The central italian painters of the Renaissance

Front matter

By Bernhard Berenson

The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance.

With a Frontispiece. Third Edition. Revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo, gilt top

Preface To Second Edition

Twelve years and more have passed since this book first went to the press. At that time the painters of Central Italy still lay under the hard ban of Academic judgment, and Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle's sawdusty appreciations. It is different now. Book after book has appeared on Sienese art, not only in English but in German and French. Even Umbrian painting is being studied for its own wild-herb taste, and not merely in its Florentine phases, as in Signorelli and Perugino.

I venture, therefore, in this edition, to insert lists of works by painters not mentioned in the first. They would have frightened the student, even if I had then been prepared to publish them. I was not. Of some I knew enough to feel sure that much more must be ascertained before one had anything like an adequate notion of their character and activity. Of others I had not even heard. Most of them, it is true, had been treated by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, but so briefly or so vaguely as to attract no interest.

iii

IV

Preface

To take them in alphabetical order: Alegretto Nuzi was known by half a dozen works, and his derivation from Bernardo Daddi, which has since been noticed by several students independently, had not occurred to any one. Andrea de Licio had never been heard of, and his painted fairy tales at Atri were unknown. Antoniazzo was a mere name. Mr. Everett has repaired the fault in the American Journal of Archeology. Bartolo di Fredi, neglected as all the Sienese after the Lorenzetti, is still almost unknown and quite unappreciated. He was probably the most creative and determining personality in Sienese painting, between Lippo Memmi and Sassetta. Bartolommeo della Gatta is still a shadowy figure. So is Caporali, who may turn out a more charming Bonfigli. Cozzarelli had not been properly distinguished from his master and model, Matteo di Giovanni. Fei, Giovanni di Paolo, Sassetta, and Vanni were as remote as Kunchinjunga. Mr. F. M. Perkins has resuscitated Vanni in the Burlington Magazine, and there also I printed something on Sassetta. At Fei and Giovanni di Paolo — the whimsical, absurd, frequently incredible, but always entertaining Giovanni di Paolo — Mr. Perkins and I have tinkered away together. Giovanni Francesco da Rimini — an Umbrian, despite his birth — was a discovery of

PREFACE

Dr. Ricci, and the student can look him up in the files of the Milanese Rassegna a" Arte. Girolamo di Benvenuto was and remains annoyingly like his father and master, Benvenuto di Giovanni. Girolamo di Giovanni da Camerino I have sketched in the Rassegna. Lorenzo Salimbeni I had hoped to know better, but he remains the author of the Urbino frescoes and little else. Matteo da Gualdo used to be mixed up with Girolamo di Giovanni da Camerino. His outlines are not yet fixed. I am inclined to believe that toward the end of his career he refined and grew exquisite under Benozzo's influence. Matteo da Viterbo was rediscovered by Eugene Mtintz, and deserves a place with the Lorenzetti. Mezzastris was confused with his fellow-pupil Niccol6 da Foligno. Nelli was and remains an idiot, but as I mention him in my text, I had better insert a list of his paintings. Finally, I wish I had more to say about Scaletti of Faenza. He is one of the most fascinating artists of the Quattrocento, a lovechild of Ercole Roberti and Botticelli. I propose him as a splendid subject of research for younger men.

Apart from names of fellow-students already mentioned, I recall especially two to whom I am seriously indebted, Prof. B. Feliciangeli of Camerino and Rome, for communications pub-

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PREFACE lished and unpublished regarding Boccatis ; and my countryman, the well-known critic, Mr. F. Mason Perkins, for hints and monitions about Sienese as well as Umbrian painting.

Other students may have anticipated the publication of this or that result at which I have arrived in the course of the last twenty years. I am delighted that they have, for it proves that our studies have a scientific basis. But I pray these colleagues to forgive me if I have not taken the time and the trouble to keep a double entry of our agreements.

B.B.

Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Dee., 1908.

