It has been customary to account for this rapid decline of the Roman school by referring to the sack of Rome in 1527. No doubt the artists suffered at that moment at least as severely as the scholars; their dispersion broke up a band of eminent painters, who might in combination and competition have still achieved great things. Yet the secret of their subsequent failure lay far deeper; partly in the full development of their master's style, already described; and partly in the social conditions of Rome itself. Patrons, stimulated by the example of the Popes, desired vast decorative works; but they expected these to be performed rapidly and at a cheap rate. Painters, familiarised with the execution of such undertakings, forgot that hitherto the conception had been not theirs but Raphael's. Mistaking hand-work for brain-work, they audaciously accepted commissions that would have taxed the powers of the master himself. Meanwhile moral earnestness and technical conscientiousness were both extinct. The patrons required show and sensual magnificence far more than thought and substance. They were not, therefore, deterred by the vacuity and poor conceptive faculty of the artists from employing them. What the age demanded was a sumptuous parade of superficial ornament, and this the pupils of Raphael felt competent to supply without much effort. The result was that painters who under favourable circumstances might have done some meritorious work, became mere journeymen contented with the soulless insincerity of cheap effects. Giulio Romano alone, by dint of robust energy and lurid fire of fancy flickering amid the smoke of his coarser nature, achieved a triumph in this line of labour. His Palazzo del Te will always remain the monument of a specific moment in Renaissance history, since it is adequate to the intellectual conditions of a race demoralised but living still with largeness and a sense of grandeur.

Michael Angelo formed no school in the strict sense of the word. Yet his influence was not the less felt on that account, nor less powerful than Raphael's in the same direction. During his manhood the painters Sebastian del Piombo, Marcello Venusti, and Daniele da Volterra, had endeavoured to add the charm of oil-colouring to his designs; and long before his death, the seduction of his mighty mannerism had begun to exercise a fatal charm for all the schools of Italy. Painters incapable of fathoming his intention, unsympathetic to his rare type of intellect, and gifted with less than a tithe of his native force, set themselves to reproduce whatever may be justly censured in his works. To heighten and enlarge their style was reckoned a chief duty of aspiring craftsmen; and it was thought that recipes for attaining to this final perfection of the modern arts might be extracted without trouble from Michael Angelo's masterpieces. Unluckily, in proportion as his fame increased, his peculiarities grew with the advance of age more manneristic and defined; so that his imitators fixed precisely upon that which sober critics now regard as a deduction from his greatness. They failed to perceive that he owed his grandeur to his personality; and that the audacities which fascinated them, became mere whimsical extravagances when severed from his terribilita and sombre simplicity of impassioned thought. His power and his spirit were alike unique and uncommunicable, while the admiration of his youthful worshippers betrayed them into imitating the externals of a style that was rapidly losing spontaneity and sense of beauty. Therefore they fancied they were treading in his footsteps and using the grand manner when they covered church-roofs and canvases with sprawling figures in distorted attitudes. Instead of studying nature, they studied Michael Angelo's cartoons, exaggerating by their unintelligent discipleship his wilfulness and arbitrary choice of form.

Vasari's and Cellini's criticisms of a master they both honestly revered, may suffice to illustrate the false method adopted by these mimics of Michael Angelo's ideal. To charge him with faults proceeding from the weakness and blindness of the decadence—the faults of men too blind to read his art aright, too weak to stand on their own feet without him—would be either stupid or malicious. If at the close of the sixteenth century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance the world by empty exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a braggadocio display of meaningless effects—crowding their compositions with studies from the nude, and painting agitated groups without a discernible cause for agitation—the crime surely lay with the patrons who liked such decoration, and with the journeymen who provided it. Michael Angelo himself always made his manner serve his thought. We may fail to appreciate his manner and may be incapable of comprehending his thought; but only insincere or conceited critics will venture to gauge the latter by what they feel to be displeasing in the former. What seems lawless in him, follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like it or not, we must reckon. His imitators were devoid of thought and too indifferent to question whether there was any law to be obeyed. Like the jackass in the fable, they put on the dead lion's skin of his manner, and brayed beneath it, thinking they could roar.

Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said to have founded a school, was destined to exercise wide and perilous influence over a host of manneristic imitators. Francesco Mazzola, called Il Parmigianino, followed him so closely that his frescoes at Parma are hardly distinguishable from the master's; while Federigo Baroccio at Urbino endeavoured to preserve the sensuous and almost childish sweetness of his style in its integrity.[399] But the real attraction of Correggio was only felt when the new barocco architecture called for a new kind of decoration. Every cupola throughout the length and breadth of Italy began then to be painted with rolling clouds and lolling angels. What the wits of Parma had once stigmatised as a ragout of frogs, now seemed the only possible expression for celestial ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious etiquette. False lights, dubious foreshortenings, shallow colourings, ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared for gaudy brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for their part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour, requiring neither effort of conception nor expenditure of labour on drawing and composition. At the same time, the Caracci made Correggio's style the object of more serious study; and the history of Bolognese painting shows what was to be derived from this master by intelligent and conscientious workmen.

Hitherto, I have had principally to record the errors of artists copying the external qualities of their great predecessors. It is refreshing to turn from the epigoni of the so-called Roman school to masters in whom the flame of the Renaissance still burned brightly. Andrea del Sarto, the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to Fra Bartolommeo than to any other of the elder masters, was himself a contemporary of Raphael and Correggio. Yet he must be noticed here; because he gave new qualities to the art of Tuscany, and formed a tradition decisive for the subsequent history of Florentine painting. To make a just estimate of his achievement is a task of no small difficulty. The Italians called him "il pittore senza errori," or the faultless painter. What they meant by this must have been that in all the technical requirements of art, in drawing, composition, handling of fresco and oils, disposition of draperies, and feeling for light and shadow, he was above criticism. As a colourist he went further and produced more beautiful effects than any Florentine before him. His silver-grey harmonies and liquid blendings of hues cool, yet lustrous, have a charm peculiar to himself alone. We find the like nowhere else in Italy. And yet Andrea del Sarto cannot take rank among the greatest Renaissance painters. What he lacked was precisely the most precious gift—inspiration, depth of emotion, energy of thought. We are apt to feel that even his best pictures were designed with a view to solving an aesthetic problem. Very few have the poetic charm belonging to the "S. John" of the Pitti or the "Madonna" of the Tribune. Beautiful as are many of his types, like the Magdalen in the large picture of the "Pieta"[400] we can never be sure that he will not break the spell by forms of almost vulgar mediocrity. The story that his wife, a worthless woman, sat for his Madonnas, and the legends of his working for money to meet pressing needs, seem justified by numbers of his paintings, faulty in their faultlessness and want of spirit. Still, after making these deductions, we must allow that Andrea del Sarto not unworthily represents the golden age at Florence. There is no affectation, no false taste, no trickery in his style. His workmanship is always solid; his hand unerring. If Nature denied him the soul of a poet, and the stern will needed for escaping from the sordid circumstances of his life, she gave him some of the highest qualities a painter can desire—qualities of strength, tranquillity, and thoroughness, that in the decline of the century ceased to exist outside Venice.

