Subsequent to both of these appeared Vincenzio Foppa, of Brescia, founder of an ancient school at Milan, of which I shall treat more at length in the following book. Vasari makes mention of a Vincenzio da Brescia, or Vincenzio Verchio, who is the same Vincenzo Civerchio di Crema, commended by Ridolfo, and so much admired by the French in the capture of Crema, that they fixed upon one of his pictures, then ornamenting the public palace, to be presented to their king, and to this artist we shall also again allude.
About the commencement of the fifteenth century there flourished, in Verona, an artist of the name of Stefano,[[20]] declared, as it appears to me, by Vasari, sometimes a native of Verona, sometimes of Zevio, a territory adjacent to the former. The same author makes honourable mention of him in several places, exalting him above the best disciples of Angiolo Gaddi, to whose style, judging from what I have myself observed at San Fermo and elsewhere, he added a certain dignity and beauty of form, while such was his excellence in frescos, as to be extolled by Donatello beyond any of the artists who were then known for similar compositions in those parts.[[21]]
The Commendatore del Pozzo brings his labours down as far as the year 1463, an incredible assertion, as applied to a scholar of Gaddi. To this period might better be referred Vincenzio di Stefano, apparently one of his sons, of whom nothing survives but his name, and the tradition of having conferred the first lessons of the art upon Liberale.
Highly distinguished, on the other hand, both by the consent of the Veronese and of foreigners, is the name of Vittor Pisanello; although there exists great confusion of dates in his history. Vasari makes him a disciple of Castagno, who died about the year 1480; yet del Pozzo informs us that he has in his house a holy figure, with the annexed signature of Vittore, and dated 1406, most probably before the birth of Castagno. Again we are told by Oretti that he was in possession of one of his medals, representing the Sultan Mahomet, struck in the year 1481, a supposition which, admitting the picture of Pozzo, we are unable to reconcile to facts, so that the medal was, perhaps, taken from some painting of Pisanello, coloured at a former time. To whatever master Vittore may have been indebted, certain it is that several of his too partial admirers have placed him above Masaccio, in regard to the services rendered by him towards the progress of the art, though impartial judges will not refuse to give him a station near him. The whole of his labours, both in Venice and in Rome, have now perished. At Verona, also, little remains; even that noble piece of San Eustachio, so highly extolled by Vasari himself, having been destroyed; and his Nunziata, at San Fermo, being greatly defaced by time, in which, however, is still visible a country house, thrown into such admirable perspective, as to delight the beholder. There remain several little altarpieces, containing histories of San Bernardino, finished in the style of the miniaturists, in the sacristy of San Francesco; but they are crude in their colouring, and the figures more than usually long and dry. The Guide of the city announces them as the productions of Pisanello; but there is no authority for this, and upon the strength of a date of 1473, which is seen upon one of them, I do not scruple to pronounce them by another hand. He is commended by Facio, (p. 47) for his almost poetical style of expression; and there is a specimen of an effort at caricature, with which Vittore embellished his historic painting of Frederick Barbarossa, in the ducal palace at Venice. He is, moreover, praised by the same author for his skill in drawing horses and other animals, in which he surpassed every other artist. His name is not unknown to the antiquaries; many medals struck by him, of different princes, being found in museums, which acquired for him, in an equal degree with his pictures, the esteem and applauses of Guarino, of Vespasiano Strozza, of Biondo, and of several other distinguished scholars.
In the adjacent city of Vicenza, resided a Jacopo Tintorello, strongly resembling Vittore in his style of colouring, however inferior to him in the perfection of his design, as far as we are enabled to judge from a picture of the Saviour, with a crown of thorns, exhibited at Santa Corona; a piece which reflects credit upon that school. It is yet more highly honoured by an Epiphany, painted in San Bartolommeo, by Marcello Figolino, an artist commemorated by Ridolfi, under the name of Giovanni Batista, and who flourished, according to his account, at the period of the two Montagna. He must, however, at that time, have been far advanced in years, if it be true that the era of his birth preceded that of Gian Bellini.[[22]] His manner is undoubtedly original; so much so, that I find nothing resembling it, either in Venice or elsewhere; it embraces great diversity of countenance, and of costume, skilful gradation of light and shade, with landscape and perspective; and is remarkable for ornament, and the finish and smoothness of every part. It was fully entitled to render its author the father of a new epoch in the history of art; if, indeed, we are to believe him, which does not sufficiently appear, to be as ancient as has been affirmed.
