Part 15 (1/2)
Correggio was remarkable for the humility and gentleness of his deportment, for his pensive and somewhat anxious disposition, and kindly domestic feelings: these are the characteristics which have poured themselves forth upon his Madonnas. They are distinguished generally by the utmost sweetness, delicacy, grace, and devotional feeling. I remember reading somewhere that Correggio had a large family, and was a particularly fond father; and it is certain, that in the expression of maternal tenderness, he is superior to all but Raffaelle: his Holy Family in the Studii at Naples, and his lovely Virgin in the gallery, are instances.
Guido ranks next in my estimation, as a painter of Virgins. He is described as an elegant and accomplished man, remarkable for the modesty of his disposition, and the dignity and grace of his manner; as delicate in his personal habits, and sumptuous in his dress and style of living. He had unfortunately contracted a taste for gaming, which latterly plunged him into difficulties, and tinged his mind with bitterness and melancholy. All his heads have a peculiar expression of elevated beauty, which has been called Guido's air. His Madonnas are all but heavenly: they are tender, dignified, lovely:--but when compared with Raffaelle's, they seem more touched with earthly feeling, and have less of the pure ideal: they are, if I may so express myself, too _sentimental_: sentiment is, in truth, the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of Guido's style. It is remarkable, that towards the end of his life, Guido more frequently painted the Mater Dolorosa, and gave to the heads of his Madonnas a look of melancholy, disconsolate resignation, which is extremely affecting.
t.i.tian's character is well known: his ardent cheerful temper, his sanguine enthusiastic mind, his love of pleasure, his love of women; and true it is, that through all his glowing pictures, we trace the voluptuary. His Virgins are rather ”_des jeunes epouses de la veille_”--far too like his Venuses and his mistresses: they are all luxuriant _human_ beauty; with that peculiar air of blandishment which he has thrown into all his female heads, even into his portraits, and his old women. Witness his lovely Virgin in the Vatican, his Mater Sapientiae, and his celebrated a.s.sumption at Venice, in which the eyes absolutely float in rapture. There is nothing ideal in t.i.tian's conception of beauty: he paints no saints and G.o.ddesses _fancy-bred_: his females are all true, lovely women; not like the heavenly creation of Raffaelle, looking as if a touch, a breath would profane them; but warm flesh and blood--heart and soul--with life in their eyes, and love upon their lips: even over his Magdalenes, his beauty-breathing pencil has shed a something which says,
A misura che am-- Piange i suoi falli!
But this is straying from my subject; as I have embarked in this fanciful hypothesis, I shall multiply my proofs and examples, as far as I can, from memory.
In some account I have read of Murillo, he is emphatically styled _an honest man_: this is all I can remember of his character; and _truth_ and nature prevail through all his pictures. In his Virgins, we can trace nothing elevated, poetical or heavenly: they have not the _ideality_ of Raffaelle's, nor the tender sweetness of Correggio's; nor the glowing loveliness of t.i.tian's; but they have an individual reality about them, which gives them the air of portraits. That chef-d'oeuvre, in the Pitti Palace, for instance, call it a beautiful peasant girl and her baby, and it is faultless: but when I am told it is the ”_Vergine gloriosa, del Re Eterno Madre, Figliuola, e Sposa_,” I look instantly for something far beyond what I see expressed. All Murillo's Virgins are so different from each other, that it is plain the artist did not paint from any preconceived idea of his own mind, but from different originals; they are all impressed with that general air of truth, nature, and common life, which stamps upon them a peculiar and distinct character.
Andrea del Sarto, who is in style as in character the very reverse of Murillo, fascinated me at first by his enchanting colouring, and the magical aerial depths of his chiaro-oscuro; but on a further acquaintance with his works, I was struck by the predominance of external form and colour over mind and feeling. His Virgins look as if they had been born and bred in the first circles of society, and have a particular air of elegance, an artificial grace, an attraction, which may be entirely traced to exterior; to the cast of the features, the contour of the form, the disposition of the draperies, the striking att.i.tudes, and, above all, the divine colouring: beauty and dignity, and powerful effect, we always find in his pictures: but no _moral_ pathos--no poetry--no sentiment--above all, a strange and total want of devotional expression, simplicity and humility. His Virgin with St. Francis and St. John, which hangs behind the Venus in the Tribunes, is a wonderful picture; and there are two charming Madonnas in the Borghese Palace at Rome. In the first we are struck by the grouping and colouring; in the last, by a certain graceful _lengthiness_ of the limbs and fine animated drawing in the att.i.tudes. But we look in vain for the ”sacred and the sweet,” for heart, for soul, for countenance.
