Ambrogio Samengo and Francesco Borzone deserve also to be enumerated among the landscape painters. Ambrogio was the scholar of Gio. Andrea Ferrari, a painter of flowers and fruit; and his works are rare in consequence of his early death. Francesco, after a miraculous escape from the plague, applied himself to the composition of marine subjects and landscapes in the style of Claude and Dughet; and his pictures, from their clearness, sweetness, and fine effect, attracted the notice of Louis XIV., who invited him to his court, where he remained many years; and this is the reason of the scarcity of his works in Italy. We might here mention Raffaele Soprani, the biographer of the Genoese artists, and many noble Genoese with him; but in a work where the names of many painters themselves are omitted, it will not be expected that we should record all the amateurs of the art.
I may place in this class of artists Gio. Benedetto Castiglione; not that he wanted talents for larger works, as many altar-pieces in Genoa, and particularly the very beautiful Nativity in St. Luke, one of the most celebrated pictures in the city, sufficiently prove, but because the great reputation which he has acquired in Europe has been derived from his cabinet pictures, where he has represented in a wonderful manner animals, either alone or as accessories to the subject. In this department of the art he is, after Bassano, the first in Italy; and between these two the same difference exists as between Theocritus and Virgil; the first of whom is more true to nature and more simple, the second more learned and more finished. Castiglione, the scholar of those accomplished artists Paggi and Vandyke, ennobles the fields and woods by the fertility and novelty of his invention, by his classical allusions, and his correct and natural expression of the passions. He displays a freedom of design, a facility, grace, and generally a fulness of colour; but in some pictures a greater richness is desired by Maratta. The general tone is cheerful, and often reddish. We find by him in collections large pictures of animals with figures, as in that belonging to his Excellency the Doge Agostino Lomellino; at other times sacred subjects, among which the most celebrated are those from Genesis, the creation of animals, and their entry into the ark; and the return of Jacob with a numerous body of servants and cattle, a stupendous performance in the Palazzo Brignole Sale. Sometimes we find fabulous compositions, as the Transformations of Circe, in the collection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; at other times hunting pieces, as that of the Bull in the collection of the Marchesi Riccardi at Florence; often markets and shews of cattle in the Flemish manner, and always more finished and more gay when painted on a smaller scale. Such is a Tobias in the act of recovering his sight, a most elegant picture, which I saw in possession of the Gregori family at Foligno. It would require a volume, as Soprani observes, to describe all his pictures in Genoa; but there is an abundance of them, not to mention those abroad, in every part of Italy, as he studied both at Rome and Venice, and a longer time at Mantua, where he died in the service of the court. He there, for the correctness and beauty of his colouring, obtained the name of Grechetto; and, for his peculiar style of etching, he was also called a second Rembrandt. In that city are to be found some pictures in his manner by his son Francesco and his brother Salvatore, in which they often make near approaches to him. Francesco repaired afterwards to Genoa, where he employed himself in painting animals, which less experienced connoisseurs sometimes ascribe to Gio. Benedetto. No Genoese, except Francesco, rivalled him in this branch; for Gio. Lorenzo Bertolotti, who studied under him for some time, dedicated himself to the painting of altar-pieces; and in that of the church of the Visitation he highly distinguished himself. Anton Maria Vassallo was a reputable painter of landscape, flowers, fruits, and animals. His chief merit is in his colouring, which he learned from Malò, the scholar of Rubens. He excelled also in figures; but his short life did not allow him to obtain a more extended celebrity.
GENOESE SCHOOL.
EPOCH IV.
The Roman and Parmesan succeed to the Native Style. Establishment of an Academy.
Many masters of this school being cut off by the plague in the year 1657, others deceased in the course of nature, not a few incapacitated from age, and some also turned to mannerism, the Genoese School fell into such a state of decline, that most of the young artists had recourse to other cities for instruction, and in most instances repaired to Rome. In consequence, from the beginning of this century to our own days, the Roman style has predominated among these painters, varying, according to the schools from which it descended, and according to the scholars that practised it. Few of them have preserved the style unmixed; and some have formed from the Roman and the Genoese a third manner, deserving of commendation. On this account my readers should be cautioned not to judge of these artists from works which some of them left when studying in Rome, as I have known to be sometimes the case. Artists ought to be estimated by their mature works, which, in this art, are like the corrected editions of a work in letters, by which every author wishes to be judged.
