The History of Painting in Italy. Luigi Lanzi

his diffidence is the following: on the arrival of Rosso at San Sepolcro, Raffaellino, out of respect to that artist, gave up to him an order for a picture which he was to have executed; a rare instance among painters, who are in the habit of using kindly those artists only, who come merely to see a city, and immediately leave it. He kept a school at San Sepolcro, whence proceeded Gherardi, Vecchi, and other artists, some of whom, perhaps, surpassed him in genius; but they did not equal him in grace, nor in high finish.

      About this time many artists flourished in Arezzo, but of these two only are praised by Vasari, who is not sparing in his commendations of the Florentines, as I have remarked, but deals them scantily to his own townsmen. Giovanni Antonio, the son of Matteo Lappoli, was the scholar of Pontormo, and the friend of Perino and of Rosso, with whom he lived in Tuscany, and whose style he emulated in Rome. He was more employed in painting for private houses than for churches. Guglielmo, surnamed Da Marcilla, by Vasari, a foreigner by birth, became a citizen of Arezzo from inclination and long residence; he was dear to the citizens, who afforded him the means of enjoying life, and grateful to the city, where he left most beautiful monuments of his genius. He had been a Dominican in his own country; he became a secular priest on arriving in Italy, and at Arezzo he was called the Prior. He was an excellent painter on glass, and on this account, was brought to Rome by one Claude, a Frenchman, to execute windows for Julius II.; but he also employed himself in fresco. He studied design in Italy, and so improved in that art, that his works at Rome seem designs of the fourteenth century, while the Aretine ones appear the work of a modern. He painted some ceilings and arches in the cathedral, with scriptural subjects in fresco. In design he followed Michelangiolo, as nearly as he could; but his colouring was not firm. His paintings on glass are quite in a different style; there, to very good drawing, and uncommon expression, he joined tints that partake of the emerald, the ruby, and of oriental sapphire, and which, when illuminated by the sun, exhibit all the brilliance of the rainbow. In Arezzo, there are so many windows of this glass at the cathedral, at S. Francis, and at many other churches, that they might excite the envy of much larger cities. They are so finely wrought with subjects from the New Testament, and other scriptural histories, that they seem to have reached the perfection of the art. The Vocation of S. Matthew, in a window of the cathedral, is highly praised by Vasari; it exhibits "perspectives of temples and flights of steps, figures so finely composed, landscapes so well executed, that one can hardly imagine they were glass, but something sent down from Heaven for the delight of mankind."

This place and period remind me, that before I pass on to another epoch, I ought to say a few words concerning the invention of painting on glass, which was anciently likewise styled Mosaic, because it was composed of pieces of different coloured glass, connected by lead, which represented the shadows. We may observe glass windows that emulate well composed pictures on canvass or on panel; and this art is treated of by Vasari in the thirty-second chapter of the introduction to his work. From the preface to the treatise De omni scientiâ artis pingendi, by Theophilus the Monk, I find that France was celebrated for this art beyond any other country;[177] and there the art seems to have been invariably cultivated, and brought by degrees to perfection. From the earliest ages of the revival of painting, the Italians wrought windows with different coloured glasses, as is remarked by P. Angeli in his description of the churches of Assisi, where the most ancient specimens are to be seen. In the church likewise of the Franciscan friars at Venice, we find that one Frater Theotonius, a German, worked in tapestry and glass windows, and was imitated by one Marco, a painter, who lived in the year 1335.[178] It may also be observed, that such windows over the altars supplied the place of sacred paintings in churches; Christian congregations, in lifting up their eyes, there sought the resemblance of what "they hoped some time to behold in the celestial paradise: che ancor lassù nel ciel vedere spera," and they often addressed their supplications to those images. In the fifteenth century Lorenzo Ghiberti, a man eminent in various arts, still further improved this, and ornamented the oval windows of the façade of the church of S. Francis, and of the cathedral of Florence with coloured glass. In a similar manner he finished all the oval apertures in the cupola of the cathedral, except that of the Assumption, executed by Donatello. The glass was manufactured at Florence, for which purpose one Domenico Livi, a native of Gambassi, in the principality of Volterra, who had learnt and practised the art at Lubec, was invited to that place, as is proved by Baldinucci in his correction of Vasari.[179] From this school apparently came Goro, and Bernardo di Francesco, with that train of Ingesuati, whose workmanship, exhibited at S. Lorenzo and elsewhere, has been much commended by the Florentine historians. (See Moreni, part vi. p. 41.) This art afterwards flourished at Arezzo, where it was introduced by Parri Spinelli, a scholar of Ghiberti. About the same time flourished in Perugia P. D. Francesco, a monk of Cassino, not merely a painter in glass, but a master in that city; and some conjecture that Vannucci profited by his school, though a comparison of dates does not much favour such a supposition. This art also flourished in Venice, about 1473, where one window was executed after the design of Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the church of S. John and S. Paul, and another was erected at Murano; but the art of painting glass could not be unknown at this last place, where it originated.

      It is true, that in process of time the Florentine and Venetian glass appeared to be not sufficiently transparent for such purposes; and that a preference was given to that of France and of England, the clearness and transparency of which was better adapted for receiving the colours, without too much obscuring the light. It had this other advantage, that the colours were burnt in the glass, in the manner described by Vasari, instead of being laid on with gums or other vehicles; hence they had greater brilliancy, and were more capable of resisting the injuries of time. This was a Flemish, or rather a French invention, and the Italians unquestionably received it from France. Bramante invited from that country the two artists above mentioned, who, besides the windows of the Vatican palace, that were wrought with colours burnt into the glass, and destroyed in the sack of Rome, in the time of Clement VII. ornamented two in the church of S. Maria del Popolo, with those scriptural histories that yet remain perfectly brilliant in colour, after the lapse of three centuries. Soon after this Claude died at Rome. William survived him many years, and from that time continued to reside in Arezzo. He there was engaged in the service of the capital, where one of his painted glass windows is preserved in the Capponi chapel, at the church of S. Felicità; and he taught the art to Pastorino of Siena, who exercised it very skilfully in the state saloon of the Vatican, after the designs of Vaga, and in the cathedral of Siena. This artist is reckoned the best scholar of his master. Maso Porro, Michelagnolo Urbani, both natives of Cortona, and Batista Borro of Arezzo, were trained in the same school, and were afterwards employed in Tuscany and elsewhere. In ornamenting the old palace, Vasari availed himself of the assistance of two Flemish artists, Walter and George, who wrought after his designs. Celebrated equal to any artist is Valerio Profondavalle of Louvain, who settled at Milan after the middle of the sixteenth century, a man of fertile invention, and a pleasing colourist in fresco painting, but chiefly eminent in painting on glass, as we are informed by Lomazzo. Orlandi celebrates Gerardo Ornerio Frisio, and his windows executed about 1575, in the church of S. Peter at Bologna. This art afterwards declined, when custom, the arbiter of arts, by excluding it from palaces and churches, caused it gradually to be forgotten.

Another method of painting on glass, or rather on crystal, was much in fashion in the last century, and was employed for ornamenting mirrors, caskets, and other furniture of the chambers of the great. Maratta and his contemporaries on crystal for such works in the same style that they employed in painting on canvass; and above all Giordano, who taught it to several pupils. Among these, the best was Carlo Garofalo, who was invited to the court of Charles II. of Spain, to practise this species of painting,[180] the era of which does not embrace a great number of years.

[128] Although Vasari, Borghini, and Baldinucci, have also treated of other schools, they have chiefly illustrated that of Florence, with which they were best acquainted. To them succeeded the respectable authors of the Florentine Museum, and of the Series of the