Andrea del Sarto had, in his profession, great talents rather than genius and enthusiasm. He was weak, dissipated, unprincipled; without elevation of mind or generosity of temper; and that his moral character was utterly contemptible, is proved by one trait in his life. A generous patron who had relieved him in his necessity, afterwards entrusted him with a considerable sum of money, to be laid out in certain purchases; Andrea del Sarto perfidiously embezzled the whole, and turned it to his own use. This story is told in his life, with the addition that ”he was persuaded to it by his wife, as profligate and extravagant as himself.”
Carlo Dolce's gentle, delicate, and melancholy temperament, are strongly expressed in his own portrait, which is in the Gallery of Paintings here. All his pictures are tinged by the morbid delicacy of his const.i.tution, and the refinement of his character and habits. They have exquisite finish, but a want of power, degenerating at times into coldness and feebleness; his Madonnas are distinguished by regular feminine beauty, melancholy, devotion, or resigned sweetness: he excelled in Mater Dolorosa. The most beautiful of his Virgins is in Pitti Palace, of which picture there is a duplicate in the Borghese Palace at Rome.
Carlo Marratti, without distinguished merit of any kind--unless it was a distinguished merit to be the father of Faustina Zappi,--owed his fortune, his t.i.tle of _Cavaliere_, and the celebrity he once enjoyed, not to any superiority of genius, but to his successful arts as a courtier, and his a.s.siduous flattery of the great. What can be more characteristic of the man, than his simpering Virgins, fluttering in tasteless, many-coloured draperies, with their sky blue back-grounds, and golden clouds?
Caravaggio was a gloomy misanthrope and a profligate ruffian: we read, that he was banished from Rome, for a murder committed in a drunken brawl; and that he died at last of debauchery and want. Caravaggio was perfect in his gamblers, robbers, and martyrdoms, and should never have meddled with Saints and Madonnas. In his famous _Pieta_ in the Vatican, the Virgin is an old beggar-woman, the two Maries are fish-wives, in ”maudlin sorrow,” and St. Peter and St. John, a couple of bravoes, burying a murdered traveller: _dipinse ferocemente sempre perche feroce era il suo carrattere_, says his biographer; an observation, by the way, in support of my hypothesis.
Rubens, with all his transcendent genius, had a coa.r.s.e imagination: he bore the character of an honest, liberal, but not very refined man.
Rubens painted Virgins--would he had let them alone! fat, comfortable farmers' wives, nursing their chubby children. Then follows Vand.y.k.e in the opposite extreme. Vand.y.k.e was celebrated in his day, for his personal accomplishments: he was, says his biographers, a complete scholar, courtier and gentleman. His beautiful Madonnas are, accordingly, what we might expect--rather too intellectual and lady-like: they all look as if they had been polished by education.
The grand austere genius of Michel Angelo was little calculated to portray the dove-like meekness of the _Vergine dolce e pia_, or the playfulness of infantine beauty. In his Mater Amabilis, sweetness and beauty are sacrificed to expression; and dignity is exaggerated into masculine energy. In the Mater Dolorosa, suffering is tormented into agony: the anguish is too human: it is not sufficiently softened by resignation; and makes us turn away with a too painful sympathy. Such is the admirable head in the Palazzo Litti at Milan; such his sublime _Pieta_ in the Vatican--but the last, being in marble, is not quite a case in point.
I will mention but two more painters of whose lives and characters I know nothing yet, and may therefore fairly make their works a test of both, and judge of them in their Madonnas, and afterwards measure my own penetration and the truth of my hypothesis, by a reference to the biographical writers.
In the few pictures I have seen of Carlo Cignani, I have been struck by the predominance of mind and feeling over mere external form: there is a picture of his in the Rospigliosi Palace--or rather, to give an example which is nearer at hand, and fresh in my memory, there is in the gallery _here_, his Madonna del Rosario. It represents a beautiful young woman, evidently of plebeian race: the form of the face is round, the features have nothing of the beau-ideal, and the whole head wants dignity: yet has the painter contrived to throw into this lovely picture an inimitable expression which depends on nothing external, which in the living prototype we should term _countenance_; as if a chastened consciousness of her high destiny and exalted character shone through the natural rusticity of her features, and touched them with a certain grace and dignity, emanating from the mind alone, which only mind could give, and mind perceive. I have seen within the last few days, three copies of this picture, in all of them the charming simplicity and rusticity, but in none the exquisite expression of the original: even the hands are expressive, without any particular delicacy or beauty of form. An artist who was copying the picture to-day while I looked at it, remarked this; and confessed he had made several unsuccessful attempts to render the fond pressure of the fingers as she clasps the child to her bosom.
