He had a pupil and successor in his labours at Ravenna in Francesco da Cotignola, whom Bonoli, in his history of Lugo, and that of Cotignola, as well as the describer of the Parmese paintings, agree in surnaming Marchesi, while in the Guide to Ravenna, he is denominated Zaganelli. Vasari commends him, as a very pleasing colourist; although inferior to Rondinello in point of design, and still more of composition. In this he was not happy, if we except his celebrated Resurrection of Lazarus, which is to be seen at Classe; his extremely beautiful baptism of Jesus Christ, at Faenza, and a few other histories, where he checks his ardour, and more carefully disposes his figures, for the most part fine and well draped; occasionally whimsical, and in proportions less than life. One of his most extraordinary productions is a large altar-piece at the church of the Osservanti, in Parma, where he represented the Virgin between several Saints, enlivened by several portraits in the background. He never, in my opinion, produced any work more solid in conception, nor more harmoniously disposed, nor more ingenious in the colonnade, and the other accessary parts. Here he preserved the most moderate tints, contrary to his usual practice, which was glowing and highly animated, and distributed more in the manner of Mantegna, than of any other master. He had a brother named Bernardino, with whom, in 1504, he painted a very celebrated altar-piece, representing the Virgin between S. Francesco and the Baptist, placed in the interior chapel of the Padri Osservanti, in Ravenna; and another to be seen at Imola, in the church of the Riformati, with the date 1509. Bernardino, likewise, displayed tolerable ability alone, and among the paintings at Pavia, there is one at the Carmine, inscribed with his name; a fact that may correct an error of Crespi, who names the elder brother Francesco Bernardino, making the two into one artist.
Contemporary with him, Baldassare Carrari was employed at Ravenna along with his son Matteo, both natives of that state. They painted for San Domenico the celebrated altar-piece of S. Bartolommeo, with the grado, containing very elegant histories of the Holy Apostle. Such is its merit, as hardly to yield to the gracefulness of Luca Longhi, who placed one of his own pictures near it. It was one of the earliest which was painted in oil in Ravenna; and it deserved the eulogium bestowed by Pope Julius II., who on beholding it, in 1511, declared, that the altars of Rome could boast no pieces which surpassed it in point of beauty. The painter there left his portrait in the figure of S. Pietro, and that of Rondinello in the S. Bartolommeo, somewhat older; an observance shewn in those times by the pupils towards their masters. Yet I should not here pronounce it such, as Vasari is not only wholly silent as to his school, but omits even his name.
At Rimini, where the Malatesti spared no expense to attract the best masters, the art of painting flourished. It was at this time that the church of San Francesco, one of the wonders of the age, was nobly erected, and as richly decorated. A number of artists at Rimini had succeeded Giotto in his school; and it is to them the author of the Guide ascribes the histories of the B. Michelina, which Vasari conceived were from Giotto's own hand.[7] At a later period one Bitino, whose name I am happy to rescue from oblivion, was employed at the same place; an artist not perhaps excelled in Italy, about the year 1407, when he painted an altar-piece of the titular saint, for the church of S. Giuliano. Around it he represented the discovery of his body, and other facts relating to the subject; extremely pleasing in point of invention, architecture, countenances, draperies, and colouring.[8] Another noble production is a S. Sigismondo, at whose feet appears Sigismondo Malatesta, with the inscription, Franciscus de Burgo, f. 1446; and by the same hand there is the Scourging of our Saviour. Both these paintings are seen on the wall of S. Francesco; abounding in perspectives and capricci, with character approaching so nearly to the taste of Pietro della Francesca, then living, as to induce me to believe, that they are either by him, and that he has thus Latinized the name of his house, or by some one of his pupils, whose name has perished. Not such has been the fate of Benedetto Coda, of Ferrara, who flourished at Rimini, as well as his son Bartolommeo, where they left a number of their works. Vasari, in his life of Gio. Bellini, makes brief mention of them, describing Benedetto as Bellini's pupil, "though he derived small advantage from it." Yet the altar-piece representing the Marriage of the Virgin, which he placed in the cathedral, with the inscription of Opus Benedicti, is a very respectable production; while that of the Rosary, in possession of the Dominicans, is even in better taste, though not yet modern. This, however, cannot be said of the son, one of whose pictures I saw at S. Rocco da Pesaro, painted in 1528, with such excellent method, as almost to remind us of the golden age. It represents the titular saint of the church along with S. Sebastiano, standing round the throne of the Virgin, with the addition of playful and beautiful cherubs. Another pupil of Gio. Bellini is noticed by Ridolfi. Lattanzio da Rimino, or Lattanzio della Marca, referred by others to the school of Pietro Perugino, which, perhaps too, produced Gio. da Rimino, one of whose pictures, bearing his signature, belongs to the grand Ercolani collection at Bologna.[9]
