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THE ART OF THE

Renaissance

Frontispiece

Antonello da Messina

St Jerome in his Study

THE ART OF THE

RENAISSANCE
Peter and Linda

Murray

FREDERICK

A.

PRAEGER,

Publisher

NEW YORK

c5

BOOKS THAT MATTER

Published in the United States of America in 1963

by Frederick A. Pracgcr,
64 University Place,
All
rights reserved

Inc.,

PubUsher
3,

New

York

N.Y.

p.

AND

L.

MURRAY

T963

Library of Congress Catalog Card

Number: 63-18834
Norwich

Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold and Sons Ltd,

Contents

Page

ycHAPTERoy^
Introduction

The

Renaissance

Humanism

Classical

Antiquity
Historical

Changing conceptions of Renaissance

Background

17

CHAPTER TWO
The
arts

of Florence 1400-1450

the International

Gothic Style

the Heroic Style of Masaccio

Donatello,

Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Alberti

63

CHAPTER THREE The Netherlands and Bohemia the the Eyckian Revolution, Campin

Soft Style

89

CHAPTER FOUR The mid-century

Francesca

in Italy: Florence

Mantegna

Piero della

Siena

145

CHAPTER

FIVE
in the Netherlands:

The mid-century

Rogier van der

Weyden

Bouts and Memlinc

France,

Germany

(Cologne), Spain and Portugal, Austria

181

CHAPTER

SIX

Printing and early illustrated books

Engraving

Diirer

203

CHAPTER SEVEN Late Gothic Hugo van

der Goes

Bosch

Griinewald

Botticelli

Filippino

Piero di

Cosimo

227

CHAPTER EIGHT
Leonardo da Vinci and the Milanese Renaissance

247

CHAPTER NINE
Perugino and Early Classicism
Messina

Ghirlandaio

Antonello da

Venice

Bellini

267

CHAPTER TEN
The Beginnings of the High
Renaissance

280 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 286 INDEX OF

AND ARTISTS

NAMES

all those Museums, Galleries and private have been kind enough to allow works in their possession to be reproduced in this book. They are also grateful to The Viking Press Inc. for permission to quote from The Portable Kenaissance Reader, edited by Ross and McLaughhn, New York, 1958, on pages 8-9 and 12-15, The passages from Alberti's 0 Painting appearing on page 116 are from the translation of John R. Spencer, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1956, and the quotation on page 15 is from W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissance, Henry Holt and Co. Inc., New York, 1940.

The

Publishers wish to thank

collectors

who

Chapter One

Renaissance

is a word which which few people would care

is

very generally understood, but

to define very closely. This

book

is

almost entirely about the Early Renaissance, about the formation of

that style in the arts which, culminating in

Leonardo da Vinci,

Michelangelo, and Raphael,

aesthetic quality.
earlier

is still
is

generally used as a touchstone of

The period

usually reckoned to begin in Italy

than elsewhere, in the fifteenth century or at some point in

the fourteenth century, perhaps as early as Giotto (died 1337), and

to

end

in the sixteenth century, at

any time

after the

death of Raphael
itself

(1520) and before that of Tintoretto (1594).

'rebirth',

The word
Italians

means

and there can be no doubt that the

their
all

of the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries regarded

superior to

the ages since the

fall

of the

own times as immensely Roman Empire (that is,

this

about a thousand years earher), and in

largely concurred.
after a sleep

opinion posterity has

quotation can

The

idea of the rebirth of letters and of the arts

is

of

thousand years

an Itahan one,

as

easily establish. Marsilio Ficino, writing to

Paul of Middelburg in

1492, says: 'This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the
liberal arts,

which were almost

extinct:

grammar, poetry,

rhetoric,

painting, sculpture, architecture, music, the ancient singing of songs

to the Orphic lyre, and all this in Florence. Achieving what had been honoured among the ancients, but almost forgotten since, the age has joined wisdom with eloquence, and prudence with the mihtary art, and this most strikingly in Federigo, Duke of Urbino, as if proclaimed in the presence of Pallas herself. ... In you also, my dear Paul, this century appears to have perfected astronomy, and in Florence it has recalled the Platonic teaching from darkness into .' Haifa century light. earher, the same ideas were expressed by
. .

Lorenzo Valla
'the glory

in proclaiming the perfections

of the Latin language:

rust

of Latinity was allowed to decay in

are the opinions

and mould.

And
this

many, indeed, and varied

happened.
I

of wise

men on how

neither accept nor reject any of these, daring only to

declare soberly that those arts

liberal arts, the arts

which

are

most

closely related to the

of painting, sculpture, modelling, and archi-

tecture,

had degenerated for so long and so greatly and had almost

died with letters themselves, and that in this age they have been'

aroused and

come
and

to

life

again, so greatly increased

flourish.

is
.

the
.'
.

number of
Thus, the

good

artists

men of letters who now

arts.

Renaissance was thought of both as a revival of good Latin literature

and of the figurative

ing importance which the

One reason for the apparently overwhelmmen of the age attached to good Latinity
it

was, of course, the fact that

was the

common tongue of all educated

new European
states

men a
less

tiny proportion

of the population in any country; another,

obvious, reason was the fact that the

into existence; some, like France

were

coming

and England, with centralItalian states,

ized monarchies, and others, like

most of the
states

indepen-

dent merchant communities. These

administrative
a living thing.
class,

needed

professional
still

well grounded in

Roman Law, which was

They were

inevitably exponents of the new, lay,

learning, which, like the professional studies of the clergy,

was based
art

on

Latin.
first

Giorgio Vasari, the painter, wrote the

history in 1550
(it

important book on

additions, in 1568),
as a rebirth

was so successful that it was reprinted, with many and he shared this view of the revival of the arts
after the

of antiquity
as:

long sleep of the Middle Ages. In

the Preface to his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

we find

such statements
clearly

'But in order that

it

may

be understood more

what I call "old" and what "ancient", the "ancient" were the works made before Constantine in Corinth, in Athens, in Rome, and in other very famous cities until the time of Nero, the Vespasians, Trajan, Hadrian and Antonius; whereas those others are called "old" that were executed from St Sylvester's day up to that time by a certain remnant of Greeks, who knew rather how to dye than how For having seen in what way art, from a small beginto paint. ning, climbed to the greatest height, and how from a state so noble
. .

she
art

fell
is

into utter ruin,

and

that, in

consequence, the nature of

like

this

similar to that

of the others, which,

human

bodies, have

their birth, their

growth, their growing old and their death; they

risen again

will

now
.

be able to recognize more easily the progress of her second

birth

and of that very perfection whereto she has

.'
.

m our

times.

This self-confident view met with approval in the nineteenth

century, and in 1855
sance' used

we

fmd, for the

first

time, the

word

'Renais-

by

the French historian Michelet

as

an adjective to
to the rebirth

describe a

whole period of history and not confined

or a classically inspired style in the
arts.

of Latin

letters

Very soon

i860 to be precise

in

it

came

to

have some of that over -life-size

all Italians

were conscious expoall Popes either nents of virtu, all monsters like Alexander VI or splendidly enhghtened patrons hke Julius II and Leo X. The choice between these latter was not infrequently connected with the political and religious sympathies of the individual historian. Incomparably the greatest monument of
glamour which
still

lingers;

when

statesmen Machiavellian, and

this

approach to history
first

is

Renaissance in Italy,

published in i860 and

Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the still an influential

It was followed, and reinforced for English readers, by John Addington Symonds's Renaissance in Italy. Both these books present a rather romantic account of the period, in which the exuberance of the ItaHan temperament is occasionally taken at its face value, with results that might have surprised the principals. Symonds was by temperament and upbringing almost entirely antipathetic to everything valuable in Italian civilization, and he wrote from a position which almost automatically disqualified him from a true understanding of the Renaissance yet his very weaknesses enabled him -to write a biography of Michelangelo with sympathy and insight into at least some aspects" of that strange genius. Burckhardt's pupil and successor, Heinrich Wolfflin, was in some ways more successful. His Classic Art, first published in 1899, deals with the art of the Italian Renaissance from an almost exclusively formal point of view, and its analyses of the works of art themselves have hardly been surpassed: on the other hand, Wolfflin did not really attempt to explain the art of the period in terms of anything

book.

but aesthetic impulses, and Magdalen

it is

short-sighted to imagine that the

late Pietas

subhme pathos of Michelangelo's

tello's
'I

or the fervour of Dona-

{plate 2)

were inspired

solely

by

Will-to-Form.
is

This avoidance of the fundamental inspiration of Renaissance art

on

a par
is

with the current improper usage of the word Humanism:

that ItaHan art

the fact

of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, even

is

when
in

treating a 'classical' subject,

entirely Christian in

its

roots and

its meaning. Even Botticelli's The Allegory of Spring [plate 1) has been shown to have a Christian interpretation, esoteric and elaborated though it may be; and there can be no doubt that Masaccio and

Donatello, Piero della Francesca and Bellini, were overtly or implicitly Christian, just as

much

as

Fra Angelico or Michelangelo.

A
to

century ago

it

was imagined, because BotticelH painted the

because Alberti in his

Birth of

Venus

[plate igo),

De

re aedificatoria refers

'temples'

and

'the gods', or because

Humanist poets wrote about

Mars and Venus or treated astrology seriously, that all these sensible and educated men were neo-pagans, anxious only to promote irreligion and to follow (somewhat tardily) in the footsteps ofJulian the Apostate. This fallacy has been encouraged by the modern misuse of the word Humanism to mean 'non-Divine', a sort of substitute rehgion in which Man is not only the measure of all things but also
his

own

end: thus the

modern

atheist seeks to

supply himself with

a spurious ancestry in Pico della

Mirandola or Marsilio Ficino.

in the Renaissance was humanitas, a word Leonardo Bruni from Cicero and Aulus Gellius to mean adapted by worthy of the dignity of man. those studies which are 'humane' (The word Humanity still survives in the Scottish universities with the meaning of Latin and Greek literature.) They were, of course, distinct from theological studies, but distinction need not imply opposition, and it is essential to realize that the new secular learning was parallel to the older clerical studies rather than opposed to them. Secular learning of some kinds law, or medicine was not new; what was novel was the study of language, Hterature, and philosophy in a new context. This is one explanation for the hero-worshipping attitude to antiquity and especially to the great masters of Latinity the Humanists were amateurs in theology or medicine, but avid professionals in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and the study of

In fact.

Humanism

10

'Ih^

rf

;ak%

kHy^''- -.::.
Botticelli Primavera, The Allegory of Spring

Latin (and

some Greek)

authors: they invented textual criticism and

philology in their concern to re-create antique

prose.

They

naturally quoted extensively

they did not distinguish

wisdom and elegant from classical writers, but sharply between pagan and Christian classics

(except to prefer Cicero's Latin to St Jerome's).

A recent historian of
The
Classic,
it

Humanism,
Scholastic,

P.

O.
it

Kristeller, in Renaissance
Strains, has

Thought:

and Humanistic

described

thus:

'We

can

understand what

meant

for a Renaissance humanist with religious

convictions to attack scholastic theology and to advocate a return to

It meant that these were themselves the product of antiquity, were considered as the Christian classics which shared the prestige and authority of classical antiquity and to which the same methods of historical and philological scholarship could be applied.' This is

the Bibhcal and patristic sources of Christianity.

sources,

which

after all

equally true of Renaissance

artists.

Donatello

is

perhaps the best

example, but most of the leading figures of the fifteenth century

II

used Early Christian and Late

Roman
flowing

art as a

source-book, often

preferring the dramatic and expressive quahties o( Early Christian

art

to

the

smoother, more

forms

of the

Augustan
at

period.

Vitruvius was
least

a text

book

for architects, but the text

from
little

the second decade of the fifteenth century

known was so obscure

architecture
as

that

attention

surprisingly free

was paid from the

to

it,

and, in actual

fact,

was
all

precise imitation

of extant remains

through the fifteenth century: the real cult of Antiquity

to be imitated very closely hardly dates

something
early

from before the

sixteenth century.

Poggio Bracciolini, who is supposed to have rediscovered a manuof Vitruvius in the Swiss monastery of St Gall, wrote a noble lament on the Ruins of Rome and the Mutability of Fortune, which perfectly expresses the nostalgia for the Roman past and the longing of the best minds of the fifteenth century for that Romantic conception of the Golden Age which they hoped to recapture and to bring to a rebirth on Italian soil. In 1430, before any serious attempt had been made by anyone but Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Michelozzo in Florence to re-create the actual architectural forms of the Romans, Poggio wrote: 'Not long ago Antonio Lusco and I used to contemplate the desert places of the city with wonder in our hearts as we reflected on the former greatness of the broken buildings and the vast ruins of the ancient city, and again on the truly prodigious and astounding fall of its great empire and the deplorable inconstancy of fortune. Here, after he had looked about for some time, sighing and as if struck dumb, Antonio declared, "Oh, Poggio, how remote are these ruins from the Capitol that our Virgil celebrated: 'Golden now. once bristling with thorn bushes.' How justly one can transpose this verse and say: 'Golden once, now rough with thorns and overgrown with briars.' But truly I cannot compare the tremendous ruin of Rome to that of any other city; this one disaster so exceeds the calamities of all other cities. '"Surely this city is to be mourned over which once produced so many illustrious men and emperors, so many leaders in war, which was the nurse of so many excellent rulers, the parent of so many and such great virtues, the mother of so many good arts, the city from
script
. .
. .

12

DONATELLO
Magdalen
i
'

;,a

which flowed mihtary discipHne, purity of morals andUfe, the decrees of the law, the models of all the virtues, and the knowledge of right living. She who was once mistress of the world is now, by the injustice of fortune, which overturns all things, not only despoiled of her empire and her majesty, but delivered over to the basest servitude, misshapen and degraded, her ruins alone showing forth her former dignity and greatness.
.
.

13

city, both pubHc and private, seemed would vie with immortality itself, now in part destroyed entirely, in part broken and overturned these buildings ." were beheved to lie beyond the reach of fortune. 'Then I answered, "You may well wonder, Antonio. For of all the pubHc and private buildings of this once free city, only some few broken remnants are seen. There survive on the Capitoline the double tier of arcades set into a new building, now a receptacle of the

'"Yet truly these buildings of the

it

which

Q. Lutatius, Q. F., and Q. Catulus, the consuls, had charge of making the substructure and the Tabularium; this is an
public
salt
.
. .

that

edifice to

be revered for

its

very antiquity.
trivial,
. . .

'"This will perhaps seem

these

but

it

moves me

greatly, that to
statues,

monuments

may add

only these five marble

four

in the Baths of Constantine,

of Phidias and Praxiteles of Mars.

. . .

two standing beside two recHning, and the

horses

the work
forum
statue,
.

fifth in the

And

there

is

only one gilded bronze equestrian

which was presented to the Lateran basilica by Septimius Severus. '"This Capitoline hill, once the head and centre of the Roman Empire and the citadel of the whole world, before which every king and prince trembled, the hill ascended in triumph by so many emperors and once adorned with the gifts and spoils of so many and
.

such great peoples, the cynosure of all the world,

lated

now

lies

so deso-

and ruined, and so changed from

of dung and
filth.

its

earlier condition, that vines

have replaced the benches of the senators, and the Capitol has become
a receptacle
."'
. .

The shadow of Rome

was
sufficient to ensure

thus lay always over the Italy of the

letters

Humanists, and any contribution to the restoration of arts and

immortahty for

a writer, an artist, or a

patron. Thus,
historian

some

thirty years after Poggio's threnody, Platina, the

of the Popes, records that Nicholas V,

who had

himself

been a professional Humanist, 'began the great vault for the apse of
St Peter's, popularly called a tribune,

by which

the church itself

is

made more

splendid and capable of holding

more

people.

He
the

restored the Milvian bridge and erected a princely palace to house

the baths of Viterbo.

streets

And
is

it

was by

his decree that

almost

all

of

Rome were

cleared and paved.' Platina records that

fittingly inscribed:

'On

his sepulchre this

epitaph

Here

lie

the bones of

14


the fifth

Pope Nicholas, who

.'
.

restored the golden age to you,

Rome.

Aristocratic societies tend to look

ancestors, but the Italians

back to the achievements of their

of the Renaissance looked much further

spiritual ancestors in ancient

back into history, to fnid their

This was because they

Rome.

knew

they were attempting something no

feudal society could understand, let alone emulate.

in
its

Modern

society

and political aspects at any rate was Middle Ages. The Great Schism of the fourteenth century and the exile of the Papacy in Avignon meant that the one great central (but not hereditary) power was removed from the Italian scene, and the oligarchical societies of Florence and Venice were able to estabUsh themselves as the leading powers of Italy: the ascendancy of Venice was maritime, that of Florence fmancial. The skill of the Florentines in banking operations and in large-scale enterprises involving international commerce, mostly in the wool trade, meant everyday dealings with England and Burgundy, which in turn meant a very high average of education and culture among the Florentine ruling classes. These classes eventually became the patrons and supporters of the new Humanist art, and, in due time, formed the public which bought the books made available by printing; they were able to exploit their own abilities far more freely than the feudal aristocracy, confined as they were to the Church or to a relatively brutish military career. 'The Medici family produced numbers of cultured bankers and wool-merchants, a pohtician with a taste for Platonic philosophy, a poet prince, two popes and a
managerial,
capitalist,

born

in Italy in the Late

condottiere.'

The numerous Italian schools of painting arose from the different; factors in each town Venice, for example, with its Eastern interests, would naturally be more Byzantine in outlook than Florence.

Florence, virtually dominated by the Medici family for sixty years from 1434, lies at the heart of the Renaissance, partly because of her economic power and stability. As soon as the Medici fell, in 1494, the leadership of Italy began to pass to Rome, now once more the centre of a rejuvenated and strong Papacy. The reign of JuHus II (1503-13) was one of the great moments of humanity. This was soon
to vanish.

The new

national states, France and Eng-land at their head,

15

were rapidly rising to power, and in 1494 the French learned how easy it was to invade Italy and to subjugate the small individual states: the Italians learned the lesson of unity too late, and, after the appalling Sack of Rome in 1527, France and Spain fought for domination ni the distracted peninsula.

Not

until the late nineteenth

century did the

fate,

Italians

again enjoy the liberty to decide their

own

even though they continued to be the cultural leaders of the

world throughout the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth century the vast spiritual forces of the Counter-Reformation were directed from Rome.

The

history of Burgundy in the fifteenth century

is

almost exactly

Duchy, sandwiched between France and the Empire, was dependent for its livelihood on the ports of Bruges and, later, Antwerp, and on the wool trade with England and Italy. In order to maintain their independence the Dukes of Burgundy, from John the Fearless, murdered by the French in 1419, to Charles the Bold, killed in battle by the Swiss in 1477, made the most of their feudal and aristocratic pretensions, always hoping that Burgundy would truly become the Middle Kingdom that it set out to be. The political use of feudal pomp can be seen in the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded in 1429, which was rigidly aristocratic and exclusive, second only to the Garter. More sensibly, the Dukes maintained an uneasy series of alliances, mainly with the English, whose wool they needed, against the French, whose depredations they feared. The marriage of Duke Charles the Bold to Margaret of York in 1468 was part of this policy, all of which collapsed when Charles was killed at Nancy by the Swiss allies of Louis XI of France. Eventually Burgundy passed to the Empire and, when Spain and the Empire were united by Charles V, Burgundy was one of the reasons for the Francothe opposite.

The

small

Spanish struggle fought out in Italy in the sixteenth century.

16

Chapter

Two

It is

by no means unusual
it

for a

new

style in the arts to exist alongside

an older one which

struggles

subsequently replaces; the history of the early

ideas, after

of Impressionism affords a striking instance of how new meeting with the strongest opposition, can so impose
style

themselves that within a half-century or so they become the accepted

academic

and

in turn are replaced

by

a fresh vision.

What

is

peculiarly interesting about the history of the arts in Florence in the

first

quarter of the fifteenth century

is

that not

one but two

new

styles

were seeking to

assert

themselves in the face of traditional

forms.

century

earlier,

Giotto had imposed a

new and more

vision on the arts of Western Europe; representations of from the Bible, or the Lives of the Saints, depend upon the dramatic gestures and facial expressions of the actors, and the human figures who carry the action and make it vividly comprehensible do so through the immediacy of their naturalism. Giotto made tremendous advances in the technique of representing the human body in a more realistic way than any practised since classical antiquity; he took much of his inspiration from sculpture, and in his truth to nature he had been preceded by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, whose sculpture was itself inspired by antique art. From the beginning of the fourteenth century the representational arts in Italy were linked, on the one hand with the heritage of Roman art, particularly sculpture, and on the other hand with the dramatic possibilities inherent in Christian subject-matter. The Black Death of 1348 cut short the movement initiated by Giotto, and it was not until the early fifteenth century that his ideas were taken up once scenes

human

more. Late fourteenth-century

extreme, partly
as a result

art

tended to be reactionary in the

of the Black Death itself, and partly, seems to have survived it. At the very end of the century the cloud lifted somewhat, and a new note
possibly, because

no major

artist

17

ofjoy
at

in the vanities of this world made its appearance Burgundy, centred on Dijon. From the standpoint of style this art made few innovations, but it marks a new approach to the world, gayer, more sophisticated, deliberately elegant and in living

and

the Court of

even precious, and

it

very rapidly became fashionable, spreading

Italy.

quickly into France and

Of this so-called International Gothic style,

are to be seen in
first

characteristic

examples

two works made for the Court of Burgundy. The of these is an altarpiece which is probably the sole survivor of scries of works commissioned from Melchior Broederlam in the

early 1390s for the Charterhouse at

Champmol,

near Dijon, a ducal

foundation destined to receive the tombs of the family and therefore

an object of splendid munificence. Broederlam's work consists of a

pair

of oddly shaped painted wings enclosing of each wing contains

carved

wooden

altarleft

piece; the inside

a pair

of scenes

on the

the Annunciation and the Visitation,

on the

right the Presentation

and the Flight into Egypt

ing for natural

{plate j). Delicate, fragile almost, in clear,

bright colours, they have the sensitiveness of a newly

detail, for the

awakened

feel-

play of light on rocks and flowers, for

little castles

the picturesqueness of flights of birds and spiky

crowning

jagged pinnacles, for the patterns of

buildings in

tiled

pavings within the tiny

which the Virgin

sits

to receive her angelic visitor, or in

which the

Infant Christ

about Broederlam.
times in the
painter

is presented to Simeon. Not much is known He came from Ypres, and is mentioned several accounts of Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy as his

from 1385 onwards,

as

employed on

all

manner ofjobs from

and
little else

decorating rooms in the castle at Hesdin to designing tiled floors and

painting altarpieces. Nothing
is

known of his

training,

except for his patronage, that he was in Paris in 1390/95, and that he died about 1409 or later. But the resemblance between
life

of his

the products of the Giottesques and of Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers cannot be dismissed merely as one of those instances of what appear to be coincidences in the arts, but which are in fact the results of the
his

surviving

work and

Sienese painters such as

pervasive influence of a widespread trend in thought and culture. In

this case
it

indicates rather the spread

which,

as the scat

of ideas from Italy to Avignon, of the Papacy for over seventy years, was a centre

Melchior Broederlam
Presentation

and

Flight into Egypt,

detail from the

Dijon Altarpiece

for the dissemination

of

Italian ideas,

and hence the permeation of

Italy, a

the Gothic

North with
its fullest

influence

from

permeation which

eventually bore

fruit in the

conjunction of North and South

in International Gothic.

The domed
Annunciate

building next to the

the recession

sits,

room in which the Virgin of one room space behind another, the
little

delicate tracery, the thin colonnettes, the central space in

which the

Presentation takes place, and even the coulisse system of the landscape,

where the sense of recession is achieved by winding the pathway between the rocky masses in a series of diagonals, all suggest that at some point in his career Broederlam had been in contact with Italian
forms.

He had

transmuted them into something more Northern by

including picturesque details taken from the Apocryphal Gospels

that favourite

compendium of amusing stories and fantastic additions

19

Claus Sluter Duke

Philip of Bun^iiiidy and his Patron Saint

Claus Sluter The

Virgin

to the strict

Gospel narrative, which, while they enliven

details, also

a picture

with charming

weaken

its

impact by substituting decora-

tive incidents for the simple

dogmatic themes of the

New Testament.

Among
made
its

the assessors

who

valued the Brocderlam wings was the

same Charterhouse at Champmol he main portico sculpture representing Duke Philip {plate 4) and his Duchess presented by their patron saints to the Virgin [plate ^) standing on the tnuncan between the double doors of the entrance.
sculptor Claus Sluter. For the
Lifelike, realistic, vivid in their portraiture,

enveloped in the bulky

folds

of flowing garments, the four figures of the ducal donors and

their patron saints flank the doors, filling the splays.

On

the tnttneaii

the Virgin gazes at the Child, her heavy robe swirling about her in

deep rhythmic
fullest frontality

folds,

and her whole body turned to develop the of pose, while her outspread arm and the movement

20

Claus Sluter
Moses figure Jrom The Well of Moses

with which she supports the Christ Child on her hip achieve

at the

same time a monumental splendour and the most tender grace. The monastery also contained Sinter's masterpiece, The Well of Moses. During the French Revolution it was partly dismembered, for the upper part with the Crucifixion is now but a damaged fragment, leaving only the group of six prophets [plate 6) surrounding the pedestal. These astonish by the quahties of intense observation of nature and dehberate inflation of style, by the massive bulkiness of the figures and the way in which this results in the absorption of distracting detail. If they are compared with Broederlam's use of delicacy and fineness of detail, then it is the same contrast, broadly speaking, as that presented by the confrontation of Gentile da Fabriano and Masaccio, and the most striking parallel with the arts in Florence a few years later.
21

Perhaps the most successful and famous of all works of the International Gothic ascendancy
is

the manuscript

known

as the

Tres

Riches Heures,

made

for the

Duke of
Philip the

Berry, brother of King

Charles VI of France and

Duke

Bold of Burgundy. Most

[plate 7).

of

this

manuscript was completed before 1416 by three brothers,

Pol, Hennequin,
first

and Herman de Limbourg

it is

These three are

mentioned

as

children in the accounts of the

Duchy of Burgundy

for about 1400, so that

not surprising that the styhstic charac-

teristics of the Broederlam altarpiece and the illuminations by the Limbourg brothers should have a great deal in common. These works are essentially the products of a Court art; the content of the pictures is expressed in a style which in itself is an elaboration of something fundamentally old-fashioned and therefore more easily acceptable because more easily assimilable. The thin and elegant figures have no real weight and the artist has been more concerned

with the rich and elaborate costumes than with any attempt to represent figures in three dimensions.

Moreover, the

dresses,

and

especially
at this

the hats of the ladies, are in the height of fashion

Burgundy

time
are

set the fashions for the

drawn with
and
it is

great

whole of Europe. The horses and dogs realism of detail, but figures and animals are set which distinguishes International Gothic which is associated with the great Florentine

against a tapestry-hke background, rather than in a three-dimensional

space,

precisely this

from
artists

the heroic style

of the early fifteenth century. It is easy to understand that works displaying these decorative characteristics would be appreciated by wealthy patrons who knew little and cared less about the nobler quahties of painting and sculpture, and this ready appeal explains the speed with which the style spread across Europe. Its arrival in Florence is demonstrated in Lorenzo Monaco, whose works in 1414, and even somewhat later, were entirely in the Giottesque tradition. Lorenzo, who was probably born about 137072 and died probably in 1425, was a Sienese who settled in Florence and became a Camaldolensian in the Monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli, where there was a famous school of manuscript illuminators. He was a typical late fourteenth-century painter whose art was based on the descendants of Giotto and on Sienese art of the beginning of the fourteenth century. This purely traditional style, which was the
22

LiMBOURG Brothers
The Month of May from
the Tres Riches

Hemes of the Duke of Berry

dominant style in Florence at the time, can be seen in his two versions of the Coronation of the Virgin {plate lo); one is dated 141 3 (1414 by modern reckoning), and the other, very similar, is probably of about
23

LoRBNZo Monaco

Adoration of the

Magi

the

same

date.

Both

are typical Trecento altarpieces with gold back-

grounds and

flat

figures silhouetted against

them

so as to

form bright

two-dimensional coloured patterns with only a limited and conventional representation

of space in the picture or

is

solidity in the bodies.

The impact of International Gothic

of the Magi [plate
last

obvious in Lorenzo's Adoration

S),

which

is

undated, but which must be

among

his

works. Here he has created something entirely different, but

clearly

dependent upon Gentile da Fabriano.

full

The

triumph of International Gothic can be precisely dated

with the

arrival in Florence

of Gentile da Fabriano

{c.

1370-1427).

He was commissioned by

immensely rich Palla Strozzi to paint Magi an Adoration of the {plate p), which was finished in May 1423, and it is probably this picture which influenced Lorenzo Monaco's Adoration. Gentile's picture is equally divided by the three arched divisions of the frame. The Madonna holding the Infant Christ on her knees, and with St Joseph sitting at her feet, is pushed to the far left, where an oddly formal geometrical construction represents the
the

24

which the beasts of the Nativity munch contentedly. The panels are filled with the Magi and their crowd of retainers, two other
stable in

dressed in an exotic assortment of peaked hats and turbans, crimped

beards, trailing

embroidered robes and long curved

scimitars.

There

and camels merging into the wild and jagged mountain peaks lit by the flare of light surrounding the angel appearing to the shepherds and by the pale glow of dawn on a manyare horses, dogs,

towered town clinging to the

inhabited

side

of the distant

hills.

The

space

by the

figures

is

too small to contain so large a cohort, and

their poses as well as their

accoutrements betray the

arrived

new

ideas

of

courtly art which have

now

from

the North. In fact, the

exotic quality of the Magi's followers suggest not only a realism

of

detail

chosen for

its

extravagance of

effect,

but the impact of

tales

of Eastern origin

the adventures of Marco Polo turned into

and the of Siena

the backcloth of everyday Christian imagery, and the translation into religious art of the literary fantasy of the novelle
fahulae.

Gentile

left

Florence in 1425 and went to

Rome by way

a series and Orvieto. By 1427, when he died, of frescoes in S. John Lateran, but these, like his earliest works, the historical frescoes in the Doge's Palace in Venice, have been destroyed. The works in the Doge's Palace were finished by Antonio Pisanello, who was born probably in 1395, and who perhaps worked under Gentile, since he not only succeeded him in Venice between 141 5 and 1422, but also at the Lateran in 1427. Pisanello's passionate

he was working on

animals, and costumes makes him perhaps the supreme exponent of International Gothic until his death in 1455 or 1456, but he was by no means the only one. The Paradise Garden [plate 13) may even be by Pisanello rather than Stefano da Verona, who was possibly Pisanello's master before he went to Venice. There
interest in birds,
is

by an unknown German master working about 1475 which shows exactly the same charming and graceful style with its tenderness of sentiment and delicacy of detail unaffected by any austere aesthetic ideals. Pisanello's interest in detail made him an expert portrait painter, and he was one of the first as well as one of the greatest of portrait medallists, his earhest datable medal being of 1438.
a similar

enchanting Paradise Garden

[plate 11)

25

^^il-r

^ a^

T^m:

as

Jf

Jj yS>_
-^

4)

^itei

9 Gentile
10

da Fabriano

Adoration of the

Magi

Lorenzo Monaco

Coronation of the Virgin

II

German Master

Paradise Garden

One of
painters
is

the interesting points about the International Gothic

the use they

all,

made of drawings.

No drawings by Masaccio
ground
for

survive at

while those by Pisanello, for instance, are very numeras the

ous. Clearly the painter used his drawings not as a trial

compositions but

raw

rnaterial for the details

of his

pictures.

The Vallardi Codex (Louvre) contains hundreds of drawings; many are by Pisanello himself and the remainder are copies and drawings by pupils and other artists horses, dogs, wild animals, costumes (plate 12), heads of Mongols and Tartars, plants, men dangling on the gallows all assembled as a mine of useful material from which

the elaborate details of paintings could be quarried.

The crucial difference is that between the two styles which sought to
replace in Florence at the beginning

of the fifteenth century the dying

Giottesque tradition, and of this difference the outstanding contrasts

between Gentile and Masaccio, and Ghiberti and Donatello. became the Great Divide in the fifteenth century, and a close comparison of two major instances will help to make its fundamental nature clear.
are those

In

fact,

this difference

27

12 PiSANELLO

Designs Jor Court Dress,

Ttro figures and a

Head

After completing the Strozzi Adoration, Gentile painted the

now

ally

dismembered Quaratesi Altarpiece, completed in May 1425; originit consisted of a central Madonna and Child (plate 14) flanked by two saints on either side. It has the charm, the flatness, the decorative quality, the elaboration so dear to, and so typical of, the International
Gothic painter. Against
gentle, bland-faced
a

dark brocade strewn with flowers, the

sits

Madonna

holding a beautiful Child, and on

curtain.

either side small angels peer

from behind the background

The

flesh tones are tender, pallid, the expression

almost vacant.

The

four saints also have the same kind of elegant stylized clothes with
rich patterns,

wavy,

fluted edges,

and heavy embroideries.

13

PiSANELLO

or

StEFANO DA

Verona

Paradise Garden

The Masaccio Madonna and

Polyptych,
is

Child {plate

13),

once part of the Pisa

it

quite different. Like the Quaratcsi Altarpiecc

has been

dismembered, and fewer fragments survive. The central panel is immediately striking in its utter contradiction of all the things which Gentile stood for. The Madonna is not beautiful and the Child is
ugly, but she
increase the
left
sits

firmly on the throne and her heavy draperies

figure, the strong light falling

volume of her
cast

from the
sit

making

shadows so
is

that the sense

of recession and of internal

the front of the throne

depth within the picture

complete.

On

two

small angels playing musical instruments and they too,

by the

strength of the light falling

this sense

on them and

the shadows

it casts,

increase

of depth and of recession, so that with the two other small

first

angels standing behind the throne, half concealed and half in shadow,

they create for the

time the illusion of a coherent internal space.

features
flat

The chiaroscuro plays across the Madonna's Child's body so that He does not recline as a
mother's blue cloak but forms a
heavily on her knee.

and across the

block that

pattern against His

sits

solid, sculptural,

The

saints that

once flanked the Madonna also

and shadow so that despite their gold grounds they stand out vividly and with the striking reahsm of heavy, unidealized features and massive bulk. The crucial point lies
have
this

powerful

stress

on

light

in this

change of feehng from an

a

interest in purely decorative

naturahsm to

new and

vivid realism, but

that International Gothic perished as a

must not be imagined result: far from it. Despite

it

Masaccio's enormous prestige and despite the influence exercised

his frescoes in the Brancacci

by
^

Chapel, where

all

the artists of the next

generation

came

to study,

it is

quite clear that Ghiberti represents a

continuation in sculpture of International Gothic ideals which are

no

more than brought up

to date

by

incursions into realistic detail and,

later in his career, into perspective.

between Ghiberti and Donatello is as great as that between Gentile and Masaccio except that Donatello introcontrast

The

duces a further factor

his

highly charged

emotional quality.
in
his

The

influence

of Gothic

on

Donatello
all is

survives

use

of dramatic
reasons.

silhouette,

but in

him

permeated by an

ultra-

powerful realism and even by a cult of ugliness used for expressive

29

15

Masaccio Madonna and child

14

(^above

left)

Gentile

da Fabriano

Madonna and Child

16

St

Masaccio Madonna and Child Anne

with

17 Ghiberti

Sacrifice

of Abraham

Brunelleschi

Sacrifice

of Abraham

Ghiberti was born in 1378 and

as Gentile. In

is

therefore of the

1401 he

won

the competition for a

his

new

same generation pair of doors

for the Baptistery in Florence,

principal competitors being

Brunelleschi and Jacopo della Quercia.

Brunelleschi
trial

Both

the Ghiberti and the

panels have survived [plates 17, 18).

The

scene set

was the

Sacrifice

of Abraham, and both are within the stipulated

earlier pair
is

quatrefoil

framework taken over from the

allusions to the antique (one
classical figure

of Andrea

Pisano doors. In the Brunelleschi panel the action

violent.
is

vehement, even

The

of the foreground figures

adapted from the

equals the

his training

nowhere

and the trend of his smooth modelhng and the brilliant surface of Ghiberti's rendering of the scene. The Brunelleschi was made in a number of pieces and put together afterwards; the Ghiberti was a technical triumph in that it was cast in one piece. In it the action
31

of the Spinario) are indicative of mind, but technically the panel

19 Ghiberti Anmniciation

20 GfflBERTi

Flagellation

flows smoothly; the angel ghdcs

down from heaven

his father

to arrest the

patriarch's knife; the beautiful, classically inspired,

Isaac turns

with

relief

both towards

nude figure of and the angel, where

Brunelleschi's distorted

and

terrified Isaac struggles against the knife,

and the plunging angel with vehement gesture arrests Abraham's hand at the very last second. The same qualities of grace and charm, of brilUant workmanship, of sinuous use of pattern and line, of silhouette, appear in the doors which were begun by Ghiberti in 1403 and finished in 1424. For instance, in the panel of the Annunciation {plate ig)

the Virgin, in her

a gesture

little

aedicule, has the typical Gothic

sway and with

creeps
a

of

infinite delicacy

both welcomes and

a

retreats before her

heavenly

visitant.

Sometimes

more modern note

is

in; for instance,

the Christ of the Flagellation [plate 20)

almost

pure

classical figure,
still

but the executioners, symmetrically arranged

about him,
32

use the forms of counterpoised pattern and grace

inherited

from the

past, hi Ghibcrti's

wrote
his

late in his hfe

own 'Commentaries', which he and which arc one of the main sources of know-

ledge of his career and his contemporaries, he records triumphantly

to

own account of his success: 'The palm of victory was conceded me by all the experts and by all my fellow competitors; by
and without
a

universal consent

single exception the glory

was

conceded to me.' During the years of the execution of

his first pair

of doors he

also

made

number of other works,

chief among

them

being the two statues on the facade of Orsanmichele. St John the

Baptist (1414)
{plate 21),

enclosed in his highly decorated Gothic

niche,
fall

still

speaks the language of International Gothic. His draperies

folds arranged for their linear rhythm, and even the rough hair-shirt has the same studied refmement as his locks of hair and the graceful curls of his beard. The features are sharp and stylized, the whole attitude one of elegance and distinction, St Mattheti' (1419-22 but dated 1420) [plate 22) shows a greater interest in the
in

heavy

antique: he
it is

is

the classical philosopher slightly Gothicized.

true, the

same

interest in elegance, the

folds

of draperies to create interesting

is

There is, same disposition of the zigzag patterns of light and

is

shade, but the quality of the head

far closer to antique sculpture,

and the pose, though almost

sufficiently

identical
it

with that of the St John,

just
it

more upright

to leave

elegant without weakening

into the softer grace of the earlier statue. This interest in the antique,
this

modification of his Gothic

line, is

one of the

first qualities

which

strikes

of doors which he executed between 1425 and 1452 and which were a continuation of his first commission. These are the doors which Michelangelo described as the Gates of Paradise, and

one

in the pair

in

them Ghiberti departed utterly, first from the original brief which was given him, and secondly from the example of his first pair. Instead of the twenty narratives and the eight single figures which
the
little

fill

quatrefoils

of the

first pair,

the second pair

is

divided into

ten large panels each containing an

Old Testament

scene of great
of

complexity and elaboration. In the Creation and Fall

instance, five separate episodes

from Genesis

are represented
is

Man, for and the

use of varying depths of relief to suggest recession

of the utmost
his narrative

refinement. In the scene ofJacob and Esau this use of the subtleties of
relief allows Ghiberti to set the different incidents

of

33

21 GfflBERTi St John the Baptist

22 Ghiberti St Matthew

23 GfflBERTi The Story of Joseph,

from

the second Baptistery

Doors

within an architectural framework receding into an infinite distance,

and yet enables him to do so without violating the structural unity of the surface. In The Story ofJoseph [plate 23) a huge crowd takes part in the main action before the circular building which forms the background, yet despite the number of actors the scene combines coherence and unity with delicate, sinuous charm, but the new
interest in a perspective setting imparts a
It is futile

to speculate

Donatello, for

new logic and a new order. how much Ghiberti was influenced in this by by now Donatello had supplanted him as the major
art.

Florentine sculptor, and, in fact, as the major force in Florentine

/He was

younger than Ghiberti, and despite the fact that in the hst of competitors for the Baptistery doors competition in 1401, his youth makes it unhkely that he participated, though he probably worked on the doors, since he was apprenticed to Ghiberti until 1406. He then went into partnership with Nanni di Banco, and in the Prophets which they executed jointly for the cathedral they are barely distinguishable from each other. By the end of the decade, however, he emerged as an independent personahty, and rapidly developed into the major Florentine artist of
eight years

Vasari included

him

35

the fifteenth century, uncontested in his supremacy after the death

of Masaccio in 1428. The ramifications of his influence not only permeated Florentine sculpture and painting, but worked powerfully throughout northern Italy and Ferrara, and even touched Venice through its repercussions upon Mantegna.

The statue of St George (plate 24), made for a niche on the outside of Orsanmichele about 1420, is one of the key works in his development, not so much for its importance as a free-standing figure personifying the Christian virtues o knighthood, as for the small
relief under the statue [plate 23):
it is

this

which

is

the herald of things

to

come. In
this

it

St

George on horseback

slays the

dragon, while the

princess, praying watchfully, stands before an arcade

on the

right,

on the opposite side are of the gradations of relief, so as to confer upon the marble plaque the pictorial qualities of recession into space and an imaginative feeling for an actual setting. Moreover, the architectural framework is proporarcade and the dragon's rocky
lair

and

treated reahstically

and with an

infinitely sensitive use

tioned to the figures, so that the three-dimensional space

is

related to

them, making the pictorial

illusion

complete^

24 DoNATELLO St Georgc (copy)

in

the original setting at Orsanmichele

25

DoNATELLO

Rclicf of St Gcor^^c Slayiif^ the Draqoii from Orsmimiclicle

The \ had

climax was reached abou{i42^at the

moment when

Gentile

completed the Quaratesi^ltarpiece, Masaccio was working on the Pisa Polyptychy'and/Donatello began a series of works which
[plate 26) for the

included the bronze*pancl of The Feast of Herod

in the Siena Baptistery.

font

was a chequered one: it had originally been commissioned in 141 6 from several minor sculptors and Ghiberti's advice was sought in 141 7; it was later divided between Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, Ghiberti, and two
history of the Siena font Sienese goldsmiths. Donatello's panel represents the

The

moment when
an

the Baptist's head

entirely

is

presented to

Herod

at the feast. It strikes

new

note technically, and the rendering of the scene has an

intensely dramatic quality.

Herod

shrinks back in horror,

one guest
table, the

expostulates, another recoils, hiding his face behind his hand, a third
clings to his
little putti

companion, and yet another has

fall

fled

from the

next to Herod

over each other in their effort to escape

her

from

the ghastly trophy presented to the King, and even the triumis

phant Salome
feasters
is

abashed

at

own

exploit.
it

Behind the

table

of

an arcade, and in a

room beyond

musicians play, and in

another

room beyond

that figures can be seen

through the open

beliind the
figures within

arches, so that there are a

number of spatial elements one

and to the

other, perfectly proportioned to each other

them. The illusion

the relief and

is

achieved by minute gradations in the depth of

by

a brilliant use

of the devices of central perspective.

37

The
ness

contrast

between the drama

creates a

in the

foreground and the unawareincreases the psychological

of the figures in the rooms beyond

tension,

and

new visual world of tremendous consequencej

gradations of relief can be seen to an even

Donatello's

gift for infinite

greater degree in the httle panel of the Ascension {plate 2j), for in this

work

there

is

barely any break in the surface, and the planes of the

infinite thinness that the figures are

modelling are reduced to such an

hardly

more than drawn upon

the marble surface. Ghiberti also

exploited this use of dehcately graded depth of rehef in his second

pair

of doors, and he used it also in the relief of the Baptism of Christ which he made for the Siena font, though never with the same degree of refinement as Donatello himself.
{plate 28)

26 Donatello The Feast of Herod

1
;* ;._;,.

