Among the disciples of the School of Giorgione, were, likewise, Gio. da Udine and Francesco Torbido, a Veronese, who has been surnamed il Moro, and both were distinguished practisers of his tints. In regard to Giovanni, afterwards a pupil of Raffaello, we have written, and we shall again write elsewhere. Moro remained but little with Giorgione, a much longer while with Liberale. Of this last he imitated very truly both the diligence and the design, in the former even surpassing him; always a severe critic upon himself, and slow in completing his undertakings. We rarely meet with him in altarpieces, still more rarely in collections of paintings, for which he was often employed in sacred subjects and in portraits; deficient in nothing, except, perhaps, we could wish to see somewhat greater freedom of hand. In the dome of Verona, he painted several histories in fresco, among which is the Assumption of the Virgin, truly admirable; but the designs are not his, Giulio Romano having prepared the cartoons. His style of execution, however, is clearly enough perceived, which, in respect to colouring and to chiaroscuro, discovers him to be an artist, as Vasari has recorded, "as careful in regard to his use of colours, as any other who flourished at the same period."
The other names that here follow, are included, according to history, in the train of Giorgione, not as his pupils, but his imitators. Yet all exhibit traces of Bellini, because the Venetian manner, up to the time of Tintoretto, did not so much aim at inventing new things, as at perfecting such as had already been discovered; not so desirous of relinquishing the taste of the Bellini, as of modernizing it upon the model of Titian and Giorgione. Hence it arose, that a people of painters were formed in a taste extremely uniform; and the exaggerated observation, "that whoever had cultivated an acquaintance with one Venetian artist of that age, knew them all," seemed to have some ground in truth. But still, as I have said, it is exaggeration, as there is certainly much diversity of style and merit when compared with one another. Among the leading disciples of Giorgione are to be ranked three, who belong to the city or territory of Bergamo, and these are Lotto, as is most generally supposed, Palma, and Cariani. They resemble their master most frequently in fulness, but in the mixture and selection of colours they often appear of the school of Lombardy. More particularly in Cariani there is apparent a certain superficies, like that of wax, equally diffused over the canvass, which shines so as to enliven the eye; and when seen at a distance, with but little light, appears in full relief, a result which others have also noticed in the works of Coreggio.
The name of Lorenzo Lotto is recorded by Vasari and elsewhere, in which accounts his country is considered as consisting of the entire state, as he himself, indeed, affixed to his picture of S. Cristoforo di Loreto, Laurentius Lottus Pictor Venetus.[[43]] The late annotator of Vasari, observing the grace of countenance and the turn of the eyes remarkable in his pictures, supposed him to be a disciple of Vinci, an opinion that might be supported by the authority of Lomazzo, who mentions the names of Cesare da Sesto and Lorenzo Lotto together, both being imitators, in the distribution of their lights, of da Vinci. Lotto most likely profited by his vicinity to Milan, in order to cultivate an acquaintance with, and to imitate Vinci in many points; though I am not, therefore, inclined to discredit the account which gives him for a pupil to Bellini, and a rival to Castelfranco. But the style of the disciples of Lionardo, so uniform in Luini and in the other Milanese, is very slightly perceptible in the productions of Lotto. His manner is, in truth, wholly Venetian, bold in its colours, luxurious in its draperies, and like Giorgione, of a deep red in the fleshy parts. His hand, however, is less bold and free than that of the latter, whose loftier character he is fond of tempering with the play, as it were, of his middle tints; selecting, at the same time, lighter forms, to whose heads he gives a character more placid and a beauty more ideal. In the background of his pictures he often retains a peculiar clear or azure colour, which if it do not harmonize so much with the figures, confers distinctness on each individual, and presents them in a very lively manner to the eye. His pictures of S. Antonino, at the Dominicans in Venice, and of S. Niccolo, at the Carmine, which design he repeated in the S. Vincenzio of the Dominicans at Recanati, are compositions extremely novel and original. In his others he varies little from the usual style; that of a Madonna seated on a throne, surrounded with saints, with cherubs in the air, or upon the steps. Yet these he relieves by the novelty of perspective, or by attitudes, or contrasted views. Thus in his specimen of the S. Bartolommeo, at Bergamo, entitled by Ridolfi wonderful, he bestows upon the Virgin and the infant Jesus such finely diversified and contrasted motions, that they seem as if conversing with the holy bystanders, the one on the right and the other on the left hand. And in that of S. Spirito, sparkling as it were with graces, we meet with a figure of S. John the Baptist, drawn as a child, standing at the foot of the throne, in the act of embracing a lamb, and expressing so natural and lively a joy, at once so simple and innocent, with a smile so beautiful, that we can hardly believe while we gaze upon it, that Raffaello or Correggio could have gone beyond it.