Forli, as far as I can learn, boasts no artist earlier than Guglielmo da Forli, a pupil of Giotto. His paintings in fresco, conducted at the Francescani, no longer survive, nor in the church of that order could I meet with any specimen of the thirteenth century, besides a Crucifix by some unknown hand. From that period, perhaps, a succession of artists appeared, there being no scarcity of anonymous paintings from which to conjecture such a fact; but history is silent until the time of Ansovino di Forli, who has already been included among the pupils of Squarcione. I have my doubts whether this artist could be the master of Melozzo, a name venerated by artists, inasmuch as he was the first who applied the art of foreshortening, the most difficult and the most severe, to the painting of vaulted ceilings. Considerable progress was made in perspective after the time of Paolo Uccello, with the aid of Piero della Francesca, a celebrated geometrician, and of a few Lombards. But the ornamenting of ceilings with that pleasing art and illusion, which afterwards appeared, was reserved for Melozzo. It is observed by Scannelli, and followed by Orlandi, that in order to acquire the art he studied the works of the best ancient artists, and though born to fortune, he did not refuse to lodge with the masters of his times, in quality of attendant and compounder of their colours. Some writers give him as a pupil to Pietro della Francesca. It is at least probable, that Melozzo was acquainted with him and with Agostino Bramantino, when they were employed at Rome by Nicholas V., towards the year 1455. However this may be, Melozzo painted on the ceiling of the great chapel, at Santi Apostoli, the Ascension of our Lord, where, says Vasari, "the figure of Christ is so admirably foreshortened as to appear to pierce the vault; and in the same manner the angels are seen sweeping through the field of air in two opposite directions." This painting was executed for Card. Riario, nephew to Pope Sixtus IV. about the year 1472; and when that edifice required to undergo repairs, it was removed and placed in the Quirinal palace in 1711; where it is still seen, bearing this inscription: "Opus Melotii Foroliviensis, qui summos fornices pingendi artem vel primus invenit vel illustravit." Several heads of the apostles which surrounded it, and were likewise cut away, were deposited in the Vatican palace. Taken as a whole, he approaches Mantegna and the Paduan School nearer than any other in point of taste; finely formed heads, fine colouring, fine attitudes, and almost all as finely foreshortened. The light is well disposed and graduated, the shadows are judicious, so that the figures seem to stand out and act in that apparent space; dignity and grandeur in the principal figure, and white drapery that encircles it; with delicacy of hand, diligence and grace in every part. What pity that so rare a genius, pronounced by his contemporaries "an incomparable painter, and the splendour of all Italy,"[10] should not have had a correct historian to have described his travels and his pursuits, which must have been both arduous and interesting, before they raised him to the eminence he attained, in being commissioned by Card. Riario to execute so great a work. At Forli, there is still pointed out the façade of an apothecary's shop, displaying Arabesques in the first style; and over the entrance appears a half-length figure, well depicted, in the act of mixing drugs, said to have been the work of Melozzo. Vasari states, that in the villa of the Dukes of Urbino, named the Imperial, Francesco di Mirozzo, from Forli, had been employed a long while previous to Dosso; and it would appear that we are here to substitute the name of Melozzo, to correct one of those errors which we have so frequently before remarked in Vasari. In the lives of the Ferrarese painters there is named a Marco Ambrogio, detto Melozzo di Ferrara, who seems to be confounded with the inventor of foreshortening; but it is my opinion that this was quite a different artist, of which his name itself gives us reasons to judge. Melozzo di Forli was still alive in 1494: since F. Luca Paccioli, publishing the same year his "Summa d'Aritmetica e Geometria," ranks him among painters in perspective, "men famous and supreme," who flourished in those days.
Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, or shortly afterwards, Bartolommeo di Forli flourished in the same city, a pupil of Francia, noticed by Malvasia, whose style was more dry than that of the generality of his fellow pupils. Next to him I place Palmegiani, transformed by Vasari into Parmegiano; a good, yet almost unknown artist, of whom, in books upon the art, I have found mention only of two works, although I have myself seen a great number. He was cautious too that posterity should not forget him, for the most part inscribing his name and country upon his altar-pieces, and upon pictures for private ornament, as follows: Marcus Pictor Foroliviensis: or Marcus Palmasanus P. Foroliviensis pinsebat. He seldom adds the year, as in two in possession of prince Ercolani, on the first of which we find the date of 1513, and on the second that of 1537. In the forementioned pictures, and more particularly in those of Forli, we may perceive that he practised more than one style. His earliest was in common with that of the quattrocentisti, in the extremely simple position of the figures, in the gilt ornaments in study of each minute part, as well as in the anatomy, which in those times consisted almost wholly in drawing with some skill a S. Sebastian, or some holy anchorite. In his second manner he was more artificial in his grouping, fuller in his outlines, and greater in his proportions; though at times more free and less varied in his heads. He was accustomed to add to his principal subject some other unconnected with it, as in his picture of the Crucifixion, at S. Agostino di Forli, where he inserted two or three groups on different grounds; in one of which is seen S. Paul visited by S. Antony; in another, S. Augustine convinced by the angel on the subject of the incomprehensibility of the Supreme Triad; and in these diminutive figures, which he inserted either in the altar-pieces or on the steps, he displays an art extremely refined and pleasing. His landscape is likewise animated, and his architecture beautiful, while his Madonnas and other portraits are superior in point of beauty to those of Costa, but not equal to Francia, whose style of colouring he less resembles than that of Rondinello; a circumstance which led Vasari to attribute to the artist of Ravenna an altar-piece in the cathedral, undoubtedly from the hand of Palmegiani. The works of the latter are very numerous in Romagna; and exist in the state of Venice. One of his Madonnas was in possession of the Ab. Facciolati, in Padua, and mentioned by Bottari; and another belongs to the Sig. Dottore Antonio Larber, at Bassano. The select gallery of Count Luigi Tadini, at Crema, possesses a third; the going up of Jesus to Mount Calvary; and I saw a Dead Christ, between Nicodemus and Joseph, in the Vicentini palace at Vicenza; a very beautiful picture, in which the dead has truly the appearance of death, and those living of real life. I had long entertained a curiosity to learn whose pupil so considerable an artist could have been; until I was gratified by finding that Paccioli, in his dedication of the above cited volume, addressed to Guidubaldo, Duke of Urbino, calls him the "attached disciple of Melozzo."
I was made acquainted with an artist of Forli, who flourished at the period of Palmegiani, by his Eminence Card. Borgia, who in the church of S. Maria dell'Orto, at Velletri, transcribed the following inscription: "Jo. Baptista de Rositis de Forlivio pinxit, I. S. O. O. de Mense Martii." The picture is on panel, and displays both good design and good colouring. It represents the Virgin, with the holy child in her arms, seated in a round temple supported by four columns, and each of these columns is clasped by an angel, as if bearing the temple in procession through the air. The angels are wholly arrayed in heroic dress. For this description I am indebted to the very worthy cardinal.
In respect to the other cities of Romagna, I can easily suppose that I am rather in want of materials, than that these have had no artists to boast. I have recorded, not long since, one Ottaviano, and also one Pace da Faenza, pupils of Giotto; and there was pointed out to me as the production of the latter, an ancient figure of our Lady, in a church of the same city, an edifice formerly belonging to the Templars. Giacomo Filippo Carradori is included, from his style, among the ancients; in other points it is hardly possible that he could have reached the fifteenth century. There are more especially two pictures, in which he exhibits a change of style, although he never displayed the powers of a superior artist. One of them bears the date of 1580; the other that of 1582.
Another artist of Faenza better deserved mention in the first edition, but I had then no account of him. This was Giambatista da Faenza, one of whose pictures is preserved in the Communal[TN2] Collection of the Lyceum, with the author's name, and dated 1506. It exhibits the Holy Virgin; on whose right two angels support the mantle, and on the steps of the throne appear St. John the Baptist, a youth, and another cherub, in the act of playing on the harp. It is correct in point of design, the tints are very pleasing, and the folds something similar to those of Albert Durer; in other respects, equal to Costa, and perhaps, also, not inferior to Francia. He was the father of Jacopone da Faenza, and of his brother, Raffaello, from whom descended Gio. Batista Bertuzzi, likewise an artist.
There is a Francesco Bandinelli da Imola, a pupil of Francia, pointed out by Malvasia; and one Gaspero, also of Imola, was employed in painting at Ravenna. In his native state, there is to be seen, at the Conventual friars, a picture of our Lady, between Saints Rocco and Francis, in a style inclining to the modern, accompanied with two portraits, very animated in point of expression.
[2] Di minio, a peculiar red colour, used also in oil painting, and well known to the ancients, who on festal days were accustomed to ornament with it the face of Jove's statue, as also that of the victors on days of triumph. Pliny and others explain the ancient method of employing it. The term, in its simple acceptation, means here the art of designing and colouring in miniature, (from di minio) early applied to the ornamenting and illuminating of ancient works and MSS. R.