v A Florentine Picture-Chronicle Of the Letterpress of this Work Three Hundred Copies were printed by William H. Ward & Co., Limited, Holbein House, 119 Shaftesbury Avenue, in the Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London. The Ninety-nine Facsimiles of the Original Drawings by Finiouerra were produced at the Imperial Press, Berlin, under the supervision of Dr. Lippmann. The entire Work was executed for Bernard Quaritch, 15 Piccadilly, in the Parish of St. James, in THE City of Westminster. It was begun in the month of December 1896, and finished in the month of July 1898. COLLATION Letterpress Halletitle ml Title, a leaves i Prefatory matter, 3 leaves i Introdnction, aa leaves i Descriptions of the Plates, 79 leaves rLATES—I. to XCIX. All Rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved. mfssxss^f BfiYgS A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE BEING A SERIES OF NINETY-NINE DRAWINGS REPRESENTING SCENES AND PERSONAGES OF ANCIENT HISTORY SACRED AND PROFANE MASO FINIGUERRA REPRODUCED FROM THE ORIGINALS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY THE IMPERIAL PRESS, BERLIN WITH MANY MINOR ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES A CRITICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE TEXT SIDNEY COLVIN, M.A, KEEPER OF THE PRINTS AND DRAWINGS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM LONDON BERNARD QUARITCH 'rSWTV,VW^MViVIVfKTi l ! rtf «#«•»»» •tf.MJr* «.»■«. * •-< ERRATA Introduction, p. 5, note 1, 6, for Tesoretto read Tesoro. 3, line 5, for ghonfalone read ghonfalone aprestanziato. line 8, for lanatore read lauatore. line 9, for herede read lerede, and for ncl read nella. line 10, for costienzie read coscienzie. line 11, for giudichamo read giudichiamo. line 14, delete (?), for vaiao read vaiaio, and for paghiamo read paghianc. 4 carried over, line 6, for di read da. „ line 7, for Grassi read Grasso. „ line 9, for I rouancj (?) read Trouancj. „ line 13, for de read dc. „ line 16, for Cho simo read Chosimo. ,, line 17, for Chericho read Chiricho. „ after line 20 should appear, in a separate line , the heading Boche, „ line 22, for donna read dona. „ line 28, for braghono read traghono. note z, line 4, for portoglie. Giusto read portoglie Giusto. line 6, for an engraver read a printer. for Gehrs read Lehrs. col. p. 36, col. p. 40, note Interleaf, PI. XIV. XV., for fwos read >’ » note 1, line 8 , for uno maistreo read ,, PI. XXIV. line 1 ,for drawings read drawing. GfTTV CFWTTR LIBRART CONTENTS Introduction ............... 1-44 Chronicle-Drawings ............. 45 to end Explanation of Drawings ...... . . On Interleaves facing each Plate LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SEPARATELY PRINTED Border of Scrolls, Heads, and Candelabra. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... Title-page THE CHRONICLE DRAWINGS Adam and Eve—Cain and Abel ....... Adah and Seth—Methusaleh and Jubal ...... Lamech, Enoch, Tubal Cain : End of the First and Beginning of the Second Age The Drunkenness of Noah ........ Noah’s Ark .......... Shem, Ham, and Japhet—Heber and Nimrod ..... The Tower of Babel ......... Ragau and Saruch—Semiramis and the City of Babylon The City of Nineveh ......... End of the Second and Beginning of the Third Age .... The Sacrifice of Abraham ........ Jacob and Esau .......... Zoroaster, Inachus, Prometheus, Pharaoh ...... Triumph of Joseph ......... Cecrops and the City of Athens ....... Moses on Mount Horeb, with the Worship of the Golden Calf Job ............ Aaron ........... Caleb ........... Joshua before the Walls of Jericho ....... Orpheus Taming the Beasts ........ I II III IV V VI VII . VIII IX X . XI XII, XIII XIV, XV . XVI, XVII . XVIII, XIX XX, XXI XXII, XXIII XXIV . XXV XXVI, XXVII XXVIII, XXIX A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE Saturn and the Town of Sutri Jupiter and the Island of Crete The Persian Sibyl The City of Troy The Libyan Sibyl, and the Angel Api Hercules and Antaeus . The Delphian Sibyl, and the Temple of Theseus and the Amazon The Erythraean Sibyl . The Death of Hercules Jephthah Sacrificing his Daughter King Midas The Temple of Themis Pyrrha and Deucalion . Theseus and Ariadne Minos .... Oromasdes Raising the Dead . The Mage Hostanes Mercurius Trismegistus . Linus and Musaeus Apollo Medicus . Aesculapius and Machaon Agamemnon and Menelaus Priam and Hecuba Paris and Helen Jason and Medea Andromache, the Wife of Hector Ulysses and Diomed Carrying off the Pali Pyrrhus and Polyxena . Proserpine and Pluto Samuel and Aegisthus . Death of Absalom Death of Dido . Temple of Solomon Solomon and the Queen of Sheba Samuel and Elisha Two Sibyls Jonah and the Whale . Nebuchadnezzar and the Three Chi Samson .... Aeneas, Ascanius, and Dido(?) . The Cumaean Sibyl David and Goliath Codrus, King of Athens Susannah and the Elders Judged by Death of Aeschylus Palamedes and Talthybius Paris and Troilus Cassandra and Penthesilea Aeneas, Turnus, and Latinus . Romulus and Remus Virgil and Aristotle Amos and Hosea . Julius Caesar and the City of Florence Sardanapalus Numa Pompilius and Isaiah Cyrus and the Son of Tomyris Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus (?) Death of Milo of Crotona . XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI, XXXVII XXXVIII, XXXIX . XL . XLI . XLII . XLIII . XLIV . XLV XLVI, XLVII XLVIII XLIX L LI LII . LIII . LIV . LV . LVI . LVII . LVIII . LIX . LX . LXI . LXII, LXIII . LXIV . LXV LXVI, LXVII LXVIII LXIX . LXX LXXI LXXII, LXXIII LXXIV LXXV LXXVI LXXVII LXXVIII LXXIX LXXX, LXXXI LXXXII, LXXXIII LXXXIV LXXXV LXXXVI . LXXXVII . LXXXVIII LXXXIX . XC . XCI, XCII XCIII, XCIV . xcv . XCVI XCVII, XCVIII XCIX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT Cup of Plenty : bas-relief by Desiderio da Settignano. From a monument in Sta . Croce , Florence Heraldic Lily : the Badge of Florence. From a bas-relief by Luca della Robbia in Or San Michele , Flor , Pulpit of Sta. Maria Novella, Florence : by Lazzaro Cavalcanti (Buggiano) . The Tiburtine Sibyl. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... The Delphian Sibyl. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ...... Cadmus, Proserpine, Midas, Gideon, etc. From an illuminated Chronicle by Leonardo da Besozzo . The Temptation and Expulsion. From a woodcut in the Supplementum Chronicarum of J . P . Bergomensis , Venice , i486 The Building of the Ark. From a woodcut in the Chronicon Nurimbergense of Hartmann Schedel , Nuremberg , 1493 Facade of Palazzo Rucellai, Florence : by Alberti ........ Facade of Palazzo Pazzi (Quaratesi), Florence : by Brunelleschi ..... Scroll Ornament from the Porta della Mandorla, Duomo, Florence ..... Scroll Ornament from Angle of Sarcophagus: by Verrocchio ...... Procession of the Queen of Sheba. From a cassone picture in the possession of the Earl of Crawford The Conversion of St. Paul. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... Reception of Aeneas by Dido at Carthage. From an illuminated manuscript in the Riccardi Library , Florence . The Head of John the Baptist brought to Herodias. From the altar-cloth of the Baptistery , Florence , embroiderea from th designs of Antonio Pollaiuolo ..... The Planet Mercury. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving Winged Boys carrying Wreaths : by Jacopo della Quercia. From the monument of I/aria del Careto in the Cathedral at Lrn Boy carrying Wreath : by Desiderio da Settignano. From the ?nonument of Carlo Marsuppmi in Sta . Croce , Flor Boys carrying Wreaths : by Niccol6 dell’ Arca. From the Area di S . Domenico in the Church of S . Domenico , B < Scroll Ornament. From one of the external niches of Or San Michele , Florence the UJfizi 23, 24, 25. Studies of Florentine Craftsmen in the Workshop. From drawings attributed to Finiguer Florence ............. S. Zenobio between two Deacons—tarsia work executed by Giuliano da Majano for the Sacristy Cathedral, Florence. From cartoons by Finiguerra .... 28. Boys : by Donatello. From two bronze statues in the Museum of the Bargello , Florence Boys blowing Trumpets. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the UJfizi, Florence 31, 32. Boys with Trumpets and Garlands: Venus and Cupids: and Boys blowing Trumpets. From three niello print in the collection of Baron E. de Rothschild , Paris .... Sibylla Agrippa. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving in the '■'■fine manner ” Sibylla Agrippa. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving in the " broad manner Ornamental Design of Hunting Scenes, with Wreaths and Medallions. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engra r . The Chastisement of Cupid. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving St. Sebastian. From an engraving by Martin Schongauer ...... Allegorical Figure of Fortitude. From a painting by Sandro Botticelli, in the Uffizi, Florence The Gladiators. From an engraving by Antonio Pollaiuolo ...... Man seated before a Stool, Reading. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra , in the Uffizi , Florence 41. Landscape, with the Castle of Vincigliata (?). From a fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi Palace , Floi 42. Pedestal of the Marzocco or Lion of Florence : by Donatello or his School 43. Heads of Young Men. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the UJfizi, Florence 44. The Condottiere Filippo Scolari (“ Pippo Spano”). From a fresco by Andrea del Castagno at Florence 45. Arms of the Arte della Seta. From a bas-relief in the Via Capacci, Florence 46. Cupids supporting a Wreath. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving 47 - Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving . 48. Noah. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... 49. David. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence 50. Model posing for David. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence 51. Lantern of the Riccardi Palace, Florence ..... 52. Boys carrying Festoons : Part of a Frieze by Giuliano da Majano. From Cathedral, Florence ........ 53. Porta San Niccolo, Florence ....... 54. The Tower of Babel. From the fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Campo Santo at Pisa 55. Lion Weathercock of the Bargello ...... 56. Windows from the Palazzo Pazzi (Quaratesi), Florence 57. Wreath Decoration of Cupboard Panels. From the tarsia panelling in the sacristy of the Cathedral, Florence 58. Abraham and Isaac. From a relief by Ghiberti on the east door of the Baptistery, Florence b panelling in the sacristy of the *3 15 29 32 32 32 35 35 37 38 39 40 41 43 I II II III III IV V VI VI VII VII VIII VIII IX IX X XI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 59- 60. 61. 62. 6 3- 64. 65. 66 . 67. 68 . 69. 70. 7 1 - 72. 73- 74- 75- 76. 77- 78. 79- 80. 81. 82. 8 3- 8+. 85. 86 . 87. 88 . 89. 90. 9 1 - 92. 93- 94- 95- 96. 97- 98. 99. 100. 101. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. no. "3- 114. "5- 116. 117. FACING PLATE XII, XIII From a Florentine fifteenth-century he • tarsia panelling engraving >' Floret in the XII, XIII XVI, XVII XVI, XVII XXII, XXIII . XXIV . XXIV XXVI, XXVII XXVIII, XXIX XXVIII, XXIX XXXI XXXI XXXII XXXIV, XXXV XXXIV, XXXV XXXVIII, XXXIX . XLII . XLIII . XLIV . XLIV misty of Well-head by Bernardino Rossellino at Pienza Encounter between a Hunting Party and a Family of Wild Men. engraving Triumph of Chastity. From a cassone picture in the possession of Lord Wantage Triumph of Saul. From a cassone picture attributed to Pesellino, formerly in the Torrigiani Gallery and possession of Lord IVintage .....••••• Illustration to the Fourteenth Canto of Dante’s “Inferno.” From a Florentine fifteenth-century Study for a Kneeling Saint. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence Abraham and the Worship of Baal. From a fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Campo Santo at Pisa Joshua. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ...... Man leaning on Staff. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi The Shaft of Cupid. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving .... Death of Anchises. From a drawing in the illuminated MS. of Virgil in the Riccardi Palace A Sloop at Sea. