The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 4 (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. 4 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Lanzi, Luigi
Painting -- Italy -- History
Two other citizens exhibited specimens in the same place, of the style
which is now called _antico moderno_. Alessandro Pampurini, as it is said,
drew some figures of cherubs, round a _cartellone_, or scroll for
inscriptions, together with a kind of arabesques, bearing the date of 1511;
and in the subsequent year Bernardino Ricca, or Ricco, produced a similar
work opposite to it, which owing to its having been executed with too much
dryness, perished in a few years, and was renewed by a different hand. But
there still exists his picture of a Pietà at S. Pietro del Po, with some
specimens likewise by his companion, sufficient to prove that both are
worthy of commemoration for their time.
Having thus described the series of artists who decorated the cathedral,
there remain a few other names unconnected with that great undertaking, but
which, nevertheless, enjoyed considerable celebrity in their day. Such are
Galeazzo Campi, the father of the three distinguished brothers, and Tommaso
Aleni. This last so nearly resembled Campi in his manner, that their
pictures can with difficulty be distinguished, as may be seen at S.
Domenico, where they painted in competition with each other. It is loosely
conjectured by many that they were the pupils of Boccaccino, an opinion
which I cannot entertain. The disciples of the best masters in the
fourteenth century continued to free themselves, the longer they
flourished, from the dry manner of their early education. Galeazzo, on the
other hand, the only one we need here mention, approaches less closely to
the modern style than his supposed master, as we perceive in the suburban
church of S. Sebastiano, where he painted the tutelar saint and S. Rocco
standing near the throne of the Virgin with the Infant Christ. The picture
bears the date of 1518, when he was already a finished master, and
nevertheless he there appears only a weak follower of the Perugino manner.
His colours are good and natural, but he is feeble in chiaroscuro, dry in
design, cold in his expression; his countenances have not a beam of
meaning, while that of the holy infant seems as if copied from a child
suffering under an obliquity of the eyes, those of the figure are so badly
drawn. The observation, therefore, of Baldinucci, or of his continuator,
that he "had rendered himself celebrated even beyond Italy," would seem in
want of confirmation; nor do I know whence such confirmation can be
derived. Certainly not from the ancients, for even his own son Antonio
Campi only remarks of Galeazzo, that he was "a tolerable painter for his
age."
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