become incarnate in the womb of Mary; his foot poised upon a globe, and the cross resting in his left hand, whilst his right is raised in benediction. The archangel with out-stretched arms indicates the mother to the child, and the child to the mother, thus beautifully executing his mission by an expressive sign. In front of her, but on a lower level, so as to appear of less majestic presence, stand the Precursor and St. Sebastian; the former points to the principal group as the fulfilment of a cycle of prophecy which in his person was complete; the latter is a graceful prototype of that long series of martyrs who were destined to seal with blood their testimony to the atonement thus initiated. One portion of this novel theme had been anticipated by Giovanni Sanzi, in whose representation of the same subject at the Brera, though composed after old conventional ideas, the divine Infant is seen descending from the Almighty upon the Virgin, instead of the dove, which usually figures as the Holy Spirit. But such innovations were looked upon with watchful jealousy by a Church wedded to traditional conventionalities. Doubts were raised as to the orthodoxy of this representation of the Trinity, and an unfortunate ruddy tint suffused over the plumage of the snowy dove was construed into a stain on the immaculate character of the conception, which is usually represented as coincident with the Annunciation. The altar-piece was removed to undergo along with its author a searching examination, which resulted in its restoration as an object of devotion, and in his escape from the rigours of the Holy Office.
Two altar-pictures by Timoteo remain in the cathedral-sacristy of his native city,[*194] besides a St. Apollonia in the church of the Trinità. These exhibit much soft expression and devotional feeling, combined with considerable breadth of execution; yet they scarcely possess the simple sentiment of the earlier Umbrian artificers, the noble character of Sanzi, or the fervour and finish of Francia. During his residence at Urbino, he may not improbably have influenced the young Raffaele's opening genius; but, ere long, fame's many-tongued trumpet told him how much he had to learn of his countryman, from whom he soon received an invitation to assist in executing the commissions which were crowding upon him at Rome; and, like many other gifted artists, Timoteo deemed it no degradation to work under his younger but more matured genius. Although one of the latest painters who retained that devotional spirit which we have endeavoured to trace from the Umbrian sanctuaries, his manner, at an after period of his life, changed with the influences to which he was exposed in the atmosphere of the Vatican; and some of those works produced under the superintendence of Raffaele which are generally ascribed to his hand, such as the Sybils in the S. Maria della Pace,[*195] display a very decided tendency to "the new manner." Few paintings have given occasion to greater variety of opinion and conjecture than this fresco, both as to the share in it which belongs to Timoteo, and as to the source from which the conception was derived. The theme is unquestionably referable to an authority older than that of Michael Angelo; and it is remarkable that, instead of the charge of plagiarism from his great rival being brought home to Raffaele, as has been frequently asserted, the former must have owed to Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Andrea d'Assisi the idea of rendering the sybils of mythological fable subservient to religious representation.[*196] By all these artists, pagan pythonesses had been grouped with scriptural prophets, as foreshadowing the mysterious plan of human salvation, and the fresco of the Pace must be regarded as a felicitous adaptation of Umbrian feeling to the tastes of such a patron as Agostino Chigi, deeply imbued with the classic tendencies of the Roman court.[197] The repeated restorations to which this fine work has been subjected render criticism of its merits in a degree nugatory, but the inferiority of the Prophets to the Sibyls is generally admitted.
