The History of Painting in Italy. Luigi Lanzi

Painters, containing choice anecdotes of those masters, which are now republished, and accompanied by a print from the work of each painter, in the Etruria Pittrice of the learned Sig. Ab. Lastri. Other anecdotes are to be found in the work of P. Richa On the Churches of Florence, and in Sig. Cambiagi's Guide to that City. Pisa too, has its Guide by the Cav. Titi; to which has succeeded the much larger work of Sig. da Morrona, above noticed. Siena has one by Sig. Pecci, Volterra another by Ab. Giachi, and Pescia and Valdinievole by the Ab. Ansaldi. Sig. Francesco Bernardi, an excellent connoisseur in the fine arts, prepared a guide to Lucca after Marchiò; it remains inedited since his death, together with his anecdotes of the painters, sculptors, and architects of his native country. Meanwhile the Diario of Mons. Mansi affords considerable information.

[129] Condivi promised to publish them, but this was never performed. See Bottari's notes on the life of Michelangiolo, p. 152, in Florent. edit. 1772.

[130] See the fine eulogy on him by Sig. Durazzini, among his Panegyrics on illustrious Tuscans, where he corrects Vasari, his annotators and others, who have fixed the birth of Lionardo before this year. Tom. iii. n. 25.

[131] See Sig. Piacenza, in his edition of Baldinucci, t. ii. p. 252. He has dedicated a long appendix to Vinci, in which he has collected all the anecdotes scattered through Vasari, Lomazzo, Borghini, Mariette, and other modern authors.

[132] "Leonardo seems to have trembled whenever he sat down to paint, and therefore never finished any of the pictures he began; for by meditation on the perfection of art, he perceived faults in what to others appeared admirable." Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della pittura, page 114.

[133] Both have perished, after serving as models to the best painters of that age, and even to Andrea del Sarto. See what has been written by Vasari, and by M. Mariette, in the long letter concerning Vinci, which is inserted in tom. ii. of Lett. Pittoriche.

[134] It was on account of the same procrastinating disposition that Leo X. withdrew the patronage he had conferred on him, and which he was accustomed to bestow upon all men of genius.

[135] Vasari.

[136] Vasari, who published a life of him in 1550, and enlarged it in another edition; and Ascanio Condivi da Ripatransone, who printed one in 1553, ten years before the death of Bonarruoti.

[137] He was very partial to this poet; whose flights of fancy he embodied in pen-drawings in a book, which, unfortunately for the art, has perished; and to whose memory he wished to sculpture a magnificent monument, as appears from a petition to Leo X. In it the Medicean Academy requests the bones of the divine poet; and among the subscribers we read the name of Michelangiolo, and also his offer. Gori Illustraz. alla vita del Condivi, p. 112.

[138] He projected a tract on "All the movements of the human body, on its external appearances, and on the bones, with an ingenious theory, the fruit of his long study." Condivi, p. 117.

[139] "Zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id amplius et augustius ratus; atque ut existimant Homerum secutus, cui validissima quæque forma etiam in fœminis placet." Inst. Orat. lib. xii. c. 10.

[140] None however of these great men presumed to despise Michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of Christ, in the Minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the Arte di Vedere. Mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. Juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (See Satire iii. v. 100.)

      ——"rides? majore cachinno Concutitur; flet si lacrymam conspexit amici, Nee dolet: igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas Accipit endromidem; si dixeris: æstuo, sudat."

[141] Bottari confesses "that he shews somewhat of mannerism, but concealed with such skill that it is not perceptible;" an art which very few of his imitators possess.

[142] See Winckelmann in his "Gems of Baron Stochs," where he records and comments upon the text of the historian, p. 316.

[143]

      "Duo Dossi e quel che a par sculpe e colora Michel più che mortal Angiol divino." Orl. Fur. Cant. xxxiii. 2.

[144] Raffaello came to Florence towards the end of 1504. (Lett. Pitt. tom. i. p. 2.) In this year Michelangiolo was called to Rome, and left his cartoon imperfect. Having afterwards fled from Rome, through dread of Julius II., he completed it in three months, in the year 1506. Compare the Brief of Julius, in which he recals Michelangiolo (Lett. Pitt. tom. iii. p. 320), with the relation of Vasari (tom. vi. Ed. Fiorent. p. 191). During the time that Michelangiolo laboured at this work, "he was unwilling to shew it to any person (p. 182); and when it was finished it was carried to the hall of the Pope," and was there studied (p. 184). Raffaello had then returned to Florence, and this work might open the way to his new style, which, as a learned Englishman expresses it, is intermediate between that of Michelangiolo and of Perugino.

[145] He chose the companions of those who had painted in the Sistine, Jacopo di Sandro (Botticelli), Agnolo di Donnino, a great friend of Rosselli, and the elder Indaco, a pupil of Ghirlandaio, who were but feeble artists. Bugiardini, Gianacci and Aristotile di S. Gallo, of whom we shall take further notice in the proper place, were there also.

[146] Varchio, in his Funeral Oration, p. 15.

[147] Idea del Tempio della Pittura, p. 47. Ed. Bologn.

[148] Tom. vi. p. 398.

[149] See Entretiens sur les Vies et sur les Ouvrages des plus excellens Peintres, tom. i. p. 502.

[150] See pp. 245, 253.

[151] Lett. Pitt. tom. iii. lett. 227. Rosa, Sat. iii. p. 85.

[152] Salvator Rosa in his third satire, p. 84, narrates the rebuke which the Prelate gave Michelangiolo for his indecency in painting the Saints themselves without garments.

[153] Microscosmo, p. 6.