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... The Persian Sibyl. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... Hercules and Antaeus. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving attributed to Pollaiuolo The Virgin of the Annunciation. From a picture by A/essio Baldovinetti at Florence Judith and Holofernes. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving .... The March to Calvary. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving .... Weathercock in the Form of a Winged Figure. From the Church of the Madonna dell'' lmpruneta, A Prophet : by Ghiberti. From the east door of the Baptistery at Florence Samson : by Ghiberti. From the east door of the Baptistery at Florence Boys carrying Festoons: part of a Frieze by Giuliano da Majano. From th, the Cathedral, Florence .......... Fortune. From a niello print in the collection of Baron E. de Rothschild, Paris Venus and Cupids. From a niello print in the collection of Baron E. de Rothschild, Paris Cupid. From a niello print in the collection of Baron E. de Rothschild, Paris .... The Story of Theseus and Ariadne. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving Scroll Carving with Figure of Boy. From the Porta della Mandorla of the Cathedral, Florence David. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ....... The Judgment of Pilate. Portion reduced in scale from a large Florentine fifteenth-century engraving Head of a Jew, with Studies of Hands. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florenc Two Soldiers. From a bronze relief by Ghiberti on the Baptistery door, Florence Head of a Woman. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence Festivities at a Ricasoli-Adimari Marriage, 1521. From a painting in the Academy, Flor Exterior Pulpit of the Cathedral at Prato. By Donatello .... Jason and Medea. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving .... View of a Loggia. From a painting in the Academy, Florence .... Man wearing Cloak and Sword, and Studies of Hands. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence Tomb of Giovanni d’ Averardo de’ Medici : by Donatello. In the sacristy of the Church of St. Lorenzo, Florence . Decorative Sphinx : by Desiderio da Settignano. From the monument of Carlo Marsuppini in the Church of Sta. Croce, Florence .LXII, LXIII The Death of Absalom. From the pavement of the Cathedral at Siena ........ LXV Three Figures. From a drawing by Antonio Pollaiuolo in the British Museum ..... LXVI LX VII Lantern of Brunelleschi’s Dome. From the Cathedral, Florence ....... LX VIII Solomon receiving the Oueen of Sheba. From a bronze relief by Ghiberti on the east gate of the Baptistery, Florence . . LXIX Solomon receiving the Queen of Sheba. From a cassone picture in the possession of the Earl of Crawford . . . LXIX Monument of Giannozzo Pandolfini, Church of the BadIa, Florence. School of Donatello or Desiderio . LXXII LXXIII The Prophet Samuel. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ....... LXXIV The Sack of Troy : with Venus appearing to Aeneas. From an illuminated manuscript in the Riccardi Library, Florence LXXVI David beheading Goliath. From a bronze relief by Ghiberti on the east gate of the Baptistery, Florence . . . LXXVIII Judith with the Head of Holofernes. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ..... LXXVIII The Battle of the Hose. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving ...... LXXX LXXXI The Beheading of John the Baptist: by Verrocchio. From one of the reliefs of the altar-table of the Baptistery, now in the Museum of the Duomo, Florence ........ Head of Boy. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence .... Saul. From a bronze relief by Ghiberti on the east gate of the Baptistery, Florence .... Scene from the Life of St. John. From the altar-cloth embroidered in the Baptistery of St. John from the desigt A. Pollaiuolo The Prophet Amos. From the tarsia panels executed by Giuliano da Majano in the sacristy of the Cathedral, Florence The Prophet Isaiah. From the tarsia panels executed by Giuliano da Majano in the sacristy of the Cathedral, Florence Dante and the City of Florence. From a fresco by Domenico cli Michelino in the Cathedral at Florence Woman weaving a Wreath. From a drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence The Prophet Isaiah. From a Florentine fifteenth-century engraving .... Death of Milo of Crotona. From a drawing by Salvator Rosa in the possession of the Earl of Pembroke . XLIV . XLV . XLV . XLV XLVI, XLVII . LII . LII . LIII . LIV LV . LVI . LVII . LVII . LVIII . LIX LX LXI LXXXV LXXXVIII LXXXVIII LXXXIX . XC . XC XCI, XCII XCIII, XCIV . xcv XCIX FIG. a.—HERALDIC LILY: THE BADGE OF FLORENCE. From a Bas-relief by Luca della Robbia in Or Sou Michele, Florence. PIAE MEMORIAE VIRI DJLECTISSIMI SVIS NVPER ABREPTI EDWARDI BVRNE-JONES PICTORIS ORTV ANGLI STJRPE CELTICI INDOLE FLORENTINI IMAGINES IN OFF1CINA FLORENTINA OLIM DEPICTAS QVAS IPSE LVBENTER INSPICIEBAT NVNC PRIMVM DIVVLGATAS ET COMMENTARIOLIS ILLVSTRATAS s. c. PRO DIVTVRNA AMICITIA MAERENS A Florentine Picture-Chronicle FIG. 3.—PULPIT OF STA. MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE : BY LAZZARO CAVALCANTI (BUGGIANO). INTRODUCTION Character and scope of present publication—External history of the drawings—Their form , number, and arrange¬ ment—Their material and quality—Their character as Chronicle illustrations—Historical authorities of the Middle Age : Eusebius, Orosius , Isidore, etc.—Popular compendiums derived from such authorities—Equal reverence for Jewish and Pagan past: the Sibyls—Zoroaster and the Magi: Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus , etc.—Such personages especially prominent in our picture-chronicle—Distinction between good and bad magic: not observed by our artist—His immediate MS. authority not discovered—Chronicles and the art of miniature-painting: the picture-chronicle of Leonardo da Besozzo — Early printed chronicles with woodcut illustrations—Our drawings earlier than the woodcut books: perhaps meant to be engraved on copper—The drawings: why specially Florentine—Considerations which fix their date: architectural and decorative ideals—Mixture of Gothic and early Renaissance forms—Archaic touches in the drawing — Costumes: the two-peaked head-dress—Date of draughtsman being proved, to prove his quality as a goldsmith : position of that craft in Florence—A goldsmith's shop as figured in an early engraving—How our draughtsman proves himself of the craft — His artistic place and affinities : resemblance to a certain group of furniture-painters—Dependence on Donatello in decorative forms and realistic spirit—Idealist and naturalist painters: Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello—Younger realists: Baldovinetti, A. Pollaiuolo , A. Verrocchio—Our draughtsman a realist closely akin to these: his special relation to Pollaiuolo—Who then can he be ? — Hypothesis: Maso Finiguerra—Grounds of hypothesis —Finiguerra according to contemporary documents—Accor ding to literary traditions: Bandinelli, Cellini, Vasari, Baldinucci, etc.—Tradition representing him as the father of engraving—How these accounts fit our draughtsman — Hypothesis to be further tested by four main comparisons — But let the drawings first be studied for themselves — Comparison with drawings ascribed to Finiguerra at the Ujfizi—With tarsia work in sacristy of Duomo—With existing Florentine nielli and engravings — History of this study : the Abbe Za?ii and the Florence pax — Parts assigned by later compilers to Baldini and Botticelli—These speculations upset by recent research: the Florence pax not by Finiguerra —-Niello prints bearing the marks of our artist's hand—Origins of copper engraving in Germany and Italy: the earliest Florentine examples—Baccio Baldini: his existence unconfirmed: engravings to be studied without regard to this attribution—The “ fine-manner " and “ broad-manner" groups: their technical character and relations—Subjects of the A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE Character and scope of present publica- External history of the drawings. fine-manner group — Subjects of the broad-manner group—Comparison of fine-manner group with Chronicle drawings: general resemblances—Particular resemblances—Points of difference—Participation of different hands Apparent death or disappearance of our draughtsman about 1465 — Results as to his identity: aut Finiguerra aut Diabolus Conclusion . T HE series of Italian drawings reproduced in the following pages is one quite unique in its kind, and of singular interest to students. It illustrates in a hundred ways the popular mind and historical ideals of Florence in the middle years of the fifteenth century, and contains moreover, as I hope to prove, the key to a whole chapter in the history of art in that attractive age which has hitherto been obscure or misunderstood. Through the enterprise of Mr. Ouaritch, I am enabled to set the series before readers in complete facsimile, and to add from various con¬ temporary sources a number of other illustrations which will enable the student to follow my arguments and test my conclusions for himself. From the nature of the case, what I have to say is intended chiefly for those who, in examining a work of early art, like to learn what there is to be learnt about it, and to go closely and with method into the matter before them. Others who, while caring for such works in themselves, care little for critical or historical discussion concerning them, will do well to skip my text and go straight to the pictures, which they can hardly fail to find curious and entertaining ; and whence, if they like, they can come back to learn more about them from this intro¬ duction. First as to the external history and character of the drawings themselves. Nothing is known of them before the early 1840’s, about which time they were bought in Florence by a well-known German engraver. Professor Ed. Schaeffer of Heidelberg, who afterwards sold them to a gentleman of the neighbourhood, Hofrath Schlosser of Neuburg. From him they passed by in¬ heritance into the possession of a nephew, Baron von Bernus, who in 1872 entrusted them for sale to M. Prestel of Frankfort. M. Clement, the great Paris dealer, bought them from M. Prestel, and after negotiations with the British Museum, which for the time being came to nothing, sold them in 1873 to Professor John Ruskin for £ 1000. Fifteen years later I saw them in Mr. Ruskin’s possession at Brantwood ; coveted them for the national collection, as things obviously of high importance in the study of Florentine fifteenth-century art; and was presently able to induce the owner to part with them. With his usual generosity, he let the Trustees of the British Museum have them for the same price that he had himself given, certainly less than half their value then, and very likely not more than a quarter of their value now. During all this time they remained anonymous—an attribution to Benozzo Gozzoli written in a compara¬ tively modern hand inside the cover being one which no competent student could accept ; although certain correspondences between our draughtsman’s work and that of Benozzo, due to common influences which helped to form them, render it natural enough that his name should have been suggested. Their present attribution to Maso Finiguerra, the famous Florentine goldsmith long though falsely reputed the inventor of the art of engraving (or more strictly of printing from engraved plates), is my own ; and to explain and justify it is one of the chief objects of the present pages. The drawings fill a folio sketch-book which at present contains fifty-one leaves, having originally con¬ tained more. An unknown owner, apparently in the seventeenth century, had numbered the leaves 1 to 59 ; but it is doubtful whether some mutilation had not even then taken place, and whether the order in which the leaves were at that time stitched was quite exact. When the drawings were in Mr. Ruskin’s pos¬ session, he took them from their binding (which was not the original one), and framed separately those which pleased him best: some few of the