To Kneller, as I have already written, we owe the preservation of Raphael's cartoons.
CHAPTER XII. [48]
ITALIAN MASTERS FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES—TADDEO GADDI, 1300, SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIED 1366—FRA FILIPPO, 1412-1469—BENOZZO GOZZOLI, 1424-1496—LUCA SIGNORELLI, 1441, SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIED ABOUT 1524—BOTTICELLI, 1447-1515—PERUGINO, 1446-1522—CARPACCIO, DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH AND DEATH UNKNOWN—CRIVELLI—FILIPPINO LIPI, EARLIER THAN 1460—ANTONELLA DA MESSINA, BELIEVED TO HAVE DIED AT VENICE, 1496—GAROFALO, 1481-1559—LUINI, DATE OF BIRTH UNKNOWN, SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIED ABOUT 1530—PALMA, ABOUT 1480-1528—PARDENONE, 1483-1538—LO SPAGNA, DATE OF BIRTH UNKNOWN, 1533—GIULIO ROMANO, 1492-1546—PARIS BORDONE, 1500-1570—IL PARMIGIANINO, 1503-1540—BAROCCIO, 1528-1612—CARAVAGGIO, 1569-1609—LO SPAGNOLETTO, 1593-1656—GUERCINO, 1592-1666—ALBANO, 1578-1660—SASSOFERRATO, 1605-1685—VASARI, 1513-1574—SOFONISBA ANGUISCIOLA, 1535, ABOUT 1620—LAVINIA FONTANA, 1552-1614.
Taddeo Gaddi, the most important of Giotto's scholars, was born in 1300, and was held at the baptismal font by Giotto himself. Gaddi rather went back on earlier traditions and faults. His excellence lay in his purity and simplicity of feeling. His finest pictures are from the life of the Virgin, in S. Croce, Florence. He was, like his master, a great architect as well as painter. He furnished the plans for the Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte della Trinità, and conducted the works of the campanile, Florence, after Giotto's death. He was possessed of great activity and industry. He is supposed to have died in 1366, and rests in the scene of his labours, since he was buried in the cloisters of S. Croce.
Fra Filippo, 1412-1469, a Carmelite friar. The romantic, scandalous life, including his slavery in Barbary, attributed to him by Vasari, the great biographer of the early Italian painters, has received no corroboration from modern researches. It is rather refuted. He always signed his pictures 'Frater Filippus,' and his death is entered in the register of the Carmine convent as that of 'Frater Filippus.' In all probability he was from first to last a monk, and not a disreputable one. He describes himself as the poorest friar in Florence, with six marriageable nieces dependent on him, and he is said to have been involved in debt.
His colouring was 'golden and broad,' in anticipation of that of Titian; his draperies were fine. He was wanting in the ideal, but full of human feeling, which was apt to get rude and boisterous; his angels were 'like great high-spirited boys.' Withal, his style of composition was stately. Among the best examples of his work are scenes from the life of St John the Baptist in frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Prato. His panel pictures are rather numerous. There are two lunette [49] pictures by Fra Filippo in the National Gallery.
Benozzo Gozzoli, 1424—1496, a scholar of Fra Angelico, but resembling him only in light and cheerful colouring. He is said to have been the first Italian painter smitten with the beauty of the natural world. He was the first to create rich landscape backgrounds, and he enlivened his landscapes with animals. He displayed a fine fancy for architectural effects, introducing into his pictures open porticoes, arcades, balconies, and galleries. He liked to have subsidiary groups and circles of spectators about his principal figures. In these groups he introduced portraits of his contemporaries, true to nature and full of expression and delicate feeling. His best work is in the Campo Santo, Pisa, scenes from the history of the Old Testament, ranging from Noah to the Queen of Sheba. The Pisans were so pleased with his work as to present him, in 1478, with a sarcophagus intended to contain his remains when they should be deposited in the Campo Santo. He survived the gift eighteen years, dying in 1496. His easel pictures are rare, and do not offer good representations of the master. There is one in the National Gallery—a Virgin and Child, with saints and angels.
Luca d'Egidio di Ventura, called also Luca 'da Cortona,' from his birthplace, and Luca Signorelli, 1441, supposed to have died about 1524. His is a great name in the Tuscan School. He played an important part in the painting of the Sistine Chapel, though he is only represented by one wall picture, the History of Moses. At his best he anticipated Michael Angelo in power and grandeur, but he was given to exaggeration. His fame rests principally on his frescoes at Orvieto, where, by a strange chance, he was appointed, after an interval of time, to continue and complete the work begun by Fra Angelico, the master most opposed to Signorelli in style. Luca added the great dramatic scenes which include the history of Antichrist, executed with a grandeur which 'only Lionardo among the painters sharing a realistic tendency could have surpassed.' These scenes, which contain The Resurrection, Hell, and Paradise, bear a strong resemblance to the work of Michael Angelo. In his fine drawing of the human figure Signorelli may be known by 'the squareness of his forms in joints and extremities.' A conspicuous detail in his pictures is frequently a bright-coloured Roman scarf. His work is rarely seen north of the Alps.
Sandro Filipepi, called Botticelli, 1447—1515. He was an apprentice to a goldsmith, and then became a scholar of Filippo Lipi's. Botticelli was vehement and impetuous, full of passion and poetry, seeking to express movement. He was the most dramatic painter of his school. Occasionally he rises to a grandeur that allies him to Signorelli and Michael Angelo. His circular pictures of the Madonna and Child, with angels, are numerous. Like Fra Filippo, Botticelli's angels are noble youths, some of them belonging to the great families of the time. They are prone to be ecstatic with joy or frantic with grief. There is a grand Coronation of the Virgin, by Botticelli at Hamilton Palace, and a beautiful Nativity by the old master belongs to Mr Fuller Maitland. His Madonna and Child are grand and tragic figures always. Botticelli's noble frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are apt to be overlooked because of Michael Angelo's 'sublime work' on the ceiling. There has been a revival of Botticelli's renown within late years, partly due to the new interest in the earlier Italian painters which Mr Browning has done something to stimulate.