\,i

*'#

^
DoNATELLO
Ascetisioii

28 Ghiberti Baptism of Christ

The

point that emerges

is

both

similarity
first,

and
is

a dissonance

the creation between Masaccio and Donatello; for the of an ideal space and of a complete illusion of a true world, and this identity of purpose between the painter and the sculptor coming at about the same moment marks perhaps more clearly than anything else could have done the break between the older forms represented

there

by

Gentile and the

new

ideas

sance.

The main
this

distinction

developed by the artists of the Renaisbetween Masaccio and Donatello lies in

works onwas to become the hall-mark of his later style, while his use of line and silhouette was to stamp itself indelibly on Florentine art. A striking instance of this
the sculptor's dramatic quality, found
his earliest

from

wards, and

passionate sense of tragedy

is

his pair

of bronze doors for the Old Sacristy in

S.

Lorenzo,

made

up contains two prophets. The figures gesticulate vehemently, and all their expressiveness is concentrated into the swinging movement of their robes and the force of their gestures, silhouetted in low relief against a plain ground [plate 30). Donatello here turns the tables on Ghiberti's exploitation of his idea of pictorial perspective in low relief, by abandoning his own invention in favour of dramatic movement and expression alone. Between 143 1 and 1433 he was in Rome, where presumably he was absorbed in the study of the remains of classical antiquity. He was never seduced by the grandeur of the classical past into attempting a re-creation of its forms, and its impact on him is effective through his absorption of it as a tradition, as something he could use.
in the 1430s.

Each of the panels of which they

are built

His

later

work
real

is

never superficially antique in appearance, but

art,

it

shows more

understanding of antique

particularly

of Roman
except

portrait sculpture, than

any other fifteenth-century

classical

artist

perhaps Mantegna. Certain

the

themes appear

after this journey:

nude David, inspired by the Antinous marbles of the second by the Marcus Aurelius now in front of the Capitol; the more skilful use of classical architectural details in capitals and ornament, though this never becomes a slavish imitation and always remains intensely individual and even wayward in character; the increasingly important use of the ptitto, the chubby, playful infant, found so often in classical friezes
century; the equestrian statue of Gattamelata, inspired

40

29 DoNATELLO CatUoria,
Putti

detail

of the

30

DoNATELLO

Argutfig fgures from

bronze doors, S. Lorenzo

and mosaics, grappling with weapons,

bunches of grapes amid vines, and which,

sacrificial

instruments, or
artists

like

Early Christian

before him, he adapted to Christian iconography and used freely in

/^he most sacred contexts.

/^/ The David

[plate 31)

was the

first

nude figure

cast in

bronze since

classical times.

The

easy, relaxed pose, the tender

modelling of the

forms, rippling softly, smoothly, under the bronze skin, sharply

shadowed under
David
final
is

the strange peaked hat, curling richly in the twisted

art.

locks of Goliath's severed head, are ringing echoes of Roman

also evidence

The

of the rebirth of the

spirit

classical past,

and of the

emergence of that new

which was

to inform the Renais-

of a lesson learned by rote, not of a model to be imitated, but of a parity of creation, of equality with the tradition
sance: the sense, not

41

31

DoNATELLO David

that inspired

it,

of continuity of thought and feehng, even though

which the art was dedicated was entirely different. But these moments of elegiac serenity were rare in Donatclloj His temperament returned quickly to the stimulus of dramatic effects, and the great commissions executed in Padua during the years from 1443 to 1453 open a new chapter in his art, and also determined the character of North Italian art for the next half-century,
the purpose to

42

works survive from the Paduan period: the equestrian known as Gattatnclata the Honey-cat {plate altar the Santo, the BasiHca of St Anthony. The and the main of J2), heavy figure of the successful mercenary soldier, relaxed and confident in his conqueror's pose on his huge and richly harnessed horse, stems ultimately from the hiiperator type of Roman portraits, and the ugly face, full of character, derives patently from the astonishing realism of Roman funerary busts. The Santo Altar has been much reconstructed, and the various parts of it the free-standing Madonna and Child and six flanking saints, the three reliefs of the miracles of St Anthony, and the Pieta in bronze, and the sandstone relief of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ now in the back of the altar have been moved out of their original positions and contexts.
great
statue

Two

of the

condotticrc,

:^-'-\(^:

32

DONATELLO
Gattatnclata

V
43

33

Masaccio

Triniry

34 DoNATELLO Mirack of the

/.

35

DoNATELLO

Laiiiciitation

The main

characteristic

of the rehefs

is

their

of perspective, very low of huge barrel vaults

relief,

and dramatic

effect.

amazing exploitation The background

[plate 34),

in the Miracle of the

Ass

receding

steeply into the picture plane, the curious arrangement

steps in the Miracle of the Irascible Son,

of sheds and
one case
world-

which

delimits as narrowly as

stage scenery the space for the dramatic action, recall in the

the elaborate and brilliant space construction in Masaccio's Trinity

[plate 55) in Sta

Maria Novella, and in the other

his

own

within-world construction of the Siena Feast of Herod [plate 26). Huge crowds surround the saint, and press forward to gaze upon his
project

up the columns and buildings, so that their bodies beyond the picture plane determined by the architectural framework and create an extra spatial element by impinging upon the world of the spectator. The bronze Pieta relief has an unusual stillness; the heavy, nude body of the dead Christ is supported
miracles, climbing

45

by

tearful putti, but their

sorrow

is

a timeless

weeping, and

is

of

another order of feeling from the passionate, shrieking grief of the

Magdalen

in the sandstone Lafiientation {plate 55).

is

But the

tautness

of

dramatic tension
fearfully to His

rarely far

away; in the squat-faced Child clutched

Mother

in small

Madonna
zgi),

reliefs; in

the playful,

music-making];;/^^/ of the Cantoria [plate

fisticuffs; in

only

hairbreadth from

the baldpated prophet

whom

the artist abjured with

lined face

violence to speak to him, and

whose gaunt, deeply

and

angular pose suggest the harsh gutturals of the Tuscan dialect; in the sagging flesh and sunken eyes of the aged Magdalen
(p/fl?t?

2),

haggard

and emaciated

in the
it is

shaggy pelt that blends so closely with her

difficult to distinguish

tangled hair that

animal from human.

Even
S.

in his unfinished last

work, the bronze

reliefs

on

the pulpits in

Lorenzo, the Christ of the Resurrection

[plate 36)

is

no youthful

Saviour transfigured in glory, but a massive and sullen figure,

climbing heavily from His tomb,

so that His

still hung about with grave-clothes, movements seem weighed down by the mortal body He is

transforming.

36

DoNATELLO

Rcsurrectioti

So immense was Donatello's personality

sors

that he exhausted in

sculpture the forms and style he invented and exploited. His succes-

were painters; they took over his wiry line, his drama and tension, and the emotional possibilities of his use of distortion and extreme ugliness. Castagno's harsh saints, Pollaiuolo's strained muscular executioners, and the hard, metallic outline enclosing even
Botticelli's

tense,

taut figures,

Vcnuses,

Madonnas, Graces, and

sculptors

Judiths alike, are the

acknowledgment of his impact. The

of the next generation concentrated on the anti-Donatellesque on softness, on sentiment, on delicacy, even though line rather than mass was the means of their expression. It is because of Donatello's
long
life

and huge production, because of the inescapable force of his

fell

example, that the lessons taught by Masaccio

on

cars that

heard

but could not properly assimilate his teaching.

The grandeur of the

imI

Brancacci Chapel frescoes was given the lip-service of recognition and

superficial imitation, but their real teaching lay fallow, until the

petus givenbyDonatellofmally petered out in meaningless confusion.

Masaccio was born in 1401 and entered the Guild of Painters

Florence in 1422. In 1427 he
returns
is

recorded in the

first

income-tax

made

in Florence, the so-called Catasto.

years, provide a

These tax returns,

good deal of information about economic circumstances; they almost invariably contain cries of poverty and distress that can be largely disregarded, but in the case of Masaccio it seems that he and his younger brother had their widowed mother to support and that they lived in great poverty. Soon after this, Masaccio went to Rome, probably for a commission, and died there at the age of twentyFlorentine
artists

made every few

and

their

seven.

The extraordinary

thing

is

that in five or six years'

work he

was able to revolutionize Florentine painting and to create for himfame which was kept alive in the next century by Michelangelo and Vasari, and which has never been allowed to die. It is clear, however, that this fame was largely confined to other painters, and that he never enjoyed the popular esteem accorded to the bright and realistic work of Gentile da Fabriano. Because Masaccio died so young he left only a handful of works, and some problems of attribution have had to be cleared up before a full understanding of
self a
his

achievement could be arrived

at.

47

His two major works are the polyptych painted for the Carmelite

church in Pisa in 1426-27, and (he

to be

series

of frescoes in the Carmehte

is known from documents by him, and Vasari saw it and described it, but, unfortunately, it was dismembered long ago, and can now be reconstructed only in part from a number of panels, scattered in various museums, which

church in Florence. The Pisa Polyptych

have been identified largely because of their

those parts of the Brdncacci Chapel frescoes

stylistic identity

with

which are attdbuted to Masaccio. The most important panel, the Madonna and Child {plate 15), which has been cut at the. bottom, is so badly damaged that the green underpainting shows through in many places, and
large areas have been lost, but which, nevertheless, provides direct

moment, that is, when Gentile was at most a couple of years old. Some further panels from the Pisa Polyptych have come to light, the most notable being the St Paul which is in Pisa, and the
evidence of his style in 1426-27
at a

da Fabriano's Quaratesi Madotina

{plate 14)

Crucifixion {plate 37) in Naples.

it

When the polyptych is

Trecento

reconstructed,

can be seen that

it

retains several

characteristics,

such

as

the use of a plain gold background, and the treatment of each of the
figures as a separate unit, like statues in niches.
differs entirely

On the other hand, it

from contemporary sub-Giottesque altarpieces on the one hand and Gentile da Fabriano's International Gothic style on the other, in that all the figures are thought of as three-dimensional forms occupying a definite position in space, all lit from the same point and
all

subject to the

that

same laws of perspective. It is probable, for example, the haloes in the London Madonna {plate if,) are the first to be

treated as intangible circles seen in perspective rather than the simple

gold plates hanging behind the heads in such an altarpiece as Lorenzo Monaco's Coronation of the Virgin {plate 10). Much of this reahsm derives from sculpture; Masaccio was probably influenced a great deal by the pulpits by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano in the Baptistery and Cathedral in Pisa. Also, he was younger than Donatello, and it was Donatello and Brunelleschi who made the original important
experiments in perspective
at a

time

when Masaccio was

boy of

fourteen or fifteen. In short, the Pisa Polyptych shows a return to a

monumental
of Giotto.

style

which had not been seen

in Italy since the death

48

37

Masaccio
Crticijixioii

The

frescoes in the Brancacci

Chapel in Sta Maria del Carmine

in

Florence {plates jSj 41) are even

more important than

the polyptych;

they were painted probably between 1425 and 1426 and his departure
for

Rome

about 1428, and are therefore contemporary with the

all

by Masaccio, and about by fire in the eighteenth century. It is also possible that some of the portrait heads were left unfinished when Masaccio went to Rome. From early sources it is known that three painters worked in the chapel: Masaccio, Masolino, and Filippino Lippi; since Filippino Lippi worked there in the 1480s
one-third of the whole cycle was destroyed
it is

polyptych. However, the frescoes are not

comparatively simple to discern

to be divided

his late

Quattrocento

style

and
a

to identify his share in the chapel as a whole. This leaves us

with

number of frescoes
and
at this

between Masaccio and Masolino,

point in his career Masolino, though an older

man

than

49

Masaccio, was clearly very deeply influenced by him. Those frescoes

which accord with the solemnity of style of the Pisa Polyptych are attributed to Masaccio, and those which are more International Gothic in style are allotted to Masolino. Thus, the traditional works by Masaccio, and especially the most famous fresco of all, the Rendering of the Tribute Money (plate 38), can be used on the one hand to confirm the reconstruction of the Pisa Polyptych, and on the other to act as a touchstone separating the works of Masaccio from those of MasoHno. Masaccio's style is grand and simple; above all, it is adapted to the technique of fresco painting in that he relies very little on outline and builds up his massive figures in simple contrasts of tone and colour. His groups, too, are built up with an internal coherence, each figure being related to the others and yet, though retaining its own identity, being conceived as part of a larger whole. In the Tribute Money, Christ is the natural centre of the group, physically and psychologically, yet He forms but one element in a structure that would be meaningless were He moved or altered. This is the first time since Giotto that the quality of complete coherence was revived that is, that no part can be changed or removed without damaging irretrievably the significance of the whole. Most important of all, and most revolutionary, is the way in which his groups

are set in a landscape, as in the Tribute

figures

Money, in such a way that the and the landscape obey the same laws of perspective (in

contradistinction to Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the

[plate g)),

and

all

the forms are

lit

from

the

Magi same point which, in

50

39

Masaccio Head of St John from

left)

the

Rendering of the Tribute

Money

38 {above

Masaccio Rendering of the

Tribute

Money

the case of the Brancacci frescoes, corresponds to the actual

window

of the chapel. This use of the pictorial light coming from the same source as the actual hght gives a convincing three-dimensional quahty
to
all

the figures in his frescoes. Their dramatic quality

is

evident

of the heads, which show strong characterization, so that individual Apostles can be distinguished [plate jg).
in the details

40 Masaccio Expulsion of Adam and Eue

41

Masaccio The Lame Man

healed by the shadow of St

42

Masolino Madonna and Child !&

The frescoes attributed to Masolino have a iivehness and reahsm which derive directly from Masaccio, but they lack his consistency and severity of style. Masolino was born in 1383 and probably worked on Ghiberti's first pair of Baptistery doors. On the face of it, it would seem likely that he was Masaccio's teacher, as Vasari thought, but this seems to be disproved by the fact that he did not enter the Florentine Guild until 1423, the year after Masaccio, and the rules of the Guild laid down that no master might take pupils until he had registered and paid his dues. Masolino seems to have been a traditional Giottesque artist who was influenced by Masaccio and not vice versa for a few years between 1423 and about 1426, when he went to Hungary, and that later on his style changed once more and he became a painter of the International Gothic circle, something much more in keeping with what one would expect o{ his beginnings. The first datable work by him, a Madonna {plate 42) in Bremen of 1423, shows no trace of Masaccio's influence, but is a

53

simple Late Trecento

Madonna rather like those by Lorenzo Monaco.

His

work in

the Brancacci Chapel shows, therefore, the highest point

of Masaccio's influence on him, but even there, in the elegant young men strolling across the background of The Raising of Tahitha [plate
44),
it is

evident that he had an interest in costume and in narrative

characteristic

details

more

of Gentile da Fabriano than Masaccio,

44
43

(right)

Masolino The

Raising of Tabitha, detail

.

Masolino

Herod's Feast

Again, a simple comparison of similar heads by Masaccio and Masolino

shows very

clearly that he

feeling for three-dimensional

was entirely lacking in Masaccio's form and for modelling in light and

shade. His International Gothic characteristics are better displayed in

the

work which he

did after Masaccio's death.

of these are the frescoes in S. Clemente in town of Castiglione d'Olona near Milan, where there is a signed work in the Collegiata and where one of the series in the baptistery is dated 1435. In these frescoes International Gothic has completely
small

The most important Rome, and the series in the

regained the ascendancy and the figures in Herod's Feast [plate 43) are directly comparable with works like Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration
[plate g)

or Pisanello's costume drawings.

as

They

are quite different

from works such

Masaccio's fresco of the Trinity [plate jj) in Sta Maria Novella in Florence, where Brunelleschian architectural forms
are used to create a convincing setting in depth for the figures,

although Masaccio has

figures

made

the figures of the donors

conform

to

the perspective of the architecture, while those o the supernatural

same perspective system and have, therefore, the effect of floating in the air. The relationship between Masaccio and Masolino still presents many problems, one of the most puzzHng being the pair of panels acquired by the National Gallery in London in 195 1 as by Masolino, but which are now generally believed to be one by Masolino and the other by Masaccio, for one has the flaccid indefiniteness of form and the lack of solidity consonant with Masolino, while the other has the directness of lighting and th_e clarity of spatial position which is fundamental to Masaccio. The other great factor controlling the revival of the arts in Florence in the fifteenth century was the influence of the architecture of Brunellcschi, and of the writings and architecture of Alberti. bBrunelleschi's great achievement was the building of the dome of Florence Cathedral [plate ^5), a work which he could never have brought to so triumphant a conclusion had it not been for the knowledge of Roman constructional methods which he gained from his study of the ruins of antiquity. Born in 1377, and trained originally as a goldsmith, he was a strict contemporary of Ghiberti, yet he was never touched by those quahties of smallness and preciousness that characterize International Gothic. All his thinking was large in scale,

do not conform

to the

56

45 Brunelleschi

The Dome
Cathedral

oj Florence

even in

his smallest

works, and though he drew

his

forms and

details

from

the repertory of classical

Roman architecture he, like Donatello,

The
great

absorbed and re-created those forms without being slavishly bound

to the sources that inspired him.

dome

is

engineering than of architecture, for the huge cavity

its

more a feat of demanded for

,

covering qualities beyond those of architecture alone.

Tl;]^_^rst

R e naissanc e
ncllcschi

build ing in Florence, proper lv speakin g

j

is

thejbj^ndling'hospital, the Ospedale degli.

hi
classi cal
IS

)egun

1419;

still

ma ebtcd

to

forms adapted trom the

and Romanesque past,~ibrthe col onnad ed lopjgia ip late 47) facing a square is a form with a long history. It is in the skilful use of simple proportions that the loggia is so satisfying in itself and so
full

on

the size of the

of significance for the future. The arches of the arcade are based column of the order, and these measurements not
itself,

only control the height and width of the arcade

tradition in their use

but are

extended in depth by the proportions of the bays, which break with

of domes instead of cross-vaulting. This t)'pe of lucid and almost elementary relationship is also the basis of the

design of the

Old

Sacristy

of

S.

Lorenzo
cube with

{plate 46),

where the

centrally planned,

domed chapel

a smaller

domed choir

proportionate to the main structure

initiates a

form which reaches

57

4.6

Brunelleschi
Interior
Sacristy, S.

of the Old Lorenzo,

Florence

far into

the Renaissance as a

Brunelleschi pursued the

model form further

for continuous emulation.

in the rather similar Pazzi
basic central space
as

Chapel

in the cloister

of Sta Croce, extending the

a loggia outside,

by

sections

on

either side

septs or aisles

and placing

they could be considered

with
a

small tran-

domed porch

section corresponding to the

central space. His interest in

domed

choir

on

the other side of the

his use

classical details

barrel vaults in the loggia

entirely personal treatment

of coffered and the transeptal extensions, but his

governs
detail
is

of architectural

clear

v^onderfully delicate carving of the

window
little

arches and

soffits,

from the and

in the glazed coloured terracotta decorations of the frieze inside the

chapel, and the lovely roundels of the

dome of

the loggia,

made by
S.

the della

Robbia workshop.

later than the Old Sacristy, and Sto work, fmished long after his death in 1446, represent successive stages in his development of simple planar geometry as a basis for planning. Both use the crossing square as the unit

Lorenzo, built

much

Spirito {plate 48), his last

repetitions

of measurement, the nave, choir, and transepts being so many of the central space, and the aisles, side-chapels, and the
Sto Spirito, he designed the
58
aisles

spacing of the nave arcades being subdivisions of the main unit. In

to run
all

round the church, with

Brunelleschi
Loggia
dcgli Innocenti, Florence

Brunelleschi
Sto Spirito, Florence

an

altar

under the

dome

over the central space; he worked out a

simple proportion for the heights of the parts of the nave elevation

the arcades, the wall section over them, and the clerestory area so
that the impression created
is

one of supreme

lucidity

and control,

and

a sense

The commonest
was white

of space and harmony materials of Florentine architecture contribute

rarely equalled and never surpassed.
plaster walls

largely to the effect of simplicity and restraint, for the general usage

with the richer

details

of arcades, window

frames, door cases, cornices, coffering, and so on, in the lovely fme-

grained pietrn scrcna, which ranges in colour from a pale bluey-grey,

through

darker grey-green, to a

muddy brown, and which

can be

carved with great delicacy and precision. Black-and-white

reality the

effects (in

marbles of which they are composed are closer to creamy-

or pinkish-white and dark grey-green) were imitated occasionally

from earlier buildings such as the Baptistery, S. Miniato al Monte, and the cathedral: Albcrti used them in his refacing of Sta Maria Novella, but this was because the original fourteenth-century facade which he was reconstructing had been built in this way. Leon Battista Albcrti stands somewhat outside the close-knit group of Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio, since he was not born until about 1404 in Genoa, and was the last to die, in 1472. Also, in social background he came of a wealthy merchant family in temperament and traimng he was from another world from the highly

professional artists

whom
Alberti

he frequented after

his

exiled family

returned to Florence in 1428. Humanist, scholar,

papal
civil servant,

latinist,

lawyer,

became an architect through his interest in the theory of the arts, and he was never a practical builder as Brunelleschi was, but employed a competent man to deal with the technicalities of construction Matteo de' Pasti on the Tcmpio Malatestiano at Rimini, Bernardo Rossclhno in Florence, and Fancelli at Mantua. Little of his work is in Florence, though that little includes his first building, the Palazzo Rucellai of 1446, where he was the first

to

work out

the articulation of a facade of several storeys with a

classical

order of pilasters, following distantly yet clearly the system

of the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus. His architecture was always closer to classical examples than Brunellesclii's: he was the first to adapt to the Christian church the 60

temple front of Roman origin, just

in

as

he was the

first, in S.

Andrea

Mantua, designed two years before his death, to revive the coffered barrel vault for the whole of a seventy-foot nave span.
lies in his writings. In 1435 he wrote a which he dedicated to Brunelleschi, Donatello, treatise on painting, Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, and Masaccio (the only painter among them, and already dead at that) in other words, to the most advanced and significant artists of the day. In it he established two great principles: that naturalism could be achieved by the use of perspective, and that figures should be composed into dramatic groups so as to make the narrative clear, rather than to form pious tableaux. Alberti's importance as an innovator is attested by the consistency with which these two principles are worked out in Florentine fifteenth-century painting and sculpture. His influence on architecture was strengthened by his treatise, 'De Re Aedificatoria'

His

vital

importance

written probably about 1450 and circulating in manuscript until

first

its

printing in 1485.

It

became

the

first

theoretical

work on

the

subject since the

Roman

Vitruvius

whose

writings, then recently

rediscovered, had been Alberti's

own

inspiration.
a transition

Both Brunelleschi and Alberti represent

their

from wall
change in
Brunel-

architecture to space architecture, and in both

men

this

understanding of their art came

wall

late in their careers.

nave of most important element: the arches of an arcade are but sections cut away from the plane of the wall. Alberti does the same in the Palazzo Rucellai, where he concentrates on an elevation as a solid piece of masonry, the parts of which are co-ordinated so as to stress the coherence of the plane surface, and in the Tempio Malatcstiano in Rimini, built from about 1450 onwards but never finished, where the side-arcades of arches borne on piers instead of columns, stress the continuity of the wall area. In his unfinished, and now virtually destroyed, Sta Maria degli Angeli in Florence, built probably after his return from Rome in the early
leschi, in the
S.

Loggia degli Innocenti, the Old

as

Sacristy, or the

Lorenzo,

treats the

the

1430S, Brunelleschi demonstrated a quite different attitude in that he

then concentrated on the shapes of the spaces to be enclosed by the

walls:
it is

the richness and complexity of the internal space that

is

is is

important, and the wall

merely the means by wliich

this

61

49 Alberti

S.

Andrea, Mantua

is the best example. Here the elements are the same as those used in S. Lorenzo, but the feeling is quite different. The use of half-columns instead of pilasters between the side-chapels, and the curve of the wall at the back of the chapels, create a succession of undulations; the vistas of receding arches one within the other in the aisle elevations, and the recession of the aisles themselves as they form an ambulatory round the church and enclose the central large cruciform space within their smaller and more complex units, all create an impression of spaces flowing out of each other and being conceived

manifested. Sto Spirito

by

the architect for their spatial significance, instead of the concen-

on a wall as a limiting and defining element. In S. Andrea in Mantua [plate 49), Alberti links the forms of the facade, those of the
tration

loggia immediately within

it,

and those of the and not

its

interior

of the church

in one sequence of interlocked shapes, each part being significant

through
It
is

its

relationship to another,

as individual elements.

through the sophisticated understanding of volumes and

controlling position as the
laid the
as

relationships that architecture achieves

greatest

of the

arts,

and these experiments and discoveries

foundations for the High Renaissance concept of a building

organic whole.

an

62

Chapter Three

St Francis died in 1226 in 1221

and was canonized

in 1234.

in 1228. St

Dominic died
founded
outside
fell

and was canonized

The two
life,

great Orders

by
the

these

men

were, in a sense, missionary orders; they

religious
in that their

framework of existing
of poverty,
their

concern was for

the laity rather than the religious. In

rule

many

things similar

in

their

dependence on charity,

their adventurousness in

travel

and exploration

they yet differed radically in that the Franmissions,

ciscans concentrated

on preaching and

and the Dominicans,

who

eventually abandoned the rule of corporate poverty without

any of the dissensions that rent the Franciscan Order on the same account, concentrated on education, learning, and the extirpation of heresy. For both, however, their special stress on preaching and on
the encouragement of a

helped to fdl the void

secularization

left

more demonstrative type of spirituality by the decline, through its unworthy

of aim, of the impetus of religious enthusiasms that

had prompted and supported the Crusades. The new direction of religious revival led, on the one hand, to practical issues resulting from a renewal of the social conscience, and, on the other, to the rise of a new and more popular type of mysticism among religious. One of the forms this took was the production of a new kind of devotional book which amplified the Gospel and accompanied its narrative with comment and meditations. These were frequently highly picturesque in their detail, and led to the elaboration of a new iconography of the Life of Christ and, in particular, of the Life of the Virgin, which assumed a new importance through the intensification of her cult that accompanied the spread of the Mendicant Orders. The great devotional books o{ the period stretch over about a century and a half: the 'Golden Legend' by Jacopo da Voragine written between 1255 and 1266, the 'Meditations on the Life of Christ' by an anonymous Italian Franciscan (though it was for long attributed
63

to St Francis's official biographer, St Bonaventura), written towards

by Ludolf the mid fourteenth century, the several books by Jan van Ruysbroeck which include his 'Mirror of Eternal
the end of the thirteenth century, the 'Life of Christ'

Carthusian, written at about the

Salvation', written in the second half

of the fourteenth century, and

the supreme 'Imitation of Christ' by

Thomas a Kempis, first known in

141 8. All these circulated widely in manuscript

manuscripts of the 'Meditations' are

known

about two hundred and enjoyed enormous

popularity and influence. In the case of Jan van Ruysbroeck, this

influence

by his hermit life at the Abbey of Groenenwhere he died in 13 81, and by his connexion with the lay confraternity of the Brethren of the Common Life, founded at his instigation by Geert de Groote about 1380 at Deventer in Holland. The Netherlands became in the late fourteenth and early
was
intensified

dael near Brussels,

fifteenth century a particularly lively centre for religious revival

ing from the

among the laity, with a strong parallel influence among clergy workAbbey of Windesheim, near Zwolle in Holland,
by one of de Groote's disciples, and growing eventually into an important order of many houses, particularly famous for its contemplatives and mystics.
established in 1387
It is difficult

to define precisely the

impact of the Devotio Moderna

is

on

the art of the century.

this

The
a

clearest influence

in the

new

icono-

graphy, and

must

in part at least

stem from the importance of

mystery plays. These have

texts suggest,

much

longer history than the surviving

but whatever their role before the thirteenth century,

they had
to

importance from then onwards and appear have expanded from dramatic representations of the Easter
a considerable

Sepulchre and the Christmas Crib into complex Biblical plays. Much of the narrative detail in religious pictures derives from their extensive use

of the Apocryphal Gospels, which contain

tales

of the

childhood of the Virgin, of her education in the Temple, of the

disappointment of her suitors
that blossomed,

when

it

was the

elderly Joseph's rod

and the heahng of pagan statues falling as the Christ Child passed them by on the way to Egypt, and a host of similar details, charming, naive, homely, evocative, highly pictorial, but scarcely canonical. This was the very stuff^ of popular drama. The
at the Nativity,

of the midwives

the unbelieving one's withered hand, of the

64

legends and miracles of the saints also fed the appetite for wonders,

and the didactic aspect of

their lives

was made more vivid by the

in

envelope of the marvellous.

The emergence of the new iconography was preceded

Germany

and Bohemia by the long aftermath of Italian Trecento painting. Like a leaven working through the whole lump, so the outstanding quality of Italian of Tuscan art during the fourteenth century

slowly permeated the whole of Western European painting, and the

styles that

are in the
cess

emerged in the more active artistic centres such as Prague main directly derived from Florence and Siena. In the proof assimilation by, for instance, the Master of the Vyssi Brod
Duccio's coherent narratives and the attenuated forms of

cycle,

Simone Martini's sophisticated elegance become more spiky and contorted, and the Master of the Trebon Altarpiece (known in German as the Master of Wittingau) achieves a slightly Expressionist form of Agnolo Gaddi that is, his colour is darker and richer, his forms less clear, and his sense of internal space more distorted, but his rather wilting poses and his sense of pattern derive from Florentine sources. In Master Theodoric, whose largest complex is the Crucifixion and Pieta surrounded by heads of saints in the chapel of Karlstein
Castle, executed in the second half

of the fourteenth century, the

figures

have

much of the weighty

directness

and

solidity

of form of

the Lorenzetti. Later forms of this Italianate influence are touched

but slightly by the greater directness and naturalism of International

Gothic.
in

The Madonnas with

faces

curly, golden hair, small, tight features

round

with high bland foreheads, tenderly sweet smiles,

Infants: these types sur-

languid eyes, and long, thin, boneless fingers which seem hardly able
to bear the

weight of their plump, sprightly

vive right

down to the mid-fifteenth century, becoming weaker as the

is

original inspiration

more worked

out. Their

type-name of Sclionc

Madonnen

Beautiful Madonnasadequately describes the genre.

Italy
is

In France and in Flanders a complete break with the current

flowing from

marked by

the

emergence of Claus

Sluter,

working
style

in

Dijon in the

last fifteen

years of the century. Sinter's

of

large, bulkily clothed figures, highly naturalistic in their

hair, facial expressions,
is

details

of beard,

found

in his sculpture for

Champmol

near Dijon and descends ultimately from the portal

65

sculpture of French cathedrals.

in

The

majestic

amphtude of his prophets

The Well of Moses {plate 6), the splendour and richness of his handling of drapery, has its counterpart in painting in the works attributed to the mysterious Master of Flemalle, where the heavy
folds

of long, thick
feet

dresses

and cloaks

lie

heaped

in angular masses

about the

of his Virgins.
Style

from the Soft

One of the characteristics of the change current in Germany and Bohemia, and the Interit

national Gothic

which generally succeeded

there

and spread so

rest of Europe, to the realistic vision of the Master of Flemalle and Jan van Eyck, is to be found in this treatment of drapery in, that is, the change from soft, flowing folds trailing

widely over the

gracefully around

willowy bodies
Stil'

to angular clusters

of stiff material
this
is

enveloping

much more

thick-set figures. In

German,
style.

described

quite simply as 'der eckige

the angular

Of the most telling

examples of this

new angularity one is the small triptych by the Master

of Flemalle representing the Entombment in the centre panel with the Resurrection on one wing, and Golgotha and a donor in the foreground on the other. Not only are the figures extremely
realistic,

and
is

is

there a coherent spatial system within the picture, so

that there
in the

a sense

of depth, of recession from the mourning

women

foreground to the weeping

is

woman
new

at the

back of the group

round the tomb, but there

also a

unity of feeling, of heart-

rending emotion running through the whole compact mass of figures.

The
St

angel wiping

away

the tears with the back of his hand, the

John

straining to support the grieving

Mother

leaning over her

dead Son, the stricken

woman

holding the headcloth, these sound a

reaHsm.

The iconoon the cover of the tomb set slantwise across the empty grave from which the Christ steps awkwardly; the gaudily dressed soldiers about the tomb lying in gawky attitudes, the little wattle fence which seems to have survived from German fourteenth-century representations of the scene: these
than the centre panel.

new and' urgent note of dramatic much deeper into pictorial space
graphy
is

The

Resurrection plunges

quite familiar; the angel seated

in different arrangements

remain the constant

parts.

What

survives

from the past is the gold ground patterned in a delicate raised tracery qf tendrils; what is new is the concern to re-create the scene itself, to stimulate the emotion of the beholder, to make him participate
66

50

Master of Flemalle

Sr Joseph, detail Jroin the Merodc Altarpiccc

drama unfolded before his eyes to suggest sounds of grief, to involve him in the suffering, so upon the price of his salvation.
in the

to

him

the very-

that he meditates

One of the

great mysteries of Flemish fifteenth-century painting

concerns the identity of the Master of Flemalle and the personality of

Robert Campin. Campin

is

well documented.

He was born

about

1378/80 and died in Tournai in 1444, so that he was probably a few years older than Jan van Eyck and survived him by three years. He

may have worked in Tournai from 1406 onwards, and he certainly became a citizen of the town in 1410, which means quite clearly that he was not born there; he held the official appointment of Painter in Ordinary to the town, and had a considerable workshop with apprentices. He became Dean of the Painters' Guild in 1423, and was
swept into
local pohtics as a result

of

a revolt in the

town, but in
in a different

1428 he retired again into private

life.

In 1432 he

was

kind of trouble because of

his position as the

his irregular life,

but although he was

often at loggerheads with the authorities, he kept his popularity and

town's major

artist,

and remained prosperous

is

until

his death.

However, the

tantalizing fact

that

no

signed, docu-

mented, or even traditionally attributed work survives.

considerable

body of work

is

attributed to the Master

itself

of

Flemalle, a

name

derived from the behef,

erroneous, that

some

of his works came from Flemalle in the Netherlands. There is also a large and important triptych of the Annunciation, with wings

two donors, and on the other the enchanting making mousetraps [plate 50), attributed for want of a better name to the Master of Merode (whence the altarpiece came). But the Merode altarpiece has so many affinities with the works of the Master of Flemalle that the two are generally considered to be by one man. The characteristics of this man's style
containing on one side
scene of St Joseph
are a certain vivid realism
tional eficct, the use

and angularity of form,

in the

a striving for

emoof an
faces,

of heavy draperies

falling in thick folds like

interior.

crumpled blotting-paper, and an interest There are also certain physical

mouths, rather thick-set
figures,

minute

details

characteristics:

long

heavily lidded eyes, small rounded chins under straight, thin-lipped

dumpy

proportions, fairly strong

le.

colour, and a gift for landscape painting. In 1427 Rogelet de

68

51

Jacques Daret Nativity

52

Master of Flemalle
Xativity

Pasture and Jacquelotte Daret were entered in the Guild records of

as apprentices to Robert Campin, and in 1432 they both became Masters, Jacques Daret being made Dean of the Guild on the same day. Both were natives of Tournai, where Jacques Daret, the son of a woodcarver, was born before 1400. In 141 8, when living in Campin's house, he entered Holy Orders, and he must have continued working as Campin's assistant until the end of the formal apprenticeship without which he could not practise as a Master on his own. In 1433 Daret was working for the Abbey of St Vaast, near Arras, on a fourfold altarpiece containing a Nativity [plate ji), now

Tournai

in the

Thyssen Collection. This Nativity contains

many

features

drawn from the Apocryphal Gospels, particularly that of the pseudoMatthew, which recounts the story of the two midwives, Zelomi

who

believed in the Virgin birth, and Salome

as a result

who

did not, and

whose hand withered

increduhty.
It

of her expressions of contemptuous

of St Joseph shielding the candle

also has the figure

with

his

hand, and the half-scale angels surrounding the ruined

these features are to be

hut in which the Virgin kneels before the naked Infant lying

on the ground. All

attributed to the Master of Flemalle (plate ^2),

found in and the

a Nativity
similarities

between these two works suggest that Jacques Daret derived his picture from the one by the Flemalle Master, which would suggest a connexion between the well-documented Campin by whom no pictures are known, and the considerable oeuvre of the unidentified Master. The interior of the room in the Merode Annunciation [plate 5j) contains a wealth of vividly portrayed detail: the water-pot hanging in the alcove with the embroidered towel beside it; the latticed and
shuttered, window, the long

bench

against, rather than

upon, which

the Virgin

sits;

the book, the guttering candle, the lily in the vase

upon
the

the table, tipped

awkwardly
details

in an uncertain attempt at per-

spective.

Many

of these

reappear in another work, clearly by

same hand: these are the wings of the Werl Altarpiece the only one containing the clerical donor presented by the Baptist [plate 34) and the other the Virgin seated reading before the fire in a room at the back of which an open window looks out
surviving parts

upon a landscape {plate 55). The interiors in the Werl Altarpiece are far more competently managed than the gauche perspective of the
70

53

Master of Flemalle

Annunciation, central panel of the Merodc Altarpiece

Merode Annunciation. The same device of the open door to join the two scenes is used as it was to include the donors in the Annunciation,
but behind the Baptist
is

convex mirror reflecting the scene. This image in Jan van Eyck's Arnoljini Marriage Group {plate 62), and that this is an imitation is borne out by the fact that the Werl wings are dated 1438; it also suggests a development within the Master of Flemalle's works. The patterned gold ground and the compressed frieze of figures in the Entombment show the evolution of new forms still within the framework of an older non-naturalistic tradition; the uncertain perspective of the Merode Annunciation indicates an increasing concern for reahsm in setting and character; both these pictures suggest an artist who is leading rather than following, for the nearest approach to them is in
is

clearly a reference to the mirror

71

54

Master of Flemalle Donor

John

presented hy St

55

Master of Flemalle The

of the Werl Altarpiece

Virq^in reading,

the Baptist, n^ing of the IVerl Altarpiece

Van Eyck
traits

in the 1430s.

view: a painter

who
is

has

of 1434, and

But the Werl wings support the opposite knowledge of the Van Eyck Artioljini porusing that knowledge in combination with a

more
72

studied solution of his

own

earlier spatial

problems.

great deal

is

known about Jan van Eyck from

even
his birthplace
It is

1422 onwards, but

nothing
his birth

earlier,

being doubtful and the year of

unknown.

possible that before this date he

had been
in

connected with the Court of Count William of Holland, for

he was working for the dead Count's usurper brother
It is

1422

in

The

liague.

also possible that

he

may have worked on

the illumination

of a

Book of Hours that was later split up and fmished by several hands, and of which the part that came to be known as the Hours of Turin was burnt in 191 1 in the fire which destroyed the Royal Library in
Turin. Fortunately, the pages containmg the miniatures had been

photographed, and therefore can be compared,

if only inadequately,

with other surviving pages from the same manuscript

now

in the

Turin

Museum
of the

[plate ^6),

but

known from
of Milan.

their original

home in

the

Trivulzio Collection as the Hours

teristic

lost

pages attributed to the

The outstanding characVan Eycks are the shimmer-

ing quality of the light, a magic blend of realism and poetry in the

treatment of nature, and

reappear in

a use

of certain perspective devices which

is

some ofJan's
to

later

works. There

also the point that

one

of the miniatures represented Count William, and part of the manuscript

is

known

have been

in his possession.

56 Attributed to] AN
Jroin the

VAN Eyck
Turin

Birth of St John the Baptist

Hours

of

73

Eyck entered the service of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, and served him until the end of his life. He was not
Ill

1425 Jan van

only
sent

Court

painter, but also a confidential servant, for his master

him on

several secret diplomatic journeys, at least

his various

two of which

were connected with

Portugal.

marriage negotiations in Spain and

He

lived in Lille until 1429,

and then in Bruges, where he

bought

a house,

and where he was

visited

by

the

Duke

in 1433. In

1441 he died in Bruges.

The

bald framework of his documented life-history

a

is

supple-

number of signed and dated works, and by others that can be confidently attributed to him and that are datable by analogy
mented by
with those for which
relatively small
a date exists.
its

What

is

so astonishing

is

the

consistency in his production,

continuously high level, and the

it.

development

to

be found in

This,

it is

true,

may

be because the
portrait

earliest

dated works are the Ghent Altar and the small

after painting these,

of Tymotheos, and because he only lived another nine years what development there was must largely have
his

preceded

dated works.
is

Then
Altar
is

there

the

a Latin quatrain

problem of Hubert. On the frame of the Ghent which may roughly be translated: 'The

painter

Jan, second in
iiivites

Hubert van Eyck, than whom none was greater, began it; art, having completed it at the charge of Jodocus Vyd,
this verse
last line

to contemplate what has chronogram expressing the date 1432. The inscription implies that Hubert was Jan's elder brother, and states specifically that he began the altarpiece. Presumably, he must have executed other works as well. Hubert is barely documented at all, and the four exiguous references supposed to relate to him in the Ghent city archives do not incontrovertibly refer to him. It has therefore been advanced that Hubert was an invention, a piece of local patriotic propaganda produced in Ghent in the sixteenth century to offset the enormous prestige of Jan in Bruges, that the quatrain is a fake, and that Jan alone existed and painted the whole of the great work. But there is no overriding reason for doubting the genuineness of the inscription, and there is, besides, a small group of works which, while they can be related to Jan's known paintings, yet do not appear to be entirely by him. The Three

you by

on

the 6th

May
a

been done'. The

of this verse

is

74

yt^l^

wm^

Purr ^^ Hi
^^E'^fC
/<jji

^H^^^^H^^/^T.^^

'''\^

.^^-

'

^^

^^hB
BH^ ^ \ '""^^ili
at the Sepulchre

f
57 Attributed
to

Hubert van Eyck The Three Maries

Maries

at the

Sepulchre [ph^te ^y) has

many points in common with the

Ghent Altar, and hence with Jan's dated or datable works, but, hke some of the miniatures in the Turin Hours, it also has a markedly International Gothic character. The clumsy perspective of the tomb, the elegance of the three holy women, the caricature types of the
sleeping soldiers, the precious jewel delicacy of the angel, the un-

developed

spatial

towered
plexity

city

system of the composition, with the walled and and the splendid sunrise as a flat backcloth to the drama

of the Resurrection

and all and imagination. Also, the elaborate symbolism of The Three Maries at the Sepulchre is paralleled in the Ghent Altar, and hnds many
75

all these are still part o the sophisticated comof the very early fifteenth-century approach to naturalism, suggest a less factual mind than Jan's, a richer vein of poetry

58

Van Eyck

Aniinnciatioii, the outside of the wings,

Ghent Altarpiece

echoes in Jan, though he rarely achieves the same depths, the same
multi-layers,
it is

of meaning. But from

developed.

this,

and other works,

in

which

reasonable to assume that he participated, Jan's

own

personal

style certainly

The Ghent Altar is a large and complex polyptych, some sixteen when fully open, by some twelve feet high, and about eight feet by twelve feet when the folding wings are closed. One of
feet across

the

first

things that strikes one

on looking
parts,

at

it

is

the absence of
is

coherence between the various

tradition

although there

medieval

which justifies the arrangement of the

central panels

of the

Deesis above with the Paradise scenes below.

piece has

When closed,

the altar-

on the outside of its wings a large Annunciation [plate ^S) below it, the portraits of the donors and their patron saints, while the topmost sections contain four small figures of sibyls and prophets with texts on floating ribbons. Another striking thing is the
and,

76

59

Van Eyck

Dccsis, Adoration of the

Lamb ami

the inside of the wings,

Ghent Altarpicce

disparity in the scale

of scale

exist

of the various figures: no less than four changes between the three divisions of the outside of the wings,
altarpicce.

and similar

disparities are present

of the inside of the

between the upper and lower parts There are also curious disparities in

approach; some parts are almost prosaically factual, others almost

The angel and the Virgin of the Annnficiaby two small panels, one with the representation of an arched window looking out upon a city square, and the other with a wash basin and ewer set into a niche and a white towel hanging from a rail beside it. The symbolism of the ewer and basin is clear, but that of the city view is not; in the same way, the lighting
visionary in their intensity.
tion are

separated

system within these scenes

angel are
the
little
lit

is

also

odd, since both the Virgin and the

from the right, and the open window in the centre and windows at the back of the figures do not in any way modify the lighting within the picture; nor does the light from
arched

77

these

windows

fall

in

any logical way across the bare floor space

as insertions.

between them, so that they have been treated sometimes

The donor and his wife kneel beside the figures of their patrons, the two Sts John, who are represented as statues and painted in grisaille.
This introduces not only a disparity of scale, but also one of vision,
for three orders

of reality are

now present:

a narrative representation

portraits, and two simutwo highly factual lated sculptures. The portraits of Jodocus Vyd and his wife have the same closely detailed approach to living form that Jan shows in, for instance, the Man in a Red Tnrban [plate 61) or the Tymotheos in the

of a sacred

subject,

donor

Leal Souvenir {plate 60). Yet there

is

a strong

attempt to impose a
the panels

uniform framework on these disparate elements through the governing factor of the Hght, which
falls

uniformly in

all

the right, and also through the use in the upper panels of a
ceiling

from beamed

running through the whole scene, and, in the lower panels,

trefoil arches to

of the same cusped

of the altarpiece
viewpoint.

frame the

figures.

