The Story of Siena and San GimignanoGardner, Edmund G.
History
The Story of Siena and San Gimignano
Gardner, Edmund G.
Art -- Italy -- Siena; San Gimignano (Italy) -- History; Siena (Italy) -- History
These varied influences combined with that of Florence to produce
eclecticism; "a most singular and charming eclecticism, saved from the
pretentiousness and folly usually controlling such movements by the
sense for grace and beauty even to the last seldom absent from the
Sienese."[67] The three principal Sienese painters of this kind are
Girolamo del Pacchia (1477-1535), Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), and
Domenico di Giacomo di Pace (1486-1550), called Mecarino or Beccafumi.
Girolamo del Pacchia was the son of a Hungarian father and a Sienese
mother; he learned the first principles of art in Siena (probably from
Fungai), and then went to Florence and Rome, returning to Siena in 1508
where he soon fell under Bazzi's influence. Like Pacchiarotti (with whom
he used to be confused) Girolamo became involved in plots and
conspiracies, and was forced to fly from Siena. Baldassare Peruzzi is
one of the most famous architects of the Renaissance. As a painter he
first worked under Pinturicchio, then went to Rome where he laboured
much for the Popes and Agostino Chigi, falling under the influence of
Bazzi and later of Raphael, whom he succeeded as chief architect of San
Pietro. In the sack of Rome he was taken by the Spaniards, cruelly
tortured, and escaped to Siena in a state of abject poverty. The Sienese
made him public architect to the Republic, and afterwards Capomaestro of
the Duomo. There are a number of buildings attributed to him in Siena,
mostly doubtful. He ended his days in the Eternal City, working on the
fabric of San Pietro. Of Baldassare's paintings Siena only possesses a
few of his earliest and some of his very latest. Domenico di Giacomo was
the son of a contadino on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi (whom we have
already met in the political field) in the plain of the Cortine near
Montaperti. Lorenzo found him, like Giotto, drawing on the sand and
stones the movements of the animals under his charge, took him into his
household, had him taught to paint, and gave him his own family name.
"Domenico was a virtuous and excellent person," says Vasari, "and
studious in his art, but excessively solitary." He worked at Rome, Genoa
and other places, but told his friend and admirer, Vasari, that he could
do nothing away from the air of Siena. At different epochs he imitated
Perugino, Bazzi, Fra Bartolommeo, even Michelangelo; an unequal but
imaginative painter, he excels in the treatment of light and shade. Two
other artists of this epoch deserve special mention--Andrea Piccinelli,
called Del Brescianino, the son of a Brescian, who painted between 1507
and 1525, first following Girolamo del Pacchia, afterwards imitating Fra
Bartolommeo; and Bartolommeo Neroni, called Il Riccio, whose work
belongs to the middle of the century, the son-in-law and chief pupil of
Bazzi. To complete the sketch of Sienese art in the first half of the
Cinquecento, we must add a painter who comes slightly earlier than these
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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