Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

rosy voluptuous style of decoration through pagan figures, darting

Cupids, and chubby cherubim. Correggio, rather than Raphael, conquered

France, and left upon its art an influence that lasted till Watteau.

-

In Parma itself his work was continued, and then transformed, by

Francesco Mazzuoli, called by Italian whim il Parmigianino- the

Parmesan. Born an orphan (1504), he was reared by two uncles who

were painters, so that his talent ripened rapidly. At seventeen he was

commissioned to decorate a chapel of that same church- San Giovanni

Evangelista- in which Correggio was painting the dome; in these

frescoes his style achieved an almost Correggian grace, to which he

added his own peculiar love of fine raiment. About this time he

painted a remarkable portrait of himself as seen in a mirror; this

is one of the most engaging autorittrati in art, revealing a lad

of refinement, sensitivity, and pride. When Parma was besieged by

papal troops his uncles packed up this and others of his pictures, and

sent Francesco with them to Rome (1523) to study the works of

Raphael and Michelangelo, and seek the favor of Pope Clement VII. He

was on the way to full success when the sack of Rome forced him to

flee to Bologna (1527). There a fellow artist robbed him of all his

engravings and designs. Presumably by this time his protective

uncles had died. He earned his bread by painting for Pietro Aretino

the queenly Madonna della Rosa, formerly in Dresden, and for some

nuns the Santa Margherita, which still survives in Bologna. When

Charles V came there to reorganize a devastated Italy, Francesco

made a portrait of him in oils; the Emperor liked it, and might have

made the artist's fortune, but Parmigianino took the portrait back

to his studio to give it a few finishing touches, and never saw

Charles again.

He returned to Parma (1531), and received a commission to paint a

vault in the church of the Madonna della Steccata. He was now at the

top of his powers, and his incidental products were of a high order: a

Turkish Slave who looks more like a princess; a Marriage of St.

Catherine matching Correggio's handling of this theme, with

children of unearthly beauty; and an anonymous portrait allegedly of

his mistress Antea, described as one of the most famous courtesans

of the time, but here angelically demure, with robes too gorgeous

for anyone less than a queen.

But now Parmigianino, perhaps goaded on by his misfortunes and

poverty, became ardently interested in alchemy, and neglected his

painting to set up furnaces for the improvisation of gold. The

ecclesiastics of San Giovanni, unable to recall him to his work there,

ordered his arrest for violation of contract. The painter fled to

Casalmaggiore, lost himself in alembics and crucibles, let his beard

grow, neglected his person and his health, caught a chill and fever,

and died as suddenly as Correggio (1540).

II. BOLOGNA

-

If we pass over Reggio and Modena in unseemly haste it is not

because they had no cherished heroes of sword or brush or pen. In

Reggio an Augustinian monk, Ambrogio Calepino, compiled a dictionary

of Latin and Italian, which in successive editions grew into a

polyglot lexicon of eleven languages (1590). Little Carpi had a

handsome cathedral designed by Baldassare Peruzzi (1514). Modena had a

sculptor, Guido Mazzoni, who shocked his townsmen by the realism of

a terra-cotta Cristo morto; and the fifteenth-century choir stalls

of the eleventh-century cathedral matched the beauty of the facade and

campanile. Pellegrino da Modena, who worked with Raphael in Rome and

then returned to his native city, might have become a painter of

note had he not been murdered by ruffians bent upon killing his son.

Doubtless Renaissance violence snuffed out in their growth a

regiment of potential geniuses.