Such masterpieces as these, with others that are to be seen at Bergamo, in churches and private collections, place him almost on a level with the first luminaries of the art. If Vasari did not fairly appreciate his merits, it arose only from his having viewed several of his less studied and less noble pieces. And it is true that he has not always exhibited the same degree of excellence, or force of design. The period in which he chiefly flourished may be computed from the year 1513, when he was selected, among many professors of reputation, to adorn the altar for the church of the Dominicans at Bergamo; and, perhaps, the decline of his powers ought to be dated from 1546, an epoch inscribed upon his picture of San Jacopo dell'Orio, in Venice. He was employed also at Ancona, and in particular at the church of S. Dominico, at Recanati, where, interspersed among pieces of superior power, more especially in his smaller pictures, we detect some incorrectness in his extremities, and stiffness of composition, resembling that of Gian Bellini; whether, as it is conjectured by Vasari, they were among the earliest, or more probably among some of his latest efforts. For it is well known, that when far advanced in years, he was accustomed to retire to Loreto, a little way from Recanati, and that engaged in continual supplication to the Virgin, in order that she might guide him into a better method, he there closed the period of his days in tranquillity.
Jacopo Palma, commonly called Palma Vecchio, to distinguish him from his great-nephew Jacopo, was invariably considered the companion and rival of Lotto, until such time as Combe first confused the historical dates relating to him. By Ridolfi we are told that Palma employed himself in completing a picture left imperfect by Titian, at the period of his death in 1576. Upon this, and similar authorities, Combe takes occasion to postpone the birth of Palma, until 1540; adding to which the forty-eight years assigned him by Vasari, the time of his decease is placed in 1588. In such arrangement the critic seems neither to have paid attention to the style of Jacopo, still retaining some traces of the antique, nor to the authority of Ridolfi, who makes him the master of Bonifazio, any more than to Vasari's testimony, in the work published in 1568, declaring him to have died several years before that period in Venice. He does not even consider, what he might more easily have ascertained, that there was another Jacopo Palma, great-nephew of the elder, who, according to the authority of Boschini (p. 110), was a pupil of Titian's as long as the latter survived; and that Ridolfi, on this occasion, entitled him Palma, without the addition of younger, on account of its being so extremely unlikely that any would confound him with the elder Palma. Such, notwithstanding, was the case, and is, in fact, only a slight sample of the inaccuracies of the whole work. The same error has been repeated by too many authors, even among the Italians; and the most amusing of all is, that Palma the elder is said to have been born about the year 1540, while almost, in the same breath, the younger Palma is declared to have been born in 1544. So much must here suffice as to his age, proceeding in the next instance to his style.
