[ITALY.]
GABRIEL CAPPELLINI, IL CALIGARINO, OR THE LITTLE SHOEMAKER.
If it be characteristic of Germany that one of her illustrious shoemakers should be a poet and another a philosopher, it is no less characteristic of Italy and Holland that several followers of the gentle craft in these countries should have distinguished themselves as painters. We take three examples from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Gabriel Cappellini of Ferrara in Italy was more generally known by the appellation Il Caligarino, or the little shoemaker, a name derived from his original occupation. He is said to have been led to throw down the awl and take to the brush in consequence of a compliment paid to him one day by one of the great family of painters called Dossi, who told the shoemaker that a pair of shoes he had just made were so elegant that they looked as if they had been painted. He became a scholar of Dossi, and made a fair name as an artist in the sixteenth century. He is praised by Barotti for “the boldness of his design and the sobriety of his color.” Several of his paintings may now be seen in the city of Ferrara, the best of which is in the Church of St. Giovannino. This is an altar-piece representing the Virgin and Child with infant saints attending upon them. In the Church of St. Francesco is a painting of SS. John and James. There is also an altar-piece ascribed to him in the Church of St. Alesandro at Bergamo, representing the Last Supper. A small painting of the same subject is in the possession of Count Carrara.[95]
FRANCESCO BRIZZIO, THE ARTIST.
Francesco Brizzio (or Briccio) was the most eminent of the three painters we have to name who began life as shoemakers. He was born at Bologna in 1574. Up to the age of twenty he worked as a shoemaker, and then, being free to follow his bent, became at first a pupil of Passerotti, who taught him design, afterward of Agostini, who initiated him in the engraver’s art, and finally of Lodovico Caracci, under whom he became so proficient that “by some he has been pronounced the most eminent disciple of Caracci;” and it has been affirmed of this son of Crispin that of all Caracci’s pupils except Domenichino he was gifted with the most universal genius. In perspective, landscape, architecture, and figures, a competent critic, Andrea Sacchi, the famous Roman artist, says, “Brizzio surpassed all his rivals.” Guido speaks highly of the beauty of his cherubs. His extant paintings are an altar-piece entitled “The Coronation of the Virgin,” which is very rich in coloring, and the “Table of Cebes,” a grand painting executed for the Angellili family. Numerous engravings of his are known to connoisseurs, and highly prized as the work of an artist “who often approaches Guido.” “His pictures were not only admired for the truth of the perspective and the beauty of his coloring, but also for the grandeur of his ideas, the majestic style of the architecture, the elegance of the ornaments, and the noble taste of the landscapes which he introduced to set off his buildings.” Brizzio died in 1623 at the age of forty-nine.[96]