Lazzaro Spallanzani

“ I cried. “What aid was that?”
“You must know, Lazzaro,” said she, “that he comes often to Pesaro from Cesena, being a man in whom the Duke places great trust, and on whom he has bestowed considerable powers. He never fails to lie at the Palace when he comes, and he seems to—to have conceived a regard for me. He is a man of twice my years,” she added hurriedly, “and haply looks upon me as he might upon a daughter.” ”

“ Ramiro met me with a countenance through the assumed gravity of which I could espy his wicked, infernal mockery peeping forth.
“I deplore your end, Lazzaro Biancomonte,” said he slowly, “for you are a brave man, and brave men are rare. You were worthy of better things, but you chose to cross swords with Ramiro del’ Orca, and you have got your death-blow. May God have mercy on your soul.” ”

“ Filippo interposed, “that our Excellency is in some error. This gentleman is Lazzaro Biancomonte, a poet of whom Italy will one day be proud, despite the fact that for a time he acted as the Lord Giovanni Sforza’s Fool.”
Ramiro looked at his interlocutor, as the mastiff may look at the lap dog. He grunted, and blew out his cheeks.
“There is yet another part he played,” said he, “as I have good cause to remember—for he is the only man that can boast of having unhorsed Ramiro del’ Orca. He was for a brief season the Lord Giovanni Sforza himself.” ”

“ God was good. I swore a thousand times, the world was a good world—so good that Heaven could scarce be better.
I had come, perhaps, the better half of the distance I had to travel, and I was giving full rein to my joyous fancy, when suddenly I espied ahead a company of horsemen. They were approaching me at a brisk pace, but I took no thought of them, accounting myself secure from any molestation. If it so happened that it was a search party from Pesaro, seeking two men disguised as monks who had ravished the coffin of Madonna Paola di Santafior, what should they want of Lazzaro Biancomonte? ”

“ My mistrust of Ramiro went further than I had explained, and concerning Madonna more closely than it did me.
“Nay, Lazzaro mine,” she still protested, “I will attempt it. It is, at least, well worth the risk.
“You forget,” said I, “that even when Cesare comes we cannot say how he will bear himself towards you. You were to have been betrothed to his cousin, Ignacio. It is a matter upon which he may insist.”
She looked at me for a moment with anguish in her eyes that turned my misery into torture.
“Lazzaro,” she moaned, “was ever woman so beset! ”

“ Raffaello is by common consent placed at the head of his art; not because he excelled all others in every department of painting, but because no other artist has ever possessed the various parts of the art united in so high a degree. Lazzarini even asserts, that he was guilty of errors, and that he is only the first, because he did not commit so many as others. He ought, however, to have allowed, that his defects would be excellences in any other artist, being nothing more in him than the neglect of that higher degree of perfection to which he was capable of attaining. ”

“ It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in order to include him in my book—to be finished by the end of next year ”

“ Verona by Maffei, the critic and the antiquarian, as well as the first reformer of Italian tragedy. Tuscany took the lead of the intellectual movement of the country under Leopold and his successor Ferdinand, when Florence, Pisa, and Siena again became seats of learning and of poetry and the arts. Maria Theresa and Joseph II. fostered the intellectual progress of Lombardy; Spallanzani published his researches on natural philosophy ”

“ James the Apostle, which shews a pictoric fire equal to handling the most difficult themes. He left too a variety of works in Genoa, Turin, and Piedmont, besides his painting of the cupola at [Pg 321] Novara, in the church of S. Gaudenzio, than which he produced nothing more truly beautiful.
Andrea Lanzani, after receiving the instructions of Scaramuccia, pupil to Guido, who remained for some period at Milan, passed into the school of Maratta at Rome. But his genius finally decided him to adopt a less placid style, and he began to imitate Lanfranco. ”

