Page:Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers, volume 5.djvu/75

 Drestlen. Gnllery, A Mountain Torrent „ T-,e Ark of Noah. ,, Five other Lauilscapes. London. Kat. Gallery, Orpheus charming the Beasts. Munich. Pinakutkek. A Boar-hunt.

SAVERY, Solomon, (Savry,) a Dutch engraver, bom at Amaterdam in 1594. From his having engraved a few English portraits, he is said to have visited this country, but it is not certain that he did so. The following are his principal plates :

Charles I. with a high-crowned bat, a view of West- minster in the background. Oliver Cromwell. 1U49. John Speed, the Historian. Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Christ driving the Money-changers out of the Temple ; after Rembrandt.

SAVILL, —, was a painter living in London at the time of the Restoration. He painted portraits of Samuel Pepys and his wife, and also a miniature portrait of the former, for which he was paid £3.

SAVILLE, Dorothea, an English portrait painter. Slie practised in London in the first part of the 17th century. Some of her works were engraved by Hollar and Thomas Cross.

SAVOLDO, Giovanni Girolamo, was a native of Brescia, born about 1480 — possibly as late as 1484-1485. Brescia at that time gave birth to many of the best artists of the Venetian School — notably to Girolamo Romanino, who was born, like Savoldo, at Brescia about 148.5, to Bonvicino or Moretto, Romanino's fellow-worker at Brescia in 1621, and to Moretto's own pupil Moroni, born about 1525. All these artists happen to be well represented in the National Gallery.

Moroni's 'Brescian Nobleman' and ' Tailor' {Tay- liapanni) are masterpieces of his silvery manner ; and Savoldo's ' St. Mary Magdalen approaching the Sepulchre ' is, in its own way, no less at- tractive. This figure, with its mj'sterious charm (which is repeated in the Berlin Gallerj'), is characteristic of the artist, in his love of twiliirht effects and the gleam of reflected light. She seems less the devoted woman of the Bible story than some fair Venetian, stepping down to her gondola for the evening's rendezvous — this figure with the lovely face peeping archly out beneath the veil of white shimmering satin. Here too appears just that romantic element which Savoldo's art might have drawn from Giorgione ; just as he shares the love of dim liglit, which appears again in his ' Adoration of Shepherds ' in the same (National Gallery) collection, with the later Bassani. Savoldo's treatment of this subject ('Adoration of Shepherds'), set in a beautiful Giorgionesrjue landscape, is peculiarly impressive in his painting in the Turin Gallery. The colour- ing here — -as in the beautiful painting mentioned next — is cold and rather Brescian tlian Vene- tian in character. To be noted next in the same collection is his ' Holy Family' ; while the grave sweetness of the Virgin's type reappears in a signed and dated (15'J7) picture at Hampton Court. The attendant Saints in the above painting of the Turin G.allery are SS. Francis and Jerome ; ami the present Director of that Gallery is of opinion that both are by the same master, and that both — as Lermolieff was the first to notice, though neither of these interesting paintings are signed — are by the Brescian artist, Savoldo. The Louvre Gallery contains two male portraits (Nos. 1518, 1519) attributed to Savoldo : (1) Portrait of armed man against a glass, who is said to be Gaston de Foix — a ver)' clever portrait study ; (2) Grand por- trait of unknown man, black cap, grey-green robe, clean-shaved face, holds a letter in his gloved right hand. More important is the fine signed altar-piece of the Brera Gallery at Milan. The 'Virgin and Child' are represented with SS. Peter, Dominic, and Jerome ; this work comes from the church of St. Dominic at Pesaro. A study in black chalk, for the head of the fine ' St. Jerome in the Desert,' in the late Sir Henry Layard's Col- lection, is also in the Louvre Gallery. In S. Maria del Organo at Verona, in a side chapel on left, is a ' Virgin and Child in the Clouds,' with SS. Peter, Benedict, Zeno, and Paul. Aretino, in a letter dated December 1548, mentions Savoldo as one of the famous Venetian artists of that time, though already touching the decline of his powers ; and Cav. A. Venturi adds that the Aretine calls him a fanciful (capriccioso) painter, alluding in this con- nection especially to that ' Magdalen ' already mentioned. Had "Romanticism" been invent. d in Titian's age, the later epithet might have been preferred. The ' Head of a Youth,' in the Borghese Gallery at Rome, — a half-figure, Venetian in feeling, with full hair and hand extended — might be, according to Cav. Venturi, a study for the St. John of the Berlin Gallery ' Deposition.' In any case thi.s painting is a most interesting study — superb in colour and strong in drawing, the rich flesh tones contrasting efi'ectively with the white linen and dark-coloured jerkin.

Savoldo was long resident at Venice, and his 'Adoration of the Shepherds' in S. Giobbe of that city is of especial beauty. A replica of this picture is in the Tosio Gallery of Brescia. His name occurs twice in the pages of the 'Ano- nimo,' where I find — in the excellent version edited by Dr. Williamson — at Venice, in the house of Messer Andrea di Odoni, 1532, "the large figure of a woman, nude, lying down, painted on the back of the bed by Gerolamo SavoMo of Brescia"; and again, in the house of Messer Francesco Zio at Venice, 1512 — "The canvas, representing Christ washing the disciples' feet, is by Giovanni Gerolamo of Brescia." These two paintings have in neither case, to my know- ledge, hitherto been traced, although one is said to be in Bucharest. Coming to Florence, we find among the Venetians in the second "Sala," the 'Transfiguration of Christ' in the presence of SS. Peter, John, and James — a painting on wood. Both this, and the same subject in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, may be replicas of some original work by tlie artist on this subject ; but the visitor to Milan nmst on no account overlook the grand Brera altar-piece mentioned above. Aretino's verdict we have already seen, and it must be added that both Giorgio Vasari and Ridolfi (Delle Meraviglie dell' Arte) alike have a good word for this Brescian artist.

If he is less distinctively Brescian, in his technique and feeling, than his fellow-countrymen, Romanino, Jloretto, or Moroni, if he comes nearer to Giorgione and Titian in their glow of living colour, he yet marks a transition from the purely Venetian tradition. It is through his scenes of twilight mystery and light imprisoned in the folds of silk that we are a little later to reach those cool silvery flesh tints of the great Brescian portraitist, Gian Battista Moroni. S B