ar V 18142 §mmll UtiiMjsiitg Jibatg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Z891 AllLlP. - //?/?£ arV18142 Luca delta Robbia, Cornell University Library ,. 3 1924 031 255 056 olin,anx The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031255056 ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF THE GREAT ARTISTS. LUCA DELIA ROBBIA WITH OTHER ITALIAN SCULPTORS OF THE XV AND XVI CENTURIES. ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF THE GREAT ARTISTS. The fallowing volumes, lach illustrated with from 14 to 20 Engramigs, are nou. ready, price 3^. 6rf. Those marktd with an asterisk are 2s. dd. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. By F. S. Pulling, M.A. WILLIAM HOGARTH. By Austin Dobson. GAINSBOROUGH and CONSTABLE. By G. Brock-Arnold, M.A. LAWRENCE and R0MNEY.» By Lord Kon'ald Gower, F.S.A, TURNER. By Cosmo Monkhouse SIR DAVID WILKIE. By J. W. Mollett. B.A. SIR EDWIN LANDSEER. By F. G. Stephens. GIOTTO. By Harry Quilter, M.A. FRA ANGELICO and BOTTICELLI. By C. M. Phillimore. FRA BARTOLOMMEO and ANDREA DEL SARTO. By Leader Scott. MANTEGNA and FRANCIA. By Julia Cartwright. GHIBERTI and DONATELLO.* By Leader Scott. LUCA DELLA ROBBIA and CEF.lInL* ISy Leader Scott. LEONARDO DA VINCL By Dr. J. Paul Richter. MICHELANGELO BUONARROTL By Charles Clement. RAPHAEL. By N. D'Anvers. TITIAN. By R. F. Heath, M.A. TINTORETTO. By W. R. Osler. CORREGGIO.* By M. Compton Heaton. VELAZQUEZ. By^. Stowe, M.A. MURILLO.* By Ellen E. Minor. ALBRECHT DURER. By R. F. Heath. M.A. THE LITTLE MASTERS of GERMANY. By W. E. ScOTT HANS HOLBEIN. By Joseph Cundali.. OVERBECK. By J. Beavington Atkinson. REMBRANDT. By J. W. Mollett, B. A. RUBENS. By C. W. Rett, M.A. VAN DYCK AND HALS. By P. R. Head, B.A. FIGURE PAINTERS of HOLLAND. By Lord Ronald Gower, F.S.A, CLAUDE LORRAIN. By Owen J. Dullea. WATTEAU. By J. W. Mollett, B.A. VERNET and DELAROCHE. By J. RuuTZ Rees. MpISSONIER.* By J. W. Mollett, B.A. The Singees. Bas-tjelief in mauble foe the Organ Gallery of the Ddomo at Floeence, A.D. 1431. By LrcA della Eobbia. In the National Museum, Florence. " Tke whole world without Art would he one great wilderness.' LUCA DELIA ROBBIA WITH OTHER ITALIAN SCULPTORSi BY LEADER gCOTT AUTHOR OF LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON (Limited) st. dunstan's house, fetter lane, fleet street, e.c. 1890 PEEFACE. This little work is intended to form a sequel to the previous volume in tLis series on Ghiberti and Dona- tello. In that I have given an outline of the rise of Italian Sculpture to the schools founded by those two great artists. In this volume the .progress of the art through the loth and ] 6th centuries is slightly sketched. The subject being large, the lives many, and space limited, the compression of facts necessary even in a mere outline of the history of Italian Sculpture, pre- cludes the possibility of admitting any original matter. This may perhaps be no drawback, as in a work of this kind it is more needful to make a concise tabulation of facts and clear classification of the different schools and their masters than to give expression to individual opinion. I trust that I have so far succeeded iu this, that the volume will prove a useful handbook for foreign travel as well as a guide to the study of sculpture in our own Museums. Leadee Scott. Florence, March 18S3, - CONTENTS. PART I. THE MASTERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. PAGE I. IIiNO DA FlESOLE , . . 1 II. Andkea del VeK1!0CL-III0 9 HI. Matieo Civitale and Vittore Pisaxo ...... 18 PART II. THE ARTIST FAMILIES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. I. The RossELLisrt 25 II. The Della Robbia Fajiiia- 33 III. The Majani 45 PART III. THE ARCHITECT-SCULPTORS OF THE RMklSSANCE. I. GiuLiAxo AND Antonio San Gallo 52 II. Andhea and Jacopo Sansovino .55 III. Benedetto da Rovezzako . . . . 63 PART IV. SCULPTURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. I. Baccio Bandinelli C8 II. BaP.TOLOMMEO AMM.iNNATI AND TlilEOI.O . ... .73 III. Benvenuto Cellini .... 78 IV. Giovanni da Bologna 8S PART V. THE SIENESE SCHOOL. I. The Eakly Masters of Siena 91 II. Niccol6 Aretino 99 III. jACOrO BELLA QUERCIA 132 Index 112 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PACB I. The Singers. By Luca della Robbia Frmili piece. II. The Nativity. By LtrcA della Eobbia .... 1 III. Bust of TSicxoih Stkozzi. By Miso da Fiesole . 6 IV. PonTKAIT OF VEnEOCCHIO 8 V. Statue of David. By VEBnoccnio 13 VI. Boy with Dolphin. By Veruocchio 13 VII. Medal of Sigismokdo Malatesta. By Vittore PiSANO 23 VIII. Monument of Cardinal Jacoi'o of Poiitugal. By Antonio Eossellino 29 IX. Porteait of Luca della Robbia 32 X. Dancing Boys. By Luca della Robbia .... 34 XI. June. By Luca della Robbia 36 XII. Madonna in Adoration. By Luca della Robbia . 38 XIII. Madonna and Child. By Luca della Robbia . . 40 XIV. Coronation of the Virgin. By Luca della Robbia 42 XV. Madonna and Child. By Andrea della Robbia . 44 XVL The Seven Works of Mercy. By Giovanni della Robbia 47 XVII. Madonna in Glory. By Benedetto da JIajano . 50 XVIII. Tomb of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. By Andrea Sansovino 58 XIX. St. John the Baptist. By Jacoi'o SAnsovini . . 60 XX. Marble Bas-reliefs. By Bandinelli 71 XXI. Medal of Francis I. By Cellini 80 XXII. Perseus with the head of Medusa. By Cellini . 83 XXIII. Mercury. By Giovanni da Bologna 88 XXIV. Bas-relief. By Niccoix) Aretino IGO XXV. Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. By Jacopo dei.la QUEROIA 105 The Natitity. Bas-Eeliep. By Luca Della Uobbia. In Florence. PAET I. MASTERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. MINO DA FIESOLE. I'N the previous volume on. the Italian Sculptors,^ we have given a slight 'sketeh of the rise of sculpture under the Pisani, and its development in Florence under the two great masters, Ghiherti and DonateUo. From these two, each so excellent in art yet diverse in style, sprang two distinct schools. DonateUo heads the earnest naturalistic school, which, blending a study of classic art with a true love of nature, brought forth such artists as Verrocchio, Luca della Eobbia, Civitale, Jacopo deUa Quercia, and finally culminated in Michelangelo. Ghiberti's polished pictorial style, becoming embued with the spirit of the Eenaissance in its later phases, produced the decorous ornate works of EosseUino, Desiderio da Settignano, the Majani, Eovezzano and San- sovino. Yet the followers of DonateUo, possessing a more perfect technical knowledge, want the spontaneous earnestness 1 ' Ghibei'ti and DonateUo.' E.I.S. — 2 B a EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. which ia so charming in his own works, and Ghiberti's successors with more learning lack their master's intuitive perception and finished composition. In DonateUo's school Hve the free spirit of the Eepuhlic aild a childlike devotion to nature ; in that of Ghiberti's successors, the sophistication and pedantry of the Eenaissance make themselves evident. Among the masters of the fifteenth century who can scarcely he classed with either school is the purist Mino da Kesole, who might be called the Fra Angelico among sculptors, so devotional and purely conceived are his works, and so delicate and soft his style. Although called Fiesolan, Mino was born in 1430-1, at Poppi in the Casentino, his father being Giovanni di Mini.'^ He was a scholar of Desi- derio, or perhaps it would be more proper to say an associate, as the two artists were nearly the same age. He certainly followed the style of Desiderio, adding to it a higher finish, a less sophisticated manner, and the charm of his own pure, devotional mind. His first known, independent work was the bust of Rinaldo della Luna, executed in 1461,^ soon after which he must have taken his iirst journey to Eome, whither he went in 1463 to assist other sculptors in the pulpit of the Papal Benediction at St. Peter's. Here he so distinguished himself that the Cardinal Girolamo d'Estouteville employed him to sculpture the altar of San Girolamo, in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. He executed some beautiful reliefs of scenes from the life ' "We gather this from "il Libro della Matricola de' Maestri di pietraelegnarae," where he is called Minus .Johannis Mini de Pupio. In the tax-papers {caiasto) of 1469-70 he declares himself 40 years of age. * Milanesi, 'Annot. Vasari,' vol. iii. p. 129. MINO DA FIESOLE. 3 of tlie saint, and also made a portrait bust of the Cardinal. The reliefs have disappeared. It is said that some figures from the altar are in the possession of Mons. G. Dreyfus in Paris. When he returned from Eome, Mino matriculated in the " Arte de' Maestri di Pietra " in Florence, on the 24th July, 1464, after which he ohtained several commissions in that city. Dietisalvi Neroni employed him to make a hust of himself in that same year, and ths Fiesolan Bishop Salutati had previously given him the order to sculpture a monument to himself for the Duduio of Fiesole. The Bishop died in 1466, in which year the tomb is dated, but the intensely life-like bust which forms part of the monument was probably made during the life of the Prelate. It is the most highly-finished, expressive piece of sculpture imaginable ; a keen, nervous face, at once kindly and sharp, but intensely alive. The details of dress and decoration are highly finished to the most minute point. The tomb, which rests on ornate consoles above the bust, shows the same care, skill, and finish, and a degree of originality in composition, which proves that Mino was not a mere imitator. In the same chapel of the Duomo of Fiesole, opposite this tomb, is an altar, which Mino also made for the Bishop Leonardo Salutati. The dossal is in three compartments, the Virgin and Child, with the infant St. John in the centre, and St. Lawrence and St. Kemigius in the side niches. The lovely devotional face of the kneehng Virgin, the unconscious grace of the children playing at her feet, are most charming, while the saints are full of noble dignity and truth of modelling. In this work he seems to have wrought the marble till it became soft under his hands. No word can so well express this especial characteristic of Mino's handling as the Italian moriidezza. B 2 i EAHI.Y ITALIAN SCULPTORS. By this time lie had teen twice married, his first wife being Francesca, daughter of a carpenter named Angelo, and his second, Giana di Giuliano d' Antonio. His first son Giuliano was horn in 1466, and died in the same year. He was followed, however, by six brothers, who aU lived. Mino's next important work was the tomb in the Badia at Florence, of Bernardo Giugni, an eminent citizen and Florentine ambassador, who died 1466. A figure of Justice, very much in the style of Desiderio, fiUs the lunette of the arch above the sarcophagus on which the deceased is lying in efiigy ; the whole tomb is in relief on the wall of the church. The monks of the Badia were so pleased with this tomb, that they commissioned him in 1469 to sculpture a monu- ment to the founder of their abbey. Count Ugo. The Count lived in the teuth century, and like most mediaeval saints was converted from a worldly hfe by a vision. Having lost his way in a forest while hunting, he came one day to a forge on which the devil was beating out the black souls of the con- demned like bars of iron. So horror-struck was Count Ugo, that he vowed himself to a life of penitence ; forthwith sold- liis estates and built seven abbeys, of which the Badia was one. In the tomb which Mino sculptured to his memory, he followed very nearly the composition of the Giugni tomb, but in the place of Justice he placed Charity and a lovely Madonna and Child in the lunette of the arch. The whole tomb is highly ornate, and richly finished. He was paid 1600 lire for it, besides an additional sum on Jan. 4th, 1481, because he had made several accessories of marble instead of limestone. In the same year, 1469, his old patron, Dietisalvi N"eroni, desired him to sculpture a Madonna and Child, with St. Leonard and St. Lawrence in mezzo-rilievo, which he intended MINO DA FIESOLE. 5 to place in the chapter-house of San Lorenzo, but at Neroni's death it fell into the hands of the " Dieci di Balia," in the name of his creditors, and was placed in the sacristy of the Badia, the monks of the order paying Mino, on Oct. 13, 1470, thirty-two large gold florins, which were stUl due to him, and they took off part of the rent of his house which belonged to the monastery.'- The relief is now over a private altar in the convent. In 1471 Nino's second journey to Eome took place. Cardinal Barbo 'having employed him to make the tomb for his uncle, — that vainest of Popes, Paul II. His design was extremely rich, the whole work being covered with ornamentation, in the shape of winged boys, arabesques, and scrolls. The sarcophagus on which the effigy of the Pope reclined, was covered with Scriptural and allegoric reliefs. The columns which supported the arch above were adorned with saints in niches, the lunette was filled with bas-reliefs of the Last Judgment and the Resurrection, the Creation of Eve and the Temptation, besides figures of Faith and Charity in relief. ,In the first-named, Paul II. and the Emperor Frederick III. are being introduced into heaven by St. John the Baptist. The church of Santa Maria in Trastevere at Rome has a beau- tiful tabernacle by Mino. Two angels sustain a little bronze door which closes the receptacle for the holy wafer. Above it Christ, with the cross in His hands, holds a chalice from which emanates flame. The arch which surmounts this is supported on Corinthian pilasters, and adorned with cherubs' heads. There is an architrave similarly sculptured, two statuettes in niches, and a tympanum in which is a dove, emblem of the Holy Spirit. It is inscribed, " Opus Mini." In the same year, 1 Milanesi, 'Annot. Vasari,' voL iii. p. 120 note. EAELT ITALIAN SCULPTORS. 1471, Mino sculptured a similar tabernacle for the Duomo of Volterra ; he also made one for the nuns of Sant' Ambrogio. In this, instead of Christ holding a vase of flame, the Infant Bcsr OF NiccoLO Stbozzi. By Mino da Fiesole. In the Berlin Museum. Jesus arises from the chalice ; and the gradino has a relief of the miraclo of the Sacrament. The nuns were so pleased with this highly-finished work that they paid without demur the full price demanded, 160 florins. The tabernacle is now in MINO DA FIESOLE. 7 the cliapel of the Novitiate in Santa Croce, where it was placed in 1815. The year 1473 is marked by two important works, one at Perugia, whither he sent an altar-piece for the chapel just erected in the Duomo by the Baglioni family. The dossal is in three compartments, divided by pilasters, and finished with architraves, cornices, and gradini, all adorned with delicate sculpture. In the centre is a Pietk, in a tabernacle ; four angels surround it in attitudes of adoration ; beneath this is an Infant Christ. The side compartments have alti-relievi representing St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome. The eyes, hair, and borders of the drapery of these statues show traces of colour and gilding, as do many of Mino's works. The reliefs which he contributed to the pulpit at Prato date from this same year. The commission was given to him and Antonio Eossellino ; Mino's share was two compartments with reliefs from the life of St. John the Baptist, but the work falls far below his usual excellence. There are several portrait busts attributed to Mino in the National Museum of Florence, amongst which are those of Einaldo della Luna, Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici and his wife, and Dietisalvi Neroni, with the relief profiles of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Federico, Duke of Urbino. There is also a charming round relief of the Virgin and Child. A fine bust of Mccolo Strozzi is in the Berlin Museum. Mino died on July 11, 1484, from injuries received in trying to move some heavy marbles. He was buried in Sant' Ambrogio.^ In his will he left his design for the fagade of the Duomo of Florence to the Opera del Duomo. 1 From the 'Libro do' Morti,' cited by G. Milanesi, in 'Aunot. Vasari,' vol. iv. p. 125. Andbea del Veebocchio. CHAPTER IL ANDREA DEL VEKROCCHIO. ALTHOUGH a man of versatile talent, being at the same time a goldsmith, sculptor, intagliatore, painter, and musician, Andrea del Verrocchio was not endowed with genius, and did not achieve great excellence in any branch. He is more famous as being the master of Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci, who soon soared beyond his instruc- tions, than for any great work of his own. He was born in 1435, being the son of Michele di Francesco di Clone, a baker, and Nannina his second wife. The artistic talent does not seem to have been hereditary, Andrea being the first artist of the family, and his brothers following other trades. A nephew and grandnephew were, however, painters, probably his followers. The name " del Verrocchio " was probably given to him from his having studied gold working with a certain Giuliano Verrocchi.^^ Baldinucci, quoting an old MS; of the Strozzi family, asserts that Verrocchio was a scholar of Donatello ; and the fact that he helped that mastar in the marble Lavaho of the sacristy pf San Lorenzo renders the assertion probable, although there is no other positive > Mflanesi, from 'Del Migliore Bifiessimi al Vasari,' MS. Maglia- becchian Library, Florence. 10 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. proof, and his works furnish no internal evidence of stylo. It would seem that he was in early life apprenticed to Verrocchio the goldsmith, and began painting later, hut did not follow out the career, for he soon relinquished the brush for the chisel. There might be a little truth in Vasari's story that he gave it up in anger because his pupil Leonardo had so soon surpassed him in excellence, as his well-known angel in the Baptism of Christ at the Belle Arte remains to prove. He may have recognised the fact of the mediocrity of his own talent by that incident, and in a moment of discouragement made a rash vow not to paint again. That he was of an impulsive, hasty disposition is shown by an incident of his youth. "When he was seventeen years of age (1452) he was Avith several companions outside the walls near the Porta a Pinti, when they began to throw stones, and Andrea so injured a boy named Antonio di Domenico that he died a few days afterwards. It was not till 1453 that he was absolved from homicide.^ Although Vasari speaks of chalices and buttons for piviali, worked by Verrocchio in his youth, the earliest documentary evidence we have of his employment in metal- working is the commission, dated Sept. 10, 1468, for the ball to be placed on the cupola of the Duomo. It was completed in 1471, and weighed 4368 Tuscan lbs. It was not placed, however, till May 27, 1472, when it was drawn up to its position, and next day, " at the ninth hour was fixed in the name of God." 2 This ball was struck by lightning on Jan. 17, 1600, and fell into the piazza. It was replaced by a larger one made by Bronzino in the time of Ferdinand I. ^ 'Libro delle Provisioni della Repubblica di Firenze,' anno 1453, a. c. 23 tergo. ^ Taken from the ' Diary of Luca Landucci.' MS. ANDEEA DEL VEREOCCHIO. 11 In 1472 Verrocohio was called on to make the tornh of Piero and Giovanni de' Medici, sons of Cosmo, which con- sists of a simple porphyry sarcophagus, adorned with bronze tablet and fohage, and a finely-wrought rope network in bronze. It stands in the sacristy of San Lorenzo. During the next year he was called to Prato to adjudicate the value of the pulpit made by Mino of Piesole and Antonio Eos- seUino; and in 1474 he and other artists were requested to send in models for the sepulchre of Cardinal Niccolo Forte- guerri at Pistoja. The model ^ of Verroochio gave the greatest satisfaction, but the price he asked was too high, aiid while the Council was deliberating whether they would pay his terms Piero del PoUajuolo sent in a model, which was seen and approved, just after Verrocchio had obtained the commission. The family of the Cardinal made efforts to put off Verrocchio, but they did not succeed, for Andrea was certainly the author of the statue of Hope and the relief of the Almighty sur- rounded by Angels which adorn the monument. The tomb was finished by Lorenzetto, or Lorenzo Lotti, and Gaetano Mazzoni, and is, as may be imagined, a heavy and inhar- monious work. In this year, 1474, Verrocchio cast a bronze boll, worked out with bas-reliefs, for the abbey of Montescalari ; so it is evident that if, as Mr. Perkins asserts,^ his journey to Eome took place between 1474-76, it must have been after this date— probably in 1475— during which no works are chronicled in Florence. He was called to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV. to cast some statuettes of the apostles in silver for the papal chapel. These, as well as almost all his works in metal, have disappeared. 