“ He was deficient at first in the true principles of perspective; but he soon acquired the theory from Castello, his great friend and companion, as we shall shortly see. Through him he improved both his colouring and his style of composition. In conjunction with Castello he executed several works, so much alike, that one hand can scarcely be distinguished from the other. These, however, were not his best performances. He must be seen where he painted alone; and he shines no where more than in Genoa, nor beyond a period of twelve years, within which space Soprani circumscribes his best time. ”

“ Lawson would become acquainted with some young thing and make an appointment; for twenty-four hours he would be all in a flutter and describe the charmer at length to everyone he met; but she never by any chance turned up at the time fixed. He would come to Gravier's very late, ill-tempered, and exclaim:
"Confound it, another rabbit! I don't know why it is they don't like me. I suppose it's because I don't speak French well, or my red hair. It's too sickening to have spent over a year in Paris without getting hold of anyone."
"You don't go the right way to work," said Flanagan. ”

“ His works are more frequently met with than those of Tassi, as he almost always painted in oil. He was assisted in Rome by a young man, who in consequence obtained the name of Tempestino, though he often exercised his genius in landscape in the style of Poussin. He afterwards married a sister of this young artist, and subsequently procured her assassination, for which he was sentenced to death in Genoa, but his sentence was commuted for five years imprisonment. ”

“ There he appears an artist of various styles, who would have shone little inferior to his master, had he always adhered to his best manner. His S. Lucia, at the Agostiniani, and different sacred histories, in the public palace at Fano, display many fine imitations, strong chiaroscuro, and well-varied tints.
The Canon Gio. Andrea Lazzarini, from Pesaro, also acquired his knowledge from Mancini. He was both a good poet and prose writer, and truly well informed in sacred and profane literature. Few Italian writers can compare with him in treating pictoric subjects. ”

“ Possibly another disciple of Maganza, from the period at which he flourished, was Gio. de Mio of Vicenza, an artist who competed with Schiavone, Porta, Zelotti, Franco, and with Paul Veronese himself, in the library of S. Mark, though history makes no mention of his master any more than of Mio; if, indeed, he should [Pg 171] not be the same as Fratina, recorded by Ridolfi, as one of the assistants in ornamenting the library. The name of Gio. de Mio was met with in one of the archives, and Fratina was possibly his surname. ”

“ When he painted Peruginos or Pinturichios he was charming; when he painted Raphaels he was," with a scornful shrug, "Raphael."
Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken aback, but he was not obliged to answer because Flanagan broke in impatiently.
"Oh, to hell with art!" he cried. "Let's get ginny."
"You were ginny last night, Flanagan," said Lawson.
"Nothing to what I mean to be tonight," he answered. "Fancy being in Pa-ris and thinking of nothing but art all the time." He spoke with a broad Western accent. "My, it is good to be alive." ”

“ All this, and ever so much more, together with scraps of French, German, Bohemian, Hungarian, Russian, and several other languages which the lazzaroni had picked up for the purpose of making themselves agreeable to foreigners. They surrounded Uncle Moses and his four boys in a dense crowd—grinning, chattering, gesticulating, dancing, pushing, jumping, and grimacing, as only Neapolitan lazzaroni can; and they tried to get hold of the luggage that lay upon the wharf.
Bagged, hatless, shirtless, blessed with but one pair of trousers per man; bearded, dirty, noisy; yet fat and good-natured withal ”

“ Lazzarini indisputably took part, informs us that these artists were brothers, both born at Pesaro, and that they transferred their services to Ancona, their adopted country, (p. 65) . From the dilettanti of Ancona I could gather tidings of only one Peruzzini; and I doubt whether his being named Domenico by the author of the MS. may not have arisen from mistake, as he proceeds to relate matters chiefly appertaining to Giovanni. However this be, there is a picture of S. Teresa by Peruzzini at the Carmelite Friars in Ancona, bearing some traces of Baroccio's manner. ”