sheets so framed he lent to public institutions or to friends : but when the set was made over to the British Museum, all but one or two of these were recovered, and the whole set was rebound. The book is made up of paper bearing two different water-marks, viz. a capital R and a cardinal’s hat with strings : 1 the latter is of frequent oc¬ currence in Italian docu¬ ments, printed books, and engravings from the fourteenth 1 The cardinal’s hat with strings, in a form slightly different from this, is noted by Briquet ( Papicrs etfiligranes des archives de Genes, Geneva, 1883) as occurring in documents of 1342 and 1377. It is found in precisely this form in the Monte Santo di Dio of 1477, and in the famous edition of Dante of 1481, both printed by Nicola della Magna at Florence ; also in some of the engravings commonly ascribed to Baccio Baldini, and in others both Florentine and North Italian down to past the end of the century (Robetta, G. Campagnola, Giovanni Maria da Brescia, etc.). The R is found by Briquet under the dates 1443, 1447, and 1448, and occurs in the Cicero de Oratore printed at Subiaco in 1465. Their form, number, and arrangement. INTRODUCTION 3 Their material and quality. to the beginning of the sixteenth century. The size of the paper is thirteen inches high by nine wide : all the sheets except three are drawn on both back and front, so that on the fifty-one sheets there are ninety-nine drawings. But these ninety-nine represent a consider¬ ably less number of subjects, inasmuch as in a score or more cases a single subject has been drawn across two opposite pages of the open book. Our repro¬ ductions differ from the originals in that each is printed on one side of the paper only ; but when two opposite pages contain the two halves of the same subject, they are bound facing each other as in the original. 1 The drawings are all in various shades of umber or sepia, from yellowish or greyish to rich brown, and from pale to dark ; they are all executed in pen outline (sometimes over a faintly visible sketch in grey chalk) with washed shadows, the wash being in many cases reinforced, and in some entirely replaced, by a system of pen-shading in short straight lines slanting from right to left, which are often drawn zizgag, without lifting the pen at the end of the stroke. Signs of retouching are visible in a few cases: in some the retouches are early and skilful, probably by the artist’s own hand : in others they are late and childish : but the general condition of the set is ex¬ cellent. Most drawings of the old Italian masters that have come down to us are in the nature of sketches and studies — sketches for the first general idea of a composition or part of a composition—studies, usually from life, for single figures, heads, or details of limb and drapery. These, on the contrary, are not done in preparation for pictures, but are independent and finished works of art. Ouaint and energetic in inven¬ tion, and extremely elaborate in execution and detail, they represent in the most characteristic way the rude and lusty infancy of the Renaissance spirit in Italian art, struggling to do justice on the one hand to its newly-quickened perceptions of natural fact, and on the other to embody its eager and childish imaginations concerning the past. They vary considerably in artistic quality ; betraying the hand of a master of the second rank, who sometimes rises near the level of the first, and sometimes sinks below his own. At first sight these differences suggest that the drawings may be by more hands than one; but a little study discovers alike in the weak parts of the work and the strong the presence of a single well-marked style and personality. Further, two main points quickly become apparent about them : first as to subject, that they form a 1 In a good many cases the artist has given a kind of loose connection to two subjects intrinsically quite independent, when they happen to be drawn facing each other, by mfcans of a common landscape background running across the two pages. This kind of semi-connection has generally been ignored in the arrangement of the reproductions. regular series of illustrations to Universal History before the birth of Christ, as that history was con¬ ceived in the imagination of the Middle Age and the early Renaissance ; second as to origin, that they are the work of some goldsmith (who might also be painter or sculptor, the three arts being often practised in the same workshop and by the same hand) belonging to the realistic school of Florence about the year 1460. Let us proceed to prove and illustrate these two points in their order. The subjects, as they at present stand, begin with Adam and Eve (having doubtless originally begun with the Days of Creation) : then the Patriarchs, down to the end of the First Age of the World: then the personages of the Second Age, beginning with Noah and ending with the Tower of Babel : then the Third and succeeding Ages, beginning with Abraham and including, with the succession of kings, prophets, and judges of the Bible, the famous per¬ sonages of profane history supposed to have been con¬ temporary with each — kings like Inachus, Cecrops, and Codrus ; wise men of the East like Zoroaster, Hostanes, and Hermes Trismegistus ; Grecian poets and sages like Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Aesculapius, Aristotle ; divinities of classical mythology like Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto, and Proserpine ; the Sibyls, whose prophecies foreshadowed among the Gentiles the reign of the true God ; the heroes and heroines of the siege of Troy ; famous lovers like Theseus and Ariadne and Jason and Medea ; Eastern Kings whose downfall served to point a moral, like Sardanapalus and Cyrus ; and Virgil, with some of the characters of his epic. Some of these personages are represented singly, in repose ; others dramatically, in this or that action of their lives. In almost every case they are identified by their names rather clumsily written in Roman capitals, sometimes on a scroll and sometimes on a blank space in the page, and spelt in an unlearned and uncertain vernacular orthography. Thus Gaum stands for Cain, Dea for Adah (another form found in Florentine MSS. is Isdea ), Ja/iob for Jacob, Nebrot and Banbilonia (but these are the usual vernacular forms) for Nimrod and Babylon, Jobbo and Jette for Job and Jephthah, Gianson for Jason, Deuhalion for Deucalion, Ansa/on for Absalom, Adromancha for Andromache, Pruto for Pluto, etc. In the early subjects the artist (if, as is perhaps doubtful, it was he who also wrote the scrolls) is at pains to give the supposed dates of his various personages from the Creation of the World according to the computation of the chroniclers, using the Latin form ( Abelfuit anno XXX. etc.). From the time of Moses on he gives this up, and is content with giving the names only. But it is plain throughout that he is following more or less closely the indications of Their character as Chronicle illustra- 4 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE some manuscript Chronicle of the World or Summary of Universal History. Many such epitomes, both in Latin and Italian, were current in Italy during the later Middle Age and early Renaissance. Miscellaneous collections of famous and popular stories, following more or less vaguely the plan of Valerius Maximus, 1 existed also in the vernacular under the name of Fiori di Virtu , di Storia, Fioretti or Fioritd , etc. ; and looking at the list of subjects, we might at a first glance suppose the artist had taken his suggestions from one of these. But such an origin would not account for his regular division of time by the several ages of the world, nor for the care which he takes with dates and synchronisms. When in the later part of his work he gives up ex¬ pressly stating dates, he still continues to draw, on the same or on adjoining pages, sacred and profane per¬ sonages who have no reason for being placed together except that the chroniclers make them contemporary, e.g. Hercules and Jephthah, Samuel and Aegisthus, Numa Pompilius and Isaiah, etc. In the text of his inscriptions also are signs which seem to show that he took his subjects, not, as might be guessed, from the conversation of some literary friend, but from an actual manuscript which he had before him. Thus for “ Ragau ” is written “ Ragan,” and for “ Taltibio,” “ Taltileo ”—mistakes which could not be made by ear, but could easily be made by eye. Historical author}- Before going farther, it seems desirable that the Jge°{ * Eusebius^ student should have a clear general idea of the character Orosius, Isidore,etc. an( j sources 0 f those conceptions of the world’s past which were condensed for popular information in com- pendiums and brief chronicles of the kind in question. To draw up and tabulate the chronology of universal history had been a task which had much occupied men of learning in the declining ages of the pagan world. The chief compiler of this kind under the Roman Empire had been one Julius Africanus, who lived in the time of Marcus Aurelius. In the fourth century after Christ, Eusebius, the famous and learned Bishop of Caesarea, founding himself on the work of Africanus, had compiled a Chronicle in two parts —an epitome and disquisition on method followed by chronological tables — and his work, as translated, edited, and continued in Latin by St. Jerome (for the original Greek text had been early lost), became for the early Christian Church and throughout the Middle Age the standard source and authority for all ideas of the order and synchronism of historical events 1 Giving, that is to say, each story as an instance of this or that principle, motive, or quality previously defined. Valerius Maximus was a rather dull and affected writer of the reign of Tiberius, and his Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri xi. was one of the favourite books of the Middle Age and early Renaissance, having been printed some dozen times north and south of the Alps before the end of the fifteenth century. It is compiled on the above plan, which remained until the other day, as every one knows, that of the ordinary school theme. from the Creation. Next to Eusebius as a source for subsequent compilers comes Paulus Orosius, a scholar and theologian of Tarragona, whose book of Histories (FListoriarum adversus paganos libri septem) was written under the patronage and encouragement of St. Augus¬ tine in 416-417, three years after the sack of Rome by Alaric. Its special object was to teach persons whose faith had been shaken by the calamities of the time that antiquity had suffered and been scourged in like manner without enjoying the same con¬ solations ; 1 and its childish confusions and inaccuracies show how far the world had by this time drifted from any clear or just conceptions of the past. It was translated by King Alfred, and passed throughout the Middle Age as an authoritative text-book. Two hun¬ dred years later another learned Spaniard, St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville from 600 to 636, wrote a brief general Chronicle (preceding his special history of the Goths and Vandals), in which he introduced the divi¬ sion of time into six periods or ages of the World :— 1. From the Creation to the Deluge. 2. From the Deluge to Abraham. 3. From Abraham to David. 4. From David to the Babylonian Captivity. 5. From the Captivity to the Birth of Christ. 