Bologna, standing at a main crossing of Italy's trade routes,

continued to prosper, though her intellectual leadership was passing

to Florence as humanism dethroned Scholasticism. Her university was

now only one of many in Italy, and could no longer read the law to

pontiffs and emperors; but its medical school was still supreme. The

popes claimed Bologna as one of the Papal States, and Cardinal

Albornoz had passingly enforced the claim (1360); but the schism of

the Church between rival popes (1378-1417) reduced papal control to

a technicality. A rich family, the Bentivogli, rose to political

mastery, and maintained throughout the fifteenth century a mild

dictatorship, which observed republican forms and acknowledged but

ignored the overlordship of the popes. As capo or head of the

Senate, Giovanni Bentivoglio governed Bologna for thirty-seven years

(1469-1506) with sufficient wisdom and justice to win the admiration

of princes and the affection of the people. He paved streets, improved

roads, and built canals; he helped the poor with gifts, and

organized public works to mitigate unemployment; he actively supported

the arts. It was he who brought Lorenzo Costa to Bologna; for him

and his sons Francia painted; Filelfo, Guarino, Aurispa, and other

humanists were welcomed to his court. During the later years of his

rule, embittered by a conspiracy to depose him, he used harsh

methods to maintain his ascendancy, and forfeited the good will of the

people. In 1506 Pope Julius II advanced upon Bologna with a papal

army, and demanded his abdication. He yielded peaceably, was allowed

to depart intact, and died in Milan two years later. Julius agreed

that Bologna should thenceforth be ruled by its Senate, subject to

veto, by a papal legate, of legislation opposed by the Church. The

rule of the popes proved more orderly and liberal than that of the

Bentivogli; local self-government was unhindered; and the university

enjoyed remarkable academic freedom. Bologna remained a papal state,

in fact as well as name, till the advent of Napoleon (1796).

Renaissance Bologna was proud of its civic architecture. The guild

of merchants raised an elegant Mercanzia, or Chamber of Commerce

(1382f), and the lawyers rebuilt (1384) their imposing Palazzo dei

Notari. The nobles built handsome palaces like the Bevilacqua, where

the Council of Trent would hold its sittings in 1547, and the

Palazzo Pallavicini, described by a contemporary as "not unworthy of

kings." `05123 The massive Palazzo del Podesta, seat of the

government, received a new facade (1492), and Bramante designed a

stately spiral staircase for the Palazzo Comunale. Many facades had

arcades on the street level, so that one might walk for miles in the

heart of the city without being exposed- except at crossings- to sun

or rain.

While in the university skeptics like Pomponazzi questioned the

immortality of the soul, the people and their rulers built new

churches, adorned or repaired old ones, and brought hopeful

offerings to miracle-working shrines. The Franciscan friars added to

their picturesque church of San Francesco one of the fairest

campaniles in Italy. The Dominicans enriched their church of San

Domenico with choir stalls painstakingly carved and inlaid by Fra

Damiano of Bergamo; and they engaged Michelangelo to carve four

figures for the ornate arca or tabernacle in which the bones of

their founder were zealously preserved. The great pride and tragedy of

Bolognese art was the cathedral of San Petronio. Far back in the fifth

century this Petronius had served the city as its bishop, and had been

deeply loved for his beneficence. In 1307 many worshipers claimed to

have been healed of blindness, deafness, or other infirmities by

washing the diseased parts with water from the well beneath his

shrine. Soon the city had to provide accommodations for hundreds of

pilgrims seeking cures. In 1388 the communal council decreed that a

church should be built for San Petronio, and on a scale that would

humble the Florentines and their duomo; it was to be 700 by 460

feet, with a dome rising to 500 feet from the ground. Money proved

less ample than pride; only nave and aisles to the transcept were

completed, and only the lower part of the facade. But that lower

part is a masterpiece that attests the noble aspirations and taste

of Renaissance art. The portal jambs and architrave were carved with

reliefs (1425-38) challenging in subjects and surpassing in power

Ghiberti's gates to the Florentine Baptistery, and yielding to them

only in refinement of finish; and in the pediment, along with

unprepossessing figures of Petronius and Ambrose, a Madonna and

Child, carved in the round, worthy of comparison with

Michelangelo's Pieta. These works of Iacopo della Quercia of Siena

were an inspiration to Michelangelo, and he might have been saved from

the muscular exaggerations of his sculptural style had he accepted

more of the classic purity in della Quercia's designs.

Sculpture rivaled architecture in Bologna. Properzia de' Rossi

carved a bas-relief for the facade of San Petronio; it won such praise

that when Clement VII came to Bologna he asked to see her; but she had

died in that week. Alfonso Lombardi, whose reliefs won

Michelangelo's praise, stepped into history on the coattails of

Titian. Learning that Charles V, during the conference at Bologna

(1530), was to sit for Titian, he persuaded the painter to take him

along as a servant; and while Titian painted, Alfonso, partly

concealed behind him, modeled the Emperor in stucco. Charles spied

him, and asked to see his work; he liked it, and asked Alfonso to copy

it in marble. When Charles paid Titian a thousand crowns he bade him

give half to Alfonso. Lombardi brought the finished marble to

Charles at Genoa, and received an additional three hundred crowns. Now

famous, Alfonso was taken to Rome by Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and

was commissioned by him to carve tombs for Leo X and Clement VII.