On

the inside

[plate 59) the

main

disparities lie in the scale

and the
this

The upper row

contains figures of four different scales,

the largest in the centre being that of

disparity can easily be a survival

God

the Father,

though

from

medieval tradition of impor-

tance indicated

by

size.

The detail is superb in quality, but the minute

handling of jewels, crowns, brocades, never overwhelms the grasp

in facial expression

of the structure of the whole figure. There is also a passionate interest and in character; instances of this are in the open mouths of the singing angels, and the difference in treatment between the supernatural figures and those of Adam and Eve which stand on the outside edges of the uppermost panels and appear as figures from
another world, physically
as

well as spiritually.

Below the Deesis is the panel o{ Adoration of the I^amh, the various iconographical elements of which may be analysed almost indefinitely
in ever deepening layers

of meaning and symbolism. The

sacrificial

Lamb stands upon the altar, and the chalice catches the blood pouring
from
of the Passion are upheld by httle angels kneeHng round the altar, and in the foreground of the flowery hill-side the pilgrims approach, both towards the altar and the Fountain of Life which gushes in the foreground. They come in long
its

breast; the instruments

processions

prophets,

martyrs, popes, virgins, pilgrims, judges,

78

LEKT;:
6o Jan van' Eyck
Tymothcos, inscribed

BfjVVEMIR
'"Vn""^-"

Leal Souvenir

h"ii'>nairfr'n'i~fi liiii -VT

"'iii''fi"?'''Slfr

knights, hermits,
fantastic detail

wending

their

way

across a landscape
this

of such

and such luxuriance that

seems to be the repre-

sentation of an earthly as well as a celestial paradise.

The next firmly dated work by Jan is the portrait of the unknown Tymotheos which bears the inscription 'Leal Souvenir' and the
signature and date 1432 [plate 60).
simplicity
it

Its

clarity

of organization, the
detail,

of the

lighting, the

minute handling of the

in a

connect

clearly

with the donor portraits in the Ghent Altar, and the same

features also appear in the

bears, in addition to

which the signature and the date 1433, the proud if

Man

Red

Ttirhan [plate 61),

79

6t

Man

Jan van Eyck in a Red Turban

62

{right)

Jan van
(

Arnolfini Marriage

63

Master of Flemalle
Portrait of a

Man

ambiguous device of 'Als Ich Kan' As I can. It is instructive to compare the Man in a Red Turban with the Portrait of a Man {plate 6j) by the Master of Flemalle. The two problems are virtually the same; both artists have made great play with the decorative patterns of the headgear; both have examined with the most minute intensity the facial forms of their sitters, even to the depiction, in Jan's head, of

the stubble of the beard.

surface forms that Jan
total

It is through his minute examination of van Eyck achieves the comprehension of a

form, and in

this

Flemalle was not his equal since the face of his

the features appear
as a total

turbanned
portraits

man

is

more empty, and

of individual parts of a head than

more the form. In few of

his other portraits,

[plate 62),

with the exception of the Arnolfini Marriage Group

does Jan achieve quite these heights of excellence.

The

Anioljini Marriage

Group

is

one of the world's most fascinating and

involved pieces of iconography, and can qualify for the unusual role

of a painted marriage certificate, for the Italian merchant is clearly at the most solemn moment of his vows, as is proved by the lighted candle above his head signifying the presence of God, while at the feet of his young wife stands the small dog emblematical of marital fidelity, and behind them is the marriage bed. On the wall at the back of the room above the mirror which reflects the scene the artist has signed the work and affirmed his presence at the ceremony

'Johannes de Eyck
Here again
ance that
is

fuit hie 1434'.

it is

the realism, the minute concentration

on appear-

so striking.

The
is

perspective system of the room, the

scientific theories

window,

the floorboards,
at the

not based on any of the

date,
is

of optics which, of
reality

same

were current

in Florence;

it

is

purely empirical, but so perfect

the observation that the illusion

within the

room

is

complete.
is

The

perspective of the

Dresden

Virgin and Child with Saints

equally based

on

a reality

founded apparently on observation, although no church

corresponding to
this

interior

one has ever been

identified, so that the reality

must

in large part be a creation

of the painter's imagination, and

derived from a use of architectural forms for symbolic purposes.

What

is

complete

is

the sense of actuality, so that Jan van

Eyck

appears to be approaching the idea of the general through a heightened

realization

of the

particular. In this

he

is

worlds away from Roger

van der Weyden, and even from the Master of Flemalle, whose starting-point was, it is true, reality, but a reality suffused by emotion and drama the approach from the generalized feeling, from the state of mind, to the particular and the statement of fact. Nowhere

in

Jan van Eyck

is

there any drama.

as in the St

hearted

movement,

At most there is a vague, halfGeorge in the Madonna of Canon van

82

\^\-\

11

u
64 Jan van

Eyck Madonna of Canon

van dcr

Pack

der Paele {plate 64),

accompanied by

a frozen smile, or a half-smile

of

discreet

contentment and pride

under modest room.
a

in the face

of the Madonna looking

sits,

down on

her Infant in the tiny panels where she

like a

grand

lady, half-enthroned

canopy of

state, half-hoiirgcoise

upon

the floor in a

The

tradition that the

Van Eycks invented

oil-painting has long

been abandoned. The amazing technique of Jan's works does, however, suggest that he must have invented or perfected a better, purer
varnish or
oil

medium,

for his paint has a fluid qualir}% an absence

of brush-strokes, and

a jewel-like clarity

of colour which give

it

the

appearance o( being floated almost magically upon the panel. Jan's

colour and the consistency of his paint are
transparent,

much more

subtle,

more luminous than

the Master of Flemalle's

more more
83

65 Jan

van Eyck

Roliii

Madonna,

detail

pastosc inatierc; but he never achieves the tender, palUd luminosity of

Roger. The Flemish technique of the

oil

medium

is

demonstrably
for instance

ahead of the use of

pictures,

oil

paint elsewhere

in Italy,

because the nature of northern painting confined the art to easel

whereas the
in

first

requirement of the Itahan patron was for

easel picture

fresco, so that

tempera became the

its

medium,

since

it

resembled fresco

colour and demanded the same qualities from

the executant. Like fresco, tempera requires promptness of hand

and

execution, and does not readily allow repainting and retouching; oil

84

66

KoNRAD WiTZ

Christ walking on the Water

permits a

slow,

deliberate

approach,

requires

time for drying

thoroughly during the phases of execution, and allows for second

thoughts. Despite his virtuoso quahties, and perhaps because of them,

Jan van Eyck's influence did not penetrate nearly so widely as that of Roger through Europe, particularly in Germany. Lucas Moser, for
instance, in the

Tiefenbronn Altarpiece

[plate 14^)

Flemalle than from his great contemporary, and

Christ walkiti^ on the Water [phtte 66),

stems more from Konrad Witz, in the

it is is

of 1444,

has,

true, the acute

realism of Jan in that his landscape background

recognizably a
85

67 Petrus Christus St

Eligius

and

the Lovers

on the Lake of Geneva, but in its treatment it is closer to the wide and tender landscape of the Flemalle Dijon Nativity than to the more visionary ones at the back of either the Ghent Altar or the Rolin Madonna [plate 6^). In fact, the lamentation of poor Moser, 'Cry, Art, cry and lament loudly, nobody nowadays wants you. So, 1 alas, 143 ', painted on the frame of his altarpiece, suggests that the new style was making but slow headway against the insinuating
particular site

quahties of the older Soft Style.

86

After the death of Jan van Eyck in 144T, the most important Bruges painter was Petrus Christus, who has usually been considered
as a pupil

of Jan, despite the

liis

fact that

he

is

not certainly recorded in

in his

Bruges

until 1444. Stylistically,

he comes the closest to Jan

realism and in

rather dispassionate quality,

though he never
for instance in
saint
is

achieves the same virtuosity.

He borrows from Jan,

the St Eliguis and the Lovers [plate 67), of 1449,

where the

represented as a goldsmith selling a ring to a

young

couple, and

Arnoljini Marriage

where the mirror and the details of the interior directly recall the Group (plate 62) to which, incidentally, it is also

linked in theme, for this

tion [plate 6S)

is

clearly a betrothal picture.

The Lamentait

shows the

stiff

poses,

and the empty, lumpish forms he

also

favoured, perhaps because of a certain attempt at stylization;

shows him leaning, or rather pushing himself, not very successfully, in the direction of Roger's pathos, but he is defeated by the coarse forms of his draperies and his perfunctory sentiment. He is at his best in portraits, for there he seems sufficiently interested to push his

68 Petrus Christus Lamentation

analysis
interest
little

beyond

superficial statements

about the features, and to

himself in the flow of light from

more than one

source.

The

St Jerome [plate 6g) has long been argued over; the date 1442

which it bears is not above suspicion, and cannot be used to support the argument that this is a Jan van Eyck that Petrus finished, although evidence of style would suggest it. It has been claimed, also, that this is the Jan St Jerome mentioned in the Medici inventory of 1492; it may be. That a picture of this type did exist in Florence is borne out by the pair of philosopher saints by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli in Ognissanti, clearly based on just such a prototype. It has also been advanced that the brilliant, if a httle mechanical, handhng is due to the fact that it is a later fifteenth-century copy of a lost Van Eyck
original.

69 Petrus Christus St Jerome

Chapter Four

Masolino

is

an excellent example of what happened to an

artist

trained in the International Gothic tradition

attracted to the
is

who found
artists

himself

new

realism of Masaccio.

To

a large

extent his case

typical

of what happened to most of the Florentme

working

at

about the middle of the fifteenth century, but on the whole they

tended eventually to be more influenced by the aggressively dramatic

realism of Donatello than
himself. In different
artists

by the more
this

classical

forms of Masaccio
in

ways

twofold aim can be seen working

varying

as

much

in age as in

accomplishments, and best of all

in the

major figures of the period, Fra Angclico, Fra Filippo Lippi,

Uccello,
It

Domenico Veneziano, and Castagno.

used to be thought that Fra Angelico offered a perfect parallel

works were more lyrical, or indeed more which has something to commend it, was based on two things: the first was the supposed date of Fra Angehco's birth at around 1387, which made him precisely contemporary with Masolino and with Donatello; the second factor was the existence of his earliest certainly datable work, the altarpiece painted for the
to Masolino, although his

sentimental. This view,

Cloth Guild

(the Linniitoli Madoiuia) [plate 70) in 1433. This picture

seems to have a definite connexion with the

appears

work of Masaccio, and

work.
It

the influence can be substantiated in Angelico's later

now

more

likely,

however, that Fra Angelico was born

is

as late as

about 1400, so that the influence from Masaccio

rather to be

of one contemporary on another, and is therefore more closely paralleled by the influence exerted by Masaccio on Fra
reckoned
as that

Filippo Lippi.

Here again,

until

comparatively recently,

it

tomary
sively

to

assume that Fra Filippo started

realistic.

his career as a painter

was cusof
progres-

rather sweet devotional images and that his

work became

more austere and more

This was due to a preconceived

it

notion of the idea of development, according to which

was
89

71 (ri^ht)

Fra Filippo

Lippi

Barhadori Altarpiece

70 Fra Angelico
Linainoli

Madonna

believed that a
plished,

more

realistic

painting was necessarily

later,

more accomwork.
so,

and therefore necessarily

than a
this

less realistic

There
arts in

is,

of course, no reason in logic

why

should be

and the
that the

Florence in the period from about 1430 to 1460

show

development of ideas was rather more complicated. Fra FiHppo's

development can be plotted fairly precisely since the rediscovery in the cloister of the CarmeHte church in Florence of some fragments
of frescoes which can be dated about 1432. Fra Filippo was an orphan who was put into the Carmelite monastery in Florence in 1421, when he was still a child, by his aunt, presumably to get him off her hands.

During the mid 1420s Masaccio was painting the Brancacci Chapel in the church; in 1430 Fra Filippo is recorded in a document as a painter. Since the Carmelites were an enclosed Order, it seems probable that Filippo was Masaccio's pupil, and the battered fresco fragments, which were mentioned by Vasari but later covered with whitewash and rediscovered only in i860, confirm this impression entirely. The next dated works, the Tarquinia Madonna [plate 73) of
90

1437 and the Barbadori Altarpiece {plate 71), commissioned in 1437, both show a trend away from Masaccio and are rather nearer to
Donatello. This
(so called
is

perhaps more discernible in the Tarquinia Madonna

original

home), for the compactness of the groupbackground in layers receding into the distance, the fat and really very ugly child, suggest that Donatello's Siena Font The Feast of Herod [plate 26) and the vigorous ^//ff/ of the Prato pulpit and the Cantoria [plate zg) were in Fra Filippo's mind. In the
its

from

ing, the architectural

Barbadori Altarpiece the composition

is

easier

and

less

compressed.

The

setting

is still

architectural, but

only a simple panelled room,

recall the ferocious expressions

containing a large, tabernacle throne. Although the faces of the Httle

angels leaning over the balustrade
still

of Donatello's

putti,

the inspiration seems better assimilated, and the

less stressed.
It is

emotional impact of ugliness

is

The Barbadori

Altarpiece

one of the earhest datable examples of the Sacra Conversazione, that form of the Madonna and Child group where the saints are so placed as to suggest the intimacy
91

important for two other reasons.

72 Fra Filippo Lippi Coronation of the Virgin

of a Holy Conversation

piece. This

became an increasingly popular

saints in separate

composition, replacing almost entirely the older types of the Virgin

enthroned in majesty, or with the

flanking a central
quality
in

compartments
is its

Madonna

group.

The second

reason

prophetic

the

increasing

complexity of individual forms; the

draperies cularized

fall in

small folds, and

many

different textures are parti-

of the Madonna's headcloth, the embroidered copes, the fmely feathered angel's wings, the marbled panelling and floor, the carvings on the throne until there is barely
thin gauze

the

a square inch
diflerent

of the picture surface that

colour.

is

not broken up into a

form and

The

Coronation of the Virgin {plate 72),

of this can be seen in the commissioned in 1441 but probably

effect

not finished until 1447. The concept of internal space has been abandoned in order to achieve the maximum richness of surface, and

even the rational ordering of scale has

also gone: the central figures

of
92

God and

the Virgin, and the

two

angels flanking them, are

73

Fra Filippo

Lippi

Tarqtiinia

Madonna

of perspective into account, than any of the angels in the groups on either side, and even than the kneeling figures in the foreground. Also the multipHcity of detail is more pronounced. The heads of the angels offer a pointer to the influence of Fra Angehco which impelled Fra Filippo towards a competition in sweetness; with him it took the form of a stronger Hnearism, paler, brighter colour, and a retreat from the realism imposed by Masaccio. The frescoes in the choir of Prato Cathedral, begun in 1452, bear the date 1460, although it is unhkely that they were finished before 1464. He was extremely dilatory over the work, perhaps because the delays furthered his romance with Lucrezia Buti, a nun in a convent of which he was chaplain, who became the mother of his son Fihppino in 1457 or 1458, and perhaps also because of the damage to his health caused by his being racked in 1450 in order to extract from him the truth over his embezzlement of his assistant's wages. The Funeral of St Stephen and the Feast of Herod which form part of the series show the artist concentrating on movement and dramatic narrative at the expense of coherence. The Funeral of St Stephen contains a bold perspective vista of the interior of a church, a type of setting which was by now common, since it provided an opportunity for the display of knowledge and abiHty in what was now a sine qua non of any up-to-date artist's repertory, and in the Feast of Herod [plate 78) the use of continuous representation the device of several successive
relatively larger, taking the effects

incidents being

shown

as

occurring simultaneously so as to

make

the

narrative plain-;-is pushed almost

beyond the hmits of reason,

so that

the naturaHsm of the perspective setting and the telling contrast of

Herod's horror and Herodias's impassivity

reality

is vanquished by the unof the presentation. Donatello's rehef of the same subject is

the source, but it also shows by how much a superficial acceptance of his influence is detrimental to internal coherence. A similar development can be found in the Madonna and Child groups. The Madonna of Humility {plate 74), a very early one, has a

strong emphasis on light and

the ugly faces, the rather outre reahsm taken

shadow derived from Masaccio, and from Donatello; the late

Pitti Tondo [plate 73) of 1452 with the Madonna and Child background of the story of St Anne, and with the famous figure of the Maenad striding purposefully with her basket upon her

ones

the

against a

94

\.

FiLiPPO LiPPi

Madonna of Humility

75 Fra Filippo Lippi

Madonna and

Child, the Pitti Tondo

^M^.

76 Fra Filippo Lippi Madonna Adoring Child

in a

Wood

77 Fra Angelico Madonna and Child with Saints and Anqch

head, and the enchanting one of about 1455-57 with the tender

Madonna adoring

Child upheld by a grinning imp of mischief

describe the change in his style resulting

from

the sweetening and

softening of his realism in favour of a poetry derived ultimately

from

an entirely different inspiration. The Nativities are also evidence of

this

change.

One

{plate j)

was the

altarpiece for the chapel in the

assistant

Medici Palace frescoed by Fra Angelico's

Benozzo Gozzoli
97

with the famous procession of the Magi in which the younger

poetic quahty, being
tions of, the scene.

mem-

bers of the Medici family figure. These Nativities have an entirely

the insubstantial

more meditations upon, rather than representaThe gloomy background, the shadowy witnesses, angels, the soft beauty o{ the Madonna and the
the measure of the transition in the

rather cloying sweetness of the Child, lying, fmger-sucking,

ground

[plate y6), are

on the mid-

century from the realism of Masaccio and the emotion of Donatello

to that tenderness

and grace which characterized the sculptors of the

second generation.

The

surprising thing

is

to

fmd

Fra Filippo as the

herald of this change.

Fra Angelico's development appears to have been quite different,

but

his early career

is

still

obscure, and he probably did not start

painting until quite late in the 1420s.

He became

comparatively early age, but, unlike Fra Filippo,

viction,

Dominican at a he did so from cona

and

as a

member of

the

Order of Preachers he

deliberately
is

used his art for didactic purposes. For this reason, his style

always

simple and direct, and possibly also somewhat conservative.

little

The
all

reliquaries that are usually ascribed to

him, and which are

known
but the
yo),

in coloured reproductions,
first

may

be early works by him,

firmly dated
in 1433.

work
It is

is

the Linaiuoli

Madonna

[plate

commissioned

best looked at in relation to the

Madonna and Child with St Anne [plate 16) by Masaccio, and the Madonna of Humility [plate 74) by Fra Filippo. The Masaccio and
the Fra Filippo are both naturalistic in vision, but the Masaccio
is

infused with classical grandeur, and the Fra Filippo with emotional
feeling. Fra

Angelico retains
solidity

Masaccio,

its

much of the hieratic quality of the and three-dimensional form, but in some ways
of the beautiful Madonna
of
a

he

is

closer to the International Gothic ideal

is

while the Child

straight out

medieval or Byzantine model,

merely brought up to date by

slight concessions to light

and shadow.

The Madonna and

spent most of his

Child with Saints and Angels [plate yj), the altar-

Marco in Florence, where Fra Angelico working life, and was in charge of the workshop, was painted probably between 1438 and 1440. It is therefore compiece of the Monastery of S.
parable, as a Sacra Conversazione, with the Barbadori Altarpiece
[plate yi); the

composition

is

more open, less cluttered in internal space

98

78 Fra Filippo Lippi Feast of Herod

than Fra Filippo's, and

the

antithesis

it uses the same type of compositional devices of the kneehng figures, the exact balance of the stand-

ing saints and angels, the plants, garlands, and hangings

but

the

is more classical in shape, derived ultimately from the niche by Michelozzo on Orsanmichele, made to contain Donatello's St Louis, and now containing Verrocchio's Incredulity of St Thomas. As a general rule, however, Fra Angelico's works can be dated from the progress of the works in the Monastery of S. Marco, which is decorated with a large number of frescoes, one in each cell, and larger, more ambitious ones in the chapter house, on the landings, and in the passageways. The ones in the more public places, like the Madonna and Child with Eight Saints {plate 81 ) in the upper corridor,

throne

or the Annunciation {plate 82) facing the

stairs,

are quite direct in their

is

treatment of the subject.

in execution,

The Madonna

fresco

probably

fairly late

and

may not have been painted until after Fra Angehco

in 1449,

returned from
to
S.

Rome

work in his Domenico in

which would mean that he continued old convent after he had been appointed Prior at
Fiesole.

Compared with

the altarpiece, the frescoed

Madonna and Child group is much simpler in composition, even rather bare. Four saints stand in each group on either side; four pilasters decorate the wall which flanks the simple niche-throne, the
99

Madonna

is

a formal, yet tender, hieratic figure,

holding an equally

formal, yet very beautiful. Child, one hand raised in blessing, the

other holding an orb.

cast long, spiky

The

lighting

is

curiously illogical: the pilasters

shadows on the plain wall, the niche is shadowed inside and has a shallow cast shadow on the wall, the faces also the true direction of light indicate the light coming from the left in the corridor. But none of the groups casts any shadow on the

ground, so that despite the

effect

of recession created by the figures

remains
a flat
is is

of the

saints in echelon, the picture

composition.

The

same

irrational, but artistically sound, solution

used in the Annun-

ciation,

where

the interior of the arcaded loggia

evenly illuminated,
In the frescoes in
subjects are not

despite the fairly strong light

coming from
less

the

left.

the

cells,

the iconography

is

direct

and the

entirely reaHstic: the

Mocking of Christ takes place on a dais above unseeing contemplatives, and the hands of the buffetters, the head of

the spitting soldier, the stave forcing the

crown of thorns on
of the early morning

to

Christ's head, are represented as apparitions beside His

face.

bHndfolded
is

In the Noli

me

tangere the brilliance

real

enough, but the irradiating

light, the floating rather

than walk-

ing figure of Christ, the wealth of natural detail in the garden, are for

devotional reasons and intended to stimulate the meditation of the

monk who

lived in the

cell.

In this

huge

series the

workshop played

a large part.

In 1447, or perhaps earlier, Fra Angelico "was in

Rome, where he

painted the private chapel of Nicolas

with scenes from the Lives

of

Sts

Lawrence and Stephen,

frescoes

which sum up the whole

trend of his work.

settings, clarity

They

possess a logical realism in their perspective

vigour.

The colour
a

of scale and narrative content, and restraint in their is limpid, but with suflicient use of chiaroscuro of continuous representation
the division of the scenes through differ-

to give substance to the figures; the use

is

kept to

minimum by

ences in their architectural setting, but

nowhere

is

the search for

realism in the use of lighting effects allowed to destroy the unity of

the whole, or the sense of the plane of the wall.

The

stories are told

with

wealth of circumstantial and colourful

detail: for instance, the

allusion to the Pope's decision to declare 1450 a Jubilee

Year

is

shown
on the

by

the

two

soldiers

about to break

down

the walled-up door

100

Fra Angelico Scenes from

the Lives of Sts

Stephen,

detail,

Lawrence and St Lawrence

Receives the Treasures of the

Church

83
8

DoMENico Veneziano The

[above
left)

Adoration of the

Magi
Saints

Fra Angelico Madonna and Child with Eight Fra Angelico Annunciation

82 {below

left)

left [plate 80)

but even a detail of this kind is never intrusive or merely

is

included for decorative richness, but

at the heart

of the

narrative.
striking,

Compared with
and
it is

Fra Filippo's late frescoes, the difference

it is

is

striking because
style
at,

the

man

v^ho started in a backward-

looking
driving

who

finally

understood what Masaccio was really

as his pupil.
is

and not the

man who began

The
about

other great Sacra Conversazione of the period

the St

Lucy

Altarpiece [plate /p)

this artist,

by Domenico Veneziano. Very

art.

little is

known

and he seems to stand

slightly outside the

stream of Florentine
is

On

the other hand, the St

main Lucy Altarpiece

clearly

one of the major works of the middle of the century, and

103

in

some ways
not

is

more

subtle than

any of those by AngeHco or Lippi.

known when Domenico Veneziano was born, and he signed himself as a Venetian. The very problematic tondo of the Adoration
It is

of the Magi (plate 8^)

certain fact

is

often held to be evidence of an International

late 1420s

Gothic phase dating from the

is

or early 1430s, but the

first

that in 1438 he

was

in Perugia

and wrote
is

to Piero de'
i

Medici, then in Ferrara, to ask for work. His letter

1438,

dated

April

and the

crucial part

of it runs:

'I

have heard
is

at this

time what

Cosimo
and
it

has decided to have done,

a magnificent

which
if it

to paint an altarpiece,

and that he wants

work. This gives

me

great pleasure,

that I through your intervention were to paint it, and if that came about I have hope in God to show you wonderful things, seeing that there are there [in Florence] good masters like Fra Filippo and Fra Giovanni [that

would

please

me

even more

were possible

is,

Fra Angelico,

whose name
Spirito, the

in religion

was Giovanni],
if

who have
it

great deal of work to do.

is

And

especially Fra Filippo a picture

which
is

to

go to Sto

which even

he works

at

day and
the

night he will not do in five years, so great a

work

it is.

[This

Barbadori Altarpiece, destined for Sto Spirito.] But, however, the

great

and good wish

have to serve you, makes

I

me

presumptuously
else, I

offer myself, so that if

were

to

do

it less

well than any one

should be grateful for every valuable correction to give you every

proof that

can do

were

so big, that to

as fine work as any. And if by chance the work Cosimo thought of giving it to several masters, or
I

more

one than to another,

beg of you,

so that

may

as far as

possible serve that noble lord, that

good as to use your offices in my favour and to help that I may have some part of it. So that if you knew the desire I have to do some famous work, and especially for you, you would be favourable to me in this. Presumably, he was successful, because he is recorded as working on some frescoes in Florence in 1439-45, but only a few tiny fragments of these now survive. The most important thing about them that is
will be so
.'
. .

you

known is the fact that he had as an assistant Piero della who must then have been making his first contact with
works.
It is

Francesca,

Florentine

certain that

the play of light

ment of Picro's
104

Domenico's unique interests in colour and in were of fundamental importance in the developstyle, and therefore on all painting outside Florence

84

DoMENico Veneziano

Miracle oj St Zeiwbiiis

itself.

signed.
St

Only two works are quite certainly by Domenico; both They arc the Madonna with fragments of two saints, and Lucy Altarpiece, the main panel of which is in the Uffizi and
between
Berlin,

are

the the

predella panels scattered

Cambridge, Washington,

and elsewhere.

The fresc6ed Madonna and two saints the Carnesecchi Madonna London are the surviving fragments of a street tabernacle, so called from their original site. They probably date from after 1438,
in

the date of Domenico's letter to Piero de' Medici,

is

a terminus post qncni for

any of his works

in Florence.

which presumably Even its very

105

bad

state

of preservation cannot conceal that

it is

work of noble

simplicity,

broad

in treatment. This

and the two fragments of heads of saints are direct and is an artist with a gift for massing in blocks

of light and shadow, for creating large simple shapes which tell through their silhouette and their contrasts of colour. The St Lucy Altarpiece is possibly more clearly organized spatially, with as much care given to the perspective of the architecture, and to the proportions

of the figures within

it;

it,

as

any of the Sacre Conversazioni

that preceded

the Hght

is

paler, cooler, the colour

more

limpid.

St Lucy's pink gown, St Zenobius's green cope, the Baptist's red

shirt,

and

St Francis's

greenish-brown habit, the pink and green

tiles

shadows under the vaulting of the pink arcade, or in the shell-niches behind the throne, all these alternations, picked out with the sharp black marble inlays, and set off by the
in the pavelnent, the green

gentle blues of the sky, the robes of the

Madonna,

St Lucy,

and the

Baptist's cloak, give for the first time the impression

of a

man starting

with

composition in colour
his picture,

as

much as in form or spatial geometry,

and organizing

its richness of effect or its variety of movement or emotion, but purely in visual terms, with all else subordinated to that end. In Domenico's work, the organization of

not for

masses, and the blond

of Piero

is

plainly to be seen, but the kind of

little

and limpid colour that becomes the hall-mark calm and deliberation
appeal for the Florentines, since
in 146 1.

they represent had

Domenico
other

ended in the workhouse, where he died

important picture attributed to him
and St Francis
[plate 86) in Sta
is is

The only

the fresco of St John the Baptist

is

Croce, which

totally unlike the early

It

attributed Adoration and

is

very similar to the work of Castagno.

possible, therefore, that

he developed from
linear realism

the International Gothic

pictures in the 1440s

Adoration in the 1420s, through the

two signed

and 1450S to the harsher, very shortly before 1461.

of the St John and St Francis

It used to be believed that Domenico was murdered by Castagno, but one of the very few things known with certainty about him is that this is untrue, since he died in 1461 and

something
the

Castagno died of the plague in 1457. Nevertheless, there in the circumstantial story of a friendship, or at

may be
least

an

acquaintance, between the

two men. Castagno was,

after

in

some ways,
his rather

most important Florentine painter

Masaccio since

106

which may be partly responsible for the image of him as Domenico's murderer, is due to the fact that he entirely abandoned the three-dimensional forms and painterly treatment of Masaccio in favour of the linear rhythms of Donatello, which he translated into terms of painting. This linear quality seems to have agreed with Florentine temperament since its development was maintained throughout the rest of the century, and the colour and the light effects of Domenico Veneziano were totally ignored. The date of Castagno's birth is not known, although it has been placed anywhere between the late 1390s and the most usually accepted 1423. He was certainly in Venice in 1442 when he signed and dated some frescoes which he had painted in collaboration with an unknown painter called Francesco da Faenza. From the 1440s until his early death in 1457 he painted numerous works in Florence, including the frescoes of the Last Supper and the Scenes from the Passion, as well as the Famous Men and Women with their elaborate perspective effects. (These were once in the Villa Legnaia outside Florence, but have now been transferred to the Castagno Museum in the former convent of S. Apollonia, for the refectory of which
ferocious brand of realism,

the Last Supper (plate 8^) and the Scenes from the Passion
painted.)

were

The
is

Last Supper, a traditional refectory subject,

is

a curious

mixture of grandeur and harsh realism, simplicity and elaboration.

The room
with the

projected as an eye-level extension of the actual

room

floor, ceiling,

inlays; the diffused light

and walls covered with patterned marble from windows at the end of the room and

from two immediately above the fresco have caused the artist to insert a painted two-Hght window into the right wall, so that he may use the strongest light and shadow in delineating Christ and the Apostles. The old iconography of Christ, seated centrally, slightly
inclined towards the sorrowing St John, with Judas as the only figure

on

the

wrong

side

of the long

table, allows

contrast both visually and psychologically.

him the most dramatic The strongly marked eye-

brows, the heavy

lids,

the dark hair, the haloes like highly polished

metal plates reflecting the heads they crown, the formahzed pleats

of the draperies, all combine to create a vivid and harsh reality, with the deepest undercurrent of feeling, hi Castagno is to be found another facet of the acceptance of Masaccio's unity of form
folds

and

107

85

Andrea del Castagno

setting that

Last Supper

and

governed Fra Angelico's work from the 1440s onas

wards; Castagno uses Masaccesque means only in so far

Donatello.

they can

be made to express an emotional response similar to that surging in

The

Scenes from the Passion are vehement, violent even;

the lighting effects are of a kind never before realized, in that the
crucified Christ
is lit from below from the direction of light from windows; the Christ of the Resurrection [plate 8y) rises triumphantly, heroically, from the tomb, not with the leaden struggle of Donatello's last rendermg of the scene, but irradiated and serene, the embodiment of victory. Never before had such

the real

108

7^

<XX%>OOOOOJ<
mmmm

<->^r.'j *L

draughtsmanship been seen; no movement

is

too compHcated, no

form too difficult, dcfnie; no limb in

is

for his strong,

perspective,

not

made

precisely

wiry hne to explore, analyse, and no group of bodies interlocked, that and perfectly clear; his knowledge of anatomy
his

is

purely visual, but he sees with perfect understanding, and

solidity.

forms

have an almost tangible

Nor

is

his

colour always the dark,

single

stormy tone of the Last Supper, for the splendid

hgures of the

Famous Men and Women glow with light and brilliance against their dark, painted marble niches. The allusion to Donatello's St George in the warrior Pippo Spano [plate gj), and to the disputing prophets o
109

86

domenico
Veneziano
St John the Baptist

^jf^psfs^ if '-^-Fmm
the

and St Francis

Old

Sacristy doors in the confrontation

of Dante

{plate 88)

and

Petrarch

cannot be accidental, and in

his last

dated work, the frescoed

equestrian figure of Niccolo da Tolentino [plate gz), painted in 1456

in the cathedral as a

pendant to Uccello's painted memorial to

Sir
is

John
statue

Hawkwood

[plate gi), the effect

of Donatcllo's
its

Gattaniclata

both obvious and intended to be so. More flamboyant than Donatello's

it

had to be to make an impact despite

being a

mono-

chrome painting eccentric in its perspective (the sarcophagus is seen from a quite different position from the horse and rider surmounting
it), it

remanis in every sense of the term painted sculpture.

no

87

Andrea del Castagno

Resurrection

The most
but
it is

difficult

of Castagno's worksisthe/l55//w^/'/c?i
to

[plate go),

known from documents

rising

have been painted by him in 1449-50,

in a wandorla like a brilliant sunset
easy,

not impossible that the strange composition of the Virgin

rose-filled

from her

tomb

borne by four half-sized angels, and flanked by the

lant, figures

even noncha-

of St Julian and St Miniato, was partly dictated by the commissioner, for the tiny angels are highly reminiscent of Interis

national Gothic, while the drawing of their bodies and draperies

Castagno

at his

most energetic and uncompromisingly modern.

a point

There might here be

of contact with the early

Adoratioti

III

88

Andrea del Castagno Dante

89

UccELLO Delude

believed to be
fact that the

by Domenico Veneziano, but

Sceties

against this there

is

the

sky in the

from the Passion contains six angels,

distraught with grief, of the same half-scale type, and that the great

Assumption is the sculptured Porta della Mandorla of the cathedral, where the use of the traditional small angel is also to be found. The survival of International Gothic systems would not be so surprising if the artist were not so advanced in other
Florentine
for an
respects.

model

The

other major painter of this generation was Uccello,

who was

actually the oldest, since he

was born

in

1396/7 and lived until 1475.

He worked on
have been
Painters'

Ghiberti's

first

baptistery doors

therefore trained in the International Gothic style

his true spiritual

from 1407, and was which appears to

to

home. He

is

known

have entered the

Guild in 141 5, but no pictures by him are known for something like fifteen years after that. In 1425 he went to Venice, and
five years,

worked on the mosaics of St Mark's for about means that he was out of Florence during the
Masaccio's
life.

which
o

creative years

When

he returned about 143 1 he seems to have

worked in a somewhat Masolinesque style, but during the 1430s he became fascinated by the new ideas in perspective and foreshortening,
although he never really mastered the
full

implications of the system,

113

90 Andrea del Castagno Assumption

which became for him, eventually, no more than another form of elaborate pattern-making. Even when the impact of the new ideas was fresh, his treatment of them was quite arbitrary, as can be seen in the monochrome fresco in the cathedral of the equestrian figure of the condottiere Giovanni Acuto who was in

reahty an English adventurer, Sir John

Hawkwood painted

in

1436

[plate gi).

This has two separate viewpoints, one for the base

(a

and another for the horseman

system which Castagno

later

followed); a similarly irrational approach was also used in his Four

Heads of Prophets of 1443 in the roundels in the corners of the clock

of Florence Cathedral.
Recent careful restoration has made
it

possible to see his

most

famous work, the Deluge

114

[plate

8g),

painted largely in greenish

CCELLO Sir John Hati'kn'ood Memorial

lovc right)
ccolo

Andrea del Castagno

da Tolentino Memorial

93

Andrea del Castagno

Pippo Span

monochrome
on

in the cloister

of Sta Maria Novella about 1445. The

its

importance of monochrome, and

the kind of light

corollary, the very great stress

and shade

effects that

produce the extremes of

relief in a painting, as in

Castagno's heads, are not only derived from

from most desirable in painting. In Delia Pittura, his essay on painting which circulated from about 1435 onwards, he advocates the use of monochrome: 'But I should like the highest level of attainment in industry and art to rest ... on knowing how to use black and white,' and his further comment 'I
the Florentine feeling for sculptural form, but also stem directly
Alberti's analysis

of what

is

almost always consider mediocre the painter

who

does not underI

stand well the strength of every light and shade in each plane.
the learned and the unlearned praise those faces which, as

say

though

carved, appear to issue out of the panel, and they criticize those faces
in

which

is

seen

no other

art

than perhaps that of drawing', goes a

long

way towards

explaining

why Domenico
literally,

Veneziano had so

little

success.

Uccello takes Alberti quite

not only in the use of

in the way in which he manages the draperies of and includes the head of the wind-god to explain the gale that blows among them: '. It would be well to place in the picture the face of the wind, Zephyrus or Austrus, who blows from the

monochrome, but

his figures

clouds making the draperies

move
. .

in the

wind. Thus you will see

Alberti's dicta

with what grace the bodies, where they are struck by the wind, show
the

nude under the

draperies.

.'

Another of
is

which

probably contributed towards producing the pictorial confusion

which later

afflicted Florentine

painting

to be
.
.

found in his commenin

dation of abundant variety of detail:

please in painting. places arc
I

'.

copiousness and variety

say that

istoria is

most copious

which

in their

mixed

old,

young, maidens, women, youths, young boys,

all

fowls, small dogs, birds, horses, sheep, buildings, provinces and

similar things.'
It is

true that he
'.
. .

and goes on

to

blame

those painters

recommends a certain moderation, who, where they wish to

It
is

appear copious, leave nothing vacant.

dissolute confusion

not composition but

which they disseminate. There the istoria does not appear to aim to do something worth while but rather to be in tumult', but only too often his counsels were followed and his
caveats ignored, so that eventually chaos ensued.

116

94 Sassetta St

rraticis renounces his cdiihly Father,

Irom the Life of St Francis

Uccello's three big battle pieces, painted about 1454-57, are con-

ceived as decorative patterns

first

and

last [plate 93).

They
is

certainly

follow the advice about copiousness, for the field

horses, riders, lances, corpses, pieces

littered

with

of armour, and the

hill-side

beyond

the rose-hedge

is

covered with the variegated shapes of fields

dotted with little soldiers running about.

the tapestry effect, and the colour
is

The rocking-horse chargers

stress

bear riders in superbly patterned clothes, the lances and banners

is

as irrational as the

composition

fantastic.

This becomes the keynote of his

late

works: the Hunt

and the extraordinary predella commissioned by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in Urbino, which was painted between 1467 and 1468 and recounts the story of the profanation of a Host, stand quite apart from painting of the period, and in their fantasy parallel the marvellously complicated perspective drawings of facetted goblets and mazzocchi (a wooden framework for supporting the elaborate hats favoured by the dandies of the day) on which

he

is

said to

have passed

his
'I

tax return, he declared:

am

midnight hours. In 1469, in filling in his old, infirm, and unemployed, and my

wife

is

ill.'

Despite the influence of Uccello's late works on the

and 1470s two things had happened: firstly the moment of gentle and rather sweet pictures Hke Fra Filippo's Nativities had passed, and secondly the younger men were interested in problems of anatomy and movement that could best be solved in terms of the rather harsh linearism which was the heritage of Castagno and Donatello. Outside Florence four separate strands have to be followed: Siena, where the main currents are derived from Florence; Central Tuscany and Urbino with Piero della Francesca; Padua and Mantua with Mantegna; and Ferrara, where the line of development ran through the Padua of Donatello and Mantegna, and reflected the influence of the lost Ferrarese works by Piero. During the fourteenth century, Siena had been as great a fountainhead as Florence itself; the influence of Duccio, of Simone, and the Lorenzetti was as decisive in Florence as it had been in Siena, and even more so, for it was their style that determined the course o{ late fourteenth-century painting in Florence, and that spread far and wide across Europe to return eventually transmuted into the courtly
decorative painters of the period,

by

the 1460s

118

1^'

95

UccELLO The Rout of San Romano

grace of International Gothic. In the fifteenth century

tine art that

it

was Floren-

determined the developments in Siena. Domenico di

Bartolo

[c.

1400-47), in the Madonna of Humility dated 1433, reflects

Masaccio and Donatello, and in his big fresco cycle (painted 1441-44) in the Spedale della Scala, where he describes with a wealth of circumstantial detail the succouring of the poor and the care of destitute
children, his
did,
starting
di

development takes much the same

line as Fra Filippo's

(c.

from the same premises.

