Plate 33.—St. Lucy Sentenced to Death
Jacopo D’Avanzo, Church of St. Anthony, Padua
showing fine qualities of freedom in the execution. But his work as a whole is unequal, owing to his tendency of allowing himself to be influenced by that of his contemporaries. The best of his frescos are those which are most Luinesque in style and character.
In the side entrance of the right aisle, in the Church of St. Ambrogio, in Milan, Ferrari has painted the frescos, “Christ bearing the Cross,” and the “Three Marys”; the latter, though darkened much, is in a good state of preservation, and is now under glass. At Saronno, in the Church of the Santuario, he has decorated the cupola with an assemblage of angels and winged boys, some of which are designed with great spirit, and are beautifully painted. Later work by Ferrari is the fresco decoration of the fourth chapel in the right aisle of St. Maria delle Grazie (1542), where he painted the powerful compositions of the Passion, namely, the “Crucifixion,” the “Scourging of Christ,” and “Christ Crowned with Thorns.” The figures are life-size, and are characterized by much animation, strong colouring, and great freedom of execution.
The works of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo in fresco painting which adorn the Stanze of the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, respectively, have been so much described, and are so well known to students, that any criticism which might be offered here would amount to an unstinted appreciation of their labours. It goes without saying that it is a very serious thing for the sake of Italian Art that so much of the finest work of these masters has either gone very dark and dirty, or, what is worse, has in places almost perished by the disintegration of the colours. The large fresco of the “School of Athens,” in the Stanze of the Vatican, probably the best work in fresco from the hand of Raffaelle, is now quite different from what it must have been when first it was painted. The composition of the figures and some portions of the original colours still remain, but all else must be entirely changed. Even where the original colour is still on the wall, such parts are extremely blackened by age and dirt, but the architectural background, the central flight of steps, and the foreground around and between the figures are, on the contrary, much lighter in tone than they must have been originally, and consequently all the shade and shadows, which formerly connected the masses of the figure groups together, have disappeared. The present extreme lightness of tone which surrounds the dark figures, unduly emphasizes the latter, and gives an unsatisfactory and very spotty appearance to the general composition, which is at variance with the early engravings and copies of this fresco. It is quite likely that the present aspect of this great work is due to the fact that the cleaners and restorers engaged on it from time to time have employed their cleansing energy on the background more than on the figures, and have cleaned off the dirt,
Photo. Anderson.