But the Cardinal died in 1535; and Alfonso, losing his commissions and

his patron, followed him, within a year, to the grave.

Painting, in fourteenth-century Bologna, was chiefly illumination;

and when it graduated into murals it followed a stiff Byzantine style.

It was apparently two artists from Ferrara who aroused Bolognese

painters from the rigor mortis of Byzantium. When Francesco Cossa

came to make his home in Bologna (1470) there was still in his

painting a certain Mantegnesque severity and sculptural hardness of

line, but he had learned to infuse his figures with feeling as well as

dignity, to set them in motion, and to bathe them in a living play

of light. Lorenzo Costa arrived in Bologna when he was a lad of

twenty-three (1483), and he stayed there for twenty-six years. He took

a studio in the same house as Francia; the two men became fast

friends, and influenced each other to mutual advantage; sometimes they

painted a picture together. Costa won the praise and ducats of

Giovanni Bentivoglio by painting an excellent Madonna Enthroned in

San Petronio. When Giovanni fled at the approach of the terrible

Julius (1506), Costa accepted an invitation to succeed Mantegna at

Mantua.

Meanwhile Francesco Francia was making himself the head and crown of

the Bolognese school. His father was Marco Raibolini, but as

surnames were loose in Italy, Francesco became known by the name of

the goldsmith to whom he was apprenticed. For many years he

practised the goldsmith's art, silverwork, niello, enameling, and

engraving. He was made master of the mint, and engraved the coins of

the city for both Bentivoglio and the popes; and his coins were so

distinguished by their beauty that they became collectors' items,

bringing high prices soon after his death. Vasari describes him as a

lovable man, "so pleasant in conversation that he could divert the

most melancholy individuals, and won the affection of princes and

lords and all who knew him." `05124

We cannot say what turned Francia to painting. Bentivoglio

discovered his talent, and commissioned him- already forty-nine- to

paint an altarpiece for a chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore (1499). The

dictator was pleased, and engaged Francia to decorate his palace

with murals. They were destroyed when the populace sacked the palace

in 1507, but we have Vasari's word for it that these and other

frescoes "brought Francia such reverence in the city that he was

reckoned as a god." `05125 Commissions poured in upon him, and perhaps

he accepted too many to allow his best potentialities to mature.

Mantua, Reggio, Parma, Lucca, and Urbino received panels from his

brush; the Pinacoteca Bolognese has a roomful of them; Verona has a

Holy Family, Turin an Entombment, the Louvre a Crucifixion,

London a Dead Christ and a striking portrait of Bartolommeo

Bianchini, the Morgan Library a Virgin and Child, the Metropolitan

Museum of Art a delightful portrait of Federigo Gonzaga in youth. None

of these is of the first order, but each is gracefully drawn, softly

colored, and suffused with a tenderness and piety that makes them

heralds of Raphael.

Francia's epistolary friendship with Raphael is one of the

pleasantest episodes of the Renaissance. Timoteo Viti was among

Francia's pupils at Bologna (1490-5), and became at Urbino one of

Raphael's early teachers; possibly some quality of Francia passed to

the young artist. `05126 When Raphael had achieved fame in Rome he

invited Francia to visit him. Francia excused himself as too old,

but he wrote a sonnet in Raphael's praise. Raphael sent him a letter

(September 5, 1508) rich in Renaissance courtesy:

-

M. Francesco mio caro:

I have just received your portrait, brought to me in good

condition... for which I thank you very warmly. It is most

beautiful, so lifelike that I sometimes mistake, believing myself to

be with you and to hear your words. I pray you to excuse and pardon

the delay and postponement of my self-portrait, which, because of

important and incessant occupation, I have not yet been able to

execute with my own hand in accordance with our agreement.... However,

I send you meanwhile another drawing, of the Nativity, done amid so

many other things that I blush for it; I do this trifle rather in sign

of obedience and love than for anything else. If in exchange I shall

receive [the drawing of] your story of Judith I shall place it among

the things that are dearest and most precious to me.

