Some letters of Federigo Zuccaro in the Oliveriana Library further illustrate the turn of thought which influenced religious art in the end of the sixteenth century. He had been employed in 1583 by Francesco Maria II. to decorate a chapel in the church of Loreto; it was dedicated to the Madonna, and the theme prescribed for his frescoes was her life. The altar-picture by Baroccio represented the Annunciation; and the scenes selected for mural paintings were her marriage, visitation, death, assumption, and coronation. Of these the first three belonged to a class of dramatic compositions adapted to the prevailing taste, while the others partook of the Umbrian influence which still lingered around that shrine. The subsidiary ornaments being of course under the direction of Zuccaro, he felt puzzled how to fill up certain spaces offered by the architectural arrangement, and wrote to the Duke. After consulting the chief theological authorities among the hierarchy of Loreto what would best develop the "humble and mystic" sentiment which it was his object to sustain, the artist suggested that figures emblematic of glory and perpetuity should support the Coronation of the Madonna, as expressing the inherent attributes of that subject. In like manner he proposed to accompany her Death with Faith, Hope, and the Fear of God, the best supports of a death-bed; whilst the Assumption was to have Charity on one hand, Perseverance on the other, and above Joy, the fruit of these virtues and the foretaste of glory. As accompaniments for the Annunciation, he submitted that there should be two prophets or sibyls, the instruments through whom the incarnation of the Word was predicted. Giotto or Fra Angelico would have chosen the prophets of the Old Testament; Michael Angelo would have preferred pagan sibyls; Perugino or Raffaele might have invoked them both; Zuccaro, painting at Loreto, thought either equally appropriate appendages to his allegorical creations.[221] Yet Federigo was not altogether blinded to the barbarous tendency of the taste around him. In writing of Milan, he says that the painters there had in his day "wofully diverged from the beautiful simplicity and arrangement of those living early in the century; and that the Proccaccini, especially Giulio Cesare, introduced a set of scoffing heads, and certain angels so debauched looking, and devoid of all reverence in the presence of God and the Madonna, that I know not how they are tolerated, unless it be that they are excused for the sake of many other commendable parts."[222]
Of the large number of important works he executed in Venice, Milan, Pavia, Turin, and other towns of Upper Italy, we shall not attempt a catalogue, nor of his many frescoes in the Roman palaces and churches. We cannot, however, pass by an altar-picture still in the Church of Sta. Caterina in his native town, which was carried to Paris by the French plunderers. It represents Peter, Francis, and other saints, presenting to the Madonna the Zuccaro family, consisting of two men, a woman, and seven children—probably Taddeo, himself, his wife and offspring; and it is inscribed "Federigo Zuccaro dedicates this monument of his affection to the intercessors of his family and birthplace, 1603." Besides the interest attaching to the portraits, it is a satisfactory specimen of his usual manner. A work of his brother, connected with the history of the duchy, has been described in a previous volume.[223]
Academical instruction is considered as favourable only to mediocrity by many who maintain that genius must be cramped by the fetters of uncongenial routine, or by the prescribed duties of a conventional curriculum. The Academy of St. Luke was, however, founded under Gregory XIII., and Federigo Zuccaro was, in 1593, elected its first president, an honour appreciated far beyond the favour of princes or the decoration of knighthood. After inauguration, he was conducted by a crowd of artists to the palace he had built for himself on the Pincian Hill, at that corner otherwise consecrated by the residences of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and Nicolò Poussin. Here he afterwards held meetings of the Academy, where he read his discourses; and by will he left to it that house, failing of his natural heirs. His death occurred in 1608, at Ancona, at the age of sixty-six; but the clause of remainder in favour of the Academy has never become effectual, the palace in the Via Sistina being still possessed by his descendants. It is well known as the Casa Bertoldy, and may be regarded as the cradle of the modern German school of painting. The frescoes on which Overbeck, Cornelius, Schnorr, and Veit first essayed that elevated and pure style which has regenerated European taste, there attract many an admirer, little aware that the basement rooms, abandoned to menial uses, contain some of the latest efforts of cinque-cento decoration that have fair pretensions to merit. The richest of them has its vaulted roof studded with allegorical delineations of the arts, sciences, and virtues, painting being justly pre-eminent in a painter's house. The lunettes of another are crowded by portraits of the Zuccari, extending over four generations, and numbering twenty-one heads, true to nature. The third, which was Federigo's nuptial chamber, exhibits the ceremony of his marriage, around which are figures of Chastity, Continence, Concord, and Felicity, in the fashion of an age when genius had been replaced by ingenuity, grandeur by dexterous execution.
