Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/109

 of St Paul.” The list of his engravings in 1510, when, according to van Mander, he was only sixteen, includes subjects as various as a celebrated “Ecce Homo,” “Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise,” a herdsman and a milkmaid with three cows, and a little naked girl running away from a barking dog. Whatever may be thought of the tradition embodied in van Mander’s pages as to the true age of Lucas van Leyden, there is no doubt that, as early as 1508, he was a master of repute as a copperplate engraver. It was the time when art found patrons among the public that could ill afford to buy pictures, yet had enough interest in culture to satisfy itself by means of prints. Lucas van Leyden became the representative man for the public of Holland as Dürer for that of Germany; and a rivalry grew up between the two engravers, which came to be so close that on the neutral market of Italy the products of each were all but evenly quoted. Vasari affirmed that Dürer surpassed Lucas as a designer, but that in the use of the graver they were both unsurpassed, a judgment which has not been reversed. But the rivalry was friendly. About the time when Dürer visited the Netherlands Lucas went to Antwerp, which then flourished as an international mart for productions of the pencil and the graver, and it is thought that he was the master who took the freedom of the Antwerp gild in 1521 under the name of Lucas the Hollander. In Dürer’s diary kept during his travels in the Low Countries, we find that at Antwerp he met Lucas, who asked him to dinner, and that Dürer accepted. He valued the art of Lucas at its true figure, and exchanged the Dutchman’s prints for eight florins’ worth of his own. In 1527 Lucas made a tour of the Netherlands, giving dinners to the painters of the gilds of Middleburg, Ghent, Malines and Antwerp. He was accompanied during the trip by Mabuse, whom he imitated in his style as well as in his love of rich costume. On his return home he fell sick and remained ailing till his death in 1533, and he believed that poison had been administered to him by some envious comrade.

A few days before his death Lucas van Leyden was informed of the birth of a grandson, first-born of his only daughter Gretchen. Gretchen’s fourth son followed the profession of his grandfather, and became well known at the Parisian court as painter and chamberlain to the king of France, Henry IV.

As an engraver Lucas van Leyden deserves his reputation. He has not the genius, nor had he the artistic tact, of Dürer; and he displays more cleverness of expression than skill in distribution or in refinement in details. But his power in handling the graver is great, and some of his portraits, especially his own, are equal to anything by the master of Nüremberg. Much that he accomplished as a painter has been lost, because he worked a good deal upon cloth in distemper. In 1522 he painted the “Virgin and Child with the Magdalen and a Kneeling Donor,” now in the gallery of Munich. His manner was then akin to that of Mabuse. The “Last Judgment” in the town-gallery of Leiden is composed on the traditional lines of Cristus and Memling, with monsters in the style of Jerom Bosch and figures in the stilted attitudes of the South German school; the scale of colours in yellow, white and grey is at once pale and gaudy, the quaintest contrasts are produced by the juxtaposition of alabaster flesh in females and bronzed skin in males, or black hair by the side of yellow, or rose-coloured drapery set sharply against apple-green or black; yet some of the heads are painted with great delicacy and modelled with exquisite feeling. Dr Waagen gave a favourable opinion of a triptych now at the Hermitage at St Petersburg, executed, according to van Mander, in 1531, representing the “Blind Man of Jericho healed by Jesus Christ.” Here too the German critic observed the union of faulty composition with great finish and warm flesh-tints with a gaudy scale of colours. The same defects and qualities will be found in such specimens as are preserved in public collections, among which may be mentioned the “Card Party” at Wilton House, the “Penitent St Jerome” in the gallery of Berlin, and the hermits “Paul” and “Anthony” in the Liechtenstein collection at Vienna. There is a characteristic “Adoration of the Magi” at Buckingham Palace.

