The History of Italian Painting. Luigi Lanzi
without garments.
[153] Microscosmo, p. 6.
[154] Tom. ii. p. 254.
[155] He is also blamed for this part of the perspective by others. (See P. M. della Valle in the "Prosa recitata in Arcadia," 1784, p. 260, of the Giorn. Pis. tom, liii.)
[156] Malv. tom. ii. p. 254.
[157] Vite de' Pittori, &c. p. 44.
[158] Dialogo sopra la Pittura.
[159] Idea del Tempio della Pittura, p. 41.
[160] Conca, Descriz. Odeporica della Spagna, tom. i. page 24.
[161] The ignorant believe that Michelangiolo "nailed a man to a cross and left him there to expire, in order to paint from the life a figure of our Saviour on the cross." See Dati, in his notes of the Life of Parrhasius, who is said to have committed a similar homicide. This story of the latter is probably a fable, and undoubtedly it is so of Michelangiolo. The crucifixions of this artist are often repeated, sometimes with a single figure, sometimes with our Lady and S. John; at other times with two Angels, who collect the blood. Bottari mentions several of these pictures in different galleries. To these we may add the picture of the Caprara palace, and those in the possession of Monsignor Bonfigliuoli and of Sigg. Biancani in Bologna. Sig. Co. Chiappini of Piacenza has a very good one, and there is another in the church of the college of Ravenna.
[162] A name given by the Italians to pictures of a dead Christ on the knees of his mother.
[163] Bottari, in his Notes to the Letter of Preziado, doubts whether this supposed scholar of Michelangiolo be Galeazzo Alessi, remarking at the same time that this last was rather an architect than a painter. I am inclined to think that the Matteo in question may have been the foregoing Matteo da Lecce, or da Leccio, and that owing to one of those errors, which Clerche in his "Arte Critica," calls ex auditu, his name in Spain became D'Alessi, or D'Alessio, the letters c and s in many countries being made use of reciprocally. Besides, this Leccese, of whom we write in the fourth volume, flourished in the time of Vargas, went to Spain, affected the style of Michelangiolo, and never settled himself in any place from his desire of seeing the world. Memoirs of him appear to have been collected in Spain, by Pacheco, who lived in 1635 (Conca, iii. 252), who in his account, at this distance of time, must have been guided by vulgar report; a bad authority for names, particularly those of foreigners, as was noticed in the Preface. That he should further be called Roman instead of Italian, in a foreign country, and that he should there adopt the name of Perez, not having assumed any surname in Rome, can scarcely appear strange to the reader, and the more so as he is described as an adventurer—a species of persons who subsist upon tricks and frauds.
[164] Sebastiano painted it again for the Osservanti of Viterbo; and there is a similar one described in the Carthusian Monastery, at Naples, which is painted in oil, and is supposed to be the work of Bonarruoti.
[165] Limbo, among theologians of the Roman Church, is the place where the souls of just men, who died before the coming of our Saviour, and of unbaptized children, are supposed to reside.
[166] This noble fresco was ruined during the revolutionary tumults at Rome.—Tr.
[167] That Raffaello was at this time well versed in perspective it is unreasonable to doubt, as Bottari has done: he proceeded from the school of Perugino, who was very eminent in that science; and he left a good specimen at Siena, where he remained some time before he came to Florence.
[168] Vol. iii. p. 126.
[169] This is conspicuous in a S. Raffaello with Tobias, which was transferred from the royal gallery of Florence to the imperial gallery of Vienna.—See Rosa Scuola Italiana, p. 141.
[170] Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxv. cap 10.
[171] "Any excellence he possessed was stolen from the admirable manner of our Florentine painter, Rosso; a man truly of wonderful genius." Cellini, in his life, as quoted by Baldinucci, tom. v. p. 72. He who writes thus of the ablest pupil of Giulio Romano, either was unacquainted with his works in Bologna, and in Mantua, executed before he knew Rosso, or blinded by party rage, was incapable of appreciating them.
[172] Page 81.
[173] About the time when Michele taught, there resided in Spain one Tommaso Fiorentino; one of whose portraits is mentioned by the Sig. Ab. Conca, (tom. i. p. 90,) belonging to the Royal Palace at Madrid. In the Ducal Palace of Alva, there are also galleries of grotesques, where we read the name of Tommaso Fiorentino, the author, to which is added (tom. ii. p. 362) "The name of this professor of the art is quite new to me; in his grotesques we meet with the exact style of the sons of Bergamasco, &c." I hardly know how the name can appear new to the Ab. Conca, when he had already mentioned it elsewhere; nor how the composition of an artist, who painted in 1521, could resemble that of others who were still young in the year 1570, in which their father died.
[174] Vasari, in his Life of Morto, says, that he came to Florence in order to improve his skill in figures, in which he was deficient, by studying the models of Vinci and of Michelangiolo. In despair, however, he returned to his grotesques. Now I shall elsewhere produce an unedited document shewing his ability in figure painting, which I should not have occasion to do if the beautiful portrait of Morto, in the Royal Gallery at Florence, was, as is conjectured, by his hand. But I am inclined to think that it is the likeness of an unknown person, who, as I have seen in other portraits, caused himself to be drawn with a finger pointing to a death's head, in order to remind him of his mortality, but in this picture the head has been capriciously interpreted as a symbol of the name of Morto, and the painting given as the portrait and work of Feltrese; of whom Vasari gives a very different one.
[175] They wrought from the designs of Pontormo, and still more those of Bronzino. They also wrought for the Duke of Ferrara after the designs of Giulio Romano, published by Gio. Battista Mantuano, among his prints.
[176] A similar composition is to be seen in an altar-piece in the cathedral of Volterra. It is inscribed, Opus Leonardi Pistoriens. an. 1516. This, however, ought not to be passed over on account of an historical doubt started by the Cavalier