1 Now ;ii the South Kensington Museum. • Perkins's 'Tuscan Sculptors,' vol. I. oh. vi. p. 177. 12 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. It is said by Vasari, and repeated by most authors, that whilst in Eome he sculptured a monument in Santa Maria sopra Minerva to Selvaggia, the wife of Francesco Tomabuoni, who died in child-bed ; of which monument, the relief repre- senting the scene of the death-bed is now, by some strange chance, in the Bargello of Florence. Sig. G. Milanesi^ proves that some mistake exists with regard to this relief and tomb. There were only two of the family Tomabuoni named Francesco, one of whom died in 1436 while Verrocchio was an infant • and the other died in 1484, his wife Marietta Valori surviving him. Baron Eeumont supposes the tomb, if made, was to Francosca di Luca Pitti, wife of Giovanni Tomabuoni ; basing his theory on a letter written from Eome by Giovanni to Lorenzo il Magnifico, announcing the death of his wife in child-bed on Sept. 24, 1477 ; but whether Vcrrocchio's relief was ever sent to Eome, or whether the ton;b was erected in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, there is nothing to prove. Vasari might have confounded his account of it with the tomb of Giovanni Francesco Toma- buoni, erected i i that church by Jlino Fiesole. Verrocchio's relief, whether or not it was used for the purpose designed, is decidedly one of his best works in marble. With all his faults of style and hardness of execution, ho has in this attained to a great expression of passion. The dying woman is supported on her couch, and her friends give way to unre- strained grief around her. If Eeumont's theory be true, this work cannot be dated before 1478 ; consequently the •bronze David of the Bargello, which was made in 1476, miist have been cast two years previously. ITiis is a very weak conception, though animated and life-like. The shepherd hero is small and meagre in his ' ' Annot. Vasari,' vol. iii. p. 860. Dayid. Bronze Statue by Veerocchio. a.d. 1476. In the National Museum, Florence. U EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. proportions ; his thin face overpowered by a profusion of curls. Scriptural tradition is defied by his being represented in a corslet ; and the left hand resting on the hip gives a flippant attitude very much at variance with the subject. A far better specimen of Verrocchio's genius is the bronze boy with a dolphin, now on the fountain in the Cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence — a charming bit of modelling. A little later he took his part in decorating the beautiful silver altar of the Baptistery of Florence, for which he modelled the compartment of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist; and in 1471 he had begun the bronze group of St. Thomas feeling the wounds of Christ, which was placed in a tabernacle made by Donatello on the front of the church of Or San Michele. It was originally intended that Donatello should sculpture the group for this niche ; but there had been a division of opinion among the consuls of the Guild of Mer- chants, who gave the order ; some wisliing Ghiberti to have the commission, others Donatello. The dispute remained undecided during the lifetime of the two artists, and was afterwards given to Verrocchio. The group is a fair specimen of his style, being crude and hard, and yet not devoid of expression. It was not finished till 1483, when he was paid 800 large florins for it. In 1479 the Venetian Senate sent for Andrea Verrocchio to cast an equestrian statue in bronze of their general, Bar- tolommeo Coleoni, one of the most famous Condottieri of the time, and the most formidable enemy of the Visconti of Milan. Coleoni at his death at Bergamo, in 1476, left his posses- sions and 216,000 gold florins to the Venetian Eepublic on condition that his equestrian statue should be erected on the Piazza of St. Mark. The Senate kept the letter of the will, but evaded the spirit, by having it placed on the Piazza of ANDREA DEL VEREOCCHIO. 15 the " School of St. Mark,'' an old law forbidding them to encumber the piazza of the church of that name. Verrocchio, who had while in Eome studied very closely the statue of Marcus Aurelius and other antiques, set to work with great energy, and had modelled a very fine horse, when hearing that the Senate intended Vellano of Padua, Dona- tello's pupU, to make the rider, Verrocchio gave way to one of his passionate impulses, and breaking up his model, returned to Florence. After forbidding him to again enter Venetian territory — to which decree Verrocchio sent a very independent answer — the Senate revoked their edict and recalled him, doubled his pay, and promised him entire supervision of the work. So Verrocchio patched together his broken model, and returning to Venice, cast his horse ; but exposing himself to extremes of heat and cold in the process, he took a chill and died, leaving Lorenzo di Credi, his favourite scholar, as his executor, to finish the work. This wish, however, the Senate disregarded; and by their order the statue was completed by Alessandro Leopardo, who was from that time known as Alessandro del CavaUo. The whole statue is very imposing, great power and firmness are expressed in the fearless visage and stalwart limbs of Coleonij but the only part to which Verrocchio can lay claim is the modelliag of the horse, which shows a direct study of the antique.^ Ifot confining himself to the more durable materials of marble and bronze, Verrocchio did not disdain to model in wax. Several of those curious efiigies in wax, richly clad in the costume of the time, which were hung up in crowds round 1 An illustration of this statue will be found in tlie account of Ven-occhio in Miss Catherine Mary Phillimore's 'Fra AngeUoo,' p. 104. 16 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. the miraculous altar in tlie cliurch. of the SS. Annunziata as votive ofEerings, were his work. The three ex votos of Lorenzo cle' Medici, made on the occasion of his escape from the Pazzi conspiracy, are men- BoT ■WITH Dolphin. By Teeeocchio. Figure on top of Fountain in the Court of the Palazzo Vecohio, Florence. tioried as Verrocchio's masterpieces in this style. He was assisted in these hy his friend Orsino, a famous worker in wax. One of them was dressed in the clothes which Lorenzo wore at the time of the conspiracy. , ANDREA DEL VERROCCniO. 17 Verrocchio also made several crucifixes in wood, and worked in terra cotta. A fine crucifix in terra cotta by Hm is in the South Kensington Museum. Nor did he disdain to fashion the figure of a boy to strike the hours on the clock of the Mercato Nuovo. It is believed that he was the first sculptor who cast moulds in plaster of Paris. So much did he use Lis new invention that it became a fashion in Florence to have a cast of the features of the dead taken in plaster ; so that every house had a collection of " penates " more awful than beautiful. The ancients also used gypsum in casting moulds, so that this was probably one among the many classical revivals of the age. After Verrocchio's death, in 1488, his disciple Lorenzo di Credi brought his remains back to Florence, and buried them in the church of Sant' Ambrogio, in the sepulchre of Ser Micliele di Clone. The list of his pupils contains several famous names — Pietro Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, and Lorenzo di Credi, painters ; Francesco di Simone, Donatello's nephew, and Nanni Grosso, sculptors ; besides Agnolo di Polo, a worker in terra cotta. E.I.S. — 2 CHAPTEE IIL MATTEO CIVITALI AND VITTORE PISANO. MATTEO, son of Giovanni Civitali cli Lucca, was one of the finest sculptors of his age, although from the fact of his best works being localized, in a country town off the beaten track of tourists, he is not so well known as he deserves to be. It is not certain whether he was an ofifshoot of the Florentine or the Sienese school. Vasari says he was pupil of Jacopo della Querela, but chronology forbids the supposition, as Matteo was only bom in 1435, three years after Delia Querela died. It is probable that he had his artistic training in Florence, where Ghiberti, DonateUo, and the Della Eobbias still laboured. Civitali's first independent work was the tomb of Pietro da Noceto, in the cathedral of Lucca, which was finished in 1472. The similarity of this to Desiderio's tomb of Mar- suppini, in Santa Croce, has been taken as a proof of his Florentine training. Florentine artists were called in to value this tomb, and Antonio Eossellino esteemed it at 4.50 ducats. There is, however, only a note of payment of 350 for it to Civitali. In 1478 he adorned with marble sculpture the choir of the Duomo of Lucca, but when the choir was destroyed the CIVITALI. 19 i'elie''s were removed to the sanctuary, A similar fate befell a,n altar-piece which. Civitali was employed by Domenico Bertini, of Gallicano, to make for the chapel of the Sacrament in the Duomo : only two angels remain of this work. His capo dJopera was the marble temple which contains the Volto Santo in the Duomo of Lucca. The contract was made on January 18th, 1482, between Domenico Bertini and Matteo Civitali ; the architect being bound to erect an octangular marble temple with a statue of St. Sebastian within thirty months, the price fixed being 750 ducats, besides a walled orchard and house in Lucca. Architecturally, this miniature temple is a very beautiful specimen of pure Eenaissance style ; ^ the statue of St. Sebastian is full of feeling. It is said that Perugino admired it extremely. The altar of St. Eegulus in the same church was sculptured in 1484, and is a lovely specimen of Civitali's style. Life-size statues of St. Regulus, St. Sebastian, and St. John the Baptist stand in three niches. The pedestal is wreathed with flowers and fruit, and beneath the niches are three reliefs of scenes from the lives of the respective saints. Four fine brackets sustain the sarcophagus' with the recumbent efiigy of the bishop. A statuette of the Virgin and Child in a niche surmounts all. In 1486 Civitali made a compact to adorn with marble sculptures the twenty-two altars of the Duomo of Pisa, which were hitherto of stucco. He was paid ten gold florins on account, but though other payments are chronicled he did not finish the undertaking, but handed his designs to other sculptors to execute. He was almost an old man when he was called to Genoa ' This tabernacle has since been overladen with gilding which quite destroys the purity of effect. C 2 £0 EARLT ITALIAN SCULPTORS. in 1496 to decorate the chapel where the ashes of St. John the Baptist repose. For this he sculptured six heautiful statues, life-size, of Adam, Eve, Zacliariali, Elizaheth, Habalc- hulf, and Isaiah. The Zachariah is especially fine and noble. In the lunettes above Isaiah, Ere, and Elizabeth, were reliefs of scenes from the life of the Baptist. The Uffizi Gallery of Florence possesses a lovely relief of Faith, full of earnest religious feeling ; a charm which some of his works possess in an intense degree. He died on October 12th, 1501, leaving a son Niccolo, who followed his father's art. Others of the CivitaU family have been also noted as sculptors and architects. ViTTORE PiSANO, called Pisanello, although he styled him- self Pisanus Pictor and was celebrated for the excellence of his frescoes, has nevertheless a place in these pages due to his fame as a medallist. Indeed the art of casting medallions, which had died out since the days of the Eomans, — if we except the quasi-classic coins of Frederick II. at Naples in the twelfth century — revived in Vittore Pisano, whose long line of followers has given to Italy a collection of medals, almost equal in art to those of the Eoman Empire. Vittore was a Veronese, born 1380 (?) ; died about 1456. Vasari says he studied painting under Andrea del Castagno in Florence, but this is not proved by any trustworthy evidence. All his earlier career seems, however, to have been given to painting. He finished some frescoes com- menced by Gentile da Fabriano in San Giovanni in Laterano at Eome, and adorned the Pellegrini chapel in the Church of Sant' Anastasia at Verona, with some very characteristic frescoes of the lives of St. Eustace and St. Oeorge. A PISANELLO. 21 tampera painting of SI. Anthony and St. George by him is iu the National Gallery. This and a portrait of Leonello d'Este, in the possession of Commendatore Morelli at Milan, are his only known panel pictures. We have principally to treat of his genius in the p'astic art, and cannot do better than quote the words of Monsignor Giovio, who writes thus to Duke Gosimo. Speaking of Vittore Pisano, he goes on to say : — " He was still more excellent in the art of bas-reliefs, which is esteemed very difficult by artists, as being a mean between the plain surface of a piiuting and the round of a statue. We see, however, from his hand, many rare medallions of great princes, made in a grand form and of the exact size of the reverse which Guido has sent me of the horse in armour. Amongst these I have that of the great king Alfonso with his long hair — on the reverse is an ambus- cade of soldiers ; that of Pope Martin, with the arms of the Colonna for reverse ; that of Sultan Mahomed, who took Constantinople (he is represented on horseback, in Turkish dress, and holds a whip in his hand) ; Sigismondo Malatesta, with a reverse of Madonna Isotta of Eimini ; and Xiccolo Piccinino with a long cap on his head, and the before- mentioned reverse of Guido, which I return. Besides this, I have a most beautiful medalHon of Giovanni Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople, with that curious Greek hat which the emperors used to wear. This was made by Pisano when he was in Florence, at the time of the Council of Eugenius which the said Emperor attended. The reverse is the cross of Christ, sustained by two hands, meaning the Latin and the Greek Churches." It seems that Giovio has not qnite well described the reverse of this coin, which, as it is engraved by MafEei 22 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. (' Verona Illusfcrata'), shows the emperor on horsehact, adoring a cross planted on a rock. The gallery of Florence possesses this medallion in gold ; it weighs two Tuscan pounds five ounces. It is looked on as uniq^ue, the one which was in. the National Museum at Paris having disappeared. The following is a list of all the signed and authenticated medallions of Vittore Pisano, who hecame the portrayer of almost every contemporary Italian prince : — 1. Nioeolb Piccinino. 2. Lionello d'Este {four different medals). 3. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta ifwo medals). 4. Pietro Candido Decembrio. 5. Yittarino da Feltre. 6. Filippo Maria Visconti. 7. Giovauni Paleologus (coined 1438). 8. Alfonso V. of Aragon (two medals, one dated 1448). 9. Francesco Sforza. 10. Giovau Francesco Gonzaga. 11. Cecilia Gonzaga (1447). 12. Lodovico III. Gonzaga. 13. Malatesta IV. Novello. 14. Inigo d'Avalos. 15. Tito Vespasiano Strozzl (a very large medallion of square form,. It is, however, dovMfnl if this was the work of Pisano, the age of Tito Strozzi, as he is represented, being much beyond what he would have been in Pisano's lifetime). The medal of Filippo Maria Visconti (No. 6) has a very enigmatical reverse, which has never been interpreted. It is a warrior on horseback, and two other horses, one of which is ridden by a page. In the background is a city on a hUl, thought to be Genoa, and a nude figure with a lance in his hand. His reverses were always more or less mystical and poetical in conception ; in some of them the art is extremely fine, and true in outhne. Vittore also made a medallion with his own likeness ; in 24 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOKS. ■wliich his head is uncovered. Another medallion portrait of him exists with a cap on the head and a garland of laurel on the reverse ; it is said to be the work of Francesco Corradini. That Vittore was much esteemed by his contemporariis is evident from the fact that Guerino Veccliio and Tito Vespasiano Strozzi celebrated his genius in poems. He is sometimes called " il Pisano di Guerino," from the first- named author. The title of Strozzi's poem published by Aldo is 'Ad Pisanura Pictorem,' and begins " Statuariumque aniiquis comparandpm." A certain Bartolommeo Facio wrote a book in 1466 called 'De Viris Illustribus,' in which Vittore is much praised. Vasari, who was not very well informed about artists beyond the bounds of Tuscany, took his information from a Veronese author, Fra Marco de' Medici, and from the ' Italia lUustrata ' of Biondo di Forli. The school of medallists and cameo workers which Pisanello left behind him was very large. The art fioi.irished in most of the cities of Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and many famous names are on the list, such as Bono Ferrarese, Caradosso, Corradini, Domenico dei Cammei, the PoUajuoli, Benvenuto Cellini, and Jacopo Callot, a Frenchman by birth, who was patronized by the Medici. A few medallions by Vittore Pisano and casts of several others may be consulted in the South Kensington Museum. PART ir. THE ARTIST FAiMILIES GF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTEE I. THE ROSSEIiLINI, IF Niccola Pisano reigning alone and supreme may Tdo called the Emperor of Art in the thirteenth century, Donatello and Ghiberti were rival kings, presiding over a large aristocracy of artists in the fourteenth. But in the fifteenth century there was a very commonwealth of art,- whole families rising to such excellence as would have given them dazzling fame had they been less numerous. It was at this time that the works of fresco aud sculpture multiplied so greatly that every church, and palace, and even each private citizen's house, became a shrine of art, and Italy laid up a store of beauties, which rendered her rich even in her fallen days, and which are the brightest decorations of her new life. There were the Ghirlaudaji, the PoUajuoli, the Delia Robbias, the Majani, the Eossellini, the San Galli, the Del Tasso 26 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. family,, all in Florence ; the . Civitali in Lucca ; and the Ferrucci of Siena, each emulating the rest in every forrii of art. In so limited a space it is quite impossihle to give anything like serious hiographies of this illustrious multitude. A few guides to their chronology and a mention of their principal works will he aU that we can allow ourselves. The Ghirlan- daji and PoUajuoli have been treated of elsewhere,^ but the Eossellini, Delia liobbias, and Majani have won a prominent position in the history of sculpture. The Eossellini were a family of five artistic brothers — ^Domenieo (born 1407), Beenakdo (born 1409, died 1464), Giovanni (born 1417, died 1496 3), Tommaso (bom 1422), and Antonio (bom 1427, died 1479). ^ They were the sons of Matteo di Domenico Gambarelli, the name Eossellino being only a bye-name. Bernardo rose to great eminence as an architect under Pope Nicholas V. For him he built palaces at Orvieto and Spoleto, baths at Viterbo, restored the Vatican, and commenced the basilica of St. Peter in Eome. He almost built the town of Pienza for Pope Pius IL, who was bom there, and was desirous of beautifying his native city. Ey Bernardo's plans it was enriched with several fine Eenaissance public buildings. He also erected the Piccolomini, Nerucci, and Spannocchi palaces at Siena. His fame as a sculptor rests chiefly on his monuments to ' In 'Fra Angelico,' by Miss Catherine Mary Philliniore. * These dsites of birth are taken by Sig. M .lanosi from the tax papers of Matteo Gambarelli. THE IIOSSELLINI. 