753. ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS.
Altobello Melone (Cremonese: painted about 1500).
There was no native and independent school of Cremona. Melone was a pupil of Romanino at Brescia. He painted some of the frescoes in the nave of Cremona Cathedral.
Two of Christ's disciples are walking after his death and burial to Emmaus. The risen Christ "drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden, that they should not know him" (Luke xxiv. 16). The painter makes excuses for the disciples not recognising their Master by naïvely dressing Him as a tourist with an alpenstock.
755. RHETORIC.}
756. MUSIC. }
Melozzo da Forli (Umbrian: 1438-1494).
Melozzo, born at Forli in the Romagna, near Ravenna, is classed with the Umbrian School, both because he studied (it is believed) under Piero della Francesca, and because he worked at Urbino. Giovanni Santi, who was his friend, especially praises Melozzo, "to me so dear," for his skill in perspective; and, like many other artists of these times, he was an architect as well as a painter. In 1472 he was in Rome; he was one of the original members of the Roman Academy of St. Luke, founded by Sixtus IV., and in the book of the Academy he signs his name as "Painter to the Pope." Some of his Roman frescoes are preserved. In the Vatican gallery is a fresco transferred to canvas, commemorating the restoration of the Vatican Library and containing many portraits. This work has been published by the Arundel Society, but Melozzo is more widely known by the figures of angels playing on musical instruments, now in the sacristy of St. Peter's, which have been published by the same Society. These grand figures of youths with abundant flowing hair are "among the most beautiful and masterful creations of the Renaissance spirit, caught up, it would seem, into a certain ecstasy and rapture of divine things." Portions of a fresco, painted for SS. Apostoli, representing the Ascension of our Lord, are now on the staircase of the Quirinal Palace. The work was "one of the most grand and daring feats of foreshadowing that art has bequeathed, and may be considered as the first illustration of that science which Mantegna and Correggio further developed" (Kugler). In this connection we may notice in our pictures that "the steps and the figures thereon are drawn in perspective, as if they were real objects seen from below; they present the earliest example the Gallery possesses of this kind of perspective illusion, which was practised with great success by Mantegna, and carried out on the grandest scale by Michael Angelo in the ceiling of the Sistine chapel" (Monkhouse, In the National Gallery, p. 115). About the year 1480 Melozzo went to Urbino, where he executed the work described below. In Forli itself a few frescoes by Melozzo survive. In the British Museum there are some drawings by this rare master.
These pictures are two of a series of seven, which were painted for the good Duke Frederick to decorate the library of the Ducal Palace at Urbino. The words on the frieze above our pictures are portions of a running inscription describing the Duke's style and titles. He was created "Gonfaloniere of the Church" (756) in 1465 and "Duke of Urbino" (755) in 1474. The series represented symbolically the seven arts—grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy—which, until the close of the Middle Ages, formed the curriculum of a liberal education. Notice in both pictures that the figures of the learners are kneeling—an attitude symbolical of the spirit of reverence and humility which distinguishes the true scholar ("I prayed, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me"); whilst the figures representing the sciences to be learned are seated on thrones—symbolical of the true kingship that consists in knowledge ("And I set her before kingdoms and thrones"), and are clothed about with pearls and other precious stones ("She is more precious than rubies").
In the picture of Rhetoric (755) the youth is being taught not to speak, but to read—"You must not speak," the Queen of Rhetoric seems to tell him, "until you have something to say." Notice, too, that Rhetoric is robed in cold gray. "You think Rhetoric should be glowing, fervid, impetuous? No. Above all things,—cool."
But Music (756) is robed in bright red, the colour of delight. The book now is closed. "After learning to reason, you will learn to sing; for you will want to. There is so much reason for singing in this sweet world, when one thinks rightly of it." Music points her scholar to a small organ—"not that you are never to sing anything but hymns, but that whatever is rightly called music, or work of the Muses, is divine in help and healing" (Mornings in Florence, v. 128, 134). Hanging from the wall on the left, almost above the scholar's head, is a sprig of bay, the Muses' crown. Other pictures of this same series are in the gallery at Berlin and in the Royal Collection at Windsor. The latter is of peculiar interest in the history of the Renaissance. It shows the Duke, his son and the Court, and a black-robed humanist, seated in a sort of pulpit—"the unique representation of a scene of frequent occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a part of every day's occupation" (see the description in Symonds, ii. p. 221).