Contents

The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance i

Index to the Works- of the Principal Central Italian Painters . 130

THE CENTRAL ITALIAN PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE.

I

Every time we see an object we carry away in our memory some shadow of its shape and colour. This ghost of animate or inanimate things, passing under the name of " visual image," haunts different minds in different degrees. Some people scarcely recognise its presence, although they know it exists ; others can at will conjure up shadows so defined that they, in their turn, evoke emotions after their kind, and tinged with the poignancy of the feelings aroused by the objects themselves ; still others need only shut their eyes to see absent shapes with the vividness and warmth of direct retinal impressions. Strictly speaking, each person varies from every other in the richness of his visual images, but for our purpose it suffices to distribute all people into the three classes we have just defined. Of the first, we say that they visualise badly, or not

VISUAL IMAGES IN ART at all ; of the second, that they visualise fairly ; of the third, that they visualise perfectly.

The course of art would probably have been a very different one if people had never visualised at all, or had always visualised perfectly. Had we no faculty whatever for calling up the shapes of things, it might never have given us pleasure to see mere reproductions of them. Why should it ? Nor should we be any more likely to care for mere reproductions if we had within ourselves the faculty of calling up at will perfect visual images. But most of us belong to the second class — those who have a moderate power of visualising. When objects are named, some image of them looms up in our minds. It is, however, apt to be so vague, so elusive, that it tantalises rather than satisfies. After a vain effort to fix the image of an absent friend, the crudest manual reproduction may be pounced upon with pleasure, and a photograph seem the friend himself ; for almost anything may be more complete and more vivid than our indwelling picture of him.

All this would be different if we visualised perfectly. At the mention of a friend's name

VISUAL IMAGES IN ART we should see him almost as if he were present — nay, more — as we have seen him at a hundred significant moments. Not one, but a thousand sweet shades of himself hover past, each greeting us as our friend ; and at will, as mood inspires, we fix upon this or that as his best and faithfullest lieutenant in our affection. Should we still care for the mere reproduction of his likeness ? Granting that the reproduction, as such, were perfect, it would be one, and only one, moment in the flux of his life. Any other instant would represent him perhaps equally well. But does the single moment represent him at all ? Even the single images we have of him each take colour and warmth from the others. The mere reproduction of our friend would hardly please us, because it could convey one only of his manifold aspects, an aspect which, even then, would be inferior to any one single image of him in our own minds. The pleasure in mere likeness is, in fact, the outcome of a feeble power of visualising, and but for this might never have been known.

Now conceive of an art that could have had

DECORA TION no purpose in helping out our actual visualising, each one of our images being perfect. What could such an art have done to please us through the channel of our eyes ? It still would have had two broad domains, one of which we shall call Illustration, and the other Decoration. Both terms need explanation, if not apology. By Decoration I mean all those elements in a work of art which appeal directly to the senses, such as Colour and Tone ; or directly stimulate ideated sensations, such as, for instance, Form and Movement. The word has never deliberately been used in quite so wide a sense ; indeed, it is one of the vaguest and least hedged-in terms of our language ; but as the tendency for some time past has been to make it designate all in a work of art that is not merely expressive, or academic, or dexterous, we shall not be imposing upon it too hard a burden it we make it convey the full meaning I have given it.

A definition of Illustration now follows as a matter of course : it is all that which, in a work of art, is not Decorative. But this definition is too negative, too verbal, to satisfy. We must make it more concrete. The current use of the word is at once too comprehensive, and, as I shall try to show, too narrow, Raphael's illustrations to the Bible in the loggia of the Vatican cannot be illustrations in the same sense as are the photographic views which commonly embellish magazine articles on travel. We all feel the difference ; but in what does it really consist ? The answer will appear if we stop to consider what each does for us. The view being a mere reproduction, we regard it as a fact, and not as art at all. It may give pleasure, but only to such as crave either for knowledge, or for greater precision of visual imagery. Raphael's frescoes reproduce nothing which was ever seen in that precise form in the world about us, either by himself or by anyone else. They convey no information. But do they also do nothing for our visualising ? On the contrary, they stock our minds with images. Images of what — of scenes that never took place ? Just so. But surely these are not the visual images we spoke of a little while ago, which we agreed were but shadows in the mind of things actually seen ? What then are they ?