27 Leonardo Bruni in Santa Croce, and La Beata Villana in Santa Maria Novella, both in Florence. Leonardo Bruni was a jurist and Greek scholar, who at his death in 1444 held the office of chancellor to the Florentine Eepuhlic. His tomb is a very finely-executed piece of sculpture, though in composition it resembles many other monuments of the time : angels holding a scroll, and a pall over the recumbent figure on the sarcophagus. The Beata Villana was a Florentine saint who died in 1360. She was the daughter of a rich' merchant ; and after having lived a very religious life in her childhood, married a worldly youth of the family of Lenintendi, and in her new life of pleasure forgot her piety. One day, when dressed for a feast, she was horrified to see in her mirror a demon's face reflected instead of her own. On consulting other miriprs they all showed the same hideous features. She immediately put on the hair shirt of her girlhood, and went to the church of Santa Maria Novella to confess her sins, living from that time a life of penitence, prayer, and charity. Many marvellous stories of her visions and miracles are told. Her grandson commissioned Bernardo Eossellino to sculpture her tomb. The contract was signed June 12, 1451, and Bernardo was bo and to finish the work by October of the same year, or to be fined 20 florius. The sum stipulated as payment was 250 lire. One hundred lire more were added for an arch and two marble stiplti.''- The tomb is a very good specimen of his skill. Above the sleeping saint,- angels hold aside a curtain, and beneath this two angels support a crown of Ught. A remarkably delicate bust of St. John the Baptist and a portrait bust of Battista Sforza in the Bargello are attributed ' Cioognara, ' Storia della scultura,' vol. IV. ch. iii. pp. 148-9, note. 28 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. to Bernardo. He died in 1464, and was buried in ibe Duomo of Florence. His youngest brother, Antonio Eossellino, eighteen years his junior, was by far the most famous sculptor of the family ; in him the finish and delicacy so characteristic of the artists of the age was carried to its highest excellence. He is said to have been a pupil of Donatello, but he formed a style of his own by blending the pictorial manner of Ghiberti with his master's realism, and adding a technical excellence which for fineness and delicacy of handling surpasses both. Yet he never achieved any works which have the power and rugged force of Donatello's, or the noble grace of Ghiberti. The church of San Miniato has a charming tomb to Car- dinal Jacopo di Portogallo sculptured by him. Mourning genii weep at the head and foot of the young cardinal lying on his sarcophagus, and two kneeling angels, one of whom holds the crown of virginity, are beneath them. A lovely Madonna and Child in alto-rilievo form a roundel beneath some too-heavy looped curtains above the tomb. The cardinal died in 1459. Antonio had the commission for the tomb in 1461, the price fixed being 425 gold florins. It was-finished in 1466. When it was erected, the Duke of Amalfi, who was one of t!;e Piccolomini family, admired it so much that in 1466 he ordered a precisely similar monument in memory of his wife, the daughter of Ferdinand I. king of Naples. This is in the church of Santa Maria di Monte at Naples ; and is almost a replica, except that a beautiful relief of the Eesurrection is added. Antonio did not live to finish this, and his heirs were called on to refund fifty florins of the price to pay other artists.! The same church has another bas-relief of the ' MUanesi, 'Annot. Yasiri,' vol. iii. p. 95, note. Monument op Cardinal Jacopo of Pobtugal. By Antonio Eossellino. In San Miniato, near Florence. A.n. 1461-(i6. 30 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. Nativity by Antonio. The influence of Ghiberti is visible in this truly pictorial sculpture : the Madonna adores the Holy Child beneath the lowly shed ; outside two shepherds gaze at the guiding star ; while in the clouds above a lovely group of angels with arms entwined dance and sing with exquisite grace and spirit. Cherubs' heads and statuettes of saints and evangehsts surround and complete the delicately-sculptured work. Antonio's best qualities may also be seen in the three reliefs which he contributed to the pulpit in the Duomo of Prato in 1473. They represent two scenes from the Life of Stephen, and the Assumption of the Virgin. The Florentine gallery of sculpture contains three or four of his works, viz. : 1. A charming circular relief of the Madonna adoring the infant Saviour. Here, again, Ghiberti's style is suggested in the perspective of the landscape background, and the shep- herds playing their flutes in the distance. A beautiful cornice of angels' heads surrounds the composition. There is a slight want of grace about the Child ; the Yirgin has sweet, placid features ; the flesh is polished to an extreme degree of softness. 2. A bust of Matteo Palmieri, signed " opus Antonii Ghamberelli, 1468," which is very lifelike. The surface of the marble is injured by some centuries of exposure abov3 the door of the Casa Palmieri, at the Canto aUe Eondine, near Santa Croce, where it was first placed. 3. A statue of the youthful St. John, which once stood on the door of the Opera di San Giovanni, near the Duomo at Florence. Empoli, a small town in Tuscany, boasts of a statue of St. Sebastian, which was executed by Antonio in 1457 for the Company of the Annunciation of that town. THE ROSSELLINI. 81 In the cliurch of San Giorgio at 'Ferrara is a magnificent monument to Bishop Lorenzo Roverella. This has been hitherto attributed to Ambrogio da Milano, but the books of administration of the monastery of San Eartolommeo, No. 23, A.D. 1470-76, prove the commission given to Eossellino by Fra Niccolo Eoverella, abbot of the convent, and the price fixed was fifty florins of gold. Before 1478 the fine relief of the Madonna and Child, in an almond surrounded by cherubs, was executed for the Nori family. It is in the column above the holy water vase at Santa Croce, and was placed in memory of Francesco Nori, or Neri, who was killed in the Duomo by one of the Pazzi conspirators, when Nori flung himself in the way and caught thj blow which had been intended for Lorenzo. Leo X., Lorenzo's son, granted an indulgence to all who should pray for the soul of Francesco.^ Antonio Eossellino died presumably about the year 1479, aged 51, the last entry of his tax to the Arte de' Maestri having been paid in 1478. He was often called Antonio del Proconsolo, because his studio was in the street near the Proconsul's office, now called Via del Proconsolo. ' Nori was killed in 1478, but it is supposed he had ordered the monument in his lifetime, as Antonio did not live long enough to execute it after his death. LUCA BELLA ROBETSt ~ '?l_^is:^= =^^$& a™&^S?;>^ "V_ o^^'ff^^S&JTSSS [^ « ^^» 1, ^saay ^^ i'^'^^^S ^^W ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^V^^^^ lEJ^Slllr ^ Sfi^^S ^^^^R ^^^^^l(\^^^ ^E ^@\ ^^P^B ^^^^w CHAPTEE II. THE BELLA EOBBIA FAMILY. DUEING nearly a century the name Delia Eobbia shone in the annals of.soulpture, or rather of the plastic art, for the especial branchy of art which tates their name is not truly sculpture, hut glazed terra cotta. The legitimacy of the Delia Eobbias' ari, or how far the colouring of sculpture is detrimental to its purity, is still an open question. Setting aside the consideration of colour, Luca della Eobbia, the first and greatest of his race, was a true artist, as is shown by his early works in marble, and the charming grace and sweetness of his enamelled Madonnas. (^ He was born about 1400 in the Via Sant' Egidio, Flor- ence. He afterwards bought a house in Via Guelfa,i which remained for some centuries in his family. Vasari makes much of his good education, saying, " He was not only taught^ to read and write, but even learned arithmeticP'^Apprenticed ll to a goldsmith in his boyish years, he first learned to model in wax, but then his "spirit growing stronger" (cresciutogli\i^ I'animo) he began to try more ambitious works in bronze and marble. Baldinucci says he studied sculpture under Ghiberti, but there are no documents to show this, and his style 1 Gaye, 'Carteggioinedito,' vol. i. pp. 183-186. E.I.S. — 2 D Daucing Dots. Bas-relief in Marble for the Orgau Gallery iu the Diiomo of Florence, A.D. 1431. By LnCA della Eobbia. In the National JIuseum, Florence. THE BELLA EOBSIA FAMILY. 35 shows no trace of that master's influence. His first im- portant work was an organ gallery to face the one sculptured by Donatello in the Duomo. The commission was given in 1431. He adorned the front of the gallery with the most exquisite reliefs of choristeis,' and singing maidens, so lifelike that one can seeiihe^ifetion of the throat, and not only that, but the soul of music in their animated faces. Some are playing, others dancing, and in every group is a charming freedom of action, grace of attitude, and elegance of flowing drapery that is not to be surpassed. These lovely reliefs are now in the large hall of the National Museum in Florence — (See Frontispiece)) A cast of the group is now in the South Kensington Museum. (^In 1437 Luca undertook to make five bas-reliefs for the Campanile of Florence to complete the series of Arts and Sciences begun by Andrea Pisano ; and in the following year he began two altars for the Duomo, one to St. Peter, the other to St. Paul?- The first seems not to have been finished, for parts of it are in the National Museum. After this date we find no more works in marble. He gave up the sr.alpello for the steachini, and took to utilizing his clay models by a process of invitriation or enamel, which gave them colour and glaze, and rendered them so impervious to atmospheric injury that they have proved more lasting than marble. His glaze was composed of litharge, antimony, and other minerals. This new invention so took the fancy of the world that orders came in from aU parts, even from Spain and France, and finding himself unable to fulfil them all he took into partnership two brothers, Ottaviano and Agostino di Duccio.2 ) Probably this Agostino di Duccio is the one known ' 'Eicerche Italiane,' ii. 365. 2 Milanesi, • Annot. Vasari,' vol. ii. pp. 177-8, notos. B 2 36 EAELT ITALIAN SCULPTORS. to fame as having spoiled the marble from which Michel- angelo afterwards made his David. These taking the name of the firm were by Yasari mistaken for brothers of Luca. .TUNE. Onm OF THE Twelve Mokths. Medallion ia Enamelled Terra Cotta, painted in monochrome. By LnCA della Bosbia. 2ti the South Kensington Museum. It is true that Luca had brothers, but Ser Giovanni was notary to the Signoria, and Marco is not mentioned as a sculptor ; the latter was, however, father to the mast famous THE BELLA EOBBIA FAMILY. 87 of the race after Luca, i. e. Andrea, Luca's nephew and pupil, f who was born Oct. 28, 1 435. Andrea's brother Simone was \ also a scholar of Luea. Of Andrea's large family of seven sons, five followed his profession, so that amongst so inany artists it is quite impossible to assign the numerous works of glazed /f terra' eotta to their true authors. Andrea's eldest son, Girolamo, went to France, and became head of the families of | the Seigneurs de Puteaux and Grand Champs. Simone's | family, leaving the plastic art, formed two branches, from one i of which sprang the present Marchese Viviani della Eobbia, i and the other gave several bishops to the Church. \\ (One or two works in bronze are attributed to the elder ' Luca. In company with Micholozzo and Maso di Barto- lommeo, he, in 1446, began the bronze gates of the sacristy on the north side of the Tribune of the Duomo. Maso died, and his brother Giovanni took his place in burnishing the reliefs. ]n 1464 Luca completed the inner part of the door alone. The doors are in ten compartments, each containing a bas-relief ; the corners and cornices are adorned with heads in relief. Above the gates he placed an architectural ornament in glazed terra cotta, with a charming relief of the Resur- rection. The Opera of the Duomo were so pleased with this work (which had been done in 1443 before the doors were commenced) that they commissioned him to make a similar relief of the Ascension for the door of the other sacristy which stands on the southern side of the Tribune.^ This was begun in 1446. He also sculptured two statuettes of Angels for the chapel of the Corpo di Cristo. These works were valued on Aug. 5, 1451, by Bernardo Gamberelli, or Eossellino, and Pagno di Lapo Portigiani of Fiesole, and the Ascension ' The south sacristy is called the Sagrestia delle Messe, the other is the Sagrestia Antica. 38 EAELY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. esteemed at 500 lire, the Angels at ninety .^ We give an illus- The Madonna in aeoeation. Bas-relief, by LucA della Eobeia. In the Convent of San Marco, Florence. tration offa graceful relief of the Madonna adoring the infant THE BELLA EOBBIA FAMILY. 39 Saviour, which is in the Convent of San Marco, ani which shows Liica in his purest style. In 1449 he adorned the arch of the great door of San Domenico of Urbino, with a Madonna, St. Dominic, and St. Peter Martijr in relief. There is also a tine altar-piece in the church of the Osservanza near Sienai of which we give an illustration. (It is a large square relief representing the Coronation of the Virgin. The giadino has three very linely executed sulijects from her life. There is a beautiful Madonna and Angels hy Luca della Robbia over the door of the church of San Piero ISuqncon- siglio, in the old market of Florence. And in the chapel of the Pazzi in Santa Croce are a number of figures and medallions in glazed clay by his hand. Two other beautifully adorned chapels are those of San Jacopo at San Miniato, Florence, and the tomb of Ser Benozzo Federighi, now in the church of San Francesco di Paola near Bellosguardo, Florence. He had the commission for this on Maich 2, 1454, but after a long dispute about the price, he was only paid Aug. 6, 1459, Andrea dei Cavalcanti being called in to value it.i Luca made his will in 1471, Feb. 19, leaving a legacy to his niece Checca, a widow, and everything else to his nephews, Andrea and Simone ; Andrea to have all that pertained to his art, and Simone his other possessions.^ He died on Feb. 22, 1482, and was buried in the church of San Pietro Maggiors, Florence. Andrea was quite competent to continue his uncle's work, and to keep up the fame of the family. Like Luca's, his reliefs and statues are found in all parts of Italy. He did many beautiful works at the church of Santa Maria delle 1 Milanesi, 'Annot. Vasari,' vol. ii. p. 176, note. ' Gaye, 'Carteggio,' i. 185. 40 EAELY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. Grazie, and other nhurches near Arezzo. The convent of the Vernia has also some fine specimens. Andrea died full of Madonna and Child. Terra Cotta Enamel, by LuCA della Eobbia. In the Musee de Cluny, Paris. THE BELLA EOBBIA FAMILY. 41 age and honour, Aug. 4, 1525, and was buried in the same tomb as his uncle Luca. Two of his sons, Paolo and Marco, took the Dominican habit under Savonarola with the respect- ive names of Era Ambrogio and Fra Luca,^ and helped to add to tbe artistic lustre of the Order to which Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo belonged. His three other sons, Giovanni, Luca, and Girolamo, all followed' their father's art, as did the three sons of Giovanni. Girolamo and Luca took service in France under Frangois I. They executed many works in glazed terra cotta, in a castle in the Bois de Boiilogne, and at another in Orleans, and founded a family in France. Vasari and other authors say that the secret (if secret there were) would have been lost in 1550 if one of the daughters of the Delia Eobbia had not married a sculptor named Benedetto Buglione, who carried on the art a little longer. There are several works of the Delia Eobbias in the churches of little mountain villages in the Pistojese Alps. Cuti- gliano possesses one, and Gavinana has two remarkably fine specimens, said by the legend of the place to have been done by Luca himself. The story goes that the great master was ill, and went to Gavinana for change of air. The people received him most kindly, and nursed him carefully, refusing any remuneration, saying, " The honour of having such a guest was sufficient." Seeing that he wished to do something for them, they said if he would give the smallest of his works for their church they would prize it beyond measure. "Jlfot the least, but the best I can do shall be yours," replied he ; and some months after the village made great festa on the arrival of the fine Nativity and Crucifixion which still adorn their church. ^ Giomale, 'Storioo degli ^oMvi Toscani,' anno 1868, vol. ii. p. 200. ww€m m m m ~* " [■fe-s? .m ! '5JM COKONATION OF TUE VittGiN. Bas-relief by a follower of LncA della Ejbbia. Altar-piece in the Church of tlie Osservanza, near Siena. THE BELLA EOBBIA FAMILY. 43 The large portal of tlie cathedral of Pistoja ia also adorned with a circular relief of the Madonna and Child surrounded by angels and seraphs. This has lately been authenticated as the work of Andrea della Eobbia, who was paid fifty ducats of gold for it in 1505. ^ But the most beautiful of the Della Eobbia works is the frieze which runs across the whole front of the hospital " del Ceppo " at Pistoja. It is about four feet in height, and represents in a series of full-length figures, the seven works of mercy. It has been attributed to Andrea della Eobbia, but he must have been more than eighty years old, for the loggia was not built till 1514, under the government of Messer Leonardo di Giovanni Buonaffe, and the frieze was finished eleven years afterwards. The books of the hospital contain an entry of payments made in 1524 to Giovanni della Eobbia,^ Andrea's son, so he was presumably the author of this beautiful frieze. Pisa, Siena, Perugia, Fojano, and other towns possess terra cotta reliefs and statues ; indeed they are to be found in all parts of Italy ; but the number really to bo attributed to Luca or Andrea is comparatively small. The style has been imitated by inferior artists, so that anything like an authentic list of the Della Eobbia sculptures would be very difficult to obtain. In the South Kensington Museum there are fifty examples of the works of the Delia Eobbia family. One important specimen, a Medallion bearing the arms of King Een^ of Anjou, is eleven feet in diameter. A set of twelve circular madallions {see engraving on p. 36), typical of the months, e^ieouted in monochrome, are also of much interest. 1 Gualandi, 'Memorie di Belle Arti,' serii vi. p. 33. 2 Milanesi, ' Aunot. Vasari,' vol. ii. p. 193. Madonna and Child. Enamelled Terra Cotta. By Andeea DELIA BoBBLA. In the South Kensington Museum. CHAPTEE III. THE MAJANI. GIULIANO (born 1432), Giovanni (1438), and Bene- detto (1442), were sons of Leonardo di Antonio, a carpenter and stone-worker at Majano, near Fiesole. They were all three artists ; Giovanni, who had the least talent, kept to stone-cutting, but has left no especially good works. Giuliano having first learnt his father's art of intaglio in wood, afterwards turned his attention to architecture, in which he achieved a great position. Of his works in tarsia, or inlaid wood, we have the seats of the choir of the convent at Fiesole ; those in the sacristy of the Annunziata ; the presses in the sacristy of the Duomo in Florence ; the throne near the high altar in Pisa cathedral ; and several specimens at Naples. As architect, his principal patron was King Alfonso, then Duke of Calabria, who employed him to build the palace of the Poggio Eeale, and the Porta Capuana ; he also worked in Eome for Pope Paul II. He died at Naples on December 3rd, 1490, aged 58 years, as may be proved by a letter from Alfonso Duke of Calabria to Lorenzo de' M^dici.^ Of his skill in sculpture, very few authentic examples remain, except the decorations of the palace, &c. at Naples, and of some rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. There is, however, a wayside shrine, called the Madonna delV Ulivo, 1 Gaye, Carteggio inedito, vol. i. p. 300 — 302. 