The infirmity of Federigo's temper, to which we have already alluded, may account for his unworthy treatment of Vasari. In the marginal notes upon his copy of the Vite de' Pittori, now in the Royal Library at Paris, as well as in an original work which we are about to mention, he takes every opportunity of sneering ungenerously at one whose biography of his brother, and whose allusions to himself are conceived in kind and flattering terms. Although his Idea de' Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti, printed in the year of his death, is supposed to be but a compend of his lectures at St. Luke's, he is believed to have intended it as a triumph over Vasari's justly popular writings. In this, however, he signally failed; it has the mysticism of philosophy without its spirit, while its pedantic subtleties are puerile rather than profound. This, and his Lamento della Pittura, are books of great rarity, but in no way merit a reprint. A mannerist with pen and pencil, the conceits of the former equal the allegories of the latter; nature and feeling are alien to both.
Although the Zuccari were little identified by their works with their native state, and obtained less of the ducal patronage than their contemporary Baroccio, their names have reflected much lustre upon Urbino. Yet the space which they occupied in the public view was owing to the smiles of propitious fortune,—to a happy facility of executing without exertion whatever commissions were offered,—to a certain magnificence and liberality in their manner of life,—and, in the case of Federigo, to an overweening vanity, rather than to any positive artistic excellence. Their reputation has accordingly waned, as the remembrance of such incidental qualities waxed faint, and as a distant posterity applied to them that only sure test, the merit of their works. Nor were these the only advantages of their position. An analogy has been deduced between Taddeo and the immortal Raffaele, not from any supposed resemblance of their pencils or genius, but because both were natives of the same state, both painted extensively in fresco at Rome, both died when "exactly thirty-seven," and both were buried in the same corner of the Pantheon. Federigo, on the other hand, was, like Titian, invited to courts, decorated and enriched by monarchs; like Raffaele and Michael Angelo, he was an architect and a sculptor as well as a painter; like Vasari, he aimed at a literary reputation. The works of the brothers display a marked similarity, a natural result of their long painting together; yet deterioration became perceptible as their distance from the golden age increased, and the younger may be distinguished by a pervading inferiority of taste and design, but especially by a growing mannerism and laxity in his conceptions, and by the overcrowding of his subjects. To balance these deficiencies, his person was attractive, his general attainments were far more comprehensive, and a longer life was granted for the enjoyment of his fortune and the extension of his fame, than fell to the lot of Taddeo. The failing mainly attributable to both was absence of style. Their inventions were often flimsy, and their compositions, deficient in unity and dignity, are often little more than figure groups.
A necessary consequence of the low style of art which the Zuccari adopted was that, notwithstanding the number of assistants whom they constantly employed, their school neither attained to considerable repute among their contemporaries, nor put forth many pupils of note; offering in this respect a marked contrast to that of their countryman Baroccio, whose pleasing manner attracted a host of admirers and imitators. Two natives of Pesaro, however, possess a certain reputation in the semi-mechanical church decorations then largely produced. They were Nicolò Trometta, generally called Nicolò da Pesaro, and Gian Giacomo Pandolfi, the latter of whom was the earliest instructor of Simon Cantarini da Pesaro. The various works which these and other Zuccaristi have left in the duchy are quite unworthy of special description, and we may dismiss them with the mention of Cavaliere Domenico Cresti da Passignano, whose chief title to fame is reflected from that of his pupils Tiarini and Ludovico Caracci. Among the painters less known to fame were Biagio and Girolamo d'Urbino, both of whom were employed in the Escurial; the former left Spain along with Federigo Zuccaro, in 1588; the latter wrought under Pelegrino Tibaldi. Ottovevenius, after spending seven years with Federigo, carried his influence beyond the Alps, and eventually numbered Rubens among his scholars.
Among the artists who repaired to Urbino at the summons of Duke Federigo, for the construction of his palace, was Ambrogio Barocci, or Baroccio, a Milanese sculptor, who established himself there, and, after long labouring on its plastic decorations, founded a family singularly distinguished in the higher branches of mechanical and pictorial art. His two daughters were married to Girolamo and Nicolò della Genga, and his great-grandson Federigo, upon whose biography we must dwell at some length, had an elder brother Simone, who after studying the exact sciences under Federigo Comandino, became the best mathematical instrument maker that had hitherto been seen. His cousins, the Cavaliere Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Maria, were not less famous in watchmaking, an art successfully patronised by the Dukes delle Rovere, which we shall mention in our [fifty-fifth chapter]. Federigo Baroccio was born in 1528, and initiated into the rudiments of design by his father, who practised engraving and modelling. His early efforts having been approved by his grand-uncle Girolamo Genga, he was placed under the tuition of Battista Franco of Venice, an indifferent painter, much employed in the majolica shops at Urbino, whose taste for designing from antique sculpture directed his pupil's attention to those effects of chiaroscuro which distinguished his matured style. After assiduous labours in this way, he repaired to Pesaro, then his sovereigns' residence, where were placed their accumulated treasures of art. There he observed the works of Raffaele and Titian, under the guidance of Genga, who carefully advanced his artistic education, especially in perspective. At twenty he went to Rome, anxious to see the triumphs of his great countryman, which he forthwith set himself to study. Several anecdotes are told of his modesty, which kept him in the background until chance obtained for his drawings a passing compliment from Michael Angelo, and the warm sympathy and encouragement of Giovanni da Udine, delighted to find in the youth a countryman as well as an admirer of his former master. After imbibing inspiration from these healthful fountains, he returned home, and executed some church paintings. But the casual arrival of one who brought some cartoons and crayon drawings from Parma gave a new turn to his ideas. Forgetting the grandeur of Buonarroti and the pure beauty of Raffaele, he aimed at those meretricious graces which have borrowed from the dexterity of Parmegianino, and the luscious pencil of Correggio, a fascination unsupported by their intrinsic merits, and pregnant with mischief to art. To him, however, belongs the credit of introducing into Lower Italy a harmonious application of light and shade, to which his early lamp studies from sculpture may have conduced.