Among Del Sarto's followers it will be enough to mention Franciabigio, Vasari's favourite in fresco painting, Rosso de' Rossi, who carried the Florentine manner into France, and Pontormo, the masterly painter of portraits.[401] In the historical pictures of these men, whether sacred or secular, it is clear how much was done for Florentine art by Fra Bartolommeo and Del Sarto independently of Michael Angelo and Lionardo. Angelo Bronzino, the pupil of Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his portraits. Hard and cold, yet obviously true to life, they form a gallery of great interest for the historian of Duke Cosimo's reign. His frescoes and allegories illustrate the defects that have been pointed out in those of Raphael's and Buonarroti's imitators.[402] Want of thought and feeling, combined with the presumptuous treatment of colossal and imaginative subjects, renders these compositions inexpressibly chilling. The psychologist, who may have read a poem from Bronzino's pen, will be inclined to wonder how far this barren art was not connected with personal corruption.[403] Such speculations are, however, apt to be misleading.

Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received a fresh impulse at the same time as Florence. Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma, was born at Vercelli about 1477. He studied in his youth under Lionardo da Vinci, training his own exquisite sense of natural beauty in that scientific school. From Milan, after a certain interval of time, he removed to Rome, where he became a friend and follower of Raphael. These double influences determined a style that never lost its own originality. With what delicacy and naivete, almost like a second Luini, but with more of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic themes, may be seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto.[404] They were executed before his Roman visit, and show the facility of a most graceful improvisatore. One painting representing the "Temptation of Monks by Dancing Women" carries the melody of fluent lines and the seduction of fair girlish faces into a region of pure poetry. These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in the Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of Borne, and fired by Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness. The delicious freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually beautiful but ill-assorted motives. Like Luini, Sodoma was never successful in pictures requiring combination and arrangement. He lacked some sense of symmetry and sought to achieve massiveness by crowding figures in a given space. When we compare his group of "S. Catherine Fainting under the Stigmata" with the medley of agitated forms that make up his picture of the same saint at Tuldo's execution, we see plainly that he ought to have confined himself to the expression of very simple themes.[405] The former is incomparable for its sweetness; the latter is indistinct and wearying, in spite of many details that adorn it. Gifted with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of the human body, Sodoma excelled himself when he was contented with a single figure. His "S. Sebastian," notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still the very best that has been painted.[406] Suffering, refined and spiritual, without contortion or spasm, could not be presented with more pathos in a form of more surpassing loveliness. This is a truly demonic picture in the fascination it exercises and the memory it leaves upon the mind. Part of its unanalysable charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of martyrdom. Only the Renaissance could have produced a hybrid so successful, because so deeply felt.

Sodoma's influence at Siena, where he lived a picturesque life, delighting in his horses and surrounding himself with strange four-footed pets of all sorts, soon produced a school of worthy masters. Girolamo del Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi, though they owed much to the stimulus of his example, followed him in no servile spirit. Indeed, it may be said that Pacchia's paintings in the Oratory of S. Bernardino, though they lacked his siren beauty, are more powerfully composed; while Peruzzi's fresco of "Augustus and the Sibyl," in the church of Fontegiusta, has a monumental dignity unknown to Sodoma. Beccafumi is apt to leave the spectator of his paintings cold. From inventive powers so rich and technical excellence so thorough, we demand more than he can give, and are therefore disappointed. His most interesting picture at Siena is the "Stigmatisation of S. Catherine," famous for its mastery of graduated whites. Much of the paved work of the Duomo is attributed to his design. Both Beccafumi and Peruzzi felt the cold and manneristic Roman style of rhetoric injuriously.

To mention the remaining schools of Italy in detail would be superfluous. True art still flourished at Ferrara, where Garofalo endeavoured to carry on the Roman manner of Raphael without the necessary strength or ideality, but also without the soulless insincerity of the mannerists. His best quality was colouring, gemlike and rich; but this found little scope for exercise in the dry and laboured style he affected. Dosso Dossi fared better, perhaps through having never experienced the seductions of Rome. His glowing colour and quaint fancy give the attraction of romance to many of his pictures. The "Circe," for example, of the Borghese Palace, is worthy to rank with the best Renaissance work. It is perfectly original, not even suggesting the influence of Venice by its deep and lustrous hues. No painting is more fit to illustrate the "Orlando Innamorato." Just so, we feel in looking at it, did Dragontina show herself to Boiardo's fancy. Ariosto's Alcina belongs to a different family of magnificent witches.

Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painters, influenced almost equally by the Venetians, the Milanese, and the Roman mannerists. The Campi family covered those grave Lombard vaults with stucco, fresco, and gilding in a style only just removed from the barocco.[407] Brescia and Bergamo remained within the influence of Venice, producing work of nearly first-rate quality in Moretto, Romanino, and Lorenzo Lotto. Moroni, the pupil of Moretto, was destined to become one of the most powerful character painters of the modern world, and to enrich the studies of historians and artists with a series of portraits impressive by their fidelity to the spirit of the sixteenth century at its conclusion. Venice herself at this period was still producing masterpieces of the genuine Renaissance. But the decline into mannerism, caused by circumstances similar to those of Rome, was not far distant.

It may seem strange to those who have visited the picture galleries of Italy, and have noticed how very large a number of the painters flourished after 1550, that I should have persistently spoken of the last half of the sixteenth century as a period of decadence. This it was, however, in a deep and true sense of the word. The force of the Renaissance was exhausted, and a time of relaxation had to be passed through, before the reaction known as the Counter-Reformation could make itself felt in art. Then, and not till then, a new spiritual impulse produced a new style. This secondary growth of painting began to flourish at Bologna in accordance with fresh laws of taste. Religious sentiments of a different order had to be expressed; society had undergone a change, and the arts were governed by a genuine, if far inferior, inspiration. Meanwhile, the Renaissance, so far as Italy is concerned, was ended.