6. From the Birth of Christ onwards. Isidore was closely followed in the next century by Bede, and his system of the division of time into six ages was adopted by nearly all subsequent compilers desiring to set forth their matter properly secundum ordinem temporum. In the later Middle Age a summary, more or less extended, of universal history formed part of the scheme of those numerous writers who undertook to formulate in encyclopaedic shape the whole body of human knowledge, or imaginary know¬ ledge, that was accessible to them. Vincent of Beauvais, a French Dominican writing in the first half of the thirteenth century, may be taken as a typical example of such encyclopaedists. Of Vincent’s huge compilation, the Bibliotheca Mundi or Speculum majus , one division consists of the Speculum historiale (popular in the French translation of Jehan de Vignay as the Miroir hystorial ). This is a Universal Chronicle, the more valuable to the modern student of mediaeval culture inasmuch as it consists chiefly of quotations from authorities. Besides the chronology of Eusebius, the Histories of Orosius, and the Chronicle of Isidore, the sources of these later compilers in the Middle Age included especially refer¬ ences to Gentile history in the works of early Christian fathers, such as St. Augustine’s City of God , the De 1 The same occasion and the same motive—that of answering the con¬ tentions of Symmachus and others who insisted on the greater happiness or pagan times—inspired St. Augustine, as is well known, in the composition of his own great work, The City of God. INTRODUCTION 5 Popular compen¬ diums derived fn such authorities. Equal reverence f Jewish and Pagat. past: the Sibyls. Praeparatione Evangelica of Eusebius, and the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, together with what they knew of ancient tradition from such Latin historians and historical compilers as were still read, together with more scanty and hesitating references to the Latin poets. For Hebrew history, besides the Bible itself and Josephus, a book much in use was the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor (died 1178), who sets forth that history in a continuous narrative, with additions from Rabbinical and other sources, and brief notes of contemporary events in the pagan world. 1 From such, still relatively learned, compilations of famous doctors towards the close of the Middle Age there filtered down to the unlearned, through popular abridgments and summaries, a uniform and narrow cycle of ideas concerning the past, which, as time went on, became more and more mixed up with others founded on oral tradition and popular imagina¬ tion. Thus the tale of Troy was known originally to the Middle Age not through Homer but through the forged books current under the names of Dares Phrygius, and Dictys Cretensis, and eventually through the romance poems or prose writings founded upon these : in France especially the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte Maure, in Italy the Historia Trojana of Guido delle Colonne— the influence of which last we shall not fail to trace in some of the drawings of our Chronicle. In like manner the story of Alexander, even the story of the Aeneid , and still more the personality of Virgil him¬ self, became transformed through the working of the romance spirit and the spirit of folk-lore into some¬ thing unrecognisably remote from their original selves, and reacted upon the writers ol historical manuals and anecdote-books. In all these confused retrospects of the Christian Middle Age upon the past, a tendency which existed from the beginning, and increased towards the dawn of the Renaissance, was to regard with equal or all but equal reverence the personages and legends of pagan and of Jewish antiquity. The past was the past, seen through mists indeed, but through mists of glory ; 1 Comestor, or sometimes Manducator, gobbler-up or chewcr, it seems not quite certain of what, but it is said of Scripture texts, so full of them were the sermons which he delivered. He was canon and dean of the cathedral of his native town of Troyes, and afterwards Chancellor of the University of Paris. When we come to the study of the individual drawings, we shall have to go for illustration to the original text of some of the authorities whose characters I have above tried to summarise. In such a summary— intended merely as a reminder to those who have some knowledge of his¬ torical ideas in the Middle Age, and as a finger-post to those who have none —it is not necessary to mention the labours of the Byzantine chroniclers who followed in the footsteps of Eusebius, of whom the three chief were Georgius Syncellus, Joannes Malelas, and Georgius Cedrenus ; since their work did not form part of the learning, nor help to mould the popular ideas, of the Latin West. It may have struck some readers that I have made no mention of the Italian encyclopaedist who was Dante’s master—Brunetto Latini. But, as it happens, the Tesoretto of Brunetto Latini contains in its historical part little to my purpose, or that can help us in the study of the Chronicle drawings. the greatness of Rome and the wisdom of Greece had never really been forgotten ; and in order to justify the fondness with which men turned towards the thoughts of those ages, they were accustomed to dwell especially on those characters of the Gentile world who could be regarded as endowed with the spirit of prophecy and some foreknowledge of the true religion. Fore¬ most among these, of course, were the Sibyls. The Church had early adopted these virgin soothsayers, reputed to have lived in various regions of the ancient Roman, Greek, and Eastern world, into a kind of subordinate association with the Hebrew prophets. Throughout the days of the Roman Republic, the fame had been great of that Cumaean Sibyl who had sold the dwindled remnant of her books to Tarquin for so great a price. When this remnant was burnt in the Capitol the dictator Sulla had caused search to be made, in various lands where Sibyls were reported to have prophesied, for other of their oracles to replace it. Stimulated perhaps by the search set on foot by Sulla, a new literature of so-called oracles of the Sibyls sprang up in the first century before Christ among the Hellenising Jews of Alexandria, who forged and circulated, as the utterances of these mythic prophetesses, sets of Greek hexameter verses shadowing forth their own monotheistic creed and Messianic hopes. They were followed during the next three or four centuries by writers of other Alexandrian schools and sects— Judaising Christians, Neoplatonists, and apparently even Christian monks, who contributed to the floating body of feigned Sibylline literature portions conceived according to the spirit of the schools in which they were severally bred ; but all dwelling on the oneness of God, and many pointing not obscurely to the coming of a Redeemer. Augustine determined the Church’s view of the matter when, quoting a Latin translation of a Greek acrostic current in his day under the name of the Erythraean or the Cumaean Sibyl, of which the first letters formed the name and titles of Christ, he declared that it contained nothing tending to idolatry, and that its author must be counted among those belonging to the City of God. An earlier Christian doctor and controversialist, Lactantius, had asserted of the prophecies attributed to the Sibyls which he had seen that none of them speaks of any God but one, and that therefore, from the midst of paganism, they furnish arguments against the pagan creed. The same Lactantius quotes Varro on the number and names of the various Sibyls (a point on which antiquity itself had been much divided) ; giving their number as ten, and their names as the Persian, Libyan, Delphian, Cimmerian, Erythraean, Samian, Cumaean, Helles- pontic, Phrygian, and Tiburtine. This list was repeated by St. Isidore ; and later the ten became 6 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE OUVRTINA DIO ALTTAL^TIlR/AABMiI CfWAEbl COLMfE DI PJAANi'FE 8-TATO DVNAVERGING CHEFFIE NVNSIATA ENASARETTE PERLEI AblTAtSA FHBETTXCBA 1ABA /AANIFEStATO LACARNE DOVE DIO FIE HVA\ANATO EbEH^ARA IA2VA /AAPT FI LICIT twelve by the addition of a “ Sibylla Europea ” and a “ Sibylla Agrippa.” The chroniclers always mention them, and often give them dates. But what made them living personalities to the Western imagination in the later Middle Age was not this, nor the existence of their supposed oracles in Greek, which no man could read, nor the fact of their acceptance by the Church. It was, first, the ever-increasing fame of Virgil, itself greatly resting on that prophecy of a coming new age which he had put into the mouth of the Cumaean Sibyl in the Fourth Eclogue, and which was eagerly interpreted in a Christian sense ; and secondly, the popularity of a Roman legend of purely Middle Age fabri¬ cation, the legend of the Ara Caeli. This told how Augus¬ tus had sent for the Tiburtine Sibyl to his house on the Capitol, to consult her on the offer of divine honours made him by the senate : how she answered that a King was coming from heaven who would reign for ever, and with that heaven opened, and he saw a vision of the Virgin and Christ in glory standing on an altar, and heard a voice saying, “This is the altar of the Son of God.” Popularised in literature by The Golden Legend , this story was turned to account by art in all the schools of Europe from the thirteenth century down. So were the personages of the twelve Sibyls in general ; who began to appear, all or some, in company with the prophets F among the sculptured figures of cathedral doorways and in painted windows and the carvings of choir-stalls. For the artists of the great age in Italy the adoption, into the society of the austere and aged prophet-forms, of these virgin shapes and countenances of the Sibyls, was a godsend. Every one is familiar with them in painted cycles like those of the Sala del Cambio at Perugia, and of the Sixtine Chapel and Sta. Maria della Pace at Rome. In the days of our draughtsman their sculptured forms looked down already from the upper niches of the Campanile at Florence, or could be traced among the fringes of Ghiberti’s Gate of Paradise, or the reliefs of the Baptistery altar-table, while they were represented in living show and speech by Florentine boys in the processions and ceremonies in the Cathedral square on St. John’s Day, 1 or at the mystery - plays, sacre rappresentazioni, given by the religious confraternities of the city in their halls or in the refectories of convents; wherein Prophets and Sibyls were accustomed to enact their parts together, uttering alternate prophecies of the birth of Christ. In something of a kindred spirit the Persian 1 The part given to these Gentile profetizzatori dell' incarnazione di Cristo in the sacred shows, which were perhaps the most characteristic product of the Florentine popular genius in the fifteenth century, and of which Florentine painting is to a large extent but the reflection, comes out very clearly in the often-quoted passage from the MS. Chronicle of Matteo Palmicri for 1+54. I give the whole passage, which is at several points of use for interpreting our drawings :— “A di 22, nel principio mosse la crocc di Santa Maria del Fiore, con tutti i loro cherici, fanciulli e rieto a loro sei cantori : secondo, le compagnic di Jacopo cimatore e Nofri calzajolo con circa trenta fan¬ ciulli vestiti di bianco e angiolctti ; terzo, edifizio di San Michel Agnolo, al quale soprastava Iddio Padre in una nuvola, e in Piazza al dirimpetto a’ Signori, fccero Rapprcsentazione della battaglia angelica, quando Lucifero fu co’ sua agnoli mala- detti cacciato di cielo ; quarto, la com- pagnia di ser Antonio e Piero di Maria¬ no, con circa trenta fanciulli vestiti di bianco, e agnoletti; quinto, 1’ edifizio di Adamo, che in piazza fc’ Rapprcsentazione di quando Iddio creb Adamo e poi Eva, fe’ loro il comandamcnto, e la loro dis- obbedienza infino a cacciarli di Paradise, con la tentazione prima del serpente, cd altre appartenenze; sesto, un Mois£ a cavallo, con assai cavalleria di principal! del popolo d’ Isdraello cd altri; settimo, 1 ’ edifizio di Mois&, il quale in Piazza fe’ la Rapprcsentazione di quando Iddio li di£ la legge ; ottavo, piii profeti e sibille con Ermes e Trimegisto e altri profetiz¬ zatori dell’ incarnazione di Cristo ; nono, 1 ’ edifizio della Annonziata, che fe’ la sua Rappresentazione ; decimo, Ottaviano im- peratore con molta cavalleria c con la sibilla, per far Rappresentazione quando la sibilla li predisse doveva nascer Cristo, c mostrogli la Vergine in aria con Cristo in braccio ; undecimo, templum pads, con 1 ’ edifizio della Nativita per fare la sua Rappresentazione; duodecimo, un magnmeo e trionfal Tempio per edifizio, nel qual Tempio ottangolare ornato di sette virtu intorno, e da Oriente la Vergine con Cristo nato, c Erode intorno a detto Tempio fe’ la sua Rappresentazione ; tredicesimo, tre Magi con cavalleria di piu di 200 cavalli ornati molto magnificamcnte, vennono a offerta a Cristo nato; tralasciossi la Passione e Scpoltura, perchd non parve si convenisse a testa; decimoquarto, una cavalleria di Pilato, ordinata in guardie del sepolcro ; decimoquinto, 1 ’ edifizio della Scpoltura, onde rcsuscito Cristo ; decimosesto, 1 ’ edifizio del Limbo, onde trassc i Santi Padri ; dccimo- settimo, l’edifizio del Paradiso, dove messe detti Santi Padri ; deciinottavo, gli Apostoli c le Marie che furon presenti all’ Assunzione ; dccimonono 1 ’ edifizio dell’ Assunzione di Cristo, cio£ quando sali al cielo; ventesimo cavalleria di tre re, reinc, damigclle e ninfc, con carri e altre appartenenze al vivo ; vcntuncsimo, 1’ edifizio del vivo e del morto ; vigcsimosecondo, 1 ’ edifizio del Giudizio, con barclla de’ sepolcri, Paradiso c Inferno, e sua Rapprcsentazione, come per fede si crede sara in fine de’ secoli. Tutti i sopraddetti edifizj ferono sua Rapprcsentazione in Piazza innanzi a’ Signori, e durarono in fino alle 16 ore.”