James Dennistoun

“ Under the modest title of Sketches Lord Lindsay has enriched our literature with the best history of Christian art as yet produced. He has brought to his task that sincerity of purpose, veneration for sacred things, and lively sense of beauty, which impart a charm to all he puts forth; and he has peculiarly qualified himself for its successful performance, by an anxious study of preceding writers, by a faithful, often toilsome, examination of monuments, even in the more obscure sites of Italy, and by a candour and accuracy of criticism seldom attained on topics singularly liable to prejudice. ”

“ To the unimaginative materialism of the present day, these sentences may seem idle absurdities, but they illustrate the character of Fra Giovanni, and no painter ever so thoroughly instilled his character into his works. Those who have not had the good fortune to see any of these cannot form an idea of the infantine simplicity, the immaculate countenances, the unimpassioned pathos apparent in his figures, nor of the transparent delicacy of his flesh-tints, and the gay and cheerful colouring which he introduces into the details, without injury to the angelic grace of the whole. ”

“ Francis had a double motive for standing forward as a competitor for the empire;—the dignity was flattering to his gallant character and ambitious views, and he grudged it to a younger rival, whose overgrown territory already hemmed him in on every side. Leo, at heart disliking them equally, as ultramontane sovereigns formidable to Italy, on the ruins of whose freedom were based the successes of either, sought to play them off against each other, so as to weaken and embarrass both. ”

“ Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was the first to engraft these fruits of peace upon a military despotism, which his restless ambition and fierce temper ever rendered the torment of his neighbours, and the scourge of his people. The d'Este of Ferrara, the Sforza of Pesaro, but, above all, Duke Federigo of Urbino, improving upon his example, had shown how mental cultivation might be brought to modify, or, as the Latin idiom has it, to humanise, without enervating, a martial character. The reign of Guidobaldo was peculiarly favourable to the development of this new and attractive principle ”

“ In truth, when we examine the character and the times of those men who have left the stamp of their genius most deeply on the mind or destinies of mankind, we generally find a providential adaptation of the one to the other. So was it with the greatest masters of art. Had Michael Angelo appeared a century sooner, he would have found the public unprepared, by a gradual advance of naturalism, for the revolution which he was destined to bring about. ”

“ The work performed by these pioneers of learning and truth was, however, more calculated to crush than to inspire that more elastic fancy which preferred the flowery mead to the tree of knowledge. The spirit of the age was ponderous and prosaic, and the few who attempted to rise above its-95- denser atmosphere into poetic regions were clogged by the trammels of a dead language, and by obsolete associations which they dared not shake off. The fifteenth century was consequently rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and barren of strong thinkers. ”

“ Classicism, as here used, means that innovation of antique taste in art which arose out of renewed interest in the picturesque ruins of Rome, in her mighty recollections, in the excavation of her precious sculptures, and which imparted to pictorial representations sometimes a hard and plastic treatment, sometimes ornamental architecture, bas-reliefs, or grotesques. By paganism a blighting poison was infused through the spirit of art, while classicism has often ennobled the work and enriched its details, without injury to its sentiment. ”

“ Vasari thus commences his life of Sanzio: "The great bounty which Providence occasionally displays, in heaping upon a single individual an unlimited measure of favours, and all the rare gifts and graces which generally are distributed over a long interval and many characters, may well be seen in Raffaele Sanzio of Urbino. Equally worthy and engaging, he was endowed with a modesty and goodness sometimes united in those who, adding to a certain noble refinement of disposition the attraction of amiable manners, are gracious and pleasing at all times and with all persons. ”

“ In truth, Raffaele's advancement in anatomical accuracy was a necessary consequence of the growing naturalism of his time; and the improvement could not fail to develop the breadth of his pencil, as well as to enlarge the sphere of his compositions. The absolute amelioration of his works, after he settled at Rome, was therefore inevitable from the spirit of the age acting upon a genius not yet matured. That spirit Michael Angelo exaggerated rather than embodied; and to the purer taste of his rival many of his productions must have been beacons rather than models. ”

“ In him foresight became fraud, calculation cunning, prudence perfidy, courage cruelty. His daring, his constancy, his talent were devoted to murder, rapine, and treachery. His campaigns were massacres, his justice vengeance, his diplomacy a trick. Generosity was a stranger to his impulses, remorse to his crimes.
Fortune, so long adverse to Guidobaldo, at length smiled upon him. The election to the tiara of his relative and confidential friend, Cardinal della Rovere, freed him from anxiety as to the restoration of his duchy, and promised him a long career of prosperity and honour. ”