Sassetta

1400-50) and

Giovanni

Paolo (1403-83) retain the imaginative subtlety of

a distinctly

colour, and the slender, elegant forms of the Trecento masters, but

adopt Florentine perspective systems, though often with

wayward

reflection

of the

reality their use implies. In Sassetta's series

made no

(1437-44) of the Life of St Francis {plate 94) the narrative is really clearer by the attempts at a logical setting, for the haunting

loveliness

of each of the scenes

reahsm

lies

in the use

colour, of delicate detail, and of the expression of

di Paolo's
is

of pattern, of magical mood. Giovanni

of the same ethereahzed order. His blessed in Paradise have come straight from an elegant Burgundian Court fete;
St John entering the
Wilderness [plate 97),

from

series

painted

119

probably just
scale,

after the

mid

century, goes into a fantasy

world where

proportion, representational form, and colour are abandoned

for the creation of

dream world more

tender

real,

because

more important

than the everyday world. Sano di Pietro (1406-81) modernizes only

slightly the graceful,

Madonnas of

the previous century,

and debases their richness of feeling into a tedious, standardized production of pious imagery. Vecchietta [c. 1412-50) achieves, perhaps, the greatest versatility for he was both painter and sculptor,
is that of a tardy follower of Simone Martini by Fra Angelico, and his sculpture, which displays with ability the Siencse art of wood-carving, is an offshoot of the realism of Donatcllo, watered down by the traditional elegance of Sienese art. Matteo di Giovanni (1435-95) closes the century. He, too, continues the simple, pious type of Madonna image, and he, too, looks to Florence for new ideas to bring his traditional art up to date. His huge Assumption [plate g6), probably of about 1475, shows that he found them in an unexpected combination of the search for movement and energy of form of Castagno and the tender colour and grace of Angehco. What he does contribute is the beautiful idea of

but

his painting

influenced

the angels hovering as if in a celestial ballet while they play their

musical instruments, an idea which later develops into Botticelli's

skein of circling angels revolving with breathless speed

and

in-

comparable grace.
Piero dclla Francesca was born in the decade between 141 o and
1420,

most probably round about 1416. Nowadays, he

all

is

perhaps the

most highly regarded of

the fifteenth-century painters; this

was

certainly not so in his lifetime

and
It

after,

and for centuries

his great

masterpiece, the fresco cycle in the

Church of S. Francesco

at

Arezzo,

was almost

entirely neglected.

can be argued that the admiration

now

felt

for

him
art,

is

largely due to the conditioning of

modern

aesthetic appreciation

by

the discipline of

Cubism, for the serenity

unrealistic,

and calm of his

obtained by large, simple, geometrical shapes and

to earher eyes

pale, flat colours

which

seemed
all

and a

certain austerity

of sentiment, make him

now far more popular than

of whom were so

Fra Angelico or Fra Filippo or even Botticelli,

much admired in the nineteenth century. Piero's lack of fame in his own generation was partly fortuitous, since the Life by Vasari shows
120

96

Matted

di

Giovanni Assumption

was regarded as an important figure, and, in particular, as one who had done a great deal towards the codification of perspective. Vasari, however, came from Arezzo, and it is Hkely that he was predisposed to favour Piero as, almost, a fellow townsman. Much of Piero's obscurity was due to the fact that he never worked as a mature painter in Florence, that he was hardly influenced by Florentine ideas,
that he

have sought to remain in the retirement of his native hill-town of Borgo San Sepolcro, and that most of his best works were executed either there or in Arezzo, wdth the great exception of the works he did for the Montefeltro at Urbino, and the
that he seems deliberately to
lost frescoes in Ferrara

only

as

an

assistant to

and Rome. He was in Florence in 1439, but Domenico Veneziano on the large fresco cycle
loss

in the Hospital

of Sta Maria Nuova, the

of which has

left

one of
121

97 Giovanni di Paolo St John entering

the IVilderiwss
J'

the great gaps in fifteenth-century Florentine painting. In 1442 he

was back in Borgo and was made a town councillor, which suggests that he was better educated than one might have expected of a fifteenth-century painter. His choice of Domenico Veneziano as a master was singularly fortunate, since Domenico's study of light and his interest in colour made him the ideal teacher for Piero, and indeed the small predella panel of the Miracle of St Zcnohins [plate S4) might almost have been painted by Picro. Or was the choice of Domenico Veneziano fortuitous? Did he rather deliberately seek out a master who was a non-Florentme, and was not his own artistic background
Sienese rather than Florentine?

The
parts

altarpiece of the Life of St Francis by of which included St Francis renounces

Sassetta, the subsidiary

his earthly Father [plate

122

98 PiERO DELLA Francesca Baptism

of

Christ

94),

was painted for the church at Borgo between 1437 and 1444, and it was laid down in the contract that the picture should be painted in Siena and sent to Borgo; the very choice of a Sienese rather than a Florentine painter suggests that in art the affiliations of Borgo were with Siena rather than Florence, and this is also supported by the fact that Matteo di Giovanni, whom no one would ever think of except as a pure Sienese painter, was actually born in Borgo. Moreover, when Piero came to paint the big polyptych commissioned by the Confraternity of the Misericordia in Borgo in 1445, he designed it in the old-fashioned form of a central Madonna flanked by saints, each in his individual panel, like the Sassetta Altarpiece and very

much
the

closer to the type

of Masaccio's Pisa Polyptych, rather than in

newer form of the Sacra Conversazione, which he must have

123

99 PiERO DELLA Francesca Madonna of Mercy

encountered in Florence.

If a hint

of the
it is

new

type exists in what

is

frankly a very old-fashioned design,

in the kneeling circle

of the

members of the Confraternity sheltering under the Madonna's cloak [plate gg). The fmal payments for this picture were not made until 1462; this may mean that the stipulated three years for its execution were exceeded by a large margin, or merely that the Confraternity paid by instalments, but the presence of St Bernardino, in the panel on the far right, suggests that completion of the work was delayed beyond 1450, since the saint was only canonized in that year. Very

much
from

stronger connexions with Sienese painting can be adduced

the Baptism of Christ [plate g8), yet, equally, these links are as

much with Domenico Veneziano. The solemn nobility of the figures,

the confrontation of absolute frontahty with absolute profile, the

124

stressing

of the column-like figure of Christ by

its juxtaposition

with

the bole of the tree, the majesty and repose of the three angels, these
are Piero's
his

own

inventions, distilled

from

his

own temperament and

evenness

understanding of Masaccio.
light

The

pale, bright colour, the

casts

of the

which

suffuses all the

forms yet

almost no shadows,

these stem surely

from Domenico,

just as the

neophyte struggling

and the detailed landscape background stem from Florentine example. The picture probably dates from the 1440s,
out of
his shirt

theme of the fantastic hats worn by the robed figures in the background is derived from the representatives of the Greek Church who came to Florence for the Council of Florence held in 1439; the impression made by these exotic figures and by the Byzantine Emperor himself was reflected in many works of art produced about the middle of the century. The frescoes which he painted in Ferrara early in the 1450s have unfortunately not survived; the fresco portrait of Sigismondo Malasince the
testa,

painted in

S.

Francesco, Rimini,

is

much

restored; the next

which he began about 1452 in is S. Francesco, Arezzo, depicting the Story of the True Cross. The narrative is highly complicated, since it is based on at least two different stories in the Golden Legend, and Piero has treated it in such a way that the events are represented out of sequence for aesthetic reasons, so that, for instance, the two battle scenes face each other in the bottom row on cither side of the choir. This passion for symmetry can be seen many times: in the division about a central axis of such scenes as the two with the Queen of Sheba, those of the Finding of the True Cross [plate 100), its Restoration to Jeriisalefu and the Annunciation, and in the reiteration of the contrast between figures full face and those in profile. And with this quest for symmetry goes the insistence on stillness. Even in the plunging angel in the Dream of Constantine {plate 102), or the tightly packed chaos of the battle scenes, the rejection of movement, and of the drama of extreme gestures or of facial expressions, remains constant. Neither is there any attempt to persuade the spectator to look into the depth of the wall, or to treat the fresco as a window on to a distant pictorial space; simple flat forms and the pale even colours stress the plane of the wall. This is in sharpest contrast to the trend typified by
the cycle of frescoes

major work

125

lOO PiERO DELIA Francesca

Fitidiiiq

of the True Cross,

detail

Fra Filippo, whose Prato frescoes are of exactly the same date. In

them

the search for

movement and drama impedes

must be
a flat surface.

the narrative,

confuses the spectator by opening infinite perspectives within

and what

no stylistic change in Piero's frescoes, despite the years over which the work extended. The widening of his artistic horizons implied by a journey to Rome, where he is recorded in 1459 in the Vatican working on some frescoes which disappeared without trace, is suggested only by the battle scenes which derive from Roman battle sarcophagi; there is, however, a clear reminiscence of Agnolo Gaddi's frescoes on the
sense declares

common

There

is

126

iPol^H'

Jp
;

.^;--;-

'

ijjil

jl

lOI PlERO DELLA

FrANCESCA

RcSUnCCtioil

same

subject in Florence in the

Dream

of Constantine,

where the night

light eftect.

scene with the sleeping

Emperor

exploits the

same

127

It

was probably

at the

end of his work

[plate

at

Arezzo that Piero painted

it is

the Resurrection [plate iOi) at Borgo. Basically,

tion as Castagno's Resurrection
frontality
Sy),

the

same composistresses

but Piero

the

more than Castagno does, makes his landscape background more explicit, more local, than Castagno's stylized shrubs, places his rising Christ deeper into the tomb so that His movement is more dehberate, more inward, and so designs the tomb itself that it
like

becomes

an

altar with, therefore,

overtones that the Castagno's

perspective effect misses.

morning light is pearly, the thin air sharpens the forms, the sleeping soldiers slump uneasily, pointing the contrast between unawakened humanity and the effulgent
early

The

moment of salvation

that passes unheeded.

102 Piero della Francesca

DrcaiH oj Constantine

103 PiERO DELLA

Francesca

Flagellation

Signed works are very few.

dates

One of them

is

the Flagellation,

which

from

the late 1450s or early 1460s,

and which

may be connected

with Piero's stay in Urbino, the chief friiits of which were the double
portraits
Saints and Angels,

of the Duke and Duchess, the large Madonna and Child with and his considerable researches into perspective.

The

Flagellation [plate loj), a small panel, painted with great richness of colour and the most painstaking technique, is iconographically a mystery. Despite the many explanations that have been offered, no one has yet succeeded in explaining with entire conviction the significance of the three men in anxious converse on the right, and their

relationship to the Flagellation of Christ within the

Pictorially, the painting has the

tion as the Qneeti oj

frontality.

room on the left. same kind of symmetrical composiSheba scenes at Arezzo, and the consistent use of
{plates 104, 10^),

This also pervades the double portraits

which date more probably from about 1472 than the 1465 formerly suggested on rather slender grounds. The Duchess died in 1472, and it is possible that her portrait is a commemorative one. Both portraits
129

104 PlERO DELLA FrANCESCA The Duchess oj Urbiiio

105 PlJERO DELLA FrANCESCA

Federigo da Montcfekro,

Duke

of

Urbino

have

markedly Flemish character, except in so

of the

far as the profile

portrait, a descendant

Roman

portrait medal,

had long been

of his temperastylistic,

superseded in Flanders by the

more realistic type of three-quarter face

artist

view. But for Piero's hieratic purpose, and for an

ment, the profile suited

serious

his

purpose

best,

not only for

but
a

also for practical reasons: Federigo

of Montcfekro had received

and very disfiguring

facial injury

which involved his

right eye
to

and had distorted

his nose. Clearly, the portraits

owe something

some time past in Flemish oil-painting technique in Italy in general, but in Urbino in particular, for Joos van Ghent came to work there in 1473/74 on a commission which had originally been offered to Piero himself It must have been here at Urbino that
the interest taken for

Piero discussed perspective and mathematics with Alberti, and probably also architecture;
side
it is

also possible that

Bramante, born just out-

Urbino

in 1444,

was
is

his pupil at this time.

still

The mysterious

pic-

ture of a

town

in elaborate perspective,

in the palace at

Urbino,

must be by Piero and

130

certainly inspired

by

Alberti's ideas.

During

this

time he was working on

in

a large altarpiecc for the

Borgo, commissioned in 1454. Originally the polyptych must have consisted of a Madonna and Child enthroned in the centre panel with two saints on either side, and with six
Augustinian church
small panels of half-length saints at the edges, and a predella below, of which the Crucifixion alone seems to have survived. The four main panels of saints have been identified as those in Lisbon, London, the Frick Collection in New York, and the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum
in Milan,

and three of the

it

six half-length figures

have

also

been

identified. Like the earlier altarpiece for

Borgo,

this

one dragged on

was not finally paid for until 1469; it appears to have been broken up in the mid-sixteenth century. Piero's latest style is in sharp contrast to the very old-fashioned form of the altarpiece, and displays a mastery of Flemish technique and a concern for a highly detailed finish. Yet, this interest in the lesser qualities of painting in no way affected the simplicity and grandeur of his conception of masses, and the changed technique, although it imparted a
for a long time, for

great richness to his colour, hardly influenced his cool, limpid tones.

His

last

two

pictures are the large Sacra Conversazione in the Brera

in Milan which can be dated about 1475 or slightly earher, and the unfinished Nativity which seems to have been among his effects at his

death.

Both

these pictures

show marked Flemish

influence. This

is

particularly strong in the Nativity [plate loy),

where the choir of angels sings, mouths open, and the Madonna kneels adoring the naked Infant lying on the skirt of her robe on the ground before her. The Portinari Altar by Hugo van der Goes, which arrived in Florence
about 1475, has been suggested as a possible source for, or reinforcement of, this Flemish influence, but this would necessarily imply that
Piero revisisted Florence after that date. Being unfmished,
particularly useful as an
it
is

example of his technique. The Brera Altarpiece {plate 106) The Madonna and Child with

angels,

and six

saints,
it is

adored by Federigo da Montefeltro

fully

is still

more

important, for

one of the earhest of the

developed type of

the Sacra Conversazione with an architectural setting

as a

which is treated
it

continuation of the actual architecture of the chapel in which

set,

was

thus creating a spatial setting involving the spectator within

the compass of the altarpiece. This

was

form developed by
131

I06 PlERO DELLA

Francesca
Altarpiece,

Brcra

Madonna

and Child with angels and six saints, adored

by Federigo da Montefeltro

Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini in Venice during the

same years in the middle of the decade, but of the two works of this type which parallel the Piero, the Antonello has survived only in fragments, and the Bellini, burnt during the nineteenth century, is known only from inadequate copies. The composition presents
several unusual features besides this
is

new

spatial concept.

The

scene

the crossing of a small church, with a flood of light

coming from

dome

just

beyond

the upper edge

side,

opening out on either

eternity

of the picture, with transepts and the Madonna and Child seen against
a

the background of the choir, with an egg

probably symbol of suspended over them. The horizontals are strongly marked,
on
either side, the

upwards through the Hne of arm and hand of the Baptist pointing to the Child and continued through the praying hands of the Duke, the even line of heads, the strongly marked frieze
the Duke's baton and gauntlets

from

the dais continuing the feet

132

107 PiERO DELLA Francesca Nativity

of the architrave

to the final closing line

of the
all

triple cornice

mould-

ing over the coffered vault, and these are

intersected

by equally
of the
his

strong verticals running through the figures and the panelling of the
architectural setting.

There

is

also the question

of the

portrait

Duke.

It

has been claimed that his hands, and to

some extent

head, are in a
picture,

more minutely
this

detailed style than the rest

of the

and for
in

reason these parts have been attributed to a

is

Spanish painter, Pedro Berruguete, v^^ho

supposed to have been

working

Urbino

in 1477,

and

who

is

thought to have painted the

twenty-eight figures of Philosophers which

the Duke's study in the palace at Urbino.

be

little

reason for this

at one time decorated There seems, however, to extra elaboration of authorship.

At

this

time Piero was

apphcation to perspective.

much interested in mathematics and in their He wrote two treatises, one on the Five
133

Regular Bodies,
a treatise

a dissertation

on pure mathematics, and the other

last

on

Perspective in Painting. So far as can be ascertained,

Piero continued painting up to at least 1478, but in the

fourteen

or fifteen years of his

life

he does not seem to have painted anything,

and the
is

last

document

referring to

him

records his death in 1492.

It

said that

he was blind in

his last years,

but his will drawn up in

i486 contains the usual phrase about being sound in

there
is

mind and body;

also a

note which appears to be in his handwriting attached

to the will,

autograph.
a

and some notes in one of the treatises also appear to be classic tendency of his art derives from the cast of mind obviously in sympathy with Alberti, and to which the more

The

common form of an impassioned curiosity in the actual details of Roman antiquities made little appeal. This aspect of classicism was
by his younger contemporary, Andrea Mantegna, whose response to the details of classical archaeology stimulated his
that adopted

extremely romantic interpretation of the

past.

Mantegna was probably born about 143 1, which makes him the contemporary of Antonio Pollaiuolo, and also of his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini, who may have been a year or so younger. He grew up in Padua, where Donatello's Santo Altar [plate 35), and the classically inspired Gattamelata [plate 32), were formative influences on him while he was still in his 'teens. His early interest in Antiquity was partly the outcome of his relationship to Francesco Squarcione (1397-1468), an archaeologist, and probably a dealer in antiquities, as well as a painter, who had travelled in Greece as well as in Italy. Only two works by Squarcione are known: a signed Madonna which is in Berlin and an altarpiece in Padua, finished in 1452. These are close to Mantegna in style, probably because both artists
took
as their starting-point a

combination of Donatello and

classical

sculpture. Squarcione seems to have

been

a difficult character,

and

Mantegna himself was equally

violently,
also the

prickly. Certainly they quarrelled

and

a lawsuit finally

terminated the apprenticeship and

adopted-son relationship between the two men. Mantegna

was extremely precocious, since he is known to have been working on the important fresco cycle in the Ovetari Chapel in 1448, when he was only about seventeen at the same time, that is, that Donatello was working on the Santo Altar.

134

Padua was the great university

city

of the north of
life

Italy,

and

deeply interested, in the second half of the fifteenth century, in the

study of Latin and Greek literature, and in the

of the antique

world. As a result of living in

this

atmosphere the natural austerity

was channelled into archaeology, and his response to the rational and Humanist ideas of Donatello was reinforced by an interest in the exact details of classical Antiquity of an intensity to which Donatello himself seldom aspired. hi 1454 Mantegna married Giovanni Bellini's sister. The currents of influence worked both ways, and while his classicism and his illusionistic interests were introduced into Venice, in Bellini's hands they were much softened and humanized. His frescoes in the O vetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani were almost entirely destroyed in 1944, but photographs of the complete cycle exist. Mantegna worked there during two different periods, at first on some of the vaulting frescoes and on the left wall, which contained, by him, four scenes from the life of St James taken from the Golden Legend, and later on the right wall, where only the lowest fresco of the Martyrdom of St Christopher is by him. The apse has an Assumption by him, and the commissioner's objections to it ended in a lawsuit, so that a great deal of knowledge about the artist and the progress of the work is derived from the evidence given in court. Only the St Christopher and the Assumption have survived. The four frescoes of the Life of St James are arranged in two tiers; the top two of St James baptizing Hermogenes when on the way to Martyrdom and St James before the Judge form a pair balanced about a
of Mantegna's
taste

central void.

The

perspective

is

based

at the eye-level

of a spectator
(that
line
to
is,

imagined to be immediately

in front

of the frescoes
the

sus-

pended

in mid-air before them); the

lower pair have the

James on

of sight

at the foot

of the

fresco, so that St

way

Execution

[plate log) and the Martyrdom of St James [plate loS) are seen in much sharper recession. There are also virtuoso tricks played with the

spectator's relation to the

world within the

fresco,

since in the

Martyrdom one of the soldiers leans over the wooden railing which
apparently delimits the most forward plane of the picture space, and
thus impinges

upon

the spectators' world. All the frescoes contain

evidence of what was to become one of Mantegna's main obsessions:

135

his passion for archaeological exactitude, for the

armour and

the

triumphal arches are obviously correct

fact, so

down

to the last detail. In

accurate

was he

as a

recorder of classical remains that one of

is

the inscriptions recorded in the Corpus InscriptiotiHtn Latinomm

in-

on his evidence. The hardness of his forms derives very largely from Donatello, but he was certainly conditioned to this type of vision by Squarcione, who is also the source of the
cluded in
it

solely

garlands, often with putti disporting themselves

among them, not

only in Mantegna, but in

many

other Paduans. His colour veers

unexpectedly between the extraordinarily intense and an almost

monochromatic

subtlety, his handling

of

detail

is

almost painfully
or in the
influence of

precise, as in the lines

and

creases

of his

facial expressions,

clinging and convoluted folds of his draperies.

The

Donatello

is

not only formal; the rehefs of the Santo Altar also

pictorial space

governed Mantegna' s creation of consistent

effects.

and

his

use of rather sharply inclined foreshortening to create dramatic

These

stylistic

features

appear sHghtly modified in the

Martyrdom of St Christopher on the opposite wall, which was probably completed by 1457. In it, the two sections of the narrative are

by a common architectural framework. Despite the terribly damaged state of the fresco it is still possible to see that the handhng has become a little more mellow. Between 1456 and 1459 Mantegna painted the large altarpiece for the Church of S. Zeno in Verona [plate 110), which is one of the
united

with the older type of polyptych, and continues the development begun in Florence of the Sacra Conversazione in a
decisive breaks

unified pala. Mantegna's link with this

development

is

patently
|

through Donatello, and the source of the inspiration was the high
altar

of the Santo, which used in bronze the painted form of the Sacra Conversazione that was just being evolved in Florence when
left for

Donatello
a

Padua

in 1443.

The Madonna

sits

dreamily upon
J
'

high throne, clustered about with musician child-angels, and in the

panels

on

either side stand her attendant saints, reading or talking

among

themselves.

three panels in the

A common architectural framework unites the form of an open loggia through which a rose-

hedge and the sky appear. The three panels are both divided and
united by the frame, which completes the loggia by becoming

136

loS

Mantegna
Martyrdom
oj St Jaiiws

109

Mantegna
St JiiDics on the
to

way

Execution

no Mantegna
virtually
its

S.

Zcno

Altarpiece

foremost member, each of the

pilasters

of the frame

being echoed by a painted one within the picture space, and from
the front architrave
across
in

hang garlands of leaves and fruit, stretching from one panel to the next. The multiphcity of minute detail the sculptured frieze and the roundels on the piers, the draperies,
so

the elaborate throne, recall the concern with all-over finish that

becomes

strong a feature of Florentine painting.

He

is

not

interested in light,

beyond
it

creating an even illumination with just

the picture space and the position and immediately clear. His tendency to make his flesh tones so cool and his forms so harshly detailed that they appear to be of stone or metal can be seen in the Louvre Crucifixion, which once was one of its predella panels, and in the
sufficient direction to

to

make

of the figures within

it

logical

St Sebastian in Vienna
'in his

which Vasari

actually described as being

moving combination of rather arid archaeology and Christian pathos, in the contrast between the suffering martyr and the ruined classical triumphal arch; similar ideas pervade the other, huge St Sebastian in the Louvre, and
stony manner'. This offers a curiously
the very slightly smaller one in

Venice which,

much

simpler,

138

Ill

Mantegna
Ceiling oj the

Camera

degli Sposi

omits the
ing,

classical

overtones and concentrates on the pathos of sufferstabile est nisi divinus.

with the motto Nihil

In 1460

Mantegna

settled in

Mantua,

as

Court Painter

to the

Gonzaga, and
a cycle

in the palace there

he painted the Camera

for his

degli Sposi,

which was completed

as
is

in 1474, and, according to the inscrip-

tion,

seems to have been

the
first

much

own

as for their glori-

fication. It

completely consistent
since

illusionistic

decoration

of the Renaissance,
such a
the

two

walls are covered with frescoes

representing events connected with the

Gonzaga

family, painted in

way that the fireplace and the other architectural elements of room are incorporated in the composition. The scene with the
is

family surrounding the ruler and his wife, which

fireplace, appears to

painted over the

have the figures actually standing and seated

which is thus converted into a dais, and the which were part of the original hangings of the room are echoed in the painted curtains that close off some of the scenes. The ceiling is the most surprising part of all, for it apparently opens to the sky beyond a balustrade over which figures lean and peer down into the room [plate 111), and the final touch of illusion is
the mantelpiece,
leather curtains

upon

139

given by three smzW putt perched on the wrong side of the balustrade, and by a tub of plants, balanced on a bar and projecting into the void, immediately above the spectator's head. This the first foray
i

into complete illusion in interior decoration;

a half-century, possibly because
it

it

lay fallow for nearly

was

in the private part

of the

palace,

and

it

was not
art.

until the sixteenth century that perspective

illusionism

of this

di sotto in

su type

became one of the elements of

his

the decorator's

One of the other frescoes has a very fme landscape

son

background, behind the figures of the Marquis greeting

Francesco, arriving
113).

from

Rome

as a
is

newly created Cardinal

recalls

[plate

The

hardness of the forms

here slightly softened, and the

extreme use of pure frontal and profile poses

Piero's treatment

something of

of groups. Also painted for the Gonzaga Court, between about i486 and 1494, were the Triumphs ofGacsar, which are probably Mantegna's most complete characterization of the antique
world.

They

are less illusionistic

and

their

purpose

is

now

obscure,

except that

it is

known

for a Latin play.

on one occasion, as scenery They have always been one of the greatest treasures
that they served,

of the Royal Collection at Hampton Court, but have unfortunately suffered much from injudicious restoration. By this time Mantegna was Court Painter, not to the potentate for whom he had come to Mantua to work, but to his grandson, and it is this Francesco who kneels before the throne in the Madonna of Victory painted to celebrate the inconclusive battle of Fornovo in 1495, in which Francesco claimed to have defeated the invading French. Again, this picture shows Mantegna's effective use of foreshortening for dramatic effect, and represents another stage in the history of the Sacra Conversazione, since it uses the curious device of the human figure on a smaller scale than the sacred ones, and also reflects the Bellinesque as well as the Ferrarese forms which had developed partly from his own earher contribution to the theme. By far and away the most powerful of all his perspective effects is the famous Crista Scorto [plate 112), which represents the dead Christ in extreme foreshortening. This strange picture was found in his studio after his
death in 1506, together with the 'Nihil stabile
the
est
. .

.'

5^ Sebastian;

two

pictures

may

well explain why, in his later years, he had

as a recluse,

something of a reputation
140

and

also give the lie to the

112

Mantegna

Cristo Scorto, the

Dead

Christ

facile

judgment

that an

extreme

interest in,

antiquity was incompatible with the

Ferrara, as an artistic centre,

and love of, classical most deeply sincere Christianity.

had an extremely short life. Despite relative peace which crowned the the prosperity of the state, astute and ruthless pohcies of its Este rulers, no particular interest in the arts was manifested there before the middle years of the fifteenth century, and by the end of the century it had relapsed into artistic insignificance. Its earliest artists came from outside: Pisanello and Jacopo Bellini in the first phase, and Piero della Francesca in the second. It was principally from the now lost Piero frescoes, executed about 1450, that the greatest impulse sprang, and the influence of Mantegna came to reinforce the austerity of Piero and to stimulate what appears to have been a natural incHnation towards the craggy and spiky, the hard metallic outline and ghttering surface, a blend of the primitive and the highly sophisticated that makes so special an appeal to the twentieth century. The four main painters who form the school were Cosme Tura, who was born before 143 1 and died
and the
141

in

poverty in 1495

after

being superseded

as

de' Roberti; Francesco del Cossa,

born

in 1435/36,

Court Painter by Ercole who abandoned

where he died probably in 1477; Ercole de' Roberti, born between 1448 and 1455, who may possibly have worked with Cossa in Bologna before settling in Ferrara and displacing Tura in i486; and Lorenzo Costa, born in about 1460, who was trained in Ferrara, but who moved to Bologna in 1483 and settled for a milder style, closer to Francia's Umbrian softness, and eventually succeeded Mantegna as Court Painter in Mantua. Of them all, Cosme Tura was by far the greatest. He was working for the Este Court by 145 1, but much of his early work has disappeared. Mantegna was the chief influence on him, and through Mantegna Donatello, which accounts for the metalHc quality of his forms, and the striking austerity of his vision, despite its surface enrichment. The influence of Piero is rather in the colour than in the forms, for their brittle brilHance is enhanced by his restricted palette. Cossa's early training is something of a mystery, for he seems to have been acquainted with Florentine work, in particular with Castagno's, before he came into Tura's orbit in Ferrara after 1456. Mantegna counted for much in his development and he presents the same type of hard form and wiry outline. The frescoes in the Schifanoia .') Palace celebrating in a combination of ('Begone dull care Calendar and Astrological treatise the more peaceable exploits of Duke Borso d'Este, such as hunting and lovemaking, are deliciously Hghthearted, and full of revealing glimpses of the Hfe of the Court and the countryside. When the frescoes were finished in 1470, Cossa felt that he should have been better rewarded for his work, and in his discontent he left for Bologna, where he applied himself to religious subjects in which the rather coarse quality of his forms is less pleasing than in the secular triumphs of the Schifanoia. It is possible that he had Ercole de' Roberti as a pupil or assistant in Ferrara, for one of the months September has affinities more with Ercole than with Cossa or his other assistants, and once settled in Bologna he sent for Ercole to be his assistant there. But his early death cut short a career and a style which promised a much larger development, and presumably after this event Ercole returned to
Ferrara for Bologna,
. .

Ferrara.

142

113

Mantegna Mcctiufi
Duke

of

Lodovico and his

son the Cardinal, detail

By

the time Ercolc took over Tura's position as

Court Painter he
to a

had developed from the very hard severity of his early manner
rather suaver vision.

The

large altarpiece formerly in Berlin, painted

of Sacra ConverMadonna's throne on stilts so that a landscape appears on the very low skyline between it and the floor, and he also follows Piero's idea of projecting the architecture of the picture into the spectator's space. In the later one of 1480-81 the same odd feature of the pierced throne is still used, but the whole atmosphere is quieter, the poses less strained, and the forms less tortured; no open connexion with Venice can be proved, but the changes are exactly of the kind to be expected from the mellowing influence of Giovanni Bellini. There were other sides to
in the late 1470s, extends the highly ornate type

sazione with curious devices, such as raising the

143

114 Ercole de' Roberti

Pieta

Jus art,

however, than the provision

cither

of grand-manner

altar-

pieces, or the supplying

of the trivia of a court painter's functions

little

masques, costumes, furnishings, pageants for weddings. The

Picta [plate 114) expressed his deeply

emotional response to the drama

his unconventional treatment of the theme agony of suffering and the immensity of sacrifice, not by representing the details of the narrative, but by evoking only the bare bones of the tragedy, and investing them with universal significance. Lorenzo Costa is of weaker stuff. From Tura's orbit, in which he was stimulated to his best work, he shifted, when Ercole displaced Tura in favour, to the new man's circle, and thence in turn first to Bellini and then to the Bolognese Francia, with whom he was in partnership until he went to Mantua to take over the dead Mantegna's position. Isabella d'Este, who reigned in Mantua, Hked artists who were sufficiently biddable to expend themselves upon the illustration of her vapid allegories, and the bloodless figures and thin forms of Costa's Mantuan style are the fitting counterpart of her

of the Passion, and

suggests the

pretentious gallimaufries.

144

Chapter Five

It

has been argued at great length that the Rogclet mentioned with

so diminutive a

possibly have been the

Pasture

who,

in

much honour at
Jacques Daret, a

1427 as Campin's apprentice could not same person as the Maistre Rogier de le 1426, was entertained by the city of Tournai with a wine feast. There is, however, the justification that
in

name

man

in

Holy Orders, was

quite clearly the person

and the custom of nicknames or diminutives for apprentices was a general one. It would therefore seem reasonable to suggest that Roger received some, if not all, of his training in the Campin workshop, and that some of the Master of Flemalle's stylistic features which have, it is true, a great deal in common with Roger's own work arc due to his presence in the Campin workshop and to his participation in his master's works.
referred to as Jacquelotte,

This seems

more

logical explanation than to suggest, as has been

is an early form of Roger himself. Roger van der Weyden, to give his name its Flemish form, was born in Tournai in 1399/1400, the son of a master cutler who died in or before 1426 when his son was absent from the town. In 1426 he was back in Tournai, since he attended the wine ceremony recorded in the city archives, and in the same year married a Brussels woman who may have been related to Campin's wife. Although Roger never held a Court appointment, as Jan van Eyck did, he enjoyed a certain amount of Court patronage and was Painter to the city of Brussels until his death in 1464. There are no signed or dated works, so that all the attributions to Roger rest upon the identification of a great altarpiece, now in the Prado, which enjoyed enormous fame and of which one of the earliest copies was made in 1443. The Escorial Deposition [plate 116), as the picture is generally known, has many points of contact with the Master of Flemalle's Entombment, notably in the long, hanging, heavy body of Christ, the echoing

done, that the Master of Flemalle

145

115

Roger van der Weyden

Aiitumciation
i

angularity of pose in the other figures, the long features of the

Virgin

who

has the Flcmalle type of rounded chin and heavy-lidded

eyes, the deliberate realism

of rich brocades in heavy folds of thick

fall

material,

and the

clear

but diffuse light which does not

from any

particular direction, but spreads an

scene.

even illumination over the whole

The

Deposition

is

work

full

of emotion and tenderness of

a modernization of space and atmo-

feeling, close-knit in composition,

formal in the arrangement of the

figures set as a massive frieze against the solid wall

of the gold ground

with none of the

airiness

sphere characterizing so

many of Roger's

other works.
[plate 113)

Round

this

key work
links

may

be grouped an Anminciation
also
as

which has

with the Merode Altarpiece and

with

many of Jan van

Eyck's smaller Virgin and Child groups,

well as with the Arnolfini

Marriage Group [plate 62), in the naturalism of the interior; linked

with the Annunciation

146

is

a St

Luke painting

the Virgin

which

also has

ii6

Roger van der Weyden

Escorial Deposition

the closest connexions with Jan

for in both pictures the

van Eyck's Rolhi Madonna

figures are seated in a
a distant

{plate

6j;),

main

room with

view of a city bisected by a river at which two tiny figures are gazing from a parapet in the middle distance. In neither is the problem of the proportions of the middle distance solved. What makes Roger so entirely different from Jan is the greater elegance of his figures, and the profound pathos of his characterizations. All Jan's works have something of the intense impassivencss of his device 'Als Ich Kan' that motto of pure pride; it is Roger's greater ease and adventurousiiess of composition, his

colonnaded window, opening on to

tenderness of feeling, that eventually carried the greatest weight for

succeeding generations of Flemish painters.

It is

almost

as if it

were

admitted that 'Als Ich Kan' was

up; Roger's

a challenge that
still left

could not be taken

for development.

more relaxed humanity

room

147


Roger
is

said to

have gone to
that he

Italy.

The evidence

for this visit hes

in a statement

by Fazio

there admired the frescoes

was in Rome for the 1450 Jubilee and by Gentile da Fabriano in the Lateran

works now lost. There are also connexions with Ferrara suggested by payments recorded in the Este accounts, and for long the portrait of Francisque d'Este was held to be evidence of a visit to Ferrara. The identification of this portrait with a member of the Burgundian Court, who happened to be an illegitimate son of the Este house, removed much of the basis for this supposed Ferrara connexion. But it is clear that some Italian association existed, for in the Uffizi is an Entofiibiiu'iit [plate iiy) which is unmistakably Roger's, and which appears to have come from the Medici Collection. The rectangular tomb in the rock in the background, the iconography of the Entombment with the body of Christ upheld and displayed in the form of the Imago Pietatis is so close to an Entombment of the same type emanating from Fra Angelico's workshop as to suggest a link, if only in the source of inspiration. There is also a Madonna and Child with Four Saints Peter, the Baptist, Cosmas, and Damian which has a coat of arms that could be interpreted as the Medici fleur-de-lis, while the four saints are the four Medici patrons. Other plausible

interpretations have connected the picture with a Flemish family,

but,

on

the other hand, the symmetrical grouping of the figures, the

a

composition built up into

broad-based pyramid, and the general

restraint, suggest a strong, if transient, Italian influence.

he is supreme. The tenderness of characterizamakes the Magdalen [plates 121, 122) from the Braque Triptych so memorable appears constantly in his overt portraits. The arrogance of bearing of Charles the Bold is far clearer in his personification of one of the Magi in the St Columba Altarpiece [plate 118)

As

a portrait painter

tion that

than

It is

in the direct portrait [plate 120), but generally

is

with Roger's
condition,

realism

every whit the equal ofJan's

in face

blended
in the

measure of feel-

ing, a tincture

of the vulnerability inherent

fearful awareness

human

something of the almost

of the transitoriness of the

but

human

of the Divine: for most,

if not all, his portraits are

one-half of a diptych, the other wing of which usually represents the

Madonna and
chill

Child. Roger's sympathy rather than Jan's impassive was the touchstone for the next generation, in portraits as in

148

117

(/(^r)

Roger van der Weyden

Entombment

118 [below)

Roger van der Weyden

St Coltiniba Altarpiece

\l

--fy

ft,'

*5

^
*rr

t-

^f

\i J'

119

Roger van der Weyden

Crucifixion

religious works, for

one aspect of his immense strength was

to express the pathos
as in his various representations
as

in his

capacity to invent
subjects as the

new forms

of such rehgious
of the

Divine suffering,

Crucifixion [plate iig)

never
new

an actual scene, but in the form

as a

most
It

in accord

with the

devotional current:

meditation, or

contemplation on the theme of the Redemption.

was not Roger's

actual forms, his style, or his ideas that

his his

were so

pregnant for the next generation; his power lay in

quality, in the feeling that

emotional

he himself released in

works and

stimulated in others, and his profound humanity and sensitiveness to

is one of his links with Campin, and one of the dividing between him and Jan van Eyck. The influence of Dieric Bouts was more widespread than the limited number of his works would suggest. He was a Haarlem painter, born about 1415, who was working in Louvain before 1448,

sorrow
factors

150

fliWw

GWD

Xi!<K-]ir

uiK^/^'n

^/hoti rw!i in-Tun

:-

120

Roger van der Weyden

the

Charles

Bold

121 (above

right)

Roger

van

der

Weyden

Magdalen,

detail

from the

Braquc Triptych

122

Roger van der Weyden Drawing

Jar the Magdalen

"%

and

who

died there in 1475.

He

therefore cuts right across Roger,

efforts

but was to a certain extent influenced by him in that the

he

makes to express a stiff and reticent emotion stem from the impact of Roger's ideas and style. His figures have an unmistakably ramrod
quahty; his poses are ungainly; the Christ Child in his small devotional
reet

Madonnas

is

of a pathetic homeHness, with thin

less

little

upturned
a

and

a wistful peakiness [plate 126).

But, like Roger, he has the

sophistication

infinite gift

introvert sensibility

which he exploits with of so presenting

and

more
is

his ideas that the spectator

drawn to identify himself with them. The Five Mystic Meals which was painted between 1464 and
is

1468,

and unusual treatment of the Last Supper, since it is presented as an Institution of the Eucharist, and is surrounded by four smaller scenes, each representing one of the Old Testament antitypes: the
a rare

Sacrifice

of Abraham and Melchisedek, the Gathering of the Manna,

Elijah in the Desert [plate I2j),

and the

first

Passover.

The
is

accurate

perspective construction based

as it

on

a central

viewpoint

for Bouts,

was

for Roger, part

it

picture space;

of the normal constructional devices of had not been so for Jan van Eyck, although Petrus

it. The simple bourgeois setting is also a means by which the impact of the event is made more telling; unlike the Easternized dresses and turbans of the Old Testament characters, Christ and the Apostles, despite the sense of separation induced by their generalized garments and their idealized faces, are seated in a monastery refectory and waited upon by the commissioner, the

Christus had used

artist,

and, in

all

probability, his sons.

Two

things in Bouts's

work

strike

one with immediate force: the tenderness of the colour and

its

the delicate sensitiveness of

landscapes.

gradations,

and the beauty of the

The

rocks and

hills

may

be the conventional jagged

stones of symbolism rather than reality, but the recession into infinity

and the fluid, limpid, cool light are seen with an understanding which suggests a new kind of vision of the natural world. Justice scenes were a favourite furnishing of medieval law courts. Roger had done some on the Justice of Trajan and of Herkinbald, but these, his only absolutely certain works, were burnt in 1695. Bouts began his huge pair of the Justice of Emperor Otto about 1475, for they were not entirely fmished when he died and their
152

123 DiERic

Bouts

Elijah in the Desert

valuation was the occasion of

Hugo van

der Goes's journey to

Louvain
festation

in 1479/80.

Unlike the Rogers, which represented the mani-

of Divine forgiveness for a justifiable act of violence, the tell the story of how the Emperor killed an innocent man on the unjust accusation of his wicked Empress, and how the Countess vindicated her dead husband's honour by undergoing the Ordeal by Fire, with, as a consequence, the Empress being conBouts's ones

demned
content

to the stake. In the Ordeal {plate 127), the hideousness

is

of the

offset

by

the absence of all emotion in everyone concerned;

the Execution lacks, in

some of the

figures, quite the incisiveness

Bouts's style, and

is

therefore believed to be the one finished

of by

another hand. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the colour and the

dehcacy of the handling in such passages in the Ordeal

tess's

as the

Counto be
in the

impassive face contrasted with the grey pallor of her dead

husband's severed head.

The same

tenderness of handling

is

found

in the lovely little Portrait of a

Man, dated 1462, bathed

clear, pale light

of the open casement.

North largely by woodwhich the stiffness of the technique is exactly matched by the rigidity of the figures. Woodcuts had greater currency in, for instance, Holland than paintings because of the almost continuous absence of any patronage on the scale prevailing in southern Flanders.
Bouts's influence was transmitted in the
cuts, in

153

|.

Albert van Ouwater Raising of Lazarus

125

Geertgen tot Sint Jans Lamentation

The Eyckian approach to the representation of nature, informed by quite another spirit of humanity, runs through the second half of the fifteenth century and well into the sixteenth, and can be seen working in artists as different as Albert van Ouwater and Geertgen, for all that the second was a pupil of the first. Ouwater, like Bouts, came from Haarlem and was probably his contemporary. His only

known work

is

a Raising of

Lazarus

[plate 124),

depicted

as

taking

place within the apse of a

Romanesque church before an

astonished

concourse of the local citizenry peering through the sanctuary screen

at the

back. Again, this

is

the association of the spectator; but the

actual scene remains baldly dispassionate, despite the appeal

of the

tender hght and colour. Geertgen tot Sint Jans

('little

Gerard of the

Brethren of St John') is not one of the major painters of his period, but he is certainly one of the most remarkable. He too was a Dutch-

man, born
been

at

Ley den, and believed

to

have died

at

eight years of age, perhaps about 1485/95, so that he

a strict

around twentywould have

contemporary of Memlinc. His only certain works are

two
154

large panels in Vienna, once back to back, representing the

126 DiERic

Bouts Madonna and Child

12-j

DiERic Bouts
Ordeal oj the Countess

Lamentation over the

Dead

Christ {plate 12$)

and the Members

oj the

Confraternity of St John the Baptist saving the Saint's bones from being
burnt by Julian the Apostate.

The

Lamentation

is

full

instinct also

with

a gift for the deliberate simplification

of overtones of Roger and Bouts, but of human

forms, accompanied by an astonishing feeling for landscape, for the

of an earthly Paradise. At the same time, in the executioners in the background, and in the entourage of Julian the Apostate, he
freshness
creates types that are patently caricatures in an attempt to

convey

vice and depravity. This

is

a deliberate loading

of Bouts's rigidly

impersonal onlookers, and seems to be the starting-point for the

factual treatment
art.

By

of fantasy that runs through later Netherlandish analogy with the Vierma pair, a small oeuvre has been isolated,
vision of the blood-bespattered
Nativity in

which runs from the ghastly

Sorrows in Utrecht to the

Man

of

London

which

luminous

Christ Child lights His mother and the angels surrounding His crib,

and
the

is

contrasted with the radiant angel in the sky and the flames of

the shepherds' bonfire.

The interest in light has now moved beyond Hmpid dayhght of Bouts and has opened a new chapter in its
artificial light.

concern with

Roger's most important follower was Hans Memlinc,

born

at SeHgenstadt,

near Frankfurt-am-Main.

of Bruges
has

in 1465,

and prospered so

who was He became a citizen exceedingly that he was among

there in 1494. Tradition

the city's richest burghers

by 1480; he died

it that he was Roger's pupil, and tradition here must be right, for Memlinc's watered-down Rogerisms betray their origin very clearly.

More
work,
event,

decorative,
his

more

consciously producing an expensive artless

forms thinner, the compositions

only in
his portraits that

richly inventive, the

narrative interest triumphing always over the significance of the

it is

he

rises to

the level of his great

predecessor.