It is one of the sad features of this subject, that each section has to end in lamentation. Servitude in the sphere of politics; literary feebleness in scholarship; decadence in art:—to shun these conclusions is impossible. He who has undertaken to describe the parabola of a projectile, cannot be satisfied with tracing its gradual rise and determining its culmination. He must follow its spent force, and watch it slowly sink with ever dwindling impetus to earth. Intellectual movements, when we isolate them in a special country, observing the causes that set them in motion and calculating their retarding influences, may, not unreasonably, be compared to the parabola of a projectile. To shrink from studying the decline of mental vigour in Italy upon the close of the Renaissance, would be therefore weak; though the task of tracing the impulse communicated by her previous energy to other nations, and their stirring under a like movement, might be more agreeable.

FOOTNOTES:

[389] Frescoes in the Brera and at Lugano.

[390] S. Maurizio, on the Screen, inner church. Lugano in the Angeli.

[391] In the Brera. See also the Madonna, with Infant Christ, S. John, and a Lamb, at Lugano.

[392] Side chapel of S. Maurizio at Milan. These frescoes are, in my opinion, Luini's very best. The whole church is a wonderful monument of Lombard art.

[393] "Crucifixion" at Lugano.

[394] See, for example, the oil-paintings in the cathedral of Como, so fascinating in their details, so lame in composition.

[395] In the Brera.

[396] Frescoes at Saronno and in the Sacro Monte at Varallo.

[397] The whole lake-district of Italy, where the valleys of Monte Rosa and the Simplon descend upon the plain of Lombardy, is rich in works of this school. At Luino and Lugano, on the island of San Giulio, and in the hill-set chapels of the Val Sesia, may be found traces of frescoes of incomparable beauty. One of these sites deserves special mention. Just at the point where the pathway of the Colma leaves the chestnut groves and meadows to join the road leading to Varallo, there stands a little chapel, with an open loggia of round Renaissance arches, designed and painted, according to tradition, by Ferrari, and without doubt representative of his manner. The harmony between its colours, so mellow in their ruin, its graceful arcades and quiet roofing, and the glowing tones of those granite mountains, with their wealth of vineyards, and their forests of immemorial chestnut trees, is perfect beyond words.

[398] This, the last of the Stanze, was only in part designed by Raphael. In spite of what I have said above, the "Battle of Constantine," planned by Raphael, and executed by Giulio, is a grand example of a pupil's power to carry out his master's scheme.

[399] Baroccio had great authority at Florence in the seventeenth century, when the cult of Correggio had overspread all Italy.

[400] Pitti Palace.

[401] Franciabigio's and Rosso's frescoes stand beside Del Sarto's in the atrium of the Annunziata at Florence. Pontormo's portraits of Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici in the Uffizzi, though painted from busts and medallions, have a real historical value.

[402] The "Christ in Limbo" in S. Lorenzo at Florence, and the detestable picture of "Time, Beauty, Love, and Folly," in our National Gallery.

[403] Opere Burlesche, vol. iii. pp. 39-46.

[404] Near Siena. These pictures are a series of twenty-four subjects from the life of S. Benedict.

[405] In the church of S. Domenico, Siena.

[406] In the Uffizzi. See also Sodoma's "Sacrifice of Isaac" in the cathedral of Pisa, and the "Christ Bound to the Pillar" in the Academy at Siena.

[407] The church of S. Sigismondo, outside Cremona, is very interesting for the unity of style in its architecture and decoration.



APPENDICES



APPENDIX I

The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello

Having tried to characterise Niccola Pisano's relation to early Italian art in the second chapter of this volume, I adverted to the recent doubts which have been thrown by very competent authorities upon Vasari's legend of this master. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, while discussing the question of his birthplace and his early training, observe, what is no doubt true, that there are no traces of good sculpture in Pisa antecedent to the Baptistery pulpit of 1260, and remark that for such a phenomenon as the sudden appearance of this masterpiece it is needful to seek some antecedents elsewhere.[408] This leads them to ask whether Niccola did not owe his origin and education to some other part of Italy. Finding at Ravello, near Amain, a pulpit sculptured in 1272 by Niccola di Bartolommeo da Foggia, they suggest that a school of stone-carvers may have flourished at Foggia, and that Niccola Pisano, in spite of his signing himself Pisanus on the Baptistery pulpit, may have been an Apulian trained in that school. The arguments adduced in favour of that hypothesis are that Niccola's father, though commonly believed to have been Ser Pietro da Siena, was perhaps called Pietro di Apulia,[409] and that meritorious artists certainly existed at Foggia and Trani. Yet the resemblance of style between the pulpits at Ravello [1272] and Pisa [1260], if that indeed exists (whereof hereafter more must be said), might be used to prove that Niccola da Foggia learned his art from Niccola Pisano, instead of the contrary; nor again, supposing the Apulian school to have flourished before 1260, is it inconsistent with the tradition of Niccola's life that he should have learned the sculptor's craft while working in his youth at Naples. For the rest, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle dismiss the story of Pisano's studying the antique bas-reliefs at Pisa with contempt;[410] but they omit to notice the actual transcripts from those marbles introduced into his first pulpit. Again, they assume that the lunette at Lucca was one of his latest works, giving precedence to the pulpits of Pisa and Siena and the fountain of Perugia. A comparison of style no doubt renders this view plausible; for the lunette at Lucca is superior to any other of Pisano's works as a composition.

The full discussion of these points is rendered impossible by the want of contemporary information, and each student must, therefore, remain contented with his own hypothesis. Yet something can be said with regard to the Ravello pulpit that plays so important a part in the argument of the learned historians of Italian painting. Unless a strong similarity between it and Pisano's pulpits can be proved, their hypothesis carries with it no persuasion.