Monsignor il Datario expects your little Madonna with great

anxiety, and Cardinal Riario the large one.... I look for them with

that pleasure and satisfaction with which I see and praise all your

works, never seeing any others more beautiful, or more devout and well

done, than yours.

Meanwhile take courage, take care of yourself with your wonted

prudence, and be assured that I feel your afflictions as if they

were my own. Continue to love me as I love you with all my heart.

Always entirely at your service,

Your Raffaelle Sancio. `05127

-

We may allow here for some mannerly flourish, but that this mutual

affection was real appears from another letter, in which Raphael

sent his famous St. Cecilia to Francia, to be placed in a chapel

at Bologna, and asked him, "as a friend, to correct any errors he

might find in it." `05128 Vasari relates that when Francia saw the

picture he was so overwhelmed by its beauty, and so painfully

recognized his own inferiority, that he lost all will to paint, grew

ill, and presently died, in the sixty-seventh year of his age

(1517). This is one of many dubious deaths in Vasari; but he adds,

graciously, that there were other theories.

Perhaps, before his death, Francia saw some engravings made in

Rome by his pupil Marcantonio Raimondi from the drawings of Raphael.

Visiting Venice, Mark saw some engravings by Albrecht Durer on

copper or wood. He spent almost all his travel money buying thirty-six

wood engravings by the Nuremberg master on the Passion of Christ; he

copied them on copper, made prints from the copies, and sold the

prints as Durer's works. Going to Rome, he engraved on copper a

drawing by Raphael, so faithfully that the painter allowed a great

number of his drawings to be engraved, and prints to be made and sold.

Raimondi copied also the paintings of Raphael and others,

transferred the copy to copper, and sold the prints. While he made a

living in this novel way, the artists of Europe, without visiting

Italy, could now know the design of the famous paintings of the

Renaissance masters. Finiguerra, Raimondi, and their successors did

for art what Gutenberg and Aldus Manutius and others did for

scholarship and literature: they built new lines of communication

and transmission, and offered to youth at least the outlines of its

heritage.

III. ALONG THE EMILIAN WAY

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Eastward from Bologna lies a string of minor towns that

contributed their commensurate luster to the total splendor of the

Renaissance. Little Imola had its Innocenzo da Imola, who studied with

Francia, and left a Holy Family almost worthy of Raphael.

Faenza

gave its name and partial industry to faience; there- as in Gubbio,

Pesaro, Castel Durante, and Urbino- Italian potters in the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries perfected the art of coating earthenware

with opaque enamel, and painting thereon, with metallic oxides,

designs that on firing became brilliant purples, greens, and blues.

Forli (anciently Forum Livii) was made famous by two painters and

one virile heroine. Melozzo da Forli we defer to Rome, his favorite

theater of operations. His pupil Marco Palmezzano painted the old

Christian themes for a hundred churches or patrons, and left us a

deceptively charming portrait of Caterina Sforza.

Born out of wedlock to Galeazzomaria Sforza, Duke of Milan, Caterina

married the cruel and rapacious Girolamo Riario, despot of Forli. In

1488 his subjects rebelled, killed him, and captured Caterina and

her children; but troops loyal to her held the citadel. She promised

her captors, if released, to go and persuade these soldiers to

surrender; they agreed, but kept her children as hostages. Once in the

castle she had its gates closed, and vigorously directed the

resistance of the garrison. When the rebels threatened to kill her

children unless she and her men submitted, she defied them, and told

them from the ramparts that she had another child in her womb, and

could easily conceive more. Lodovico of Milan sent troops who effected

her rescue; the rebellion was mercilessly suppressed; and Caterina's

son Ottaviano was made lord of Forli under his mother's iron thumb. We

shall meet her again.

North and south of the Emilian Way two ancient capitals survive:

Ravenna, once the retreat of Roman emperors, and San Marino, the

inextinguishable republic. Around the ninth-century convent of St.

