[CHAPTER LII]
The decline of Italian art: its causes and results—Artists of Urbino—Girolamo della Genga, and his son Bartolomeo—Other architects and engineers.
THE zenith of Italian art, especially of Italian painting, was attained between 1490 and 1520. That brief span, scarcely a generation of human life, not only embraced the entire artistic life of Raffaele and witnessed the finest efforts of Leonardo, Luini, Bellini, Giorgione, Francia, Ghirlandaio, Fra Bartolomeo, Sodoma, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Spagna, and Salerno; it also ripened the earlier and better fruits of Buonarroti's genius, of del Sarto's too quickly degenerate palette, and of Titian's
"Pencil pregnant with celestial hues."
It saw the metropolitan St. Peter's commenced, the Stanze and Logge well advanced; it assembled in the Vatican halls the noblest band of painters ever united by one scholarship. That bright spot, the Pausilippo of our pictorial journey, has been passed. Our onward way lies through dreary days of progressive degeneracy, often fitfully illuminated by its reflected lights, but more rarely gladdened by gleams of original genius, or efforts of self-forgetting zeal.
In reviewing the history of painting, its stages of progress will be readily distinguished. The Byzantine period may be regarded as its starting point of stationary conventionalism.[*200] This was followed by an age of sentiment, when earnest thought gradually ameliorated penury of invention, and supplied intensity to expression. To it succeeded an epoch of effort, the hand failing to realise the aims of mind,[*201] the eye awaking to truths of nature, but bewildered by their hidden meanings. Next came the age of mastery;[*202] one of difficulties surmounted and doubts made clear. But the summit when attained was speedily quitted; the period of facility was too soon one of decline. In the words of Fuseli, painters then "uniformly agreed to lose the subject in the medium." Mechanism became the great object, copiousness a prized merit, until mediocrity sought refuge in a multitude of figures, or fell back upon theatrical artifice. The close of the fifteenth century was indeed a cycle of rapid progression, opening many new channels for the efforts of mind, and it was in Italy that this expansion was primarily felt. The ultramontane invention of printing was then eagerly adopted; the cultivation of revived philosophy, and the convulsions consequent upon foreign inroads, introduced elements of change into the Peninsular mind as well as its politics. In nothing was this movement more felt than in the fine arts. During early times, the ideas of artists exceeded their means of expression.[*203] Yet their works, even when trammelled by fetters, partly of limited skill, but more of traditionary mannerism, are often fit exponents of simple thoughts, while the coincidence between the conception and style renders solecisms of execution less startling. The forms may be timid or stiff, but they are always careful and earnest. But now a further range has been given to individual fancy. The choice and conception of the theme, its character and composition, were alike freed from conventional trammels, and became subjective (in the German sense) rather than objective. Religion and its ritual remained the same, the hero-worship of saints continued among its prominent features, art still furnished aids to devotion. But, as books became abundant and readers multiplied, pictures were no longer the written language of holy things for the multitude. The high mission of Christian art had been fulfilled; its limners, less impressed with their themes, thought more of themselves; they appealed rather to the judgment than to the feelings. They aimed at imitating nature to the life more than at embodying transcendental abstractions.[*204] We have already seen how the devotional inspirations of early painting, which Beato Angelico's pencil had mellowed into loveliness, attained, under the guidance of Raffaele, to consummate beauty of form. But the impulse that had forced pictorial art to its culminating point allowed it no rest, and the descending path was too quickly entered. The speculative minds of its creators and its admirers craved for novelty, for fresh themes and further powers. Elevation of sentiment or purity of design no longer sufficed,[*205] and with the competition which ensued for the guidance of public taste, there sprang up many solecisms to degrade it. Much that was in itself valuable was exaggerated into deformity. The knowledge of anatomy which enabled Michael Angelo to embody the terrible, that element of invention which he was the first fully to develop, also tempted him to combinations outraging nature and harmony;[*206] and his style has transmitted to our own day an influence dangerous to genius,[*207] fatal to mediocrity. Less permanent, because less healthful,[*208] was the opposite quality, introduced by Correggio, whose grace, founded upon artifice, degenerated under Parmegianino and Baroccio into meretricious affectation. A third ingredient, not so perilous and more pleasing, was brought to perfection in Venice, where alone can be appreciated the golden tints of Titian[*209] and the silvery harmony of Veronese. It is indeed remarkable that all the schools most celebrated for colouring have arisen in maritime localities, and been deficient in accurate design.
Anderson