The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello is formed like an ambo of the antique type. That is to say, it is a long parallelogram with flat sides, raised upon pillars, and approached by a flight of steps. These steps are enclosed within richly-ornamented walls, and stand distinct from the pulpit; a short bridge connects the two. The six pillars supporting the ambo itself are slender twisted columns with classic capitals. Three rest on lions, three on lionesses, admirably carved in different attitudes. A small projection on the north side of the pulpit sustains an eagle standing on a pillar, and spreading out his wings to bear an open book. On the arch over the entrance to the staircase projects the head of Sigelgaita, wife of Niccola Rufolo, the donor of the pulpit to the church, sculptured in the style of the Roman decadence, between two profile medallions in low relief.[411] The material of the whole is fair white marble, enriched with mosaics, and wrought into beautiful scroll-work of acanthus leaves and other Romanesque adornments. An inscription, "Ego Magister Nicolaus de Bartholomeo de Fogia Marmorarius hoc opus feci;" and another, "Lapsis millenis bis centum bisque trigenis XPI. bissenis annis ab origine plenis," indicate the artist's name and the date of the work.

It is difficult to understand how anyone could trace such a resemblance between this rectangular ambo and the hexagonal structure in the Pisan Baptistery as would justify them in asserting both to be the products of the same school. The pulpit of Niccola da Foggia does not materially differ from other ambones in Italy—from several, for instance, in Amalfi and Ravello; while the distinctive features of Niccola Pisano's work—the combination of classically studied bas-reliefs with Gothic principles of construction, the feeling for artistic unity in the composition of groups, the mastery over plastic form, and the detached allegorical figures—are noticeable only by their total absence from it. What is left by way of similarity is a sculpturesque refinement in Sigelgaita's portrait, not unworthy of Pisano's own chisel. This, however, is but a slender point whereon to base so large a pyramid of pure conjecture. Surely we must look elsewhere than at Ravello or at Foggia for the origin of Niccola Pisano.

Why then should we reject tradition in this instance? Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle reply; because the sculpture of no Tuscan city before his period is good enough to have led up to him. Yet this may be contested; and at all events it will not be easy to prove from the Ravello head of Sigelgaita that a more advanced school existed in the south. The fact is that the art of the stone-carvers or marmorarii had never entirely died out since the days of Roman greatness; nor was Niccola without respectable predecessors in the very town of Lucca, where he produced the first masterpiece of modern sculpture. The circular font of S. Frediano, for example, carved with figures in high relief by a certain Robertus of the twelfth century, combines the Romanesque mannerism with the naivete of mediaeval fancy. I might point in particular to two knights seated on one horse in what I take to be the company of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, as an instance of a successful attempt to escape from the formalism of a decayed style. At the same time the general effect of the embossed work of this font is fine; nor do we fail to perceive that the artist retained some portion of the classic feeling for grandiose and monumental composition. Far less noteworthy, yet still not utterly despicable, is the bas-relief of Biduinus over the side-door of S. Salvatore at Lucca. What Niccola added of indefeasibly his own to the style of these continuators of a dead tradition, was feeling for the beauty of classical work in a good age, and through that feeling a more perfect sympathy with nature. It is just at this point that the old tale about the sarcophagus of the Countess Beatrice conveys not only the letter but the spirit of the fact. Niccola's genius, no less vivid and life-giving than that of Giotto, infused into the hard and formal manner of his immediate predecessors true nature and true art. Between the bas-relief of S. Salvatore and the bas-relief over the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, there is indeed a broad gulf, yet such as might have been passed at one bound by a master into whose soul the beauty of a fragment of Greek art had sunk, and who had received at his birth the gift of a creative genius.

FOOTNOTES:

[408] History of Painting in Italy, vol. i. chap. iv.

[409] Loc. cit. p. 127, note.

[410] Loc. cit. p. 127.

[411] Mr. Perkins, following the suggestion of Panza, in his Istoria dell' Antica Republica d'Amalfi, is inclined to think that this head represents, not Sigelgaita, but Joanna II. of Naples, and is therefore more than a century later in date than the pulpit. See Italian Sculptors, p. 51.



APPENDIX II

Michael Angelo's Sonnets

After the death of Michael Angelo, the manuscripts of his sonnets, madrigals, and other poems, written at various periods of his life, and well known to his intimate friends, passed into the hands of his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti. From Lionardo they descended to his son, Michael Angelo, who was himself a poet of some mark. This grand-nephew of the sculptor prepared them for the press, and gave them to the world in 1623. On his redaction the commonly received version of the poems rested until 1863, when Signor Cesare Guasti of Florence, having gained access to the original manuscripts, published a critical edition, preserving every peculiarity of the autograph, and adding a prose paraphrase for the explanation of the text.

The younger Michael Angelo, working in an age of literary pedantry and moral prudery, fancied that it was his duty to refine the style of his great ancestor, and to remove allusions open to ignorant misconstruction. Instead, therefore, of giving an exact transcript of the original poems, he set himself to soften down their harshness, to clear away their obscurity, to amplify, transpose, and mutilate according to his own ideas of syntax, taste, and rhetoric. On the Dantesque ruggedness of Michael Angelo he engrafted the prettiness of the seventeenth Petrarchisti; and where he thought the morality of the poems was questionable, especially in the case of those addressed to Cavalieri, he did not hesitate to introduce such alterations as destroyed their obvious intention. In order to understand the effect of this method, it is only necessary to compare the autograph as printed by Guasti with the version of 1623. In Sonnet xxxi., for example, the two copies agree in only one line, while the remaining thirteen are distorted and adorned with superfluous conceits by the over-scrupulous but not too conscientious editor of 1623.[412]

Michael Angelo's poems, even after his grand-nephew had tried to reduce them to lucidity and order, have always been considered obscure and crabbed. Nor can it be pretended that they gain in smoothness and clearness by the restoration of the true readings. On the contrary, instances of defective grammar, harsh elisions, strained metaphors, and incomplete expressions are multiplied. The difficulty of comprehending the sense is rather increased than diminished, and the obstacles to a translator become still more insurmountable than Wordsworth found them.[413] This being undoubtedly the case, the value of Guasti's edition for students of Michael Angelo is nevertheless inestimable. We read now for the first time what the greatest man of the sixteenth century actually wrote, and are able to enter, without the interference of a fictitious veil, into the shrine of his own thought and feeling. His sonnets form the best commentary on Michael Angelo's solitary life and on his sublime ideal of art. This reflection has guided me in the choice of those now offered in English, as an illustration of the chapter in this volume devoted to their author's biography.