Ultimately they also are shadows of things actually seen, but combined, blended, and composed in the artist's mind under the spell of the Bible narrative. The process which went on in Raphael's brain takes place in all of us who visualise with any ease. Every word tends to evoke an image, and as we read we are accompanied by an ever unfolding scroll of vague and evanescent shapes — Mendings and fusings of the shadows dwelling within — which correspond to the sense of the phrases. Even if this panorama in our own minds lacked nothing in distinctness, we still should get a certain pleasure from the images conjured up by the same words in another mind ; not, as in the case of very poor visualisers, because we longed for greater precision of imagery, but simply for the reason that the imaginary picture can never be quite the same in any two minds. And what if another mind is stocked with shadows of shapes in themselves superior to those of our individual world ; what if that mind also possesses a more effective power of fusing and blending these images, already more attractive than ours ? Let that person read the Old Testament, or contemplate anything that can possibly have its graphic counterpart, and pictures will troop past his mental vision which, could we but see them, would reveal higher conceptions and deeper meanings than we ourselves had found, would thrill us with the contagious presence of an imagination — here and at the moment, at least — richer, warmer, and completer than our own.

But how does a mental picture like this become a work of art ? The answer would seem simple enough : before the mental image becomes a work of art it must be copied exactly in marble or on canvas. But is that really all ? Most people would unhesitatingly say yes. They would define art as the faithful reproduction of things in themselves beautiful, or of che fused and blended images of such things. The old talk of the ideal, the new talk of the temperament, Aristotle and Zola, nestle comfortably in this basket. And the common difficulty, the difference between a photograph and such a work of art as, for example, a portrait by Watts, most people would explain by saying that the one reproduces a single image of a person, the other reproduces a composite formed by a mind of exceptional power. And thus great art would be defined not as the blind imitation of nature, but as the reproduction of the visual images haunting great minds.

There are some people, however, who would not rest happy in this definition. Mere reproduction, they would say, is not art, no matter how beautiful and exalted the object reproduced. The pleasure this gives, they would add, is not artistic, but aesthetic in a more general sense, or perhaps only intellectual ; and they would insist on making a difference between a thing in itself beautiful (or a beautiful mental picture) on the one hand, and a work of art on the other. They would insist also on distinguishing between the terms " aesthetic " and " artistic," allowing the meaning of the first to include the second, but confining " artistic " to designate that pleasure only which is derived from a conscious appreciation of the quality that makes the difference between objects, or mental images — in themselves beautiful — and works of art having the qualities which I have called Decorative. They would not deny that a

IO work of art might gain from the character of the object, or of the mental image reproduced, but they would uphold that its specific value as Art was perfectly distinct from, and but slightly dependent upon, the value of the original. They would go even farther and say that the work of art, as such, had comparatively little to gain from the attractiveness of the object represented, but that the artist could enhance and glorify almost any object that lent itself to his treatment. Mere reproductions of things, no matter how exalted in themselves, no matter whether of objects in actual existence, or of the sublimest visions of the sublimest imaginations, they would speak of as " Literature " — and I, disagreeing with them only in phrase, as Illustration.

At last we have the definition we have been seeking. Illustration is everything which in a work of art appeals to us, not for any intrinsic quality, as of colour or form or composition, contained in the work of art itself, but for the value the thing represented has elsewhere, whether in the world outside, or in the mind within. If a work of art have no intrinsic value

II whatever, or if we fail to perceive it, for us it is nothing but an Illustration, and it does not matter whether it be drawn, engraved, or coloured on sheets of paper, or painted on a panel or wall. Raphael and Michelangelo, Leonardo and Giorgione, if we perceive in them no qualities except such as, in the realms of actual or ideal things, belong to the images set down in their paintings, are as much mere Illustrators as the hacks who furnish designs for the popular press. In the domain of Illustration, there are, it is true, whole universes of difference between the illustrations of the great men just named and the illustrations of the nameless folk of to-day, but from this point of view they are all mere Illustrators.