—MS. Chronicle of Matteo Palmicri, quoted by Cambiagi, Metnorie istoride , etc., Florence, 1766, and after him by d’ Ancona : see also Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. iv. pp. 316 sqq. Zoroaster and the Magi: Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, etc. INTRODUCTION 7 Zoroaster, the founder of the dual religion of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and reputed inventor of the practice and mystery of its priests, the magians, became accepted as the personification of all the prophetic wisdom of the East. Already in the Greek world, in its best days, there had existed, as Pliny testifies, a craze for the magic of the Persians, as containing the key to the three greatest of sciences, medicine, “ mathematics,” and theology ; and in the mixture of creeds and specula¬ tions which characterised the decay of paganism, and of which the chief seat was in the schools of Alexandria, this curiosity increased more and more. Jew and Platonist were alike attracted to the mysteries, speculative and practical, of Oriental magic ; while for the Christian, Zoro¬ aster and all his following gained a degree of reflected honour from the special light vouchsafed to the Magi of the Epiphany. In like manner again, the purely mythical personage of Hermes or Mer- curius Trismegistus, identified with the Egyptian god Thoth, came to be regarded as the incarnation of all the wisdom of Egypt, and took his place also among the ancient sages endowed in some degree with the knowledge of the true God. Something of the same ven¬ eration was extended to such legendary poets and sooth¬ sayers of ancient Greece as Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, and Olen. In the earlier Christian age there had been put into circulation, chiefly by the Neoplatonists, spurious writ¬ ings under the names of nearly all these sages and poets, both of the East and of ancient Greece : and when the Platonic school of Florence gathered about Cosimo de’ Medici towards the middle of the fifteenth century, the attention of scholars was fixed upon these spurious writings with at least as much ardour as upon the genuine texts of Greek writers. Marsilio Ficino, specially chosen and educated by Cosimo to be head of the school, used to solace himself chanting “ after the antique manner,” and with wonder¬ ful sweetness, it is said, the hymns of the pseudo- Orpheus to his own accompaniment on the lute ; and among the first-fruits of his knowledge of the Greek language was a translation, ordered by and dedicated to his patron, the Pimander , a theological treatise current under the name of the pseudo-Hermes. 1 Now the chronicle which our Florentine artist Such personages i j i r i • i • especially prominent had before him would seem to have given special in our picture- attention to these groups of personages. Orpheus, ckron,cie - Linus, Musaeus, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, all figure as might be expected—theirs are names which occur as a matter of course along with others, as viri doctrina excellentes , in the ordinary compendiums of ancient history. 2 But besides these we find other names of less frequent occurrence, which seem to imply some special knowledge of the per¬ sonages and ideas of Eastern magic. Such are the mage Hostanes and the good deity of the Zoroastrian creed, Oro- masdes, who appears as a turbaned sage in the act of raising one dead from the tomb. Magic has always been of Distinction between , . , 1-1 i i good and bad marie: two kinds, one high and sacred, „ ot observed by our communing with the divine artist - mysteries of things, the other vulgar and profane, trafficking with demons and practising impious arts. And it has never been found easy to keep the two separate. Already in the second century a.d., when Apu- leius of Madaura, the author of The Golden Ass , was accused of winning the hand of a rich widow by help of black arts, in his Apologia or defence before his judges he had in¬ sisted strongly on this dis¬ tinction, 3 and on the priestly and sublime character of the true magians of the East. And when thirteen cen¬ turies afterwards Marsilio Ficino, by reason of his 1 “Brevi igitur Graecas literas edoctus, Platina, ut accepi, praeceptorc Orphci hymnos exposuit, miraque, ut ferunc, dulcedine ad lyram antiquo more cccinit ; paulloque post Mcrcurii Trismegisti librum dc origine mundi in Latino, Cosmo hortante, vertit.” — I'ita Marsilii Ficitii, per Joannem Corsium, in Ph. Villani, Liber de civitatis Florentine famosis civibus, etc. Florence, 1847. Ficino, in one of his own letters, gives the year 1463 as the date of his translation of the Pimander. - On all these pseudo-Hcrmctica, pseudo - Zoroastrica, pscudo-Orphica, etc., Fabricius, Bibl. Graeca, vol. i., gives all the references that arc needed. 8 After quoting a passage to his purposes from the [pseudo] Alcibiades of Plato, he pleads thus : “ Auditisne magiam, quam temcre accusatis, artem esse dis immortalibus acceptam, colendi eos ac venerandi pergnaram, piam scilicet ct divini scicntcm, iam indc a Zoroastrc et Oromazc auctoribus suis nobilem, coelitum antistitem ? quippe quae inter prima regalia docetur, nec ulli temere inter Persas concessum est magum esse, haud magis quam rcgnarc.”—Apul. Apol. xxvi. ad init. NONE DAE£ER LENTA AATPAWILLA /WERTALOPERA ECHQN&DERARE DOVE LPROfETA GRANDE AINCHANdARP LAVENt/AENTOCHE ALTA VILLA ' NELVENTAE VERGENAL DV/AANANCILLA 2ANSA CONG1VNTO DVQ T\ AOPCTAL3AFARE- ECCH0TALCH02A FJESOPRA NATVRA . EATTAPERCHVELCHEPVO CHE.rpfO DARA 1'IG. s—THE DELPHIAN SIBYL. A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE lifelong studies in medicine, star-lore, and the other mysteries for the keys of which his age turned to the Neoplatonists and the Kabbalah, was in danger of being traduced in his old age before the Pope as a trafficker in magic arts, he defends himself on the same grounds and almost in the same language. 1 But our draughtsman is a man not of learning but of the people, and the popular imagination takes no notice of such distinc¬ tions. On the contrary, he shows a peculiar de¬ light in depicting these legendary sages and mages in the character of com¬ mon sorcerers ; placing them within regular magic circles, where they practise incantations and suffumigations, and are surrounded and minis¬ tered to by flights of de¬ mons. In the same guise, and operating by the same agencies, is also represented Apollo as the father of medicine. These scenes of necromancy stand alone, so far as I know, in the Italian art of the age. They may remind the reader of the famous chapter of Benvenuto Cellini’s auto¬ biography, written nearly a century later, where he describes the nocturnal in¬ cantations of a necromancer in the Colosseum at Rome. It is to be noticed that the artist gives all his magi¬ cians strongly-marked Jew¬ ish features. Can some of his sitters or acquaintances be of that race ? Or can the chronicler whom he followed have come 1 “ Ncque de magia hacc prophana, quae cultu daemonum niticur, verbum quidera ullum assevcravi, sed de magia naturali, quae rebus naturalibus ad prospcram corporum valetudinem coelestium beneficia capit/effici mentioncm. Quae sane facultas tam concedenda videtur ingeniis legitime utentibus, quam medicina & agricultura iure conccditur, tantoque etiam magis quanto perfectior est industria, terrenis coelestia copulans. Ex hac officina Magi omnium primi Christum statim natum adoraverunt. Quid igitur expavescis Magi nomen formidolose ? nomen Evangelio gratiosum, quod non maleficum & veneficum, sed sapientem sonat & sacerdotem. . . . Dcniquc duo sunt magiac genera. Unum quidem eorum, qui certo quodam cultu daemonas sibi conciliant, quorum opera freti fabricant saepe portenta. Hoc autem penitus explosum est, quando princeps huius mundi eicctus est foras. Altcrum vero eorum qui naturales matcrias opportune causis subiiciunt naturalibus, niira quadam ratione formandas .”—Marsilii Ficini Apologia. FIG. 6.—CADMUS, PROSERPIN possibly under the dawning influence of those combined Neoplatonist and Kabbalistic studies, which before the close of the century worked with so powerful an effect on the mind not only of Florence, but of Europe ? Having in mind these special points in our artist’s His immediate choice and arrangement of his subjects, I made some ^dhcovered^ m search in the libraries of Florence in hopes of possibly finding, among the manuscript chronicles preserved there, one which from internal evidence could be identi¬ fied as being the actual text which he had followed. The search was not suc¬ cessful : lack of leisure pre¬ vented it from being ex¬ haustive : but one manu¬ script of the fifteenth century I did find which was in other respects very closely akin to the object of my search. This is a frag¬ mentary Sommario or Breve Historia universale preserved in the National Library. 1 In point of date, style, and knowledge it is as near as possible to such an one as our draughtsman must have had before him, following in a dim confused way the Eusebian chronology and the Isidorian division of the ages, and full of the quaint puerility of conception and expression which marks the lower class of the vernacular literature of the time. These abridged general ChrmUk, mitt, chronicles were not among the S u b j e C t S habitually picture-chronicle of . r J Leonardo da chosen tor illuminated de- Besozzo. • coration by the scribes and miniature-painters of the Middle Age. Among French manuscripts it is not indeed rare to find illuminated copies of certain books of general history, e.g. the aforesaid Miroir hystorial, translated by 1 Bill. Cat. xxv. iv. ;6 S (ii. iv. 348). The history begins thus ■ ' Commcteremo d’ Ad.mo c diremo che in ini si comincio la pritna etade del seculo che bastoe tnsmo a Noe e furono anni 2242 e fitrono nel detto tempo x gicnerazioni e la seconda eta si fn de Noe do*' ell, incomincio infino a Abraham che . . . bastoe 930 anni anche furono nel detto tempo x giene- razione ... c la terza etade del seculo si comincio d’ Abram e bastoe .0 a 9 IG anni ct furono del detto tempo xiiij. gicnerazioni e la quarta etade si comincio del principe Moise e bastoe infino a re Davit cio fu inline alia tramutazionc di banbillonia ... e la quinta etade si comincio della tramu- tazione d. banbdlonia c bastoe insino al tempo di XPO nostro Signore.” I shall give further extracts in illustration of individual drawings INTRODUCTION 9 Early printed chronicles with woodcut illustra- Jehan de Vignay from Vincent de Beauvais ; the translation made by Jehan Goulein in 1370 from the Chronicle of William, Bishop of Burgos ; and various anonymous compilations known as Tresor des Ystoires , Livre des ancietines Ystoires , Livre d’Orose, Histoire des Roumains , etc. There is another well-known class of French manuscript chronicles in the form of a long roll, sometimes histories of the world in tabular form, sometimes local chronicles with a brief general history from the Creation prefixed ; and these rolls are often adorned with circular miniatures representing the events and personages of the story. There exist also among Italian manuscripts a few examples of general chronicles with miniature paintings—but usually, so far as I know, insignificant. An exception is the im¬ portant series of miniatures executed between 1435 and 1442 by a Lom¬ bard artist working in Naples, Leonardo da Besozzo (signing always Leonardus Bissutius). This was formerly in the Morbio Library, and was sold at Berlin in 1885. 