But art was not so wholly pietistic as in the Gothic age. The study of nature and the antique materialized painting somewhat. The outside world drew the painter's eyes, and the beauty of the religious subject and its sentiment were somewhat slurred for the beauty of natural appearances. There was some loss of religious power, but religion had much to lose. In the fifteenth century it was still dominant.[60]
FIG. 27.--BOTTICELLI. CORONATION OF MADONNA. UFFIZI. Please click here for a modern color image
KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANTIQUE AND NATURE: The revival of antique learning came about in real earnest during this period. The scholars set themselves the task of restoring the polite learning of ancient Greece, studying coins and marbles, collecting manuscripts, founding libraries and schools of philosophy. The wealthy nobles, Palla Strozzi, the Albizzi, the Medici, and the Dukes of Urbino, encouraged it. In 1440 the Greek was taught in five cities. Immediately afterward, with Constantinople falling into the hands of the Turks, came an influx of Greek scholars into Italy. Then followed the invention of printing and the age of discovery on land and sea. Not the antique alone but the natural were being pried into by the spirit of inquiry. Botany, geology, astronomy, chem-istry, medicine, anatomy, law, lit[61]erature--nothing seemed to escape the keen eye of the time. Knowledge was being accumulated from every source, and the arts were all reflecting it.
The influence of the newly discovered classic marbles upon painting was not so great as is usually supposed. The painters studied
22
them, but did not imitate them. Occasionally in such men as Botticelli and Mantegna we see a following of sculpturesque example-- a taking of details and even of whole figures--but the general effect of the antique marbles was to impress the painters with the idea that nature was at the bottom of it all. They turned to the earth not only to study form and feature, but to learn perspective, light, shadow, color--in short, the technical features of art. True, religion was the chief subject, but nature and the antique were used to give it setting. All the fifteenth-century painting shows nature study, force, character, sincerity; but it does not show elegance, grace,
or the full complement of color. The Early Renaissance was the promise of great things; the High Renaissance was the fulfilment.
FLORENTINE SCHOOL: The Florentines were draughtsmen more than colorists. The chief medium was fresco on the walls of buildings, and architectural necessities often dictated the form of compositions. Distemper in easel pictures was likewise used, and oil-painting, though known, was not extensively employed until the last quarter of the century. In technical knowledge and intellectual grasp Florence was at this time the leader and drew to her many artists from neighboring schools. Masaccio (1401?-1428?) was the first great nature student of the Early Renaissance, though his master, Masolino (1383-1447), had given proof positive of severe nature study in bits of modelling, in drapery, and in portrait heads. Masaccio, however, seems the first to have gone into it
thoroughly and to have grasped nature as a whole. His mastery of form, his plastic composition, his free, broad folds of drapery, and
his[62] knowledge of light and perspective, all placed him in the front rank of fifteenth-century painters. Though an exact student
he was not a literalist. He had a large artistic sense, a breadth of view, and a comprehension of nature as a mass that Michael Angelo and Raphael did not disdain to follow. He was not a pietist, and there was no great religious feeling in his work. Dignified truthful appearance was his creed, and in this he was possibly influenced by Donatello the sculptor.
FIG. 28.--GHIRLANDAJO. THE VISITATION. LOUVRE. Please click here for a modern color image
He came early in the century and died early, but his contemporaries did not continue the advance from where he carried it. There
was wavering all along the line. Some from lack of genius could not equal him, others took[63] up nature with indecision, and others clung fondly to the gold-embossed ornaments and gilded halos of the past. Paolo Uccello (1397?-1475), Andrea Castagno (1390-
1457), Benozzo Gozzoli (1420?-1497?), Baldovinetti (1427-1499), Antonio del Pollajuolo (1426-1498), Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507), can hardly be looked upon as improvements upon the young leader. The first real successor of Masaccio was his contemporary, and possibly his pupil, the monk Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469). He was a master of color and light-and-shade for his time, though in composition and command of line he did not reach up to Masaccio. He was among the first of the painters to take the individual faces of those about him as models for his sacred characters, and clothe them in contemporary costume. Piety is not very pronounced in any of his works, though he is not without imagination and feeling, and there is in his women a charm of sweetness. His tendency was to materialize the sacred characters.
With Filippino (1457?-1504), Botticelli (1446-1510), and Ghirlandajo (1449-1494) we find a degree of imagination, culture, and independence not surpassed by any of the Early Florentines. Filippino modelled his art upon that of his father, Fra Filippo, and was influenced by Botticelli. He was the weakest of the trio, without being by any means a weak man. On the contrary, he was an artist
of fine ability, much charm and tenderness, and considerable style, but not a great deal of original force, though occasionally doing forceful things. Purity in his type and graceful sentiment in pose and feature seem more characteristic of his work. Botticelli, even, was not so remarkable for his strength as for his culture, and an individual way of looking at things. He was a pupil of Fra Filippo, a man imbued with the religious feeling of Dante and Savonarola, a learned student of the antique and one of the first to take subjects from it, a severe nature student, and a painter of much[64] technical skill. Religion, classicism, and nature all met in his work, but the mingling was not perfect. Religious feeling and melancholy warped it. His willowy figures, delicate and refined in drawing, are more passionate than powerful, more individual than comprehensive, but they are nevertheless very attractive in their tenderness and grace.
Without being so original or so attractive an artist as Botticelli, his contemporary, Ghirlandajo, was a stronger one. His strength came more from assimilation than from invention. He combined in his work all the art learning of his time. He drew well, handled drapery simply and beautifully, was a good composer, and, for Florence, a good colorist. In addition, his temperament was robust, his style dignified, even grand, and his execution wonderfully free. He was the most important of the fifteenth-century technicians, without having any peculiar distinction or originality, and in spite of being rather prosaic at times.
FIG. 29.--FRANCESCA. DUKE OF URBINO. UFFIZI. Please click here for a modern color image
Verrocchio (1435-1488) was more of a sculptor than a painter, but in his studio were three celebrated pupils--Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, and Lorenzo di Credi--who were half-way between the Early and the High Renaissance. Only one of them, Leonardo, can be classed among the[65] High Renaissance men. Perugino belongs to the Umbrian school, and Lorenzo di Credi (1450-1537),
though Florentine, never outgrew the fifteenth century. He was a pure painter, with much feeling, but weak at times. His drawing was good, but his painting lacked force, and he was too pallid in flesh color. There is much detail, study, and considerable grace about his
23
work, but little of strength. Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521) was fond of mythological and classical studies, was somewhat fantastic in composition, pleasant in color, and rather distinguished in landscape backgrounds. His work strikes one as eccentric, and eccentricity was the strong characteristic of the man.
UMBRIAN AND PERUGIAN SCHOOLS: At the beginning of the fifteenth century the old Siennese school founded by Duccio and the Lorenzetti was in a state of decline. It had been remarkable for intense sentiment, and just what effect this sentiment of the old Siennese school had upon the painters of the neighboring Umbrian school of the early fifteenth century is a matter of specula-tion with historians. It must have had some, though the early painters, like Ottaviano Nelli, do not show it. That which afterward be-came known as the Umbrian sentiment probably first appeared in the work of Niccolo da Foligno (1430?-1502), who was probably a pupil of Benozzo Gozzoli, who was, in turn, a pupil