Much attached to the method of Giorgione, he aimed at attaining his clearness of expression, and vivacity of colouring. In his celebrated picture of Saint Barbara, at S. Maria Formosa, one of his most powerful and characteristic productions, Jacopo more especially adopted him as his model. In some of his other pieces, he more nearly approaches Titian, a resemblance we are told by Ridolfi, consisting in the peculiar grace which he acquired from studying the earliest productions of that great master. Of this kind is the Supper of Christ, painted for Santa Maria Mater Domini, with the Virgin at San Stefano di Vicenza, executed with so much sweetness of expression as to be esteemed one of his happiest productions. There are many examples of both styles to be met with in the grand Carrara collection, as given in the list of Count Tassi, (p. 93). Finally, Zanetti is of opinion that in some others he displays a more original genius, as exemplified in the Epiphany of the island of Saint Helena, where he equally shines in the character of a naturalist who selects well, who carefully disposes his draperies, and who composes according to good rules. The distinguishing character then of his pieces is diligence, refinement, and a harmony of tints, so great as to leave no traces of the pencil; and it has been observed by one of his historians, that he long occupied himself in the production of each piece, and frequently retouched it. In the mixture of his colours, as well as other respects, he often resembles Lotto, and if he be less animated and sublime, he is, perhaps, generally speaking, more beautiful in the form of his heads, especially in those of boys and women. It is the opinion of some, that in several of his countenances he expressed the likeness of his daughter Violante, very nearly related to Titian, and a portrait of whom, by the hand of her father, was to be seen in the gallery of Sera, a Florentine gentleman, who purchased at Venice many rarities for the House of the Medici, as well as for himself, (Boschini, p. 368). A variety of pictures intended for private rooms, met with in different places in Italy, have also been attributed to the hand of Palma; besides portraits, one of which has been commended by Vasari as truly astonishing, from its beauty; and Madonnas, chiefly drawn along with other saints, on oblong canvass; a practice in common use by many artists of that age, some of whom we have already recounted, and others are yet to come. But the least informed among people of taste, being ignorant of their names, the moment they behold a picture between the dryness of Giovanni Bellini and the softness of Titian, pronounce it to be a Palma, and this, more particularly, where they find countenances well rounded and coloured, landscape exhibited with care, and roseate hues in the drapery, occurring more frequently than any of a more sanguine dye. In this way Palma is in the mouths of all, while other artists, also very numerous, are mentioned only in proportion as they have attached their own names to their productions. One of these, resembling Palma and Lotto, but slightly known beyond the precincts of Bergamo and some adjacent cities, is Giovanni Cariani, as to whom Vasari is altogether silent. One of his pieces, representing our Saviour, along with several saints, and dated 1514, I have myself seen at Milan, which appears to have been altogether formed upon the model of Giorgione. If I mistake not, it is a juvenile production, and when compared with some others, which I saw at Bergamo, very indifferent in its forms. The most excellent of any from his hand, is a Virgin, preserved at the Servi, with a group of beatified spirits, a choir of angels, and other angels at her feet, engaged in playing upon their harps in concert. It is an exceedingly graceful production, delightfully ornamented with landscape and figures in the distance; very tasteful in its tints, which are blended in a manner equal to the most studied specimens of the two artists of Bergamo, already mentioned; thus forming with them a triumvirate, calculated to reflect honour upon any country. It has been stated by Tassi, that the celebrated Zuccherelli never visited Bergamo, without returning to admire the beauties of this picture, pronouncing it one of the finest specimens of the art he had ever beheld, and the best which that city had to boast. Cariani was also no less distinguished as a portrait painter, as we gather from a piece belonging to the Counts Albani, containing various portraits of that noble family; and which, surrounded with specimens of the best colourists; would almost appear to be the only one deserving of peculiar admiration.