The diptych was

the usual form, with a

Madonna and

Child on one leaf and the intercessor on the other, in three-quarter

view, against a
sky.

windowed
skill

wall or a wide landscape with a limpid

Of this he is arguably

the greatest master in Flemish art, and the

in this

repercussions of his
as

and happiness

form echo

as far

south

Perugino, Bellini, and Antonello da Messina.

used to be dated before 1469,

{plate 128)

The Donne Triptych but Sir John Donne of

156

128

Hans Memlinc The Domic

Triptych

Kidwelly was

in Flanders in 1468 for the

marriage of Margaret of
again in 1477:

York
this
is

to Charles the Bold,

Duke of Burgundy, and

It is

the

more

likely date.

an example of the Flemish form

first

appeared with Jan van Eyck in the Van dcr Paele Madonna [plate 64) of 1436, and that Roger and Petrus Christus had both occasionally used. It has charm, delightful

of the Sacra Conversazione that had

detail,
is

lovely colour, superlative fmish; but these beauties adorn

a

what
the

now

dead end. The Shrine of St Ursula, which

is

is

in the Hospital

at

Bruges,

usually offered as his greatest

work;

it

too has

all

quaHties that render the

Donne Triptych

so pleasing, plus a narrative

treated with a naive literalness that the coarser sophistication

of the

twentieth century patronizingly approves.

The
at

last

of the Bruges masters was Gerard David,

in Holland, but settled in

who was bom

Bruges by 1484 and died there in 1523. With him the great saga ended, and his placidly pious pictures were old-fashioned in his own lifetime, so much so that from
1515 to 1521 he

Oudewater

worked

in

Antwerp where

the

new

ItaHanate style
art

was rapidly superseding

possibly, his

his antiquated repetitions

of the

of the

mid-century. His landscape backgrounds are very lovely, and form,

most important contribution,

is

since he helps to create

the attitude towards nature that

expressed in the emergence of

157

'.g

Gerard David Baptism of Christ

130

Gerard

Dawd Justice

of Cambyses

landscape as a genre on

its

own

[plate I2g).

When

faced with scenes

requiring forceful expression, as he was in the grisly story ox}i\Q Justice

ofCatnhyses {plate 130), of 1498, in which the corrupt judge

tually flayed alive, he blends

is

even-

mild astonishment and grimacingly

lion-dog scratching

ferocious expressions with charming Italianate details such as garland-

bearing putti and the inconsequence of a

little

himself almost beneath the torture-table. In his Sacra Conversazione

groups no more than

breaks the
stillness;

muted murmur between

the participants

but the repose which, in Jan van Eyck, was the

in

deHberate restraint of motionlessness, or in Roger was the inward-

David no more than inanition. The canals of Bruges had silted up, the bustle and energy of trade, the excitement of large ships, the adventure of the new sea-routes had shifted to Antwerp, and Bruges and Ghent were now no more than
ness

of contemplation,

is

backwaters.

Ghent, however, expired more gloriously.

since Jan

van Eyck, but

it is'

presumed

that

had produced little Hugo van der Goes was

It

he entered the Ghent guild in 1467, sponsored by Joos van Wassenhoven, who later went to Urbino and became Justus

born

there, since

158

^,v
'V

<5.
Hugo van

131

der Goes

Portiiiari

Aharpiccc, central panel, Nativity

of Ghent. About 1475 he entered the Augustinian Monastery of

Roode
enough

Clooster, near Brussels, as a lay-brother. This

difference to his
to

tinued to

made no work he is recorded as complaining that he had keep him busy for nine years without rest and he conreceive patrons and visitors, including the Emperor

Maximilian, and to

the Bouts Justice Scenes,

Cologne.

On

1479/80 he went to Louvain to value and about 148 1 he made a pilgrimage to the return journey he went out of his mind. A monastic
travel. In

chronicle describes the gentle treatment given him,

how

the prior

had musicians to play to him to calm his paroxysms, the details of his symptoms, ravings, threats of suicide. Obviously, he never worked again, and in 1482 he was dead. The problem with Hugo
159

is

not the attribution of works, despite the

quite clear.

fact

that

nothing
the

is

signed and almost nothing documented. His works have such an

is

internal affinity that his oeuvre

The problem

is

chronology.

Tommaso
from him

Portinari, the

Medici agent in Ghent, commissioned

[plate 131)

a triptych

of the Nativity
It

which was

sent to

Florence about 1475/76.

was

a revelation to the Italians,

w^ho

were faced with a picture executed in an alien technique, with a wealth of imagery and significant iconographical detail, and on such a heroic scale it is about nine feet high by some eighteen feet across when open that the portraits are life-size. Its repercussions can be heard through the rest of the century, from immediate loud echoes in Ghirlandaio to more distant and subtle ones in Leonardo. It has a unity of tone, cool and silvery; the wonderful winter landscape and the rather formal stiffness of the figures show links with Bouts, whose pupil he may have been; in the bulky forms and linear patterns are reminiscences of fourteenth-century Gothic; the donor's patron saints remind one of Sluter. But there is a new urgency and feeling for movement in the vitality of the shepherds, and a rehgious emotion in the adoring Virgin, or in the angel of the Annunciation on the outside of the wings, that returns to the example of Roger. Hugo's expressiveness and his leaning to a Gothic intensity of feeling a general characteristic of the end of the fifteenth century in North and South alike is not only a personal trait, but, through the impact of the Portinari Altar, contributed to the stressing of these qualities

in Florence.

Most of his works

are large.

The

Adoration of the Kings [plate 132)

and the Seat of Mercy (Edinburgh) are other examples on a monumental scale of his intensity of feeling and richness of colour and composition. It is customary to attribute works showing greater
emotional tension to
Altar
is

his later years,

but

this

is

because the Portinari

and that not hard and fast, and because end colours the estimate of all his work. Hugo could achieve an amazing virtuosity of detail equal to any of his predecessors; where he excelled was in combining this with a sense of the monumental. In this he equalled Jan van Eyck and Roger, and the impact of the Portinari Altar lies in its reconciling of two mutually
the only fixed point,
his tragic

160

132

Hugo van

der Goes Adoration

of the

Kings

exclusive things

size

for his only artistic

With him Ghent ends its history, progeny was the anonymous Master of Moulins,
and
detail.
is

and whether he was Flemish or French

as

yet

unknown.
of French
art

In the fourteenth century, the great fertilization

was

brought about through the long residence of the Papacy in Avignon.

Italian

Although the popes themselves were French, the introduction of forms and ideas was effected through the transference from Rome to Avignon of the Roman chanceries, and Italian artists migrated in their train. The greatest was Simone Martini, who died in Avignon in 1344. His influence, and that of other Italians, was towards a style which, by the fifteenth century, developed into International Gothic. There was, however, a different influence working
at the

same source of patronage, the Duke of Berry, for whom that arch-poem of the International Gothic style, the Tres Riches Heures [plate 7), was made by the Limbourg brothers. He also imported from Flanders, or seduced from the service of his brothers, the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy,
tlie

same time, emanating from

161

of Flemish origin such as Jean Malouel, Andre Beauneveu, Jacquemart de Hesdin, and Henri Bellechose. This meant, in fact,
artists

that parallel

with the courtly fantasy of International Gothic ran the

It

current of pre-Eyckian realism.

also

meant

that the arts in France

developed in a fragmented way. Each large region tended to develop

its

own

patronage, and according to the source

from which

it

drew
and

its artists

worked out

a regional style reflecting

both

their origins

their interrelationships

with other

centres.

Only with

the sixteenth

century was the regional character of artistic style outweighed by the

concentration of patronage within the sphere of a central monarchy.
After the political disasters that
in the second decade

overwhelmed

the French

Crown

of the

fifteenth century,

its

patronage was in

Burgundy as a major power, and the by the Burgundian Court of an artist of the calibre of Jan van Eyck oriented the arts in the direction of his kind of factual realism, so that even where fantasy still survived, as in the Rene Master's superb illustrations for King Rene of Anjou's Lii^re du Cuer
abeyance; the emergence of
possession
Epris [plate 133), painted in 1460/70, the magic dreamworld of romantic chivalry is treated with an equally magic touch of precise naturalism in the handling of light and landscape, and achieves by these means the most poetic flights of fancy.
d' Amours

133

Rene Master
jrom Livre du Citer
d' Amours Epris

162

134

Master of the Aix Annunciation

Autitimiation, central panel

The
tified

full

weight of the

new Eyckian

realism

fell

upon

the uniden-

Master of the Aix Annunciation

{plate 134),

who may possibly

have been connected with the Court of King Rene, although the

was painted between 1442 and 1445 in fulfilment of the will of a draper that is, it was a commission from a bourgeois, not a noble, patron, and is another instance of the emergence of a new class of patron of the kind that becomes a major factor in the work of Fouquet. The Aix Annunciation has figures of the weight, and architectural detail of the verisimilitude, of the kind that is familiar from the Ghent Altar onwards; moreover, the sculpture decorating the architecture is clearly connected with Sluter, while the iconography of the Annunciation taking place in the porch of a church as a prelude to Christianity is found in the Eyckian world.
altarpiece

163

'^^'^^^^"^

.J^

^s5V

3*&^
Coronation of the Virgin
artist

L*^'*^

135

Enguerrand Quarton

Fouquet, for instance, an

circle, places

who

is

largely outside the Eyckian

the Annunciation in the Hours ofEtienne Chevalier just

The Aix Annunciabroken up and are in Rotterdam and Brussels), a pair of prophets each of whom has, above his head, a library shelf cluttered with heaps of books and writing materials, forming a pair of the most remarkable still-life subjects with affinities in Naples with Colantonio, who is believed to have
within a chapel with an empty altar at the back.
tion also has, in the

wings (which are

now

been

a source for

Antonello da Messina's contact with Flemish

art.

Another work painted for a Provencal patron is the Coronation of the Virgin {plate ijj) by Enguerrand Quarton {c. 1410-66 or later), for which the contract has survived. This states that he came from Laon,
in northern France, but all attempts to discover

from

his

two known

164

136 Nicolas

Froment Mary

in the Burniii'^

Bush, detail

works
get
is

this

one, and a Virgin of Mercy in Chantilly

what

his artistic

links were have so far failed. Perhaps the closest one can remark upon the connexion between the Coronation and the sculptured tympana of certain Romanesque churches, but such an iconographical and formal source for a painting is by no means unique. The Coronation presents, however, one of the oddities which recur more often in French painting than in that of any other region: two Persons of the Trinity represented as identical in age, dress, and

training
to

and

movement. Sometimes
used Preface to the

this literal

rendering of the most

commonly

Canon of
is

the

Mass

(that

of the Holy Trinity)

does in Fouquet, for
in sculpture.

involves three identical representations

instance

but the duplication

is

it

not

unknown

Here the
the

Holy Ghost

depicted as a dove over the

crown which God

165

Father and
side

God

the

Son

place

upon

the head of the Virgin;

on

either

adoring figures represent every condition of the blessed from

presented with

kings and popes to ordinary

Judgment
which the

is

men and women, and, below, the Last Rome and Jerusalem on either side, as
is

specified in the contract. In the centre

souls

the Crucifixion, towards

Purgatory on the

of the hopeful turn as they issue from the pains of left, and those of the damned turn away as they
to Hell

abandon themselves
he has had the
survived,

on the

right.
is

Compared with Quarton,

Nicolas Froment

a far cruder artist;

good fortune that two documented works have one of them the Raising of Lazarus, which is signed and

dated 1461.

He

presents a strange mixture

of styles;

his figures in a

landscape and an interior recall the Flemish treatment of space and

the relationship of foreground to background, but the grimacing

of his facial expressions and the archaizing design of the main panel connect him with distinctly provincial Spanish or NeapoHtan style rather than with anything specifically French. Flis triptych in Aix Cathedral of Mary in the Burning Bush [plate 136), of 1476, with portraits of King Rene and his Queen in the wings, shows a marked mellowing of the harsh style of his Florentine triptych, and the development of a much milder colour and handling. The iconography of the subject is extremely intricate and full of detailed symbolism, which he absorbs into the composition so that the additive nature of the content docs not entirely destroy the impact of
affectation

the design.

The Avignon Pieta

is

[plate 137),

once also

at Villeneuve-les- Avignon,

unquestionably the greatest French painting of the fifteenth cen-

tury,

and one of the most sublime representations of the subject in

It

all art.

seems to have

affinities

with Spain, but no convincing

it

arguments have yet been offered for connecting

cular Spanish, Catalan, or Portuguese
artist,

with any parti-

or with any other region

than Provence; neither has any other picture yet been associated with
its

anonymous painter, unless it can be attached to Quarton. It must, on grounds of style, date from about 1460, and if any links with the art of any other painter or region are sought they can only be found
with the donor, and participation,
the Passion. This
therefore, in the meditation

in the spectator's identification

on

common ground

166

137 French School

The Avignon

Picta

begins outside the province of

art,

but

is

expressed in the iconoIt

graphical trends of the mid-fifteenth century generally.

takes

its

source in the Meditations ascribed to St Bonaventura, and in St

Bridget's Revelations, devotional
influence

works of great popularity and which stress on the one hand identification with the life of Christ, and on the other visionary descriptions of His sufferings. These books underlie the religious painting of the age, be it Roger and Hugo, Diirer and Antonello in the fifteenth century, or
Griinewald in the sixteenth.
Jean Fouquet
is

very well documented, but only from inconis

veniently late in his career, and there

only one absolutely certain

is

work, vouched for by

1470/76

contemporary. This

the illuminated

manuscript of Les Antiquites Jnda'iqnes which dates from about

from the end,

therefore,

of the painter's

Hfe, since

he

is

167

lived

was dead by 148 1. He and worked in Tours, where he eventually had a large workshop, and was appointed Painter to Louis XI of France in 1475. He certainly went to Italy, where he was at some time between 1443
believed to have been born about 1420 and

and 1447, and he is said (in an Italian source) to have painted a portrait of Pope Eugenius IV with two attendants, although this
depends on
a willingness to accept Giachetto Francoso as a reasonable

form of Jehan the Frenchman. He was

1448.

certainly
is

back in Tours by
internal:

The

real

evidence for the Itahan journey

only by

contact with the fountain-head of such forms could he,

at that date,

have acquired such an understanding of

tecture as
is

Italian

Renaissance archi-

background of his portrait ofjouvenel o( Etienne Chevalier [plate 139), which once formed part of the Melun Diptych (now divided between BerHn and Antwerp), or in the manuscript Hours ojEtienne Chevalier
to be

found

in the

des Ursins (Louvre), or that

which

is

at Chantilly.

This does not exclude, however,

manuscript,

his use

of

Gothic forms in the same

or

even in the same

miniature, for that of the presentation of Etienne Chevalier in

Book of Hours runs straight on from the Renaissance setting in which he kneels to the Gothic church porch, which serves as a throne for the Virgin and Child. The influence of ItaHan art does not seem to have affected him much otherwise: one cannot say, looking at a Fouquet portrait or miniature, 'here is the result of having seen suchand-such'. His approach to form is not the analytical one of Jan van Eyck; his large Pieta at Nouans is monumental in its design before it particularizes in its forms; his portraits give the whole effect before they enumerate the details. These are, it is true, ItaHan qualities, and
his

yet there
details.

is

never anything remotely

his

Italian

but his use of occasional

Even

systems of pictorial space are individual, for he uses

the continuous space development in

which the eye follows an

else

arc

through the course of the narrative, or

the

such all-embracing

systems as the simultaneous development in depth and width, as in

Honimes

mmiaturc of Boccaccio's Trial at Vendome from Le Cas des Nobles et Feuuues, where the Royal Court is depicted in a diamond form receding into the picture space and filling it from side to side. The end of the century saw two great masters, both anonymous.
first is

The
168

the Master of St Giles,

who must

have worked in

Paris,

138

Master of Moulins

Motiliiis Altarpicce

since one of the parts of the altarpiece from which his name derives shows the interior and the famous golden retable of St Denis. His colour is pallid and tender, his forms exceedingly delicate, his treatment of plants and surfaces naturalistic, his compositions elegant, but he is a miniaturist writ large. Whether he was a Frenchman who

learned his art in Flanders, or vice versa, will probably never be

settled,

but he

fits

from Bruges

at the

the declining rctardatairc atmosphere emanating end of the century, while the Master of Mouhns

represents the last repercussions of the influence

of

Hugo van

der

Goes, and does so with exceptional vigour and grandeur. In the

triptych in Moulins Cathedral [plate 138) the Virgin

and Child are

surrounded by

garland of angels

lit

from
II

the radiance

emanatmg
a rueful

from

the glory against

which they

are seated,

with the most magical

effects

of light, hi the wings, Duke Pierre

of Bourbon, with

countenance, faces his formidable wife, of whom he was said to have

been the humble servant rather than the husband, and the painter's
gift for characterization is carried a stage

beyond the normal by

his

habit of repeating the features of his sitters in the faces of their patron
saints

a piece
111

of

delicate but very effective

sycophancy which can

is

be seen

his St

Maurice [plate 140). His colour

of an astonishing
169

brilliance; his

forms of great elegance. The triptych can be dated

about 1498/ 1 500, but by this date the invasions of Italy had already started; these sounded the knell of a purely indigenous art, for with
the success of French

arms in

Italy

came

first

the invasion of France

artists

by ItaHan
style,

art

and then the physical presence of Itahan

at

Fontainebleau. Flanders, too, succumbed to the influence of Italian

which, misunderstood and garbled, treated not

as a fashion to

as a process

of

thought but merely

be imitated for

its

modishness and

pseudo-sophistication, resulted only in an utter confusion that lasted

virtually until the sixteenth century

was over.

German

art

of the fifteenth century has not been studied even more marked than
the whole, the

much
is its

outside the German-speaking countries, and one reason for this

fragmentary nature, which

France. Another
is

is

is

the case in

the extreme provinciality of the idiom,

which

can be part of its charm.

entire fifteenth century
until, right at the

On

German

painters of the

were followers of fashions set in Flanders, end of the period they developed an art of their
and book-illustration
artist

own

in engraving

at the

same time

as Diirer,

incomparably the most outstanding

himself to
a

of his generation, subjected

his

formal

Italian discipline.

Yet

wald was one of the

self in the

greatest

of all German
line

painters, expressing

contemporary Griinehimart,

Gothic language of

and exaggeration of gesture and

expression in one of the grandest tragic masterpieces of rcHgious

the Isenheim Altarpiece.

By German art is meant, at this period, the art produced in modern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and parts at least of Czechoslovakia and Poland. The regional styles, though varied, do not differ as markedly (to a foreign eye) as do those of Italy, and the level of artistic competence, of course, is far lower. On the other hand, a fair amount is known about a large number of masters, as a result of intensive study by German art historians, and this has tended to make the whole subject rather a matter of archaeological concern. At the
very beginning of the century the International Gothic influence,
in France,
as

was dominant, and the delightful naivety of the painter of the Paradise Garden [plate Jj), of about 1415, can be paralleled by Konrad von Soest's homely St Joseph blowing on the fire in the Nativity scene from his Niederwildungen Altar of 1404 (though
170

139 Jl AN FOUQUKT Etiainc Chevalier presented

hy St Stephen

140

Master of Moulins
St Maurice and donor

141

KoNRAD VON SoEST

Nativity

some

authorities read the date as 1414)

{plate 141).
life

This form of
is

International Gothic,
called the Soft Style:

low
it is

rather than liigh

in feeling,

often

contrasted with the Angular Style ('der

eckige

Stil'),

which

is

derived from Flanders and Holland rather than

painters as

France.
[plate

The Eyckian influence on such 14^) and Konrad Witz in his Christ
,

Moscr

(143 1)
[plate

walkiiiq on the

Water

66) (1444), has already been remarked and can be seen also in the

work of
1437)-

the

Ulm

sculptor and painter

Hans Multscher

(active in

painter

most important German Cologne master, Stcphan Lochner, who died in 1451. His great work in Cologne was the Patron Saints of the City [das

Around

the middle of the century the

the

was

172

r^

142

Hans Pleydenwurff

Adoi-atioii of the

A%'/

Domhild)

[plate 144),

and

this

shows very

clearly

how

he developed

the Soft Style into something reflecting the influence of contemporary

Netherlandish paintnig.

He may have

been trained
this

there, possibly

under the Master of Flemalle himself, and

would

explain his

evident connexion with his contemporary Roger van der

Weyden.

onwards German painting was to be dominated by Roger's ideas and his tender sentiment (often exaggerated by his German followers) and by the harsh forms of Bouts, whose stiffs figures were well known through engravings based on them. Hans Vleydenwurff's Adoration of the Maqi [plate 142), of about 1460, shows this very clearly, with its echoes of almost every contemthe middle of the century

From

porary Fleming, but above

all

of Roger. Roger's Madonna type

(

is

173

143

SCHONGAUER Madonna

of the

Rosehedge

equally to be seen in Schongauer's Madonna of the Rosehedge [plate

143),

Two

of 1473, and was thus transmitted even to Diirer. Austrian painters, Michael Pacher [c. 1435-98) and Ruland
differ

Frueauf the Elder (died 1507),

pattern. Pacher

somewhat from

the northern

worked
S.

in the

Tyrol and seems therefore to have of Mantegna, and

his great
[plate 146)

been aware of Italian

altarpiece

art, in

particular that

of 148 1 in

Wolfgang

combines

Italian dignity

of form with an interest in light and a Gothic passion for detail to produce one of the masterpieces of German art. This cannot be said, however, for the Assumption, of 1490, by Frueauf, although it has an attempt at simplification of form that may come from contact with
174

44 Sthphan Lochner The Domhild Madonna

Both Pachcr and Frueauf show, in their angular draperies, the which Pacher very probably practised. The dominance of Flemish art extended far beyond Western Europe, in the sense that Spain and Portugal were just as much Flemish colonies as were the German-speaking lands. For at least the first half of the fifteenth century the Iberian peninsula was Flemish in outlook, and this extended even as far as Italy itself, where the Kingdom of Naples came under Spanish domination and produced, in Antonello da Messina, the greatest Flemish painter born outside Flanders. In Spain itself the earliest fifteenth-century painters were
Italy.

influence of woodcarving,

almost entirely Flemish in outlook,

as

may

be seen in the

F/V^///

0/

175

Lucas Moser
Ticjciihroim Altarpiccc, detail

146

Michael Packer
S.

Wolfgang Altarpiccc,

detail

by Luis Dalmau, who was working between 1428 and 1460 and who signed and dated this picture in 1445, only a few years after the death of Jan van Eyck. We know that Dalmau was sent by King Alfonso V of Aragon to Flanders in 143 and was back in Valencia by 1437 so he must have seen the singing angels in the Ghent Altarpiece, finished only in 1432. This is the only certain work by Dalmau, but it establishes the Flemish connexion, which seems to have superseded an Italian influence in the fourteenth century, perceptible in the works of Ferrer Bassa, Jaime Serra, and Luis Borrassa, the last of whom was active as late as 1424. Fernando Gallego worked between 1468 and 1507 and was also influenced by Northern art; in his case it was primarily the work of Dieric Bouts, and, to some extent, the German artists of the late fifteenth century who were themselves followers of Bouts. Gallego derived some of
the Councillors {plate 148),

176

147 Pedro Berrugueti-;

Solomon from
Philosophers

the

148 {below) Luis

Dalmau

Vir^iin oj the Councillors

his

compositions from Schongauer's engravings. The availabihty

a potent factor in dissemi-

I
I

of these hne-engravings was undoubtedly

nating a style

compounded of Bouts and

the

German Gothic
art
is

artists.

Much
inspired

of the content of Bartolome Bermejo's

derived from
is

Flemish examples. His Pieta of 1490 in Barcelona Cathedral

by Roger van der Weyden, although

it is

more

Italian in

many
with

details: his

splendid St Michael [plate I4g) (and also a poorer

version in Edinburgh) shows an Italianatc dignity of design coupled

a truly

Flemish love of detail in the Bouts-like portrait of the

donor, or the fantastic dragon, which comes straight out of Bosch.

The

Italian influence

began

to supersede that

of the Netherlands

towards the end of the century, partly, no doubt, because of the

Spanish rule in Naples, established by Alfonso of A-ragon.

The

case

of Pedro Berruguete

is

interesting.

of philosophers, divided
are a

now

There are twenty-eight pictures between the Louvre and the Gallery at
at

Urbino, which came originally from the Palace

Urbino, and there

most important of which is Piero della Madonna [plate 106) in Milan, which are claimed to be wholly or partly by Berruguete. In the case of the Piero Madonna, only the head and hands of the donor, Duke Federigo of Urbino himself, are so claimed, but most of the Philosophers have been attributed, on rather exiguous evidence, to Berruguete [plate 147). It is certain that they show a Flemish style but Joos van Gent was in Urbino at the same time, in the 1460s. In 1477 a Pietro Spagnuolo Peter the Spaniard was in Urbino, and Pedro Berruguete was active in Avila and Toledo from 1483 onwards. His works in Spain
pictures, the

few other

Francesca's Brera

have, so far
there
is

as

also the

Mannerism in

they can be identified, an Italo-Flemish flavour, but argument that his son, Alonso, was a pioneer of Italian Spain early in the sixteenth century and may well have
in Italy

been inspired to study

by

his father,

who

died in

503/1 504.

The only

really

important Portuguese painter of the period was

between 1450 and 1472, whose masterpiece, was destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake o Another altarpiece of the same subject is reasonably attributed 1755. to hmi [plate 130), and it shows the pervasive influence of Bouts in the stiff figures and the awkward but genuine emotion underlying them. The heads have a hardness of form and contour that has been
Gon(;alves, active

Nuno

the St Vincent Altarpiece,

178

^2^'

149

Bartolome Bermejo
St Michael

held, very probably rightly, to

show

that the

forms of carved and

painted w^ooden sculpture were close to the painter's mind. In the

of the fifteenth century the dominance of the Flemish style seemed assured even in remote England the wall-paintings in Eton College Chapel, of the Miracles of the Virgin [plate 131), show the influence of Flanders, in this case mainly that of Roger van der Weyden, although the paintings are known to date from 1479 to 1488 and the names of two contractors are recorded Gilbert, and William Baker, the latter of whom was surely an Englishman. The paintings are now very damaged and are among the few sad survivors of the iconoclastic fury of the sixteenth century which destroyed so many paintings and so much stained glass, both in England and in
latter part

Holland, that

it

will probably never be possible to

tell

influence of painters like Bouts

spread,

and Roger van der

how far the Weyden really

rest

and

how much it was transformed in England or the northern

of Europe,
spell

provinces of Holland before both countries, like the

fell

under the

of Itahan High Renaissance

art.

150

GoNCALVES

St Vincent Altarpicce, detail

151

Baker

(?) Miracles

of the Virgin

Chapter Six

is one of the half-dozen great inventions of mankind, but its early history is still rather obscure. The great step forward was the invention of movable type, each letter cast separately

Printing, like the wheel,

and then combined to form words and sentences. When the edition had been printed these letters were redistributed and used for the next job until they were worn out, when they were melted down and recast in the original matrices. This, together with the use of the screw-press which impressed the inked characters on dampened paper, made up the basic art of printing, unchanged for centuries, and it was certainly established as a commercial proposition by 1450.
in metal

Johann Gensfleisch zum Mainz goldsmith, who perfected his invention in exile at Strasbourg about 1440; by 1450 he was in business in Mainz, but in 1455 his partner, a lawyer named Fust, foreclosed on him and set up in partnership with Schoeffer. Within thirty years presses were established all over Europe, largely run by Germans, and the modern age had begun. In fact, printing dates from much earlier, since the woodcut principle was known long before the St Christopher [plate 152) is dated 1423, but there are others which may go back to the beginning

The

idea

is

certainly to be credited to
a

Gutenberg (1394/99-1468),

of the

fifteenth century, or

even the end of the fourteenth. This

types, because a

process differs

from printing from

all

woodcut
(or

is

based

on

the fact that a smooth, even block of

wood

any similar

material) will, if inked

over, print as a black rectangle: if a trench

be cut in
a

it

then that trench will not be inked and will therefore print
it is

white shape. Thus,

possible to cut black

and white shapes with

inscription

knives and gouges and a picture can be

made v^th an

beneath
text
is

it,

like the St Christopher,

provided that the accompanying

written backwards, since printing automatically reverses.

as

block with picture and caption cut in one can be used

one page

of a complete book, and such

book

is

called a 'block-book'; the

181

disadvantages are that mistakes usually involve scrapping a whole

page, perhaps after

much work, and

the fact that the block

is

usable

for only one book. Nevertheless, this

may

well be the origin of

printing

from movable
saints

for single sheets

types, and the woodcut was known and used of devotional pictures souvenirs of pilgrimages and

images of

playing-cards. These were occasionally coloured by hand, but, naturally enough, very few have survived. So far as is known, block-books were being produced by about 1430, although the earliest datable example is of 1470, a good twenty years after the invention of printing. The block-book seems to have died out by about 1480, killed by the much simpler and more satisfactory method of combining a woodcut illustration with type:
also for the
is that they survived for so long. Many of them were popular devotional works, such as the Ars Moriendi [The Art of Dying Well) [plate i^j), the Speculum Humanae Sahationis [Mirror

and

making of

the surprising thing

of Human Salvation), or the Bihlia Pauperum, a series of illustrations

of Bible
faced

stories so

arranged that the

New

Testament events were

by

the

Old Testament

anti-types, the stories

which were held

is

to be prophecies or prefigurations

of the Acts of Christ. This

the
his

type of book which Diirer had in

Apocalypse in 1498, with
Virgin, the title-page
it

mind when he published

German and
is

Latin texts, or his Life of the

of which

dated 1511 [plate 1^4); surprisingly,

seems to have taken several years before anyone realized the advan-

tages

of printing the engraved block along with metal type in one

operation.
in

The earliest dated illustrated book of this kind was printed Bamberg about 1461. One probable reason for this slowness to

exploit the possibilities of the

new

craft

may

be found in the highly

Middle Ages. The Guild rules as demarcation, and the earhest printers, while putting the scribes out of business, were very anxious not to upset the other book-crafts: about 1470, in Augsburg, an agreement was reached whereby printers could use woodcut illustrations, provided that they were cut by the Formschneider, or
developed trade-unionism of the
later

were very

strict

on what

is

now known

152 {above

right)

German Woodcut

St Christopher;

153 {above far right)

German

Woodcut

The Dying Man tempted to Impatience, from the Ars Moriendi; 154 {below right) DiJRER Life of the Virgin, title-page; 155 {below far right) Florentine Woodcut Christ in the Garden

182

?oai!!fir.n!iinfniiaat:)!ri5tti(T(5-:Urt iinnp'-.^ir in rr

nW'fftino frrc'"

mala iioiiiiwMimBvi

iV mno

<v

TOmE IN DIVAE PARTHENICES MARI HfSTOBJAMAB ALBERTO DVRERO NORICO PER FIGVRAS DIGES TAAl CVM VERSIBVS ANNE
XiS CHELIDONli


professional cutters.

One

practical advantage

of this system over the

block-book lay in the

fact that the blocks

could be used for more

in the

than one book, and enterprising pubHshers soon found that the same

same book Hartmann Schedel's famous Liber Chronicarum of 1493 has no less than 1,809 illustrations, but only 645 blocks were used. It is an extraordinary fact that the fifteenth-century book-buyer did not object to the same view being used for Rome and for Jerusalem. The first Itahan illustrated book appeared in 1467, and the next thirty years saw a splendid flowering of the new art in Florence and Venice, superior in quality to anything produced in Germany or the Netherlands. The earliest blocks, especially in books printed in Venice, were often simple outlines intended to be coloured by hand by an illuminator. Florence, where books were first illustrated by metal engravings, was comparatively late in the field (the first woodcut illustration is of 1490), but very soon produced a distinct style of cutting, using black more than the Venetians, both in the decorated borders which surround the illustration and also as a background in the scene itself. The black background is usually enHvened by white lines cut almost to the edges of the forms. These have the great advantage of harmonizing perfectly with the area of the type itself, neither too black nor too thin in appearance by contrast: the Florentine Christ in the Garden [plate ^55) from a sermon of Savonarola printed about 1497 shows this balance, and it also shows how the for cutters were dependent on the painters in this case Botticelli their style. The most beautiful book of the fifteenth century is unblocks could even be used

more than once

doubtedly the famous Hypnerotomachia

a

Poliphili

[The

Strife of

Love

in

Dream) which was published by Aldus Manutius, the greatest printer and publisher of the age, at Venice in 1499. This is an
elaborate
details

romance which contains pages of sheer

fascination

with

of the ancient world, romantic rather than archaeological in

inspiration,

and the book has long been recognized as a reflection of, and stimulus to, late fifteenth-century feelings on the subject of antiquity, and especially the almost Scriptural reverence paid to it. The scene of The Temple of Venus [plate 1^6) is only four by five inches, but it has the elegance, hghtness, and, above all, the perfect sense of
interval that

we

find in the architecture of Brunelleschi.

184

156 Venetian

Woodcut

The Temple

of

Venus, from Hypncrotomachia Poliphili

As

early as 1477 the first attempt

was made

to illustrate a

book

with engravings on metal, and in 148 1 Landino's Commentary on

Dante was published in Florence with engravings probably designed

by

and was means of illustrating books, but the idea had undoubtedly come from the perfection attained by those artists, such as PoUaiuolo, who had made single line-engravings as independent works of art. The history of engraving on metal in intaglio begins a few years after that of woodcut. The process of engraving on metal (almost invariably copper) is simple, but it is almost the exact opposite of
BotticelH. This

was not

a success, for technical reasons,

as a

not revived until

much later

are those

rt'//t^ method, the parts cut away which print as whites: in any of the intaglio methods the actual lines gouged out of the surface of the plate and then filled with printing ink are those which print black. The main intaglio techniques in use in the fifteenth century were drypoint and Hneengraving, with etching coming into use in the sixteenth century.

woodcut. In woodcut, or any other

185

drypoint

is

the simplest, since

steel

it

consists

of drawing on

a soft

copper plate with a hard

the plate. If the plate
is

point which gouges out a furrow in

surface will retain only a film

with

it

wiped off, the poHshed of ink, but the furrows will be filled and w^ill, therefore, print as black lines if a sheet of paper is laid
inked, and the ink

on

the plate and subjected to great pressure. In Line-engraving proper

the lines are cut

It is

by pushing
difficult to

a tool called a

burin through the copper.

(the burin shps all too

much more
on

do than drypoint
it

easily

the pohshed surface), but

has the great advantage over

drypoint of printing
are inferior to the

many more

impressions before wearing out.

From the point of view of the book-illustrator the engraved processes

woodcut on
three counts they require a different,
:

and much

heavier, pressure; they cannot, for this reason, be printed

along with the type in one operation; they wear out very

more quickly
steadily

(a

wood-block, carefully
a

treated,

will give

much many

thousands of perfect prints, whereas a copper engraving deteriorates

and will not give more than

few hundred

prints at most).

From the point of view of the artist, the copper engraving is a far more subtle and personal technique, and this is probably the reason

why

it

was developed

so quickly

and soon became an independent

form, with no connexion with the book-trade.

The earHest hne-engravings were made in the North, in Germany and the Netherlands, about thirty years after the earliest woodcuts. The first major artist to emerge is the Master ES, who seems to have been active in the Rhineland from about 1440 until at least 1467. Some three hundred plates are known by him, a few of which are datable and several of which are signed E or ES
{plate 157).

Nothing more

is

known about

him, but

his types are like those

of

the Master of Flemalle and his output was mostly figures of saints, but

he also made designs for goldsmiths' work:

chase decoration

this gives a clue to the

origin of the process of engraving, since goldsmiths used tools to

on metal, and one way of testing the

efiect

of the

pattern was to rub black into the lines, sometimes also pressing paper

on

to them, thus obtaining a print.

The higher

social status

accorded

to line-engravers over woodcutters probably also

comes from the

connexion with the highly esteemed goldsmiths'

186

guilds.

157

{(ilnn'o left)

Master ES
the

Madonna watching
ChiUi being bathed

158 {above

right)

Master of

THE HOUSEBOOK
Aristotle

and Phyllis

159

{right)

SCHONGAUER

Temptation of St Antony

i6o

Antonio Pollaiuolo

Battle of the

Nude Men

Even finer as an artist is Martin Schongauer, probably ES's pupil, Colmar painter who engraved one hundred and fifteen plates, some of which arc of the highest quahty. In general, he seems to derive his types and compositions from Roger van der Weyden, the fountainhead of inspiration for all the Netherlandish and German painters of
a

the later fifteenth century: Schongauer's

own

importance

is

proved

by

his

{plate

only certain painting, the Madonna of the Rosehedge of 1473 143), an over life-size figure in the Gothic tradition clearly

showing his descent from Roger. His engravings were known in and Vasari tells us that the young Michelangelo copied his Temptation of St Antony [plate ijp); still more important, we know Schongauer died in 1491 because the young Diircr visited him, -with the intention of working under him, only to find he had recently died. Schongauer's contemporary was another anonymous painter and engraver, known as the Master of the Housebook (Hausbuch Meister) from a book of drawings at Schloss Wolfegg, which
Italy,

seems to be datable about 1475

[plate ijS).

Among

the eighty-nine

:T<^

i6i

Andrea Mantegna

Battle

of the Sea Gods

is

engravings attributed to

him

at least
all

one drypoint,

a rare tech-

nique

at this early date, since

almost

early engravings are

in goldsmiths'

made
work.

with the burin,

Italy

a striking

proof of their origin

later in

seems to have been slightly

developing the technique.

partly true.

Vasari says that engraving

was invented about 1460 by the Florentine

is

Maso Finiguerra, and, like so many of his claims, this Maso Finiguerra died in 1464, and he was possibly
British

the author of

the Florentine Picture Chronicle, a series of drawings,

now

in the

Museum, some of which are also reproduced in contemit is

porary engravings;
to

also true that the earhest Florentine

is

engraving

which

a date can be attached

of 146 1.

Early Italian engravings can be divided into the 'Fine' and 'Broad' Manners: the Fine Manner group dates from about 1460 in Florence and consists of engravings which are cross-hatched with a fine mesh

of lines, giving an

effect similar to a
at least

wash-drawing.

Few of them

are

of great

artistic

worth, but

two major

artists

used the Broad

Manner technique

Antonio PoUaiuolo and Andrea Mantegna. The

189

Broad Manner is closer in style to pen-drawing, since the lines are bolder and farther apart, with little hooks at the ends like the mark made by a rapid pen-stroke. The earHest examples seem to be of about 1470, and the style lasted for about twenty years. Antonio
Pollaiuolo's Battle of the Ntide

Men

{plate 160)

is

a signed

work of

about 1475, contemporary with the big altarpiece of St Sebastian, [plate 182), and similar in style, although the engraving has a power

and immediacy lacking

in the painting.

Andrea Mantegna made

[plate 161)

about nine engravings himself

is

the Battle of the Sea Gods

outline
is

similar to Pollaiuolo's battle

and several more are attributed to

well suited to

his shop.

The wiry hardness of Mantegna's

the

Broad Manner, and

the archaeological interests of the

school could be furthered by the dissemination

printing; for example, Diirer certainly

made

possible

Paduan by

knew Mantegna's
practise

prints.

Incomparably the greatest

engraver, and the heir to
all

artist

to

extensively as an

made in Germany, was Albrecht Diirer, who made some two hundred woodcuts and one hundred line-engravings, as well as experimenting with both drypoint and etching on iron. Diirer was born in Nuremberg in 1471, the son of a goldsmith. In i486 he was apprenticed to Michael Wolgemut, whose large workshop produced all kinds of art, including paintings and woodcuts for book-illustration, which were printed by Anton Koberger, the greatest printer in Germany. In 1490 Diirer left Nuremberg and wandered round Germany, until he
the technical advances
arrived in

Colmar

in 1492, intending to

work under Schongauer,

as a

but found that he was dead. The remaining three brothers eventually
sent

him

to their other brother in Basle

where he worked

bookof

illustrator, as

he also did in Strasbourg until

May

1494

when he

returned to Nuremberg.

From

the

autumn of 1494

to the spring

1495 he was in Venice, and perhaps also in Mantua, Padua, and

first

Cremona. came

It

seems to have been

after his

long 'wander-year' that he

into contact with Italian Renaissance

work of

sufficient

quality to change the course of his development. These

were the

engravings by Mantegna, including the Battle of the Sea Gods [plate 161) and the Death of Orpheus, which he copied in 1494, probably
before he went to Venice; another drawing of 1495 reproduces a

Rape of the
190

Sahines,

probably

after a lost

PoUaiuolo. In Venice he was

62

DURER
Self Portrait

fascinated

by

local types

Circassian

slave-girls, courtesans,

Venetian
the tight,

ladies in their easy, graceful dress

which he contrasted with

fussy clothes

of the Nuremberg women, lobsters, St Mark's which he attempted to transform into a

crabs, the lion

real beast.

of

On liis

way home
are

he made water-colour paintings of the landscape; these

at the

works which He

root of the Northern approach to land-

scape, for they are not only topographical records but

have

all

the

overtones of

mood

of pure landscape.

His

first successes

Saxony
of

visited

came rapidly after his journey. The Elector of Nuremberg in 1496 and was immediately impressed
his

with Diirer's genius, remaining

his life.

patron and admirer for the

rest

His early portraits also date from about then.

He had
its

painted a self-portrait for his betrothal in 1493 which, despite

virtuosity,

remained somewhat

flat;

his father's portrait,

of which the
191

London, is masterly as a piece of characterization, and important as one of the early examples of his power of suggesting depth by purely formal devices in a figure set against a plain background. The Self Portrait {plate 162) in the Prado is dated 1498. In it, Diirer wears his finest clothes and exhibits that vanity in his appearance for which his friends twitted him, but the most significant thing about it is the Leonardesque fascination with the hair. During these years he also established his supremacy in graphic art which for him had certain advantages over painting. A picture took too long to execute to allow of time for uncommissioned works, whereas a print could be finished fairly quickly. Pictures were only of two types in Germany: religious subjects or portraits. A print could be about anything. Compared with a painting, prints were cheap; they could satisfy devotional needs, or mere curiosity about a theme or an event; they were not tied to traditional iconography
best replica
is

the one in

or

set patterns,

but could be executed according to fancy. For an

artist like Diirer,

who combined
a

great rapidity

of thought with
a necessity.

teeming inventiveness,
to

medium of expression which allowed him

from Gothic
than
entirely

work out

his ideas

with speed and completeness was

easily to

Also, he
tradition,

had and

a natural bent for the linear inherited

lines

came more

one of

his training

masses. His early Italian interests

linear
brittle,

had been almost

prints,

with

works: Mantegna's and Pollaiuolo's

metallic linearism of Mantegna's forms derived

and the hard, from a

sculpturesque linear tradition with which he was at

home.

One of the earliest of the large woodcuts (it is about 15 by 11^ in.) was The Mens Bath House {plate 163) of 1497. The forms are very
drawing exact, and there is a feeling for mood, and an unusualness of subject-matter unknown before this date. Lines dehneate the objects, but where two dark areas meet a white line replaces the black, and not only are the directions of surface fully
detailed, the

worked
in a

out, but every effort

effects are

is

made

to represent the object's texture

and nature. These

achieved

more

easily in

engravings than

woodcuts. The Prodigal Son

{plate 166),

new

level

of virtuosity. Iconographically,

engraved in 1498, reaches it is new: formerly the

fields that the

Prodigal stood sorrowfully

among

the pigs while another swineherd

knocked down acorns. Diirer places him, not in the

192

{top

left)

DiJRER The

Men s Bath

House; 164

{top right)

JRER The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; 166 {bottom right)

Durer Adam and Eve; i6s Durer Prodigal Son

{bottom

left)

Bible mentions, but in the farm-yard where barns and hovels give
a vivid actuality to the scene,

and he does not look sadly

at his pigs;

he kneels
he
lifts

among them. Humbling

himself among his snorting hogs,

his eyes

and hands in prayer and deep repentance. This

simple motive gives a pathos and a humanity, an emotional overtone,

which brought the design immediate fame.