1 It consists of a set of miniatures which resemble our own set of drawings in this, that they have almost no text except the names of the personages, and therefore constitute, what I have called our series, a true Picture - Chronicle. The miniatures are arranged in three tiers on a page, and illustrate the entire history of the world from Adam to Tamerlane ; whereas our draughtsman does not bring his work down into the Christian era or sixth age of the world at all, but ends with Julius Caesar and Virgil for the latest characters in his history—interrupted whether by death, by fatigue with the work, or by some other cause which we cannot conjecture. Fifty years later than this, after the invention of printing, the illustration of historical summaries began to give a good share of employment to the designers of woodcuts for printed books. In Northern Europe one of the most popular of these compendiums was the Fasciculus Temporum current as the work of a Carthusian 1 Described by H. Brockhaus in Gesammelte Studien zur Kunstgescbichte, Festgabe fur Anton Springer, Leipzig, 1S85. monk, Werner Rolewinck. Of this many editions were printed in the last quarter of the fifteenth century both in Germany and at Venice. The Venice editions of 1479 and ’80 are both adorned with rough woodcuts, little fancy views of Noah’s ark and of several cities : in the 1481 edition appear a larger number of cuts, and a set of copies from these adorn another edition of 1484. In 1483 appeared at Bergamo the first edition of the Suppletnentum Chrotiicarum of Jacobus Philippus Foresti (Bergomensis), a new and somewhat scholarly compilation of which the author had studied the earlier Christian and some classical authorities at first hand. The first edition is without cuts : but a series of others published at Venice in i486, 1490, and subsequent years are illustrated with woodcuts—not good—of the Creation, the Temptation, the Expulsion, and the Death of Abel, and a varying succession of views of cities. After this follows, on a much more ambitious and ex¬ tensive scale, the great Nuremberg Chronicle, compiled by Hartmann Sche- del and published by Anton Koberger at Nuremberg in 1493, with a pro¬ fusion of cuts by Wolgemut (the master of Durer) and Pleydenwurff. In this, we have the crowning result of the combined efforts of scholar, artist, and bookseller in the early Renaissance at producing a sumptuous figured History of the World. But the drawings of our series belong to a date earlier than the invention of printing, or at least than its introduction into common use in Italy. They cannot, as will presently be shown, be put later than the decade 1455-1465, standing thus about midway in time between the illuminations of Leonardo da Besozzo and the Venice printed chronicles of the closing century. These were the years when the new art of engraving on copper was being diligently practised and improved by some of the goldsmiths of Florence. We shall by and by see reason to suppose that our Chronicle drawings were the work of one of these goldsmiths, and may have been made with a special view to engraving. One of the main uses of that art in Florence in these days was, in fact, to produce sets of theSutytemenlnm Chronkarum oj J. P. Bcrgomcn Our drawings earlier than the woodcut books: perhaps meant to be engraved on copper. A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE io designs in illustration of some popular cycle of subjects, often bearing the text engraved at foot. Two such sets are about contemporary with our draughtsman, and one of them at least, as we shall presently see occasion to believe, is by his own hand. These are a series of Planets, in which the engraver has given at foot texts probably drawn from some manual of popular astro¬ logy, setting forth the character and influence of each planet ; and a series of twenty-four Prophets and twelve Sibyls, in which he has in like manner placed a rhyming text at the foot of each figure. In this last As to their artistic character, their origin, and the The drawing! date and school to which they belong, it is plain to ™hrei 7 ine! y any fairly-instructed eye that they are the work of a Florentine goldsmith-draughtsman within a year or two before or after the date 1460. The Tuscan and specifi¬ cally Florentine character of the series is evident on many grounds. The names, for one thing, are written as no one but a Florentine speaks, with the guttural aspirate almost always instead of the letter c or q , as “ huesta ” for “ questa,” “ sehonda ” for “ seconda,” “ difihata ” for “ edificata,” and “ Deuhalion ” for “ Deu- HRCH5M08 Sg (jafafjwoljcintt \tlftictiienilicrbanmi 'fyporijnaljicacnim 'ftnrcwitnfl fWFFFFV case the texts are derived from a known source : they are the speeches written by Feo Belcari, a devout poet attached to the service and person of Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors, for delivery by the actors who impersonated these foreseers and foretellers of Christ, in the manner above narrated, in a primitive mystery-play or sacra rappresentazione of the Annunciation. So much in general for the subjects of the drawings we are about to study, and for their character as illustra¬ tions to a summary of universal history ending before the Christian era. Particulars as to the subjects severally will be found later on, in the text facing each drawing. calion.” Then amid the jumble of his architectural backgrounds and views of cities, Tuscan, and again specifi¬ cally Florentine, elements are easily to be recognised. Such are the system of tiling on the roofs, in which a row of flat and a row of curved tiles occur alternately ; the weathercocks in the guise, still in use at Florence, of a lion, one of the symbols of the city ; the familiar iron brackets (garni or attaccaroba ) on the walls of houses, for carrying horizontal poles on which were hung birdcages, washing, or on festive occasions rugs and draperies (see Pis. XIX. XXXVIII.-XXXIX. LI. etc.). Neither could this conception of human types and figures possibly belong to any other school than INTRODUCTION Considerations which fix their date : architectural and decorative ideals. the Florentine. There prevailed among a special group of artists of that school in the first half of the fifteenth century a spirit of rude and vigorous realism, deeply interested in the energies of life but not at all in its graces, and content to reproduce the commonest and coarsest physical types which filled the streets and workshops of the city, and the roughest and most natural actions, with little or no regard to antique precedents or to the search for spiritual and physical refinement ; and to this group (presently to be more fully treated) our draughtsman obviously belongs. Taking his school, then, for granted as the Floren¬ tine, we can fix his approximate date by considerations almost equally obvious. For one thing, both in the FIG. 9.—FACADE OF PALAZZO RUCEI.LAI, FLORENCE: BY ALBERTI. scheme of some of his figure subjects and in the en¬ richments of some of his architectural designs, we find him taking hints from Ghiberti’s “ Doors of Paradise ” (1425-1452), which gives a sufficient terminus a quo from which to seek it. Next, in architectural and decorative design generally, he shows himself inspired almost to intoxication with the classical motives borrowed from Roman remains and brought into uni¬ versal use by the great early masters of the Renaissance in the first half of the fifteenth century at Florence. Throughout the history of Italian art since its revival, alike in miniature and in monumental painting, the composing of architectural backgrounds to the scenes depicted had been a favourite part of the artist’s business. The history of architectural ideals, Gothic displacing 11 Romanesque and Renaissance defeating Gothic, can be traced in such backgrounds, from the works of Cimabue and his school at Assisi down to those of Raphael and his followers at the Vatican, almost more fully than in the existing monuments of the architect’s art. (The combinations of street and palace, court, colonnade, and temple, which help to fill Benozzo Gozzoli’s animated backgrounds in the long series of his frescoes at Pisa, will occur to every reader as prominent examples in this order of design.) The painters inventing these backgrounds not being tied by any practical conditions, it ensued that their imaginary constructions were at all times apt to contain impracticable and fantastic elements. Few architectural dreamers show themselves more im- FIG. 10.—FACADE OF PALAZZO PAZZI (QUARATESI), FLORENCE: BY BRUNELLESCHI. practicable and more fantastic, or design streets and buildings in a clumsier taste and with less knowledge of perspective, than our draughtsman. These back¬ grounds are the worst part of his work. But amid all their craziness it is easy to see that the Florence he knew was the transformed Florence of 1430-1460, the Florence of Brunelleschi (though strangely Brunelleschi’s great triumph of the Cathedral dome is nowhere re- cognisably figured), of Michelozzo, and of Alberti ; the Florence of houses like the Pazzi (Quaratesi), the Medici (Riccardi), and Rucellai palaces ; of colonnades like those of Sta. Maria Novella and the Innocenti ; of rich combinations of sculpture and architectural decora¬ tion in the new taste, like the organ galleries of Dona¬ tello and Luca della Robbia with their reliefs of singing 12 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE children, or the mural monuments by Bernardo Rossellino and Desiderio da Settignano in Santa Croce. The bilobed round - headed window of Florentine Renaissance everywhere prevails. So do rich classical cornices and mouldings, the egg and tongue, the dentil, the Doric cymatium, the decorated torus in the form of a running wreath of leaves, the frieze of winged children’s heads. It is only in very rare instances that in the decoration of window openings our draughts¬ man goes back to the Gothic and earlier Romanesque fashion of the twisted colonnello (e.g. PI. VII.). If in the design of streets and complex groups of buildings he is apt to run into the chaotic and the uncouth, and to show that a knowledge of practicable structure and FIG. ii.—SCROLL ORNAMENT FROM THE PORTA DELLA MANDORLA, DUOMO, FLORENCE. LXVIII.), are caskets conceived in the dreams of a jeweller delighted beyond measure with the new forms of design and ornamentation borrowed from the antique, and lavishing them excitedly and uncritically. His temple of Venus (PI. LVII.) is like a pulpit of Dona¬ tello or Rossellino, again remodelled in the dream of a jeweller, and put on paper with a passion of love and care in the rendering of every enrichment and detail. Now all these characteristics do not belong to Mixture of Gothic the days when the Renaissance spirit was gradually refining itself by study and self-criticism, but to the early half-taught stage and first intoxication of that spirit. A still plainer mark of early date is to be found FIG. is.