The Brera Picture Gallery
“Chi sprezza la Pittura non ama la Filosofia ne la Natura.”—Leonardo da Vinci.
The Palazzo di Brera contains one of the finest collections of pictures in Italy. The palace itself, once the house of the great order of the Umiliati, and after them of the Jesuits, who in their turn were dispossessed by the State in 1772, is in its present form a grandiose seventeenth century building, with a double galleried cortile of fine proportions. In the midst of the cortile stands a statue of Napoleon Buonaparte, by Canova. The Biblioteca Nazionale occupies part of the building. There is a large fresco of the Marriage at Cana in Galilee on the staircase leading to the Library, by Callisto Piazza, one of the late Milanese school—a good example of the artist.
The Pinacoteca is entered from the upper loggia. The pictures have recently been admirably arranged. They are labelled with the names and dates of the artists, and the attributions are in accordance with the latest criticism. We shall only dwell on the most interesting of the numerous works, noticing particularly the local school.
We pass through Sala I. with cartoons by Andrea Appiani, a late eighteenth century Milanese artist.
Sala II. contains some of the best work of the early Lombard school, frescoes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which have been removed from churches 336and convents. We pass some unimportant primitive frescoes that would be beautiful in their original position, but lose artistic value in the narrow space where they are now seen, and come to three frescoes by Bramantino, which show him at his best. The Madonna and Child (15) is very characteristic of his manner, in the broad treatment of the flesh and drapery, in the blond types, and the way in which the figures are lighted from below. A Putto (16) has an irresistible charm. This child among the vine leaves is so true to nature, so full of joy and life. The St. Martin (17) is a noble conception of chivalrous youth. In beauty and refinement it excels any other work by Bramantino.
We now come to Vincenzo Foppa, who takes the most important place in the early Lombard school. Madonna and Child with SS. John Baptist and John Evangelist kneeling on each side (19). The composition is formal, but there is a strong feeling for nature in the figures. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (20) is a composition full of vigour and life; the saint’s figure is well drawn and modelled with a sculpturesque solidity. There is a na?ve simplicity in the expression of the archers’ faces and in their close vicinity to their mark, hardly in keeping with the academic feeling shown in the architectural surroundings. Foppa’s colour in these two frescoes is much fresher and pleasanter than in his altarpieces.
Next we have Borgognone (Ambrogio da Fossano), whom Morelli calls the Perugino of the Lombard school. These frescoes from the church of San Satiro belong to his best period. St. Martha, St. Catherine, St. Mary Magdalen (22); St. Barbara, St. Roch and St. Clara (23); St. Martina, St. Apollonia and St. Agnes (24). They are very beautiful figures, of most refined and delicate execution. St. Roch is especially fine, his poetic face shows a power of characterisation that is seldom seen in Borgognone’s work, and the St. Barbara is exquisitely graceful. It is very unfortunate that these valuable frescoes have been so much damaged. The large Madonna with angels and God the Father (25) is a fine picture, but loses its due effect in the narrow gallery.
PUTTO, FRESCO BY BRAMANTINO (BRERA)
To face p. 336] ???? [Anderson, Rome
337We come next to a number of frescoes by Bernardino Luini, where his fundamental faults, viz., heavy forms and want of drawing, are glossed over by his gift of charm. Madonna and Child, with a lamb and little St. John, in a landscape (63), is one of the best. The Madonna is tender and dignified, and there is an idyllic feeling about the whole that is very attractive. Madonna and Child with St. Anne (64) is also charming. St. Anne is a graceful figure in yellow and purple, a combination of colours which the peasant women of Lombardy wear to this day. There are some profane subjects, 70 to 76 inclusive, from the Villa Pelucca, near Monza. A young horseman in a decoratively-treated landscape (72); Sacrifice to Pan (73); Daphne (74); Birth of Adonis (76). A very charming bust of a young woman (75), whose golden hair and dress of palest puce and white against a background of pale green makes a pleasant colour harmony.
On the opposite wall are frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari, scenes from the life of the Virgin. There is life and movement in these paintings and a freshness both of treatment and feeling, but the execution is careless. The side panels of the Adoration of the Magi (33), with the servants and horses, are very spirited. The Meeting of the Virgin and Elizabeth (37) is rather theatrical, but the lines of the composition are good.
