The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 5 (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. 5 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Lanzi, Luigi
Painting -- Italy -- History
He adopted this style in a number of pictures for private ornament, both
for the Dukes Farnesi, in whose palace at Rome he first began to paint, and
for other noblemen. His Polyphemus, conducted for the Casa Borghese in that
city, is highly extolled, as well as his scriptural histories at S.
Callisto. There are many pictures also from his hand; his St. Andrea
Avellino at Rome, enriched with splendid architecture, boasts singular
merit; his Dead Christ at Foligno, with the "Padre Eterno," a figure, which
though in human form, nevertheless impresses us with grand ideas of the
Divine Being; the Transit of our Lady, in Macerata; the S. Rocco, and the
S. Corrado, in Piacenza; perhaps the most finished among Lanfranco's
productions, and deservedly the most celebrated. But he exhibited this
style still more fully in cupolas and other scenes on a grand scale,
according to Coreggio's example. When young, he executed a small coloured
model of the cupola of the cathedral at Parma, emulating his whole style,
in particular that grace of motion, of all by far the most difficult. He
imitated it too at S. Andrea della Valle at Rome, and in his picture
availed himself of the example afforded by Michelangiolo in architecture,
when unable to execute a more beautiful cupola than Brunelleschi's, and
desirous of differing from it, he worked from a new design, and succeeded
to admiration. This production forms an epoch in the art, inasmuch "as he
was the first," says Passeri, "to irradiate the opening of a celestial
glory with a splendour of light, of which there was formerly seen no
example." ... "Lanfranco's cupola remains a solitary specimen in the way of
glories; because, in respect to its celestial idea, in the opinion of the
most dispassionate judges, he has attained the highest degree, as well in
the harmony of the whole, its chief object, as in the distribution of the
colours, in the parts, and in force of chiaroscuro," &c. Nor was this, on
which he spent four years, the sole example he left of a fecundity of idea
and rare elevation of mind, of which we meet with no account in any other
artist, even among the ancient painters. Add to this, the cupolas at the
Gesù, and at the Tesoro of S. Gennaro at Naples, where he succeeded
Domenichino, with various tribunes and chapels in Rome and Naples, adorned
with equal majesty, and which have given to Lower Italy the most genuine
examples in this kind, of which the art can boast. From him it was that the
Machinists acquired the power of gratifying the eye at larger distances,
painting only in part, and in part leaving the work, as he was accustomed
to express it, for the air to paint. In the two schools above-mentioned we
have embraced his best disciples: to the Bolognese he gave no pupils, as
far as I learn, any more than to Romagna and its dependencies; if we except
Gio. Francesco Mengucci, of Pesaro, who assisted him in the cupola of St.
Andrea; a painter, I believe, for collections, who has been much extolled
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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