At the same period flourished the Cavalier Carlo Ridolfi, a native of Vicenza, but who received his education and distinguished himself at Venice. His natural good sense led him to shun the peculiar style of his times, no less in writing than in painting; and we may observe the same character that is displayed in his "Lives of the Venetian Painters," written with equal fidelity and judgment, preserved also in his pictures. Thus his Vizitazione, painted for the church of the Ognissanti at Venice, has been much extolled; a piece that exhibits some novelty in the adaptation of the colours; a fine relief, and exactness in every part. Other specimens of him are to be met with in public places, both in Venice and throughout the state; but a great part of his productions were for private persons, consisting of portraits, half-length figures, and historical pieces. Ridolfi imbibed excellent principles of the art from Aliense, which he afterwards improved in Vicenza and Verona, by copying the best models he could find, and attending to perspective, to the belles lettres, and to other pursuits best calculated to form a learned artist. Such he likewise appears in the two volumes of his "Lives," which are at present extremely rare, and deserving of republication, either with the plates which I heard were still in existence at Bassano, or without them, since it is no very serious loss after all to remain ignorant of the features of celebrated men, provided we become acquainted with their virtues. Upon a comparison of Ridolfi's style of writing with that of Boschini, we might suppose that these authors flourished at two different epochs, though they were very nearly contemporary. Bayle's observation, indeed, may be considered correct, as applied to them; that there exists a certain mental, as well as physical epidemic; and as, in the last, every individual is not seized with the disorder, so, in the former, good sense, as evinced in thinking and in writing, does not become altogether extinct. Thus the Cav. Carlo, as I before noticed, was not only a good writer, but one of the best biographers of artists we have. Not that he was wholly exempt from every kind of grammatical error, any more than Baldinucci himself, though one of the della Crusca academicians; but he knew how to avoid errors of judgment, into which others fell; such as relating old stories, fit only to amuse children when they first begin to draw eyes and ears; making inquisition into the life and manners of every artist, and wasting time in long preambles, episodes, and moral reflections, quite out of place. On the contrary he is precise, rapid, and eager to afford fresh information for his readers in a small space, with the exception of quoting largely sometimes from the poets. His pictorial maxims are just; his complaints against Vasari always in a moderate tone, and his descriptions of paintings and of grand compositions very exact, and displaying great knowledge, both of mythology and history. He concludes the work with an account of his life, in which he complains of the envy of rivals, and the ignorance of the great, too often combining together to trample upon real merit. His epitaph, as given by Sansovino, a contemporary writer, and afterwards by Zanetti, refers the year of his decease to 1658. Boschini, on the contrary, in his Carta, page 509, speaks of him as one of the living authors in 1660, in which year his book was given to the world. I am inclined to think that those verses in which Ridolfi is commended, were the production of Boschini while the former was still living, and that after his death he neglected to retouch them.
Two others, among the best of these imitators of a more solid taste, are Vecchia and Loth, fully entitled as much as the rest to the rank they hold. Pietro Vecchia sprung from the school of Padovanino, but he did acquire altogether his style, most probably because Padovanino, like the Caracci, gave an individual direction to the talents of his pupils, in the path he judged best adapted to their success. The genius of Vecchia was not at all calculated for lighter subjects. He had imbibed from his master an admiration of the ancients, as well as the art of imitating them; and with these principles he arrived at such a degree of excellence, that several of his pictures pass for those of Giorgione, of Licini, and even of Titian. It is true, that by dint of copying and exactly imitating old paintings, much darkened by time, he contracted the habit of colouring with considerable dulness of lights, affording an example for every young artist, that he should learn to tinge with lively colours, previous to taking copies of similar pictures. For though he, indeed, acquired the colouring of the ancients, he added neither much variety nor much choice of countenances; and he still remained a naturalist, limited in his ideas, and more inclined towards the burlesque than the serious. Some of his best productions consist of pictures for private ornament; of youths armed, or equipped and ornamented with plumes, in the manner of Giorgione, though not without some degree of caricature. One of these, an astrologer telling their fortune to some soldiers, is in possession of the senator Rezzonico at Rome, altogether of so beautiful a character that Giordano painted a companion to it; a little picture quite in the same taste. But although his humourous pieces please us in some, they disgust us in many of his other subjects, and more particularly in the Passion of our Saviour; a sacred mystery, in which the spectator ought never to be presented with cause for mirth. But Vecchia seemed to forget this, and introduces, like Callot, certain caricatures among his sacred pieces, of which specimens are to be seen in the church of Ognissanti at Venice; in possession of the Conti Bevilacqua at Verona, and in other places. In other points, with a style rather strong and loaded with shade than pleasing, he shewed himself an excellent artist, both in his naked parts and his draperies; which he designed and coloured at the same time in the academies. His fleshes are dark red, his handling easy, his colour thick and heavy, the effects of his light new and studied, and his whole taste so far from any degree of mannerism, and of such a composition, that to any one unversed in pictorial history, he would appear to have flourished at least two ages before his real time. Melchiori bestows particular commendation upon him for his talents in restoring old pictures; and conjectures that he, in this way, acquired the appellation of Vecchia, his family name being, as we have noted in the index, that of Muttoni. He instructed several pupils in the art, none of whom pursued their master's career. Agostino Litterini, and Bartolommeo his son, were among these, both artists well known in Venice and the islands, and both distinguished for clearness and boldness of style, though the latter surpassed his father in this way. A specimen of his altarpieces at San Paterniano, displays an imitator of Titian, and of the better age. Melchiori likewise gives the reputation of an excellent artist to his daughter Caterina, though commendations of this sort ought always to be understood in reference to the time in which the artists flourished. The same reasoning might apply also to politics. The title of your Excellency used once to be applied to minor sovereigns, but it has since become applicable also to the great officers and ministers of state.