" Illustration," as I shall employ the word, is then somewhat narrower, and, at the same time, considerably wider a term than the current use, which confines it to art as subordinated to letterpress. It will exclude mere reproduction of single perceptions of objects, too formless to give pleasure to any but the quite uncultivated, for whom simple recognition is already a delight. It will comprise, on the other

WHY TASTE CHANGES hand, the mere reproduction of all those visual images, no matter how elaborate and significant, and no matter in what shapes they are cast, of which the form has no intrinsic merit of its own that we more or less consciously perceive.

II

Now it is no academic reason which has led me, at the opening of a small book on the Central Italian Painters, to speak of visual images, and to distinguish clearly in the work of art between Decoration and Illustration. It is a steep short-cut — would we had had the leisure to build a broad, gently climbing highway ! — which, once bravely over, places us where we shall understand a great deal that otherwise would have for ever puzzled and perplexed us.

What more perplexing, for example, than the veerings of fashion, or even of taste ? It makes scornful sceptics of most, and forces upon the few who still believe, the alternative of silence or paradox. De gustibus non est disputandum is a maxim no less maintained now than in more barbarous ages. It is true, politeness forbids pushing too far a discussion on

WHY TASTE CHANGES matters of taste ; but if such questions were of enough consequence to compel attention, and if we could communicate our views without fear of offending, is it so certain that we should arrive at no conclusions? I think not. Fortunately it is not our business here and now to make the perilous attempt. But one thing, at least, must be made clear at once. It is this. The question of preference in art is not at all the same that it is in life. Life makes different demands from generation to generation, from decade to decade, from year to year, nay, from day to day, and hour to hour. Our attention is stretched with the utmost interest toward those things that will help us to satisfy these demands, and with admiration toward those of our fellows who, without crowding or hindering us, have perfectly satisfied them. As the demands, so the objects of our desire and our admiration vary. And as the objects of desire and admiration are altered, so will the subject-matter of the arts change. It cannot be otherwise. But depth of conception and attractiveness of ideal are, as we have seen, all that the greater number of even cultivated

H

WHY TASTE CHANGES people care for in the arts ; and this being so, art must either present the current conceptions and ideals, or fail of a result in which even a restricted public will take an interest. Now the fluctuation of the ideal can affect those elements only in the work of art in which the ideal can be obviously manifest — in the Illustrative part. But this, as we have agreed, is far from being the whole, or even the more essential factor in art. There remain all the Decorative elements which mere change in ideal can not touch, for the good reason that the ideal can be adequately presented without them. All, therefore, in the work of art which distinguishes it from the mere mental image, all the Decorative elements, the more essential elements, as I believe, are above the revolutions of fashion and taste. Ages may arise which lack even the few who in better periods have a feeling for Art as distinct from Illustration or dexterity, and they are ages of bad taste — not of different taste. Some may prefer Guido Reni to Botticelli, the Caracci to Giorgione, and Bouguereau to Puvis de Chavannes, but let them not fancy that their preference rests on artistic grounds. The truth is that

WHY TASTE CHANGES 1 5

the elements essential to a painting as a work of art are beyond their perception, and that they look in a picture for nothing but a representation of something that would please them in actual life, or perhaps for the exhibition of a kind of skill that they happen to appreciate. (There are a thousand standards whereby one's tastes in matters of actual life may be judged, but as none of them are purely artistic, they are not my concern just here.)

