Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/496

 484 FRESCO PAINTING 1335, representing the last judgment, hell, and the triumph of death, are considered among the grandest specimens of early art. To these succeeded Simone di Martino, Taddeo Gaddi, Francesco da Yolterra, Antonio Veneziano, Pietro d'Orvieto, and others, whose labors ex- tended to the close of the century. Pietro d'Orvieto's designs, representing subjects from Genesis, were probably the earliest works in luon fresco, the joinings of the plaster being so frequent, as compared with earlier wall paintings, that the amount of work in each portion must have been finished at once. The wars and internal dissensions which distracted Pisa interrupted the decoration of the Campo Santo for many years ; but tranquillity having been restored, Benozzo Gozzoli was invited in 1468 to complete the work. The whole of the north wall, upward of 400 ft. long, was as- signed to him, and in the next 16 years he cov- ered this immense space with a series of fres- coes representing the principal events in the Old Testament, described by Vasari as urC opera terribilissima. Besides the works enu- merated as belonging to the 14th century, we may mention Giotto's celebrated series in the Arena chapel at Padua, representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the same master's recently discovered portraits of Dante and other Florentine citizens in the chapel of the Bargello at Florence ; the series by Taddeo Gaddi and Simone di Martino in the Spanish chapel in the church of Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, representing the "Triumph of the Church;" Spinello's "Overthrow of the Rebel Angels " in the convent of S. Agnolo, at Arez- zo ; and the series representing the " Fruits of Good Government and the Triumph of Peace," painted by Ambrosio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Publico of Siena. In the 15th century, to the latter half of which belongs the so-called re- naissance or new birth, when the study of the remains of ancient sculpture infused a new life into art, increased wealth and intelligence caused an increased demand for easel pictures, the value of which was greatly enhanced by the introduction of oil as a medium for mixing col- ors ; but fresco painting still maintained its su- premacy, and claimed for its function the re- ligious and moral teaching of the people, by the representation of sacred history. The noblest achievements in art are therefore still those of the fresco painters. The great names of the century are Pietro della Francesca, whose frescoes in the church of S. Francesco in Arez- so, Vasari says, " might be called too beautiful and excellent for the time in which they were painted;" Masolino; Filippo Lippi, who paint- ed the frescoes in the duomo at Prato; Fra Angelico da Fiesole ; Masaccio, whose series of the life of St. Peter in the Brancacci chapel in the church of Sta. Maria del Carmine, in Florence, to which additions were afterward made by Filippino Lippi, formed an epoch in art; and Ghirlandaio, the master of Michel Angelo, whose frescoes representing the his- tories of John the Baptist and the Virgin af- forded models for Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michel Angelo. Luca Signorelli, Andrea Mantegna, the great founder of the Mantuan school, Francesco Francia, who decorated the church of St. Cecilia in Bologna, Perugino, the master of Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo, and some others, belong partly to this century and part- ly to the next, which witnessed at once the cul- mination of the art of fresco painting, and its corruption and decline. The three most illus- trious painters of this latter era, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michel Angelo, embodied their loftiest conceptions on the walls and ceil- ings of churches and palaces, and their numer- ous disciples filled Italy with imitations, degen- erating toward the close of the century into lifeless mannerisms. Leonardo's chief work is the well known "Last Supper," executed for the refectory of the convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Milan, of which only the mouldering remains are now visible. It has been called the most perfect work executed since the revival of painting. Of Michel Angelo's fres- coes, the most famous are the series on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, representing the "Creation" and the "Fall of Man," with the noble figures of the prophets and sibyls ; and the "Last Judgment," on the end wall of the chapel the whole combining to a degree never since equalled grandeur of form and sublimity of expression. Raphael's frescoes exhibit perhaps, in the aggregate, the highest development of Christian art. The most fa- mous are those covering the walls and ceilings of the chambers in the Vatican, known as the "Stanze of Raphael," although many of these works, as well as the decorations of the log- gie or open colonnades of the Vatican, were painted by Giulio Romano and other scholars of Raphael from his designs. Raphael's hand is seen chiefly in the series of "Theology" or the " Dispute of the Sacrament," " Phi- losophy " or the " School of Athens," " Poetry " or "Parnassus," and "Jurisprudence," in the Camera della Segnatura; and in the "Expul- sion of Heliodorus from the Temple," the "Mass at Bolsena," " Attila," and the "De- livery of St. Peter," in the stanza of Heliodorus. He also painted the four celebrated sibyls in the Chigi chapel in the church of Sta. Maria della Pace, and the " Galatea" in the villa Farnesina in Rome. The frescoes in the Vatican, having suffered by neglect, were skilfully restored by Carlo Maratti at the beginning of the 18th cen- tury. Giulio Romano also designed and partly executed the well known "Fall of the Giants" in the palazzo del Te at Mantua. Shortly after the completion of the works in the Vatican, Cor- reggio painted in the church of S. Giovanni in Parma his fresco of the "Ascension," and that of the "Assumption " in the duomo of the same city, in both of which the art of chiaroscuro and relief is carried to perfection. Parmigiano, his pupil, left unfinished some frescoes in the Stec- cata at Parma, in which a figure of Moses