“ Lanzi relates the following amusing anecdote of Giovanni da Capugnano, an artist of little merit, but whose assurance enabled him to attract considerable attention in his day. "Misled by a pleasing self-delusion, he believed himself born to become a painter; like that ancient personage, mentioned by Horace, who imagined himself the owner of all the vessels that arrived in the Athenian port. His chief talent lay in making crucifixes, to fill up the angles, and in giving a varnish to the balustrades. ”

“ Already on the steps, in the hall he heard a strange noise, which seemed to proceed from Spalanzani’s room. There was a stamping, a clattering, a pushing, a hurling against the door, intermingled with curses and imprecations. “Let go, let go, rascal!—scoundrel! Body and soul ventured in it? Ha, ha, ha! that I never will consent to—I, I made the eyes, I the clockwork—stupid blockhead with your clockwork—accursed dog of a bungling watch-maker—off with you—Satan—stop, pipe-maker—infernal beast—hold—begone—let go!” ”

“ After this enumeration of foreign artists, we must now return to the national school, and notice some disciples of Ribera, It often happens that those masters who are mannerists, form scholars who confine their powers to the sole imitation of their master, and thus produce pictures that deceive the most experienced, and which in other countries are esteemed the works of the master himself. This was the case with Giovanni Do, and Bartolommeo Passante, in regard to Spagnoletto, although the first in progress of time softened his manner, and tamed his flesh tints ”

“ Of a style still less dependant on the principles of Giotto, are the relicks of those artists whom Lanzi is willing to consider as the precursors of the legitimate Venetian schools, and whose origin he dates in the professors of miniature and missal-painting, many contemporary, many anterior to Giotto. ”

“ He was born in Saxony, and brought to Rome by his father while yet a boy, and was at that time skilled in miniature, and was a careful and correct draughtsman. On his arrival in Rome, his father employed him in copying the works of Raffaello, and chastised the young artist for every fault in his work, with an incredible severity, or rather inhumanity, inflicting on him even corporeal punishment, and reducing his allowance of food. Being thus compelled to study perfection, and endowed with a genius to appreciate it and perceive it, he acquired a consummate taste in art ”

“ Gio. Andrea de' Ferrari perfected himself under this master, having been previously the scholar of Castelli, whose feeble style may be detected in the Theodosius, painted by Ferrari as an altar-piece in the Gesù. In many works he is a respectable follower of Strozzi; as in the Nativity in the Duomo of Genoa, and in the Nativity of the Virgin, in a church of Voltri, full of figures which seem inspired with life. Although little known, and perhaps too little commended by Soprani, he is one of the first Genoese artists ”

“ Lazaretto or Lazar-House is a hospital for the reception of poor persons suffering from the plague, leprosy or other infectious or contagious diseases. A peculiar use of “lazaretto” is found in the application of the term, now obsolete, to a place in the after-part of a merchant vessel for the storage of provisions, &c. Lazzarone, a name now often applied generally to beggars, is an Italian term, particularly used of the poorest class of Neapolitans, who, without any fixed abode, live by odd jobs and fishing, but chiefly by begging. ”

“ In order to become a figure painter, he entered first the school of Fontana, and next that of Sabbatini, whom he greatly assisted in his labours for the Vatican. But after quitting also this master, and occupying himself, some little time, in designing from Raffaello's pictures, he returned to Bologna, opened a studio, and there educated as many as a hundred and thirty-seven masters in the art, some of whom were excellent. He was a fine artist for his age; understood perspective well, which he acquired from Fontana, and designed both correctly and gracefully in the taste of Sabbatini. ”

“ Clara's image was completely faded from his mind; he had no thoughts except for Olimpia. He uttered his love-plaints aloud and in a lachrymose tone, "Oh! my glorious, noble star of love, have you only risen to vanish again, and leave me in the darkness and hopelessness of night?"
Returning home, he became aware that there was a good deal of noisy bustle going on in Spalanzani's house. All the doors stood wide open; men were taking in all kinds of gear and furniture; the windows of the first floor were all lifted off their hinges ”