The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 1 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth CenturyLanzi, Luigi
History
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 1 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Lanzi, Luigi
Painting -- Italy -- History
Having a little before named Pietro Perugino, who long taught in
Tuscany, we may here mention the pupils who retained his manner. These
were Rocco Zoppo, whose Madonnas remain in many private houses in
Florence, I believe, to this day, and are in the manner of Pietro;
Baccio Ubertini, a great colourist, and on that account willingly
adopted as an assistant of his master; Francesco, the brother of Baccio,
surnamed Bacchiacca, known at S. Lorenzo by the martyrdom of S.
Arcadius, executed in small figures, in which, as well as in the
grotesque, he was very eminent, and nearly approached the modern style.
To these artists who lived in Florence, their native country, we may add
Niccolo Soggi, likewise a Florentine, but who, to shun the concourse of
more able painters, fixed his residence in Arezzo, where he had
sufficient employment. His accuracy, his studious habits, and his high
finish, may be there contemplated in the Christ in the Manger, in the
church of Madonna delle Lagrime, and in many other places in the city
and its environs. It would have been fortunate had he possessed more
genius, but this gift of nature, which, to use the words of a poet,[83]
confers immortality on books, and I would add pictures, was not granted
to Soggi. Vasari has given this character of a diligent, but meagre, and
frigid painter, also to Gerino da Pistoia, in which place one of his
pictures, now in the royal gallery, was painted for the monks of S. Pier
Maggiore; several others are in the city of S. Sepulcro, and some even
in Rome, where he assisted Pinturicchio. With the two preceding, I class
Montevarchi, a painter so named from his own country, beyond which he is
almost unknown. Among these artists, though they were scholars of
Pietro, we find imitators of the Florentines of the fourteenth century.
I omit the name of Bastiano da S. Gallo, who continued with him only a
short time, and left him on account of the aversion he had conceived to
the dryness of his style. In the Florentine history, by Varchi (book
10), we find mention of a Vittorio di Buonaccorso Ghiberti, who on
occasion of the siege of Florence by the family of the Medici, in 1529,
painted the figure of the Pontiff, Clement VII. on the façade of the
principal chamber of the Medici, in the last act of hanging from the
gallows. But neither of this, nor of any other production from so
infamous a hand, do there remain any traces in Florence, at least that I
have been able to discover, from which to judge either of the manner or
the master of Vittorio.
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