In 1498 he issued the Apocalypse {plate 165). This

book
a

issued entirely

by an

artist as his sole

responsibiHty,

was the earliest and it set

set into

new
on

type for books.

Where

earlier

ones had illustrations

the letterpress, Diirer used the full page for his

text

woodcut and put

the

He condensed the narrative so that the incidents are never repeated in the illustrations, even when they repeat in the text, thus reducing the illustrations from as many as seventy-four in earHer books to fourteen. He also condenses the action and makes much of
the back.
it

Horsemen go on mankind indirectly. Diirer shows them charging in a solid phalanx and mowing down humanity
continuous; for instance, in Revelations 6 the Four
evil

out singly, and the

they do

falls

under their hoofs.

to woodcuts,
effect.

He adapted the technique he used in the engravings

infinitely richer

making them

and more dazzling in

fruit

The

Apocalypse ranks with Leonardo's Last Supper and

as a

Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling

supreme work of art, the

of

spontaneous genius, using

the subject in a totally
sheer beauty and

all

the resources of tradition yet treating

itself

new way, immediately imposing

by

power of imagination.
appears to have been a turning-point, for about

The year 1500

then Diirer began his

move towards

theory.

He

started to study

proportion in humans and animals

quality of things,

particularly horses

and

also

perspective, but his natural balance, his innate feehng for the physical

made him compensate

detail.

even more engrossed in natural

Piece of Turf, all dating

for the theory by becoming Drawings hke the Hare or the

are microscopic at a

from 1500-3,

moment

when he was experimenting with

engravings of
this

theories

of ideal proportion. The

period are
as

more

detailed

and

delicate than ever,

with two or three times

the largest and
It
is

many

lines to the square

inch as before.

All stress the textures and surfaces of things.

is

inches.

of 1 501 most splendid of all his engravings ten by thirteen filled with minute, almost Eyckian detail, even
5^ Eustace

The

194

though the main subject is the relationship between the proportions of man, animals, and nature. The dramatis pcrsonae arc reduced
almost to a schematic system with the recession of the landscape

managed
positions

in successive stages,

and

all

the figures are seen in set

profile.

full frontal, three-quarter,

and

Never again did he combine so much in so small a compass, for at the same time he produced coarser prints in an effort to harmonize two styles, though what he lost in less minute handling he more than made up for in increasingly complicated iconography. The Adam and
Eve of 1504 is a case in point {plate 164), for it is intended to be read as a book, with no detail so minute that it does not contribute to the significance, and with the complication of a basis in obscure medieval

The rowan tree Adam holds was once believed of life, the apple of sin is also that of discord, the four animals are symbols of the four humours, and also the personificasystems of thought.
to be the tree
tions of the deadly sins, which all invaded Man after the Fall. Adam and Eve are not only our ancestors at the moment when they became our forefathers, but they embody ideals of classical beauty, harmony, and proportion, since Adam is adapted from the Apollo Belvedere,

which had been discovered at the turn of the century. This conflation of the moment of their entry into the human predicament with the timeless quality of ideal form is also made to contain overtones of human nature and personality, in the maximum contrast between masculine vigour and feminine softness. The paintings of these years are neither numerous nor very successful, except for the Adoration of the Magi, of 1504, but in all the painted works the extremes of iconographical and narrative detail are abandoned. His last work before he went to Venice for the second time was the set of woodcuts for the Life oj the Virgin {plate 134), but this remained unfinished until after his return. The set was planned to have twenty illustrations of which seventeen were done when he left, two more were added in 15 10, and in 151 1 a new frontispiece was cut and the whole issued as a book Hke the Apocalypse. The woodcuts fall into two types: those in which the homely narrative and multitudinous detail recall the earher works in which these quaHties predominated, and those in which Diirer set himself one of
the classic problems of design, and solved
it

by

a conscious skill in

195

composition, a use of

classical

proportions, or the adaptation of

classical poses. In turn, this raises the

on

these blocks. In Basle

question of his personal work and Strasbourg, where he had worked for
a designer

the great printers, he

sionally cut

had been
it is

of blocks, and only occa-

one himself:

waste of money to employ a designer

on

the mechanical part of the work. In

Nuremberg he began by

cutting
basis

many of his own blocks,

because he was changing the whole

of graphic art, and the creation of a new style could only be done by personal work. When the standard of cutting had been set and his workmen trained to work to his wishes, then he designed and they cut. The same happened in the engravings. First he had to
establish the fantastically

high quality by example; then he could

leave the actual engraving to the journeymen he trained, and later he

,/

had no need to cut or engrave, though this results in deader cutting than is the case with those blocks he had worked himself. From 1500 to 1505 was a transitional period, when it was still necessary to do much of his own hackwork, and not until 15 10 was the workshop able to cope with anything he demanded. Most of the engravings and v^oodcuts are standard in size, not for aesthetic reasons, but because of the sizes of blocks (the larger the block the more difficult to obtain without blemish) and the size of the press.

>^

When Diirer arrived in Venice for the second time in the summer of 1505 he was no longer the poor, unknown student he had been eleven years before. He was rich, famous, and sought after. He mixed with scholars. Humanists, musicians, connoisseurs, and instead of fdling sketch-books with the surprises and curiosities of the new world
he found himself in, he studied theory.
church, paid for by the

He executed several paintings,

German The Venetians had
and
that

including a grand commission for an altarpiece for the

German
it

merchants.

criticized his style, saying that

was not

'antique'

he was

only an engraver and could not handle colour; the Feast of the Rose Garlands was intended to stifle this kind of criticism for good, and

which have survived extensive restoration have a richness comments that he had triumphed over his critics to the wonder and admiration of all. In type, the altarpiece is a very complicated and crowded Sacra Conversazione, which owes an enormous debt to Bellini, whom Diirer said was 'still first in painting'.
those parts
that explains his

196

167 DiJRER

Madonna of
the Siskin

It is

clear

from such engravings

as the Little

Horse of 1505,

as

well

as

from

his tentative essays in

human

proportions, that Diirer had

been influenced by Leonardo even

a

if the influence
Little

was not based on

as well:

very wide knowledge of his works. The

Horse certainly harks

back to the Sforza Horse, but there are other examples

the

Madonna of

the Siskin

[plate 167),

painted in 1506, introduces

the infant St John, hitherto unknown to Venetian Madonnieri, in the Leonardesque intercessory type. Isabella d'Este had wanted Leonardo
to paint her a Christ disputing with the Doctors,

the commission; but

it is

and he had avoided beheved that he did execute a cartoon

but which

may have given Diirer the Leonardo received the commission when he was in Venice. Nothing more Leonardesque exists in Diirer 's oeuvre, except a later drawing of profiles which as much caricatures Leonardo as it imitates him. Diirer described it as 'a picture the like of which I have never painted before', and even if a lost Leonardo did not directly inspire it, it seems almost certain
which was eventually
lost,

idea for his picture, particularly as

197

the heads of the old

the

men were derived from him. The painting offers

between youth and age, beauty and ughness, innocent wisdom and crabbed knowledge, virtue and vice all those contrasts which ran off Leonardo's pen when he doodled.
contrasts

maximum

Diirer returned to

Nuremberg

reluctantly;

he was no longer
after the
'I

content to be merely a good

workman and he hankered

climate of the arts in Italy. 'Here', he wrote

from Venice,

am

gentleman; there
cold.'

am

a parasite.

How

shall

long for the sun in the

Now

he began developing the

'erudite' side to his art

and

personaHty that raised him so

period and country.

much above

the other painters of his

He

studied mathematics and geometry, Latin

and Humanist hterature; he consorted, not with fellow artisans, but a change in his whole mode of life and thought, traceable directly to the influence of Leonardo and Mantegna, and to the example of Bellini, with whom he had been on terms of friendship in Venice. A new kind of engraving was evolved after his return, based on the Italian type of chiaroscuro print that is, a print, usually a woodcut, printed in more than one colour so as to give an effect of tone. Diirer now began to make prints which, while still purely in black and white, also managed to convey the idea of a middle tone. This was done by great evenness of cutting, and by planning the print in zones of light, middle tone, and shadow. He used this manner for the Great Passion, finished in 15 ii and published as a book like the Apocalypse and the Life oj the Virgin, also finished at this time.
with Humanists and scholars

His greatest engravings, the Knight, Death and

in his

the Devil, St Jerome

Study {plate i6S), and Melencolia, were produced in 15 13-14,

and here again the multilayers of thought embedded in the iconography have to be read, at the same time as the aesthetic quaHty of
the print rnakes
against sin
its

impact.

The

Christian knight prepared for battle

and death, riding through the world assailed by temptation; the saint in a spiritual haven of faith and learning; the Vita Activa and the Vita Contemplativa contrasted with the Melencoha in her twilit world of accidie, appalled at the gulf between her powers

and her vision, the spiritual portrait of the artist himself overcome by divine discontent at his own inadequacy before the immensities of art and knowledge.
198

i68 DiJRER St Jerome

in his

Study

V>

i0w^*m>*tmiti'^'^igmmmift^

Adam and Eve where he made an overconscious attempt to reconcile Gothic forms and proportions with Renaissance canons of Ideal Beauty, and the Trinity Altar (Vienna, 1 507-11) which is based on St Augustine's 'City of God'. A medieval Seat of Mercy adored by angels and the faithful is approached through a frame, which he also designed, representing the Last Judgment an imaginative and exact interpretation of the text, dazzling in colour and with subtle spatial arrangements, designed to draw the spectator into the picture space. In 1 5 19 he appears to have had a nervous breakdown, and when the young Jan van Scorel came to Nuremberg to be taught by him he found DUrer so preoccupied with Luther that he went elsewhere. By 1520 he was settled in his Lutheran conversion, but still conpaintings o this period include the painted

The

(Prado, 1506-7),

tinued in a religious half-world without severing his connexion with

Catholicism.
his

pension and status confirmed by the

He had become Court Painter in 15 12, and it was to get new Emperor Charles V that
the journey to the Netherlands,
feasted

in 1520 he a year.

made

Everywhere he was

which lasted exactly and feted, and his fascinating

199

was most impressed with, such Ghent Altar and works by Roger and Hugo, but the Brussels bed for fifty people, Mabuse's polychromed house, the gifts and tips he parted with, the man who swindled him, Patinier's wedding, and such-hke trivia. His sketch-book records in superb silverpoint drawings places he visited, people he met, things he saw [plate 169). But he returned a broken man. He had ventured into the malarial swamps of Zeeland to see a whale, washed out to sea before he got there, and the fever he contracted undermined his constitution. From about 1520 onwards he seems to have entertained the idea of painting a large Sacra Conversazione for which many drawings exist. At the same time he was occupied with a number of small engravings of Apostles. Eventually, possibly because the rehgious cHmate of Nuremberg was unsympathetic to a large rehgious work, he abandoned the altarpiece, but he adapted some of the finer Apostle figures to wings for the centre of the now non-existent triptych, and in 1526 decided to present them to his native city as a memorial to himself. These are the two tall, narrow panels of the Four Apostles [plates 170, 171), St John and St Peter in one and St Paul and St Mark
diary not only records the things he
as the

169

DuBER Caspar Sturm

'_ /.,vpB.

:rvaM

"Xtr- 4!^. ,cr

q^ Si^

iH^f^-t V

.r.ffl

u'^A

,^

--..

i%

^* ^i

..i

lyo DiJRER St John and St Peter from the Four Apostles

171

DuRER
from

St Paul and St

Mark

the

Four Apostles

in the other.

and, in addition to

Each panel contains both an Apostle and an Evangehst, this, the four men typify the four humours: St
St

John

as

the sanguine,

Mark

as

the choleric,

St Paul as the

melanchoHc, and St Peter as the phlegmatic, and these four temperaments are contrasted with one another so as to endow the figures with the maximum of thoughtful interpretation. Distantly, of course, they echo the four saints in the wings of Bellini's Frari Madonna {plate 234), and it may well be that the memory of format and content suggested the design of the Apostles. It was his last major

work.

He

died in April 1528.

201

The mainspring of his Hfe and work is to be found in the basic dichotomy of his mind. A patient and humble observer of reaHstic detail, using as a best-loved technique Hne-engraving on copper technique demanding an exacting and objective accuracy he was also a visionary. He was embued with the idea of the artist as a creator, inspired by God. Art was an unteachable mystery, yet he sought to rationalize his inspiration by principles, and he recognized that both unrestrained fantasy and the impulsive imitation of nature were not enough, and that art must be controlled by knowledge. He perceived that his contemporaries, though skilled and talented, lacked the disciphne of a sound training in theory, and patiently he tried to remedy this in himself; yet he was equally convinced that theories were incapable of doing justice to the immensity of God's creation, and that any good result that may be derived from a sound theoretical foundation in the arts is still entirely dependent on the artist's own intelligence and ability to reshape the theory and transcend it. His theoretical writings are important when he treats of perspective, which he expounds in a workmanlike manner, or conic sections, in which his diagrams are thorough and practical, but in the theory of Ideal Beauty he starts from a standpoint which, however well it could be argued, precluded any useful end. Alberti and Leonardo had both taken it for granted that Ideal Beauty could be created by the artist; Diirer lays it down as a law that it cannot. Man is imperfect, and absolute beauty is the work of God; Man may not enter into so close a communion with God as to be able to re-create Ideal Beauty.

He may
It is

create better figures, but not the best.

not true that the tension in Diirer was produced by the impact
artist

of the Renaissance on an
conflict

trained in a Late Gothic tradition, nor

did his yearning for Italy produce the conflict in his mind.

The

Italy, since he found that there the had developed the philosophical and intellectual approach to the arts which he contrasted with the empirical and haphazardly individuaHstic state of the arts in Germany. Contact with the minds and works of the Itahan Renaissance, with the classicism, amplitude, and serenity of Venice in general, and Mantegna, Bellini, and

produced the craving for

artist

Giorgione in particular, did not create the tension in Diirer:

focused
it.

it

202

Chapter Seven

During the first half of the fifteenth century, Florentine sculpture was dominated by Ghiberti and Donatcllo. During the second half, sculpture became a matter either of the acceptance of Donatello's ideas or a reaction against them, and a reaction entailed, largely, a continuation of Ghiberti's graceful and tender art. Outside Florence, the most important early fifteenth-century Italian sculptor was the Sienese Jacopo della Querela. In some ways his style is close to Donatello's and, like him, he was a powerful influence on the young Michelangelo at the end of the century. Jacopo was born in 1374/75 and died in 1438. He was one of the competitors in the 1401 competition for the baptistery doors in Florence, which Ghiberti won, but Jacopo's entry has not survived and the earliest work attributable to him is the Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in Lucca Cathedral, probably
executed about 1406
altar-tomb, and
[plate 172).

The tomb seems

it

to

show
the

know-

ledge of Northern types, since

it

has a recumbent effigy

upon an

has even been suggested that he

pntti

knew

work of

Glaus Sluter.

The

carrying garlands are, however, a classical

earliest use

Roman

motive, and are supposed to be the

of such an

modern tomb. For this reason, it has been suggested that he took the motive from Donatello, but this would not only mean that the tomb must be later than 1406, but that
antique motive on a

or altars with this motive were unknown to Jacopo, which is unlikely. One of the difficulties about Ilaria' s tomb is that it was broken up and later reassembled, so that it is not known whether it is as the sculptor designed it. His next major work was the Fonte Gaia, for his native Siena, commissioned in 1409 but not finished until 14 19. It too has now been dismembered, and is terribly damaged and weathered, but the surviving pieces show a bold, broad, handling comparable with Donatello's and not uninfluenced by him, although Jacopo always remains a far more Gothic artist,

Roman tombs

203

172 Jacopo della Quercia Tomb of Ilaria

del Carretto,

Lucca Cathedral

with
their

a strong

emphasis on hnear

effects not, as in

Donatello, used for

and poetic and Donatello all worked on the font in the baptistery of Siena Cathedral, and Florentine influence drove Jacopo to attempt similar effects of pictorial perspective in his relief, but they were, fundamentally, alien to his mind, which was happier
emotive or dramatic force, but for
their decorative

quahties. Jacopo, Ghiberti,

with the type represented by the Trenta Altar, S. Frediano, Lucca, of 1422, in which fairly high relief figures emerge from a plain
ground, giving the
stone

maximum

play to the linear effects of the figures

is the series of round the main door of San Petronio in Bologna, and the freestanding figures of the Madonna and Child and one of the saints in the tympanum above, begun in 1425. Here again, low reHef, expressive line, an avoidance in the backgrounds of the kind of pictorial effects that were fashionable in Florence, enable him to achieve a style of rare force and simpHcity: it is easy to see from the Creation of Eve [plate J 73) and the Expulsion Jrom Paradise [plate 174) why Michelangelo so greatly admired these works, which form a link between him and Donatello and Masaccio. This robustness of form is precisely what was lacking in most of the Florentine sculptors of the next generation. The influence of Donatello was so overwhelming that any reaction against it tended to be a continuation of the dehcacy of Ghiberti. Alberti had dedicated his Della Pittura to Brmielleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, and

themselves and their abundant drapery. His masterpiece

reliefs

204

Jacopo della Quercia Creation of Eve, San Petronio, Bologna; Jacopo della Quercia Expulsion from Paradise, San Petronio, Bologna; 175 (bottom left) LuCA della Robbia Cantoria, detail. Singing Boys; 176 (bottom right) LucA della Robbia Madonna and Child
173
{top
left)

174

(top right)

Luca

della

Robbia, which impHes that he expected Luca to play

art
as

as

important a part in Florentine

to 1438,

his

great contemporaries.

Certainly, the promise of his Cantoria (plate 173), executed

from 143
pendant,

and for which Donatello's was commissioned

as a

suggested that Donatello was by no means without a serious

petitor,

com-

but although Luca della Robbia continued to execute occa-

sional

commissions in sculpture

the

sacristy

doors for the Cathedral,

made between 1464 and 1469, were the most important his discovery of the method of applying vitrified lead glazes to terracotta
led to his specializing in this decorative

work for architecture and for

205

the relief equivalent of small devotional pictures. Plaques for build-

charming Madonna and Child reHefs of arms, became the main products of his important workshop, which produced a delightful and popular art, and one not without a good deal of influence despite its modest ambitions, particularly since its life was prolonged into several generations. The antithesis to Donatello's vehemence was readily available in his mild Madonnas in their simple blue and white veils, and they were also a prolongation of the tender grace of Ghiberti, so that both currents of thought existed in parallel. The elegance and delicacy of handling of Desiderio and Mino go far to compensate for the loss of Donatello's energy and inventiveness, and they are also striking parallels of the same tendencies in contemporary painting. The brothers Bernardo (1409-60) and Antonio (1427-c. 1479) RosselHno were architects and building contractors as well as sculpBernardo built for Alberti. Their major works are two large tors
ings like the Pazzi Chapel,
[plate ly 6), splendidly decorative coats

and important tombs which involve architecture almost

sculpture.

as

much

as

The earlier, by Bernardo, commemorates the

great Floren-

Leonardo Bruni, and was erected in Sta Croce about form it derives from the papal tomb in the 1444/50 baptistery by Donatello and Michelozzo, and this type of wall-tomb dominated tomb design for nearly a century, with no more than minor variations on the theme of sarcophagus, recumbent figure, and
tine Chancellor
[plate 177). In

subsidiary sculpture, until the Pollaiuoli introduced the major innovation of a representation

of a living figure to supplement the effigy. Antonio Rossellino's tomb for the Cardinal of Portugal, made between 1 46 1 and 1466 for a chapel annexed to S. Miniato, on a hill

above Florence, is a far grander and more imposing work, but it does not depart except in increased splendour from the type

estabHshed by his brother [plate 178).

Benedetto da Maiano (1442-97) retained something of the sturdy

quality of the RosselHno brothers in his portrait busts, such as the

head by Ghirlandaio, such

a

one of Pietro Mellini of 1474. This has the as that of Francesco

qualities
Sassetti:

of
it is

a portrait

obviously

good likeness, it is competent, but relatively uninspired. The more delicate style of the later Quattrocento derives from Donatello's experiments in very low relief, from the softer forms
206

Bernardo Rossellino
Bniiii

178

Tomb, Sta Crow, Florence

Antonio Rossellino Tomb of the Cardinal of

Portugal, S. Miniato, Florence

exploited by Luca dclla Robbia, and from the paintings of Doinenico

Veneziano and the later works of Fra FiUppo; Desiderio da Settignano

[c.

1430-64) and

Mino da

Fiesole

(1429-84),
it

who, according

to

Vasari,

up almost to the end of the century. Desiderio's tomb of Carlo Marsuppini, Brum's successor as Chancellor of the Florentine State, follows the normal wall-tomb pattern and, since it faces the Bruni tomb across the nave of Sta
pupil, carried

was Desiderio's

Croce, adds an extra point of competition to the striving for

elegance,
grace,

and rich decorative

originally

detail,

particularly in such

enchanting features

as the little shield-bearing

boy

angels [plate 180).

still

Both tombs were

coloured,

and

traces

survive.

207

179

MiNO DA

FiESOLE Tomb of Count Ugo of Tuscany, Badia,

Florence, detail

Desiderio's peculiar excellence, as well as the ultimate dependence

of his much gentler

relief from the

art

upon Donatello, can be

[plate 181),

seen in the

Madonna

and in such works as the Sacrament Altar in S. Lorenzo; so tenderly are the forms of hair and features drawn upon the surface of the marble that his handUng acquires an extraordinary translucence and deHcacy. Mino's tomb of

Marsuppini tomb

Count Ugo of Tuscany

in 148 1,

[plate lyg),

commissioned in 1469 and finished

shows the influence of the antique, a result, presumably, of the years he spent in Rome, where he made several tombs, and worked in the Sistine Chapel on the central screen. His bust of Niccolo Strozzi, of 1454, is a good example of mid-century prose.
In the last quarter of the century the
tine

two most important Floren-

workshops were both run by men who were primarily sculptors, arts with skill Antonio PoUaiuolo and Andrea Verrocchio. The brothers Antonio and Piero PoUaiuolo are first recorded as painters in 1460, but Piero must then have been still
although they practised other

208

xHo DnsiDERio DA Settignano

Tomh

of Carlo Marsuppini,

Sta Croce, Florence

i8i Desiderio

da Settignano
Child, detail

Madonna and
from
the

Marsuppini Tomb

and, in any case, his documented works make it very Antonio was by far the more talented of the two. Antonio was probably born about 1432, and his brother was about nine years younger: Antonio died in 1498, Piero having predeceased him in
a

young man,

clear that

Very little is known for certain about their careers, but the view is correct, in that they were passionately interested in anatomy and the rendering of violent muscular action by means of a wiry contour. In this they were the heirs of Donatello and
1496.
traditional

Castagno (Piero

is

said to

have been Castagno's pupil) and the

precursors of Leonardo as scientifically

minded

artists.

This

is

most
as

evident in the rehef-hke engraving, signed by Antonio,

the Battle of the

known

where the flamess of the background and the mirror-images of the figures themselves throw into the sharpest rehef the contours and the play of muscle within the forms. The Martyrdom of St Sebastian [plate 182) appUes the same pictorial principles of decorative pattern on the surface of the picture
[plate 160),

Nude Men

209

contrast

and intensive study of the anatomical and botanical details. The between the moon-faced saint and the brutish but vital
is

executioners

probably to be explained by attributing the figure of

the saint to Piero,

who was

an

artist

of no more than moderate

competence,

as

witness the trouble caused

by

his Virtues

commis-

Chamber of Commerce. The last years of their hves were spent on two papal tombs those of Sixtus IV, begun
sioned by the Florentine

VIII, from 1492 to 1498, both of which were Old St Peter's. They were completed by Antonio after Piero's death in Rome, where he himself also died. Both tombs have been much altered, so that their original form is difficult to reconstruct. The tomb of Sixtus [plate i8j) now consists of a low platform, the sides of which contain reliefs of the Virtues and the Liberal Arts, and upon which lies the recumbent effigy of the Pope. The whole is

in 1493,

and Innocent

originally in

cast in bronze,

most elaborately

chiselled,

and given

refinement and

dehcacy of finish which accords astonishingly with the robust vigour

of the emaciated face, patently based on a death-mask, and the linear exuberance of the details of draperies, hair, jewels, and a multitude of other ornaments. The tomb of Innocent VIII [plate 184) breaks ground. It is a variant of the Florentine type of wall-tomb, for instead of the customary effigy on a sarcophagus surmounted by a rehef, usually of the Virgin and Child, the base consisted originally of the seated figure of the Pope, hand raised in blessing, surrounded

new

by

rehefs

of the Virtues, and surmounted by the sarcophagus and

relief of the

effigy,

with the oval

in the lunette over the effigy.

sets

Madonna supported by two angels The present garbled arrangement upof the dead man's soul in
its

the sequence of the composition, with the living figure above the
inter-

effigy contradicting the aspiration

cession for Divine mercy. Again, the

tomb

is

entirely

of bronze, and

has the same degree of high finish as the Sixtus; the pose of the
blessing

Pope

sets a

pattern that echoes

down

the centuries, and itself

as

echoes the thirteenth-century St Peter enthroned, which was then,

now, near
Sixtus,

by.

The treatment of
life

the head

is less

linear than in the

but

it is

not in the modelling of the face so

that the

much

as in its

expression of character and

power of the head

resides.

Andrea Verrocchio [c. 1435-88) was even more a sculptor, but his well-organized workshop could deal with orders for almost any kind
210

82

Antonio Pollaiuolo
Martyrdom
oj St Sebastian

183

(^aboi'e

right)

Antonio and Piero

St Peter's,

Pollaiuolo

Tomb of Sixtus IV,

Rome

184

Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo Tomb oj Innocent VIII, St Peter's, Rome

85

Verrocchio

Dai'id

86

(^beloii>

right) VERROCCfflO CoUeoni Monument, Venice

worked
is

of art-work and at one time or another many important painters for him, the greatest being Leonardo da Vinci. Verrocchio
a pupil a strong contrast

of Donatello in the latter's old age, but there between their approaches to sculpture; Verrocchio is typical of the Late Quattrocento in his elegance and fmesse of handling, his avoidance of the strong emotional effect, and his concentration on craftsmanship that indicates the strength of the goldsmiths' tradition in bronze sculpture. A comparison between Donatello's David [plate ji) and Verrocchio's (made before 1476) [plate 18$) reveals how deeply the basic ideals of the sculptor have changed, even in relation to classical antiquity, which both men would have admitted as a standard by which to be judged. The Donatello is all relaxation and understatement; the Verrocchio is tense, alert, the expression mischievous, the minute details of veins and the thin forms of elbow and neck and hair given the sharpest
rehef. In his masterpiece, the Colleoni
186),

may have been

Monument

in

Venice
at

[plate

unfinished at his death, Verrocchio dehberately challenged

[plate 32)

comparison with Donatello's Gattamelata

Padua.

He

attempts to render military bravado by such technical feats as the

212

horse with one hoof raised (Donatello,

to support
all

less skilled in casting,

four). Principally,

however, Verrocchio

relies

had on

the portentous

frown and

stifF-lcgged

swagger of
that

his condottierc,

seated high in the saddle and half turned in a strained attitude

with

the result that while Donatello's figure

is

of an Imperator,

Verrocchio's

is

a village bully.

The

passion for minute detail, for

the over-elaboration of surfaces,

contemporary
forms
is

critic

was now so far out of hand that a complained that the horse had been flayed, and
minute

despite the tension of the silhouette, the accumulation of

harmful rather than helpful to the impression of grandeur

to overstatement

that the artist strove to create.

The tendency

is

the characteristic of
a

sometimes called Quattrocento Mannerism,

term

easily

what open

is

to

abuse, but useful in conveying the slightly exaggerated quality of

much of the
confusion.

best

work done
was

in the last years

also

of the
in the

fifteenth century,

a period in Florence that

one of great

political

upheaval and
will be

The

best examples can be

it is

found

work of BotticelH
it

and FiHppino Lippi, but

seen that there
is

not unique to Florence, and

a close similarity to the

Northerners of the same

general outlook, most notably Bosch and Griinewald.

Hieronymus Bosch
painters

{c.

1450-1516)

is

one of the most puzzling

art,

who

ever hved. HQs pictures are, as works of

beautiful

and have always been recognized as works of genius, really very little idea of what they are about, and as early have yet we as the sixteenth century there must have been arguments about the
in themselves,
devils

and

fantasies, since a

Spanish priest then solemnly defended

Bosch's orthodoxy, while a twentieth-century historian has evolved

a

theory of more than usual

silliness

about Bosch's heretical leanings.

Bosch was a Dutchman, first recorded at 's Hertogenbosch in 1480/ 81, and the first work that is known, a Crucijixion [plate iSy), must date from about this time, and shows, not surprisingly, the influence of Bouts and Roger van der Weyden. There is a group of more or Bosch's less 'normal' pictures of this type, but quite soon afterwards chronology is very hit-or-miss he seems to have developed the devil-haunted imagination which is so characteristic of the Late Middle Ages. It is hard to understand all, or even very much, of his symbolism; but there can be no reasonable doubt about the general meaning of such works as The Ship of Fools [plate 188), a well-known medieval allegory on human folly, or the obsessive nature of the Temptation of St Antony, a subject which seems to have been, in one form or another, close to his heart. It may serve as a reminder of the

universal beHef in witchcraft, but

its

appeal has been just as great to

Freudian psychologists. Almost any details will

technician in oil-paint he

show how superb

was

[plate ig8),

and

also

how his imagina-

tion

was fed by the same sources

with
this

as the early

woodcutters, and indeed

Diirer himself has links in his Apocalypse series and in the painting of
Christ in the Temple,

same

fantastic riot

of

late fifteenth-

century popular imagery and devotional prints.

Two
known
and

great painters are akin to

teenth century and,

as

him Breughel in the later sixmore immediately, Mathis Nithardt-Gothardt, Griinewald. Bosch died before Luther broke away from

the Church, but Griinewald,

who was born in the 1470s, died in 1528 may himself have ended as a Lutheran, although much of his hfe
in the service

was spent

of first the Archbishop of Mainz and later work expresses the torment of the early sixteenth century more fully than that of any other artist. Diirer was too steeped in Italian culture to have much use for the
the Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz. His

214

87

Bosch

Crucifixion

88

Bosch The

Ship of Fools

tortured Gothic forms

which Griinewald twisted

to suit his expres-

sive purposes in his masterpiece, the

Isenheim Akar, of about 15 15.

painted by a

This was painted before Luther nailed his theses to the door of

Wittenberg Cathedral
able message

in 15 17,

but

it is

man who,

like

Bosch, used his great technical powers to express a simple, unmistakvisions are entirely in the spirit

of emotional intensity and terrible reaUsm. These of St Bridget o Sweden, whose Revelations were one of the most popular devotional books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; they would have been repugnant
to
all

but a very small number of Itahans, of

certainly

whom

Savonarola

would

have been one, and Botticelh might well have been

Altar
a

another.

The Isenheim
painted surfaces

is
is,

complicated structure with four layers of

sets

that

two

of wings, Hke

a double cupboard,

enclosing the final altarpiece, which consists of three carved

wood
215

89

Grunewald
Cmcifixion,

Washington D.C.

Statues

of

saints.

There are
it

also

two

side panels

and

a predella. In

form, therefore,
carved
It

harks back to the type of Burgundian and

German

altar of which the Broederlam at Dijon is a classic example. was painted for a lazar-house, which explains the presence of the plague saint, St Sebastian, and the patrons of the more austere and soHtary forms of monasticism, St Antony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit. On the outside is the Crucijixion [plate 194), not seen as an event, but as a meditation on the most frightful aspects of suffering, with the theological significance stressed by the Baptist, whose stabbing fmger points to the tortured body of Christ, while below the Cross stands the Lamb of Sacrifice. The wings open to disclose an Anmmciaticn, a Nativity [plate 193), and an Ascension; and these open again to disclose on either side of the carved innermost shrine two panels, Sts Paul and Antony in the Desert and a Temptation of St Antony. The Crucifixion is sombre and livid; inside, all is a magic glory of brilhant colour and light, and the final scenes of the Desert Saints are again lurid and eerie, with, in the Temptation, the kind of devilhaunted imagery that permeated Bosch's visions of sin.

216

but the imagery harks back to Romanesque, and in his portrayal of the ghastly wounds, the agonized feet and hands, the dying face, here and in the smaller Crucifixion in Washington [plate i8g). Griinev^'ald stands at the absolute extreme pole from the elegiac serenity of the High
This
is

a sixtccnth-ccntury picture,

the expressive violence of

moment was in its fnial stage in Rome. was born about 1445 and died in 15 10. He too is an artist who crosses the dividing line between the hopeful confidence of the fifteenth century and the dark fulfilment of the Savonarola period, so that it is not out of character that he too should develop eventually the same urgency and passionate desire to express the suffering involved in the Passion. Botticelli was probably a pupil of Fra Filippo, so that he must have inherited all the skills of the Italian Renaissance before his first identifiable commission in 1470, for a very Pollaiuoloesque Fortitude to go with a series of Virtues by Piero
Renaissance, which at this
Botticelli

Pollaiuolo.

From

this

point his

work

ranges through the simple, if

oj the

languorous, imagery of the Madonna

the extremely sophisticated

Magnificat [plate igi) to

imagery of the Primavera and the Birth oj Venus [plate 190), both of which, under the guise of simple mythologies are really elaborate images of Neoplatonic interpretations, in a Christian sense, of the Venus myth. Thus, Primavera
[plate i)
is

kind of allegory of civilized living, with Venus

(complete with halo)

as a

sort of pagan Madonna who should lift up Man's mind to the contemplation of that beauty which is Divine in origin. In the same way, the Birth of Venus is a very long way away from the Venus Pandemos. It may be argued that this is a rather artificial interpretation, and in a way it is, but it is an interpretation

that

made

sense to the late fifteenth century.

It

can clearly be seen

how,

later,

under the impact of Savonarola's theocracy and the

becomes less esoteric example is the Mystic Nativity [plate igg) with its inscription: 'I Sandro painted this picture at the end of the year 1500 (?) in the troubles of Italy in the half time after the time according to the nth chapter of St John in the second woe of the Apocalypse in the loosing of the devil for three and a half years then he will be chained in the 12th chapter and we shall
troubles besetting Italy, Botticelli's imagery
clearly Christian.

and more

The

best possible

see clearly

(?)...

as in this picture.' In

order to emphasize the

217

ipo

(^ahoue

left)

Botticelli

Birth

of Venus

191 {belong

left)

Botticelli
the Magnificat

Madonna of

192 (right) Botticelli Deposition

193

(hclow) Botticelli

Mars and

Vctius

importance of the Madonna and Child and the

relative unimportance of the humans, he has reverted to the early medieval device of disregarding scale and perspective and grading the actual sizes of the figures according to their importance; hence the Madonna is far the

largest

although placed apparently in the middle distance.

is

The feature that links him most firmly with the Florentine heritage his linear quality; the view of Botticelli that estimates him as an
of languid grace,
soft

and of a kind of sexless sensuaUty, overlooks the hard, wiry outlines and the firmness the marble, almost of his surfaces. LiUes and roses, languor and rapture are all there,
artist

superficially,

but held together underneath by an almost Gothic

precision of line,

and

concern for soHd form derived from the

Florentine obsession with sculpture.

Botticelh's last works, executed between 1500 and 15 10, have something of the emotional intensity of the Northerners, and his

Deposition

[plate

Crucifixion [plate ig4)

that

no

Italian
all

may well be compared with Griinewald's of about ten years later, with the reservation would have conceived of representing it in those
igz)

terms. For

the

agony of

suffering that Botticelli expresses, the

forms of his dead Christ echo those of the calm, proud nude in the

Mars and Venns

as in the

[plate 193),

and the

stylizations

he has used to render

the impact of his forms

more poignant

are

of virtually the same kind

mythology. The Virgin's tragic mask, the collapse of

Christ's dead body, are pathetic, but the formal balance

of the

composition, the deliberate use of the purest forms to express the

abandon of grief touch chords which are different in essence as well as in resonance from Griinewald's horrific vision. At the height of his most successful period, during the 1480s, he had made use of every convention of continuous representation, movement, agitation of pose and drapery, surface elaboration, for instance in the three frescoes he contributed to the Sistine Chapel series. This trend towards the organization of the surface of the picture in terms of the maximum effect to be derived from a multiplicity of contrasting forms becomes an abiding feature of Florentine art at the end of the century. Filippino Lippi (1457/ 8-1 504) was probably Botticelh's pupil after his own father's death in 1469, and he shares something of the same obsessive quahty.
220

^'^
V
194

Grunewald
Isctihcim Aharpicce,

Crucifixion

195

Grunewald
Isenheim Altarpiece,
Nativity

196 FiLiPPiNO LiPPi Madonna and Child with St Dominic and St Jerome

In Filippino's

work

there

is

even more nervousness and agitation;

all

every drapery
there
is less

flutters

wildly and

the figures float or posture, yet

genuine emotion expressed and

many of his works have

classical bric-a-brac.

too great a display of his passion for modish

This

is

not true of

his masterpiece, the Vision of St Bernard (i486)

which is contemporary with the calm (but rather insipid) version of the same subject by Perugino. Filippino's picture has a grace and tenderness that his work only occasionally achieves, as in the Madonna and Child with St Dominic and St Jerome [plate 196). The frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel in Florence, on the other hand, show his desire to obtain emotional excitement and, at the same time, to display his knowledge of antique objects [plate 197).
(plate 202),

222

These pictures were painted

difficult to see

at the

end of the century, and

turning

it is

not
the

how

the tide

was

now

away towards
whose

sobriety and reahsm of Perugino and Leonardo,

researches

were devoted
less,

to actuahty

and simphcity of grouping rather than to

the febrile emotionalism of the Quattrocento Mannerists. Neverthethere

is is

an excitement to be derived from Filippino and Botticelh

art

that

never provided by the staid Perugino. The

of Piero

di

Cosimo provides a wistful half-way house. He was, according to Vasari, a wayward and extravagant character, living on hard-boiled
eggs cooked
fifty at a

time along with

his glue.

His greatest contem-

porary fame rested on his designs for carnival processions, especially

those for one gruesome

Triumph of Death

in 151

1.

His Lapiths and

Centaurs [plate 2iy) shows the sympathy with nature and with the

half-human that seems to have been one of the most

of his character.
197 Filippino Lippi St Philip Casting Out
the

attractive sides

Devil

[98

Bosch

Earthly Paradise

199

(right)

Botticelli Mystic

Nc

224

'<

*>^.\l<i^'SlllUl:V.>

200 Verrocchio The Baptism of Christ

Chapter Eight

Leonardo da Vinci was regarded, even by his contemporaries, as an astonishing virtuoso, and to the men of the sixteenth century he seemed to have been the last of the primitives, or the first of the generation active around 1500 which they regarded as the culmination of the whole process of the Renaissance. Frequently Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo are taken together in these terms, but it is important to remember that Leonardo was born in 1452 and was
therefore at
as his

contemporaries.

work long before the others, who are usually thought of The only real parallel is with Bramante, who

was sUghtly older and whose friendship with Leonardo in Milan in was probably decisive for many aspects of Milanese art around i500.'Leonardo has always been famous because of the fantastic range of his genius; he was not only one of the greatest artists in an age of great artists, but he was probably the best anatomist in the world and a natural scientist almost without a peer in many branches of knowledge such as botany, geology, and even the beginnings of aeronautics. Nevertheless, his thousands of notes and drawings on these and other subjects have only been rediscovered and evaluated comparatively recently, and to many of his contemporaries Leonardo must have seemed a strange man who wasted his time on extravagant projects that never came to anything. There are barely some fifteen pictures by him, and some of these are damaged beyond repair. He began hfe as a perfectly traditional apprentice in the shop of the painter and sculptor Verrocchio, and the first account
the 1480S and 1490s

of his precocious genius

Baptism
[plate 200)

is

that he painted the left-hand angel in the

by Verrocchio, and that as a result Verrocchio swore that he would give up painting. It is certainly true that Verrocchio did concentrate on sculpture from tliis time on, and that the picture of the Baptism is clearly executed by two very different
hands, and even then not entirely finished;
it is

therefore reasonable

227

202 FiLiPPiNO LiPPi Vision

oj St Bcrtiard

203 Perugino Vision

of

St Bernard

to assume that Verrocchio decided to

employ Leonardo

as

the

principal painter in the firm.

It is

not certain

when

this

took place,

but Leonardo became a Master in the Guild of Painters in 1472 and was Hving in Verrocchio's house in 1476 when an anonymous

was made against him. The accusation was almost certainly true, and may explain some of Leonardo's characteristics such as his tendency to live as a recluse, and his proneness to abandon things half done. There is an early Annunciation {plate 201) which is usually regarded as his work, painted when still in Verrocchio's shop, and this shows, in the wings of the angel and in the drapery of the Madonna, two of the characteristics of his art. The angel's wings have been studied in detail from those of a bird and are quite different from the conventionally feathered wings which most fifteenth-century painters gave to their angels. Similarly, there is a drawing for the Madonna's draperies which has obviously been made from an actual piece of cloth. In the fifteenth century this was a revolutionary proceeding, for most painters painted the folds in garments from their imagination, but it soon became known that the young Leonardo was making careful drawings of the fall of actual folds and using the drawings to work from. The result was
accusation of homosexuality

not to send other painters to make similar

studies;

they simply

borrowed Leonardo's drawings; but in both cases it is evident that he was already demonstrating that passion for actuaHty and curiosity about the appearance of nature which was to be his principal characteristic. Not surprisingly, he soon began to use the new oil technique,
or rather to experiment with it, for many of his paintings have been much damaged by the fact that he was experimenting with new technical methods. One such case is the Madonna with the Flower Vase
[plate 205),

probably painted in the 1470s, which has a minutely

painted vase of flowers with drops of condensation represented vdth

commented on them nearly a century later. Of is a much more beautiful picture which has unfortunately been cut down; this is the portrait that almost certainly
such
skill

that Vasari

about the same date

represents Ginevra de' Benci,

and was painted probably on the occa-

sion of her marriage in 1474 [plate 206).

The

sitter's

pale face stands

out against a dark background of carefully observed juniper branches

Tginepra

an obvious reference to her name. Originally there must

230

204 Leonardo da Vinci Adoration of the Kings

have been hands, very probably those shown in the drawing in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (plate 211). As early as 1474,
therefore,

Leonardo had evolved

Lisa.

a half-length portrait that looks

forward to the Mona

The most important work of this period, however,

is

the Adoration

of the Kings [plate 204), which was commissioned in 148 1 for a

monastery just outside Florence. Leonardo left it unfmished, and no payments are recorded after 148 1, but the careful, brownish lay-in is one of the most important works painted in Florence in the last
quarter of the fifteenth century.
feet square)
is

The

picture (which is about eight

a solution to the

number of figures

problem of representing a large crowded round a central group of Madonna and

231

child, yet so arranged that the most important figures are not swamped. This he did by using a pyramidal form of composition, which creates an effective depth, but at the same time gives major linear patterns on the surface of the picture so that the spectator's eye is led to the most important parts. The Adoration is full of closely observed gestures and facial expressions, and it has a haunting, romantic quality in the shadowy press of figures around the serene central group, in the medley of old men, youths, horses, riders, which surge up from among the ghostly figures that inhabit the ruined architecture in the background. It is no exaggeration to

recognize in this picture the watershed of Renaissance

art,

for as
it

much

as

Masaccio's Pisa Madonna or Tribute

it,

Money

[plate j8)

breaks with all that had gone before

and determines the eventual

considera-

course of Florentine, and therefore of Italian, painting. Unfinished

though
tions

it

may have been, and possibly largely because no

of extraneous detail blurred the concentration on the purely formal solutions it proposed, it was an event after which the forms of
Florentine art as they had
till

then been pursued might

still

linger

on

in a Botticelli or a Ghirlandaio, but linger only as survivals

older, relegated order.

of an

232

205

ifa''

kf')

Leonardo da
the

Vinci Madonna with Flower Vase

io6

(left)

Leonardo da

Vinci Ginevra de'Benci

207 Leonardo da Vinci

Virgin of the Rocks,
Paris version

Among

Leonardo's notebooks

is

a draft

of

a letter to at

Lodovico
a military

Sforza, the

Duke of

to be able to

Milan, in which he claimed do almost everything, but principally

some length
be

to

engineer, and only at the end, almost as an afterthought, did he say

that he could act as an architect, a sculptor,
as

and
is

'in

painting

can do

much

as

anyone, whoever he

may

be'. It

not knowai whether

was ever sent, but Leonardo was certainly in Milan in 1483 when he was commissioned to paint the picture now usually known
this letter as the Virgin of the

Rocks

[plate 20 j).