“ Were we to estimate the celebrities of Urbino by the encomiums of their partial countrymen, and measure their claims upon mundane immortality by the standard set up by Baldi Lazzari, Grossi, Cimarelli, and Olivieri, it would become our indispensable duty to add at least a volume to the present work. But these authors were deeply imbued with that peculiarly Italian patriotism which, narrowing its sympathies within the limits of a township or a petty state, enshrined provincial mediocrity in a temple of fame modelled upon a scale of national splendour. ”

“ As the flower of Bramante's life went by during his long stay in Upper Italy, it is there that his pictorial talents must be appreciated, and that his most numerous, if not his most famous fabrics, may be found. But when Lombardy became the battle-field of Italian independence, when art was there neglected and personal safety compromised, he bethought him of the monuments of antique genius still scattered over the capital of her classic times, and came to Rome in quest of improvement as well as employment. ”

“ During the early years of the thirteenth century, there appeared on the lofty Apennines of Central Italy, one of those mysterious beings who, with few gifts of nature, are born to sway mankind; whose brief and eccentric career has left behind a brilliant halo, that no lapse of time is likely to dim. Giovanni Bernardoni, better known as St. Francis of Assisi, by his eloquence, his austerities, and all the appliances of religious enthusiasm, quickly gathered among the fervid spirits of his native mountains a numerous following of devoted disciples. ”

“ Fearing to abandon traditional types, they ventured not beyond the addition of accessories, such as architecture, landscape, animals, fruits, and flowers, or a disposal of the draperies with greater freedom and attention to truth. But, the further they departed from received forms, the more willingly did their genius pluck by the way those graceful aids and appliances which spontaneous nature offered in a land of beauty; and every new combination which that awakened genius inspired, induced, and to a certain extent authorised, fresh novelties. ”

“ From these far-off peaks there seemed to breathe a gentle breeze, that tempered the air with bracing freshness, and, from the rustling groves of the adjacent hills, began to awaken sweet notes of wandering birds." The same golden sun continues to dawn upon Urbino, but, ere many months had passed, the bright galaxy of satellites that circled round Duke Guidobaldo was scattered, for their guiding star had gone to another sphere. ”

“ The Venetian, Mantuan, and Neapolitan succours successfully and quickly arrived; many small free companies flocked to his standard; and the Bolognese factions postponed their movement till a fitter moment. Breaking off all negotiations, he thundered censures against Chaumont and the Duke of Ferrara, and ordered his now ample army to assume offensive operations. His physical energy was at the same time restored, and the threatened eclipse proved but a passing cloud, from which his indomitable genius burst forth with renewed brilliancy. ”

“ Still more gorgeous is his crowded composition painted for the Zeni of Venice; but there he has contaminated the purist spirit of Christian painting, for in the suite of the eastern kings is portrayed the patron of the picture, with all the gallant company who attended his embassy from the Republic to Usamkassan, sovereign of Persia. The unequalled variety of groups, the elaborate splendour of oriental costumes, the crowd of horsemen in contrasted attitudes, the lavish adoption of gold, form a dazzling but harmonious whole, which has scarcely any parallel in painting. ”

“ Theology, the earliest of the series, painted immediately on his arrival at Rome, has most of the freshness and devotional sentiment of his early genius and Umbrian education. It and the Philosophy are most pregnant with abstruse scholarship, drawn in part from the learned companionship of Duke Guidobaldo's court. The glowing and harmonious colouring of the Heliodorus, and Miracle of Bolsena fully equals any known production of Venetian art; and in the Incendio, the Heliodorus, and the Battle of Maxentius, we have the energy and vigour of Michael Angelo, without his exaggerations. ”

“ He next entertained a hope of the dukedom of Milan, by Clement's sanction; but he had played away his honour in a losing game: despised by himself and his employers, the prestige of success passed from his arms. Yet his peculiar talent for courting popularity ensured him the zealous support of his troops, who knew also that a bankrupt in character and purse was the best leader for men intent upon pillage. To the single merit of a winning manner, he united many odious qualities. His unmeasured ambition was restrained by no principle, either as to its objects, or the means of attaining them. ”

“ But fortune is fickle, and the breath of popular favour still more changeful. Four years and a half from this date the war-cry of "Bentivoglio" again rang through these streets; the same mob strained their brawny sinews to level the citadel which Julius had erected to curb them, and to shatter the colossal statue of him with which Michael Angelo had adorned their piazza; the same Pontiff saved himself from capture, and his legate escaped from the popular fury to fall by the dagger of a friend. ”