Up to this period I have described the merits of the artists of the city and of the state, who appeared in the early part of the century; but I have not yet recorded its greatest master; I mean Squarcione, of Padua, who from his ability in bringing up pupils, was pronounced by his followers the first master of painters, and continued to educate them until they amounted to 137. Ambitious of seeing more of the world, he not only traversed the whole of Italy, but passing into Greece, he took designs of the best specimens, both in painting and sculpture, of every thing he met with, besides purchasing several. On returning to his native place, he began to form a studio, which proved the richest of any known at that period, not merely in designs, but in statues, torsos, bassi relievi, and funereal urns. Thus devoting himself to the instruction of students, with such copies, aided by his precepts, rather than by his own example, he continued to live in comparative affluence, and divided many of the commissions which he received among his different pupils. In the church of the Misericordia is preserved a book of anthems, illustrated with very beautiful miniatures, commonly ascribed to Mantegna, the ornament of that school: but so great is the variety of the different styles, that the most competent judges conclude it to be one of the works committed to Squarcione, and by him distributed among his disciples. Of these we are not yet prepared to treat, the chief part of whom are known to have flourished subsequent to the introduction of painting in oils, while little can be said of the productions of Squarcione himself, though much in respect to his labours as a master. And, indeed, he may be considered the stock, as it were, whose branches we trace, through Mantegna, in the grand school of Lombardy; through Marco Zoppo in the Bolognese; while it extended some degree of influence over that of Venice itself. For Jacopo Bellini, having come to exercise his talents in Padua, it would appear that he took Squarcione for his model, as before stated.
There is nothing remaining from the hand of Squarcione, in Padua, that can be relied upon with certainty, except an altarpiece, formerly to be seen at the Carmelitani, but now in possession of the accomplished Conte Cav. de' Lazara. It is drawn in different compartments; the chief place is occupied by the figure of San Girolamo. Around him appear other saints; but the work is in parts re-touched, though there is sufficient of what is original to establish the character of the painter. Rich in colouring, in expression, and above all in perspective, it may be declared one of the best specimens of the art produced in those parts. The painting of the altarpiece, here alluded to, was assigned him by the noble family of the Lazara, of which the contract is still preserved by them, dated 1449, the salary being paid in 1452, the period at which it was completed. The artist subscribes himself Francesco Squarcione, whence we are enabled to correct the mistake of Vasari, who, invariably unfortunate in his nomenclature of the Venetians, announces his name as Jacopo, an error repeated also in the dictionaries of artists. Besides this specimen, there still exist, in a cloister of San Francesco Grande, some histories of that saint in terra verde, which are to be referred to the early part of his life, there being good authority for believing them to be by the same hand, though with the assistance of his school, as the more and less perfect parts render sufficiently apparent. Near them were placed some other pieces of Squarcione also in terra verde, which were defaced in the time of Algarotti, who regrets their loss in one of his elegant and pleasing letters. Their style is altogether analogous to that of his school; animated figures, neat in the folds, foreshortenings not usual in works of that age, and attempts, though yet immature, at approaching towards the style of the ancient Greeks.
Proceeding from Padua, in the direction of Germany, we meet with some anonymous paintings, in the districts of Trevigi and Friuli, which ought, apparently, to be referred to this epoch; so far removed are they in style from the nobler method, we shall shortly have to describe. The name of Antonio is well known in Treviso, an artist who produced a S. Cristoforo, of gigantic stature, tolerably well executed, in San Niccolo, and that of Liberale da Campo, author of a Presepio, which is placed in the cathedral. Superior to both of these must have been Giorgio da Trevigi, if we are to believe Rossetti, where he mentions his introduction into Padua, in 1437, in order to paint the celebrated tower of the Horologe. There exist other pictures of the fourteenth century, more or less perfect, interspersed throughout the Marca Trevigiana, and more particularly in Serravalle. Other places in Italy, indeed, bear the same name, derived from the inclosed form of the mountains; this, however, is the largest of the whole, being a rich and ornate city, where Titian was in the habit of spending some months in the year at the house of his son-in-law, by way of amusement, and has left there several memorials of his art. But the whole of the church of the Battuti appears ornamented in a more antique taste, executed in such a manner, that I was assured, by a person who witnessed it, that it most of all resembled a sacred museum of art. The whole must have been the work of the same artists that we have just been recording in other cities, inasmuch as the names of no natives are known beyond the single one of Valentina. He, indeed, verged upon the improved age; but in Ceneda, that boasts various altarpieces of his hand, as well as in Serravalle itself, where he painted another, with some saints of the Holy Family, he still appears a disciple of the ancients, and a copyist of Squarcione, of Padua. We shall soon discover more celebrated artists rising up in this province, after the introduction into the Trevigiana, of the method of the Bellini.