46 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS, near Prato, where Benedetto had a villa and podere, which was the joint work of the three brothers, signed with their names, and dated 1480 ; it is now removed to the interior of the cathedral at Prato. Over the altar of the shrine is a Madonna and Child of terra cotta; the dossal is a Pietk in relief, in white marble, on a ground of green Prato marble. The relief shows a more crude and hard style than Benedetto's works, but is not devoid of feehng and sentiment. It is believed to be by Giuliano and Giovanni, while Benedetto did the statuette. Two angels which surmounted the taber- nacle are destroyed. Benedetto, who was ten years younger than Giuliano, studied the art of intardatura under him, but his artistic talent being stronger, he soon surpassed his brother, and has left some beautiful specimens of this wooden mosaic. He was discouraged as to the durability of this art, because, having taken two elaborately inlaid caskets to Corvinus, King of Hungary, he found on displaying them to his patron that the sea-water had warped and injured his work. Overcome with chagrin, he resolved to give his attention to a less perish- able art, and soon became more famous as a sculptor than as an iidarsiatore. Thus it happens that his career begins late ; no work by him is recorded before 1474, when the bust of Fietro Mellini, which is now in the Bargello, was executed — except the decorations in the Sala Grande and' Sala dell' Udienza in the Palazzo Vecchio, which he undertook in 1473, in company with his brother Giuliano. The beautiful door iu the Sala deir Udienza, which Benedetto decorated with marble sculp- tures and Giuliano with inlaid wood, was not finished till 1481. The statuette of St. John the Baptist which once surmounted it is now in the Bargello. In 1490 the Florentiues commissioned him to make the 48 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. busts of Giotto, and. of Antonio Squardalwpi, a famous musician and ofganist of the Duomo; these heads are stOl in sculptured niches in the Florentine cathedral. About this time, or earlier, Klippo Strozzi employed him to sculpture a bust of himself, which is now in the Louvre, and commissioned him to prepare his tomb in the church of Santa Maria Novella. When Filippo Strozzi died in 1491, the sepulchre was already advanced, and he left a clause in his will that it was to be finished within two years of his death. The sarcophagus is adorned with a bas-relief of two angels holding a tablet. Above this is a circular relief of the Madonna and Child. Both the reliefs and the angels which support it are exquisitely carved and delicately moulded, the flesh having an extreme softness. This is worthy to be considered one of Benedetto's best works. Perkins^ places Benedetto's visit to Naples in 1490^ the date of his brother's death in that city, but if he went there on that occasion, he could not have remained long enough to undertake any great works, for at that time from 1490 to 1493 he had on hand the Strozzi tomb, the busts for the Duomo, a crucifix of wood for the high altar of the Duomo, which was coloured by Lorenzo di Credi, besides the import- ant commissions at San Gemignano, the altar of St. Bartolo, and the chapel of Santa Fina, as well as the tomb of Santa Savina at Faenza. The chronology given by Sig. Milanesi,^ dates his works for Alfonso at Naples in 1495, while the relief of the Annunciation, ordered for the monastery of Mont' Oliveto, by the Count of Terra Nuova, on which Perkins bases his opinion, was sculptured in Benedetto's own studio at Florence in 1489, as is proved by the date of a letter from the • ' Tuscan Sculptors,' vol. i. ch. viii. p. 230. ' ' Annot. Vasari,' vol. iii. p. 337 note. THE MAJANl. 49 Queen of Naples to Lorenzo il Magnifico, asking the Signoria of Florence to allow the sculptures for the Count of Terra Nuova to be sent from Florence free of tax. This Annunciation is a very elaborate work ; the figures, especially the angel, are over-draped ; the background is crowded with perspective j and the whole shows a strong leaning to Ghiberti's pictorial style. There are some pleas- ing statues round the principal subject, and seven small bas-reliefs finely sculptured fill the gradino of the altar. One of his most pleasing works, was, however, the altai of San Bartolo at San Gemignano. This quaint old town, which preserves to this day its mediaeval style, and has its churches covered with frescoes, such as are to be seen in no other place in Italy, was in the twelfth century blessed with two saints. One, a leprous youth named Bartolo, and the other Fina, a paralyzed maiden ; in the lives ,of both is shown the idea of perfection achieved through suffering. In 1490, Bene- detto began the altar of Santa Fina, in the chapel of the church, on whose walls Ghirlandajo painted his wondrous frescoes. The altar has three reliefs of scenes from Santa Fina's life, and several statuettes of aijgels. The far more beautiful altar of San Bartolo in the church of Sant' Agostino, was not commissioned till 1494. It is at once an altar and a tomb ; the sarcophagus with a bronze inscription being placed above a gradino sculp- tured with beautiful reliefs. Over this are Faith, Hope, and Charity in niches, and still higher a circular alto-relievo of the Madonna and Child, in a frame of festoons of flowers and fruit. ' The architectural design is rich, and the decorations, angels and seraphs, &c., all exquisitely finished. The beautiful altar for the relics of Santa Savina in Faenza is of similar design. The pulpit of Santa Croce, which was commissioned by one of his early patrons, Pietro Mellini, shows in its reliefs a E.i.s. — 2 E Madonna in Gloet. By Benedetto da Majano. In ehapel of Santa Fina, San Gemignano. a.d. 1490-93. THE MAJANI. 51 great love of piolorial sculpture ; thoy are scenes from the life of St. Francis, of most careful execution, and great effect, especially in the Death of the Saint, where the per- spective of the nave of a church is given with great truth. His plan caused much deliberation before it was accepted, as he decided to carry his staircase through one of the columns, which he actually achieved without injury to the architecture. Benedetto died May 24, 1497, and was interred in San Lorenzo, Florence. He left his money to the Bigallo, or Foundling Hospital of Florence, and the captains of the company spent it in building an oratory at the Hospital of San Biagio near S. Piero a Monticelli. He also left to the Bigallo two statues of St. Sciasfiaii and the Madonna, which were afier wards ceded to the Misericordia, in whose church they still remain. Besides the Majani there was another family, the " Del Tasso " in Florence, fimous as wood-carvers and intarsiatori ; they made the beautiful carved ceiling in the Sala dell' Oriuolo and Sala dell' Udienza in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. The family consisted of Chimenti or Clementi, the father, and his two sons, Lionardi and Zanobi, apprentices of Benedetto da Majano, besides Cervagio and Domenico, brothers and assistants of Clementi. Several of their works in marble and in wood are to be seen in the church and convents of Sant' Ambrogio and San Salvi in Florence ; in the refectory of San Pietro at Perugia, as well as the choir of the Duomo in that city, which Dome- nico del Tasso finished just after Giuliano da Majano's death. Domenico had three sons .ill intarsiatori, one of whom made the Carro della Zecca, and several statues, &c., for the decoration of the city on Leo X.'s triumphal entry. PAET III. THE ARCHITECT-SCULPTORS OF THE RENAISSANCE. CHAPTEE I, GIULIANO AND ANTONIO DA SAN GALLO. SCULPTUEE has always been more or less the handmaid of architecture, but in tracing the history of the two arts there appear to have been alternate seasons of Special union and disjunction between them. In the early times of church building the sculptor was a decorative mason ; he not only placed his stones, but he made them eloquent by carving on his door and fagade the scriptural truths which were taught within the building. Thu^ all the Pisani were architects, and the Gothic buUders were also sculptors. In the time of Ghiberti and Donatello the two arts became separated ; sculpture was no longer decoration incorporated GIULIANO AND ANTONIO DA SAN GALLO. 53 in the stones of the building, hut took the form of extra- neous ornament. The architect made the shrine, and the artist filled the niches with statues, the lunettes with reliefs, and the doorways with beautiful metal-work. A second union of the two arts took place in the era of the Eenaissance, when palace building occupied the architects instead of the erection of churches ; the same artist designed the palace and was also its decorator. In 1500 a perfect group of architect-sculptors existed, among which the chief names are the brothers San Gallo, Andrea Sansovino, Benedetto Eovezzano, and, chief of all, Michelangelo himself. In the second part of the 16th century another disjunction took place, and we find that of all the sculptors who filled Florence with statues under the patronage of Duke Cosimo, not one had any reputation as an architect. The brothers San Gallo were architects by hereditary bias, their father, Francesco di Bartolo Giamberti, having been AveU known in the profession in the time of Cosimo de' Medici, Giuliano the elder (born 1443 — died 1516) ^ was early apprenticed to a wood-carver named Francione. It is not certain from whom Antonio — who was ten years younger than his brother — learned the art of wood-carving, but he soon rose to equal fame. Their sculpture being mostly architectural — consisting of carved ceilings, reliefs on pedi- ments, and architraves of doors, &c. — very few detached works remain. Among these are three crucifixes finely carved in wood, one of which, the joint work of the two ' These dates (Giuliano born 1443, Antonio 1453) are taken by Sig. Milanesi from the " portata all' Estimo " of 1478, where the brothers are declared to be respectively 34 and 24 years of age. 54 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. brothers in 1482, is in a chapel behind the choir in the church of the SS. Annunziata in Florence ; a second, carved by Antonio alone, is in the vestibule of the cloister of the same church, having been removed thither from San Jacopo tra' Possi, when that church was destroyed. A third, done by Antonio for the company of the Scalzo in 1514, is unfor- tunately lost. Giuliano's fame as a sculptor rests chiefly on the fine chimney-piece which he carved for the Palazzo Gondi, and which at the time was considered the finest work of the kind. The brothers were associated in the construction of many great works ; they built fortresses for the Medici, the Sforza of Milan, and for Popes Alexander VI. and Clement VII., besides many palaces in Pome and Plorence on Bramanto's death. Giuliano was offered the post of architect at St. Peter's, but his failing health caused him to refuse the onerous post. The name San Gallo was given to them from a convent they built for the monks of San Gallo, near the walls of Florence. Giuliano was inclined to murmur that he was known more by the sobriquet than by his family name, but Lorenzo de' Medici consoled him by saying, " It was better to have founded a name by his own genius, than to take one from others." Giuliano died on Sept. 20 in 1516, leaving a son Francesco, already famous as a sculptor. Antonio outlived him many years, his death not taking place till 1534. One or two works of merit remain to us from the hand of Giuliano's son Francesco. A Madunna and Child are in the church of Or San Miehele ; and the fine tomb, of the year 1546, of Angela Marzi Medici, Bishop of Assisi, stands near the Tribune of the Annunziata Church in Florence. Francesco sculptured also the tomb of Piero de' Medici at Monte Cassino, finished after Piero's death in 1548. Pope GIULIANO AND ANTONIO DA SAN GALLO. 55 Clement VII. commissioned him to make it at the price of 4000 ducats. The Antonio da San Gallo, called " il giovane," who rose to such eminence as an architect, was a nephew of Giuliano and Antonio, and received his training under them. He was the son of their sister Smeralda, who married Eartolommeo di Antonio di Cordiani.^ He is distinguished as Antonio San GaUo il giovane, and was horn in 1485. Ho also had a brother Battista, an architect. ' Most authors after Vasari have given the name of Smerahia's husband as Andrea Picconi, but from documents lately discovered it is found to have been Eartolommeo di Cordicmi. I'rivate information from fiig. Milanesi, ^^^^^M r]M ^^*^ fi ii/^r isf^^^'^Af ^® w ^^^ CHAPTER ir. ANDEEA AND JACOPO SANSOVINO. IN Andrea Sansovino the artistic faculty was most strongly developed ; in fact it was almost spontaneous, for lie used to amuse himself by modelling in clay or soft mould the sheep which he was set to guard when a boy. Vasari says his father was very poor, but it appears from a document dated Aug. 4, 1508, that Niccolo di Domenico Contucci or Mucci, when he died, left his two sons, Andrea and Piero, a house in Monte Sansovino, and several pieces' of land. To one who knows the mode of life in the mountainous and country districts, the two assertions are quite reconcilable, it being usual for each family to possess its own house and small holdings of chestnut forests or arable land, which its members work themselves. Every family has its flock of sheep to supply wool for the weaving of winter garments, and these are confided to the care of the boys or girls between the ages of nine and thirteen. So that though Andrea was a little herdsman, it is no proof of extreme poverty in his house. Simone Vespucci was at this time sent from Florence as podestd of the little mountain town, and he acted the part which Cimabue fulfilled to the youthful Giotto, by taking back the boy with him to Florence, that he might ANDREA AND JACOPO SANSOVINO. 57 te trained in art. He placed liim with Antonio del Polla- juolo, under whom he made great progress. He studied in the art school of the Medici garden. The Vespucci family once possessed several of his early works, but they are now dispersed. The convent of Santa Chiara, however, still has a relief in Verra cotta representing St. Lawrence and oilier saints. A larger relief of the Assumption of the Virgin with three saints beneath, was afterwards vitrified by the Delia Eobbia process. Two richly-carved capitals on the pilasters of the Sacristy of Santo Spirito which he had done for Cronaca were so much admired that they led to his first commission in architecture — the ante-room between the Sacristy and the church which was erected in 1490, he being then thirty years of age. He took as his model the Eotunda at Eome, supporting it on twelve Corinthian columns surmounted with a richly-carved architrave and frieze. In Sansovino's works architecture and sculpture are always blended ; the Chapel of the Sacrament in Santo Spirito, erected by him for the CorbineUi famUy, is richly adorned with reliefs, statues of saints, and other sculptures. A large Fieta in mezzo-rilievo, over the altar, is the master- piece of these artistic decorations, the nude figure of Christ being excellently modelled, and the weeping Madonna and St. John full of feeling. Nine yerrs of Andrea's life were spent in Portugal, in the service of the kings John II. and Emanuel ; some of the results of his labours there are still to be seen in a battle-piece m leHef and some statues on the altar of the church of the convent of San Marco near Coimbra. The first work which he began on returning to Florence in 1500 was the Baptism of our Lord in two statues to be placed over the eastern door of the Baptistery. Owing to a pressing order for a Madonna and Child and a St. John the Baptist 58 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOnS. for Genoa, the Florentine works were left imperfect. They remained in the Opera del Duomo for nearly a century, when they were finished by Vinceuzo Danti. Andrea had so far blocked them out that he had bsen paid 50 florins of the price on Jan. 31, 1505. The latter years of his life were divided between works in Rome for Pope Julius 11. and rrom the Tomb of Caedinal Ascanio Sfoeza. By Andrfa Sansotino, a.d. 1505. In Santa Maria del Popolo, Home. the erection of the Shrine for the Holy House at Loreto, which was a commission from Pope Leo X. His tombs of the Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Gii-olamo Basso deUa Eovore in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo are both very beautiful, but his " capo d'opera " is a group representing the ANDREA AND JACOPO SANSOVINO. 59 Virgin and St. Anna m Sant' Agostino at Eome, wliicli is a most graceful and charming conception. Though the design for the marble shrine of Loreto is Sansovino's, very few of the sculptures which actually adorn it were by his hand. Many of the artists of the 16th century worked tliore, including Bandinelli, Francesco da San Gallo, Tribolo, Lombardo, and others, who at diHerent times finished reliefs begun by Sansovino or added others of their own design. The only part which is entirely the work of Andrea is the Anmineiutlon in high relief, which he has treated with peculiar grace and extremely delicate finish. One of the figures of the Prophets was also executed by Andrea himself. During the years in which Sansovino was employed at Loreto he always retired to his native town, Monte Sansovino, for four months' repose. Here he not. only cultivated the bits of land his father had left him, but added to them, and replaced the family homestead by a commodious house of his own architecture. He died from cold taken in superintending some building oj)erations hero in 1529. In person he was small but well formed, his face and expression pleasing ; he had an impediment in his speech, but was very highly educated and a man of cultivated tastes. Several of his scholars became famous, among whom were Girolamo Lombardo, who assisted him at Loreto ; Leonardo del Tasso, Domenico del Monte Sansovino, and Titian's friend, Jacopo Tatti, to whom descended his name Sansovino and a double portion of his fame. Jacopo, the son of Antonio and Franccsca Tatti (born 1486,1 died 1570), had nearly a century of artistic life ; he ^ Tlie "libro de battezzati " has the entry of Jacopo's baptism on July 3, 1486. lii 1487 his father's tax-paper describes him as one year old. 60 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. saw the culmination of the Eenaissance movement, was a friend of the leading minds in it, and beheld the first steps of the decline in his old age. His procUvities for art were so strong that he shared the fate of many a youthful genius ; he got into disgrace at school, and strongly re- sisted his father's authority by refusing to be apprenticed to a trade : winning his way at length he entered Andrea Sansovino's studio, where he soon became like a son to his master. Thus his first art training was in sculpture ; but when as a young man he accompanied Giuliano da San Gallo to Eome, the strongest interest was awakened in the revival of Eoman architecture, which was occupying all minds at the time. Just as Eaphael, Michel- angelo, and every other artist became a builder on St. John the Baptist. the site of the old temples ^/^ f T'',/^?''7,"'°' ^\^^^*- '■ M Santa Maria at Frarx, Venice. and palaces of the Caasars, so ANDREA AND JACOPO SANSOVINO. 