Gian Carlo Loth, an artist from Monaco, resided during a long period, and subsequently died, at Venice, in the year 1698, aged sixty-six years, as we find written in his epitaph. Both Orlandi and Zanetti are mistaken in giving him as a scholar to Caravaggio, who died before Carlo was born. It is probable, however, that he acquired his strong and loaded manner of composition, and his exact representation of nature without ennobling it, from the study of Caravaggio's pictures. And if he were really the pupil, as is supposed, of Liberi, he failed to make himself master of the lively and ideal character of that school; nor did he perhaps derive any thing from it, but a certain rapidity of hand, and an elevation of manner that distinguished him from the naturalists of his time. He took a rank among the first four painters of his age, all of whom bore the name of Carlo, as I have elsewhere observed. He was much employed in Germany for the emperor Leopold I., as well as in Italy for the churches, and still more for different collections. Many cabinet pictures from his hand are to be met with in every state, in the style of Caravaggio and Guercino, with histories; of which kind is the dead Abel, so much praised in the royal gallery at Florence. One in the best preservation I have seen, is to be found at Milan; a picture of Lot inebriated, in the Trivulzi palace, celebrated among men of taste as a museum of antiquities; newly arranged by the present young and accomplished marquis, and forming a collection not unworthy of a royal house. Daniele Seiter, a fine colourist, to whom we shall again allude, was instructed in the art by Loth, during a period of twelve years. He was distinguished both in Rome and at Turin; and was succeeded by Ambrogio Bono, one of the best disciples formed by the same master in Venice, where he left a variety of works, all executed in the taste he had so early imbibed.
Other artists, about the same period, flourished in Venice, who by dint of imitating the most approved models, and also through their own talents, obtained easy access into the most choice collections. Jean Lys, from Oldenburg, came early among these, bearing along with him the style of Golzio. But, on beholding the Venetian and Roman schools, he adopted an exceedingly graceful style, partaking of the Italian in its design, and of the Flemish in its tints. He chiefly produced figures upon a middle scale, such as his Prodigal Son, in the royal museum at Florence; or of smaller dimensions, as in his various little pictures of village sports and combats, with similar subjects, in the Flemish mode of composition. Yet he produced a few pictures for churches, like his St. Peter, in the act of resuscitating Tabitha, at the Filippini, in Fano; and his more celebrated San Girolamo, at the Theatini, in Venice, where he died. Valentino le Febre, from Brussels, is a name omitted by Orlandi; while his very numerous engravings of Paul Veronese, and of the best Venetian artists, are ascribed by him to another artist of the same name. He painted little; and always pursued the track of Paul Veronese, of whom he was one of the most successful imitators and copyists known. His countenances bear no stamp of a foreign origin, and his colours none of the bad character of his age; while his touches are always strong, without offending our taste. His smaller pieces are full of research and finish; though he has less merit upon a larger scale, and is occasionally wanting in point of composition. We meet with another distinguished imitator of Paul, in Sebastiano Bombelli, from Udine; Guercino's scholar in the outset, and subsequently a fine copyist of the best works of Paul Veronese, which are scarcely to be distinguished from the copies he took; until he gave up the more inventive branches of the art, and devoted his attention to portraits. Here he restored the lost wonders of a former age; his portraits being remarkable for strong likeness, vivacity, and truth of colouring, both in the drapery and the fleshes. In his painting there is a happy union of the Venetian and the Bolognese manner; and in some specimens of his portraits that I have seen, he seems to have preferred the delicacy of Guido to the vigour of his own master. He was esteemed also beyond Italy; he was employed by the archduke Joseph at Inspruck; took the portraits of several German electors; of the King of Denmark, and of the emperor Leopold I., by whom he was largely honoured and rewarded. It is a matter of regret, that, owing to a peculiar varnish of pitch and gum,[[78]] which at the time produced a good effect, a great portion of his pictures should have become obscured; and that many by the more ancient masters, which he wished to restore, should have been altogether blemished or destroyed like his own. Among the imitators of Titian, of Tintoretto, and of Paul, one Giacomo Barri is likewise mentioned by Melchiori; though he is the sole authority we have upon the point. It is now easy to meet with his engravings in aqua fortis, but not with his pictures. He was also the author of a little work entitled by him Viaggio Pittoresco d'Italia, which has become somewhat rare, owing, I imagine, to its small dimensions, and to the researches made after it by those who preserve a series of pictorial works; for the rest, his authority is of a middling character.