This painting has long been a

233

Leonardo da Vinci

Study of Acorns

209 Leonardo da Vinci Anatomical Study

source of controversy since there are

and one in the National

Galler)^ in

one in the Louvre London. With almost any other

versions,

two

fifteenth-century painter the existence of two closely similar pictures

would not present any problem at all, but Leonardo completed so few pictures that it seems almost inconceivable that he should have painted two so nearly the same. The documents begin in 1483 and go on until 1506 and all of them seem to refer to one picture which, it is now generally agreed, can only be the London version. On the other hand, the Paris version not only is clearly by Leonardo, but is
obviously rather earlier in style and retains sufficient hkeness to the
pictures

1483.

Once more

of the Florentine period to make it convincingly datable in the basic form of the composition is pyramidal and
is

the interrelationship of the figures

such that a triangular pattern

is

formed on the picture plane, the apex of which is the head of the Madonna. Once more, the relationship of the figures to their mysterious setting has the same quahty of dream-Hke fantasy as in
234
VJ
h-

J?7-

210 Leonardo da Vinci Landscape with Storm

211

Leonardo da Vinci

Study of Hands

the Adoration, with overtones here of the purely intellectual approach

to the

problem presented by the

disposition in a convincing internal

space of four figures in the closest and most meaningful psychological

union. Leonardo's interest in botany and geology can be seen in the

curious setting in a cave as well as in the flowers which carpet the

ground.
there
is

Many
a

drawings of this period

exist for similar flowers,

and

very beautiful drawing in Turin for the head of the angel.

At the same time, he was making scores of drawings in his notebooks on a variety of other subjects [plates 20S, 2og, 210, 211), principally on architecture, human anatomy, and the anatomy of the horse. The

many drawings of horses and

riders [plate 221) are

probably con-

nected with a projected book on the anatomy of the horse, while

others were made for the monument to Lodovico Sforza's father on which he spent sixteen years, but which never got beyond the clay model of the horse. This was destroyed early in the sixteenth century and the figure of Sforza himself was never even begun.

235

212 Giovanni Bellini A^ony

in the

Garden

213

Mantegna Agony

in the

Garden

-a/'

um

p^

m
<

Bh^^^*^^^

^"

b^r^^
"^''"-Jjjtlf*

.^^^H
.^^BS;

^ k^
PI^H
IHI'v

^1
.

^^^K

'
'

1
1 1

MJrtirMrAJMtJiB&t^'

'

Ol
:'''*^''-;^y?f'?a-

g-^^j:

t:

V Hm

214 Giovanni Bellini Madonna and Child

period is, of course, the Last Supper of the monastery of Sta Maria delle Grazie one of the most famous pictures in the world, though now hardly more than a noble ruin. Leonardo is known to have been working
other great
[plate 21 s) in the refectory

The

work of this

more than any High Renaissance. It is probably no coincidence that the monastery church was being completed at this very moment by Bramante in a style which was to evolve within a few years into the classical architecture of the High Renaissance. What is so important in the Last Supper is the way in which Leonardo went far beyond his predecessors in the attempt to render the uiner drama of the precise moment at which Christ announced that one of His disciples would betray Him. If one looks
on
it

in 1497,

and

it is

the picture, which, perhaps

first

other, can be said to

be the

painting of the

at

an earher example, such

as

Castagno's

[plate 83),
is

or even an almost

contemporary one such

as Ghirlandaio's, it

clear that the artist has

simply disposed the Apostles on either side of the central figure,

eleven of them with pious expressions and the twelfth, Judas, clearly
singled out
all

by the fact that he is on

first

the opposite side of the table

from

the others, and has a different expression. In Leonardo's picture

is,

there

for the

time, a grouping of the Apostles not merely

symmetrically, but in small groups of three contrasted types that balance each other as they turn questioningly one to the other, and
yet interlock through the whole composition as the meaning of
Christ's words
is

and the emotions they evoke run through them. Judas

singled out not

by being made
at his

villainous-looking biit

by
his

the

way

that he starts

back

own
all

guilty

knowledge, and has

is

head so

placed that, alone

among

the figures, his face

in shadow.

There
to

is

a story, probably apocryphal, that the Prior, in a vain

effort to spur

Leonardo on

to further effort,

complained that he used

come in the morning,

stand looking at the picture for half an hour,

put on a dozen brush-strokes and go away for the day. Leonardo

explained that he was having great difficulty in visuahzing the face of anyone as wicked as Judas, but suggested that if there was really a great hurry he would put in the Prior's portrait. The offer was presumably not accepted; but the idea of the artist as a meditative philosopher and not simply as a highly skilled workman who covered so many square feet of wall each day must have seemed

238

AiUAa2MU/lXT7A'' >77;a' fV .'g:_g^^'^'7TT7TgTLpT-JM[jSJL^

i- ;

ttt "

^.

215

Leonardo DA Vinci

Last Supper

very strange to the Prior, and indeed to most of his contemporaries.

The

sixteenth-century conception of the artist as a creative genius, hke the poet and unlike ordinary craftsmen, can certainly be traced back to Leonardo.

At
south,

the end of 1499 the French invaded Milan and the Sforza

fell. Both Bramante and Leonardo left the city and went Bramante to Rome where he was to evolve those architectural forms that in their lucidity and harmony are the very essence of the High Renaissance, and to preside over the birth of the designs for the new St Peter's; and Leonardo through Mantua and Venice to Florence, where he arrived in 1500, and where, with longish intervals away, he was to spend the next six years. During his second Florentine period his position was markedly different from what it had been before he went to Milan. He had gone as a promising young man; he returned preceded by the fame of his Last Supper. Much of his time and energy he spent in continuing the studies in anatomy that had occupied him in Milan, where he had begun a book on it; it was he who invented the system of so representing a muscle that its function was clear, while eUminating its bulk which only obscured what lay

dynasty

239

2i6 SiGNORELLi Last Judgment, 217

detail.

The Damned

PiERO Di CosiMO Lapiths and Centaurs

':>

p^l^

r-"-^

underneath
point

it.

It is

also clear that

Leonardo's anatomical drawings

were made from

actual dissection

on

bodies,

from

nothing

medical stand-

else

would

within the

womb and

explain the pathetic drawing of a foetus

not merely from the observed surface for

his painting. He put the lessons to good though, for in 1503 he was commissioned by the Signoria in Florence to paint on one of the walls of the Great Council Chamber

experiment and assistance in

use,

a picture

of the Florentine victory of the Battle of Anghiari,

battle itself but

as a

pendant to Michelangelo's

Battle of Cascina. Michelangelo's choice

of subject was not the

preparing to fight:
it

and

virility.

battle itself;

of the warriors was a hymn to the perfection of male beauty Leonardo chose to represent the white heat of the a furious medley of men and horses in a struggling
studies

nude

mass, the horses fighting as ferociously as the men, in an attempt to

render what he himself called the bestial madness of war. But he also

chose to use a novel technique

he

had neither knowledge nor

experience of fresco painting, as had been proved in Milan

and the

wax medium
for
it

that he used

proved not only

useless

but destructive,
all

melted and ran. In 1505 work stopped, and

a

that survived

were from

these

few drawings. All that is known of the painting is derived and from some free copies made before its eventual

disintegration.

The

other works of this period are the cartoons for the Madonna

and Child with St Anne, and the

Virgin of the Rocks:, adults

Mona
in

Lisa.

The

cartoons are a
faced in the

continuation and an extension oi the problem he

first

a group of and two children, closely knit physically and psychologically. The earHest of them is probably the one in London [plate 218), executed most hkely towards the end of his stay in Milan. The Virgin is seated on one of St Anne's knees, holding the Child, who leans across them both; the heads of the two women are at the same level, their faces turned inwards, and both with the tender,

how

to

compose

pyramidal form

two

mysterious half-smile which gives

expression.

movement and
at the base,

vivacity to the

But the group

is

fairly

wide

and the pyramid

rather vdder than deep,; the Httle St

group.

The Louvre
is

picture

is

John is not fully knit into the an unfinished painted panel (the

London one

drawing on paper), for which no preparatory

241

cartoon stage
lap, leans

is

known to

exist.

Here the Virgin, seated on

St

Anne's

forward to

restrain the Child,

who

attempts to bestride the

lamb; the two

women are impacted one into the other, and St Anne's

at

tender glance is directed downwards at her daughter, while the Virgin

and Child look

each other, so that there

is

an almost Giottesque use

of the meaningful look, imposed upon a formal structure reminiscent of Masaccio's similar composition. The little St John has been replaced by the lamb, and the meaning is extended by the significance of the Child clasping the symbol of His Passion. Mona Lisa was not a famous beauty, nor a grand person, but merely the wife of a Florentine official. Leonardo had painted several portraits in Milan Ludovico's mistress, and a musician, and there are probably two others that owe much to him, even if he did not entirely execute them himself. He had also been compelled to begin one of Isabella d'Este when he was in Mantua after his flight from Milan. There is a close connexion between the Mona Lisa [plate 2ig) and the features he used for the Virgin and St Anne in the cartoons, even in the one which he is beHeved to have started in Milan, so that her gentle and secretive face seems to have been as

much
lids

in his mind's eye as a real physical presence. Vasari elaborates

eyes,

upon her tender colouring, on her moist

and mouth and
us.

and

delicately tinted
flesh that

nostrils:

not a hint of this natural

he so

admired survives
looks out at

in the

subaqueous gloom through which she

now

She develops the type of the early Ginevra, and with

her folded hands lying on the

arm of her

chair creates the classic half-

length pose that continues to echo

down the centuries from Raphael to Rembrandt, and has become so much a commonplace that it is difficult to reahze on looking at her that it was once new and fresh. The parapet of the window against which she sits looks out on to a
vast

and shadowy landscape,

as fantastic as the

cave that shelters the

of alpine scenery in storms and floods. The execution is in an oil-technique of infinite deUcacy and softness; the tones of the modelling are as if breathed rather than painted on to the panel, and only the major forms
Virgin of the Rocks, as imaginative as his views

survive

her flickering half-smile, her long nose, her eyes

as

heavily

Hdded below as above and eyebrowless so that the smooth expanse of her forehead has no interruptions. How much real woman, how
242

Leonardo DA Vinci Madonna and

with St Anne, London version

Child

219 Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa

much

tutelary

Muse, will always remain an enigma, and perhaps

is

intentionally, since she

the

embodiment of an

idea as

much

as

an

essay in portraiture.

Leonardo spent nearly the whole of 1502 away from Florence,

serving as military engineer to the ruffianly Cesare Borgia in his

campaign of terrorism; in 1506 he came to terms with the French invaders and returned to Milan. He was appointed Painter to Francis I of France in 1507, and began, in his usual dilatory way, to
design an equestrian

monument

to the city's governor, Trivulzio.

He

resumed his anatomical drawings, and filled books with his study of muscles and embryology. When French control of Milan ended in 15 12, he turned towards the new centre of patronage in Rome, and in 1 5 1 3 he went there at the instance of Giulio de' Medici, the Pope's cousin, and was lodged in the Vatican. Nothing came of the four years he stayed there but increasing frustrations bom of his unproductiveness, and this at a moment when Raphael and Michelangelo were executing their greatest works. In 15 17, with perhaps
also

243

220 LuiNi Madonna and Child

something of desperation, he went to France, accepting the

Francis
I,

offers

of

who was

seeking to build up a team of Itahan

artists

for

prestige purposes.

But he was an old man by

it

now

with only two

more

years to Hve, and

seems not unreasonable to suggest that he

was tired, disillusioned, and overburdened, not only by the weight of his immense and almost unusable knowledge, but also by consciousness of the little he had to show for it all, and by the way in which in the end his fame had left him isolated while the victories lay with younger men who had learned from him, but who now divided Rome between them, and whose brilhant language of synthesis and generaHzation was entirely alien to his patient questioning of each individual form and his refusal to elaborate general theories. All that he had left behind in Milan was the wreck of the promising school existing at the end of the fifteenth century. Bramante's Roman works were few, though influential; it was in Milan that the stimulation and excitement of the creation of a new style had existed. Vincenzo Foppa (1427/30-1515/16) was the leading painter in Milan until the advent of Leonardo; he had the same background as
244

Mantcgna, with
leaned

Paduan and Squarcioncsquc

training,

and had
in

somewhat towards Giovanni Belhni

Italy at that time?

but

who did not,

with

North
of

his quiet provincial talent

its

hints

Florentine perspective, rather generalized forms, and tender liandling

were quickly submerged. Bramantino, who died in 1530, worked chiefly in Milan, where he became Painter to Francesco Sforza II in
1525. His

name would

suggest that he was a follower of Bramante,

is

but whether in painting or in architecture

uncertain; the sketch-

book of ruins of Rome, often attributed to him, is, however, fairly certainly by him. His art was a strange one, almost Poussincsque in
its

The

arrangement of volumes and in the austerity of its composition. influence of Leonardo was almost entirely disruptive. His fasci-

nating chiaroscuro, the soft modelling of his forms, his infinitely

was imitated fervently and indiscriminately, his tender mysterious smiles became a standard grimace with his followers. Only Bernardino Luini {c. 1481/2-1532), who began well within the fold of Bramantino and Foppa, and was dragged into the orbit of Leonardo, not by personal contact but by the mesmeric
delicate,
finish,

smoky

of his works, survives the dangerous influence, but at the cost of his lightness and gaiety of colour, which took on the gloom of
effect

Leonardo's overworked surface, and the independence of his vision,

which becomes a pale reflection of Leonardo's compound of naturalism and tenderly ideahzed and reticent smiles {plate 220).

221

Leonardo da
Vinci Study of a | Horseman

222 GiORGiONE CasteJfranco Madonna

Chapter Nine

Two of the followers of Piero della

of the
diversity

Francesca afford a

good example
have very

of

style

of the

last

years of the fifteenth century.

at first sight, to

Neither Signorelli nor Perugino seem,

much in common with Piero, or indeed with each other; but both men were born about the middle of the century and were perhaps
working under Piero
a

in the 1460s.

Subsequently Signorelli developed

at times,

powerful linear

style, rather

melodramatic

which

in

its

obsession with outline and with the dramatic possibilities of the male

nude obviously looks forward to the work of Michelangelo. Perugino, on the other hand, was the master of Raphael and the initiator of a phase, sometimes called Early Classicism, which was the herald of the High Renaissance style of the years around 15 10. Signorelli was born at some date in the 1440s at Gorton a and is known to have been active as a painter by 1470. A few fragments dating from 1474 seem to confirm the influence of Piero della Francesca, but very soon after this he must have gone to Florence, where he at once came completely under the spell of the ideas of movement and anatomy which were being worked out in conjunction with expressive outline by Antonio Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio. He appears to have received a commission for one of the Vatican frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in the early 1480s, and from then until his death in 1523 his style hardly changed, though his later works, from about 1505 onwards, have a harshness of colour and a repetitive dullness consistent with his having maintained, in the last years of his life, a provincial workshop which did not attempt to rival the works
of Michelangelo and Raphael that he had seen when he visited Rome about 1508 and in 15 13. The climax of his whole career, the most typical example of his art and one of the characteristic works of the
Late Quattrocento,
is

the fresco cycle

which he painted

in the

Cathedral

at

Orvieto between 1499 and 1503. The whole chapel

247

of four large frescoes on the walls, smaller frescoes of the window over the altar, and a further series on the vaulting and round the entrance arch. More than fifty years earHer Fra Angelico had begun a Last Judgment on the ceiling immeconsists
series

of a

on

either side

theme of the fresco cycle was more into an enormous and pessimistic representation of the End of the World, and there can be no doubt that this choice must have seemed very relevant to the people commissioning the cycle. During the 1490s the political state of Central Italy had been more than usually upset, and Florence, in particular, had passed through the extraordinary episode following the death of Lorenzo de' Medici and the expulsion from the city of his heirs. The apocalyptic preaching of Savonarola had set the whole city by the ears and brought it to the brink of civil war. Savonarola had provoked the Pope to such an extent that he had brought down excommunication on himself, and he was eventually judicially murdered in circumstances of the greatest complexity from which the facts that emerge most clearly are the vengeful barbarity of his accusers and that he brought a great deal of his fate on himself in a dehberate search for martyrdom. Fie had endeavoured to impose a theocratic rule on Florence which was by no means to the taste of all the Florentines. His sermons apparently struck terror into everyone, although to read them nowadays they seem turgid revivahsm. In particular Savonarola was continually threatening the vengeance of God in general terms, and an invasion by the French as part of that vengeance. In 1494 the first of the French invasions took place, and to the surprise of everyone the French army swept through Italy, easily routing the professional mercenary soldiers of the Itahan states who were not accustomed to fighting battles in which people were killed. So rapid was the Frenchadvance that they found themselves at Naples almost before they knew what had happened, and, having outrun their supply lines, they were forced to fight their way back again. The reputation of the Italian commanders as great professional soldiers was irretrievably shattered, and it became clear that a modern centraHzed state such as France had become could dominate a loose federation of ItaHan states, none of which could ever be trusted to keep faith with its
diately

above the

altar so that the

or

less fixed.

SignorelH turned

it

248

temporary
the

allies.

In 1499 the French returned

this

Duchy of Milan,

being the occasion

and took possession of when both Leonardo

and Bramante left the city. Half of the sixteenth century was spent in a warfare between France and Spain, fought out in Italy for the
possession of the peninsula.
state like

The economic and

at least

political

power of a

Florence was broken for ever, although the Italians retained

another century. In 1494 and again in 1499 the French armies by-passed Orvieto on their way to
their cultural

supremacy for

Rome,
affected

so that the town, isolated

on

its

hill-top,

by

the fighting.

The two

salvations

was not seriously of the city were the

and
that Signorclli

direct cause

of the completion of the fresco

cycle,

chose to illustrate terrors which, according to Revelations arc to

accompany

the arrival of Antichrist and the

highly significant.

The

arch over the entrance shows a

End of the World was number of

on mountain-tops, the which appear in various apocryphal legends as the warnings in the last ages of the world. As one enters the chapel proper, on the left and right walls are two large scenes of the spurious miracles worked by Antichrist and the crowds who are seduced by him before he is fmally put down by the archangels. The right-hand wall has the next stage, the Resurrection of the Flesh, with bodies and skeletons crawling out of the ground and with various scenes of families reunited. The next two scenes on either side of the altar and immediately below Fra AngeHco's figure of Christ in Judgment are the traditional representation of the Blessed and the Damned. It is in the scenes of the Damned that SignorelH's imagination is most fully revealed and both the Devils and the Damned are drav^oi with hard Florentine outlines and with a vigour which is entirely different from earher representations of the same subject {plate 21 6). Instead of fantasy creatures, half man, half beast, or insect, his devils are entirely human, and they torture their unhappy, writhing victims with the passionate enjoyment that only humans bring to such a task; their horrible humanity is increased by their colour, for their bodies and faces shade through every gradation of the greys and purples and greens of decomposing flesh. SignorelH's normally strident and harsh colour sense has here an appropriateness markedly
scenes, the earthquakes, the ships stranded

echpse, and the rain of blood

lacking in his

more

pacific subjects.

The

Resurrection scene provides

249

between the empirical of the fifteenth century and Leonardo's really profound studies in the subject, for the bodies of the risen dead display bone formations of purely fanciful character and quite imaginary musculature, yet Signorelli has always been credited with a more than normal interest in anatomy, and even Vasari speaks of his showing 'the true method
a fascinating

commentary on

the difference

anatomy

that so obsessed Florentine artists in the third quarter

of making nudes'. Yet he anticipates Michelangelo's work in the Sistinc Chapel, both in the ceiling and, even more, in the Last Judgment; but the difference between them is not simply that Michelangelo had a deeper imaginaand a greater technical mastery. Signorelli's figures, in fact, sum up all the advances in knowledge that had been made from Masaccio onwards and they have the same forcefulness and clarity, taken as individual figures, that inform those of Castagno or Donatello. The great weakness of Signorelli's work, like that of Botticelli or Filippino, is that all the parts compete against one another so that the fresco as a whole becomes filled with a multiplicity of gesticulating figures and it is impossible to determine amid the uproar which are the important figures and which the subordinate ones. Precisely this feeling for lucidity and for simplification in the narrative was the contribution made by Perugino, and he untion

from Piero dclla Francesca during the very years when Signorelli was also studying under him. Perugino was born near Perugia, at about the same time as Signorelli, and died in the same year, 1523. Like Signorelli, his best work was done between 1495 and 1500 and, indeed, he retired to Perugia about 1506 when it became evident that his style was so old-fashioned that there was little chance of further employment, either in Florence or in Rome. Again, like Signorelli, Perugino must have gone to Florence very
doubtedly learnt
it

soon

after leaving Piero's shop, since

he

is

recorded in the Florentine

Guild in 1472.
in the Sistine

He was commissioned in
Chapel

148 1 to paint the key frescoes

was the most important commission of the late fifteenth century, for it involved a complete cycle of frescoes on a most ambitious scale and scheme, and on it were employed all the major painters of the day, most of them
in the Vatican. This

Florentines, but also including Perugino, Pinturicchio,

and Signorelli.

250

223 Perugino The Charge

It is a

to

Peter

the state of the arts in Rome that for so grand a was necessary to rely entirely on artists temporarily brought in for the purpose, and a signal contrast with what obtained thirty years later, when the artists admittedly also imported came to establish Rome as the central focus in the arts, and to found a specifically Roman and papal tradition of patronage. Perugino who

comment on

work

it

seems to have been Sixtus IV's favourite painter

executed the pair

to

of histories on the altar wall flanking an altarpiece of the Assumption, which he also painted (and which were all destroyed to make way
for Michelangelo's Last Judgment), and The Charge
Peter [plate 22j)

This fresco stands out from

clarity

all

the others in the chapel in the extreme

of

its

composition and also in the

way

in

which

the archi-

tectural elements are

made

to play an

important part in the composi-

whole and are not merely decorative adjuncts. The church in the background is not merely symbolical; it is the centre of the composition. The picture is so organized that the concentration of the spectator is fixed on the single event; the perspective of the paving, the alternation of light and dark masses, the placing of
tion as a

251


subsidiary figures and groups, and the triumphal arches in the back-

ground,

all

contribute not to a diffusion of interest but to

its

focusing

on

the central point.

The same

quahties of calm and order can be

seen in his Vision of St Bernard [plate 20j), which, as an object lesson should be compared with the same subject by Filippino {plate 202),

and in the superb fresco of the

an event to be represented
tion, a

Crucifixion

which

is

treated not as

realistically,

but

as a subject

of contempla-

mystery to be pondered in the

stillness

of a placid landscape.

In both cases, however, and much more obviously in some of his Madonnas, there is a certain emptiness and, above all, a vacuously pious expression on the faces which can become positively irritating. This is the price that had to be paid for the restoration of order into
late fifteenth-century Florentine painting.

The

fresco cycle painted

in the Sala del

Cambio

at

Perugia between about 1496 and 1500

exactly contemporary with Signorelli's frescoes at Orvieto

has most

of Perugino's virtues as well as his shortcomings; it is also a vitally important work in the history of art, since it is almost certain that it

was here
ence

that the seventeen-year-old

Raphael gained

his first experi-

as a fresco painter

on

a large scale. If occasionally Perugino's

heads strike one

as foolish,

or the composition as thin,

it

should

be remembered that he was going against the current. Without

Perugino's use of decoration
factor,
as

an adjunct rather than

setting to

as a principal

of simple bulky

silhouettes to estabhsh an ordered calm,

of

architecture as an ideal
tions

and rational
figures, the

enhance the propor-

and balance of his

Vatican Stanze would never have

quite another

received the kind of decoration they did, for the cast of Raphael's

mind would have probably taken

training been

mould had

his

wholly Florentine, instead of being channelled first in the direction of Perugino's ideahzed and reticent forms. If Raphael learnt fresco painting in the studio of Perugino, Michelangelo was taught the rudiments of fresco technique in the

workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio. Ghirlandaio was born

in 1449

and died in 1494, but in the course of this comparatively short life he painted a number of large frescoes in various Florentine churches
as well as

one

in the Sistine

Chapel
of,

in the Vatican.

not

now

very highly thought

but his

As an artist he is works are invaluable

documents for the

252

social historian,

and

his skill as a fresco painter,

224 Ghirlandaio

Visitation

which was very

possible

considerable,

meant

that Michelangelo

grounding in that

difficult craft.

had the best Ghirlandaio was commisApostles in 1481/82

sioned to paint the fresco the Calling

in the Sistine

of the First

Chapel but the nominal subject occupies

of the fresco
in
field,

tively small part

a series

of splendid full-length

a comparamost of which is given up to portraits of prominent members of

It

the Florentine

community

Rome.

has been suggested, very

probably correctly, that the reason for

this

was

that

Pope

Sixtus IV,

who had
gesture,

been implicated in 1478 in the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici rulers of Florence, wished to make sortie sort of concihatory

of the main Florentine famihes was of ohve branch if not amende honorable. In any case, nearly all Ghirlandaio's frescoes consist of a nominally religious subject with portraits of the donor and his family and friends. The most famous examples of this are to be found in the chapel of the Sassetti family in Sta Trinita in Florence, and the even and
this representation

to be interpreted as a sort

larger fresco cycle in the choir

St)4istically Ghirlandaio's art

of Sta Maria Novella {plate 224). was sober and somewhat old-fashioned,
253

but his essentially prosaic mind made him open to influence from
Flanders and
left

him comparatively untouched by

the emotional

enthusiasms which stimulated a painter like BotticelH.

The

altarpiece
[plate

of the
22^),
it is

Sassetti

Chapel, the Adoration of the Shepherds, of 1485

as a

good example of Ghirlandaio's work

of the shepherds

tempera painter;

also shows, in the figures

at the right, clear traces

of Flemish naturalism and, in particular, the influence of the enormous triptych by Hugo van der Goes which had arrived in Florence
about 1475, which was a miracle of virtuosity and an example of the technique of oil-painting which many Florentine painters sought
vainly to emulate. In Ghirlandaio's Adoration, the shepherds are

borrowed from Flemish naturalism, and even rather literally from Hugo's great altarpiece, and the naked Child lying on the ground also echoes the Northern type of Nativity which had, much earher,
influenced Fra Filippo's late Nativities.

The

classical

sarcophagus,

which serves as a cot for the Child, has an imaginary classical inscription which runs: ense cadens solymo pompei fulvi(us) augur NUMEN AIT QUAE ME conteg(it) urna dabit (I, Fulvius the Augur of Pompeius, slain by the sword near Jerusalem, prophesy that the Godhead will use this sarcophagus in which I lie). This, and the
triumphal arch in the background, like the
classical reliefs in the Sta

Maria Novella

frescoes,

show

that Ghirlandaio, like

most of

his

contemporaries, was obsessed with the idea of the antique world

and imitated
inscription

it,

superficially at

any

rate,

with some exactness. The

and the
itself

lettering

on

the sarcophagus and the shape of the

classical and they provide a good example of the way in which in the late fifteenth century the Christian world was thought of as growing naturally out of pagan

sarcophagus

could easily be

antiquity.

Ghirlandaio never attempted oil-painting, although he was clearly

fascinated

by

the possibility of elaborate detail

which

it

afforded.

One of the few

a degree

Itahan painters of the fifteenth century

who

achieved

selves

of skill in oil-painting comparable with the Flemings themwas the rather strange figure of Antonello da Messina.

Antonello was the only major painter in the whole of the fifteenth
century
Venice.

who was born south of Rome, yet he had great influence in He was born in Sicily about 1430 and died there in 1479. It

254

15

Ghirlandaio Adoration of the Shepherds

used to be thought that the minute

trained in Flanders and he

St Jerome in his Study [Frontispiece], implied that he

is

of his oil-paintings, such as the must have been sometimes even referred to as a pupil o
skill

Jan van Eyck. This view is no longer tenable, since Antonello could have seen Flemish paintings in Naples, and in any case his own style is based on that of Jan van Eyck who died in 1441. Had Antonello^ gone to Flanders as a young man about 1450 he would certainly have been influenced by Roger van der Weyden rather than by Jan van
Eyck, whose influence faded almost immediately
after his death.

The

first dated work by Antonello is the Salvator Mundi of 1465, also in London. This has a complete mastery of the oil-technique, together with a largeness of design reminiscent of the mosaics in Sicihan churches. Many of Antonello's works seem to have been destroyed in various earthquakes, so that his reputation must now, for lack of

255

226 Antonello da Messina

S. Cassiano Altarpiece, fragment

early works, be taken

on

trust,

but his fame must have spread since

he went to Venice in 1475, and there, in 1475/76, he painted a large altarpiece for the church of S. Cassiano [plate 226). This altarpiece is

now known
have made
picture.
It

only from fragments in Vienna, and from copies which

it possible to reconstruct the original appearance of the must have been one of the three great altarpieces all of which date from the mid 1470s, and all of which developed the new idea of continuing the actual space of the chapel within the picture

in such a

way

that the figures appear to be in an imaginary space

world of the spectator but which is at the same time an extension of that world. These altarpieces are all of the Sacra Conversazione type; that is to say, they represent the Madonna and
the real

beyond

Child enthroned and surrounded by

saints so that all the figures

appear to have some emotional relationship. This idea was not

new
Fra

it

occurs before the middle of the century in the

work of

Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, and

Domenico Veneziano

but the new

form meant
256

still

more

intimate connexion with the spectator. This

type can also be seen in the

S.

work of Mantcgna,

for

example

in the

Zeno

Altarpiece [plate no) of 1459, but the three altarpicces of

all

the middle 'seventies

share the characteristic of the continuation

of the space of the actual chapel into the picture space. The others were the Brera Altarpiece {plate 106) by Piero della Francesca, and one by Giovanni Bellini for a church in Venice, now known only from two bad copies. Only the fragmentary S. Cassiano Altarpiece can be
dated, so that
it is

not really possible to determine the interaction

between
this

these three great works. In 1476,

however, having produced

skill as a

masterpiece and astounded the Venetians by his

oil,

portrait

painter in

Antonello returned to

his native Sicily,

where he died

three years later,

Venetian painting of the

late fifteenth

century derives very largely

between the work of Mantegna and that of Antonello result of the upbringing and interests of Giovanni Bellini, who is far the most important and also the most typical Venetian painter of the last years of the fifteenth century. Giovanni Bellini was the younger son ofJacopo Bellini, who had an

from

a fusion

da Messina. This fusion was the

estabhshed workshop in Venice up to his death in 1470/71. Jacopo

Bellini,

who was born about 1400, was a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano,

227 Jacopo Bellini

Madonna and Child

whom he accompanied to Florence where, in

1423, he appears in the

pohce records. It seems that some unruly Florentine children threw stones at some paintings by Gentile which had been put out into the workshop yard to dry in the sun, and Jacopo, zealous in his master's interests, beat them so hard that their parents brought him before the magistrate. Jacopo Bellini was brought up to practise the International Gothic style,
[plate

and

this

can be seen in his few surviving paintings

22j\ but is clearest in the two sketch-books, one in the British Museum and one in the Louvre, which he left to his son Gentile and

which have come down to us. They contain hundreds of drawings, rather Uke those by Pisanello, but with an even more marked tendency towards highly elaborate perspective
castles

settings of fairy-tale and semi-imaginary classical monuments which have a nominal religious subject somewhere in the background. The sketch-books also contain ideas [plates 228, 229) which his sons later developed on a grander scale, notably the Pieta type of Entombment of Christ which seems to develop ultimately from Donatello, but, since the individual drawings in the sketch-books cannot be dated with any certainty, may well in this form have been one of Jacopo's major contributions. Jacopo's elder son, born probably about 1429, was presumably named after Gentile da Fabriano. He died in 1507, having worked for much of his life in the family workshop. His

258

228

(^Icft)

Jacopo Bellini

Drawitii^ of Christ hcforc Pilate

229

{ri}iht)

Jacopo Bellini
of the

Drawing

Entombment

iL^

fame as a portrait painter was such that in 1478 he was chosen by the Venetian Government to go to Constantinople in answer to a request

from

the Sultan for an artist skilled in portrait painting.

He is known

most of his time on a series of large paintings representing scenes from Venetian history, or the processions and ceremonies of the great Venetian charitable foundations. Most of these have been destroyed, but the survivors, including the St Mark preaching at Alexandria which was completed after his death by his brother
to have spent
2^0 Gentile Bellini Procession
in

Piazza

di

San Marco

Giovanni,

show
is

that these large works,

Hke those

still

in Venice,

one

of which

dated 1496, were a combination of very large portrait Venetians for

groups, together with views of Venice itself which, in their topographical accuracy, reflect the passionate love of
their city [plate 230)
all

two and

a half centuries later

and which look forward to the views painted by Canaletto and Guardi.

Gentile's brother, Giovanni, died in 15 16 at a very great age.

He

was born about 1430,

but, like Gentile, he probably

worked
sister

in the

family business until the death of their father. Their

exerted very great influence on both the brothers, as
a direct

Nicolosia

married Mantegna in 1454 and the austere forms of Paduan classicism may be seen by

comparison between the two pictures of the Agony

[plate 213)

in the

and Giovanni BelHni [plate 212) which hang in the National Gallery, London. Even here, however, there is a feeling for light and colour, a softening down of the asperities of form, the birth even of the landscape of mood, which show that Giovanni was already developing away from Mantegna towards the sensuous and colouristic style which we associate with Venice and which was, in fact, created by him and handed down to the great painters of the sixteenth century, Giorgione, Titian, and Sebastiano del Piombo were all his pupils, and even those artists who were not trained in his shop were profoundly influenced by him, so pervasive was his style, so inventive and versatile his imagination. The history paintings done in the Doge's Palace works which

Garden by Mantegna

estabHshed
his official

him
rank

in the premier position in Venice, since

it

gave him

were destroyed in the

fires that

burnt the decora-

by Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello, so that nothing at all is known of this type of state art, dedicated to the glory of the Republic and its elected rulers. Some of his official portraits of the Doges survive, such as that of Doge Loredano [plate 231), of about 1502, and there are a few other portraits besides those in the state altarpiece commissions, like the one of Fugger, the Augsburg banker, and the dehcate Man in the Royal Collection. These show Giovanni to have been interested in the Flemish type of three-quarter view against a landscape background, rather of the Memlinc type. The kind of picture for which he is most celebrated is, however, the Madonna and Child group, either as a small devotional work [plate 214) or in
tion

260

231 Giovanni Bellini

The Doge

Loredaiio

whole series of the very grand altarpieces which mark the development ofthe new forms of Sacra Conversazione. The mediumsized Madonnas were obviously immensely popular among private patrons, and the quality of them varies very much, from ones executed entirely by his own hand to much coarser studio repetitions of his designs, though this would make no difference to the signature, so that 'op. ioh. bell.' is more of a trade-mark than an indication of personal responsibihty and thus it would have been understood at
the

the time.

Many of the painters who formed his principal competitors, but who had been trained in his shop, also produced large numbers of
these half-length

Madonnas with

a full-length Child, often standing

on

a parapet

and with

a landscape

tinues long after his death. Catena for example,

background, and the type conand Basaiti, Cima,

Montagna, and his chief competitors from the Vivarini workshop and circle, produced works clearly influenced by him and derived from his types, so that the term 'Madonnieri' has come to refer to a particular kind of Venetian workshop painter speciaHzing in this
261

232 Giovanni Bellini S. Giobbe Altarpiece

233 Giovanni Bellini S. Zaccaria Altarpiece

much

sought-after kind of devotional picture. His large Sacra

Conversazione altarpieces also had similarly powerful repercussions

in Venice

and throughout northern Italy. The first, probably, of was one in SS. Giovanni e Paolo which was burnt in 1867 and which is known only from copies. The immediately striking points about it are the device of suggesting the continuation of the spectator's space within the picture, the use of an open background of sky, the raising of the Madonna's throne well above the level of the surrounding saints, and the insertion of the charming child angel singers below the throne. It will never be possible to solve the problem whether this picture or Antonello's S. Cassiano Altarpiece []plate 226) was painted first, nor whether both were preceded by Piero's Brera Altarpiece [plate 106), and it has been advanced admittedly on the evidence of the copies that 1480/85 is a possible date for it. The next great example in the series is the S. Giobbe Altarpiece [plate 232), which it is quite reasonable to date about 1480/85, by comparison with other works of the same period. The
these

262

234 Giovanni Bellini Fran Altarpiccc

same

features

of the very high throne, the continuous

is

space, the

angel musicians, are present, but here the setting

the rather strong hght
falls

an interior and

the apse, and to bathe the

from the right, to cast long shadows on nude bodies of S. Giobbe (Job) and St Sebastian (both plague saints) in calm radiance. The Frari Madonna {plate 234) of 1488 differs from the S. Giobbe Altarpiece and the later
Zaccaria one in that
it is

S.

considerably smaller

the figures are half

for the

Hfe-size. It takes
pilasters

up the

S.

Zeno

Altarpiece

by Mantegna,

of the frame are incorporated in the design of the interior

rooms. The

in, so to speak, different

from the Madonna and Child by being final form is the S. Zaccaria Altarpiece of 1505 [plate 253), which sums up all Bellini's experiments
space and the saints isolated

in the type.

instead

The space is continuous with the spectator's world, but of the low viewpoint at the base of the picture in the

S. Giobbe

and well below the Madonna's

feet in the Frari

the viewis

point

is

now

placed well up the picture so that there

a deep

expanse of paved floor before the single musician angel

at the base

263

of the throne marks the back of the very sHght arc on which the figures are aHgned. The deep apsed niche containing the throne is set
in the open, for

on

trees, so that this is a

and the picture of Doge Barbarigo in Murano Cathedral. The four

S. Giobbe

of it can be seen the cloudy sky and compromise between the interior type of the Madonna enthroned in an open loggia in the votive
either side
saints

echo one another in pose

the two men on the outside facing into

two women
sits

the spectator's world, the

in profile facing the throne,

and yet

all

four have the distant unseeing expressions of complete

abstraction.

The Madonna

and

waits, the Child, as thoughtful as

His Mother, stands hesitating over a tiny gesture, and even the angelmusician
faint
listens,

not to the music that he

is

making, but to the

perfect stillness

last

note that has died away.

The

cool, pearly light shps gently over

is

the forms, bathing

reflection.

them in

a quiet radiance; all

This

is

an old man's picture, the

fruit

of

a Hfetime

and of

patient study
that lack

and consideration, but with that unhurried quahty, of urgency, which is the sign of perfection in both understanding and communication. It is also, in a sense, the swan-song of the form. The Madonna here is still the human mother with a child
be more than human, but
is

whom we know to
Humanist

who is not made so by

embodiment of
the

any outward circumstance. This

instead of its separation,

the perfect

attitude to things Divine; the accessibiHty

its

inviolabiHty.

The

step

of the Divine towards this form

of thought
the
S.

is

impHcit in the change from Piero's Madonna, seated

the saints around her, to the higher throne and

among but not above

more

exalted presence of the S. Giobbe, or, for that matter, the

Cassiano Altarpiece. Later, from about the 1480s onwards, this

trend was quickened, until after the turn of the century, and in such

Bartolommeo, the Virgin is represented in Glory and humanity is entirely replaced by the effulgent majesty of a celestial vision. Raphael's Madonna di Foligno of 15 12 conforms to this type, which becomes the norm. The Madonna then acquires many and varied attributes of a non-human kind: she becomes the Queen of Heaven, or develops less exalted though equally separating quaHties of otherness such as sophistication, fashionably languorous grace, a dehberate consciousness of her role, and an air of unattainability which she in turn communicates to her Son. There was also
painters as Fra

the simple

264

235 GiORGiONE Tempest

Z.

236 [below) Giovanni Bellini Feast of the Gods

265

a current

towards their master,

of influence passing from Bellini's own pupils backwards who had far too receptive an intelHgence to be

unaware of the currents which he himself had set in motion. The landscape of mood, adumbrated by Bellini as far back as the London Agony in the Garden [plate 212), and fully developed in the background of Giorgione's Castelfranco Madonna of about 1505/7 [plate 222), or in the new secular subjects to which he was giving a particular impetus and significance, such as the Tempest [plate 23^) or the Sleeping Venus [plate 2^0), are reflected in many of BelHni's later devotional Madonnas such as the Madonna degli Alberetti of 15 10. These influences transform the type of the Sacra Conversazione as well, since the St Jerome and other Saints of 1 5 1 3 has the newer softness of handling and unified vision inspired by Giorgione, who by this date had already been dead three years. The death of Giorgione left Bellini supreme in his last years, for, despite the impHcations of Titian's rivalry and persistent attempts to displace him from his official position, Bellini demonstrated in his late works his ability to develop his style and ideas so as to keep pace with the new vision current after the turn of the century. The Feast of the Gods, of 15 14 [plate 236), is an essay in the new type of mythology, with the gods of Olympus disguised as peasants enjoying a heavenly picnic in a vein of tenderly elegiac eroticism, while in the Lady at her Toilet, of 15 1 5 [plate 237), the nude figure is reminiscent of the reticence and intimacy of Giorgione's poetic art.