61 Sansovino also begaii to make architectural designs. He was stiU. however ia full career as a sculptor; Bramante employed him to make a model of the Laocoon, and the bronze cast from it is now in the Louvre. In the house of Cardinal San Clemente, that refuge of artists, he met all the greatest painters of the day ; while here he was employed in restoring antique statues for Pope Julius II. On his return to Florence he had an order for a statue of St. James, to he placed in the Duomo, after which he turned his mind to private commissions, carved exquisite chimney-pieces for the Altoviti and Gaddi palaces, and escutcheons, &c., for different citizens. One of his finest statues is the Boy Bacchus, with a tazza uplifted in one hand, now in the Florentine National Museum. The modelling of the limbs is extremely good, and the figure has an airy joyousness which renders it very expressive. Sansovino was willing to help others, as he had been assisted in his youth. During his frequent visits to the wood-carver, Nanni d'Unghero, with his friend Andrea del Sarto, his pity was awakened by the drudgery and uncon- genial labours imposed on the apprentice " Tribolo," who, with a decided talent for art, was only allowed to do all the coarse manual labour of the shop. Sansovino released him from the tribulations which had given him his nickname, and in Jacopo's studio the boy's genius developed fast. After a second visit to Eome, when he built the churches of San Marcello and San Giovanni de' Fiorentini, Sansovino's later life was passed in Venice, where his masterpieces of architecture — the Library and Procurazie on the Piazza San Marco, the Zecca, and several palaces and churches — remain to speak of his skill. This period of his life is marked by his long and close friendship with Titian ; and in the great (32 EAELY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. painter's life wo have many a picture of the two grey-liaired friends talking in the fresh garden on the banks of the Lagoon, or sharing social meals, at which Titian's daughter, the beautiful Lavinia, ministered to them. Of Sansovino's sculptural works in Venice, the Madonna over the door of San Marco is perhaps the most pleasing. The bronze reliefs in the doors of the sacristy, consisting of scenes from the life of Christ, are very artistic and forcible. AU his architecture had a peculiarly sculpturesque effect. The surface was so broken by friezes, entablatures, and other adornments, that one of Sansovino's buildings gives the idea of a single sculptured stone. Besides Tribolo, Bartolommeo Ammannati and Girolamo of Ferrara were scholars whoso career reflected credit on his teaching. CHAPTEE III. BENEDETTO DA EOVEZZANO. BEKEDETTO DA EOVEZZANO, another of the archi- tect-sculptors, was son of Bartolommeo di Eicci di Grazini (bom 1474 — died 1552). The family was originally from a village near Pistoja ; but Benedetto settled in Eovez- zano about 1505, having bought a house and land there. It is believed that Benedetto had his training under Michel- angelo's friend, the scidptor Donato Benti, as he was his assistant in executing the fin3 marble gallery for the organ loft in San Stefano at Genoa in 1499, and also in sculpturing a tomb at the commission of the King of France in 1502. The distinguishing- marks of Eovezzano's sculpture are claisio grace, and extreme finish. His marbles are so polished, that the surface is soft as satin. This is a quality of the Florentine school of the second half of the fifteenth century which they shared with the ancient Greeks. Praxi- teles passed his statues to Nicias for him to give them the circumlitio before he considered them finished. It is believed that this circumlitio was a polishing of the surface of the marble with a preparation of wax. The Greek statues show decided signs of some delicate process of polishing, and the same soft lustre is evident on the works of Mino of Fiesole, Qi EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. the Majani, Desiderio of Settignano, and Rovezzano. The Italians designate it as morbidezza. Much of Eovezzano's sculpture took an architectural form. He sculptured beauti- ful portals, fuU of graceful foliage, for the house of Oddo Altoviti, and charming friezes, capitals, and a sculptured chimney-piece for Pier Francesco Borgherini. As a tomb- maker, Eovezzano was very successful. His monument to Fiero Soderini in the church of the Carmine at Florence, and the tomb of Oddo Altoviti in the same church, are very good specimens of his style. His masterpiece — the tomb and shrine of St. Giovanni Oualberto, a saint of the Vallombrosian order, which he sculptured in 1506 for the church of Santa Trinitk, Florence — was unfortunately destroyed by the soldiers in the time of the siege of Florence. Several of the dlti rilievi, much injured and wanting almost all the heads of the figures, are preserved in the National Museum, together with some of the friezes and brackets from the shrine. The reliefs, which are scenes from the life of the saint, show Eovezzano's richness of composition, graceful drapery, and high finish. Eovezzano spent five years of his later life in England, whither he went in 1524 to sculpture the monument of Cardinal Wolsey. But the Cardinal falling into disgrace, the work was discontinued. The bronze parts were fused by order of Parliament in 1646, and the marble sarcophagus ultimately served for Lord Nelson's monument in St. Paul's. In 1552, Eovezzano, old and blind, retired to the convent of VaUambrosa, where he made a pact, with the monks, to pay down 100 gold ducats and receive board and lodging for the remainder of his life. The monks made a good bargain, for he died in the same year.^ 1 Milanesi, 'Annot. Vasari,' vol. iv. p. i36, note. BENEDETTO DA EOVEZZANO. 65 Between this group of architect-sculptors and the statue- makers of the sixteenth century, the grand figure of Michel- angelo 1 stands out unrivalled. In him the truth -which DonateUo put into sculpture comes out with a rugged energy and force of naturalistic passion which is overpowering. A strong character, with intense and vivid earnestness, all his passion and el niggles against the wrongs of his age were impressed on the marble which his hauds wrought into form ■ a humanist not only in the acceptation of the term in Renaissance times, hut as one who made the mortal body of man his earnest study, his sculpture shows perfect truth to nature in its strongest forms — ^indeed strength and force seem to have been his highest aims. The gentleness of nature is rarely expressed in his works. This strength, which in Michelangelo's conceptions takes the form of nobility, became the stumbling-block of his followers. Mistaking the outward signs of grandeur for the spirit of greatness, the painters and sculptors who imitated the master degenerated too frequently into mere muscular coarseness. Knowledge of anatomy was no longer a means of showing the beauty of humanity, but was set up as the object and end of art. Prom this time scholars ceased to surpass their masters as in the preceding centuries, but imitated without understanding their spirit. ' Any Wographio mention of Michelangelo is here omittod, as a volume of the present series has already been given to him. E.I.S.- PAET IV. SCULPTURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. BACCIO BANDINELLI. AFTER the death of Lorenzo de' Medici most of the Florentine artists followed Leo X. to Rome, but his reign, prolific as it was in architects and painters, produced very few artistic sculptors beyond Michelangelo himself. However, on the revival of the Medici power in Florence, in the person of Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, who was made Duke of Tuscany in 1537, artistic patronage also revived, and Cosimo's court was graced by a perfect coterie of artists and sculptors. Although not endowed with the instinctive good taste of Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Duke was a very earnest patron of art, and gave his thoughts to the decoration of the city, £s much or more than any of his predecessors had done. He BACCIO BANDINELLI. 67 was always accessible to artists, and it seems almost in- credible to Tis that tlie private life of the reigning prince should so often have been interrupted by the jealousies of artists who, by Cellini's account, made and settled their dis- putes in the private apartments and presence of the Duke and Duchess. Cellini and Bandinelli were not at all par- ticular in their recriminations before their august patrons, and did not scrapie to accuse the Duchess herself of unfairness and partiality. Among the group of sculptors employed by Duke Cosimo, four stand pre-eminent — Baccio Bandinelli, Bartolommeo Ammannati, Giovanni da Bologna, and Benvenuto Cellini. Of these Bandinelli, born 1488,i was the eldest. He was the son of a goldsmith of some repute named Michelagnolo, whose arcestor, Viviano, a blacksmith, had settled in Florence from Gajuole about the middle of the 15th century. The family name was Brandini, but when Baccio became famous and was made a " cavaliere " he tried to prove his descent f.om the Bandinelli, a noble Sienesa family. From his youth Baccio had a taste for art, and to encourage it his father fitted him up a studio in his house, and made him draw and model from the half-clad labouiers on his " podere.'' at Pinzerimonte, near Prato. The boy was placed in the studio of Giovanni Eustici, where Leonardo da Vinci saw him and encouraged him to undertake an artistic career. No means were neglected for his instruction. He was one of the many young students who drew from Michelangelo's cartoon of Soldiers sur- prised while bathing, and it is said his copies were among the best. It is asserted by Vasari that having obtained all 1 Some authorities give the date 1493 as that of Bandinelli's birth, but in the " Libro de' Battezzati," it is entered under Oct. 7, 1488. P 2 68 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. the tenedt he could himself he tore the cartoon to prevent his companions profiting equally ; some say the deed was done out of jealousy to Micheld,ngelo ; others as an act of rash championship for his friend Leonardo da Yinoi, who on this occasion was Buonarroti's rival. Unfortunately, jealous actions were not tmfrequent in the life of this sculptor, and he had always an overweening appreciation of his own talents. One of his earliest works was a youthful Mercury hold- ing a iiute in his hand, which was bought by Giovanni Eattista della Palla for Francis I. of France. Cardinal Giovanni Medici, being struck by the merit of a St. Jerome which he modelled in wax, obtained for him the commission in 1514 to make a colossal statue of St Peter, for the Duomo of Florence. No use was made of this for fifty years, till, at the marriage of Cosimo's son with Giovanna of Austria, it was placed in the Duomo near the tribune of San Zenobi. Baccio soon after went to Eome, to show a model of a David IdlUng Goliath to Pope Leo X. in hope of obtaining his patronage, but his Holiness only despatched him to Loreto with a recommendation to Andrea Sansovino that he shoilld employ him on the sculptures for the shrine of the Santa Casa. Here his jealous nature led to quarrels between him- self and Sansovino ; and Bandinelli being worsted retired to Eome, leaving his relief of the Nativity of the Virgin half finished at Loreto. He sculptured an Orpheus in Inferno for the Cortile of the Medici palace in Florence, the modelling of which shows his study from the antique during his sojourn in Eome. In one instance he made a direct copy from the antique, by reproducing in marble the group of the Laocoon for BACCIO BANDINELLI. 69 Cardinal Medici to present to the King of France, but instead of going to Paris, Bandinelli's copy was sent to Florence, where it remains in the corridor of the Uffizi ; the bronze one modelled by Jacopo Sansovino was sent to France, and is now in the Louvre. Bacoio restored the arm of one of the Laocoon's sons which was wanting in the antique group. On his return to Florence the great dispute of his life began, about the statue of Hercules and Cacus. A great block of marble had been excavated at Carrara in 1508, and the Florentine Gonfaloniere, Pier Soderini, was desirous that Michelangelo should sculpture from it a Hercules as a pendant to the David erected, since 1503 at the door of the Palazzo Vecchio. But the great master had other works on hand, being employed in the Pope's service at Eome and Bologna, and in his absence Bandinelli, by a series of schemes, obtained the commission for the statue, and went to Carrara to discover the block to suit his design, and render it more portable. It was still so heavy that the means of transport by water were insufficient, and the mass sunk to the bottom of the Arno near Signa. When after much delay and many vicissitudes the fated block reached the sculptor's studio in Florence, he discovered that he had hewn it carelessly while at Carrara, and its proportions would no longer fit the model which he had made and shown to the Pope. As a natural consequence the freshness had gone out of his inspiration, and after making several stiff and lifeless models he at length decided to begin. But he had barely blocked out the limbs, when one of those sudden changes occurred so frequent in Florence in those days — the Medici ■werefuoi-usdti (exiled), and he as their partisan thought it wise to retire to Lucca. In his absence the Signoria, by a decree dated 70 EAELY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. August 22, 1528, gave the marble to Michelangelo, its first possessor, and he began to change Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus into a Samson slaying Philistines, hut before many strokes of his mallet were struck, Plorence was in the midst of the siege, and Michelangelo flung away the scarjpello to defend his beloved San Miniato from the guns of the Prince of Orange on the Arcetri hills. Peace concluded, Michelangelo was employed on the Medici chapel in Sau Lorenzo, and the marble given back to Bandinelli, who this time brought his work to completion, and the colossus was finished in 1534, and placed in front of the Palazzo Vecchio on May 1st in that year. It is more interesting for its story than for its own excellence. The only one of Bandinelli's contemporaries who found a word of praise for it was • his most envied rival Michelangelo, who said that the Lead of Cacus was a " good artistic work " ; for the rest, many sonnets and epigrams were written on it, but all far from laudatory. Tliere is a great deal of muscular development about the figure of Hercules, but very little action or force ; he seems to be calmly standing above his writhing foe. His ill success with this did not however deter Bandinelli from making every effort to obtain the next gigantic block of marble, excavated in 1554, with which Cosimo I. wished to make a colossal statue of Neptune for a fountain on the Piazza della Signoria. Instead of one rival he had in this case six, and tliough the Duchess was his ally, Cellini, Ammaunati, and Giovanni da Bologna, who aU. made models, were serious opponents. How- ever, a stronger hand than these removed Bandinelli from the contest. He died in February, 1559, while superintending the erection of his family tomb in the church of the SS. Aiinunziata, for which he had sculptured the Pieta which still adorns it. BACCIO BANDINELLI. 71 One of Bandinelli's most conspicuous works is the monu- ment to Giovanni delle Bande Nere on the Piazza San Lorenzo, in Florence; the rehef on the hase shows a good Marble Reliefs. By Bandinelli. In the Opera del Buomo, Florence. deal of talent, but the usual faults are visible in the sitting statue of the warrior — overdrawn muscularity without life. 72 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. Before Bandinelli's death he was engaged. In a grand scheme to decorate with sculpture the choir of the Duomo of Florence, Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo being the architect. The scheme was never completed, though Bandinelli finished the statues of Adam and JEve, which were placed in the Duomo, but removed in 1722. Though not devoid of merit, contemporaries condemned the statues as wanting in grace. To show how little real feeling entered into this artist's works, it is enough to say that the first statues of Adam and Eve not pleasing him, he changed them into a Bacchus and Geres, which still adorn the ilex groves in the Boboli gardens. For the same form to suit both religions and pagan characters, it must follow that sentiment is vague and religious feeling entirely wanting. The balustrade of marble which enclosed the choir was, however, finished and adorned with no less than 90 reliefs, each represenbing the figure of a prophet, sibyl, or evangelist. The form was altered in the beginning of this century, and 24 of the reliefs removed and placed in the Opera del Duomo. Some of these are the best works of Bandinelli ; our illustration is taken from two of them. CHAPTER II. BAKTOLOMMEO AMMANNATI. TEIBOLO. BAETOLOMMEO Ammannati (born in Florence 1511, died 1592) was not at all higher in artistic feeling than his rival Bandinelli. His training was adequate; he was first a scholar of BandineUi and then worked at Venice tinder Jacopo Sansovino, from whom he also imhibed his architectural knowledge. It was hardly possible to live in Florence without falling in with the general devotion to Michelangelo, and Amman- nati left Sansovino's more refined style to become, like Bandi- nelli, an imitator of Buonarroti ; but, with the same want of spirit, imitation had the same deteriora,ting effect, and Ammannati's colossal Neptune on the fountain has the very faults which mark Baccio's Hercules and Cams — tremend- ous development of muscle, and yet an utter and inane want of force and life. The Hercules at Padua is a great improve- ment on this, while the allegoric statues of Wisdom and Labour, Honour and Fame, which adorn the tomb of Marco Benavidesin the church of the Eremitani at Padua, cause him to rank still higher. This fine monument was erected in 1583. Possibly, had patronage been on a higher basis, the sculp- tors of Duke Cosimo's court might have risen to more lofty 74 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. conceptions, but it was their fate to become mere decorators of villas. Ammannati's statues are to be seen in the gardens of Boboli and Castello, while in the park at Pratolino the artist built up a colossal figure emblematic of the Apennines, in brick and mortar, stuccoed to represent stone. The Grand Duke Francesco employed him often in architectural works, the Ponte Santa Trinita being his erection, as well as some parts of the Palazzo Pitti, and the adornments of the gardens belonging to it. In the church of Santa Chiara at Urbino is a monument by Ammannati to the Duke Francesco Maria, which he did during a visit to the court of Guido- baldo II. of Urbino. At the same time he sculptured a Leda for the Duke which much pleased him. This visit was a fateful one to the artist, for he became attached to Laura Battiferri, one of the ladies of the Duchess. The fair Laura was a poetess, whom Tasso himself honoured by calling her the " Pride of Urbino." The Duchess of Urbino refused to part with such an ornament to her court, and gave the ambitious artist his conge; but the lady, dispensing with the sanction of her patroness, married Ammannati at Loreto in 1550, and went to Eome with him. It was long before the Duchess forgave this act of inde- pendence ; but the union proved a very happy one, and Ammannati, who died in 1592,. did not long survive his beloved Madonna Laura. Teibolo was another of the scholars of Sansovino who fell into the snare of imitation of Michelangelo. He was the son of a wood-carver named Eaffiaello, better known by his nickname of Eiccio de' Pericoli, and was bom in 1500. Some authors say the family nanne was Braccino, but the young Niccolo was all his life known as " Tribolo," a name TEIBOLO. 75 given him from his whining and melancholy disposition, he being always in tribulation. We have seen how his complaints of the drudgery in Nanni d'TJnghero's shop prevailed with the good-hearted Jacopo Sansovino, who took the boy under his own care. Here Tribolo, who had talent, improved so much that Sansovino often put important works into his hands. The first of these were some terra-cotta figures of children for the chimney-piece in the house of Messer Giovanni Gaddi, after which he assisted in the sculptures for the monument to the King of Fortuf/al. It was not long before the youth obtained independent commissions. Matteo Sfrozzi employed him to make a marble fountain for his villa at San Casciano, adorned with boys and dolphins. "While he was engaged on these, a Bolognesc gentleman, Messer Bartolommeo Barbazzi, who was in Florence at the time, was so struck with the young sculptor's skill that he obtained for him the commission to sculpture the marbles for one of the doors at San Petronio, Bologna. Two figures of Sibyls are spoken of very highly by Cicognara,! who has engraved both them and some reliefs in the same doorway. The plague of 1525 caused him to fly from Bologna, but he returned again later, and began a tomb at the commission of Messer Barbazzi. The design had been made by Michelangelo, and Tribolo had his old fellow- scholar Solosmeo as assistant. The death of Barbazzi caused the work to be relinquished, but two statues of cherubs (putti) and a large bas-relief of the Annunciation are still preserved unfinished in the church of San Petronio. The two cherubs were begun at Carrara, whither Tribolo had gone to select marbles for the monument. He did not return to ' See Cicognara, 'Storia della Scultura,' vol. iii. plates 2, 66. 