In the changes which produced such an alteration in the state of painting at Venice, several cities of the provinces also in some measure partook, but in others many eminent geniuses arose, capable of resisting the moral contagion that invaded the capital, and of barring its entrance into their native provinces. The school of the Friuli, after the death of Pomponio Amalteo and Sebastiano Seccante, owing to the mediocrity of Sebastian's followers, or of the younger branches of his family, had declined, as we before stated, from its original splendour. It numbered, indeed, other pupils by different masters; limited in point of invention, dry in design, and somewhat hard in their colouring. None appeared capable of restoring the art, and succeeded only in furnishing the city with works reasonably well executed, more or less, and borrowed from familiar models. To this class belong Vincenzo Lugaro, mentioned by Ridolfi for his altarpiece of San Antonio, at the Grazie in Udine; Giulio Brunelleschi, whose Nunziata in one of the Fraternities presents a good imitation of the style of Pellegrino; and Fulvio Griffoni, who received a commission from the city to produce a picture of the Miracle of the Manna, to be placed in the public palace near the Supper of Amalteo. Add to these Andrea Petreolo, who ornamented the panels of the organ, in the dome of his native town of Venzone, as well on the interior, where, in a very beautiful manner, he exhibited the histories of San Geronimo and San Eustachio, as on the outside, where, surrounded with fine architecture, he represented the Parable of the wise and foolish Virgins. Without dwelling upon the names of Lorio and Brugno, of whom there remain but few works, which obtained little celebrity, we shall newly record the name of Eugenio Pini, the last it may be said of those artists who but slightly addicted themselves to foreign methods. He flourished about the middle of the seventeenth century, was frequently employed at Udine, and in his own state; extremely diligent and skilled in every office of a painter, if we except, perhaps, his want of a more perfect harmony of tints. The Repose of Egypt, in the dome of Palma, and his San Antonio in that of Gemona, are pronounced by the Abbate Boni among his noblest productions.
During the period the latter flourished at Udine, Antonio Carnio, a native of a town of Portogruaro, came to establish himself in the city. Instructed in the art by his own father, a very able artist, he subsequently appears, as far as we may judge from his style, to have studied the works of Paul Veronese and Tintoretto. Next to Pordenone, the Friuli perhaps never produced a finer genius; equally original in all the branches of historic painting, bold in his design, happy in his colouring, more particularly of his fleshes; expressive in every variety of passion; and all these comprehended within the limits of a grand naturalist, though he frequently became a mannerist, in order to expedite his works. Several of his best productions are, at this period, lost to Udine, owing to the fault of the artist who retouched them; and among the most studied and the best preserved, there still remains his San Tommaso di Villanuova, adorning an altar of Santa Lucia. He produced likewise several histories for private ornament, half-length figures, portraits and heads in caricature, for which he displayed a peculiar talent, and which still exist at Udine. Both the city and province are well supplied with his pieces, few of which, however, are to be found coloured with strength of handling or very highly finished. He was never without numerous commissions, even though confining his talents to the Friuli; but either from want of prudence, or some other reason, he nevertheless died in penury near Portogruaro. A few of his pictures in that place are still pointed out; but those seen at San Francesco, among which are the Washing the Disciples' Feet, and our Lord's Last Supper, said to have been executed by him in 1604, either bear a false date, or are rather to be attributed to his father. For, at that period, Antonio could not have produced them, since he was still alive in the year 1680; and on this point we ought to admit the authority of Pavona, at one time his pupil, from whom Guarienti received his notices of Carnio, which he inserted in the Abecedario. This artist must not be confounded with another Carnio, named Giacomo, who flourished posterior to him, and was much inferior to Antonio in point of merit.
Sebastiano Bombelli was born at Udine, as I just observed, though he studied and resided at other places. He left no specimens of his art in the Friuli, if we except a few portraits and pieces for private ornament, along with some heads or busts of saints; while his altarpiece of the Redeemer upon the Cross, between some saints, in the parochial church of Tricesimo, is considered a very rare piece. He had a brother of the name of Raphael, whose labours were more abundant, but the whole of them, together with his name, were confined within the limits of the Friuli.
