The fame and success of Cimabue and Giotto, brought forth painters in abundance, and created schools all over Italy. The church increasing in power and riches, called on the arts of painting and sculpture, to add to the beauty and magnificence of her sanctuaries; riches and honors were showered on men whose genius added a new ray of grace to the Madonna, or conferred a diviner air on St. Peter or St. Paul; and as much of the wealth of Christendom found its way to Rome, the successors of the apostles were enabled to distribute their patronage over all the schools of Italy. Lanzi reckons fourteen schools of painting in Italy, each of which is distinguished by some peculiar characteristics, as follows: 1, the Florentine school; 2, the Sienese school; 3, the Roman school; 4, the Neapolitan school; 5, the Venetian school; 6, the Mantuan school; 7, the Modenese school; 8, the school of Parma; 9, the school of Cremona; 10, the school of Milan; 11, the school of Bologna; 12, the school of Ferrara; 13, the school of Genoa; 14, the school of Piedmont. Of these, the Florentine, the Roman, and the Bolognese are celebrated for their epic grandeur of composition; that of Siena for its poetic taste; that of Naples for its fire; and that of Venice for the splendor of its coloring.
Other writers make different divisions, according to style or country; thus, Correggio, being by birth a Lombard, and the originator of a new style, the name of the Lombard school has been conferred by many upon the followers of his maxims, the characteristics of which are contours drawn round and full, the countenances warm and smiling, the union of the colors clear and strong, and the foreshortenings frequent, with a particular attention to the chiaro-scuro. Others again, rank the artists of Milan, Mantua Parma, Modena, and Cremona, under the one head of the Lombard school; but Lanzi justly makes the distinctions before mentioned, because their manners are very different. Writers of other nations rank all these subdivisions under one head—the Italian school. Lanzi again divides these schools into epochs, as they rose from their infancy, to their greatest perfection, and again declined into mannerism, or servile imitation, or as eminent artists rose who formed an era in art. Thus writers speak of the schools of Lionardo da Vinci, of Michael Angelo, of Raffaelle, of Correggio, of Titian, of the Caracci, and of every artist who acquired a distinguished reputation, and had many followers. Several great artists formed such a marked era in their schools, that their names and those of their schools are often used synonymously by many writers; thus, when they speak of the Roman school, they mean that of Raffaelle; of the Florentine, that of Michael Angelo; of Parma or Lombardy, that of Correggio; of Bologna, that of the Caracci; but not so of the Venetian and Neapolitan schools, because the Venetian school produced several splendid colorists, and that of Naples as many, distinguished by other peculiarities. These distinctions should be borne in mind in order rightly to understand writers, especially foreigners, on Italian art.
CLAUDE JOSEPH VERNET.
Claude Joseph Vernet, the father of Carl Vernet, and the grandfather of Horace, was born at Avignon in 1714. He was the son of Antoine Vernet, an obscure painter, who foretold that he would one day render his family illustrious in art, and gave him every advantage that his limited means would permit. Such were the extraordinary talents he exhibited almost in his infancy, that his father regarded him as a prodigy, and dreaming of nothing but seeing him become the greatest historical painter of the age, he resolved to send him to Rome; and having, by great economy, saved a few louis d'or, he put them into Joseph's pocket, when he was about eighteen years of age, and sent him off with a wagoner, who undertook to conduct him to Marseilles.
VERNET'S PRECOCITY.
The wonderful stories told about the early exhibitions of genius in many celebrated painters are really true with respect to Joseph Vernet. In his infancy, he exhibited the most extraordinary passion for painting. He himself has related, that on his return from Italy, his mother gave him some drawings which he had executed at the age of five years, when he was rewarded by being allowed to use the pencils he had tried to purloin. Before he was fifteen, he painted frieze-panels, fire-screens, coach-panels, sedan chair-panels, and the like, whenever he could get a commission; he also gave proof of that facility of conceiving and executing, which was one of the characteristics of his genius.