There are other frescoes by Marco d’Oggiono and Bernardino Lanino.
338Sala III.—Here we have pictures of the Venetian schools of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are examples by Moretto, and fine portraits by G. B. Moroni. By Paris Bordone there are three sacred subjects (106, 107, 108), and a picture called Gli Amanti Veneziani (105) which shows him in a more congenial mood. It has all the charm of rich colour and sensuous beauty, and one can admire the fine qualities of the technique here, whereas in the religious subjects it gives no pleasure. Near by hangs the masterpiece of the Brescian artist, Girolamo Savoldo, Madonna and Child, with SS. Peter, Domenico, Paul and Jerome (114). The background is especially beautiful, with its water and hills and luminous sky paling to an exquisite light on the horizon. The Cenacolo (117), doubtfully ascribed to Titian, cannot be considered his work. The rather uninteresting Adoration of the Magi (119) was begun by Palma Vecchio and finished by Cariani. The large Marriage of Cana (120) is a work of the school of Paolo Veronese. There are also pictures by the sons of il Bassano.
Sala IV. contains Venetian works of the sixteenth century. The first thing one sees is Tintoretto’s famous picture of St. Mark Appearing to the Venetians, who are searching for his body in the crypt of St. Eufemia of Alexandria (143). Mr. Berenson says of this picture—‘... the figures, although colossal, are so energetic and easy in movement, and the effects of perspective and of light and atmosphere are so on a level with the gigantic figures, that the eye at once adapts itself to the scale, and you feel as if you too partook of the strength and health of heroes.’[18] In Tintoretto’s Deposition of Christ (149), the grand lines of the shadowed figure fill us with a deep sense of tragedy. Of a very different character to these two pictures is
18. The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, p. 56.
339the festive scene, by Bonifazio Veronese (114), Moses Saved from the Water. The subject here is an excuse for one of those fêtes champêtres which the Venetian artists loved to paint. The picture shows us delightful groups of richly-dressed men and beautiful women in a romantic landscape, painted with all Bonifazio’s characteristic glory of colour.
Baptism and Temptation of Jesus (151) cannot be regarded as a genuine work of Paolo Veronese.
Sala V.—Venetian pictures of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries.—Gentile Bellini’s great canvas of the Preaching of St. Mark in the Piazza of Alexandria (164) is a stately representation of a contemporary scene; some of the groups are very quaint. It was finished by Gian Bellini. Bartolommeo Montagna has a very fine altarpiece, Madonna and Child, with SS. Andrew, Monica, Ursula and Sigismondo (165), signed 1498. There are three charming little pictures by Carpaccio—Marriage of the Virgin (169), Dispute of St. Stephen (170), and Presentation of Mary in the Temple (171). Three works by Cima show us this gentle artist at his best. St. Peter enthroned between SS. John Baptist and Paul (174) is a restful picture with devout saints; the mild and youthful St. John is a notable contrast to the wild and ascetic figure of this saint as usually depicted by the Florentines. The other two pictures are Madonna and SS. John Baptist, Sebastian, Roch, Magdalen and donors (175), and St. Peter Martyr between SS. Nicolo of Bari and Augustine (176). St. Sebastian (177), by Liberale da Verona, is a most delightful and satisfying picture, suffused with a golden glow, and the idealised figure of the saint forms an exquisite harmony with the colour of the houses and blue sky and water of the background.
Sala VI. contains three fine works by Titian. Portrait 340of Count Antonio Porcia (180) is a magnificent painting; the pale face, black dress and background, and blue landscape, make a striking arrangement of colour. The St. Jerome (182) is a late work, the rugged figure in the savage landscape is tremendously vigorous. Ruskin writes of this picture that it is ‘a superb example of the modes in which the objects of landscape may be either suggested or elaborated according to their place and claim. The larger features of the ground, foliage and drapery, as well as lion in the lower angle, are executed with a slightness that admits not of close examination.... But on the rock above ... there is a wreath of ivy, of which every leaf is drawn with the greatest accuracy and care, and beside it a lizard, studied with equal earnestness, yet always with that right grandeur of manner to which I have alluded....’[19] Beside the Titians, the picture by Palma Vecchio—S. Sebastian, Constantine, St. Helena, and St. Roch (179)—seems wanting in strength and distinction. St. Roch has a poetical head, and S. Sebastian is a well-painted nude, but the type is effeminate.