Thus our rough division of the elements that constitute the work of art and divide it into two classes, the one Illustrative and the other Decorative, has already been of service. It has enabled us to distinguish what is subject to change and fashion from what is permanent in the work of art. The Decorative elements, the intrinsic values, are as perdurable as the psychic processes themselves, which, as we have reason to believe, vary only in degree from age to age, but in kind remain the same through all times. But Illustration changes from epoch to epoch with the contents of the mind, the visual part of which it reproduces, and it is as varied as are races and individuals.

It follows then as a clear conclusion that a i6 phase of art which contains few if any except Illustrative elements will tend to pass away with the ideals it reproduces ; also, that if we do not perceive the Decorative factors in the work of art (which yet may exist there in spite of our incapacity) we shall cease caring for it the moment we are tired of the phase of life or feeling or thought which it embodies.

III

And now, for the present at all events, we can cease from abstractions and definitions, and turn in earnest to the Central Italian Painters. They were, as we agreed at the outset, not always enchanting in colour, and seldom great in form, yet one or another branch of their school has ever retained the attention, I will not say of the most artistic, but certainly of the most cultivated public. We shall now understand the reason. The Central Italian Painters were not only among the profoundest and grandest, but among the most pleasing and winning Illustrators that we Europeans ever have had. They saw and reproduced visions which have embodied the aspirations, the ideals, of two distinct epochs. Of these epochs, the first, the Middle Age, is so far behind us that to most of us its desires and ideals are no longer comprehensible, and the art which embodies them, losing for all but a few whatever glamour and spell it once had as Illustration, has faded into the dulness of documents recording dead things. But in the other epoch we are living still, and the forms which first expressed its cravings and aspirations answer as well to-day as when they were conceived in the mind of Raphael, four hundred years ago.

We shall begin with that school of Central Italian painting which illustrates the Middle Ages. The practice in Italy of the graphic arts had probably never been interrupted since the early days of their origin, and it would be a tedious task to pursue their course throughout its whole length, now stagnating, then dwindling, and finally almost disappearing, until they gushed forth again, fed by vigorous unsearched springs. Was it Etrurian genius reviving ? Was it wafted over seas from Byzantium, or did it come from over the mounti8 ains, from the smiling fields of France ? Let historians find answers to these fascinating questions. For our interest lies not in the origin, but in the enjoyment of the work of art, and for enjoyment it is enough to know that painting as an art was flowering toward the end of the thirteenth century within the walls of " soft Siena," then, as always, sorceress and queen among Italian cities.

The first flower of this new growth, the flower from whose seed all Sienese art sprung, was Duccio di Buoninsegna. For this reason, and because he was so typical of his time and school, and anticipated so much that was characteristic of all Central Italian Painters — for all these considerations, we must dwell on him at some length.

All that the Mediaeval mind demanded of a painter, Duccio perfectly fulfilled. It was the chief business of the Mediaeval artist to re-write the stories of the Saviour, and of His immaculate Mother, in pictographs so elaborate that even the most unlettered could read them. At the same time these pictographs were intended to be offered up as a sacrifice, along with all the rest of the furnishing and actual decoration of God's holy house, and for this they were to be as resplendent as gold and skill could make them. In the hands of a man of genius the pictograph could transform itself into great Illustration, and the sacrifice into great Decoration. Did they suffer this change at the hands of Duccio ?

Let us look for answer at the paintings on the reredos that once enclosed with splendour the altar of as proud a temple as Christendom could show. Now it moulders away in the museum outside the Cathedral of Siena, without interest for men, and consequently no longer a fit sacrifice to God. Their metallic lustre, the green and gold, give to these panels such an aspect of subdued sumptuousness as we expect not from paintings, but from bronze reliefs — from Ghiberti's " Gates of Paradise." For the person who approaches them with all his theories safely put to sleep, and his mind on the alert for the distinguishing notes in what he is about to perceive, there is a glamour compounded of sensuous appeal and spiritual association in the first flash of this mysterious work. It is like the binding of some priceless illuminated manuscript, inlaid with ivory, adorned with gold, and set with precious stones. As you look closer, it is as if you had turned the covers of a book wherein you behold a series of splendid Illustrations. The long-familiar stories are here retold with a simplicity, a clearness, and a completeness that, alongside of the blurred images these tales usually evoked, must have seemed to most of Duccio's contemporaries like the buoyant sparkle of the morning after groping dark. And not this alone : Duccio did not merely furnish the best attainable pictographs. He gave the stories he told all the value that he, as a man of genius, felt in them ; he lifted his spectators to his own level of perception.