I noticed, in a former volume, Gio. Batista Gaulli. This artist, after many years practice under Luciano Borzone, unwilling to remain in a city depopulated by the plague, went to Rome; and there, by studying the best masters and by the direction of Bernino, made himself master of a new style, grand, vigorous, full of fire, his children gracefully drawn, and altogether enchanting. He contributed some pupils to the Roman School, and two of them he educated for their native school; Gio. Maria delle Piane, called, from his father's profession, II Molinaretto, and Gio. Enrico Vaymer. Their pictures were composed in a good style, and there are some of their works in the churches of Genoa; particularly of the first, by whom there is at Sestri di Ponente a Decollation of St. John the Baptist, highly celebrated. But they owed both their fame and their fortune to portrait painting. The accomplishments of their master in that respect, above all other artists, insured them a reputation, whence they abounded in commissions, both in Genoa, which on that account is full of portraits painted by them, and also in foreign countries. Vaymer was three times called to Turin to paint the king and royal family; and was invited by very considerable offers to remain there, which he, however, always rejected. Molinaretto, after several visits to Parma and Piacenza, where he furnished the court with portraits, and left some pictures in the churches, was invited by King Charles of Bourbon to Naples, where he died, in a good old age, painter to the court.
Pietro da Cortona also contributed some good scholars to Genoa. A doubtful celebrity remains to Francesco Bruno of Porto Maurizio, who left in his native country some altar-pieces in the style of Pietro, and a copy of one of the pictures of that master. He is an unequal painter, if, indeed, we may not conclude, with Sig. Ratti, that some inferior works are improperly ascribed to him by common report. With still less foundation Francesco Rosa of Genoa is conjectured to have sprung from this school, who studied about the same time in Rome. The frescos and oil pictures which he left in that city, at S. Carlo al Corso, and particularly at the churches of S. Vincenzio and Anastasio, evince him a follower of a different style. He there approaches Tommaso Luini and the dark mannerists of that period. He painted in a much better style, at Frari in Venice, a Miracle wrought by S. Antonio; a large composition, in which besides a most beautiful architecture he displays much knowledge of the naked figure, good effect of chiaroscuro, great vivacity in the heads; in the latter, however, little select, and in the general effect partaking more of Caracci than Cortona.
There is no doubt that Gio. Maria Bottalla was instructed by Cortona. The Cardinal Sacchetti, his patron, from his happy imitation of Raffaello surnamed him Raffaellino; an appellation which I am not sure was confirmed to him in Rome, and it certainly was refused to him in Genoa. In both those cities he left very considerable works, in which he did not go so far in his imitation of Pietro, as to neglect the style of Annibal Caracci. A large composition of Jacob, by his hand, is to be seen in the collection of the Campidoglio, formerly in the Sacchetti; and there exists in the Casa Negroni in Genoa, a picture in fresco by him. Both are very considerable works for a painter who had not passed his thirty-first year. Another undoubted scholar of Pietro was Gio. Batista Langetti, although in his colouring he adhered more to the elder Cassana, his second master. Langetti is one of the foreign painters who, after 1650, flourished in Venice, and excited the poetic genius of Boschini. He extols him as an artist eminent in design and execution;[69] and this commendation is confirmed by Zanetti; with an understanding, however, that this extends only to his more studied pictures; as, for instance, his Crucifixion in the church delle Terese. As to the rest he generally painted for profit; painting heads of old men, philosophers, and anchorets, for which he is very remarkable in Venetian and Lombard collections. It is said that he was accustomed to paint one a day; his portraits were always drawn with truth, without adding that ideal grandeur which we so much admire in the Greek sculptures in similar subjects. He animated these countenances, however, with a strength of colour and with a vigour of pencil that caused them to be highly sought after; often receiving for them not less than fifty ducats a-piece. His name is not found in the Abbeccedario, which is not to be wondered at, for in so vast a work it is impossible to notice every individual artist.