LUCCA (anc. Luca), a town and archiepiscopal see of Tuscany, Italy, capital of the province of Lucca, 13 m. by rail N.E. of Pisa. Pop. (1901) 43,566 (town); 73,465 (commune). It is situated 62 ft. above the level of the sea, in the valley of the Serchio, and looks out for the most part on a horizon of hills and mountains. The fortifications, pierced by four gates, were begun in 1504 and completed in 1645, and long ranked among the most remarkable in the peninsula. They are still well-preserved and picturesque, with projecting bastions planted with trees.

The city has a well-built and substantial appearance, its chief attraction lying in the numerous churches, which belong in the main to a well-marked basilican type, and present almost too richly decorated exteriors, fine apsidal ends and quadrangular campaniles, in some cases with battlemented summits, and windows increasing in number as they ascend. In style they are an imitation of the Pisan. It is remarkable that in the arcades a pillar generally occupies the middle of the façade. The cathedral of St Martin was begun in 1063 by Bishop Anselm (later Pope Alexander II.); but the great apse with its tall columnar arcades and the fine campanile are probably the only remnants of the early edifice, the nave and transepts having been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 14th century, while the west front was begun in 1204 by Guidetto (lately identified with Guido Bigarelli of Como), and “consists of a vast portico of three magnificent arches, and above them three ranges of open galleries covered with all the devices of an exuberant fancy.” The ground plan is a Latin cross, the nave being 273 ft. in length and 84 ft. in width, and the transepts 144 ft. in length. In the nave is a little octagonal temple or chapel, which serves as a shrine for the most precious of the relics of Lucca, a cedar-wood crucifix, carved, according to the legend, by Nicodemus, and miraculously conveyed to Lucca in 782. The Sacred Countenance (Volto Santo), as it is generally called, because the face of the Saviour is considered a true likeness, is only shown thrice a year. The chapel was built in 1484 by Matteo Civitali, a local sculptor of the early Renaissance (1436–1501); he was the only master of Tuscany outside Florence who worked thoroughly in the Florentine style, and his creations are among the most charming works of the Renaissance. The cathedral contains several other works by him—the tomb of P. da Noceto, the altar of S. Regulus and the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia of Siena (described by Ruskin in Modern Painters, ii.), the earliest of his extant works (1406), and one of the earliest decorative works of the Renaissance. In one of the chapels is a fine Madonna by Fra Bartolommeo; in the municipal picture gallery are a fine “God the Father” and another Madonna by him; also some sculptures by Civitali, and some good wood carving, including choir stalls. In the cathedral choir is good stained glass of 1485. The church of St Michael, founded in the 8th century, and built of marble within and without, has a lofty and magnificent western façade (1188)—an architectural screen rising much above the roof of the church. The interior is good but rather bare. The church of St Martino at Arliano near Lucca belongs to the first half of the 8th century; it is of basilican plan (see G. T. Rivoira, Origini dell’ Architettura Lombarda, iii. [Rome, 1901] 138). St Frediano or Frigidian dates originally from the 7th century, but was built in the Romanesque style in 1112–1147, though the interior, originally with four aisles and nave, shows traces of the earliest structure; the front occupies the site of the ancient apse; in one of its chapels is the tomb of Santa Zita, patroness of servants and of Lucca itself. In S. Francesco, a fine Gothic church, is the tomb of Castruccio Castracane. San Giovanni (originally of the 12th century), S. Cristoforo, San Romano (rebuilt in the 17th century, by Vincenzo Buonamici), and Santa Maria Forisportam (of the 12th century) also deserve mention.

Among the secular buildings are the old ducal palace, begun in 1578 by Ammanati, and now the residence of the prefect and seat of the provincial officers and the public picture gallery; the early Renaissance Palazzo Pretorio, or former residence of the podestà, now the seat of the civil and correctional courts; the palace, erected in the 15th century by a member of the Guinigi family, of brick, in the Italian Gothic style, and now serving as a poor-house; the 16th-century palace of the marquis Guidiccioni, now used as a depository for the archives, the earliest documents going back to 790. The Palazzo Mansi contains a collection of Dutch pictures. There are several other fine late 16th-century palaces. The principal market-place in the city (Piazza del Mercato) has taken possession of the arena of the