A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools. National Gallery (Great Britain)

there are few with any allegorical or mythological subject. Even after Leonardo came to Milan, bringing with him new motives and a wide curiosity, the native Lombard masters, such as Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, adhered in the main to sacred subjects. The Lombard School, it should be observed, was late in arising. The building of Milan Cathedral and the Certosa of Pavia in the first part of the fifteenth century directed the art-impulse of the time rather to sculpture, and it was not till about 1450 that Vincenzo Foppa came from Brescia and established the principal school of painting at Milan. Other schools started with spiritual aims, which wore off, as it were, under the new pleasure of sharpening their means of execution; but the Lombards first took up the art when it had already been reduced to a science. And then most of the painters were natives, not of some large capital, but of small towns or country villages. Thus Luini was born on the Lago Maggiore, and the traditions of his life all murmur about the lake district. But he learned technique at Milan; and thus came to "stand alone," adds Ruskin, "in uniting consummate art power with untainted simplicity of religious imagination" (see references under 18).

      With regard to the historical development of the school, it was founded, as we have seen, by Vincenzo Foppa, "the Mantegna of the Lombard School." Borgognone, his pupil, was its Perugino. Then came Leonardo from Florence, and the school divides into two sets – those who were immediately and directly his imitators, and those who, whilst feeling his influence, yet preserved the independent Lombard traditions. The visitor will have no difficulty in recognising the pictures of Beltraffio, Oggionno, and Martino Piazza as belonging to the former class. Solario, Luini, and Lanini are more independent. Lastly Sodoma, a pupil of Leonardo, went off to Siena and established a second Sienese School there, which is represented at the National Gallery by Peruzzi (218).

      FERRARESE AND BOLOGNESE SCHOOLS

      "One may almost apply to the School of Ferrara the proud boast of its ducal House of Este —

      Whoe'er in Italy is known to fame,

      This lordly house as frequent guest can claim."

Guidebook.

      The Schools of Ferrara and Bologna, which, as will be seen, are substantially one and the same, are interesting both for themselves and for their influence on others. Two of the greatest of all Italian painters – Correggio and Raphael – may be claimed as "guests," as it were, of "this lordly" school. Correggio's master was Francesco Bianchi of Ferrara, a scholar of Cosimo Tura, and may possibly have afterwards studied under Francia at Bologna;22 whilst as for Raphael, his master, Timoteo Viti, was also a pupil of Francia. The important influence of this school is natural enough, for the Ferrarese appear to have had much innate genius for art, and there is a note of unmistakable originality in their work.

      "The Art of the Emilia, the region that lies between the river Po and the Apennines, has been unduly neglected. Here there once dwelt a vigorous and gifted race, as original in their way as the Umbrians, Tuscans or Venetians, who found means of self-expression in form and colour under the political security of the Court of Este, and whose art forms an organic whole with stages of development and decay, characteristically differing, like their dialect, from that of other parts of Italy… The traveller visiting the now deserted city of Ferrara, who meditates on its records of the past, may still in fancy see erected again the triumphal arches which welcomed emperors, popes and princes in the 'quattro-cento'; the gilded barges ascending the river to the city; the platforms draped with the arras, on which were woven in gold and silk stories of cavaliers in tilt and tourney; the duke in his robes, stiff with brocade of gold and covered with gems, bearing a jewelled sceptre in his hand; the magnificently caparisoned steeds; the princesses who came in their chariots of triumph, to be brides of the house of Este… To trace the various processes, alike of thought, feeling and technique, which have gone to the making of a masterpiece of Correggio, L'Ortolano or Dosso is a fascinating pursuit. Only through knowledge of the tentative efforts of their predecessors at the splendid jovial court of the Este, is it possible to get a total impression. Born, as elsewhere, in bondage to rigid types and forms of composition, Ferrarese genius began by being profoundly dramatic and realistic. The masters of 1450 to 1475, well grounded in geometry, perspective and anatomy, painted rather what they saw than what they felt. Their aim was to conventionalise Nature rather than to transfigure her, and truth was more to them than beauty. The next generation, 1475 to 1500, developed technique so as to express movement and emotion, tempered by the eternal charm of antique ideals, till upon this sure foundation there arose men of high imagination and sentiment, who grasped and solved the mysteries of tone and colour, as distinguished from a brilliant palette" (R. H. Benson and A. Venturi in Burlington Fine Arts Club's Catalogue, 1894). Of the first or Giottesque period of the school no pictures survive, and the founder of the school, so far as we can now study it, is Cosimo Tura, who occupies the same place in the art of Ferrara as Piero della Francesca occupied in that of Umbria, or Mantegna in that of Padua. Look at his picture (772): one sees at once that here is something different from other pictures, one feels that one would certainly be able to recognise that "rugged, gnarled, and angular" but vigorous style again. Doubtless there was some Flemish influence upon the school (see the notes on Tura, No. 772); and doubtless also the Ferrarese were influenced by the neighbouring school of Squarcione at Padua. But the pictures of Tura are enough to show how large an original element of native genius there was. The later developments of this genius are well illustrated in this room, with the important exception that Dosso Dossi, the greatest colourist amongst the Ferrarese masters, is very incompletely represented. His best works are to be seen at Ferrara, Dresden, Florence, and the Borghese Palace. He has been called "the Titian of the Ferrarese School," just as Lorenzo Costa has been called its Perugino and Garofalo its Raphael. Such phrases are useful as helping the student to compare corresponding pictures in different schools, and thus to appreciate their characteristics.

      The early Bolognese School does not really exist except as an offshoot of the Ferrarese. Marco Zoppo (590) was "no better," says Morelli, "than a caricature of his master, Squarcione, and besides, he spent the greater part of his life at Venice;" whilst Lippo Dalmasii (752) was very inferior to contemporary artists elsewhere. The so-called earlier Bolognese School was really founded by the Ferrarese Francesco Cossa and Lorenzo Costa, who moved to Bologna about 1480, and the latter of whom "set up shop" with Francia in that town (see under 629). Remarks on the later "Eclectic" School of Bologna, formed by the Carracci, may more conveniently be deferred (see p. 35)

      THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

      "More allied to the Tuscan than to the Venetian spirit, the Umbrian masters produced a style of genuine originality. The cities of the Central Apennines owed their specific quality of religious fervour to the influences emanating from Assisi, the headquarters of the cultus of St. Francis. This pietism, nowhere else so paramount, except for a short period in Siena, constitutes the individuality of Umbria" (J. A. Symonds: Renaissance in Italy, iii. 133).

      Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth

      The Urbinate…

      Well, I can fancy how he did it all,

      Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,

      Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,

      Above and through his art…

Browning: Andrea del Sarto.

      The Umbrian School, unlike the Florentine, was distinctively provincial; painting was not centralised in any great capital, but flourished in small towns and retired valleys – in Perugia, Foligno, Borgo S. Sepolcro, S. Severino, Rimini (see 2118), etc. Hence the older traditions of Italian art held their ground, and the religious feeling of the Middle Ages survived long after it had elsewhere been superseded. This tendency was confirmed by the spirit of the district. The little townships of Umbria begirdle the Hill of Assisi, the hallowed abode of St. Francis, and were the peculiar seats of religious enthusiasm. Art followed the current of life, just as it did in Florence or Venice or Padua; and Umbria – "the Galilee," as it has been called, "of Italy" – thus produced a distinct type in painting, marked by a quality of sentimental pietism. The influence of Siena, whose artists worked at Perugia, must have made in the same direction, and it is interesting to