The city of Trevigi may boast of two artists belonging to the same class, though widely differing from each other. One of these is Rocco Marconi, distinguished by Zanetti among some of the best disciples of Bellini, and erroneously referred by Ridolfi to the school of Palma. He excelled in accuracy of design, taste of colouring, and diligence of hand, though not always sufficiently easy in his contours, and for the most part exhibiting a severity almost approaching to plebeian coarseness in his countenances. Even in the earliest production attributed to him, executed in the year 1505, and preserved in the church of San Niccolo, at Trevigi, Ridolfi detects that peculiar clearness of style, which may be traced also so strongly in his Three Apostles, at SS. Giovanni and Paolo, as well as in his few other pictures dispersed among the public places. Indeed half-length figures of this artist are by no means of rare occurrence in private collections, though he can boast no single specimen so beautiful, or so completely Giorgionesque as his Judgment of the Adulteress, to be seen in the chapter of San Giorgio Maggiore, and of which there is either a duplicate or a copy at San Pantaleo, and in other places. The other of these two artists is Paris Bordone, the elevation of whose mind and genius seemed to correspond with that of his birth. After having been a pupil of Titian for a short period, he became an enthusiastic imitator of Giorgione, finally adopting an originality of manner, whose peculiar grace bears no resemblance to that of any other painter. His forms may truly be said to breathe, to glow, and even to laugh, with a force of colouring, which, incapable of displaying a greater degree of truth than that of Titian, aimed, nevertheless, at more variety and attraction; while, at the same time, they were not wanting in delicacy of design, novelty of drapery, propriety of composition, and a peculiarly lively air of the heads. In the church of S. Giobbe he produced a picture of S. Andrew embracing his Cross, with an angel seen hovering above, in the act of bestowing upon him the crown of martyrdom; while in one of the two saints, represented at the side, he drew the figure of S. Peter, in the act of gazing upon him with a kind of envy; an idea equally novel and picturesque. A similar method he adopted in other of his works, produced in great part for the ornament of his native place and its vicinity. Not a subject but is taken from the antique; yet each of them is treated with originality. Of such kind, is that picture of a true Paradise, seen in the Ognissanti at Trevigi, and those evangelical mysteries in the cathedral of the same city, represented in an altarpiece, divided into six different groups, at the request, it is presumed, of the person who engaged him to execute it. Here we behold, assembled in a small space, every thing of the most pleasing and beautiful kind, which he has elsewhere scattered throughout the whole of his works. In Venice, his representation of the restoration of the ring to the Doge by a fisherman, possesses a high reputation; and this, accompanied with that of the Tempest, shortly before described, by Giorgione, forms an admirable contrast in its beauty to the terrors abounding in the latter. Decorated with the finest specimens of architecture, and a profusion of animated and well adapted figures, as varied in their actions as in their draperies, it has been commended by Vasari as the masterpiece of his labours. The same artist is, likewise, highly prized in collections. Madonnas of his are to be met with, characterized by the uniformity of their countenance, as well as some of his portraits, often attired in the manner of Giorgione, and composed with fine and novel embellishments. Being invited to the court of Francis II., he acquired the favour of that monarch and of his successor, thus enriching himself by the exercise of his talents. He had a son who pursued the same branches of the art; but from his picture of Daniel, remaining at Santa Maria Formosa in Venice, it is evident how very inferior he must have been.
At the same time flourished one Girolamo da Trevigi, a different artist to his namesake already mentioned by us, who, induced probably by the example of his noble fellow citizen, and turning his attention to a more select style than the generality of the Venetian School, applied himself to the models of Raffaello, and the Romans. He is entitled by Padre Federici, upon the authority of Mauro, Pennacchi, and is considered by him the son of that Piermaria, of whom we made brief mention before, (page 62). There is little from his hand remaining at Venice, but more in Bologna, particularly at San Petronio, where he painted in oil the histories of S. Antony of Padua, with judgment and grace, combined with an exquisite degree of polish, which obtained for him the commendation of Vasari. It was here he happily succeeded in uniting the excellences of the two schools, though he did not flourish long enough to mature them, having devoted himself to the military occupation of an engineer, to which service he fell a victim in 1544, while in England; he was killed, according to Vasari, in his thirty-sixth year. On this last point we can scarcely admit the emendation offered us by the author of the Description of Vicenza, who would substitute for this earlier date the age of seventy-six years, a period of life when men seldom encounter their final doom in the field. In this instance, perhaps, the emendator was not aware that there exist signatures of a Girolamo da Treviso, met with upon pictures from the year 1472 to that of 1487, uniformly of ancient design; an artist, who could not, in the common course of life, have survived to become an excellent disciple of Raffaello, and the assistant of Pupini at Bologna, about the year 1530. He failed, therefore, to make a distinction between two painters of the same name, as it will be perceived we have done, followed by the authority of Padre Federici.