While the art thus declined in these parts of the Venetian dominions, it appeared equally to revive in others; from whence it arose, that though greatly diminished in the capital, the glory of the state did not become wholly extinct. The city of Verona was its greatest support; for in addition to having given birth to Ridolfi, to Turchi, and Ottoni, all of whom did honour to their country, it produced likewise Dario Varotari, who having established himself at Padua, laid the foundation of a very flourishing school. He exercised his talents under Paul Veronese, at Verona, to whom he has occasionally some resemblance, though his taste appears to have been chiefly formed upon other models. His design is very chaste, by no means an uncommon acquisition among the Veronese; though he shews some traces of timidity in the method of some of those pupils of the quattro-centisti,[[79]] who, whilst they draw their contours fuller than those of their masters, appear as if they were afraid in every line of departing too far from the models before them; and this he has exemplified in the pictures of San Egidio at Padua. In others, conducted at a more mature age, he seems to have aspired at imitating more modern artists, sometimes Paul Veronese, and sometimes Titian himself in point of design, particularly in the airs of the heads; although his colours, however true and harmonious, can boast neither the Venetian strength nor beauty. Dario painted in Venice, at Padua, and in the Polesine; yet he produced little in reference to the age in which he flourished. He educated several pupils, among whom was Gio. Batista Bissoni, whose life has been given us by Ridolfi. This last was also a scholar of Apollodoro, named di Porcia, a portrait painter of much celebrity, and the style which he formed for himself is exactly that of a good painter of portraits, with which he is fond of filling his pictures, clothing them in the manner of his time. We may observe this in his Miracles of San Domenico, placed in the church belonging to his order, drawn upon a large scale, as well as in other pieces, scattered throughout the city in almost every street.
We must not omit the name of his daughter, Chiara Dario, a lady extolled by Ridolfi for the beauty of her portraits, and fully deserving of the honour conferred upon her by the grand dukes of Tuscany, who placed one of herself in their noble series of painters, where it is still to be seen. Boschini seems to be of opinion that she gave public instructions in the same manner as the fair Sirani of Bologna; and that she initiated in the art Caterina Taraboti and Lucia Scaligeri, a niece of Bartolommeo. Yet the passage referring to this, (p. 526) in the Venetian poet, is somewhat ambiguous, and he perhaps only meant to assert that these two young women pursued the same career. But the chief honour and crown of Dario's reputation, was his own son and pupil, named Alessandro, who, though left an orphan at an early age, shortly after set out for Venice, where he soon began to distinguish himself. He there received the name of Padovanino, which he retained at an advanced age, and by which he is now generally known.
He first studied Titian's works in fresco, such as he found in Padua, and his copies still continue to attract the admiration of the greatest professors. In Venice he persevered in his assiduous attention to the same incomparable master, penetrating so far by degrees into his peculiar character, as to be preferred by many to any of Titian's other disciples. But comparison is invariably disagreeable, and I am inclined to think that those who personally received from the lips of great artists a few brief and sound rules, as to what ought to be avoided or achieved in order best to resemble them, are entitled to a high degree of respect: all the speculations of the finest genius upon their works are not half so valuable; for the second century is fast passing away, since the oral tradition of the best colourists wholly ceased, and we have been attempting to attain their method, in which we cannot succeed. Padovanino was always equal to the task of handling any subject that had before been treated by Titian; his softer ones with grace, his more powerful with strength, his heroic pieces with dignity; in which last, if I mistake not, he surpassed every other disciple of this master. "Le donne, i cavalier, l'armi, e gli Amori," these, and let us add to them his boys, were the favourite subjects of his pencil, which he exhibited to most advantage, and which he most frequently introduced into his compositions. And he knew how to treat landscape as well; which, in some of his small pictures, he has succeeded in admirably. He was familiar with the science of the sotto in sù,[[80]] of which he gave the most favourable specimen in the church of San Andrea di Bergamo, in three admirable histories of that saint. It is a work embellished with beautiful architecture, and replete with graces in every part. He has approached equally near his model in the sobriety of his composition, in the very difficult use of his middle tints, in his contrasts, in the colour of his fleshes, in smoothness and facility of hand. But Titian was still to remain unequalled in his art; and Varotari is not a little inferior to him in animation, and in the expression of truth. Nor can I believe that his method of preparing his canvass, and of colouring it, was the same as that pursued by Titian's disciples, many of his pieces being much darkened, with the shades either deepened or altered. This is very perceptible even in Varotari's Dead Christ, at Florence, a painting which the prince not very long since purchased for his gallery there.