Though the dates of Michael Angelo's compositions are conjectural, it may be assumed that the two sonnets on Dante were written when he was himself in exile. We know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of his time in reading Dante aloud to his protector;[414] and the indignation expressed against Florence, then as ever fickle and ungrateful, the gente avara, invidiosa, e superba, to use Dante's own words, seems proper to a period of just resentment. Still there is no certainty that they belong to 1495; for throughout his long life Michael Angelo was occupied with Dante. A story told of him in 1506, together with the dialogues reported by Donato Giannotti, prove that he was regarded by his fellow-citizens as an authority upon the meaning of the "Divine Comedy."[415] In 1518, when the Florentine Academy petitioned Leo X. to transport the bones of Dante from Ravenna to Florence, Michael Angelo subscribed the document and offered to erect a statue worthy of the poet.[416] How deeply the study of Dante influenced his art, appears not only in the lower part of the "Last Judgment:" we feel that source of stern and lofty inspiration in his style at large; nor can we reckon what the world lost when his volume of drawings in illustration of the "Divine Comedy" perished at sea.[417] The two following sonnets, therefore, whenever written, may be taken as expressing his settled feeling about the first and greatest of Italian poets:[418]—

DAL CIEL DISCESE

From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay The realms of justice and of mercy trod, Then rose a living man to gaze on God, That he might make the truth as clear as day. For that pure star that brightened with his ray The ill-deserving nest where I was born, The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn; None but his Maker can due guerdon pay.

I speak of Dante, whose high work remains Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood, Who only to just men deny their wage. Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains, Against his exile coupled with his good I'd gladly change the world's best heritage!

QUANTE DIRNI SI DE'

No tongue can tell of him what should be told, For on blind eyes his splendour shines too strong; 'Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong, Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold.

He to explore the place of pain was bold, Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song; The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along, Against his just desire his country rolled.

Thankless I call her, and to her own pain The nurse of fell mischance; for sign take this, That ever to the best she deals more scorn: Among a thousand proofs let one remain; Though ne'er was fortune more unjust than his, His equal or his better ne'er was born.

About the date of the two next sonnets there is less doubt. The first was clearly written when Michael Angelo was smarting under a sense of the ill-treatment he received from Julius. The second, composed at Rome, is interesting as the only proof we possess of the impression made upon his mind by the anomalies of the Papal rule. Here, in the capital of Christendom, he writes, holy things are sold for money to be used in warfare, and the pontiff, quel nel manto, paralyses the powers of the sculptor by refusing him employment.[419]

SIGNOR, SE VERO E

My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth, Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will. Lo! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still, Rewarding those who hate the name of truth. I am thy drudge and have been from my youth— Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill; Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ills The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.

Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height; But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need. Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite Here on the earth, if this be our reward— To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.

QUA SI FA ELMI

Here helms and swords are made of chalices: The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart: His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short Must be the time ere even his patience cease. Nay let Him come no more to raise the fees Of fraud and sacrilege beyond report! For Rome still slays and sells Him at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase.

Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure, Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still. Perchance in heaven poverty is a pleasure: But of that better life what hope have we, When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?

A third sonnet of this period is intended to be half burlesque, and, therefore, is composed a coda, as the Italians describe the lengthened form of the conclusion. It was written while Michael Angelo was painting the roof of the Sistine, and was sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoja. The effect of this work, as Vasari tells us, on his eyesight was so injurious, that, for some time after its completion, he could only read by placing the book or manuscript above his head and looking up.[420]

I' HO GIA FATTO UN GOZZO

I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den— As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy, Or in what other land they hap to be— Which drives the belly close beneath the chin: My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in, Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin. My loins into my paunch like levers grind; My buttock like a crupper bears my weight; My feet unguided wander to and fro;

In front my skin grows loose and long; behind, By bending it becomes more taut and strait; Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow: Whence false and quaint, I know, Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye; For ill can aim the gun that bends awry. Come then, Giovanni, try To succour my dead pictures and my fame; Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.

The majority of the sonnets are devoted to love and beauty, conceived in the spirit of exalted Platonism. They are supposed to have been written in the latter period of his life, when he was about sixty years of age; and though we do not know for certain to whom they were in every case addressed, they may be used in confirmation of what I have said about his admiration for Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso Cavalieri.[421] The following, with its somewhat obscure adaptation of a Platonic theory of creation to his own art, was probably composed soon after Vittoria Colonna's death.[422]

SE 'L MIO ROZZO MARTELLO

When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will, Following his hand who wields and guides it still, It moves upon another's feet alone. But He who dwells in heaven all things doth fill With beauty by pure motions of his own; And since tools fashion tools which else were none, His life makes all that lives with living skill.

Now, for that every stroke excels the more The closer to the forge it still ascend, Her soul that quickened mine hath sought the skies: Wherefore I find my toil will never end, If God, the great artificer, denies That tool which was my only aid before.

The next is peculiarly valuable, as proving with what intense and religious fervour Michael Angelo addressed himself to the worship of intellectual beauty. He alone, in that age of sensuality and animalism, pierced through the form of flesh and sought the divine idea it imprisoned:[423]—

PER RITORNAR LA

As one who will reseek her home of light, Thy form immortal to this prison-house Descended, like an angel piteous, To heal all hearts and make the whole world bright. 'Tis this that thralls my heart in love's delight, Not thy clear face of beauty glorious; For he who harbours virtue, still will choose To love what neither years nor death can blight.

So fares it ever with things high and rare, Wrought in the sweat of nature; heaven above Showers on their birth the blessings of her prime; Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere More clearly than in human forms sublime; Which, since they image Him, compel my love.

The same Platonic theme is slightly varied in the two following sonnets:[424]—

SPIRTO BEN NATO

Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see, Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate, What beauties heaven and nature can create, The paragon of all their works to be! Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety, Have found a home, as from thy outward state We clearly read, and are so rare and great That they adorn none other like to thee!

Love takes me captive; beauty binds my soul; Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes Wake in my heart a hope that cannot cheat. What law, what destiny, what fell control, What cruelty, or late or soon, denies That death should spare perfection so complete?

DAI DOLCE PIANTO

From sweet laments to bitter joys, from peace Eternal to a brief and hollow truce, How have I fallen!—when 'tis truth we lose, Mere sense survives our reason's dear decease. I know not if my heart bred this disease, That still more pleasing grows with growing use; Or else thy face, thine eyes, in which the hues And fires of Paradise dart ecstasies.