76 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. Bologna after the death of his patron, hut went to visit an , artistic friend, Stagio, at Pisa. Stagio was employed at the time in carving some candlesticks for the cathedral at Pisa, and as his own genius lay more in decorative than statuesque sculpture, he hegged his friend to carve the angels which were to surmount his pillared basis. These as well as the Bologna works show Tribolo as a refined and graceful artist. A f ouatain which is in the gardens at Fontainebleau — having been bought by Giovanni della Palla — shows his originality of conception. It represents the goddess of nature, whose many-breasted figure is surrounded by fishes, quadrupeds, and a circle of boys holding festoons of flowers. During the siege of Florence, Tribolo, like his greater friend Michelangelo, employed himself in an engineering capacity, and made a clever model of the whole country round Florence. A treacherous use was made of this model, which was secretly packed up in some bales of wool and sent to the Pope. Vasari is not very explicit as to whom this betrayal is due, whether to Tribolo himself or to other unfaithful citizens. It seems indirectly to have led to Tribolo's appointment as sculptor in the Pope's service after the siege, and we next find him as Sansovino's assistant in working at the shrine of the Santa Casa at Loreto. Here he finished the fine relief of the Marriage of tlie Virgin which Sansovino had begun. In it he has displayed a great deal of life and action. The figures of prophets in the niches were also modelled by Tribolo. These so pleased the Pope that he despatched Tribolo forthwith to Florence to assist Michelangelo in the San Lorenzo sculptures. The great master desired him to carve two figures, one symbolic of Earth bowed down with grief, and the other of Heaven radiantly triumphant, to place on either side of the statue of Giuliano ; but in the very TEIBOLO. 77 attainment of Ms amtition poor Tribolo's name asserted itself. Tribulation was still his fate; the deadly hand of malaria was laid on him, and he was too weak from continued attacks of fever to continue his work, which fell into the hands of his rivals. When at length he had modelled the statue of Earth, the Pope, Clement VII., died, and the whole undertaking was abandoned. After this Tribolo became a mere court sculptor, arranging pageants for the wedding feasts and triumphal processions of Duke Cosimo, adorning the gardens of the villa of Castello and, the Pitti Palace with great allegoric fountains, arranging the dresses and scenic effects at the court plays and mock tournaments, and quite abandoning the artistic career of a sculptor, which he com- menced with good promise. He also undertook several architectural works, and made an aqueduct to bring the waters of the Arno and the Mugnone together into the labyrinth at Castello, where his great fountain was placed. Around the fountain are disposed a great number of statues in niches, and loggie. Among them are impersonations of the two rivers, Arno and Mugnone, of the four seasons, and the Arts, Sciences, and Virtues. Nothing can be more signifi- cant that the decline of art had already begun than a com- parison of the spirit of these statues with the allegoric ones of the masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The greater sophistication and the much lower ton^ of feeling is remarkable. The beautiful inlaid floor of the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo was the work of Tribolo. He died on September 7tb, 1550, of a malignant fever, and was interred in the burial-ground of the Compagnia dello Scalzo. CHAPTEE III. BENVENUTO CELLINI. WE now come to the genius in wliom culminated the art of gold working, that art which had flourished for many centuries in Florence!, and from whose ranks came many of the cinque-cento artists. Benvenuto Cellini was boin at Florence in the year 1500, the very date of the highest altitude of art; but although his early works show the influence of artistic feeling at its best, yet he lived long enough for the faults of the decline to be recognizable in his later productions. Some of these come distinctly under the class of " sei cento," a name which has become synonymous with imitation and mannerism. It seems to be a law of nature that genius should show its force by struggling against obstacles. Benvenuto Cellini's obstacle was music, which his father, who was one of the Pifierari to the Signoria, wished him to take as a profession. The Pifferari dressed in a green uniform, and, whenever the Gonfaloniere appeared in public, they preceded him with their silver fl.utes. Giovanni Cellini's lovo of music was so great that he quite neglected his more profitable talent of BKNVENUTO CELLINI. 70 carving in ivory for that of making curious organs and playing the flute ; and he took every pains to develop a musical taste in his little son Benvenuto. But the boy, who had inherited only his father's love of art, ran away from his music masters, and spent his time in drawing. First his tried to blend the two pursuits, and so please both his parent and himself, but he soon gave up this, and began a serious artistic career, apprenticing himself first to the father of his future rival, Bandinelli, a clever goldsmith named Michel- agnolo, and next to Antonio di Sandro, known as Marcone. Even then he sometimes gratified his father by playing the flute, at which times Giovanni would " sigh till the tears fell from his eyes," s i grieved was he at his son's abandoning the art of music. Benvenuto was emphatically the " child of his age ; " endowed with keen perceptions, intense vitality, strong individuality, he developed into one of those many- sided characters which were the product of the Renaissance — a character in which the intellectual and artistic faculties are as highly developed as the moral perceptions are blunted. His own autobiography, that piquant picture of the age, with all its boasting and self-exaltation, shows with an unsparing hand every weakness of his complex character. Blustering and fighting on the smallest provocation when his adversaiy is one easily vanquished, he docs not scruple to show cowardice and fiy when threatened with absolute personal danger. With an overweening appreciation of the excellence of his own works, he has a great reverence for good art in otliers, and a corresponding contempt for bad. His respect for Michelangelo was as great as his disdain of Bandinelli. His immorality was of the coarsest, yet his family affections were very warm ; he made the kindest guardian and benefactor to his widowed sister and her 80 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. daughters, who were left destitute, and gave them a good home in his house till his death. He sought his pleasures in the lowest society, and yet was at home at the tahles of princes and popes, though often offending the dignity of ladies by his outspoken roughness. In Florence he made an enemy of the Grand Duchess Eleonora, and in Paris of Madame d'Etampes, who was one of the great powers in the court of Prancis I. This wild genius led a most erratic life, yet never an idle one. The broils his impetuous spirit led him into caused him in turn to fly from Florence Obverse Ekvehse Medal or Feakcis I. By Benteitoto Cellini. Probably made in a.d. 153T. to Siena, thence to Bologna, then back to Florence, whence a quarrel with his brother sent him to Pisa. A whim once induced him to walk to Eome with his friend Tasso, the wood-carver. In every city he found artistic employment, but his finest works were executed in Eome, where he eclipsed the artist Caradosso in making the beautiful ena- melled buttons which the cavaliers wore in their hats. The finest of these was one representing Leda and the Swan, BENVENDTO CELLINI. 81 which lie made for Messer Gabriello Ceserino, at that time Gonfaloniere of Eome. At length the Pope heard of his skill through some beautiful silver vases which he made for Cardinals Salviati and Cibo, and before long the pugnacious master of delicate works was ensconced on familiar terms in the household of the Pope. He not only made exquisite vases and jewels for Clement VII., but when the troops of Bourbon besieged Eome in 1527," we find Cellini installed as commander of 'the defences in Castel Sant' Angelo, the fortress where the Pope was in hiding, and from whose safe battlements he showed a great deal of warlike bluster. This must have been taken for bravery, for the Condottiere Baglioni offered him the command of a company if he would enter the service and go to Perugia with him ; but this Cellini did not care to do, and was seized with a sudden wish to see his father, which necessitated his immediate return to Florence, where he had a great deal to boast of his prowess during the sack of Eome, and all his family were dazzled by his equipments and spoils of war. But he did not rest long at home ; wa next, in 1528, find him in Mantua, whither he went to fly from the plague which was raging in Florence. Giulio Eomano, then employed in painting his frescoes in the Palazzo del Th, introduced him to the Duke, for whom he made a beautiful reliquary to contain the relic of the blood of Christ. The design was very rich, and was surmounted by a seated figure of the Saviour, with one hand holding the cross and the other pointing to the wound in His side. The Duke's brother, Ercole Gonzaga, bishop of Mantua, employed him to cut his pontifical seal, and would have given him several commissions, had not Cellini, alarmed by an attack of fever, fled to Florence again, where he had the sorrow of finding his father dead and the family home broken up. E.I.S. — 2 G 82 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. However, lie determined to stay in Florence, and, opening a lottega in the Mercato Nuovo, he soon found work enough to do in artistic jewellery. His old reputation for hat buttons was kept up. Amongst others, he made a very beautiful one for Federigo Ginori, with a design on it of Atlas siqypoHing the earth. At this time he formed a friendship for Michelangelo, and though the great master does not seem to have had any special sympathy for him, Cellini always preserved infinite respect for his contemporary. It was not natural he should remain long at home. In 1530 he was again in Eome, where he made the famous button for the Pope's piviale. This button is in fact a very large kind of brooch, which, in the guise of a breastplate, fastens the heavy embroidered outer vestment of his Holiness. Two or three other artists competed for this commission, but Cellini's design pleased the Pope infinitely the best. The gold work was to be the setting of a magnificent diamond which the Pope possessed. Cellini so arranged his design that the brilliant formed a seat for the figure of the Almighty Father; beneath it were three angels in relief, and a circle of putti surrounded the whole design, mingled with many gems. The Pope next commissioned him to make the dies for the mint, and the most artistic of all the Papal coins was the result ; the obverse has an JScce Homo, and the reverse a Pope and Emperor sustaining the cross. Another fine work done about this time, 1531, is the chalice made for the Pope. The cup is supported on three figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and its foot is adorned with fine reliefs of scriptural subjects. He seems at this time to be on the high road to wealth and affluence ; but no, in a roystering mood he kills an envious rival, a certain goldsmith named Pompeo, and though two cardinals defend him, and Pope Paul III., who Pebsecs with the Head of Medusa. By Benvencto Cellini. In the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. [Modelled in 1545: cast in 1549.] G 2 84 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. wants the dies for Ids coins cut, gives him a safe-conduct, he thinks it wise to run away from Home. It would take too long to f oUow this erratic genius in all his wanderings. After going to Venice, and Padua, and hack to Eome, working for princes everywhere, he starts off in 1537 for his longest journey, to Paris, whither Francis I. had invited him. Prom this time his life was passed between France and Italy, going and returning as his whim prompted him. The French king gave him an annual stipend of 300 scudi, afterwards augmented to 700, in return for which he did many exquisite works, chief of which are the ewer and hasin in silver gilt repousse, which the Cardinal of Ferrara presented to the King, twelve mythologic statuettes in silver, and the famous golden salt-ceUar, now in Vienna. This is about sixteen inches in diameter ; the repoussi and chased base is of a rich design, emblematic of the attributes of sea and land, and is surmounted by two sitting statuettes of Ceres and Neptune. His one great statue, the Perseus, was a work of his later years, and was done at the commission of Duke Cosimo. His account of the misfortunes and excitement of fusing and casting it is very amusing. He nearly set fire to his house by the fi.erceness of his furnace ; then the metal ceased to run before the mould was half full, and he cast into the furnace aU his pewter plates and dishes, of which there were 200, to make the metal more fluent, and after terrible suspense the mould was triumphantly filled. The statue is without doubt a very fine one, but there are points in which it falls very short of perfeCuion, especially in the form and setting of the right leg. The Perseus occupied Cellini during several years ; he says,i the Duke Cosimo gave him the commission in August 1545, at Poggio a Cajano, and he made the small wax 1 ' Vita di Benrenuto Cellini,' Lib. II. p. 382. BENVENUTO CELLINI. 85 model (now in the National Museum) tliat same year. The head of Medusa -vvas cast in 1546, but the figure of Perseus was not fused till 1549. As a casting in bronze it is techni- cally a triumph; he had already some experience in the process, having in 1545 made a fine bronze bust of Duke Cosimo, which is now in the National Museum, in Florence, and is a most characteristic work. It is not, however, equal in merit to the bronze portrait of Bindo Altoviti, which won the approval of Michelangelo himself, who wrote to CeUini from Kome that " he had always known him as the finest goldsmith in the world, and that henceforth he should recognize him as a grand sculptor." A Crucifix in marble which he offered to the Duchess Eleanora, wife of Cosimo, shows his power of modelling. The Duchess was very much offended at his manner of offering the gift, and refused it, for Cellini, after vaunting its priceless worth, proposed to make her a present of it, if she would neither favour nor oppose him in the competition for the Ne^itune of the Fountain. "Then," said the Duchess, " you value neither my help nor my disfavour." " On the contrary. Lady mine," he replied, " I value them so much that I give you in recognition a thing worth 2000 ducats, but I have more faith in my own skill, and am sure that if I were allowed fair play I should gain the palm even if Michelangelo himself were my rival." Having thus made an enemy of the Duchess, he one day gave way to such ungovemed insolence to the Duke that he lost the commission for the Neptune, even though his model vas judged superior to that of his successful rival Ammannati. Thus Cellini was ever his own enemy, and the fame of his marvellous genius has come down to us mingled with the memory of his many personal faults. >1 ,-'- >^--Y.-S.. . — . , .-as^W ^cr-^ •~::^^ i H- 1^ ^^ ^^^M^ jmj^ ^^JHp Pfe^iW^^^y^^^^E ^^^^^^is ™ ^M ^^^^^\^ ^^^^s ^^^ -^S^^^ y@jS^]^^&jx s^"***.- c-a-LjiJ'^ ^^^S:^^-'''*^/y\j^:;; /-" ■'— n-^rt-ir-H--— ■ ir-*>" CHAPTEE IV. GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA. A YOUNGER contemporary of Cellini, and ono who showed, more genius in actual sculpture, was Giovanni da Bologna, the youngestof all the competitors for the Fountain of Neptune. This artist stands in the same relation to the sculpture of the Eenaissanco as Andrea del Sarto does to the painting — a kind of rock which holds back for a time the flood of the decline. Giovanni da Bologna, or more properly Jean de Bologne, was not an Italian by birth, although his training and the adoption of Italy as a residence has placed him among Italian sculptors, and his own merits set him high among his contemporaries. He was bom at Douai in 1524, and at an early age came to Eome to study art. His admira- tion of Michelangelo brought him to Florence for a better study of the great master's works, and here he had the good fortune to find a friend in Messer Bernardo Vecchietti, who, recognizing the young foreigner's genius, took him into his own house. His good taste, strengthened by a deep study of the antique in Eome, prevented Giovanni from that slavish imitation of ^Michelangelo which spoiled many of his GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA. 87 contemporaries. His works always retain a certain classic simplicity and nobility of form very different from the mus- cular weakness of Bandinelli and Ammannati. The son of Duke Cosimo, Don Francesco, the hushand of Bianca Capello, took a great interest in Vecchietti's protege after receiving the gift of a Venus in marhle, which was the first original work of the young sculptor ; and when in 1560 the competition for the fountain of Neptune on the Piazza della Signoria was proposed, Don Francesco brought forward Giovanni as a candidate, and gave him a studio in the cloisters of Santa Croce. The Grand Duke himself favoured Cellini, the Duchess was anxious for Ammannati to succeed, while Messer Ottaviano de' Medici patronized Vincenzio Danti. If a fair judgment had been given, Giovanni da Bologna should, in the opinion of contemporary judges, have had the commission ; but though he must have been about thirty years of age, he was set aside on account of his youth ! It is probable that he used his model in the Bologna fountain, which was erected in 1564, and a comparison of the bronze colossus there with that of Ammannati at Florence will certainly be in favoJir of the former. There is quite a group of Giovanni's works under the Loggia dei Lanzi and in the Piazza deUa Signoria in Florence. One of the finest is the Rape of the Sabines (placed in 1582), in which there is some very fine modelling in the figure of the Eoman who is carrying off the girl. It is said that the artist designed this group to represent the three marked ages of man — youth, manhood, and old age ; but a friend, seeing his wax model, found the attitudes so suggestive of the more classic subject, that Gian Bologna, acting on his advice, changed his design to the subject. The torso of the young Mekcuby. By Giovanni da Bologna. Before a.d. 1564. In the National Museum, Florence. GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA, 89 man, wliich is very powerful, was modelled from a noble riorentine youth of the Ginori family. A terra-cotta sketch or model of this, attributed to Giovanni da Bologna, is in the South Kensington Museum. Near the Rape of the SaKnes in the Loggia dei Lanzi stands Giovanni's Hp-rmlet and the Centaur, a group showing power and classic tendency in no ordinary degree. The two colossal statues of Oosimo I. on the Piazza della Signoria and Ferdinando I. on the Piazza della SS. Annunziata testify to his skill in casting bronze, while his flying Mercury is a very triumph both of airy lightness in modelling and of perfect technicality in casting. The swift god seems poised momentarily on one foot; the poetry of motion is in every line of his lithe figure. If Giovanni had done nothing else, the Mercury of the Florentine Museum must have stamped him as a true artist. It is supposed that the Mercury was cast to send to Yienna, as a present from the Grand Duke of Tuscany to the Emperor, on the occasion of the marriage of Giovanna d'Austria with Francesco dei Medici, 1564. But the first cast having a flaw on the left thigh, a second copy was cast to send to Vienna, and the first remained in Italy. Till the time of Pietro Leopoldo I. it was in Eome on the fountain of the Villa Medici, but is now in the National Museum, Florence. A reproduction in bronze is in the South Kensington Museum. Other famous statues by Giovanni da Bologna, are the Victory in the Sala dei Cinquecento, Florence ; Samson and the Philistines, now in Spain, and a Bacchus in bronze at the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. A number of minor sculptors were to be found in Florence during the sixteenth century, such as Vincenzio Danti of 90 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. Perugia, wlio did a great deal of decorative sculpture for Cosimo I. ; Vincenzio de' Rossi of Fiesole, a scholar of BandiuelU, who sculptured the Labours of Hercules, now in the large hall of the BargeUo or National Museum ; Fran- cesco Moschino, who has left some good works at Pisa ; and others. Sculpture,* was, however, already on the decline, partly because imitation had taken the place of inspiration and invention J partly because patronage, instead of being patriotic, as in the early days of the Eepublic, was private and courtly, the decorations of villas and private palaces failing to call forth the higher nature of artists, as the beautifying of churches and creation of great national works had done ; and partly on account of the entire change of thought and aims , brought about by the humanistic teaching of the Renaissance, So much attention was given to the outward form -that the purity of the idea became a secondary consideration. In the writing, the social converse, the public life, the art of the age, outward brilliance and appearance of classic learning gilded and made dazzling the coarsest ideas. Virtually, the history of sculpture closes here. " Sei cento " art produced but few sculptors, and those unimportant, while the seven- teenth century brought forth the school of Bernini, who dragged the art to its lowest abasement, till Canova again raised it by laying the foundations of the modern schools. PART V. THE SIENESE SCHOOL. CHAPTEE I. THE EAELT MASTERS OF SIENA. UNLIKE that of the Cosmati, tho Sienese school may- be clearly traced from the influence of Niccola Pisano. Before Mccola went to Siena to sculpture his pulpit, there was already in the city a large guild of architects, who were merging into sculptors through the process of adorning their buildings with a profusion of stone carvings. None of these iiad risen to any artistic excellence, though the names of one or two have come down to us^-such as Bellamine of Siena, who erected the Eonte Branda in 1153 ; Uguccio di Lorenzo and Udebrand; Lorenzo Maitani, who was ca^o maestro of the works of the cathedral at Siena in Giovanni Pisano's time; and Eamo di Paganello, who was exiled for ill- treating his wife, but was iu 1281 recalled by the Senate, and again employed in the Duomo under the Pisani. In 1296 Eamo went to Orvieto with Lorenzo Maitani, and in time succeeded him as cajDO maestro there. 