Marinus (d. 366) a tiny settlement formed, which, from its once easily

defensible perch on a rocky mountain top, remained immune to all the

condottieri of the Renaissance. Its independence was formally

recognized by Pope Urban VIII in 1631, and endures by the courtesy

of the Italian government, which finds little there to tax. Ravenna

recaptured a passing prosperity after the Venetians took it in 1441;

Julius II reclaimed it for the papacy in 1509; and three years later a

French army, having won a famous battle near by, felt entitled to sack

the city so thoroughly that it never recovered until the Second

World War, which shattered it again. There, on a commission from

Bernardo Bembo, father of the poet cardinal, Pietro Lombardo

designed the tomb (1483) that houses Dante's bones.

Rimini- where the Emilian Way, just south of the Rubicon, reached

its Adriatic end- entered violently into Renaissance history through

its ruling family, the Malatestas- Evil Heads. They appear first

toward the end of the tenth century as lieutenants of the Holy Roman

Empire, governing the Marches of Ancona for Otho III. By playing Guelf

and Ghibelline factions against each other, and making obeisance now

to the emperor, now to the pope, they acquired actual, though not

formal, sovereignty over Ancona, Rimini, and Cesena, and ruled them as

despots acknowledging no morals except those of intrigue, treachery,

and the sword. Machiavelli's Prince was a feeble echo of their

reality- blood and iron turned into ink, like Bismarck into Nietzsche.

It was a Malatesta, Giovanni, who, in a monogamous moment, killed

his wife Francesca da Rimini and his brother Paolo (1285). Carlo

Malatesta established the repute of the family in the patronage of

arts and letters. Sigismondo Malatesta carried the dynasty to its

zenith of power, culture, and assassination. His many mistresses

gave him several children, in some instances with disturbing

simultaneity. `05129 He married thrice, and killed two wives on

pretext of adultery. `051210 He was alleged to have made his

daughter pregnant, to have attempted sodomy with his son, who repelled

him with drawn dagger, `051211 and to have wreaked his lust upon the

corpse of a German lady who had preferred death to his

embrace; `051212 however we have for these exploits only the word of

his foes. To his final mistress, Isotta degli Atti, he gave unwonted

devotion and ultimately marriage; and after her death he set up in the

church of San Francesco a monument marked Divae Isottae sacrum -

"Sacred to the Divine Isotta." He seems to have denied God and

immortality; he thought it a merry prank to fill with ink the

holy-water stoup of a church, and to watch the worshipers bespatter

themselves as they entered. `051213

Crime had not enough varieties to exhaust his energy. He was an able

general, known for reckless bravery, and for resolute endurance of all

the hardships incident to military life. He wrote poetry, studied

Latin and Greek, supported scholars and artists, and delighted in

their company. He was especially fond of Leon Battista Alberti, the

Leonardo before da Vinci, and commissioned him to transform the

cathedral of San Francesco into a Roman temple. Leaving the

thirteenth-century Gothic church intact, Alberti fronted it with a

classic facade modeled on the Arch of Augustus erected at Rimini 27

B.C.; he planned to cover the choir with a dome, but this was never

built; the result is an unpleasant torso, called by contemporaries

Tempio Malatestiano. The art with which Sigismondo had the interior

refinished was a paean to paganism. In a brilliant fresco by Piero

della Francesca, Sigismondo was shown kneeling before his patron

saint; but this was almost the only Christian symbol left in the

church. In one of the chapels Isotta was buried; and on the tomb an

inscription was placed twenty years before her death: "To Isotta of

Rimini, in beauty and virtue the glory of Italy." In another chapel

were representations of Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Diana, and Venus. The

walls of the church were carved with marble reliefs of a high order,

chiefly by Agostino di Duccio, representing satyrs, angels, singing

boys, and personified arts and sciences, and emblazoned with the

initials of Sigismondo and Isotta. Pope Pius II, a lover of the

classics, described the new structure as a "nobile templum... so

filled with pagan symbols that it seemed the shrine not of

Christians but of infidels worshiping heathen deities." `051214

At the Peace of Mantua (1459) Pius compelled Sigismondo to restore

his principalities to the Church. When the doughty despot renewed

his hold upon them, Pius hurled a bull of excommunication at him,

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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