The artists of Friuli availed themselves of it less early, not having sufficiently imbibed the principles of modern taste, even as late as the year 1500, either, in the opinion of Rinaldis, from the secluded situation of the place, or from the disturbed and revolutionary character of the times. Hence it is that the provincial painters of that period are to be referred wholly to this, not to the subsequent era of the art. To such belongs Andrea Bellunello, of San Vito, whose masterpiece is a Crucifixion, among various saints, with the date of 1475, exhibited in the great council chamber at Udine. It has some merit in regard to the size, and the distribution of its figures; but displays neither beauty of forms, nor colour, and we might almost pronounce it an ancient piece of tapestry, when placed by the side of a beautiful picture. Nevertheless, in his own district, he was considered the Zeuxis and Apelles of his age.[[23]] Contemporary with him, was Domenico di Tolmezzo, who painted an altarpiece in various compartments for the cathedral of Udine; a Madonna, in the taste of those times, with some saints, figures which all partake of the ancient Venetian style, even to the colouring, insomuch that one might believe him to have been a disciple of that school. He has attached his name and the year, 1479, and it would appear that there belonged to the same piece, exhibiting a figure of the blessed Bertrando, Patriarch of Aquileja, two oblong tablets, one of which represents his offering of alms, the other the circumstances of the death he suffered. The whole of these paintings, which I have noticed, are tolerably executed, in particular the two histories, and are preserved in two chambers of the Canonica. Not far from the same place is seen a figure of the saint, in fresco, painted by Francesco de Alessiis, in 1494, and placed over the door of a house, formerly the college of S. Girolamo.
While the schools of the state thus continued to advance, a knowledge of design became more general in Venice; and in the latter part of the century, its artists, for the most part, had acquired a taste similar to what I have already described as influencing those of other places—a taste rather removed from the antique coarseness, than adorned with the elegance of the moderns. Although the use of canvass had been already adopted in Venice, like that of boards elsewhere, a circumstance for which Vasari accounts, in treating of the Bellini, there was no composition besides water colours, or distemper; excellent, indeed, for the preservation of tints, as we perceive from unfaded specimens in the present day, but unfriendly to the production of union, smoothness, and softness. At length appeared the secret of colouring in oils from Flanders, a discovery conferring a happier era upon the Italian Schools, and in particular upon that of Venice, which availed itself of it above every other, and apparently the very first of all. In the Florentine School I have described the origin of this invention, ascribing it, along with Vasari, to Giovanni Van Eych, and both there and in the Neapolitan, I have also shewn that the first who communicated it to Italy was Antonello da Messina, having been instructed in it by Giovanni himself in Flanders. The historical account of this Messinese, as I have repeatedly before observed, has never been sufficiently elucidated. Vasari and Ridolfi state such facts respecting him as are not easily reconcilable to the period of life in general assigned to him, reaching only to forty-nine years; and I have proved, in collecting memorials, to which they had no access, alluded to in the Neapolitan School, that there were two distinct visits made by Antonello to Venice. The first, it appears to me, must have taken place soon after his return into Italy; at which time he concealed the discovery from every one, except it were Domenico Veneziano, who is known to have availed himself of it for many years, both in Venice and elsewhere. During that period Antonello visited other places, and more especially Milan, whence he returned to Venice for the second time, and as it is said, received a public salary, and then he divulged the method of painting in oils to the Venetian professors; a circumstance which, according to the superscriptions attached to his pictures, appears to have taken place about the year 1474. Other signatures are to be met with as late as 1490, insomuch that he must have run a longer career than that which has above been assigned him. And we are here arrived at an era, at once the happiest and most controverted of any. But of the Venetians we shall treat presently, after alluding to the works of this foreign artist apart. Two altarpieces by his hand are recorded, which were painted for the two churches of the Dominante, besides several Madonnas, and other holy pieces intended for private houses, together with some few productions in fresco. There is no doubt but he also produced many others, both at the instance of natives and of foreigners, relieving himself from the multiplicity of his commissions by the aid of Pino di Messina, the same who is commended in the memoirs of Hackert, as the pupil and companion of Antonello's labours at Venice. It is not mentioned whether he produced any specimens of his art in Sicily, nor am I certain whether he returned thither. In many Venetian collections, however, they are still preserved, and display a very correct taste, united to a most delicate command of the pencil; and among others is a portrait in the possession of the family Martinengo, bearing the inscription Antonellus Messaneus me fecit, 1474.