EPOCH III.
Decline of the School, and Foundation of an Academy in order to restore it.
Subsequent to the period in which Giulio flourished, the school of Mantua produced no new names which at all approached the reputation of the first. The disposition of its sovereigns was always inclined rather to invite painters of celebrity from elsewhere, with a sure prospect of being speedily and well served, than to promote the education of their young subjects in the study of an art, slow in producing fruits, and subject to rapid decay. We have already recounted a tolerable number assembled by Duke Vincenzio for the object of ornamenting his churches; of several of whom he also availed himself for the decoration of the palaces. Antonmaria Viani, called il Vianino, a native of Cremona and a scholar of the Campi, thus filled the double capacity of an artist and an architect. The frieze surrounding the gallery of the court presents a specimen of their style, where, in a ground of gold, are seen a group of most beautiful boys, painted in chiaroscuro, and playing amidst luxuriant festoons of flowers. In the same taste of the Campi he produced several sacred pieces; such as the picture of S. Michele at Sta. Agnese; the Paradiso at the Orsoline; and subsequent to Duke Vincenzio, he was employed by his three successors, and died in Mantua, after having established his family in that city.
Not very long afterwards, Domenico Feti from Rome was declared painter of the same court, an artist of whose education, received under Cigoli, I have treated elsewhere. Cardinal Ferdinando, succeeding to the dukedom of Mantua, had brought him from Rome to his own court, where he had opportunities of improving himself, by studying the finest Lombard models, along with several of the Venetians. He produced many pictures in oil, for various temples and galleries; one of which, representing the Multiplication of Loaves, exists in the Mantuan academy, abounding with figures rather truly noble than large; but varied, shortened, and coloured in a very masterly style. A still more copious work was that in the choir of the cathedral, though his pieces in fresco, like those of Cigoli, have less merit than those painted in oil. With all the excellence of his compositions, he has certainly the fault of being too symmetrical in his groups, which consequently seem to correspond in an exact order, calculated in architecture to please both the eye and the mind, but by no means so in painting. His own youthful excesses deprived Venice of this fine genius, and distinguished ornament of his art, in the very flower of his age. The names of other artists likewise engaged in the service of the same court, where a relish for the fine arts seems to have been almost indigenous, were Titian, Coreggio, Genga, Tintoretto, Albani, Rubens, Gessi, Gerola, Vermiglio, Castiglione, Lodovico Bertucci, with others of eminent abilities; some of whom were invited for particular commissions, and others permanently engaged for a length of time. Thus the city of Mantua became one of the most richly ornamented in all Italy; insomuch that after suffering the sackage of 1630, in which the ducal palace was despoiled of the noble collection, now dispersed abroad, it still can boast, both in private and public exhibitions, sufficient to engage the curiosity of cultivated strangers for a period of many days.
The city in the meanwhile was not deficient in native artists of superior genius, such as Venusti, Manfredi, and Facchetti; all of whom, on account of their residence in Rome, we have treated of in that school; while in that of Parma we shall have occasion to insert the name of Giorgio del Grano, supposed to be of Mantua, and of Andrea Scutellari in that of Cremona, in which he became fixed. Francesco Borgani is one of those who resided in his native place, and who adopted a good style from the paintings of Parmigianino, in which he composed several pictures in S. Pietro, in S. Simone, in S. Croce, as well as in other places, by which he deserves to be better known than he now is. This artist flourished until the latter half of the past century.
Towards the same period Giovanni Canti, while yet young, came from Parma and settled in Mantua, an artist whose merits, consisting in his landscapes and battle-scenes, are to be sought for in galleries of art, not in the specimens of his altar-pieces in churches, which are very inferior. He was one of those who lay too much stress on their rapidity of hand. Schivenoglia, whose proper name was Francesco Ranieri, was one of his scholars, equally distinguished for his battles as for his landscape; superior to his master in design, but inferior in point of colouring. Next to him Giovanni Cadioli was considered a good landscape painter, and better in fresco than in oils. He wrote an account of the pictures of Mantua, and at the same period was one of the earliest founders and the first director of the academy for design at that place.
Giovanni Bazzani, a pupil of Canti, was endowed with a higher genius for the art than his master, and laid a better foundation for excellence by the cultivation of his mind, by careful study, and by copying from the most esteemed models. He more particularly directed his attention towards Rubens, whose footsteps he diligently pursued to the end of his career. He was long employed in Mantua and in its adjacent monastery, principally in works of fresco, displaying an easy, spirited, and imaginative character, in a manner that does credit to his genius. He was universally allowed to possess uncommon powers, but being crippled and infirm, he was unable to exhibit them as he wished; and besides, the rapid manner acquired from Canti, diminished, for the most part, the value of his works.
Giuseppe Bottani of Cremona, educated at Rome under Masucci, afterwards established himself in Mantua, where he acquired the reputation of a good landscape painter in the manner of Poussin, and of a good figurist in that of Maratta. His best pictures are found beyond the confines of the city; in a church at Milan, dedicated to Saints Cosma and Damiano, is to be seen a Santa Paola by his hand, taking farewell of the domestics, a piece by no means inferior to that of Batoni, which is placed at its side. It had been well for his reputation as an artist had he always exerted himself with equal care, for in every composition he might have approved himself an excellent disciple of the school of Rome. His extreme haste, however, rendered him inconsistent with himself, so that in the city where he taught, there can hardly be enumerated one or two specimens among the great number he produced in public, which can at all vie with the Milanese. The reader may have already learned, in the course of this work, that of all faults celerity is one of the most fatal to the reputation of artists; the rock upon which many of the finest geniuses have struck. To few, indeed, has it been given to produce with rapidity and to produce well.
The academy of Mantua not only still exists, but has been furnished by the princes of the house of Austria with splendid rooms, with select casts, and other advantages for the improvement of youth, so as to render it one of the finest academies in Italy.[3] There have appeared, under the auspices of Signor Volta, one of its members, compendious notices of the artists of Mantua, down from the year 1777; an earnest of a more extended work that we are in hopes of receiving from his able and accomplished pen. With these notices, as well as others afforded us in conversation with the same enlightened scholar, we have been glad to enrich the present chapter. Nor have we failed to keep in view the two Discourses upon the Letters and the Arts of Mantua, recited in the academy, and afterwards made public by the Sig. Abate Bettinelli, in which his character, as a fluent orator, and a diligent historian, in the various notes he has added, appears to equal advantage.
[3] Upon the establishment of the Italian republic, according to what I have recently heard from the learned P. Pompilio Pozzetti Scolopio, public librarian at Modena, the academies were reduced to two; the one in Bologna, the other in Milan; and in the rest of the cities they continue to exist as schools of the fine arts. To both of these the government is extremely favourable, as well as to letters, both very interesting objects of public education. And now, by the union of the Venetian states, the academy of Venice is greatly strengthened and increased, established by decree of the government in the year 1724.