Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/812

 798 PAINTING Supper " in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan. The earnest, simple faith and spiritual treatment of the early painters now gave way in a measure to the realistic tendencies of the age. Less was left to the imagination and feelings, and in place of sacred history and legends of the church, pagan my- thology, which the recent revival of classic literature and art had made familiar to the public mind, began to afford subjects to the painter. As in the corresponding period in the history of Greek art, technical excellence was rapidly approaching its highest point, and increasing wealth and luxury multiplied the production of pictures for private purposes. The painter was no longer a public teacher of religion or morals, as in the days of Giot- to or Orcagna; and as his public functions were superseded by his private ones, the art began to decline. Undoubtedly the very per- fection attained contributed materially to this result. Contemporary Florentine masters of this period were Fra Bartolommeo di San Marco and Andrea del Sarto, both of the high- est excellence ; Bernardino Luini, whose works are frequently mistaken for those of Leonar- do; Bazzi Vercelli, known as II Soddoma; Lorenzo di Oredi ; and Michel Angelo Buonar- roti, preeminent as painter, sculptor, and ar- chitect. This great master neglected illusive effects, despised oil painting, and aimed at the expression of life and power through action and movement ; and the almost exclusive at- tention which he gave to the definition of form, the result doubtless of his cultivation of the three sister arts, made the development of physical qualities thenceforth the chief char- acteristic of the Florentine school. Of the daring heights to which he attained in his efforts toward grandeur of form and sublim- ity of expression, the frescoes of the Sistine chapel afford a memorable illustration; al- though here, side by side with his prophets and sibyls, looking " like beings to whom God has spoken and who have never since ceased meditating on the awful voice," are groups and single figures of such startling novelty of ex- pression and action as to constitute a legacy of questionable value to the student of form. His influence was overwhelming in Florence, and almost every artist who came within its reach lost his individuality, and in attempting to follow him only debased art and proved his own mediocrity. Yet some were excellent painters, including Daniele di Yolterra, cele- brated for his "Descent from the Cross;" Vasari, the biographer of Italian artists ; Se- bastian del Piombo, the Zuccari, and Angelo Bronzino. During the first quarter of the 16th century the grand climax of art was reached, and within that period the greatest painters of modern times flourished together, exercising in some sort a reciprocal influence, but each working out his own peculiar aims. Before the middle of the century a steady decline was discernible, not in Florence alone, but all over Italy, Venice perhaps excepted ; and as the great masters one by one dropped off, they were succeeded by crowds of servile manner- ists, who painted rapidly and carelessly to meet the increasing and not very discrimina- ting demand for pictures, and whose works, even when devoted to sacred subjects, had in them "more of earth than of heaven." " We paint six pictures in a year," says Vasari, " while the earlier masters took six years to a picture;" a remark which his own practice strikingly illustrated. The latter part of the century, however, witnessed a fresh develop- ment in the Florentine school, and Ludovico Cardi, called Cigoli, introduced a new style, distinguished by careful drawing and brilliant coloring ; but few names of note occur among his followers, except that of Carlo Dolci, a careful painter of female heads. Pietro da Cortona about the middle of the 17th century introduced a florid, ornamental style of fresco r'nting, the followers of which were called the Italians the machinisti. Little can be said of Florentine painting after this. Paint- ing seems to have made little progress in Ven- ice previous to the time of Giotto, and during the 14th century no works of any considerable importance were produced. Indeed, the By- zantine style, which its 'painters exclusively practised, continued in favor for upward of a century after the Florentines had renounced it. The little island of Murano may be considered the nursery of Venetian art, and Giovanni and Antonio da Murano, with their pupils Barto- lommeo and Luigi Vivarini, its first masters. Commercial intercourse had familiarized them with the works of German and Flemish paint- ers, the rich and vivid coloring of which was readily adopted by contemporary Venetian artists, although until near the middle of the 15th century they designed with an antique severity borrowed from their neighbors the Paduans. Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, sons of Jacopo Bellini, were the first great artists of the school, as they were among the first in Italy to substitute oil painting for distem- per. With a tendency to elaborate finish, and a dry though correct manner, their works are distinguished by sweetness and purity of ex- pression, and afford a foretaste of that rich coloring which subsequently became the chief characteristic of Venetian art, and which re- flected the cheerful and festive spirit of the people. With the opening of the 16th century commenced a new epoch in the history of the school, and the genius of two scholars of the Bellinis, Giorgione and Titian, created a style in which a bold and decided handling, and a " golden glow " of color, with great truthful- ness of detail in landscape, draperies, and other accessories, were marked features. The former died early, but Titian, who long survived his great contemporaries of the early part of the century, reached the summit of his art in his- tory, landscape, and portraiture, and stamped the school of Venice as incontestably the first