The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Fig. 249.—Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, from a Venetian Engraving of the Sixteenth Century.

Four principal schools compete with one another—the Florentine school, the characteristics of which are truth of design, energy of colouring, and grandeur of conception; the Roman school, which seeks its ideal in the skilful and sober judgment of its lines, the dignity of its compositions, propriety of expression and beauty of form; the Venetian school, which occasionally neglected correctness of drawing, and devoted itself more to the brilliancy and magical effect of colour; lastly, the school of Parma, which is distinguished especially by its softness of touch and by its knowledge of light and shade. All such estimations of the different qualities of these various groups must not, however, be looked upon as in any way absolute.

As chiefs of the first school we have two men, each of whom presents to us one of the richest organisations and the most widely extending genius which human nature has, perhaps, ever produced; these were Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo, both of whom were sculptors as well as painters; and also architects, musicians, and poets. We will first speak of Leonardo da Vinci, whose style presents two very distinct epochs; the first tending to vigour in the shadows, to a mistiness in reflected lights, to a general effect produced by a certain oddness, or rather by a strange representation of truth; a combination of qualities which, as M. Michiels says, makes Leonardo the “most northerly of the Italian painters” ([Fig. 250]). His second style, “clear, serene, and precise,” transports us into a “completely southern sphere.” But some secret influence drew the artist so forcibly towards his earlier manner, that he returned to it at an advanced age in painting the famous portrait of Mona Lisa, which adorns the gallery of the Louvre. We must not forget the fact that we have to attribute to Pope Leo X. the great revival of the arts, and especially of painting, in Italy at the commencement of the sixteenth century.

“In Michael Angelo,” still to quote the words of M. Michiels, “science, power, grandeur, and all the more severe qualities are combined. No vulgar artifice and no affectation. The painter was imbued with a sublime ideal of majestic types from which nothing was able to divert him. He felt as if there were existing in himself a whole population of heroes, whom, by the aid of painting and sculpture, he endeavoured to withdraw from their mental concealment, and to embody in incarnate forms. His personages scarcely seem to belong to our race; they appear to be creatures worthy of some more spacious world, to the proportions of which their physical vigour and their moral energy would well respond. The very women do not possess the grace of their sex; we might fancy them valiant Amazons well capable of mastering a horse or of crushing an enemy. This great man’s object was neither to charm nor to please; his delight rather was to astonish and to strike with admiration or terror; but it is this very excess of power which enabled him to win the approbation of all.”

Fig. 250.—The Holy Family, by Leonardo da Vinci, from the Picture in the Museum at St. Petersburg.

Next we have Raphael, il divino Sanzio, as he was called by his numerous admirers, whose genius was constantly attaining to grandeur by means of simplicity, and to power by means of reserve. Michael Angelo always seems as if he were only able to represent a limited portion of his gigantic conceptions on the wall he covered with his designs; but it was sufficient for Raphael to place some tranquil figure on a narrow square of canvas, and we have before us the bright image of the most perfect and delicious inspiration. He created for himself a heaven which he peopled with the purest and most venerated types of the human race; and a light, as from on high, beams with regal splendour on these graceful visions. In Raphael, even more than in Leonardo da Vinci, it seemed as if two artists of equal sublimity succeeded one another. At first we have the charming dreamer who, in the fresh enthusiasm of his early youth, creates Madonnas, artless daughters of the earth in whose look and countenance a sacred light shines in all its ineffable purity; next he is the master full of the deepest science, for whom the real beauties of creation have no concealment; who, in representing nature, succeeded in transforming to her the magnificent ideal of which his own soul appears to have received the impression from association with the divine regions.

“The principal characteristic of Raphael,” still following the very just remarks of M. Michiels, “is the universality of his fame. It becomes almost painful to hear the vulgar crowd constantly repeating a magic name, the true signification of which they do not understand.” As the spoiled child of fortune, the creator of Virgins and “The Transfiguration,” he is almost without detractors from his fame; and it is impossible to reckon the number of his admirers. “One circumstance in his life affords us an emblem of his destiny. Having sent to Palermo the famous canvas of the ‘Spasimo,’[36] a tempest overwhelmed the ship which carried it; but the waves seemed to respect the chef-d’œuvre. After having drifted more than fifty leagues through the sea, the box which enclosed the precious production floated gently on shore at the port of Genoa. The picture was in no way injured. The Sicilian monks, for whom it was intended, did not fail to claim it; and since that time, thanks to the mercy of the waves, it attracts to the foot of Etna numerous pilgrims to the shrine of genius.”

At Venice, we first have Titian, the painter of Charles V. and Francis I. “The genius of Titian,” says Alexander Lenoir, “is always great and noble. No painter has ever produced flesh-colours so beautiful and life-like. In Titian there is no apparent tone; the colouring of his flesh is so well blended, that it seems as difficult to imitate as the model itself. Add to his pictures their truth and expression of action, and the elegance and richness of the drapery, and we shall have some idea of the great works which he left behind him.”

Next Jacques Robusti presents himself, who, from the profession of his father was surnamed Tintoretto (the Dyer). He was at first a pupil of Titian, who, it is said, from motives of jealousy, dismissed him from his studio; but the fervour of uninterrupted labour was all that Tintoretto required in order to mature the most productive talent. “The drawing of Michael Angelo, and the colouring of Titian”—such was the ambitious motto he wrote over the door of his humble atelier, and we are almost justified in stating that he was enabled, by force of study and labour, to fulfil his aspirations, if we look only at some of his pieces executed before a certain fever of exuberant production had seized upon and necessarily weakened his vigorous talents. To form some estimate of the extent to which Tintoretto was impelled by this impulse of creation, we may recollect that even Paul Veronese reproached him with being unable to restrain himself—Veronese, the most indefatigable of producers!