—SCROLL ORNAMENT FROM ANGLE OF SARCOPHAGUS: BY VERROCCHIO. scientific perspective forms no part of his training, he can do very much better with single architectural features, such as loggie, chapels or temples, shrines or tabernacles, and with the minor and decorative parts of design, as in chamber interiors, the heads and frames of doors, and the like. In all such things he is a greedy imitator of Donatello and his immediate followers, Desiderio da Settignano and Bernardo Rossellino, apply¬ ing architectural forms and mouldings as they did, only with exaggeration, to cover every inch of surface with an excessive richness of classical ornament. He takes surprising delight in the mechanical exercise of draw¬ ing every detail of enriched mouldings and surface arabesques. His Tower of Babel (PI. VII.), still more his temples of Themis and of Solomon (Pis. XLIV. in our artist’s crude commixture of classic with Gothic decorative forms. I have said that in the design of streets and buildings he never goes back to Gothic motives. But in that of thrones, chariots, candelabra, and other such decorative objects, his taste, like that of his contemporaries until past the mid-century, is still partly Gothic. Donatello, whose influence, as we shall see, seems chiefly to have formed him, was himself no purist. Beginning to work in a time of transition, and accustomed to supply statues for the decoration of Gothic buildings, the Campanile, Or San Michele, etc., he would sometimes in his own decorative schemes admit motives that savour of the Gothic, in rich and sometimes cumbrous combination with those of the Renaissance. But in such combinations no one is so INTRODUCTION J 3 Archaic touches the drawing. daring as our draughtsman. There is a particular form of rich conventional leaf-scroll, often ending in a twisted sheaf or ear of grains or berries, which is particularly characteristic of later Gothic decoration in Florence between about 1370 and 1420. Here (Fig. 11) is a characteristic example from the Porta della Mandorla of the Florence Cathedral, the joint work of Niccolo d’ Arezzo and Nanni di Banco (about 1408). In the hands of a younger generation scroll-work of essentially similar fancy falls more into the forms of the Greek acanthus, as in the angle decorations of Verrocchio’s famous sarcophagus of Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici in S. Lorenzo (1472) (Fig. 12). Our jeweller-draughtsman delights in extravagant and crude combinations, which are quite his own, of this late Gothic scroll-work with following of similar efforts in the work of Paolo Uccello. Before the close of the third quarter of the century Florentine art had shaken itself, in the hands of even minor masters, almost free of such stiffnesses as these, and their presence is a sure mark of early date. Coming to the argument to be derived from costumes; Costume: the two- - . . . , peaked head-dress. some of these are purely imaginary, but others are taken from real life. Eastern kings and sages are dressed always in long robes and cloaks, generally having the borders embroidered with feigned Oriental characters, and wear on their heads either turbans or great fantastic crowns, mitres, and tiaras exaggerated from what was known of Byzantine and Turkish use. Warriors, whether Jewish or Gentile, wear armour, the ground-idea of which is borrowed from Roman the newly-revived classic leaf-wreath and festoon (see Pis. XVI. XVII. LII. LXI. LXII.). Such decorative vagaries are quite enough to prove the relatively early date of the drawings; but a stronger proof is to be found both in the character of the work itself and in the costumes of the figures. In the style of draughtsmanship there is an unmistakable touch of archaism. The immediate influence of the great naturalist masters of the opening century, Castagno, Uccello, and Masaccio, is seen both in heads and draperies. A stiffness in the expression of movement is born of the artist’s desire to give more life to his figures than he can fully compass. There is a conscious effort in certain bold attempts at fore-shortening (see particularly the arm of the Delphic Sibyl, PI. XXXVI., and the body of one of the little new-created men in the Deucalion, PI. XLV.), which shows a very close coins and bas-reliefs, but which in detail is altered out of recognition by the fanciful enrichment of kilts, shoulder-pieces, knee-pieces, nipple and navel orna¬ ments, etc. (compare the Roman soldiers in the engrav¬ ing over-leaf, Fig. 14), the decoration of helmets with every extravagant device of wings, dragons, spikes, the heads of monsters, and immense towering plumes. A gradual enrichment of imaginary armour in this sense is to be traced throughout the sculpture of the early Renaissance from the soldiers of Ghiberti’s gates (Fig. 88) to those of Verrocchio in the famous altar- table in the Opera del Duomo (Fig. 108). In like manner ancient gems have suggested the semi-Grecian drapery of the Amazon and of Medea (Pis. XXXIX. LVIII.), which is already almost the same as is em¬ ployed by a younger generation of artists—especially Botticelli—for their ideal figures. But many of the INTRODUCTION i5 other heroines, eg. Hecuba and Helen (Pis. LVII. and LVIII.), wear a costume which was actually in use on festal occasions between 1420 and 1460, but between 1460 and 1470 was modified or disap¬ peared. This was the period of heavy materials, rich brocades, stiff gold embroideries, and high horned head¬ dresses for women. The fashion of such sumptuous and ponderous garments came in from France in the early years of the fifteenth century. (French fashions were called in Florence “ alia Parigina,” and a young gallant dressed in them a “ Parigino.”) In private holidays and festivities, and still more in public shows and cere¬ monies, the riches displayed in the way of such velvets and cloths, embossed and gold-embroidered, were im¬ mense. A lively representation of them is contained in numbers of paintings dating from this time, elabo- and 1470 (Figs. 16, 111) from the designs of Pollaiuolo, and in the emblematic figures of Virtues on the gate designed by Michelozzo in 1457 f° r t ^ ie Medici bank at Milan. It prevails also in those engravings of the Planets to which I have referred, and which we know to have been done earlier than 1465, and in a kindred series hereafter to be discussed, known as the Otto prints. The fashion seems to have been at its height about 1420-1450 ; in works of art later than the sixties it is apparently not to be found. 1 From about that date and onwards the heavy materials and stiff folds give place (more noticeably, it is true, in the work of Botticelli than in that of other masters) to lighter draperies, that begin to flutter and curl about the ankles of women as they move ; while all masters alike show the heads of women uncovered, or adorned FIG. 15.—RECEPTION OF AENEAS BY DIDO AT CARTHAGE. rately gilt and patterned, which decorate the sides and ends of marriage-chests {cassont) or the surface of marriage-trays. A particular feature of the women’s gala costume in all such representations is the high two - horned head - dress with short depending veils (a modification of the original Burgundian hennin with its single peak and long veil). A well-known early and dated example of this head-dress in Florence is the cassone at the Academy representing the festivi¬ ties held at a Ricasoli-Adimari marriage in 1421 (see Fig. 90). It prevails constantly all through the early group of cassone pictures already referred to. We find it in varying forms, now higher, now lower, in the fres¬ coes of Piero della Francesca at Arezzo (1453-1454), in manuscripts of the mid-century like the famous illumi¬ nated Virgil of the Riccardiana library (Fig. 15), in the altar-cloth embroidered for the Baptistery between 1465 with light scarves and strings of pearls twisted fancifully into the hair. Taking our artist’s date, then, as established within Date of draughts- a few years of 1460, and probably as much before as Z^rtvefisgua/ky after, we come to the next point, that of his belonging evidently to the craft of goldsmith. No student needs to be told how important was that craft in the history of Florentine art ; how of the famous painters and sculptors of the school, many, like Ghiberti, A. Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, sprang from the goldsmith’s shop, and how not a few of these, of whom Verrocchio is the central type, practised and taught together the arts of jewellery, sculpture, and painting. By what Vasari calls this stretta dimestichezza a goldsmith. Position of that craft in Florence. 1 The matter is discussed by Dr. Lippmann in connection with the famous primitive portrait-engraving formerly in the Piot Collection and now at Berlin, Jahrbuch der k.-preuss. Kunstsammlungen, vol. i. (1880), p. 11. A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE 16 of the goldsmith’s art in Florence with the others, by its intimate influence upon those of the sculptor and painter, the whole work of the school, alike in its treatment of human form and of plastic and pictorial decoration, was profoundly affected. A goldsmith's shop A lively symbol of the close relations of these three < eafly U engr”vi“ng. cra f ts 1S afforded by one of the engravings of the Planet series, viz. that which represents Mercury and the various kinds of men subject to his influence, chiefly followers of the arts and sciences. I shall need to come back to this print for a later part of my argument ; meanwhile let us examine it a little closely here. 1 Mercury, a youthful god dressed like a young Florentine beau “ alia Parigina,” rides in the sky on a chariot drawn by eagles, fancifully designed with wreaths, wings, and and Ptolemy), looking on while another holds up to them an armillary sphere. On the left are the arts and studies which specially concern us. On the ground in front kneels a sculptor or sculptor’s apprentice working with hammer and chisel at a female bust, with a finished bust of a warrior on its pedestal close by. A little further back is a house, against the upper wall of which stands a painter on a scaffolding, painting wreath and ribbon decorations at the top of the space assigned him, while his apprentice grinds the colours at a table by his side. Below the painter, and filling the space in the design between his trade and the sculptor’s, comes the jeweller’s shop, which is exactly like shops still existing on the Ponte Vecchio, in the form of a wooden booth or box, of which the shutter or lid is hooked up lions’ claws, and bearing on the wheels the signs of Virgo and Sagittarius. Below is a street with a loggia (somewhat resembling the loggia de’ Lanzi), a church with a tower like that of Santa Croce, and houses. The house on the right is of an architecture fancifully decorated with mixed classical and Gothic elements : in the open upper chamber sits a group of musicians at the organ : in the chamber below are two scholars deep in their books, and in the background a clockmaker adjusting the weights of a clock. Outside sits a youth¬ ful traveller, apparently being entertained by an inn¬ keeper. Further back in the street stand a group of three Eastern sages (probably Zoroaster, Pythagoras, 1 ( F 'g- *7-) The whole series, together with a variety of Northern copies and derivatives from it, is reproduced in facsimile, with text by Dr. Lippmann, in the publications of the Chalcographical Society, 1896. by day and let down and locked at night. Inside the booth the goldsmiths ply their trade. One sits before an anvil, while his apprentice hands him the hammer from behind ; the other is engaged at the craft, then new, of engraving a copper-plate for printing. We can see quite clearly the large square plate before him (too large for a niello plate) with the figure of a man already marked on it in outline, two gravers, of the same form as is still in use, on the counter in front of him, and what seems to be an ink-pot and pad by his elbow. Against the inner wall of the shop are ranged wares for sale, repousst trays, a jar, and waist-belts with orna¬ mental buckles hung on a rod. In front of the shop stands a young man apparently discussing a purchase in the shape of a ewer and tray. This print is the work as I hope to show, of the draughtsman of our picture- FIG. 17.