Returning to Rome in 1560, he found Federigo Zuccaro in the ascendant, and from him received a hint as to the tendency of this manner, which it would have been well that he had adopted. Having, at the request of Federigo, painted two children on a frieze, with a fusion of colour very rarely effected in fresco, the latter, considering this to be overdone, retraced the outlines with a brush, imparting to them that force which was wanting to the work. Baroccio took the reproof in good part, but profited not by it. During his first visit he had become known to Cardinal Giulio della Rovere, by whose influence, probably, he procured employment at the Vatican and Belvidere, in company with Zuccaro. With the decline of their art, the good feeling of the painters' fraternity waned, and the kindly sympathies of that glorious band, whom Raffaele had imbued with a portion of his amiable nature, no longer animated their successors. Those who saw in Baroccio one who would have raised the standard of taste from the abandonment which immediately succeeded the dispersion of that noble school, instead of seconding his efforts poisoned him at a banquet. He survived the potion, but four years of pain and feeble health elapsed ere he could return to his labours. When his system had in some degree resumed its vigour among his mountain breezes, he was called to Perugia to paint for its cathedral the Deposition from the Cross, a work which, far from exhibiting any prostration of power, greatly surpassed his previous efforts. No scriptural theme offers greater technical difficulties, or demands a larger share of those grand and energetic qualities in which Baroccio was usually deficient. It is, therefore, one of his most remarkable efforts, as regards its own qualities, and the circumstances under which it was produced. It occupied him during three years, and was followed by the Absolution of St. Francis, for the Franciscans of Urbino, on which he laboured in their convent for above twice that period. In consideration of their poverty, he charged but a hundred golden scudi for the work, to which they gratefully added as many florins.
It is not our intention to give a catalogue of even his more important productions, although a large proportion of them were executed for the decoration of his native state, which his patriotism induced him to prefer to the splendid offers made him by foreign monarchs. Among those commissioned by his sovereign was the Calling of St. Andrew, finished in 1584, and presented to Philip II., that saint being patron of the Spanish order of the Golden Fleece. It was about the same time that Duke Francesco Maria dedicated to the Madonna del Annunziata, a chapel in the church of Loreto, which we have already mentioned as decorated in fresco by Federigo Zuccaro. Its altar-picture was committed to Baroccio, the subject naturally being the Annunciation. This was in all respects a labour of love, the theme being in perfect unison with his dulcet manner, and it was accordingly considered by himself his chef-d'œuvre, a merit which, in the opinion of many, is shared by his Deposition, and, in that of Simon da Pesaro, by his Santa Michelina. Modern connoisseurs may decide between the first and last of those three great works, as they hang side by side in the Vatican Gallery, the former of them, and the Deposition, having been returned from Paris. The Annunciation is certainly a very favourable and pleasing specimen of the Baroccesque manner, but an eye versed in the criticism of sacred art must demur to the judgment of Bellori, who found maiden humility in the Virgin, a celestial air in the angel, and spiritual character in the tinting. The principal figure is the portrait of a young lady of the Compagnoni of Macerata, whose features are equally devoid of purity and of noble expression; the colouring, though delicately beautiful in itself, is meretricious in effect, transmuting flesh into roses; and the whole sentiment of the picture is anything but devotional. On the other hand, it is distinguished above a majority of his important works by unity of composition, although, like most productions of his age, the action is exaggerated and the details mannered. A copy in mosaic was sent to replace this favourite effort, which was often reproduced by the master and his pupils. A repetition of it was presented by Francesco Maria to the court of Spain, and another, left unfinished, remains at Gubbio. The Santa Michelina, protectress of Pesaro, was painted for the church of S. Francesco there, and exhibits a striking deviation from this artist's wonted style. A single figure kneeling on Mount Calvary in ecstatic contemplation, amid the war of convulsed elements, admitted of no paltry prettiness, and could scarcely fail to attain grandeur. There is, accordingly, in the breadth of composition, and in the prevalent low neutral tone, an approach to severe art, inducing us to overlook the fluttering draperies and girlish forms that belong to the master.