Thy beauty is no mortal thing; 'twas sent From heaven on high to make our earth divine: Wherefore, though wasting, burning, I'm content; For in thy sight what could I do but pine? If God Himself thus rules my destiny, Who, when I die, can lay the blame on thee?

The next is saddened by old age and death. Love has yielded to piety, and is only remembered as what used to be. Yet in form and feeling this is quite one of the most beautiful in the series supposed to refer to Vittoria Colonna:[425]—

TORNAMI AL TEMPO

Bring back the time when blind desire ran free, With bit and rein too loose to curb his flight; Give back the buried face, once angel-bright, That hides in earth all comely things from me; Bring back those journeys ta'en so toilsomely, So toilsome-slow to him whose hairs are white; Those tears and flames that in one breast unite; If thou wilt once more take thy fill of me!

Yet Love! Suppose it true that thou dost thrive Only on bitter honey-dews of tears, Small profit hast thou of a weak old man. My soul that toward the other shore doth strive, Wards off thy darts with shafts of holier fears; And fire feeds ill on brands no breath can fan.

After this it only remains to quote the celebrated sonnet used by Varchi for his dissertation, the best known of all Michael Angelo's poems.[426] The thought is this: just as a sculptor hews from a block of marble the form that lies concealed within, so the lover has to extract from his lady's heart the life or death of his soul,

NON HA L'OTTIMO ARTISTA

The best of artists hath no thought to show Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell Doth not include: to break the marble spell Is all the hand that serves the brain can do. The ill I shun, the good I seek, even so In thee, fair lady, proud, ineffable, Lies hidden: but the art I wield so well Works adverse to my wish, and lays me low.

Therefore not love, nor thy transcendent face, Nor cruelty, nor fortune, nor disdain, Cause my mischance, nor fate, nor destiny: Since in thy heart thou carriest death and grace Enclosed together, and my worthless brain Can draw forth only death to feed on me.

The fire of youth was not extinct, we feel, after reading these last sonnets. There is, indeed, an almost pathetic intensity of passion in the recurrence of Michael Angelo's thoughts to a sublime love on the verge of the grave. Not less important in their bearing on his state of feeling are the sonnets addressed to Cavalieri; and though his modern editor shrinks from putting a literal interpretation upon them, I am convinced that we must accept them simply as an expression of the artist's homage for the worth and beauty of an excellent young man. The two sonnets I intend to quote next[427] were written, according to Varchi's direct testimony, for Tommaso Cavalieri, "in whom"—the words are Varchi's—"I discovered, besides incomparable personal beauty, so much charm of nature, such excellent abilities, and such a graceful manner, that he deserved, and still deserves, to be the better loved the more he is known." The play of words upon Cavalieri's name in the last line of the first sonnet, the evidence of Varchi, and the indirect witness of Condivi, together with Michael Angelo's own letters,[428] are sufficient in my judgment to warrant the explanation I have given above. Nor do I think that the doubts expressed by Guasti about the intention of the sonnets,[429] or Gotti's curious theory that the letters, though addressed to Cavalieri, were meant for Vittoria Colonna,[430] are much more honourable to Michael Angelo's reputation than the garbling process whereby the verses were rendered unintelligible in the edition of 1623.

A CHE PIU DEBB' IO

Why should I seek to ease intense desire With still more tears and windy words of grief, When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief To souls whom love hath robed around with fire? Why need my aching heart to death aspire When all must die? Nay, death beyond belief Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief, Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!

Therefore because I cannot shun the blow I rather seek, say who must rule my breast, Gliding between her gladness and her woe? If only chains and bands can make me blest, No marvel if alone and bare I go An armed Knight's captive and slave confessed.

VEGGIO CO' BEI VOSTRI OCCHI

With your fair eyes a charming light I see, For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain; Stayed by your feet the burden I sustain Which my lame feet find all too strong for me; Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly; Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain; E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again, Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.

Your will includes and is the lord of mine; Life to my thoughts within your heart is given; My words begin to breathe upon your breath: Like to the moon am I, that cannot shine Alone; for lo! our eyes see nought in heaven Save what the living sun illumineth.

Whether we are justified in assigning the following pair to the Cavalieri series is more doubtful. They seem, however, to proceed from a similar mood of the poet's mind.[431]

S' UN CASTO AMOR

If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill, If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, If either at the other's grief despond, If both be governed by one life, one will; If in two bodies one soul triumph still, Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond, If love with one blow and one golden wand Have power both smitten breasts to pierce and thrill;

If each the other love, himself foregoing, With such delight, such savour, and so well, That both to one sole end their wills combine; If thousands of these thoughts all thought outgoing Fail the least part of their firm love to tell; Say, can mere angry spite this knot untwine?

COLUI CHE FECE

He who ordained, when first the world began, Time that was not before creation's hour, Divided it, and gave the sun's high power To rule the one, the moon the other span: Thence fate and changeful chance and fortune's ban Did in one moment down on mortals shower: To me they portioned darkness for a dower; Dark hath my lot been since I was a man.

Myself am ever mine own counterfeit; And as deep night grows still more dim and dun, So still of more mis-doing must I rue: Meanwhile this solace to my soul is sweet, That my black night doth make more clear the sun Which at your birth was given to wait on you.

A sonnet written for Luigi del Riccio, on the death of his friend Cecchino Bracci, is curious on account of its conceit.[432] Michael Angelo says: "Cecchino, whom you loved, is dead; and if I am to make his portrait, I can only do so by drawing you, in whom he still lives." Here, again, we trace the Platonic conception of love as nothing if not spiritual, and of beauty as a form that finds its immortality within the lover's soul. This Cecchino was a boy who died at the age of seventeen. Michael Angelo wrote his epicedion in several centuries of verses, distributed among his friends in the form of what he terms polizzini, as though they were trifles.

A PENA PRIMA

Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes Which to thy living eyes are life and light, When closed at last in death's injurious night He opened them on God in Paradise. I know it and I weep, too late made wise: Yet was the fault not mine; for death's fell spite Robbed my desire of that supreme delight, Which in thy better memory never dies.

Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine To make unique Cecchino smile in stone For ever, now that earth hath made him dim, If the beloved within the lover shine, Since art without him cannot work alone, Thee must I carve to tell the world of him.