Finally, in this list must be enumerated Gio. Antonio Licinio, either Sacchiense, or Cuticello,[[44]] until such period, as happening to be wounded in the hand by his brother, he renounced all title to his family name, assuming the appellation of Regillo. He is commonly, however, called Pordenone, from his native place, formerly a province, and now a city of the Friuli. "In this province," it is observed by Vasari, "there flourished, during his time, a great number of excellent artists, who had never visited either Florence or Rome; but he stood pre-eminent above all, surpassing his predecessors in the conception of his pieces, in design, in boldness, in the use of his colours, in his frescos, in rapidity, in grandeur of relief; and, indeed, in every other attribute of the arts." It is uncertain whether he attended the School of Castelfranco, as it has been supposed by some, and much more so, whether he was a fellow student along with him and Titian, under Giovanni Bellini, a supposition started by Rinaldis, (p. 62). To me, the opinion reported by Ridolfi appears nearer the truth, that having first studied, in his youth, the productions of Pelligrino, at Udine, he subsequently adopted the manner of Giorgione, following the bias of his own genius, invariably the artist's safest guide in the formation of a style. Other disciples of Giorgione, more or less resembled him in manner, but Pordenone seemed to vie with him in spirit, a spirit equally daring, resolute, and great; surpassed by no other, perhaps, in the Venetian School. Yet in lower Italy he is little known beyond his name. The picture with the portraits of his family, preserved in the Palazzo Borghese, is the best production of his that I have met with in these parts. And elsewhere, indeed, we rarely behold such histories as his exquisite picture of the Raising of Lazarus, in possession of the Conti Lecchi, at Brescia. Nor does he abound in altarpieces, beyond the province of Friuli, which boasts of several in different places, though not all equally genuine. The few executed in Pordenone, are unquestionably his, inasmuch as he has himself described them in a memorial still extant.[[45]] The collegiate church possesses two of these; one consisting of a Holy Family, with S. Christopher, executed in 1515, very finely coloured, but not exempt from some inaccuracies. The other bears the date of 1535, representing S. Mark in the act of consecrating a bishop, along with other saints, and with perspective; a piece, says its author, posta in opera, non finita, begun, indeed, but not finished. A more complete specimen was to be seen at San Pier Martire di Udine, in his Annunciation, since re-touched and destroyed. Some there are who have preferred, before every other, that preserved in S. Maria dell'Orto, at Venice. It consists of San Lorenzo Giustiniani, surrounded by various saints; among whom S. John the Baptist appears naked according to the rules of the most learned schools; while the arm of S. Augustine is seen, as it were, stretched forth out of the picture, an effect of perspective this artist has repeated in various other places. The most beautiful of his pieces in Piacenza, where he had established himself, is his picture of the Marriage of S. Catherine, upon a dark ground, which gives a roundness to the whole of the figures; it is full of grace in those of a more tender character, and displays grandeur in the forms of S. Peter and S. Paul, represented on the two sides; in the last of whom, as well as in the S. Rocco of Pordenone, he gave a portrait of himself.
But his works in fresco display the highest degree of merit; great part of which he produced in the Friuli, besides numerous others scattered throughout castles and villas, no longer distinguished by strangers, except from the circumstance of possessing some painting of Pordenone. Such places are Castions, Valeriano, Villanova, Varmo, Pallazuolo, where he is with certainty known to have employed his talents. A few remnants are likewise preserved in Mantua, in the Casa de' Cesarei, and in the palazzo Doria, at Genoa; some at S. Rocco, and the cloisters of S. Stefano, in Venice, and many specimens in high preservation in the dome of Cremona, and at Santa Maria di Campagna, in Piacenza, where, in collections, and in the façades of houses, other pieces of his are pointed out. His labours in fresco, however, are not all equally studied and correct; more particularly those in his native Friuli, which he produced at an early age in great abundance, and for a small price. He is more select in his male forms than in those of his women, whose model he appears to have frequently taken from very robust rather than very beautiful subjects, most probably met with in the adjacent province of Carnia, where he is said to have indulged his early passions. But in every thing he undertook we may invariably trace the workings of a vigorous fancy, rich in conceiving, in varying, and developing his ideas; powerful in his exhibition of the passions, displaying the master-hand that encounters the difficulties of the art with the most novel combinations in the science of foreshortening, with the most laboured perspective, and with a power of relief which appears perfectly starting from the canvass.