A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools: Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin
History
A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools: Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin
National Gallery (Great Britain); Painting -- England -- London -- Catalogs
The only signed picture by this painter still in existence. He
was a native of Cremona and worked there: he and his brother
pleased the Cremonese so much by painting in the Town Hall that
the artists were given an exemption from taxes. But he may
be classed as a Venetian, for he was an imitator of Giovanni
Bellini. This picture at once recalls Bellini's No. 280, and is
in fact a copy of a Madonna by that painter in the Chiesa degli
Scalzi at Venice.
287. LUDOVICO MARTINENGO.
_Bartolommeo Veneziano_ (painted 1505-1530).
The Martinengo family seems to have patronised this painter,
as the Senator Count Martinengo, of Venice, possesses as
an heirloom a small picture by the master which is signed
"Bartolommeo mezzo Veneziano e mezzo Cremonese." The present
picture (dated 1530) is signed "Bartolom. Venetus," so that he
was perhaps a Cremonese by birth and a Venetian by artistic
training, being probably a pupil of Giovanni Bellini (see
Morelli's _Italian Works in German Galleries_, p. 138).
A portrait of a young man, at the age of twenty-six (as the inscription
tells us), in the costume of the Campagnia della Calza (the guild of
the stocking).
288. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, MICHAEL AND RAPHAEL.
_Pietro Perugino_[133] (Umbrian: 1446-1523).
Pietro Vannucci, a native of Castello della Pieve, was
called Perugino, from the town of which he afterwards became
a citizen. His earliest master was probably Fiorenzo di
Lorenzo, and he is known to have also worked under Piero
della Francesca. Afterwards he went to Florence, where,
it is said, he studied with Leonardo da Vinci under the
sculptor Verrocchio. There is, however, no trace of any such
discipleship in his works, which, on the contrary, show an
untouched development of native Umbrian art, so that Perugino
becomes the typical representative of what Ruskin calls the
"purist ideal." It is probable that his first visit to Florence
was not paid till he was already established in independent
practice. "He there remained," says Vasari, "for many months
without even a bed to lie on, and miserably took his sleep
upon a chest; but, turning night into day, and labouring
without intermission, he devoted himself most fervently to
the study of his profession." And in time he became himself a
famous master, with Raphael for his pupil, and "he attained
to such a height of reputation that his works were dispersed,
not only through Florence and all over Italy, but in France,
Spain, and other countries." He was himself too of a roving
disposition, and he multiplied his engagements beyond his
power of fulfilling them. In 1475 he received his first public
commission at Perugia, but the frescoes then painted for the
Palazzo Communale have perished. In 1480 he was employed by
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