EPOCH II.
Camillo Boccaccino, Il Soiaro, The Campi.
After the time of Vetraro, nothing occurs worthy of putting on record until we reach the moderns; and here we ought to commence with the three distinguished artists, who, according to Lamo, were employed in Cremona in the year 1522. These were Camillo Boccaccino, son of Boccaccio, Soiaro, recorded in the preceding chapter, and Giulio Campi, who subsequently became the head of a numerous school. Other Cremonese artists, it is true, flourished about the same period, such as the two Scutellari, Francesco and Andrea, who have been referred by some writers to the state of Mantua; but as few of their works remain, and those of no great merit, we shall proceed at once to the great masters of the school whom we have mentioned above. The grand undertaking of the cathedral proved useful likewise in the advancement of these artists, and in particular the church of S. Sigismondo, already erected by Francesco Sforza at a little distance from the city, where these artists and their descendants, painting as it were in competition, rendered it a noble school for the fine arts. We may there study a sort of series of these artists, their various merit, their prevailing tastes in the Coreggio manner, their different style of adapting it, and their peculiar skill in fresco compositions. With these they not only decorated temples, but by applying them to the façades of palaces and private houses they gave an appearance of splendour to the state, which excited the admiration of strangers. They were surprised, on first entering Cremona, to behold a city arrayed as if for a jubilee, full of life, and rich in all the pride of art. Strange then that Franzese, who wrote the Lives of the best painters (in four volumes) should have compiled nothing relating to the Cremonese, far more deserving of commemoration than many others in his collection whom he has greatly praised.
Camillo Boccaccino was the leading genius of the school. Grounded in the ancient maxims of his father, though his career was short, he succeeded in forming a style at once strong and beautiful, insomuch that we are at a loss to say which is the prevailing feature of his character. Lomazzo pronounces him, "very able in design, and a noble colourist," placing him, as a model for the graceful power of his lights, for the sweetness of his manner, and for his art of drapery, on a level with da Vinci, Coreggio, Gaudenzio, and the first painters in the world. According to the opinion of Vasari, against whom the Cremonese have so bitterly inveighed, Camillo was "a good mechanical hand, and if he had flourished for a longer period would have had extraordinary success, but he produced few works except such as are small, and of little importance." In respect to his paintings at S. Sigismondo, he adds, not that they are, but are only "believed by the Cremonese to be, the best specimens of the art they have to boast." They are still to be seen in the cupola, in the grand recess, and on the sides of the great altar. The most distinguished pieces are the four Evangelists in a sitting posture, excepting the figure of S. John, who, standing up in a bending attitude, with an expression of surprise, forms a curved outline opposed to the arch of the ceiling, a figure greatly celebrated, no less on account of the perspective than the design. It is truly surprising how a young artist who had never frequented the school of Coreggio, could so well emulate his taste, and carry it even farther within so short a period; this work, displaying such a knowledge of perspective and foreshortening, having been executed as early as the year 1537.
The two side pictures are also highly celebrated, both in Cremona and abroad. One of these represents the Raising of Lazarus, the other the Woman taken in Adultery, both surrounded with very elegant ornaments, representing groups of cherubs, which are seen in the act of playing with the mitre, the censer, and other holy vessels in their hands. In these histories, as well as in their decorations, the whole of the figures are arranged and turned in such a way, as scarcely to leave a single eye in the figures visible, a novelty in respect to drawing by no means to be recommended. But Camillo was desirous of thus proving to his rivals that his figures were not, as they asserted, indebted for their merit to the animated expression of the eyes, but to the whole composition. And truly in whatever way disposed, they do not fail to please from the excellence of the design, their fine and varied attitudes, the foreshortening, the natural colouring, and a strength of chiaroscuro which must have been drawn from Pordenone, and which makes the surrounding paintings of the Campi appear deficient in relief. Had he exhibited a little more choice in his heads of adults, with a little more regularity in his composition, there would, perhaps, have been nothing farther to desire. We may, moreover, mention his painting on a façade in one of the squares of Cremona, where, not long ago, were to be seen the remains of figures which Camillo executed so as to excite the admiration of Charles V. and obtain the highest commendations. There remain likewise two of his altar-pieces, one at Cistello and the other at S. Bartolommeo, both extremely beautiful.