Let us glance at a few of these scenes. In a palace at the end of two rows of pondering, thought-vexed greybeards, sits a majestic boy. On the left a woman and an old man entering lift up their hands in amazement and reproach. Never has the story of " Christ among the Doctors " found a fitter illustration. Not a figure too much ; nothing trivial, yet not a touch to lift it beyond human sympathy. Attitude, gesture, and expression can do no more for the theme.

Another scene : Christ addresses His disciples before He bends to wash their feet. He sits facing them, hieratic, majestic, and they look as if, though they have known Him long, for the first time He is now revealed to them. Fervour of ecstatic credence, the pathetic yearning to lift one's self up, to comprehend, to make one's own the good manifested for too brief a moment, have perhaps never again been so convincingly rendered. Expression — and be it noted, individual expression, for here are different ages and different temperaments — has never been a more obedient handmaid of the gift for sublime interpretation.

In the next panel we see the disciples looking on while Christ washes Peter's feet. Consternation, almost horror, is on their faces, and incredulity withal, as if they can not believe the evidence of their eyes. Christ is all pity and humility. Peter holds his hand to his head as if to make sure of his own identity.

It would be easy to fill the rest of this little book with descriptions of the scarcely surpassable triumphs of interpretation and expression to be met with in this one reredos of Duccio's. But one or two instances more must suffice. We see Christ resplendent now in robes all gold, leaping through the gates of hell to deliver from limbo the patriarchs and prophets. They troop up to the mouth of the black cavern, majestic greybeards, with the yearning expectancy of thousands of years lingering on their faces. Then, on earth, it is Easter Day, and as the light is breaking over the jagged rocks, the three Marys approach the tomb, and start back as they behold its lid swung open and upon it a white-stoled angel, radiant and glorious. I know no more impressive rendering of this most marvellous of all subjects. To the drama of expression and gesture, Duccio adds the drama of light, with all its transfiguring magic. A bronzed purple glow flashes through the thin air, and we feel the vivifying cool of the dayspring.

Expression, then, and interpretation, grandeur of conception, and depth of feeling — the qualities most essential to great Illustration —

Duccio possessed to the utmost, and this implies that he had sufficient control also of form and movement to render his effects. There remain two other requisites without which the art of Illustration limps rather than leaps. These are Grouping and Arrangement. That Duccio possessed both these in addition to his other gifts we shall be persuaded if we look at several more panels of the Sienese reredos.

Let us turn first to a subject which demands dramatic action and many actors — the " Betrayal of Judas." Motionless, in the middle of the foreground, we see the figure of Christ. The slim and supple Judas entwines Him in an embrace, while the lightly clad soldiers lay hands on Him, the guards crowd round Him, and the Pharisee elders at the sight of His face, which betrays no feeling but pity, start back in horrified consternation. Meanwhile, on the left, hottempered Peter rushes at a soldier with his knife, and, on the right, the disciples in a crowded flock scurry away, only the most courageous venturing to look back. We have here two masses of men, and in each the action and expression are kept so clear that to mistake them would imply sheer want of wits. In another panel, representing the " Incredulity of Thomas," Christ, with right arm uplifted, appears baring the wound in His side to the impudent touch of His doubting disciple. These two figures stand out by themselves, and to right and left, more crowded on one side, more scattered on the other, stand the remaining disciples, so arranged that we get the expression on each face.