This picture (which is signed, and dated 1505) should be compared with the Perugino in the next room (288), for Lorenzo Costa has been called "the Perugino of Ferrara," and works of his are in many galleries wrongly attributed to Perugino. Every one will feel that there is a grace and a sweetness here which recalls Perugino. Lorenzo, too, has Perugino's fondness for a "purist" landscape (see 288); and note the curious device, peculiar to the Ferrarese School, by which he introduces it. The Madonna's throne is constructed in two parts, so that between the base and the upper part a vacant space is left, through which we look into the open air ("Thus saith the Lord, the heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool"). One of Costa's weaknesses may be observed in the figures of the standing saints. "His figures are seldom planted firmly on the ground—a fault which he shared with Francia. The ill-understood folds of their garments obscure the form, and trail upon the ground in meaningless tags. This insensibility on the part of Costa to one of the noblest means of expression in art is remarkable, inasmuch as the works of Francesco Cossa might have set him an example of draperies carefully studied, true to fact, and often grandly disposed" (Burton).
630. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS.
Gregorio Schiavone (Paduan: painted about 1470).
A picture of historical interest, as being the earliest in the Gallery of the Paduan School. Gregorio, the Sclavonian (i.e. Dalmatian), though not, one must think, a very good artist, was proud of his master, and this picture is signed (on the little card below the throne) "the work of Schiavone, the pupil of Squarcione." That master's style was distinguished by its sculpturesque quality; and in the works of a somewhat clumsy pupil like Gregorio ("this Dalmatian clodhopper," Morelli calls him) one sees this tendency carried to excess; the outline of the Madonna's face here, and still more in 904, is quite grotesquely sharp. Another characteristic of the school is exemplified in both Gregorio's pictures—the choice, namely, of antique embellishments, of bas-reliefs, and festoons of fruit, in the accessories. Thus note here the bas-relief behind the Madonna's chair, and in 904 the festoons of fruit upon the arch.
631. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.
Ascribed to Francesco Bissolo (Venetian: painted 1500-1528).
By one of Bellini's pupils and imitators. Observe the rich dress of a Byzantine stuff embroidered with strange animals, such as one sees in the old mosaics at Venice. The lady wears too a long gold chain, as the Venetian women do to this day.
632, 633. TWO SAINTS.
Girolamo da Santa Croce (Venetian: painted 1520-1550).
Girolamo—a relation probably of Francesco Rizo, also of Santa Croce (a village near Bergamo)—was one of the weaker followers of Giovanni Bellini. Morelli mentions, as a sign by which Girolamo's pictures, which are frequently met with in North Italian galleries, may often be recognised, that "he introduced a parrot whenever the subject he was treating would allow it, just as Paolo Farinato used to put a snail into his paintings as a sort of mark."