Were I to judge of Carlo Cignani by his works, I should p.r.o.nounce him a man of elevated character, n.o.ble by instinct, if not by descent, but simple in his habits, and a despiser of outward show and ostentation.
The other painter I alluded to, is Sa.s.so Ferrato, a great and admired manufacturer of Virgins, but a mere copyist, without pathos, power, or originality; sometimes he resembles Guido, sometimes Carlo Dolce; but the graceful harmonious delicacy of the former becomes coldness and flatness in his hands, and the refinement and sweetness of the latter sink into feebleness and insipidity. Were I to judge of his character by his Madonnas, I should suppose that Sa.s.so Ferrato had neither original genius nor powerful intellect, nor warmth of heart, nor vivacity of temper; that he was, in short, a mere mild, inoffensive, good sort of man, studious and industrious in his art, not without a feeling for the excellence he wanted power to attain.[W]
I might pursue this subject further, but my memory fails, my head aches, and my pen is tired for to-night.
Both here and at Rome, I have found considerable amus.e.m.e.nt in looking over the artists who are usually employed in copying or studying from the celebrated pictures in the different galleries; but I have been taught discretion on such occasions by a ridiculous incident which occurred the other day, as absurdly comic as it was unlucky and vexatious. A friend of mine observing an artist at work in the Pitti palace, whom, by his total silence and inattention to all around, she supposed to be a native Italian who did not understand a word of English, went up to him, and peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed with more truth than discretion, ”Ah! what a hideous attempt! that will never be like, I'm sure!” ”I am very sorry you think so, ma'am,”
replied the painter, coolly looking up in her face. He must have read in that beautiful face an expression which deeply avenged the cause of his affronted picture.
We have been twice to the opera since we arrived here. At the Pergola, Ba.s.si, though a woman, is the _Primo Uomo_; the rare quality of her voice, which is a kind of rich deep counter-tenor, unfitting her for female parts. Her voice and science are so admirable, that it would be delicious to hear her blindfold; but her large clumsy figure disguised, or rather _exposed_, in masculine attire, is quite revolting.
At the Cocomero we had the ”Italiana in Algieri:” the Prima Donna, who is an admired singer, gave the comic airs with great power and effect, but her bold execution and her ungraceful unliquid voice disgusted me, and I came away fatigued and dissatisfied. The dancing is execrable at both theatres.
From one end of Italy to the other, nothing is listened to in the way of music but Rossini and his imitators. The man must have a transcendant genius, who can lead and pervert the taste of his age as Rossini has done; but unfortunately those who have not his talent, who cannot reach his beauties nor emulate his airy brilliance of imagination, think to imitate his ornamented style by merely crowding note upon note, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, and semi-demi-semi-quavers in most perplexed succession; and thus all Italy, and thence all Europe, is deluged with this busy, fussy, hurry-skurry music, which means nothing, and leaves no trace behind it either on the fancy or the memory. Must it be ever thus? are Paesiello, and Pergolesi, and Cimarosa--and those divine German masters, who formed themselves on the Italian school and surpa.s.sed it--Winter and Mozart[X] and Gluck--are they eternally banished? must sense and feeling be for ever sacrificed to mere sound, the human organ degraded into a mere instrument,[Y] and the ear tickled with novelty and meretricious ornament, till the taste is utterly diseased?
There was a period in the history of Italian literature, when the great cla.s.sical writers were decried and neglected, and the genius of one man depraved the taste of the age in which he lived. Marini introduced, or at least rendered general and fas.h.i.+onable, that far-fetched wit, that tinsel and glittering style, that luxurious pomp of words, which was easily imitated by talents of a lower order: yet in the Adonis there are many redeeming pa.s.sages, some touches of real pathos, and some stanzas of natural and beautiful description: and thus it is with Rossini; his best operas contain some melodies among the finest ever composed, and even in his worst, the ear is every now and then roused and enchanted by a few bars of graceful and beautiful melody, to be in the next moment again bewildered in the maze of unmeaning notes, and the clash of overpowering accompaniments.
_Lucca, April 23._--Lucca disappoints me in every respect: it was once, when a republic, one of the most flouris.h.i.+ng, rich, and populous cities in Italy; it is now consigned over to the Ex-queen of Etruria; and its fate will be perhaps the same as that of Venice, Pisa, and Sienna, which, when they lost their independence, lost also their public spirit, their public virtue, and their prosperity.