In contrast with the philosophical obscurity of many of the sonnets hitherto quoted, I place the following address to Night—one, certainly, of Michael Angelo's most beautiful and characteristic compositions, as it is also the most transparent in style[433]:—

O NOTT', O DOLCE TEMPO

O night, O sweet though sombre span of time!— All things find rest upon their journey's end— Whoso hath praised thee, well doth apprehend; And whoso honours thee, hath wisdom's prime. Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime, For dews and darkness are of peace the friend; Often by thee in dreams upborne I wend From earth to heaven, where yet I hope to climb.

Thou shade of Death, through whom the soul at length Shuns pain and sadness hostile to the heart, Whom mourners find their last and sure relief! Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength, Driest our tears, assuagest every smart, Purging the spirits of the pure from grief.

The religious sonnets have been reserved to the last. These were composed in old age, when the early impressions of Savonarola's teaching revived, and when Michael Angelo had grown to regard even his art and the beauty he had loved go purely, as a snare. If we did not bear in mind the piety expressed throughout his correspondence, their ascetic tone, and the remorse they seem to indicate, would convey a painful sense of cheerlessness and disappointment. As it is, they strike me as the natural utterance of a profoundly devout and somewhat melancholy man, in whom religion has survived all other interests, and who, reviewing his past life of fame and toil, finds that the sole reality is God. The two first of these compositions are addressed to Giorgio Vasari.[434]

GIUNIO E GIA

Now hath my life across a stormy sea Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all Are bidden ere the final judgment fall, Of good or evil deeds to pay the fee. Now know I well how that fond phantasy Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal Is that which all men seek unwillingly.

Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed, What are they when the double death is nigh? The one I know for sure, the other dread. Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest My soul that turns to His great love on high, Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.

LE FAVOLE DEL MONDO

The fables of the world have filched away The time I had for thinking upon God; His grace lies buried deep 'neath oblivion's sod, Whence springs an evil-crop of sins alway. What makes another wise, leads me astray, Slow to discern the bad path I have trod: Hope fades; but still desire ascends that God May free me from self-love, my sure decay.

Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth? Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way rise, Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage: Teach me to hate the world so little worth, And all the lovely things I once did prize; That endless life, not death, may be my wage.

The same note is struck in the following, which breathes the spirit of a Penitential Psalm:[435]—

CARICO D' ANNI

Burdened with years and full of sinfulness, With evil custom grown inveterate, Both deaths I dread that close before me wait, Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. No strength I find in mine own feebleness To change or life or love or use or fate, Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late, Which only helps and stays our nothingness.

'Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn For that celestial home, where yet my soul May be new made, and not, as erst, of nought: Nay, ere Thou strip her mortal vestment, turn My steps toward the steep ascent, that whole And pure before Thy face she may be brought.

In reading the two next, we may remember that, at the end of his life, Michael Angelo was occupied with designs for a picture of the Crucifixion, which he never executed, though he gave a drawing of Christ upon the cross to Vittoria Colonna; and that his last work in marble was the unfinished "Pieta" in the Duomo at Florence.[436]

SCARCO D' UN IMPORTUNA

Freed from a burden sore and grievous band, Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied, Like a frail bark I turn me to Thy side, As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land. Thy thorns, Thy nails, and either bleeding hand, With Thy mild gentle piteous face, provide Promise of help and mercies multiplied, And hope that yet my soul secure may stand.

Let not Thy holy eyes be just to see My evil past, Thy chastened ears to hear And stretch the arm of judgment to my crime: Let Thy blood only lave and succour me, Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer As older still I grow with lengthening time.

NON FUR MEN LIETI

Not less elate than smitten with wild woe To see not them but Thee by death undone, Were those blest souls, when Thou above the sun Didst raise, by dying, men that lay so low: Elate, since freedom from all ills that flow From their first fault for Adam's race was won; Sore smitten, since in torment fierce God's son Served servants on the cruel cross below.

Heaven showed she knew Thee, who Thou wert and whence, Veiling her eyes above the riven earth; The mountains trembled and the seas were troubled: He took the Fathers from hell's darkness dense: The torments of the damned fiends redoubled: Man only joyed, who gained baptismal birth.

The collection of his poems is closed with yet another sonnet in the same lofty strain of prayer, and faith, and hope in God.[437]

MENTRE M' ATTRISTA

Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer In thinking of the past, when I recall My weakness and my sins and reckon all The vain expense of days that disappear: This cheers by making, ere I die, more clear The frailty of what men delight miscall; But saddens me to think how rarely fall God's grace and mercies in life's latest year.

For though Thy promises our faith compel, Yet, Lord, what man shall venture to maintain That pity will condone our long neglect? Still, from Thy blood poured forth we know full well How without measure was Thy martyr's pain, How measureless the gifts we dare expect.

From the thought of Dante, through Plato, to the thought of Christ: so our study of Michael Angelo's sonnets has carried us. In communion with these highest souls Michael Angelo habitually lived; for he was born of their lineage, and was like them a lifelong alien on the earth.

FOOTNOTES:

[412] See Guasti's Rime di Michel Agnolo Buonarrote, Firenzi, 1863, p. 189. The future references will be made to that edition.

[413] "I can translate, and have translated, two books of Ariosto at the rate nearly of one hundred lines a day; but so much meaning has been put by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him insurmountable."—Note to Wordsworth's English version of some sonnets of Michael Angelo.

[414] See above, Chapter VIII, The Pieta.

[415] See Gotti's Life, p. 48, and Giannotti's works (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1850), quoted by Gotti, pp. 249-257.

[416] See Appendix to Gotti's Life, No. 25.

[417] See Gotti's Life, p. 256.

[418] Guasti, pp. 153-155.

[419] Guasti, pp. 156, 167.

[420] Guasti, p. 158.

[421] See above, Chapter VIII, Vittoria Colonna.

[422] Guasti, p. 226.

[423] Guasti, p. 218.

[424] Ib. pp. 182, 210.

[425] Guasti, p. 212.

[426] Delivered before the Florentine Academy in 1546. See Guasti, p. 173, for the sonnet, and p. lxxv. for the dissertation. See also Gotti, p. 249, for Michael Angelo's remarks upon the latter.

[427] Guasti, pp. 189, 188.

[428] See Archivio Buonarroti; and above, p. 318, note 2.

[429] Rime, p. xlv.