92 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. The Sienese guild of stone-workers, then, having already artistic tendencies, were only too willing to fall under the influence of Niccola Pisano, and to give themselves earnestly to a higher style of art. Several of them, especially Agostino and Agnolo, entered the studio of the Pisani as scholars, and in them the Sienese school rose to a height almost equal to that of the Pisan artists. The finest monument of the Sienese school is the fagade of Orvieto cathedral, which — with the exception of the parts done hy Giovanni and Andrea Pisano, and the artists vaguely called by Vasari " Tedeschi " — was almost entirely of Sienese design and execution, hut with just so much of the Pisan influence as Giovanni and Niccola had grafted into the school within the last thirty years. The first sculptor was Eamo di Paganello, Giovanni Pisano's scholar ; with him Jacopo Cosme of Eome worked, together with Niccola's pupU Fra Guglielmo, Guido of Siena, &c. In 1298, Boniface VIII. read mass there; but in 1310 the building was judged unsafe hy Lorenzo Maitani of Siena, who was elected capo maestro, and the outside waU had to he rebuilt. From this time aU the best sculptors of the day vied the one with the other in rendering the fagade beautiful, till at the end of fifty years the Bible in stone, which is spread on its pilasters, was complete. It is impossible to assign the parts with any degree of certainty to their respective authors. The Noah, Tubal-cain, and Seth, as well as parts of the second and third pilasters, are in the early style of Mccola, as their short, square figures show ; the fourth pilaster, with its Last Judgment, is Giovanni's manner perfected. Probably this par: is to be attributed to Agostino and Agnolo.^ Some ^ These artists, whose names are always' coupled together, have been supposed to be brothers ; but they were, in fact, only fellow-soholarg in THE EARLY MASTERS OF SIENA. 93 parts recall the composition of Nicoola Pisano in liis Siena pulpit ; but there is a more advanced style, and grander and more poetic tone — the feeling of Dante and Orcagiia is in them. The Creation of Adam and Eve is also one of the later developments of the schools ; the drawing is natural and unconventional, the design imagiuative. While Agostino and Agnolo were at work with the multi- tude at Orvieto, Giotto passed there on his way to Naples, and his artistic eye soon siagled them out as the possessors of especial genius; through him they obtained from Pietro Saccone di Pietramala the commission for the tomb to Bishop Guido Tarlati at Arezzo, which they began conjointly in 1327, and finished in 1330. Vasari says that Giotto designed it ; but as they were both good and experienced sculptors, it does not seem likely that they would work out the compositions of another artist. There was great scope for artistic illustration in the stirring life of the warrior bishop Guido Tarlati, who wore the helmet as often as the mitre, and did not confine his militant spirit by any means to the Church. The subjoined list of the sixteen bas-reliefs ranged beneath the sarcophagus, with its effigy, is enough to show the inspiration which the sculptors had for the spirit they have shown in them : — 1. Guido made Bishop. 2. Chosen Lord of Arezzo. 3. The Commune doing him honour. 4. The Council in Office. 5. Guido builds the walls of Aresso. 6. Takes the Castle of Lucignano. 7. Takes Chvtisi in the Casentino. 8. Conc[uers Fronzole. 9. Siege of Castel Focognano. 10. Takes Eondina. Giovanni Pisano's studio ; Agostino being the son of a Giovanni, and Agnolo of Ventura, 94 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. 11. Besieges Bueine. 12. Taking of Caprese. 13. Destruction of Laterina. 14. ^uin oi Monte Sansovino. 15. Coronation of Louis of Bavaria. 16. Deatli of Bishop Guitlo Tarlati. A goodly list of warlike subjects, and very dramatically rendered ; but regarded in comparison with later sculpture, they are rudely executed. Although, so often working together, Agostino and Agnolo were also separately employed. Agnolo worked in Assisi, where he made a chapel and tomb in the lower chiuch to a brother of Cardinal JS^apoleone Orsini. Agostino laboured principally in Siena, where he helped to build the Palazzo Pubblioo, the convent of San Francesco, and one or two of the city gates ; his name is also recorded with those of Lando di Pietro and Maestro Giacomo in 1340 as architect of the Fonte Gaia, on the piazza. Agostino died some time in the year 1350, leaving a son, Giovanni, who was capo maestro of the Duomo of Siena, in 1340. A bas-relief of the Madonna and Child by him is in a chapel adjoining the oratory of San Bernardino in Siena. The sculptors Jacobbllo and Paolo of Venice, sons of Antonio daUe Masegne, were worthy pupils of Agostino and Agnolo. So closely did they follow their master's stj-le, that two of their works have long been attributed to the Sienese partners. These are the Area di Sant' Agostino at Pavia, and the large Altar-piece, fuU of statues, reliefs and sculptured ornaments, which was in the church of San Francesco at Bologna. Cicognara ^ takes his proof of the authenticity of the latter from some MSS. in the convent of San Francesco ; another MS. in the possession of the Ercolani family, after * 'Storiadella Scultiira,' vol. III. cap. v. p. 287. THE EAELY MASTERS OF SIENA. 95 describing tlie work, says it was the " lavoro di Giacomo e Pietro Paolo, tigli cli Antonio dalle Masegne veneziani, scolari di Agostino ed Agnolo scultori sanese e questo lavoro fu fatto nel-1338 per ducati d'oro 2150," &3. Of their other work, the Area di Sunt' Agostino, in Pavia, we have no other proof except the style, and the fact that, as it was begun in 1362, it could not have been, as Vasari imagines, the work of Agostino and Agnolo, who died before that time. The Area, which is much in the style of that of St. Peter Martyr, by Balducci, is in three stories, and is most elaborately covered with bas-reliefs, statues, and Gothic ornamentation. There are as many as 290 figures sculptured on it. TiNO, or Lino, da Camaino, who has been mentioned as one of the scholars of Giovanni Pisano, was a Siencse. He was the son of Camaino di Crescentius di Diotisalvi, and flourished about 1298 to 1338. He worked at the Duomo of Siena from 1300 to 1338 ; was elected Syndic in 1305. Some of Tino's best works remain to us still ; one is the tomb of the Emperor Henry VII. at Pisa. Henry VII. of Luxem- burg was chosen in 1311 to be the means of the unity of Italy — which was desired even then — ^by being crowned emperor with consent of both Guelphs and Ghibellines. The iron crown of Lombardy was used in his coronation at MUan. But he soon alienated the Guelphs, and wars began with greater fury than before ; Pisa being almost the only city which remained faithful to him. He died in 1313 at Buonconvento, where he was seized with illness on his way to make war with King Eobert of Naples, after his siege of Florence had been repulsed by the brave old Florentine, Bishop Antonio d'Orso.^ It is strange that Tino should ' Milanosi, 'Doo. dell Arte Sauese,' vol. 1. pp. 181 et seq. 96 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. have heen called on to make the tombs of both the bishop and his enemy the emperor. In that of Henry VII. ^ the effigy of the deceased, robed in his imperial mantle, lies on a white marble sarcophagus, his uncrowned head reposing peacefully on a cushion. Mourning genii adorn the ends of the sarcophagus, a row of saints the front of it. This tomb has been three times moved. It originally stood in the tribune of the Duomo oif Pisa ; thence it was taken to the chapel of San Eanieri; next, in 1727, it was placed over the door of the sacristy, and lastly in the Campo Santo, where it still remains. Like most of the sculpture of the time, it was originally coloured, a style which had evidently descended from the painted sculpture on the Etruscan sarcophagi. The tomb of Bishop Antonio d'Orso of Florence, commis- sioned by Francesco di Barbarini, stands in the right aisle of the Duomo of that city. In this the bishop sits on his sarco- phagus, dressed in his robes and mitre, and with his hands crossed on his breast. The front has a bas-relief of a youth kneeUng before Christ ; several angels surround the group. Tino worked also at the Baptistery of Florence, but the subject of his labour is not known. The church of Santa Maria Novella has, however, a signed work by him, the tomb of Bishop Aliotti of Florence, who died in 1336. This is an architectural tomb ; Gothic arches supporting the sarcophagus, which is adorned with a bas-rehef. Two angels watch the deceased beneath a Gothic canopy. It is probable that the bishop gave the commission during his life, for on July 11^ 1336, Tino was spoken of as " quondam," and anew architect elected in his place at Naples, where since the year 1324 he had been working in the service of the royal family. In 1325 he sculptured the tomb of Maria of Hungary, widow of ' A oast is in the South Kensington Museum. THE EAELY MASTERS OF SIENA. 97 Charles II. The Queen herself had left 154 oz. of gold for the purpose; and the tomb was placed in the church of Santa Maria Domna Eegina, near Naples, which she had restored, as weU as the convent near it.^ The tombjof the Pisan form, with angels and canopy above it, is placed in the nuns' chapel ; angel caryatides support the urn. Other works at Naples by Tino are the tomb of Matilde, Princess of Acaia, in 1332 ; that of Carlo, Duke of Calabria, in the church of Corpus Domini, in 1338; and of his wife, Maria of Val-ois. He also assisted in building the cloister of San Martino for Charles of Calabria, about 1325 ; and the convent, church, and palace for King Eobert, on the hill of Sant' Erasnio. Signer Milanesi gives the date of his deatli as 1339 ; this is difficult to reconcile with the document spoken of above and quoted by Perkins,^ which calls him "quondam" in 1336, but against the latter supposition , wo have the date of the tomb of Carlo Duke of Calabria. Maestro Gano, another scholar of Agostino and Agnolo, has left us two realistic specimens of his art. One is the monument of Tommaso d' Andrea, Bishop of Pisa, and com- missary for Pope Nicholas IV. The deceased, who died 1303, is lying peacefully on his tomb, two small genii kneeling at his feet, angels guarding his head beneath a Gothic arch. The artist has made his effigy of deatli awful by • placing the scroll in the bishop's hand, warning the beholder to recognise the death to which he must come, and to improve his life while he can. Gano's other tomb, that of Eaniero Porrina, in the church of Casale, near Siena, is just as realistic for its life-like effigy. Eaniero stands above his 1 Milanesi, 'Aunot. Yassir.', ' vol. i. p. 432. " 'Tuscan Sculptors,' vol. i. book ii. ch. iv. p. 99. r;.r.s. — 2 h 98 EAELY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. sepulchre dressed in his liuxo, with, his . sword girded at his side, just as when he went ferth to fight the Guelphs in the army of Henry VII. He died in 1314. A third tomb by Gano is that of ■ Ugo Cnsaruoti, in the Picve of Eapolano, sculptured in 1346, and thought to be his last work. A statue which once surmounted the monu- ment, was removed from the church because the people worshipped it as a saint. A Maestro Goeo Sanesb is also chronicled as the author of the tomb of St. Cerbone, in the cathedral of Massa, in the Maremma, which is adorned with bas-reliefs and many statuettes. It was finished in 1323. It is not known whether Goro was of the school of Giovanni Pisano or of that of Agostino and Agnolo. Other Sienese sculptors of the time were : Celling di Nesb, who assisted in the Baptistery of Pistoja in 1334, and in 1337 sculptured the tomb of Dante's poetic friend, Messer Cino di Pistoja.- Antonio Brunaccio, more famous for his activity in the Sienese revolutions than his artistic works, though he supplied marbles for the floor of the Duomo in 1356. Lando Sanesb, who was employed as a gold- worker by Henry VII., from whom he obtained a diploma in 1311. Bartolommeo di ToMMi:, called Pizzino. Giovanni di Cecca and Matteo d'Ambroqio, who carved be- tween 1376 and 1384 the mediocre statues which fiU the tabernacles of the Cappella deUa Piazza at Siena. Luca di Giovanni, who made the holy water vase in the Duomo at Orvieto ; the four artists who sculptured the font in the same church; and Ugolino da Vieri, who worked the beautiful tabernacle for the holy wafer at -Orvieto, in silver and smalto, in 1338. CHAPTEE II. NICOOLO ABETINO. MOCCIO SANESE, although not a sculptor of great talent himself, was remarkable as being the master of Mccol6 Aretino ; if this be true, the scholar soon outshone the teacher. NiccoLO Di PiERO Lamberti, called Pela, is better known as !N"iccol6 d'Arezzo. He was born in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and lived till after 1444, in which year his name appears in a document as one of the judges of some artistic work at Prato. On leaving the studio of his Sienese master, Moccio, Mccolb went to Florence to obtain work, and proving himself a good sculptor, the Opera of the Duomo employed him to make two statues of Doctors of the Church, which Vasari asserts are equal to those of DonateUo. The plague drove him away in 1383, and he returned to Arezzo, where he restored the Lombard fajade of the church of Santa Maria della Misericordia, adding above the door a relief of the Madonna and Child, with angels holding her mantle over the people of the city, for whom St. Laurentino and St. Pergentino intercede. Above the door of the bishop's palace in Arezzo are three dilapidated statues of terra cotta, as well as a St. Luke, which H 2 100 EAELT ITALIAN SCULPTORS. I3as-r*^7 were all by Mccold. Two other statues of St. Luke by him — one in the chapel of San Liagib in the cathe- dral, and one in the hospital — are in a better state of preservation. After the year 1384, internal wars having ren- dered Arezzo unquiet, Nic- col6 returned to Florence, where he obtained the commission for the sitting statue of Si. Mark, one of the four evangelists of which three were assigned to him, to Donatello, and Nanni di Banco in 1408, with the proviso that the artist who succeeded best should make the fourth. The four statues are now in the chapels round the great tribune; but the light is so imperfect that it is difficult to distin- guish them. The Arte della Lana employed Nic- col6 to make two small figures of the Virgm aiid the Angel of the Annunci- ation above the statue of St. Matthew on Or San Micbele. In 1390 he sculptured the six rounds which adorn the Loggia ')f by NiccoLtj AncTiKO. 0,i the Korth J)oo. wa^, Florence Cathedral. NICCOLO AEETINO. 101 <3e' Lanzi ; and in 1405 made the sepulchre of Leone Acdajuoli in Santa Maria Novella. In 1407 he is named as master of the door of the Diiomo. The illustration on p. 96 is part of his graceful design for the ornamentation of the arch. The Venetian Senate would have employed him ; but he was bound to finish his work at the Duomo in Flor- ence, and could not go. He went to Bologna, however, after 1410, to make the tomb of Pope Alexander V. in the eonve:.t of the Frati Minori. From want of marble and stone, the tomb, with its effigy and reliefs, was entirely made in terra-cotta and stucco. It has long be^n removed to the public cemetery at the Certosa. There are no works by Niccol6 chronicled later than this. Vasari asserts that he died soon after, and was buried at Bologna in 1417 ; but if the Iviccol6 d'Arezzo, who was one of the judges of the work of the chapel of the Cintola at Prato in 1444, was this same man, his death could not have taken place till much later .^ * Milancsi, ' Annot. Vasari,' vol. ii. p. 139 note. CHAPTER in. JACOPO BELLA. QUEECIA. ALL the before-mentioned sculptors, Mccolo excepted, were more or less mediocre, > and tlie Sienese school could boast of no great master after Agostino and Agnolo till the time of Giacomo or Jacopo della Querela, who was born at Siena in 1371, and was the son of a goldsmith named Pietro d'Angelo di Guarnieri deUa Quercia Grossa ^ and Mona Maddalena his wife. Some say he was a pupil of Goro, others of Luca di Giovanni ; but from his having com- peted for th« doors of the Baptistery in 1404, it is more probable he first learned his father's art of oreflceria. His earliest commission was given when he was quite a youth. It was an equestrian statue of wood, tow, and plaster, to place above a wooden catafalque on the occasion of the funeral of Gian Tedesco da Pietra Mala, who died in 1395 at Orvieto, and whose body was brought to Siena to be buried. The statue was for more than a hundred years in the Duomo of Siena. During his stay in ITlorenee, he competed for the bronze gates and stood high amongst the others ; some authors assert that he sculptured the MadonrM della Mandorla over the north door of the Duomo, but this Baldinucci assigns to ^ La Querela Grossa was a village near Siena. It is now extinct. JACOPO BELLA QUEECIA. 103 Nanni di Banco. We find him next at Ferrara in 1 408, wliere he sculptured a Madonna and Child in relief for the chapel of the Silvestri family, which is now removed to the chapter- house. A tomh for a Dottore Varj is spoken of, hut when the church of San Mocolo where it was placed was destroyed the tomb was lost.^ In the same year (Dec. 15, 1408) the Signoria of Siena gave Jacopo the commission to adorn the Fonte Gaia on the Piazza with sculptures. On Jan. 22, 1409, a second compact was made ; the price fixed being 2000 gold florins. He does not seem to have commenced work directly, for on June 13, 1412, he presented his design, and a third stipulation was made, to be followed by a fourth four yeais later, on his showing a different design. In 1418 a higher price was promised, and at last, Oct. 20, 1419, he was paid 2280 gold florins for his completed work. The Fonte Gaia had already existed a long time, for, as we have said in the life of Agostino of Siena, he and two other architects w;ere its builders in 1340. Its principal artistic embellishment was a statue of Venus which had been excavated in Siena and set up over the " Joyful Fountain." When the city fell into trouble and civil wars, as well as sieges from the Florentines, the people began to blame the heathen goddess as the cause of all their disasters, and dethroning her they broke the statue into pieces and buried it in Florentine territory, that any evil which might arise from her influence should fall on their enemies. Jacopo della Querela, to counter- act the remains of paganism, made his fountain an epitome of Christianity. Its form is a squale reservoir, with a parapet on three sides of it ; the centre wall was divided into niches ' Perkins (vol. i. bookii. chap, iv.) says it was placed in San Giacomo Maggiore, in Bologna, as a monument to one of the Bentivoglio family. 