Vasari, after communication with our painter's family, represents him as pining for his native air in the capital of Christendom, where his stay cannot have been of very long duration, as we find him in 1513 one of the magistracy of Urbino. Here he shared his time between the sister arts of poetry, music, and painting, "delighting to play upon various instruments, but especially the lyre, to which he sang improviso with uncommon success." On Vasari's authority, we are also told that he "was a cheerful person, naturally gay and jovial, handsome, facetious in conversation, and happy in his jokes." One of the most remarkable productions of his Raffaelesque period is a Noli me tangere (the appearance of Christ to the Magdalen after his resurrection), in the chapel of the Artieri, at Cagli, executed about 1518, which has been, perhaps, over-praised by Lanzi and others: the difficulty of the subject may in some degree disarm our criticism of its rather crowded and ungainly composition. On the whole, the merit and beauty of the few known productions of his pencil may well make us regret those which have disappeared, or which pass under other names; and, although Passavant accuses him of affectation and mannerism, the constraint apparent in some of his earlier productions may possibly be more justly ascribed to awkwardness. Pungileone supposes him to have returned to Rome in 1521, two years before his death, and there to have acquired a number of the cartoons and drawings of his friend Raffaele. Of these, and his own designs, a considerable portion passed a few years ago into the Lawrence collection, which the vacillation and ill-timed economy of our rulers allowed to be in a great measure dispersed.
Few artists have been the subject of more controversy than Bramante. His architectural works procured him high reputation, for he is associated with the genius of Julius II., and the vast piles of the Vatican: but his name and family have been disputed, as well as the place and province which gave him birth; while his biographers, besides confounding him with an entirely different person, Bramantino of Milan, have aggravated the confusion by conjuring out of these two a third artist, who exists only by their blundering. Bartolomeo Suardi, instead of being master of Bramante, as Orlandi and others have supposed, was a pupil who, from attachment to his instructor, added to his own name the diminutive Bramantino. He chanced, however, to have a scholar, Agostino, who, by also adopting that designation, has further perplexed matters; three persons being thus almost inextricably mixed up. For our purpose it is enough thus to supply a key to these masters, and to observe that their relative merits coincide with their chronology; the first being a bright light of the golden age, the last an obscure painter of the decadence, who has left us little beyond the reflected lustre of a borrowed surname. But although the minute diligence of Lazzari and Pungileone seems to have set this matter at rest, their tedious disquisitions supply few important facts or useful criticisms, and a brief notice will suffice for our present purpose.
Donato Bramante appears to have been born at Monte Asdrualdo, near Fermignano, in 1444, of parents in comfortable circumstances. As his first efforts were devoted to painting, he would naturally find instructors among the Umbrian artists already noticed; but for his education we have no particulars, beyond a conjecture that he studied under Fra Carnevale.[*198] At his father's death, in 1484, he was already abroad, probably in Lombardy, where most of his pictorial works were produced, and where some frescoes may still be seen, meriting no ordinary meed of approbation, and particularly distinguished by fidelity in portraits and accuracy of architectural perspective; qualities learned, doubtless, from the productions of Melozzo da Forlì and Piero della Francesca. Of these mural paintings, the most interesting remains in the church of the Canepa, at Pavia, and exhibits the artist presenting a model for that building to its founder, Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza, his Duchess, and his mother. Rosini ascribes to him freedom of design, ease in movement and draperies, grand conceptions, and much ability in perspective. Indeed, whilst the colder genius of ultramontane nations has seldom occupied itself with more than one branch of art, many Italian masters attained to excellence in several; and Bramante's reputation as an architect being established, his engineering talents were called into exercise by Ludovico il Moro, upon the fortifications of Milan. There too he built several churches, and constructed as a sacristy for S. Satiro, one of those small round Grecian fanes which have been considered so peculiarly his own, that various churches of that type are ascribed to him on no better grounds than their form. The conception is, however, of earlier origin, for it appears in not a few miniatures and small devotional panels of the preceding century. He had adopted it in a little chapel of the Madonna di Riscatto, on the banks of the Metauro, opposite Castel Durante, said to have been his earliest work, and the idea was freely used by Perugino and his pupils, Raffaele included. It takes the form of a round building cased by Corinthian pilasters, in an easel picture preserved at Urbino, in the sacristy of Sta. Chiara, which is interesting as an architectural study, and has been attributed to Bramante, or to Giorgio Andreoli, the porcelain enameller of Gubbio. A symmetrically elegant Doric chapel, at S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome, is the chef-d'œuvre of this classic style, and it was reproduced by della Genga in scenic decorations prepared at Urbino for the representation of Bibbiena's Calandra.