[52] Of the portraits which Raphael in fresco scattered over the
compositions of the Vatican, we shall find an opportunity to speak. But
in oil the real style of portrait began at Venice with Giorgione,
flourished in Sebastian del Piombo, and was carried to perfection by
Titiano, who filled the masses of the first without entangling himself
in the minute details of the second. Tintoretto, Bassan, and Paolo of
Verona, followed the principle of Titiano. After these, it migrated from
Italy to reside with the Spaniard Diego Velasquez; from whom Rubens and
Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England,
with unequal success. France seized less on the delicacy than on the
affectation of Vandyck, and soon turned the art of representing men and
women into a mere remembrancer of fashions and airs. England had
possessed Holbein, but it was reserved for the German Lely, and his
successor Kneller, to lay the foundation of a manner, which, by
pretending to unite portrait with history, gave a retrograde direction
for near a century to both. A mob of shepherds and shepherdesses in
flowing wigs and dressed curls, ruffled Endymions, humble Junos,
withered Hebes, surly Allegroes, and smirking Pensierosas, usurped the
place of truth, propriety and character. Even the lamented powers of the
greatest painter whom this country and perhaps our age produced, long
vainly struggled, and scarcely in the eve of life succeeded to
emancipate us from this dastard taste.
[53] Francesco Mazzuoli, called Il Parmegiano, died at Casal Maggiore in
1540, at the age of 36. The magnificent picture of the St. John, we
speak of, was begun by order of the Lady Maria Bufalina, and destined
for the church of St. Salvadore del Lauro at Città di Castello. It
probably never received the last hand of the master, who fled from Rome,
where he painted it, at the sacking of that city, under Charles Bourbon,
in 1527; it remained in the refectory of the convent della Pace for
several years, was carried to Città di Castello by Messer Giulio
Bufalini, and is now in England. The Moses, a figure in Fresco at Parma,
together with Raphael's figure of God in the vision of Ezekiel, is said,
by Mr. Mason, to have furnished Gray with the head and action of his
bard: if that was the case, he would have done well to acquaint us with
the poet's method of making 'Placidis coire immitia.'
[54] Lodovico Carracci died at Bologna 1619, aged 64.
[55] Agostino Carracci died at Parma in 1602, at the age of 44. His is
the St. Girolamo in the Certosa, near Bologna; his, the Thetis with the
nereids, cupids, and tritons, in the gallery of the palace Farnese. Why,
as an engraver, he should have wasted his powers on the large plate from
the Crucifixion, painted by Tintoretto, in the hospitio of the school of
St. Rocco, a picture, of which he could not express the tone, its
greatest merit, is not easily unriddled. Annibale Carracci died at Rome
in 1609, at the age of 49.
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