237 Giovanni Bellini

Lady

at her Toilet

266

Chapter Ten

The developments
usually called the

described in this

book culminated,
of all the

in the genera-

tion after 1500, in a brief flowering

arts in Italy,

which

is

High

Renaissance. In effect, this corresponds with

II

the pontificates of Juhus

disaster

(1503-13) and Leo

(1513-21), and the

of the Sack of
as

Rome by
belle

the Imperial troops in

era

May

1527

ended

it

just as decisively as 4

August 1914 ended the

epoque.
It is

which we
the
all

now

look back on

La

true that Michelangelo's

Jitdj^merit,

greatest masterpieces, the

Medici Chapel, the Last

all,
is

Rondanini

Pieta,

and, above

his

conception of St Peter's, are

is

much

later

than 1527: what

important

that they are funda-

mentally different in style from the St Peter's

Sistine Ceiling, as well as different

Bramante died in 15 14, in 1520; with them the Renaissance passed into history, for it is a watershed which divides Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca, and even Giorgione from Michelangelo and Tintoretto. Perhaps only Titian was able to cross it, approaching Giovanni Bellini at the beginning of his career and El Greco at the end. The salient characteristics of the High Renaissance have been stated often enough harmony, symmetry, and above all the understanding and recapture of classical antiquity in the service of new ideals. One of the greatest surviving monuments is the little tempietto in the courtyard of S. Pietro in Montorio in Rome, built by Bramante in 1502 [plate 2j8). It marks the traditional place of martyrdom of St Peter on Mons Aureus, and it is a restatement of the Early Christian type of circular church often erected as a commemoration of some peculiarly sacred spot. The design could hardly be simpler

Pieta, the Dawid, and the from Bramante's idea for St Peter's. Leonardo da Vinci in 15 19, and Raphael

circular

colonnade enclosing a circular temple

but

it is

perfect in

its

symmetry and in the mysterious effect of the harmony of its elements, all of which are classically pure in their individual proportions.
267

238

Bramante
Rome

Tempietto,

S. Pietro in Montorio,

It

was

far

from easy

to evolve

from

the allegories of Botticelli,

expressed in linear designs of the utmost complexity, to the simple

must have seemed gains of the previous generation were being thrown away what was the use of the vigorous movement and anatomical researches of Antonio Pollaiuolo, or the graceful rhythms of Botticelh, if the new generation of painters represented their figures as calm and motionless? Perugino had been mocked, in his last years, as out of date, and so he was; but nevertheless it was necessary that his form of 'Early
grandeur of Raphael's Stanze in the Vatican, and
it

to contemporaries that in

many

cases the

stylistic

Classicism' should prepare the

way

for Raphael's deceptively simple

compositions, just as

much
the

as SignorelH's

tortured nudes point

still

forward Mannerism.
further

to

Michelangelesque complexities of Late

Raphael's development is clear. He was born in Urbino in 1483 and received a provincial training, mainly under Perugino. At the age of seventeen he proved himself one of the most promising of the

268

239 Raphael Assumption and

Coronation of the Virgin

younger painters, but he was still much influenced by Perugino in such works as the Vatican Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin {plate 2jg) or the Crucifixion in the National Gallery, London, both painted when he was about twenty. Very soon after this he went to Florence, reaHzed the deficiencies of his provincial schooling, and set himself to study Leonardo and Michelangelo. The portrait of Maddalena Doni {plate 24J) owes almost everything to Leonardo's Mona Lisa; the Madonna with the Goldfinch {Madonna del Cardellino) {plate 240) is one of a series of compositions, all of which are exercises based on Leonardo's cartoons of the Madonna and Child with St Anne {plate 218); the Madonna del Granduca {plate 241) shows him experimenting with the simple dark background that Leonardo used to obtain greater effect of relief as well as simpHcity of composition. In all these pictures there is also a tautening of the draughtsmanship, a realization that contour can be made to do things beyond the range of Perugino's imagination, and this is due to Michelangelo's example
in such celebrated feats

of virtuosity

as the

cartoon (now

lost)

269

240 {far

left) Raphafx Madonna with the Goldfinch [Madonna del

Cardellino)

241

(left) Raphael Madonna del Granduca

242 (below far

left)

Raphael

Baldassare Casti^rlione

243 (below left) Raphael Maddalena Doni

244 Fra Bartolommeo

Vision of St Bernard

for the battlepiece in the Palazzo della Signoria. Raphael learned

from everyone, and not the least from Fra Bartolommeo. Fra Bartolommeo was probably born in 1474 and was therefore about a year older than Michelangelo, but there was not the towering difference in skill at that date between him and Raphael that separated the latter from Michelangelo. In any case, Fra Bartolommeo's Vision of St Bernard, of 1506 [plate 244), had many things to teach Raphael, particularly by comparison with the pictures of the same subject by Filippino Lippi and even Perugino himself: in Fra Bartolommeo's picture there is. a clear separation between the supernatural apparition at the left and the natural figures at the right, and

the

Madonna
as she

is

made

to float in the air instead

of walking into the

room,

does in Quattrocento versions of the theme.

The

description given

by Wolfflin

is

apposite: 'The vision

is

depicted in

an unexpected way, unlike the gentle, shy

picture, laying her
his desk; here
it is

woman

hand on the pious man's book

a supernatural apparition

as she steps

of Filippino's up to

sweeping

down from

above, wrapped in the solemnity of a great floating mantle and

accompanied by a choir of angels pressing closely round and tilled with awe and reverence. Filippino had painted girls, halt-shy and
271

245 Raphael Dispute concerning the Blessed Sacrament

half-curious,

accompanying the Virgin on her

visit;

Fra Bartolom-

meo

wants, not that the spectator should smile but that he should be

stirred to

devotion

the saint received the miracle with pious

wonder, and
seems
trite

this is so finely

rendered

that,

and even Perugino,

in his picture at

by comparison, Fihppino Munich, seems

indifferent.

The heavy,
saints

trailing,
St.
. .

white robe has a

new

dignity of line,
their part in

and the two

behind

Bernard are made to play

.'

the emotional atmosphere.

(H. Wolfflin, Classic Art.)

About 1508 Raphael went to Rome, and there he received the great commissions that gave him the chance to develop his genius to its fullest extent; here the untried provincial he was then about twenty-six was given the commission to decorate the Vatican Stanze, a task not much inferior to that which Michelangelo had just begun in the Sistine Chapel. The Dispute concerning the Blessed Sacrament [plate 24^), as it is usually but erroneously called, was probably begun in 1509 and still has distinct echoes of Perugino and Fra Bartolommeo, especially in the rather wooden rows of saints on the

all

too solid clouds. Nevertheless, the

skill

in the grouping

of the

figures
to the

on earth

so that the eye

altar,

is

led into the centre

monstrance on the

presages the full

of the picture, development of his

272

style in the

beyond
242)

the limits of this book.

next fresco, the School of Athens, which would take us The portrait of Castiglionc {plate

(author of The Courtier, the foundation of the idea of the

English gentleman) can stand for Raphael's aims and ideals in

his
later

period.

243),

painted

The contrast with the Maddalcna Doni {plate some ten years earlier, shows the speed of his

development.
Michelangelo was

much

less

the brilliant student.

it
is

He claimed

to

owe nothing

to anyone,

and

true that his apprenticeship to

Ghirlandaio did no

more than

give

him

the chance to learn fresco

technique from one of the fmest living exponents. Nevertheless, he

considered himself primarily a sculptor, often signing his
Michelangiolo schultore in protest at being
certainly his great
after
letters

made

to

work

as a painter;

fame was

established in the years immediately

his

1500 by his Pieta in St Peter's and

Pieta {plate 247)

David

in Florence.

The

was carved

in

Rome

in the last years

of the

fifteenth century,

Michelangelo having

fled there in

1496 to escape

from the explosive

his early patrons,

situation created by the expulsion of the Medici, and the attempt to set up a theocratic dictatorship under Savonarola. The problem was to carve a single monumental group composed of the two awkward shapes presented by a full-

grown man

lying across a

woman's

lap; this

he did by a judicious
is

adjustment of the poses, so that the gesture of the Virgin's hand

made

into an Exposition of the

Body of Christ

rather than a lament,

and, at the same time, Michelangelo was able to relate the

figures in such a

two

way

that the disparity in size

a tender

is

not apparent. The

group

is

very highly fmished and has

sentiment which hardly

reappears in his work, but in

that the later sculptors

all this it is

the

cHmax of everything

o the

fifteenth century

Minos
ideals

had sought. In

the Desiderios, the

may
be seen in the

his later

works he was

to return to the heroic

of Donatello and Jacopo

{plate 246),

della Quercia, as

over hfe-size David

youth, arrogant in his

completed in 1504. This raw-boned strength and superbly conscious of the inevitathe ideal creation of Florentine art

bihty of his victory over his unseen opponent, has always been a sort

of ideal Florentine. of the purest

He is certainly

strain in the fifteenth century,

beginning with Masaccio,

Donatello, and Castagno and going on through Pollaiuolo's warriors.

273

246 Michelangelo David

247 Michelangelo

Pieta, St. Peter's,

Rome

From

this

point of view

it is

not surprising that the typical

work

which finishes the Quattrocento in the High Renaissance in Rome should be

anticipation

Florence and looks forward to

a

male nude, tensed in the

of violent

action, every

muscle gliding under the skin so

he is in the presence of perfection and serene confidence, where even in the works of Donatello there is always the tragic sense of the human condition. For Michelangelo that sense was still to come, and it was to last for most of his long life, but in 1504 that was still in the future. The Doni Tondo {plate 248), contemporary with the David, shows how his mastery of contour led him to think of forms in terms of carved blocks with colour added as an after-thought and with almost
that the spectator feels only that
all

pleasure

on movement and the play of expressive line the power of the Virgin's left arm almost makes us forget the extraordinary clumsiness of her gesture, reaching back over her shoulder for the Child instead
the emphasis

we

take in the superb contrapposto and the

of,

more

reasonably, turning sideways.

274

248 Michelangelo Holy Family (Doni Tondo)

A few years later, in 1508, Michelangelo began his huge task in the
Sistine

Chapel of the Vatican. Lying on

his back, for years

on end, he
primeval

interpreted the story of the Divine Creation in terms of Neoplatonic

imagery, daring to imagine the Logos over the

act

altar; the

of creation by which

God

created the Idea, before the separation

of light from dark or the creation of form from the void. (Several times in the Mass the priest is directed to raise his eyes to Heaven;
once
at the

words 'Veni

Sanctificator,
.'
.
.

omnipotens, aeterne Deus:

his

et

benedic hoc Sacrificium.

This must have been in Michelangelo's

mind.) This was the Beginning, but Michelangelo worked

way

back to

this point,

progressing through the simple, traditional stories

of the Deluge and the Creation of Man, which he tells in simple, human terms. The Creation of Adam {plate 249) is so famous that it is almost impossible to see it with fresh eyes, as Michelangelo's contemporaries saw it simply as the spark of life given to Man by God:

and breathed 'And God created man in his own image Hving soul'. face the breath of life; and man became a
.

into his

275

Twenty years earlier nobody would have had the technical mastery to create so perfect a human form, like a Greek god; still less would
anyone have had so boldly simple a conception of the scene, with the earth no more than indicated behind Adam and everything concentrated on the expression of Adam's reluctant, sluggish body which is animated by the impulse, hke an electric shock, passing down his arm. Only Leonardo's Last Supper {plate 213) had attempted to render psychological situations in terms of gesture and expression. Twenty years later everybody, in imitation of Michelangelo himself, would have given the scene too much energy, too much intensity; the nobility would have disappeared from the conception.
Mannerist
art
is

inconceivable without the impulse given

is

by

Michelangelo towards virtuosity, and Vasari

expHcit in his

testi-

mony: 'But who

terribilita

is

there
last

who

will not admire, bereft

of speech, the

of Jonas, the

figure in the Chapel,

where the power of

art

is

such that the vaulting, which in actual fact curves forward from

is contradicted by the appearance of the figure which seems bend backwards and makes the wall-surface seem straight; thus, defeated by the art of drawing, by light and shade, it seems to curve away? Oh truly happy age! oh most fortunate artists! Well may you be so called that in your own days have been enlightened by such a fount of Hght, removing the darkness from your eyes, seeing every difficulty smoothed away by so marvellous, so unique an artist. Thank Heaven for this, therefore, and strive to imitate Michelangelo in all things.' All other considerations, economic, pohtical, and

the wall,
to

rehgious, are secondary to

It is

this.

only

fair to

point to Venice, which, after surviving the

Holy

League of 1508 directed against her, was the only one of the Itahan states to retain her independence and prosperity in the mid-sixteenth century. Here the economic and pohtical factors which were certainly important for the rest of Italy do not apply, and the art of Titian retains a sunny splendour far distant from the grandeurs and miseries of Mannerism in Rome, Florence, or Parma. Titian develops along the hnes laid down by Giovanni Belhni and Giorgione, whose Castelfranco Madonna [plate 222) is adapted from the Giovanni Bellini type of large altarpiece, but treated with greater richness of colour and
depth of tone. The opulence and subtlety of the
oil

medium allowed

276

249 Michelangelo Creation

of

Adam,

detail

new ideas and to experiment with new and in such a picture as the Tempest {plate 23^) he also developed a new type of picture, making a decisive break with earlier landscape painting in Venice and elsewhere. The subject of this enigmatic picture has never been satisfactorily explained; it is, indeed, probable that there is no subject in the simple sense in which
Giorgione to explore entirely
effects,

would have been understood by a fifteenth-century patron, and that, in fact, what the artist is expressing is
it

painter or
a

mood,

poetic response to natural phenomena.

complex nature of the content can be seen when the patron began to commission nonreligious pictures, and many of the early mythologies reflect the best-of-both-worlds character of fifteenth-century Humanism. The lost Hercules of 1460 by Pollaiuolo may well have been interpreted as exempla of the Christian virtue of Fortitude, and the myth of
increasingly

The

developing quite clearly

Apollo and Daphne, also

by Pollaiuolo, can be instanced as an allegory with Christian overtones, just as the Primavera {plate 1) by BotticelH, with its obscure but intelHgible meaning, is far from being the simple
277

pagan mythology that it appears to be at first sight. Yet all these pictures have a content which, ultimately, can be explained; the idea
of a connoisseur,
is

person

who

enjoys a painting for

its

own sake and

to

prepared to allow the

artist full liberty,

would have been foreign

the fifteenth-century painter and patron alike. Giorgione and Titian

began to paint for a small class of men, most of whom were well educated and able to appreciate a picture for its own sake, because it
involved passages of beautiful painting,
earher patron,
semi-practical objects,
as

well

as for its subject.

The

who hked pictures but on the whole regarded them as

bought images of the Madonna or his patron saint; this was largely because the educated classes, throughout most of the fifteenth century, were predominantly clerical or else professional men of learning, and only the exceptional patrons such as the Medici or the Gonzaga ranged over wider intellectual territory. The rise of secular education, coupled with the tendency to equate educathat is, tion with a knowledge of Latin and Greek literature

Humanism

led to

demand
2jio).

for such pictures as the Tempest or

the Sleeping Venus {plate

This picture was

left

unfinished at
it.

Giorgione's premature death in 1510 and Titian completed

it,

With

new

era

dawned

in the arts.

250 Giorgione and Titian Sleeping Venus

List of Illustrations

and Artists

Index of

Names

List of Illustrations

and Artists

Artists are listed in alphabetical order.

illustrations appear.

Roman

figures denote text references

and bold figures denote pages on which

Alberti 10, 204. 206

S. Andrea Fagade

s6, 60-2, 116, 130, 202,

Bellini,

Giovanni 10, 132, 134, 135. 143. 144. 156, 196, 198, 201,
in the

Earthly Paradise Central panel

224

62

202, 245, 257, 260-6, 276

Prado, Madrid
Botticelli,

Agony
10, 89-90, 94, 97, '

Mantua
Angelico, Fra
Linaiuoli

Garden 236 By courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Sandro 10, 47, 88, 120, 184, 185, 213, 217-20, 223,
The
Allegory

232, 250, 254, 268, 277

98-103, 104, 120, 248, 249, 256

Madonna

90

Madonna and Child (The Madonna of the Pomegranate) 237

Central portion
S. Marco Museum, Florence Madonna and Child with

By

courtesy of the Trustees of

Primavera, Spring
UflSzi,

of
II

the National Gallery,

London

Florence

97 Altarpiece of the Monastery of

S. S.

Saints and Angels

The Doge Loredano 261 By courtesy of the Trustees of

the National Gallery,
S.

Birth of Venus
Uffizi,

218
Magnificat

Florence

London
262 262 263
265

Madonna of the
LJffizi,

218

Marco Marco Museum, Florence

Giobbe Altarpiece

Florence

Accademia, Venice
S. Zaccaria Altarpiece
S. Zaccaria,

Deposition

219

St Lawrence Receives the Treasures

Museo

Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

loi of the Church Detail of the frescoes, Scenes from the Lives of Sts Lawrence and Stephen Chapel of Nicolas V, Vatican,

Venice

Frari Altarpiece

Mars and Venus 219 By courtesy of the Trustees of

the National Gallery,

Sta Maria dei Frari, Venice

Feast of the

London

Rome
Madonna and Child
Saints

Gods

National Gallery of Art

with

Eigh^

Washington
Collection

D.C.

Widener
266

Mystic Nativity 225 By courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

102

Fresco from the upper floor S. Marco, Florence

Lady

at her Toilet

Kunsthistorisches

Museum

Bouts, Dieric 150-4, 156, 159, 160, 173, 176, 178, 214
Elijah in the Desert 153 Panel firom the Altarpiece of Five Mystic Meals S. Pierre, Lou vain

102 Annunciation Fresco firom the upper floor S. Marco, Florence

Vienna
Bellini,

Jacopo

141, 257-8

Antonello da Messina
164, 175, 244-7, 262

132, 156,

Madonna and Child

Brera, Milan

257

Madonna and Child

St Jerome in his Study By courtesy of the Trustees the National Gallery, London
S. Cassiano Altarpiece

of

Drawing of Christ before Pilate 258 Louvre Sketchbook, fol. 39

Louvre, Paris

155 courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

By

Ordeal of the Countess

Brussels

155

256

Central fragment. Madonna with Child and Saints Kunsthistorisches Museum,

Drawing of the Entombment 259 Louvre Sketchbook, fol. 58

Louvre, Paris

Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts,

Bramante

130, 227, 238, 239, 244,

Vienna

Bermejo, Bartolome 178

180
St Michael
i^if

245, 249, 267

Tempietto
S. Pietro in

Baker

(?)

268
Montorio,

Miracles of the Virgin Fresco, detail

180

Harold Wernher, Bart. Luton Hoo, Beds.

Sir

Rome
18-20,

Eton College Chapel

Broederlam,
Berruguete, Pedro
Solomonfrom
133, 178

Melchior

By permission of the Provost and

Fellows of Eton College, Eton Photograph copyright 'Country
Life'

216
177
Flight into Egypt

the Philosophers

19

Galleria Nazionale,

Urbino
178, 213, 214,

Detail firom the Dijon Altarpiece

Dijon
271

Museum
12, 31-2, 48, 56-60,

Bartolomeo, Fra 264, 271

Vision of St Bernard

Bosch, Hieronymus 215, 216

Crucifixion

Brunelleschi
61, 184

Accademia, Florence
Bellini, Gentile 258-60
Procession in Piazza di

215 Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts,

San
Brussels

Sacrifice of Abraham Bargello, Florence

31

Marco Accademia, Venice

259

The Ship of Fools

Louvre, Paris

215

Dome

of Florence Cathedral

57

Florence

280

Brunelleschi
Interior of

(contd.)

Old

Sacristy

58
59

Madonna and Child Detail from the

209 Marsuppini

Resurrection

S.

Lorenzo, Florence

Tomb
Sta Croce, Florence

Detail Pulpit
S.

from

the

S.

46 Lorenzo

Lorenzo, Florence
170,

Loggia degli Innocenii (The Foundling Hospital) Florence

Sto Spirito

Domenico Veneziano
59

89, 103-7, 116, 121, 122, 124, 134, 256

DOreb, ALBBEcirr
188, 190-202
Life of the Virgin Title-page, 1511

173,

182,

Florence

Castagna, Andrea del

106-13
Last Supper Fresco
S.

47,

89,

St Lucy Altarpiece loi Central panel, Madonna and Child wiih Saints Uffizi, Florence

183

Woodcut British Museum, London

Self Portrait

108

Staatliche

The Adoration of the Magi Museen, Berlin

St

103
105

191

Prado, Madrid

ApoUonia, Florence
iii

Miracle of St Zenobius Predella panel of the

Altarpiece

Lucy

Resurrection

The Men's Bath House or Mannerbad

193

Fresco S. Apollonia, Florence

Dante
Fresco S. Apollonia, Florence

112

Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

St John the Baptist and St Francis
1 10

Woodcut British Museum, London Adam and Eve

Engraving
British

193

Museum, London
193 498

Assumption
Staatliche

14

Museo

dell'Opera, Sta Croce,

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Museen, Berlin

Florence

Page from The Apocalypse,

Niccolb da Tolentino Memorial 115

Fresco Florence Cathedral

Donatello

10, II, 12, 27, 29, 3548. 57, 60, 89, 91, 94, 98, 107, 108, 109, no, 118, 119, 136, 142,

Woodcut British Museum, London

Prodigal Son

193

Pippo Spano Fresco S. Apollonia, Florence

iig

203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 223, 250, 258, 273

Engraving, 1498
British

Museum, London
Siskin

Magdalen
Baptistery, Florence
St George

13

Madonna of the
Staatliche

197 199

Museen, Berlin

Christus, Petrus 87-8, 153, 157

36
in Bargello.
at

St Jerome in his Study

St Eligius and the Lovers Robert Lehman Collection,

86

New

Copy of the original

Setting

Orsanmichele,

British

York
87 Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts,
Brussels
St Jerome

Copper engraving, 1 5 14 Museum, London

Caspar Stunn
Silverpoint

Florence
St George Slaying the
Relief, panel

Lamentation

Dragon 37 below the figure of

200 drawing from the

St

George
Feast of Herod

Netherlands Sketchbook Musce Conde, Chantilly

St John and St Peter

88

Orsanmichele, Florence

201

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit

The

38 39

from the Four

St Paul and St

Apoiiles

Baptistery Font, Siena

Alte Pinakothek,

Munich
201

Dalmau, Luis 175-6

Ascension
Virgin of the Councillors Detail, Angels Singing

Mark
Apostles

177
Catalu'ha,

Low

relief

from the Four

Courtesy of the Victoria and

Albert

Alte Pinakothek,

Munich

Museo de Arte de
Barcelona

Museum, London
41

Daret, Jacques
Nativity

70, 145

Cantoria Detail of the Putti Museo dell'Opera,

Eyck, Hubert van 74-6

The Three Maries

at the Sepulchre

69

75
Attributed to Hubert van Eyck

Florence Cathedral

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,

Lugano
David, Gerard 157-8
Baptism of Christ

Arguing Figures 41 panel from the bronze doors, S. Lorenzo, Florence

Boymans-van

A
158

Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam

Eyck, Jan van
66, 68, 71. 72-^7,

David
Bargello, Florence
Gattamelata Piazza del Santo, Padua

42
43

Communal Museum
Bruges
Justice of

88, 145, 147. 150, 153. 154. 157. 158, 160, 255

Birth of St John the Baptist

73

Cambyses

158

from the Hours of Turin

Miniature, attributed to Jan van

Communal Museum, Bruges

Desidiero

da

Settignano

206,

Miracle of the Ass 44 Part of The Miracle of St Anthony High Altar of the Santo, Padua

Eyck

Museo

Cisico, Turin
of
tite

207, 208, 273

Lamentation

45

of Carlo Marsuppini Sta Croce, Florence

Tomb

209

Santo

Anntmciation. the outside wings, Ghent Altarpiece

St

76

Padua

Bavon, Ghent

281

Eyck, Jan van

the
inside

(contd.)

Deesis, Adoration of the

Lamb and
Ghent 77

of the

wings,

Annunciation 32 Detail, panel of first pair of doors Baptistery, Florence

Flagellation

Crucifixion

221

Isenheim Altarpiece
LJnterlinden
Nativity

Museum, Colmar
221

Altarpiece

St

Bavon, Ghent

Detail, panel

32 of first pair of doors 34

Isenheim Altarpiece
LJnterlinden

inscribed Leal Tymotheos, Souvenir 79 By courtesy of the Trustees of

Baptistery, Florence
St John the Baptist

Museum, Colmar

Orsanmichele, Florence
St

Leonardo da Vinci

the National Gallery,

London

Matthew

34

160, 194, 197, 198, 202, 209, 212, 223, 227-45, 249, 250, 267, 276

80 Man in a Red Turban By courtesy of the Trustees of

the National Gallery,
Arnolfini Marriage

Orsanmichele, Florence

London
81

The Story of Joseph 35 Detail, panel from the second

pair of doors Baptistery, Florence

Annunciation Uffizi, Florence

Adoration of the Kings

226
231

Group

By

courtesy of the Trustees of

Cartoon
Uffizi,

the National Gallery,

London
der Paele

Florence
with the Flower Vase

Madonna of Canon van

83

Baptism of Christ Baptistery Font, Siena

39

Madonna

232
232

Communal Museum, Bruges

Rolin Madonna 84 Detail of the landscape in the

Alte Pinakothek,
88, i6o,

Munich

GmRLANDAIO, DOMENICO
Visitation

206, 232, 238, 252-4, 273

Ginevra de'Benci Liechtenstein Collection

background
Louvre, Paris

253

Vaduz
Virgin of the Rocks Louvre, Paris

Fresco
Sta Maria Novella, Florence

233

Flemalle, see Master of FouQUET, Jean 163, 164, 167-8

165,

Adoration of the Shepherds 255 Altarpiece of the Sassetta Chapel SS. Trinita, Florence

Study of Acorns

234

Drawing
Royal Collection, Reproduced by gracious perof Her Majesty the

Elienne Chevalier presented by St Stephen 171 Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Giorgione 202, 260, 266-7, 276-8

Castelfranco Madonna Madonna and Child with

mission

246
St

Queen
Anatomical Study

French School 166

The Avignon
Louvre, Paris
Pieta

Liberale and St Francis

234

167

St Liberale, Castelfranco

Drawing
265

Tempest

Froment, Nicolas 166

Accademia, Venice
165
Sleeping Venus (with Titian) 278

Royal Collection Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the

Queen
Landscape with Storm

Mary
detail

in the

Burning Bush,

Gemaldegalerie, Dresden

235

Aix-en-Provence Cathedral

Drawing
Giovanni di Paolo 119
154
St John entering the Wilderness 122 Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Geertgen Tot Sint Jans 154-6

Lamentation Kunsthistorisches

Royal Collection Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the

Museum

Queen
Study of Hands

Vienna
Goes,

Hugo van der

235

133,

154,

Gentile da Fabriano 21, 24-5,

27-9. 30, 40, 47, 48, 50, 56, 148, 257, 258, 260
Adoration of the Magi Uffizi, Florence

Drawing
Royal Collection, Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the

158-61, 254
Nativity
Altarpiece
Uffizi,

IS9

Central panel of the Portinari

26 30

Queen
161
Last Supper 239 Fresco Sta Maria delle Grazie, Milan

Florence

Madonna and Child (Quaratesi Madonna)

Royal Collection Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the

Adoration of the Kings {Monforte Altarpiece) Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Madonna and Child

ii'ith

St

Anne

GoNgALVES,
Detail,

Nuno

178-80

Queen

German Master
Paradise Garden

25, 170

27

180 Archbishop panel Museo Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon

St Vincent Altarpiece

243 Cartoon Courtesy of the Trustees of the

National Gallery, London

Mona

Lisa

243
245

StSidelsches Kunstinstitut,

Louvre, Paris

Frankfurt
Ghiberti,
27, 29, 31-5, 38, 40, 53, 56, 113, 203, 204, 206

Grunewald (Mathis NithardtGothardt) 213-16

The Small
Crucifixion

Study of a Horseman

Lorenzo

Drawing
216

National Gallery of Art

Sacrifice of Abraham Bargello, Florence

31

Washington D.C. Samuel H. Kress Collection

Royal Collection Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty the

Queen

282

LiMBouRG Brothers, Pol, Hennequin and Herman Pol 22-5, i6i

The Month of May

St James on the

way

to

Execution

de
Fresco

137

Herod's Feast $4 Fresco Collcgiata, Castiglionc d'Oloru

Ttie Raising of Tahitha

23 From the Tres Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry

Formerly in Ovetari C;hapcl Church of the Eremitani, Padua

S.
S.

54

Frcvro
Detail of

Musee Condc, Chantilly

LiPPi, FiLlPPiNO 220, 250,

Zeno Altarpiece Zeno, Verona

of the Camera degH

138

young men

strolling

(Veiling

139

Brancacci Chapel, CJhurch, Florence

Carmine

271

and Child with St Dominic and St Jerome 222 Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London
St Philip Casting Out the Depil223 Fresco Strozzi Chapel, Sta Maria

Madonna

Sposi Fresco

Master of the Aix Annunciation 163

Reggia, Mantua
Cristo Scorlo, the

Dead

Christ 141

Aix Annunciation
Central panel

163

Brera, Milan

Meeting of Duke Lodovico and his son the (Cardinal

Detail

Aix-cn-Provcncc Cathedral
143

Novella
Florence
Vision of St Bernard Badia, Florence
LiPPi,

of the frescoes of the Gonzaga Court

Master Es 186
Madonna watching
bathed
the

Camera Mantua
228

degli

Sposi,

Reggia,

Child being 187

Line engraving

Battle of the Sea

Gods

189

Staatliche

Kunstsammlungen

Line engraving
British

Dresden

Fra Fiiippo 49-50, 89-98, 103, 104, Ii8, 119, 120, 126, 213, 217, 254, 256
Barbadori Altarpiece 91 Madonna and Child with Angels and St Frediano and St Augustine Louvre, Paris

Museum, London
Master of Fl^malle 65-71,
83, 86, 145, 173, 186

Agony

in the Garden 236 Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

81, 82,

Masaccio

10, 21, 27, 29, 36,

37,

40, 45, 47-56, 60, 89, 90, 91, 94, 98, 103, 107, 113, 119, 123, 125

St Joseph 67 Detail from the Merode Altarpiece Metropolitan Museum of Art,

New
The
chase

York
Cloisters Collection,

Coronation of the Uffizi, Florence

Tarquinia

'irgin

92

250, 273

Pur-

Madonna and Child

93

30

Madonna

Galleria Nazionale,

Rome
95

Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Nativity

69

Dijon

Museum

Madonna of Humility Castello Sforzesco

Milan

Madonna and Child with St Anne

Uffizi,

30

Annunciation 71 Central panel from the Merode

Altarpiece

Florence

Madonna and Child

(Pitti

95

Trinity

44

Metropolitan

Museum of

Art,

Pitti,

Tondo) Florence
in

Fresco
Sta

New
The
chase

York
Cloisters Collection,

Maria Novella, Florence

49

Purthe

Madonna Adoring Child

Crucifixion

Wood

96

Museo Nazionale, Naples

Rendering of the Tribute Money 50 Fresco Brancacci Chapel, Carmine Church, Florence

Donor
Baptist

presented by

St John

Altarpiece of Chapel of MediciRiccardi Palace Staatliche Museen, Berlin

72

Wing
The
I

of the

If 'erl

Altarpiece

Prado, Madrid
'irgin

reading
ll'erl

72
Altarpiece

Herod's Feast Fresco Prato Cathedral

99

Head of St John 51 Detail from the Rendering of the Tribute Money

Fresco Brancacci Chapel, Church, Florence

Wing

of the

Prado, Madrid

Lochner, Stephan 172-3

The Dombild Madonna
(Patron Saints of the City) Cologne Cathedral
LuiNi,

Carmine

Man 80 Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Portrait of a

175

Bernardino 245
244

Madonna and Child

Brera, Milan

Expulsion of Adam and Eve 52 Fresco Brancacci Chapel, Carmine Church, Florence

Master of the Housebook

189
Ariitotle

188,

and Phyllis

187

Drypoint
Schloss

The Lame Man healed by shadow of St Peter

Fresco Brancacci Chapel, Church, Florence

the

Wolfegg
161

52

Mantegna, Andrea
134-41, 189-90, 245, 256, 260
Fresco

36, 40, 118, 192, 19S, 202,

Carmine

Master of Mouhns
^{oulins Altarpiece

169
171

Moulins Cathedral
Martyrdom of St James
137

Masolino 49-56, 89
Madonna and Child
Kunsthalle,

St \{aurice and donor

Formerly

Ovetari Chapel Church of the Eremitani, Padua

in

53

Glasgow Art Gallery and

Bremen

Museum

283

Matteo

di

Giovanni

120, 123

Assumption

121

Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Baptism of Christ 123 Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Tomb of Sixtus IV St Peter's, Rome

Tomb
of Innocent VIII
St Peter's,

211 211

Madonna of Mercy
Central panel Palazzo Communale Borgo S. Sepolcro
Finding of the True Cross Detail, Fresco S. Francesco, Arezzo
Resurrection

124

Rome

Memlinc, Hans 156-7, 260 The Donne Triptych

QUARTON, ENGUERRAND I64-5

126

157

Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Hospice

Coronation of the Virgin 164 of Villeneuve-les-

Avignon
127

Michelangelo

Buonarroti

10,

47, 188, 194, 203, 204, 227, 241, 243, 247, 250, 252, 253, 267, 268, 269, 272, 273-6

Fresco Palazzo

Quercla, Jacopo Della

203-4, 273

31,

37,

Communale
Sepolcro

David Accademia, Florence

Pieta

274 274

Borgo Dream

S.

Tomb
128

ofllaria del Carretto

204
205

of Constantine

Lucca Cathedral
Creation of Eve San Petronio, Bologna

Fresco S. Francesco, Arezzo

Flagellation

St Peter's,

Rome
27S

129

Holy Family
{Doni Tondo) Uffizi, Florence
Creation of Adam Detail figure of Adam

Fresco
Galleria Nazionale,

Expulsion from Paradise San Petronio, Bologna

205

Urbino
130
130

The Duchess of Urbino

Raphael

277

Uffizi,

Florence

7, 227, 243, 264, 267, 268-73

247,

252,

Federigo da Montefeltro

Fresco
Sistine Chapel,

Duke
Vatican
FlESOLE 206, 207-8, 273

of Urbino

Assumption and Coronation of the

Virgin

Uffizi,

Florence

269

Vatican

Museum
270

MiNO DA

132 Madonna and Child with cmgels and

Brera Altarpiece
six Saints, adored by Federigo da

Tomb of Count Ugo of Tuscany 203

Detail Badia, Florence

Madonna ivith the Goldfinch (Madonna del Cardellino)

Uffizi,

Montefeltro

Florence

Brera, Milan

Madonna
133
Pitti,

Monaco, Lorenzo

22-4, 48, 54

Nativity

del Granduca Florence

270
270 270

Adoration of the Magi Uffizi, Florence

24
26

Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Piero di Coslmo 223
Lapiths and Centaurs 240 Detail Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Baldassare Castiglione

Louvre, Paris

Maddalena Doni
Pitti,

Uffizi,

Coronation of the Virgin Florence

85, 172

Florence

MosER, Lucas

Tiefenbronn Altarpiece Detail Pfarrkirche, Tiefenbronn

176

PisANELLo,
141, 258,

Antonio
260

Dispute concerning the Blessed Sacrament 272 Fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican

25-7,

56,

OuwATER, Albert van

Raising of Lazarus
Staatliche

54

154

Museen, Berlin

Designs for Court Dress Two 28 Figures and a Head By courtesy of the Ashmolean

Rene Master 162

From
Epris,

Livre

du

Cuer

d' Amours

Amour

Steals

the

King's

Museum, Oxford
PiSANELLO or StEFANO DA VeRONA
176

Heart
Staatsbibliothek,

162

Packer, Michael 174-s

S. Wolfgang Altarpiece

Vienna
58,

Detail of the Marriage at S. Wolfgang, Austria

Cana

Paradise Garden Museo del Castelvecchio,

28

ROBBIA, Luc A DELLA

205-6

Verona
Pleydenwurff, Hans 173-4
Adoration of the Magi

Cantoria, detail Singing Boys

20S

Museo
173

deir Opera,

Florence

Paolo, Giovanni

di, see

Giovanni

Cathedral

DA Paolo
Perugino, Piero
156,

Church of St Lawrence, Nurem222,

Madonna and Child Detail from Stemma

Orsanmichele, Florence

205

223,

berg

247, 250-1, 268, 269, 271

Vision of St Bernard Alte Pinakothek, Munich

229
251

Charge
Fresco

to

Peter

Sistine Chapel, Vatican

PoLLAiuoLO, Antonio and Piero 47, 134, 185, 189-90, 192, 20810, 217, 247, 268, 273, 277 Battle of the Nude Men 188 Engraving
British

Roberti, Ercole de' 142-4

Pieth

144
Gallery, Liverpool

Walker Art
Rossellino,

Museum, London

Antonio 206
207

PlERO DELLA FRANCESCA

106, 118, 120-34, 141. 250, 257, 262, 264, 267

10,
14-2.

I04,

247,

211 Martyrdom of St Sebastian Courtesy of the Trustees of the

National Gallery,

of the Cardinal of Portugal

S.

Tomb

London

Miniato, Florence

284

RossELLiNO,

Bernardo

6o, 206

Stefano da Vebona (Pisanello)

207
25

St

Columha

Altarpiece, Adoration

Bruni Tomb Sta Croce, Florence

28 Musco del Castcl vccchio, Verona

Paradise Garden

of the Magi C^cntral panel Altc Pinakothck,

Crucifixion

149

Munich
150

Sassetta 119-20, 122-3

St
Francis

renounces

his

earthly

Titian 260, 266, 267, 276-8 (with GlORGIONE)

Sleeping Venus Gemaldegalerie, Dresden

Father,

from

Central Panel Kunsthiitorischcs

Muicum
151

the

Life

of

St

Francis

117

278

Vienna
Charles the Bold
Staattiche

Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London

Musecn, Berlin
detail

UCCELLO
Schongauer, Martin
188
174,

II3-I8
113

Magdalen,
Triptych

178,

Deluge
Fresco, after restoration

from the Braque 151

Louvre, Paris

Madonna of the Rosehedge 174 Church of St Martin, Colmar

The Temptation of St Anthony 187 Engraving
British

Formerly Chiostro Verde, Sta Maria Novella, Florence

Sir John

Drawing for the Magdalen 151 Courtesy of the Trustees of the

British

Hawkwood

Memorial 115

Museum, London
85, 172

Museum, London

Fresco Florence Cathedral

Wrrz, Konrad
119
Christ

The Rout of San Romano

Signorelli,

Walking
Miraculous

on

Luca 247-50,
detail.

252, 268

Uffizi,

Florence

(The
Fishes)

Last Judgment,

The Damned 240

Water the Draught of 85

Fresco

Verrocchio, Andrea del 199-208, 210-13, 227, 230, 247

David
Bargello, Florence

Panel of the altarpiece St Peter's Cathedral, Geneva Musce d'Art et d'Histoire,

Orvieto Cathedral
Sluter, Claus 20-1, 65, 160, 203

212

Geneva

Duke

Philip of Burgundy and his Patron Saint

20

Colleoni Monument 213 Piazza SS. Giovanni e Paolo,

Woodcut, Florentine
Albert

183

Christ in the Garden Courtesy of the Victoria and

Formerly at Champol Dijon Museum

Venice

Museum, London
183

The Baptism
Uffizi,

of Christ

225

Florence
69, 82,

Woodcuts, German

The Virgin 20 Formerly on the trumeau at

Champol
I

Weyden, Roger van der

St Christopher Rylands Library, Manchester

Dijon

Museum
21
the Well of Moses

85, 87. 145-52, 154. 157, 160, 173, 178, 188, 214, 255

158,

The Dying Man tempted

to

183

Moses figure
I *

Impatience

From
Dijon
SOEST,

Annunciation

146

Museum
I7O-2
172

Metropolitan

Museum

of Art,

from the Ars Moriendi British Museum, London

New

York
Morgan, 1917
147
149

KONRAD VON
from

Gift of J. Pierpont
Escorial Deposition

WooDCLJT, Venetian
The Temple of Venus from Hypnerotomachia
phili

185
Poli-

Nativity Detail

Niederwildungen

Prado, Madrid

Altarpiece

Entombment
Uffizi,

Courtesy of the Victoria and

Albert

Pfarrkirche Niederwildungen

Florence

Museum, London

285

Q^
Index of

Names

Aldus Manudus, 184 Alexander VI, 9 Alfonso V of Aragon, 176,

178 Ar% Moriendi
cut, Artists)
(see

Este, Francisque d', 148

Este, Isabella d', 144, 197,

Lardino, 185

Leo X,

9,

267

Piombo, 260

Sebastian

del,

242

Eton

College

Chapel

WoodList

murals, 180 (see Baker,

List

German,

of

of Artists)
60

Liber Chronicarum, 184 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio and Pietro, 18, 65, 118 Louis XI, 16, 168 Ludolf the Carthusian, 64

Pinturicchio, 250 Pisano, Andea, 31 Pisano, Nicola and vanni, 17, 48

Platina, 14-15

Gio-

Fancelli,

Basaiti,

261

Fazio, 148

Lusco, Antonio, 12-14 Luther, 214, 215

Poggio Bracciolini, 12-14

Portinari,

Tommaso, 160

Bassa, Ferrer, 176

Beauneveu, Andre, 162

Bellechose, Henri, 162

Benozzo Gozzoli

(see

Gozzoli) Berruguete, Alonso, 178 Berry, Duke of, 22, 161 Bonaventura, St, 64, 167 Borgia, Cesare, 243 Borrassa, Luis, 176

Federigo of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, 7, 130 Ficino, Marsilio, 7, 10 Finiguerra, Maso, 189 Foppa, Vicenzo, 244 Francis I, 243, 244 Francis, St, 63
Frueauf, Ruland the Elder,

Malatesta,

Maiano, da Benedetto, 206 Sigismondo,

125

Rome, Sack

of, 16, 267 Ruysbroeck, Jan van, 64

Malouel, Jean, 162 Marsuppini, Carlo, 207 Martini, Simone, 18, 65,
118, 161

174-5
Fust, 181

Poggio Poggio) Bramantino, 245 Breughel, 214 Bridget, St, 167, 215 Bruni, Leonardo, 10 Burckhardt, Jacob, 9
Bracciolini,

(see

Gaddi, Agnolo 65, 126 Gallego, Fernando, 1 76-8 Geert de Groote, 64 Giotto, 7, 17, 22, 50

Gonzaga, Court of the, 139-40 Gutenberg, Johann Gensfleisch

Campin,

Roger

Zum,

181

(see

Master of Flemalle, of Artists) Catena, 261

List

Hawkwood,
Giovanni

Charles the Bold, 16, 148, 157 Charles V, 16, 22, 199 Cicero, 10, 11 Cima, 261 Colantonio, 164 Commentary on Dante, 185 Cossa, Francesco del, 142-4 Costa, Lorenzo, 142-4

Sir John, Acuto, no, 114 Hesdin, Jacquemart de, 162 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,

Master of Merode (see Master of Flemale, List of Artists), 68 Master of St Giles, 168-9 Master Theodoric, 65 Master of Trebon Altarpiece, or Master of Wittingau, 65 Master of Vissi Brod, cycle, 65 Matteo de' Pasti, 60 Maximilian, Emperor, 159 Medici, Cosimo de', 104 Medici, Guilio de', 243 Medici, Lorenzo de', 248 Medici, Piero de', 104, 105 Michelozzo, 12, 206
Michelet, 9

di Pietro, 120 Savonarola, 217, 248, 273 Schedel, Hartmann, 184 Schoeffer, 181 Scorel, Jan van, 199 Serra, Jaime, 176 Severus, Septimius, 14 Sforza, Francesco II of, 245

Sano

Sforza, Lodovico,

Duke of

Milan, 233, 239 Sixtus IV, 210, 251, 253 Squarcione, Francesco,
134, 136 Strozzi, Palla,

24

Symonds, John Addington, 9

Tintoretto, 7, 267

Tura, Cosime, 141-4

Valla, Lorenzo, 7 Vasari, Georgio, 8, 35, 47, 48, 53, 90, 120-1, 138, 188, 189, 207, 223, 230,

Montagna, 261
Multscher, Hans, 172

Innocent VIII, 210 Intaglio Process, 185-6

Nanni

Banco, 35 Niccolo da Tolentino,

di

10

242, 250, 276 Vecchietta, 120 Vitruvius, 12, 61 Vivarini, 261

Jerome,

St, 11

Voragine, Jacopo da, 63

Pasteur, Rogelet de la (see

Domenico
Dominic,

di Bartolo,

119

St, 63 Duccio, 65, 118

John the Fearless, 16 Joos van Ghent (Wassenhoven, Justus of Ghent),

130, 158-9, 178 Julius II, 9, 15, 267

Roger van der Weyden,

List

of Artists)

Paul of Middleburg, 7
Philip,

Duke of Burgundy,

Wassenhoven, Joos van (see Joos van Ghent) WiHiam of Holland. Count, 72
Wbfflin, Heinrich, 9,
10,

Elector of Saxony, 191 El Greco, 267 Este, Duke Borso d', 142

Kempis, Thomas b, 64 Koberger, Anton, 190

73 Pico della Mirandorla, 10 Pierre II of Bourbon, 169

18, 20, 22,

271-2

Wolgemut, Michael, 190

286

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