The History of Painting in Italy. Luigi Lanzi
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figures of the Virgin, the Baptist, and S. Jerome, and is at Torre Babbiana, eighteen miles from Siena.
What I have here related would have added to the glory of any other artist; but is little to the merit of Baldassare. The genius of this man was not limited to the production of excellent cabinet pictures and frescos. I have already said he was an architect; or, as Lomazzo has expressed it, a universal architect: and in this profession, the fruit of his assiduous study of ancient edifices, he ranks among the foremost, and is even preferred to Bramante. The encomiums bestowed on him by the most celebrated writers on architecture are mentioned in the third volume of the Sienese Letters.[290] No one, however, has done him greater honour than his scholar Serlio, who declares in the introduction to his fourth book, that, whatever merit his work possesses, is not due to himself, but to Baldassare da Siena, of whose manuscripts he became the heir, and the plagiarist, if we are to credit Giulio Piccolomini,[291] and his other townsmen. The declaration above stated absolves Serlio from this imputation, unless it is insisted that he ought to have affixed the name of Baldassare to every anecdote that he learnt or took from those manuscripts; a thing which it would be unreasonable to demand. He has, indeed, frequently mentioned him, and commended him for a sound taste, for facility, and elegance, both in designing edifices, and in ornamenting them. To say the truth, his peculiar merit lies in giving a pleasing effect to his works; and I have not observed any idea of his which in some way does not exhibit the stamp of a lively imagination. This character is apparent in the portico of the Massimi at Rome, the great altar of the metropolitan church of Siena, and the large gateway of the Sacrati palace at Ferrara, which is so finely ornamented that it is named among the rarities of that city, and, in its kind, even of Italy. But what chiefly establishes his reputation as a man of excellent and various genius, is the Farnese palace, which is "executed with such exquisite grace that it appears created by enchantment, rather than built by human hands."[292]
He was eminently skilled in ornamenting façades; in painting so as to represent real architecture, and basso-relievos of sacrifices, Bacchanalian scenes, and battles, which "serve to maintain the buildings sound and in good order, while they improve their appearance," according to Serlio.[293] He left fine specimens of this art at Siena and in Rome, where he was followed by Polidoro, who carried it to the summit of perfection. Peruzzi practised it at the Farnese palace in those pictures in green earth, with which he covered the outside, and still more in the internal decorations. Not to mention F. Sebastiano, Raffaello himself was employed in the same place: and in one apartment, finished without assistance, the celebrated Galatea. Baldassare painted the ceiling and the corbels with some fables of Perseus, and other heroes: the style is light, spirited, and resembles that of Raffaello, but is unequal to that of his model. Though inferior in figures he was not behind in some other branches. His imitation of stucco ornaments appears so relieved that even Titian was deceived by it, and found it necessary to change his point of view before he could be convinced of his error. A similar ocular deception is produced by the hall where a colonnade is represented, the intercolumniations of which make it appear much larger than it really is. This work induced Pietro Aretino to say, that the palace "contained no picture more perfect in its kind."[294] And if the scenes which he painted for the plays, represented in the Apostolical palace for the amusement of Leo X. had survived to our days, the perspective paintings of Peruzzi would have obtained greater fame than the Calandra of Card. da Bibbiena; and it would have been said of him, as of the ancient, that he discovered a new art, and brought it to perfection. The observation of Vasari, Lomazzo, and other old writers, that Peruzzi was not to be surpassed in perspective, has been recently confirmed by Sig. Milizia in the Memoirs of Architects. In this art he appears to me to have given the first and most classic examples. When I have occasion hereafter to notice celebrated perspectives in Rome, in Venice, or Bologna, we must recollect, that if others surpassed him in the vastness of their works, they never did so in their perfection. Maestro Riccio is praised in Siena as second to him in perspective, and was his scholar for some time; but afterwards he imitated the figures of his father-in-law.
The merit of Baldassare in grotesque is better seen at Siena than in Rome. This sort of painting, always the offspring of a whimsical fancy, was congenial to Mecherino and to Razzi; and both practised it with success. The latter seemed born to conceive and to execute it with unpremeditated facility; he painted in this style in the Vatican, and obtained the approbation of Raffaello, who was unwilling to cancel his grotesques as he did his historical compositions: he also executed some at Monte Oliveto that are highly facetious, and may be called an image of his own brain. Cristoforo Rustici and Giorgio da Siena obtained great fame in this style; but none of them equalled Peruzzi. This artist, graceful in all his works, was most elegant in grotesque; and amid the freedom that a subject wholly capricious inspires, he preserved an art which Lomazzo has studied, in order to comprehend its principles. He employs every species of idea; satyrs, masks, children, animals, monsters, edifices, trees, flowers, vases, candelabra, lamps, armour, and thunderbolts; but in their arrangement, in the actions represented, and in every other circumstance, he bridled his caprice by his judgment. He distorts and connects those images with a surprising symmetry, and adapts them as devices emblematic of the stories which they surround. This man, living in the brightest period of modern art, is in short, one of the individuals most interesting in its history. He had many pupils in architecture, but few in painting: among the latter are a Francesco Senese, and a Virgilio Romano, who are commended by Vasari for their frescos, and to whom grotesques, of uncertain origin, are sometimes attributed in Siena.
Somewhat later, but certainly before the complete revival of the art at Siena, I am disposed to class a fresco painter, whom Baglione and Titi call Matteo da Siena; but who is named Matteino in his native place, that he may not be confounded with the Matteo of the fourteenth century. He lived at Rome in the time of Niccolò Circignani, in whose pictures, and in those of artists of the same class, he inserted perspectives and landscapes. The efforts of his pencil may be seen at S. Stefano Rotondo, in thirty-two historical pictures of martyrs painted by Circignani, which have been engraved by Cavalieri. Many of his landscapes are in the Vatican gallery, which are beautiful, although in the old style. At the age of fifty-five he died at Rome, where he was established in the pontificate of Sixtus V. These circumstances make it appear to me unlikely, that he had painted in the Casino of Siena, about 1551, or in the Lucarini palace, along with Rustichino: the first period I consider too early, and the latter too late.
I shall now give some account of the chiaroscuros executed in mosaic, which owe their perfection to the school of Siena, during the epoch of which we are about to finish our account. I have already mentioned the erection of the magnificent cathedral of Siena, a work of many years; and may now add, that though it was grand in all its parts, nothing shewed such originality, or was so generally admired as the pavement around the great altar, all storied with subjects taken from the New Testament, of which the figures were surrounded by appropriate ornaments, which served to vary and divide the immense ground of the painting. A succession of artists always labouring to improve this work, carried it in a few years to an astonishing pitch of excellence. The nature of the stone quarries in the Sienese territory, afforded also facilities to the art which could not be so easily attained in other places. It originated like other arts from small and rude beginnings. Duccio commenced this ornamented pavement. The part which he executed is constructed of stones, in which the limbs and contours of the figures are scooped out: it is a dry but not ungraceful production of the thirteenth century. The young woman in the choir who kneels with her arms leaning on a cross, and, as an inscription informs us, implores the mercy of the Lord, is the work of Duccio: it probably represents Christian piety; and certainly both the attitude and the countenance are expressive of what she asks. Those who continued the pavement immediately after Duccio, are not so well known. We read of an Urbano da Cortona, and an Antonio Federighi, who designed and executed the two Sybils; the rest was in like manner the work of artists of little note. They all, however, improved the art in some degree, cutting the figures with the chisel, and filling up what was removed by the iron, with pitch or some