19. Ruskin, Modern Painters.
Sala VII.—Some of the finest portraits by the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto are here. Of the portrait of a Gentleman (183), Mr. Berenson says—‘This is the most subtle of all Lotto’s portraits in characterisation, and considered merely as technique, it is his most masterly achievement.’[20] Nos. 184 and 185 are almost certainly the portraits of Messer Febo da Brescia and Madonna Laura da Pola, his wife, which are known to have been painted in 1543-44. The woman, beautiful and distinguished, has an intent, sad gaze, with that reserve in her expression that one is familiar with in Lotto’s portraits. The man’s character is less complex than hers. Both portraits are of very
20. B. Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto.
341fine execution, though hers is the more delicate. The little panel, Assumption of the Virgin (186), is an early work with a pleasant landscape. The Pietà (188) is an important but unattractive composition.
Sala VIII. contains unimportant works of various Venetian schools.
Sala IX. is one of the most interesting of all, for here are the works of Gian Bellini, Mantegna, and some of the best examples of that individual and fascinating painter, Carlo Crivelli. On entering, one is at once arrested by the noble Pietà of Gian Bellini (214). In this most touching picture the artist has expressed himself with a deep human feeling which he rarely shows afterwards. We feel almost awed in the presence of the Mother’s infinite love and sorrow, and the perfect peace and calm of the dead Christ amid the agony of hopeless grief. St. John cries aloud in his despair, and a pitiless dawn is breaking behind them. It is an early work and the treatment of the flesh and heavy draperies is broad and severe. In the picture hanging next, Madonna and Child in a beautiful landscape (215), dated 1510, we see the change wrought by nearly fifty years. The intensity of feeling of the young Bellini has died away in technical perfection. The Madonna and Child (216) is an early work of the same period as the Pietà. In this beautiful sad Mother and Child is visible the earnest sentiment and the same broad manner of painting.
Mantegna’s three pictures hang opposite, and it is interesting to compare them with Bellini’s, as the two painters had much in common to start with, and departed widely each on his own lines afterwards. The Polyptych, St. Luke and other saints, with Pietà in upper part (200), is one of his earliest works, finished in 1454. The figures are very refined and carefully drawn, but they are rather stiff, and the 342execution almost timid. Beside this picture hangs one of his latest works, the Dead Christ and the Maries (199), and we can note the difference between the early and late style of the master; the careful academic manner of the first has yielded to the broad freedom of the second. This uncompromisingly foreshortened figure must have been an experiment, and is chiefly interesting technically. The Madonna and Child surrounded with cherubim (198) is a beautiful picture, painted in the broad manner of Mantegna’s maturity.
Carlo Crivelli fills the rest of the room with a wealth of colour and beauty. Madonna and Child with SS. Peter and Dominic (201) is so exquisite a picture, so lovely in colour and design, that one feels the last word has been said in an art that combines the highest decoration with a true and childlike religious feeling. Who has ever imagined a more pure and innocent creature than this lovely Madonna who sits with such unconscious grace in her rich garments on the stately throne? The Child, too, is so sweet as he earnestly squeezes a dove in both hands. The young S. Geminianus has the ardour of a martyr. The whole picture is a very exquisite harmony of colour and line. Coronation of Christ and the Virgin by the Eternal Father (202), signed and dated 1493, is a superbly decorative work glowing with rich colour. The flying angels seem really beings of the air, and the devout saints really dwellers in Paradise. S. Catherine and S. Sebastian are especially beautiful. The Pietà above (203) is very fine in composition, and the Christ is godlike with His long golden hair. The Crucifixion (206) is a restless composition. Crivelli has striven so hard to express his emotion, but the result is an exaggeration of forms and movement. There is no repose anywhere, draperies flying, fingers contorted; even the sky is in troubled wavelets. Madonna of the Candle (207). 343In this beautiful panel the Madonna sits like a goddess on her high throne, yet has all the sweetness of humanity. The perfect oval of her face and symmetry of her form are drawn by a master’s hand. The rich garland of fruits and the roses and lilies are painted with a loving care. There are also two panels of saints by Crivelli (204 and 205).
Sala X. contains Venetian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteent............