red of his flesh-tints has more freshness than glow, such is the
solidity of his impasto and the purity of his method, that his panels
present us to this day less with the injuries than the improvements of
time.
The style of Mecherino did not survive him: for Giorgio da Siena, his
pupil, confined himself to grotesque work, in imitation of Giovanni da
Udine; Giannella, or Giovanni of Siena, turned to architecture: of Marco
Pino, commonly called Marco da Siena, his reputed pupil, the style,
decidedly built on the principles of M. Angelo, renders all notion of
his having received more than the first rudiments from Beccafumi or any
other master, nugatory: but the conjecture of Lanzi, that Domenico was
the master of Danielle Ricciarelli, known to have begun his studies at
Siena, though unsupported by tradition, acquires an air of probability
less from the supposed mutual attachments to M. Angelo, than the
versatility of their talents and similarity of pursuits.
Baldassare Peruzzi,[88] born in the diocese of Volterra, but in the
Sienese State, and of a citizen of Siena, with considerable talents for
painting, possessed a decided genius in architecture. His style of
design is temperate and correct, but quantity is the element of his
composition, if _indeed_ an aggregate of fortuitous figures deserve that
name. The Adoration of the Magi, preserved in various coloured copies
from his original chiaroscuro, embraces every fault of ornamental
painting without its only charm: it is not exaggeration to say, that the
principal figures are the least conspicuous, that the leaders are
sacrificed to their equipage, that the architect every where crosses the
painter, and that the quadrupeds, however brutally placed or
impertinently introduced, for conception, chiaroscuro, spirit and style,
give to the work what merit it can claim. The same principle prevails in
his fresco of the Presentation at the Pace, and both are so evidently
opposite to Raffaello's system of composition, that it is not easily
understood how he could be supposed to have been a pupil or imitator of
that master in propriety. If he resembles him any where, it is in single
expressions, as in the Judgement of Paris at the Castello di Belcaro,
according to Lanzi; and still more in the prophetic countenance of the
celebrated Sibyl predicting the birth of the Virgin to Augustus, at
Fonte Giusta, in Siena, whose divine enthusiasm no prophetess of
Raffaello has excelled, and no Sibyl of Guido or Guercino approached.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] Lettere della Beata Vergine, S. Caterina da Siena. Venez. 1562.,
4to. p. 286, 242. The last was written at the period of Vanni's dignity.
[85] 1481-1554.
[86] 1484-1549?
[87] Fiorillo, i. 335.
[88] 1481-1536.
THE ROMAN SCHOOL.
The Roman School comprises, besides the natives of the metropolis, those
of the whole Ecclesiastic State, Bologna, Ferrara, and some part of
Romagna excepted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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