The name of Bernardino, or Bernardo Gatti, for he subscribed both to his pictures, was mentioned at length among the pupils of Parma; and I have now to record it among the best masters of Cremona. Both Campi and Lapi refer him without scruple to Cremona, though he is given by others to Vercelli, and supposed to be the same Bernardo di Vercelli who succeeded Pordenone in painting S. Maria di Campagna at Piacenza, as we find related in Vasari. By others he is supposed again to have come from Pavia, where he was employed in the cupola of the cathedral, and according to the testimony of Count Carasi, mentioned before with commendation, he there subscribed his name Bernardinus Gatti Papiensis, 1553. I leave the question to others, though it seems hardly credible that two contemporary historians, who wrote shortly after the death of Bernardino, while the public recollection of his native place must have been yet fresh, and ready to refute them, should have each fallen into error. We might add that Cremona is in possession of many of Soiaro's paintings from his earliest age until he became an octogenarian, and owing to a paralytic affection was in the habit of painting with his left hand. At that advanced period he produced for the cathedral his picture of the Assumption, fifty hands in height, and which, although he never lived to complete it, is a work, as is justly observed by Lamo, that excites our wonder. Moreover he left his possessions and a family at Cremona, from which sprung two artists deserving of record, one of whom is celebrated in history, the other never before noticed. As there still remains some degree of foundation for attributing him to Pavia, upon the authority also of Spelta, who wrote the Lives of the Pavese Bishops, and was almost contemporary with Bernardino, and what is more, he himself thinks that the difference might be thus reconciled, we may agree with him in stating that our artist was either derived from, or a citizen of Pavia, and at the same time a citizen and a resident at Cremona.
Gervasio Gatti, Il Soiaro, nephew to Bernardino, was initiated by him in the same maxims and principles which he had himself imbibed, by studying and copying the models left by Coreggio at Parma. The advantage he derived from them may be known from his S. Sebastiano, which was painted for S. Agatha, at Cremona, in 1578, a piece that appears designed from the antique, and coloured by one of the first figurists and landscape painters in Lombardy. In the same city is his Martyrdom of S. Cecilia, at S. Pietro, surrounded with angels, in the Coreggio manner, a picture nobly coloured, and finished with exquisite care. In composition it resembles those of his uncle, for one of which it might be mistaken, did we not find the name of Gervasio and the date of 1601. But he was not always equally diligent, and sometimes betrays a mechanical hand, while there is often a monotony in his countenances, and a want of selection in his heads, no unusual fault in portrait-painters, among whom he held a high rank. It is most probable that he saw the works of the Caracci, traces of which I have discovered in some of his productions, and particularly in those at S. S. Pietro and Marcellino. Perhaps it was a brother of this artist who left a picture of a Crucifixion, surrounded by different saints, at S. Sepolcro in Piacenza, bearing an inscription of Uriel de Gattis dictus Sojarius, 1601. It boasts great strength of colouring, combined with no little elegance, but the manner is insignificant and it is feeble in chiaroscuro. This, if I mistake not, is the same Uriele who, on the testimony of the Cav. Ridolfi, had been selected for some undertaking at Crema in preference to Urbini, as I formerly observed. Bernardino likewise instructed Spranger, a favourite artist of the Emperor Rodolph II. as well as the Anguissole, of both of whom we shall give some account shortly. What more peculiarly distinguishes him is his title to be considered the great master of the Cremonese School, which, benefitted by his presence and guided by his precepts and examples, produced during so long a period such a variety of admirable works. To speak frankly what I think, Cremona would never have seen her Campi, nor her Boccaccino rise so high, if Soiaro had not exhibited his talents in that city.
The remaining portion of our chapter will be devoted almost wholly to the Campi, a family that filled Cremona, Milan, and other cities of the state, both in private and public, with their paintings. They consisted of four individuals, all of whom devoted themselves indefatigably to the art until they reached an extreme old age. They were by some denominated the Vasari and the Zuccari of Lombardy, a comparison founded on some degree of truth in regard to the extent and the vast mechanism of their compositions; but not just, as far as intended to be applied to any desire of achieving much, rather than what was excellent in its kind. Giulio and Bernardino, the most accomplished of their family, were accused of too great rapidity and want of accuracy; but they are not very often liable to the charge, and many of their faults must be ascribed to their assistants. They generally produced good designs, which were invariably well coloured, and these still remain entire, while those of Vasari and Zuccari stand in need of continual restoration and retouching from the fading of their colours. Of both these masters, however, as well as the rest of the Campi, we must now proceed to treat in their individual character.