[430] Gotti's Life, pp. 231-233.

[431] Guasti, pp. 190-202.

[432] Ib. p. 162.

[433] Guasti, p. 205.

[434] Guasti, pp. 230-232.

[435] Guasti, pp. 244, 245.

[436] Ib. pp. 241-245.

[437] Guasti, p. 246.



APPENDIX III

Chronological Tables of the Principal Artists mentioned in this Volume

The lists which follow have been, drawn up with a view to assisting the reader of my chapters on Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. I have only included the more prominent names; and these I have placed in the order of their occurrence in the foregoing pages. In compiling them, I have consulted the Index to Le Monnier's edition of Vasari (1870), Crowe and Cavalcaselle's "History of Painting," and Milizia's "Dictionary of Architects."

ARCHITECTS

Name Born Died Arnolfo di Cambio 1210 1311 Giotto di Bondone 1276 1337 Andrea Orcagna — about 1369 Filippo Brunelleschi 1377 1446 Leo Battista Alberti 1405 1472 Michellozzo Michellozzi 1391 1472 Benedetto da Majano 1442 1497 Giuliano di San Gallo 1445 1516 Antonio di San Gallo 1455 1534? Antonio Filarete — 1465? Bramante Lazzari 1444 1514 Cristoforo Rocchi — — Ventura Vitoni — — Raffaello Santi 1483 1520 Giulio Romano 1499 1546 Baldassare Peruzzi 1481 1536 Jacopo Sansovino 1477 1570 Michele Sanmicheli 1484 1559 Baccio d'Agnolo 1462 1543 Michael Angelo Buonarroti 1475 1564 Andrea Palladio 1518 1580 Giacomo Barozzi 1507 1573 Vincenzo Scamozzi 1552 1616 Galeazzo Alessi 1500 1572 Bartolommeo Ammanati 1511 1592

SCULPTORS

Name Born Died Niccola Pisano after 1200 1278 Giovanni Pisano about 1240 1320 Lorenzo Maitani — 1330 Andrea Pisano about 1273 about 1349 Giotto di Bondone 1276 1337 Nino Pisano — about 1360 Giovanni Balduccio about 1300 about 1347 Filippo Calendario — 1355 Andrea Orcagna — about 1369 Lorenzo Ghiberti 1378 1455 Giacomo della Quercia 1374 1438 Filippo Brunelleschi 1377 1446 Donatello 1366 1466 Andrea Verocchio 1435 1488 Alessandro Leopardi — after 1522 Antonio Pollajuolo 1429 1498 Piero Pollajuolo 1441 1489? Luca della Robbia 1400 1482 Agostino di Duccio — after 1461 Antonio Rossellino 1427 1478? Matteo Civitali 1435 1501 Mino da Fiesole 1431 1484 Desiderio da Settignano 1428 1464 Guido Mazzoni — 1518 Antonio Begarelli 1479 about 1565 Antonio Amadeo 1447? about 1520 Andrea Contucci 1460 1529 Jacopo Sansovino 1477 1570 Michael Angelo Buonarroti 1475 1564 Raffaello da Montelupo 1505 1567 Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli 1507 1563 Baccio Bandinelli 1493 1560 Bartolommeo Ammanati 1511 1592 Benvenuto Cellini 1500 1571 Gian Bologna 1524 1608

PAINTERS

Name Born Died Giovanni Cimabue 1240? 1302? Giotto di Bondone 1276 1337 Andrea Orcagna — about 1369 Ambrogio Lorenzetti — about 1348 Pietro Lorenzetti — about 1350 Taddeo Gaddi about 1300 1366 Francesco Traini — after 1378 Duccio di Buoninsegna — about 1320 Simone Martini 1285? 1344 Taddeo di Bartolo about 1362 1422 Spinello Aretino — 1410 Masolino da Panicale 1384 1447? Masaccio 1402 1429 Paolo Uccello 1397 1475 Andrea del Castagno 1396 1457 Piero della Francesca 1420? 1506? Melozzo da Forli about 1438 1494 Francesco Squarcione 1394 1474 Gentile da Fabriano about 1370 about 1450 Fra Angelico 1387 1455 Benozzo Gozzoli 1420 1498 Lippo Lippi 1412? 1469 Filippino Lippi 1457 1504 Sandro Botticelli 1447 1510 Piero di Cosimo 1462 1521? Domenico Ghirlandajo 1449 before 1498 Andrea Mantegna 1431 1506 Luca Signorelli about 1441 1523 Pietro Perugino 1446 1524 Bernardo Pinturicchio 1454 1513 Francesco Francia 1450 1517 Fra Bartolommeo 1475 1517 Mariotto Albertinelli 1474 1515 Lionardo da Vinci 1452 1519 Raffaello Santi 1483 1520 Antonio Allegri da Correggio 1494? 1534 Michael Angelo Buonarroti 1475 1564 Bartolommeo Vivarini — after 1499 Jacopo Bellini 1400? 1464? Gentile Bellini 1426 1507 Vittore Carpaccio — after 1519 Giovanni Bellini 1427 1516 Giorgione 1478 1511 Tiziano Vecelli 1477 1576 Paolo Veronese 1530 1588 Tintoretto 1512 1594 Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio 1467 1516 Marco d' Oggiono about 1470 1530 Cesare da Sesto — about 1524 Bernardino Luini about 1460 after 1530 Gaudenzio Ferrari 1484 1549 Giulio Romano 1499 1546 Giovanni da Udine 1487 1564 Perino del Vaga 1499 1547 Marcello Venusti — about 1584 Sebastian del Piombo 1485 1547 Daniele da Volterra about 1509 1566 Il Parmigianino 1504 1540 Federigo Baroccio 1528 1612 Andrea del Sarto 1487 1531 Jacopo Pontormo 1494 1557 Angelo Bronzino 1502 1572 Il Sodoma 1477 1549 Baldassare Peruzzi 1481 1536 Domenico Beccafumi 1486 1551 Benvenuto Garofalo 1481 1559 Dosso Dossi about 1479 1542 Il Moretto about 1500 after 1556 Giovanni Battista Moroni 1510 1578 Giorgio Vasari 1511 1574

[Transcribers Note: The references in the Footnotes which contain the text "See Chapter" were depicted in the original text as page numbers. They have been changed to the paragraph heading for that page as marked in the Chapter Headings in this text version.]

THE END