104! EAELY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. containing the statuettes of the Madonna and Child, and the theological virtues. These are gracefully draped, but more laboured and loss refined than the works of the Florontino masters of his time. The two side parapets were covered with reliefs from Old Testament history. In the basin were some boys, riding on wolves and dolphins, and of course the arms of Siena, Eomulus and ^Eemus with the wolf. Taken as a whole Quercia's fountain was a beautiful work, and quite sufficient to have made his name, as indeed it did, for he was called Jacopo della Fonte ever after. Jacopo's assistants in the Fon^;e were Sano di Matteo and Nanni di Jacopo da Lucca, whom he employed to do all the, marble work e.^cept the statues and reliefs, they stipulating (Jan. 10, 1414) to finish their part in eighteen months, and to be paid 2200 lire. The Fonte Gaia, having been much ruined for yaars, was replaced in its antique form by a model by a modern Sienese, Tito Sarrocohi, in 1858-186G. Some old fragments are preserved in the Opwa of the Duomo. In 1413 Jacopo left the Fonts to go to Lucca, where Paolo Guinigi, lord of the city, had called him to sculpture a tomb for Ilaria del Oarretto his wife. This lovely work is in the Cathedril at Lucca, and consists of the efiSgy of Ilaria and a relief of children carrying festoons. The surmounting canopy was destroyed by the mob which turned Guinigi out of the city some twenty years later. The recumbent statue is free and natural without being too realistic, a sweet, reposeful face with its braids of hair bound on the smooth brow ; the hands clasp each other loosely. A hound, emblem of conjugal fidelity, lies at her feet. Whilst at Lucca, in 1422, Jacopo sculptured an altar-piece above the tombs of Federigo di Trsnta and his wife in the church of O" 106 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. San Frediano. It is in a florid style, the niches containing statues, and the base being covered with reliefs. It was not till 14 25 that his important works in the church of San Petronio at Bologna were begun, at the commission of Archbishop Arli,then Legate of Bologna, who offered him 3600 gold florins to sculpture fifteen bas-reliefs for the great door of the church. In an evil hour for his own peace he accepted the work, which, though it has greatly added to his fame, was the cause of the latter years of his life being embittered by quarrels and enmities on his account between the cities of Siena and Bologna. He had scarcely obtained his marbles and completed his design when, on Feb. 8, 1428, he was peremptorily recalled to Siena to finish the font of the Baptistery there, for which the commission had been given in 1417, but some delay had occurred in obtaining suit- able marble. Jaeopo replied with letters and promises, but remained in Bologna where he was interested in his work. His assistants who were left in Siena to go on with the font began to quarrel about it, and the Signoria, seeing the disadvantage of a studio with an absent master, took the matter in hand, and on Aug. 28, 1428, wrote to say that he must be in Siena within ten days under pain of a fine of 100 florins. This brought him back, for his poverty rendered it impossible to pay such a fine, and as soon as he reached Siena the Signoria made another decree that he was not to leave the city under pain of a fine of 1 00 florins. Notwith- standing this we find him writing to Bologna on Nov. 13, 1428, promising to return thither shortly. He must have carried out his resolve, for on Dec. 3 he petitioned the Signoria to absolve him from the fine he had incurred. He did not, however, leave Siena for any length of time till his bronze relief of the Calling of Joachim, a very fine JACOPO DELLA QUEECIA. 107 and earnest work, was finished, and placed on the Font in juxtaposition to the one which Donatello had sculptured in 1421. The Opera of the Duomo of Siena, seeing that Jacopo had other interests, employed Donatello in 1428 to make the statuettes for the tabernacle of the font ; and Jacopo released, went gladly back to Bologna, where he signed a new contract on Oct. 24, 1429, for the sculpture on the inside of the door of San Petronio. His reliefs for this " porta " are a charming series of subjects from the Old Testament. The Creation of Eve is not as graceful as the one by Ghiberti , on his gates, nor even as the one on the pilaster of Orvieto cathedral, but there is a good deal of force in it, though the attitude of the sleeping Adam is painfully constrained. The Expulsion from Paradise has been said to be the prototype of Michelangelo's Adam and Eve in the Sistine chapel, and Eaphael's in the Vatican loggie. It is well known that Michelangelo was an admirer of Delia Quercia's style, and that he studied from the doors of San Petronio during two of his visits to Bologna in his yoiith. In 1433 Jacopo promised to make some statues for the Loggia della !Mercanzia at Siena as soon as the Opera should have obtained the marble from Carrara ; and by way of binding his interests to his native city he was elected rector of the Opera del Duomo there in 1435, and made a Priore of the Signoria for the first two months of the same year. Some misunderstanding having arisen, the commission for a statue to be placed in the chapel of the Piazza del Campo being annulled, Jacopo was only paid the price of the marble he had brought from Carrara, and returned to Bologna on March 21, 1435, leaving two consuls in his place. The Signoria made another effort to obtain his favour by 108 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS. creating him eava/dere in August, 1435, but it seems the weight of his broken compacts at Bologna oppressed him, ibr in March, 1436, he writes from Parma to express his regrets, and protest that he is ready to obhge them in any way. It is thought that about this ' time he sculptured the monu- ment of Antonio Galeazzo BeMivoglio, lord of Bologna, 'vvho. died in 1345. It is in the church of San Giacomo Maggiore. In 1437, the Sienese, having again their coveted sculptor among them, write to the governor of Bologna, that the work of San Petronio having proved greater than was imagined, they beg for higher pay to Jacopo. In September of that year he is allowed to go to Bologna for one month, on the condition that he is to lose his salary as Eottore of the Opera for any time by which he exceeds that leave of absence. He disre- garded this, and on November 7,1437, the Commune of Siena writes that great disorders are being caused by his absence from the works of the Duomo. On February 5, 1438, there is a deed by which the Commune, finding Jacopo has not returned because he has had some weeks' illness, revokes its decree to stop his salary. At length, on October 20, 1438, Jacopo, worn 9u,t with his worries, with the cares of office, and the disputes of patrons, found rest in death, and was honourably interred in the Duomo of Siena. He;may well have good cause to write in one of his letters, " God knows how many complaints and murmurs I have to bear from my countrymen.'' He left all his pro^Derty to his brother and sister, except a legacy to a pupil called Ciiio di Bartolo Battilori, who was accused, after his master's death, of the ingratitude of having stolen 800 gold florins, besides clothes and jewellery, from Delia Quercia's room in Bologna. The South Kensington Museum possesses two terra-cotta groups of the Virgin 'and Child, and other original works, by Jacopo della Querela. A representation of one of them is . JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA. .. 109 given in- the 'Portfolio' (No. 158), accompanied hj a monograph on Delia Querela from -the pen of Professor Sidney Colvin. The list of Delia Quercia's scholars is a long one, and not without some illustrious names. NicooLA BoLOGNESE, or Niccola dell' Area, was, in reality, a native of Bari, who came to live at Bologna with his father Antonio, It is not proved, although Vasari asserts it, that he was a pupil of Jacopo ; although he might have worked under him at San Petronio. He ohtained the name of ieir Area from having added the elaborate canopy to the Area di San Domeniao, of which Niccola Pisano had sculptured the sarcophagus in the thirteenth cenlur3^ There is a terra cotta Madonna in the fagade of the Palazzo Puhblioo of Bologna, sculptured by him. He married Caterina do' Boateri, and died in Bologna, March 2, 1495. PiETBO DI MiNELtA, Son of Tommaso di Minella (born 1391), assisted Querela in the marble part of the font at Siena, and was architectural sculptor of the Loggia di San Paolo ; he was capo maestro of Orvleto cathedral from 1431 to 1433, and later held the same office at Siena. ' Ho had three brothers, all sculptors, and held a kind of school of design in Siena in 1476, in which the Seven Ages of Man, for the mosaic floor of the Duomo, was designed. Giovanni di Stef.\no, who made two bronze angels above the altar of the Duomo, Vito dl Marco (H. 1456), Francesco dl Bartolo (1437-1497), and Bartolo di Domenico (1472- 1522), were minor artists of his school. The two greatest of his followers were Lorenzo dl Pietro di Giovanni di Lando, better known as Vecchietta, and Matted Civitali, a Lucuhese, whose works almost rival those of Delia Quercia, and of whom we have already spoken. Il Vecchietta, born 1412, at Castiglione di Valdorcio, 110 EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTOES. near Siena, was not only sculptor, but architect, painter and goldsmith. In 1445 he painted the frescoes of the chapel which con- tain the relics in the Sacristy of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Sca!a, besides frescoing the ceiling and walls of the same Sacristy, and in .1540 he began to fresco the roof and walls of the Baptistery of Siena. The Uffizi gallery in Florence possesses a triptich of the Madonna and saints, by Vecchietta, which very well displays his style. But it is principally of his works in bronze and sculpture that we have to speak. In 1460 he had the commission for two statues of 8t Peter and St. Paul for the Loggia della Mercanzia at Siena. After his masterpiece of painting, the Assumption of the Virgin in the Altar of the Sacrament, at Pienza, in 1461, he appears to have turned his attention more to metal working, but unfortunately few specimens of this remain. The silver bust or statue of St. Catherine disappeared after' the siege of Siena in 1555. He made three silver statues also for the Duomo of Siena, that of St. Bernardino in 1474 — the same year in which that of St. Catherine was cast — one of St. Paul in 1475, and St. Sebastian 1478. The bronze recumbent effigy of Mariano Sozzino the elder, a famous juriconsult, is now in the Florentine gallery of bronzes, having been bought by Duke Ferdinando II. The commission was given in 1467 at the expense of the city. It was to be placed on his tomb in San Domenico. The head and face and the wrinkled aged hands are extremely life-like, but the style is hard. In 1465 he began one of his principal works which he finished in 1472, a tabernacle of bronze for the high altar of the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. It is surmounted by a statue of the risen Christ, and adorned with angels; it cost 1650 lire. In 1506 it was removed to the hi'.;h altar of the Duomo of Siena, where it still remains PUPILS OF JACOrO BELLA QUEHCIA. Ill In 1476 Vecchietta obtained permission to erect a chapel of Ms own design in the church of the hospital, whicli he adorned with a painted altar-piece and a hronze statuette of Christ. The picture, much injured, is now in the Belle Arte of Siena. Several of his works exist in Nami, where there is a statue in wood of St Anthony in the Duomo, and another of St. Bernardino in the church of that name, hoth signed. His wiU is dated May 12, 1479. He died June 6, 1480. Among the names of the latter half of the fifteenth century- there are but a few who stand out in the annals of the Sienese school. These are Francesco di Giorgio, (born 1439, died 1502,) sculptor and architect, who was chiefly known for the reliefs in the fagade of the Ducal palace at Urbino. He was one of the Signory of Siena in 1493, and cast two angels for the tabernacle of the high altar of the Duomo of that city. Urbaito da Coktona, a scholar of Vecchietta, in 1480 sculptured the monument of the Cavaliere Christofano Felice in the church of San Francesco at Siena, and a bas-relief over the door of the Oratory of St. Catherine. GiACOMo DI CozzARBLLi, (bom in Siena, November 20, 1453; died March 23, 1515,) was a pupil of Francesco di Giorgio, and a good bronze caster and architect. With these artists the story of the Sienese school ends. Only thirty sculptors' names are on the books in the sixteenth century, against sixty in the fifteenth, and ninety-three in the fourteenth. The causes of this decadence may be found in two reasons ; that with the completion of the Duomo the impulse given to sculpture was less, and also that, in losinf her independence and falling under the power of Tuscany, Siena lost with her freedom her artistic power. INDEX. [The names of tli3 W'jiks of SciilptiirG mentioned are given in italic.'} Papre Acciajuoli Tomh. N. Aretino li)l Adam ami ^ve— Statues by Baudinelli . . * . .72 Adam and .B«e— Statues by Civitali . . . . 2f) Ajostino and Aspolo . . 92 Alesf:anderV.,Pope. Tomb by N. Aretino . . . .101 Aliotti, Bishop. Tomb by Da Camaino . . . .96 Altar-piece in Duomo. Paru- qia.^ Mino da Fiesole . . 7 AHoviti, Bindo. Celliui . S3 Altoviti Tomh, The. B. da Rovezzano . . . . 64 Amalfi 2'omb, Naples. Ant. Rossellino . . . .28 Ambrogio, Matteo d' . .98 Amraannati, Bartoloraineo . 73 Anr/els, Statusttes of. L. della Robbia . . . .37 Annunciation. B. Majano . 4S Area di Sanf Agostino . . 9 o Aretino, Niccold , . .99 Ascension, The. Bas-relief by L. della Robbia . . . 37 Assumption, The. Relief by, A. Sansovino . . .57 Bacchus and Ceres — Statues by Bandinelli . . .72 Bande Nere Monument, by Bandinelli . . .71 Bandinelli, Baecio . . .66 Bartolommeo di Tonime , . 98 Beata Villani Tomb, The. B. Rossellinl . . . . 27 Bentivoglio Monument. Delia Querela . . . .108 Bertini, Domenico . . .19 Boy Bacchus. J. Sansovino . 61 Boi/ and Dolphin, Brome. Verrocchio . . . .14 ' PllgO Brunaccio, Antonio . . 98 Bruni Tomb, The. B. Ros- sellini .... 26 Calling of Joachim, Bronze reflie'f by Della Querela . 105 Camaino, Tiuo da . . . 9.) Cecca, Giovanni di . . . 98 CMlini, Beuveudto . . .78 Civitali, Matteo . . 18, 109 Civitali, NiccolO . . .20 Coinage designed by Celliui . 82 Coleoni, Equestrian Statue of Verrocchio and A. Tjeopardo 14 Coronation of the Virgin. L. d^lla Robbia ... 39 Cortona, Urban o da . .111 Cosimo, Duke. Cellini . . 85 Cosimo I., Colossal Statue of Giov. da Bologna . . 89 Cozzarelli, Giacomo di . .112 Crucifix, A Marble. Cellini 8-5 Danti, Vincenzio . . .89 David, Brome Statue, by Ver- rocchio . . . .12 David and Goliath, Model by Bandinelli .... 68 Decollation of S. John the Baptist. Yerrocchio . . 14 Del Tasso Family of Wood- carvers . - . .51 Desiderio . . . 2, 18 Duccio, Agostino and Otta- viano di . . . .35 Enamels by Cellini . . 80 jFaiiA— Bas-relief. Civitali . 20 Ferdinandol., Colossal Statue of 6. da Bologna . . . 89 Florence, The Campanile. Bas- reliefs by L. della Robbia . 35 ryoKX. 113 Page Plorence, Tlie, Biioiiiw). Altars by L. delta Kobbia . . 35 Fonte Gaia, Siena . 94, 104 Fountain a,i FontaineHejUjby Triboto .... 77 Gauo, Maestro . . .97 Giorgio, Pranceseo . . .111 Giotto, Bust of. B. Majano . 48 Giovanni da Bologoa . . 86 Giovanni, Luca di . . . iiS Giuqni Tomb. Miao da Fie- sole 4 Goro Sanese . . . . 9S Guido Tarlati Tomb . . i>3 Habakkuh, Statue of. Civitali 20 Henry nf Luxemburfjf Tomb of. Ba Camaiito . . 95 Hercules and Caeus. Bandi- nelli 69 Hercules and the Centaur. Giov. da Bologna . . 89 " Intatsiatura " .. . .46 Isaiah, Statue of. Civitali . 20 Jaeobello of Venice . . 94 Jacopa, Cardinal, Tomb of. A. Bosselliuo . . .28 Lando Sanese . . . . 9S Laocoon, Model of the, by J. Sansovino . . . .61 Laocoon, Copy of the, by Ban- dinelli . . . .68 Leonello d'Este. Pisanello . 21 Lucca, Duwthfi of. Civitali 18, 19 Madonna cmd Awjeh.. L. della Ko'bbiat ... 39 Madonna and Child. Mino da Fiesole .... 4 Madmina and Child. Andrea del la Robbia . . .43 Madonna and Child. Reliefs by Ant. Rossellino . . 30 Madonna in Adoration. L. della Robbia ... 38 E.l.s. — 2 Madonna in Otory. Alto-re- lievo by B. Majano . . 49 Majani Family, The, Works of 45 Maria of Hungary, Tomb of. Da Caniaino . . .96 Medat of Francis T. Cellini. SO Medallions by Pisanello . 21 Medici, Piero and Giov. de\ Tomb of. Verrocchio . 11 Mellini, Pietro, Bust of, by B. Majano . . . .46 Mercury, Bronze Statue of. Giov. da Bologna . . 89 Mercury holdiaj a flute. Ban- dinelK . . . .68 Michelangelo . . , .65 Minella, Pietro di . . . 109 JVIiiJO da Fiesole ... 1 Moccio Sanese . . .99 " Morbidezza " . . .64 Moscliiuo, Francesco . . 9J! Nativity, Bas-'relief of the. Ant. Rossellino . . .28 Neroni, Bust of Mino da P'iesole .... 3 Nese, Cellino di . . . 98 Niccola Bologmese . . . 109' Noceto, Pietro da, Tomb of. Civitali .... IS Orpheus in Infei' : Bandinelli 6S Or-^o, Bishop Antonio ci'. Tomb by Da Cainaiuo . . 96 Orvieto Cathedral, Fafade of . 92, Palmierif Matteo. Bust by Ant. Rossellino . . . 30^ Paolo of Venice . . . 94 PaulII.yTmn.hofP<^. Miao da Fiesole .... 5 Perseus ivith the head of the Medusa. Statue by Cellini 84 PisaueEck . . . .20 PoUajuolo, Antonio del . . 57 Prato, Pulpit in the Duomo of. Mino da Fiesole and Ant. Rossellino . . 7, 30 Querela, Jacopo della . .102 114 INDEX. Page Hope of the Salines. Giov. da Bologna . . . .87 Eeliquaries by Cellini . . 81 Eesun-ection, The. Bas-relief by L. della Robbia ' . .37 Binaldo della Luna, Bust. Mine da Fiesole ... 2 Robbia, Family della . . 3:i Rossellini, The . . . 2(> Rossi, Viucenziode' . . 90 Eoverella, Bishop. Monument by A. Rosselliuo . . .30 Rovezzano, Benedetto da . G3 •iS'. Anthony and S. Georrje — Tempera. Pisaiiello . . 20 S. Elizabeth. Civitali . . 20 SS. Eustace and Georrje. Fres- c'oes by Pisanello . . .20 San Gallo, Giuliauo and An- tonio da . . . .52 San Gemignauo, Altars at, by B. Majano .... 49 S. Jerome. By Bandinelli . G-S S. John. By Ant. Rossellino 30 S. John the Baptist, Statue of. Civitali . . .19 S. John the Baptist, Bust of. B. Rossellini . . " . 27 S. John the Baptist. Statue by J. Sansovino . . .60 S, Laurence and Saints. Pie- lief in terra-cotta. A. Sanso- vino . . . - . .57 S. Luke and S. Mark, Statues of. N. Aretino . . .100 S. Peter. Colossal Statue by Bandinelli . . . '. 68 San Petronia, Bologna, Snulp- tures in the Church of. Delia Querela .... 106 S. Eegulus. Civitali . .19 S. Sebastian. Civitali . . 19 S. Sebastian. Statue by Ant. Rossellino . . . .30 Kige S. Thomas feeling the wounds of Christ. VerroGchio . 14 Salutati Monuments. Mino da Fiesole .... 3 Sansovino, Andrea and Jacopo 56 "Seven works of Mere)/," Frieze of the, by Giov. della Robbia . . . .43 Sforsa, Battista, Bust of. B. Rossellini . . . .27 Sforza, Tomb of Cardinal. A. Sansovino ... . . 5S Siena, The Early Masters of .. 91 Soderini Monument. B. da Rovezzano . . . .64 Squarcialnpi, Antonio. Bust by B. Majano . . .48 Strozzi, Niocolo, Bust of. Mino da Fiesole ... 7 Strozzi Tomb. B. Majano . 48 Tafemacteby Mino da Fiesole .'5, 6 Tino da Camaino . . . 9 > Tribolo . . . .61,74 Uno Monument. Mino da Fiesole .... 4 Vecchietta, II . . . 109 Venus — Marble Statue . G iov. da Bologna .... 87 Verrocchio, Andrea del . .9 Vesjjucci, Simone . . .56 Vieri, Ugolino da . . .98 Virr/in and Child, Statue of. Civitali . . . .10 Virgin and Saint Anna. A. Sansovino . . . .59 Vittore Pisano (Pisanello) . 20 Wa:x Effigies by V&iTocchio . 15 Wolsey, Cardinal, Monument to. B. da Rovezzano . . 64 Zachariah, Statue of. Civitali 20 R. Cltxtj Ss HijUi, liiuUeUf LonUcn ^- £uiltj' ij. r->i'