Giulio may be pronounced the Lodovico Caracci of his school. The eldest brother of Antonio and Vincenzo, and the relation, or the instructor at least, of Bernardino, he formed the project of uniting the best qualities of a number of styles in one. His father, who was his first preceptor,[37] not conceiving himself equal to perfecting him in the art, sent him to the school of Giulio Romano, established at that period in Mantua, and which had begun, according to Vasari, to propagate the taste imbibed by its master from the most distinguished ornament of the art. Romano, too, instructed his pupils in the principles of architecture, painting, and modelling, and rendered them capable of directing and conducting all the branches of a vast and multiplied undertaking with their own hands. Such an education was enjoyed by the eldest Campi, and by his brothers, owing to his care. The church of S. Margherita was wholly decorated by him; and the chapels at S. Sigismondo were all completed by him and his family. They contain almost every variety of the art, large pictures, small histories, cameos, stuccos, chiaroscuros, grotesques, festoons of flowers, pilasters, with gold recesses, from which the most graceful forms of cherubs seem to rise with symbols adapted to the saint of the altar; in a word, the whole of the paintings and their decorations are the work of the same genius, and sometimes of the same hand. This adds greatly to their harmony and in consequence to their beauty, nothing in fact being truly beautiful that has not perfect unity. It is a real loss to the arts that these various talents should be divided, so as to compel us to seek a different artist for works of different sorts; whence it arises that in a number of halls and churches we meet with collections, histories, and ornaments of every kind, so extremely opposite, that not only one part fails to remind us of the other, but sometimes repels it, and seems to complain of its forced and inharmonious union. But we must again turn our attention to Giulio Campi.
It appears then that he laid the foundation of his taste and principles under Giulio Romano. From him he derived the dignity of his design, his knowledge of anatomy, variety and fertility of ideas, magnificence in his architecture, and a general mastery over every subject. To this he added strength when he visited Rome, where he studied Raffaello and the antique, designing with a wonderful degree of accuracy the column of Trajan, universally regarded as a school of the ancients always open to the present day. Either at Mantua or elsewhere he likewise studied Titian, and imitated him in an equal degree with any other foreign artist. In his native state he met with two more models in Pordenone and Soiaro, in whose style, according to Vasari, he exercised himself, before he became acquainted with the works of Giulio. From such preparatory studies, combined with imitating whatever he met with in Raffaello and Coreggio, he acquired that style which is found to partake of the manner of so many different artists. On visiting the church of S. Margherita just alluded to, in company with an able professor of the art, we there noticed several of his heads, each drawn after a different model, insomuch that on viewing the works of this artist we feel inclined to pronounce the same opinion on him, as Algarotti did on the Caracci, that in one of their pictures one kind of taste prevails, and in another an opposite manner. Thus in his S. Girolamo, in the cathedral at Mantua, and in his Pentecost at S. Gismondo in Cremona, we meet with all the strength of Giulio, though his most successful imitation is to be found in the castle of Soragno in the territory of Parma, where he represented the labours of Hercules in a grand hall, which might be pronounced an excellent school for the study of the naked figure. In the larger picture at the church of S. Gismondo, where the duke of Milan is seen with his duchess in the act of being presented by the patron saints to the Holy Virgin, and also in that of saints Pietro and Marcellino at the church bearing their name, Campi displays so much of the Titian manner as to have been mistaken for that artist. One of his Histories of the Passion, in the cathedral, representing Christ before Pilate, was also supposed to be from the hand of Pordenone, though ascertained to be his. Finally in a Holy Family, painted at S. Paolo in Milan, particularly in the figure of the child seen caressing a holy prelate, who stands lost in admiration, we are presented with all the natural grace, united to all the skill that can be required in an imitator of Coreggio. The picture is exquisitely beautiful, and an engraving of it in large folio was taken by Giorgio Ghigi, a celebrated artist of Mantua.