According to Lanzi, Antonio Contri discovered a valuable process, by means of which he was enabled to transfer fresco paintings from walls to canvass, without the least injury to the work, and thus preserved many valuable paintings by the great masters, which obtained him wide celebrity and profitable employment. For this purpose, he spread upon a piece of canvass of the size of the painting to be transferred, a composition of glue or bitumen, and placed it upon the picture. When this was sufficiently dry, he beat the wall carefully with a mallet, cut the plaster around it, and applied to the canvass a wooden frame, well propped, to sustain it, and then, after a few days, cautiously removed the canvass, which brought the painting with it; and having extended it upon a smooth table he applied to the back of it another canvass prepared with a more adhesive composition than the former. After a few days, he examined the two pieces of canvass, detached the first by means of warm water, which left the whole painting upon the second as it was originally upon the wall.
Contri was born at Ferrara about 1660, and died in 1732. Palmaroli, an Italian painter of the present century, rendered his name famous, and conferred a great benefit on art by his skill in transferring to canvass some of the frescos and other works of the great masters. In 1811 he transferred the famous fresco of the Descent from the Cross by Daniello da Volterra (erroneously said, as related above, to have been the first effort of the kind), which gained him immense reputation. He was employed to restore a great number of works at Rome, and in other places. He was invited to Germany, where, among other works, he transferred the Madonna di San Sisto, by Raffaelle, from the original panel, which was worm-eaten and decayed, and thus preserved one of the most famous works of that prince of painters. At the present time, this art is practised with success in various European cities, particularly in London and Paris.
WORKS IN SCAGLIOLA.
Guido Fassi, called del Conte, a native of Carpi, born in 1584, was the inventor of a valuable kind of work in imitation of marble, called by the Italians Scagliola or Mischia, which was subsequently carried to great perfection, and is now largely employed in the imitation of works in marble. The stone called selenite forms the principal ingredient. This is pulverized, mixed with colors and certain adhesive substances which gradually become as hard as stone, capable of receiving a high polish. Fassi made his first trials on cornices, and gave them the appearance of fine marble, and there remain two altar-pieces by him in the churches of Carpi. From him, the method rapidly spread over Italy, and many artists engaged in this then new art. Annibale Griffoni, a pupil of Fassi, applied the art to monuments. Giovanni Cavignani, also a pupil of Fassi, far surpassed his master, and executed an altar of St. Antonio, for the church of S. Niccolo, at Carpi, which is still pointed out as something extraordinary. It consists of two columns of porphyry adorned with a pallium, covered with lace, which last is an exact imitation of the covering of an altar, while it is ornamented in the margin with medals, bearing beautiful figures. In the Cathedral at Carpi, is a monument by one Ferrari, which so perfectly imitates marble that it cannot be distinguished from it, except by fracture. It has the look and touch of marble. Lanzi, from whom these facts are obtained, says that these artists ventured upon the composition of pictures, intended to represent engravings as well as oil paintings, and that there are several such works, representing even historical subjects, in the collections of Carpi. Lanzi considers this art of so much importance, that he thus concludes his article upon it: "After the practice of modeling had been brought to vie with sculpture, and after engraving upon wood had so well counterfeited works of design, we have to record this third invention, belonging to a State of no great dimensions. Such a fact is calculated to bring into higher estimation the geniuses who adorned it. There is nothing of which man is more ambitious, than of being called an inventor of new arts; nothing is more flattering to his intellect, or draws a broader line between him and the animals. Nothing was held in higher reverence by the ancients, and hence it is that Virgil, in his Elysian Fields, represented the band of inventors with their brows bound with white chaplets, equally distinct in merit as in rank, from the more vulgar shades around them."
THE GOLDEN AGE OF PAINTING.
"We have now arrived," says Lanzi, "at the most brilliant period of the Roman school, and of modern painting itself. We have seen the art carried to a high degree of perfection by Da Vinci and Buonarotti, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it is remarkable that the same period embraces not only Rafaelle, but also Correggio, Giorgione, Titian, and the most celebrated Venetian painters; so that a man enjoying the common term of life might have seen the works of all these illustrious masters. The art in a few years thus reached a height to which it had never before attained, and which has never been rivalled, except in the attempt to imitate these early masters, or to unite in one style their various and divided excellencies. It seems an ordinary law of providence that individuals of consummate genius should be born and flourish at the same period, or at least at short intervals from each other, a circumstance of which Velleius Paterculus protested he could never discover the real cause. 'I observe,' he says, 'men of the same commanding genius making their appearance together, in the smallest possible space of time; as it happens in the case of animals of different kinds, which, confined in a close place, nevertheless, each selects its own class, and those of a kindred race separate themselves from the rest. A single age sufficed to illustrate Tragedy, in the persons of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides: ancient comedy under Cratinus, Aristophanes, and Eumolpides, and in like manner the new comedy under Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. There appeared few philosophers of note after the days of Plato and Aristotle, and whoever has made himself acquainted with Isocrates and his school, is acquainted with the summit of Grecian eloquence.' The same remark applies to other countries. The great Roman writers are included under the single age of Octavius: Leo X. was the Augustus of modern Italy; the reign of Louis XIV. was the brilliant period of French letters; that of Charles II. of the English."
This rule applies equally to the fine arts. Hoc idem, proceeds Velleius, evenisse plastis, pictoribus, sculptoribus, quisquis temporum institerit notis reperiet, et eminentiam cujusque operis artissimis temporum claustris circumdatum. Of this union of men of genius in the same age, Causus, he says, quum sempre requiro, numquam invenio quas veras confidam. It seems to him probable that when a man finds the first station in art occupied by another, he considers it as a post that has been rightfully seized on, and no longer aspires to the possession of it, but is humiliated, and contented to follow at a distance. But this solution does not satisfy my mind. It may indeed account to us why no other Michael Angelo, or Raffaelle, has ever appeared; but it does not satisfy me why these two, and the others before mentioned, should all have appeared in the same age. I am of opinion that the age is always influenced by certain principles, universally adopted both by professors of the art, and by amateurs; which principles happening at a particular period to be the most just and accurate of their kind, produce in that age some preëminent professors, and a number of good ones. These principles change through the instability of all human affairs, and the age partakes in the change. I may add that these happy periods never occur without the circumstance of a number of princes and influential individuals rivalling each other in the encouragement of works of taste; and amidst these there always arise persons of commanding genius, who give a bias and tone to art. The history of sculpture in Athens, where munificence and taste went hand in hand, favors my opinion, and it is confirmed by this golden period of Italian art. Nevertheless, I do not pretend to give a verdict on this important question, but leave the decision of it to a more competent tribunal.