[Born at Pieve, in Italy, 1446. Died there or at Perugia, 1524. Aged 78.]
Immortal as the instructor of Raffaelle, and himself a celebrated painter of the Umbrian school. He was opposed to the more modern style of which Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and his own great pupil Raffaelle, are the renowned masters. His pictures are religious, earnest, and graceful, but wanting in variety of character. In his best pictures, his colouring is excellent, and the expression of his heads very beautiful, but his numerous works are of very unequal value and merit. Vasari has branded this painter as avaricious, eccentric, sordid, and irreligious. Modern writers have attempted to rescue him from the harsh verdict pronounced by his early biographer.
[By Raimondo Trentanove.]
140. Domenico Ghirlandaio. Painter.
[Born at Florence, 1449—51. Died sometime between 1490 and 1498.]
The son of a goldsmith who adopted the name Ghirlandaio (the garland-maker) on account of his skill in making the gold and silver ornaments worn by Florentine girls. The first work of Domenico was a portrait of Amerigo Vespucci who had the honour of giving his name to America. Devoted to his art, preferring honour and glory to riches. Painted in fresco, in tempera, and in mosaic, but excelled in the first. In his sacred historical pictures, he introduced portraits of remarkable persons as spectators, which gives them a peculiar value. He was the early instructor of Michael Angelo, and his finest works are in the churches of Florence.
[By Massimiliano Laboureur. His portrait, by his own hand, is in one of the pictures of the Choir of S. Maria Novella, at Florence.]
141. Leonardo da Vinci. Painter.
[Born at Vinci, in Tuscany, 1452. Died at Amboise, in France, 1519. Aged 67.]
One of the greatest names of the fifteenth century. His genius was all but universal, and his faculty of acquiring knowledge of all kinds, prodigious. He is most generally known and appreciated as a painter; but he was also a distinguished writer, a man of general science, an architect, an engineer, an accomplished musician, and a discoverer in Natural Philosophy. As painter he was the pupil of Andrea Verrochio, and the founder of the Milan school. It was at Milan that he painted his great and universally known picture, of the “Last Supper.” From 1504 to 1515, he travelled through Italy as architect and engineer to Cæsar Borgia, Duke of Valentino. He is the undoubted head of the highest development of art, in which the most elevated subjects were represented in the noblest Form. Every branch and attribute of Fine Art was intimately known to him. In the expression of the passions, his eye and mind were quick and eager; and he investigated every phase of life to its minutest modifications. He was familiar with the spirit of the humblest ranks, and could stamp divine subjects with a beauty and sentiment which only the very highest genius is competent to attain. There was great rivalry between Leonardo and Michael Angelo.—A Titanic emulation! The faculties of both were mighty and analogous; their grasp similarly broad and powerful. Leonardo passed his last years in France, protected by Francis I., who showered favours upon this gifted man. A story is current that the painter died in the arms of the monarch, but there appears no good foundation for the statement.