—THE PLANET MERCURY. From a Florentine fifteenth-century Engraving. /AERCVWO E PiAHETO /AASCfWUNo P02TO NtUECONOO C[EtO £T 2ECHO /WERCHE-IA BVA STCiTA EMOLTO PA321VA LVtEfR&>0 CONSVEGtJ eENGNICHgoNOFREDOIEWAlPOCOa UV/AIO! ELOWEMTE IMCEMamoeo AMA LEECIENflE AV\TEAWncA E^TIVOIA HEK*D1VI HAftOHEAllCORpO CRACH-E COS SCHlETTo EL 6 RT Z.O TTlilUTATVRA CHOMHVWDI METAIH AIARG1ENTO VIVO ELDI EVO E MERCOlfipI COLLA PRl/AA ORA S •/ 5 Z X LANOTTE ZVAEDEI.pi DEUADOMENICHA APERA/WO IROtE PER NI/AICO AVtHE RE IM.'Jh VITAOVERO S2ALTATI0NB EVitVaO liASV /AoRTE OV.ER 6 . NVAMlfAEIONf EPI2CE HA UAbnioeiOltC GF/ANI P1DI VIRGO DINorrE VA E IfT 'i£ MG N,‘ IN r' oi coaiIMciahoo da Virgo ir zo di fi sr ore va v d e h g n C -v- A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE chronicle himself. The goldsmith’s shop may be taken very likely as representing that in which he himself worked, or at any rate as typical of the many scores of such shops which existed in the Florence of his day. How our draughts- The proofs which his Chronicle-drawings contain oftL^ ,mSe,f of his character as a jeweller are many. In his land¬ scape foregrounds, though he draws birds and animals realistically, he invariably conventionalises his plants into forms of metallic shape and symmetry, and we see perfectly natural hares and rabbits crouching among ornamental sprays and candelabra. Just so do the earlier goldsmith-engravers of Germany, and notably the Master E. S., and to a less extreme extent, Martin Schongauer. His conception of temples and shrines, in the purely ornamental parts of his work he is always at his ease. His design of helmets, plumes, swords, and daggers and their sheaths, crowns, and mitres, the em¬ broideries of robes and all such matters, is rich and fantastic in the extreme, fantastic often to grotesqueness, but in these things his hand is always equal to his invention, and the execution (except sometimes in the matter of perspective, where his knowledge fails him) is quite masterly and unfaltering. Having now got the character of our master well His artistic place established as a Florentine goldsmith - draughtsman “resemblance'to a of about 14c c-i 4.6 c, let us proceed to examine more certain group of . . furniture-painters. closely his artistic place and affinities among the con¬ temporary schools of that city. There is much that FIG. 18.—WINGED BOYS CARRYING WREATHS: BY JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA. From the Monument o/llaria del Canto in the Cathedral at Lucca. as we have already said, is not that of an architect, but of a jeweller, bent on devising enrichments that could not be carried out on a large scale in stone, but only on casket scale — if indeed on that — in metal.’ His definition of the human form, alike in outline and in modelling the planes of the body with the brush, shows exactly the same feeling as that of Pollaiuolo and other Florentine masters of kindred training, the special training, that is, of the goldsmith’s shop. Strongest evidence of all, whereas in the drawing and action of figures he is uncertain, sometimes almost as good as the best masters of his day, at other times stiff or wavering, 1 I do not wish to push this argument too far. It is possible that such enriched structures may have been suggested by those which were actually built and decorated in wood to be drawn through the town on St. John’s Day : “ Castles of wood, indeed, but splendidly fashioned,” as they are called by a Greek spectator who came in the train of John Palaeologus to the Council of Florence in 1439, and was amazed and somewhat scandalised at the glories of the show (quoted by A. d’ Ancona, Origini del teatro in Italia , i. 205). at first sight puts him in near relation to a group of anonymous decorative painters of marriage-chests and marriage-trays in the first half of the century. He resembles these particularly by his love of rich costumes, and by the quaint spirit in which he combines a blunt realism in type and action with far-fetched decorative fantasies in dress and accoutrements. Like them, he seems to set visibly before our eyes the aspect of those popular historic pageants of the Florentine streets, on which such rich resources of this kind were lavished 1 1 A lively idea of these riches, at , date even preceding their fullest development, gtven in the Hi.t.r, ,f Tkr,,,, by Goto D.ti, written about the end of the fourteenth century :— “ Giunti al dl della vigilia di San Giovanni, la m.tttna di buon' ora tutte 1 Arti fanno la mostra fuon alle pared delle loro botteghe di tutte le ricche cose, ornament! e gioje : qu.nti drappi d’ oro e di seta si nto.tr.no ch' adorne- rebbono diem ream. ! quanto gioje d' oro e d' ariento, e c.poletti e tavole d.pinte, e tntagl, mir.bili, e cose che ,1 appartengono a fatti d' arnt’e, sarebbe lungo a contare per ordure. Appresso per 1, Terra in sell' or. dell, torn, si fa una solenne pncisstone di tutti 1 cherici, preti, monaci e fr.ti c he sono INTRODUCTION *9 Dependence on Donatello in decora¬ tive forms and realistic spirit. (compare Fig. 13). But among early paintings of this class, except in the rare instances where the hand of a master like Pesellino (Fig. 62) can be recognised, no distinct artistic individuality has yet been traced. They vary greatly in quality, many being obviously the work of mere journeymen. Perhaps from among them may some day be reconstructed the artistic personality of Dello Delli, if Vasari is right in relating how it was he who during his short period of work in Florence gave the chief impulse to this kind of production. None known to me can be assigned to the actual hand of our draughtsman, though many spring from an inspiration akin to his. On the other hand certain specific influ¬ ences there are, easily to be recognised as those by which the draughtsman of the Chronicle was formed. First and foremost of these is the influence of Donatello, alike in the choice of decora¬ tive motives and of types of human form. I have spoken of our artist already as show¬ ing himself fairly in¬ toxicated with certain motives borrowed by Donatello and his group at the begin¬ ning of the fifteenth century from Roman sarcophaguses, urns, altars, friezes, and door - frames. Chief among these are the circular wreath with ribbons, carved in relief for the decoration of flat surfaces ; the torus moulding treated as a running wreath of oak- or bay-leaves bound with fillets ; and the pattern of children carrying and staggering under festoons of wreaths and flowers. Of grande numero di regole, con cante rcliquie di Santi, che 6 una cosa infinita e di grandissima divozione, oltre alia meravigliosa ricchezza di loro adorna- menti, con ricchissimi paramenti addosso, quanti n’ abbia il mondo, di veste d’ oro e di seta e di figure ricamate, e con molte Compagnie d’ uomini secolari, che vanno ciascuno innanzi alia regola, dove tale Compagnia si raguna, con abiti d’ angioli, e suoni e stromenti d’ ogni ragione, e canti meravigliosi, facendo bellissime Rappresentazioni di que’ Santi, e di quelle reliquie, a cui onorelafanno.”—Goro diStagioDati./r/anWr Firenze, Florence, Manni, 1735, p. 85 : see A. d’Ancona, Origini delteatro inItalia,vo\. i. p. 197. Compare the account of Monaldi as quoted by Richa, Chiese Florentine, vol. v. pp. Ivi. sqq. these motives, and especially of the last two, he makes an immoderate and insatiable use. He puts his leaf-wreath moulding in the most unlikely places, treating it as a member in cornices, as a railing, and what not else ; and moreover employs a scale-pattern of similar notched leaves to give a chased and fretted surface to the columns of temples and of candelabra, and even in the design of armour and the cut and fashioning of sleeves. So again with the festoon-bearing children. This very frequent motive of Roman sarcophaguses and sepulchral urns was copied, I think, for the first time in the T uscan Renais¬ sance, by Jacopo della Quercia for his sarco¬ phagus of Ilaria del Careto in 1413 (Fig. 18). All the Tuscan sculptors following him throughout the fifteenth century loved it and played with it in new uses of their own, transferring it to the crests of funeral monuments whether in relief or in the round (see the two typical and famous ex¬ amples, Figs. 19 and 20), to candelabra, and to friezes wherever a frieze could exist, in stone, terra-cotta, or woodwork. To what endless uses our draughtsman puts it we shall see when we come to examine his single subjects. The forms of his boy angels mingled in the design with these festoons seem taken straight from Donatello’s own—sturdy, muscular, some¬ what charmless, abounding in vitality and energy rather than in grace. Of the three great sculptors of the early years of the fifteenth century in Florence, Ghiberti (1378-1455), Donatello (1386-1466), and Luca della Robbia (1399-1482), Donatello was, as everybody knows, the special realist or naturalist. With a healthy and genial dependence upon actual life for his in¬ spiration, and an artistic temperament of extraordinary power, he was in the fifteenth-century transformation of Italian art perhaps a stronger creative and stimulating FIG. 19.-BOY CARRYING WREATH: BY DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO. From the Monument 0/Carlo Marsuffiini, in S/a 20 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE Idealist and naturalist painters: Fra Angelico , Masaccio, Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello. force than any other single man. Vitality, energy, individuality, the expression above all things of char¬ acter and power—these were the qualities which he sought and attained, not excluding charm and beauty on occasion, but also never turning away from rusticity and coarseness. Just as in sculpture Donatello stands strongly contrasted with Ghiberti, who had the natural gift of fastidious ele¬ gance, and whose ideals ran all in the direction of suavity and grace in type and atti¬ tude, so also among painters there prevailed, in the first years of the Renais¬ sance movement, an analogous con¬ trast of idealist and naturalist. At one extreme stood the seraphic dreamer, Fra Angelico (1387- 1455); at the other the harsh and masterful students and de- pictors of natural fact, Andrea del Castagno (1396?- 1457), an( l Paolo Uccello (1397 - 1475), with the finely - balanced nature of Masac¬ cio (1401-1428) standing in a sense between them, but leaning rather towards Donatello and the realists. Castagno, repre¬ sented to-day by little more than the ten heroic figures from his frescoes in the castle of Legnaia, now transported to Sta. Apollonia Nuova, and the great Last Supper and other Passion frescoes in the same place, impressed the school profoundly by the masterful energy and individuality of his types, sometimes rising to real grandeur, sometimes sinking into harshness and brutality. To kindred qualities Paolo Uccello (1397- 1475), now represented by still less—the defaced frescoes of Noah and the Flood in the Chiostro Verde, the damaged portrait fresco of the Duomo, the scattered series of battle-pieces of which the best is in the National Gallery, etc.—added a passion for the problems of perspective and for the creatures of the wood and field, and filled his pictures with birds and beasts faithfully studied from nature. In the next or second generation of fifteenth- century artists in Florence, Alessio Baldovinetti (1427- 1499) inherited both these influ¬ ences, and com¬ bined with Uc¬ cello’s delight in natural history and Castagno’s predilection for rude and energetic types and actions, sometimes degen¬ erating into boor¬ ish coarseness, a love of land¬ scape detail which was his own. Contemporary with, and per¬ haps influenced by Baldovinetti in conception of life andchoiceoftypes —profoundly in¬ fluenced at any rate by his seniors Donatello and Paolo Uccello— was the great gold¬ smith - draughts - man, sculptor, and afterwards painter, Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429- 1498), whose younger brother, Piero, seems to have been actually Baldovinetti’s pupil in painting. In all the early school of Florence, the elder Pollaiuolo was the finest master in drawing the naked human figure, and especially its movements in strong action— “egli s’ intese degP ignudipiii modernamente che fatto non avevano gli altri maestri innanzi a lui ,” says Vasari — often accompanying such movements with an intensity of facial expression amounting to grimace (see Fig. 39, p. 42). These men, Baldovinetti and Pollaiuolo, to whom as a nearly kindred spirit must be added Verrocchio (1433-1488), also FIG. 20.—BOYS CARRYING WREATHS: 1IY NICC0L6 DELL' ARCA. From the Area (US. Domenico in the Church o/S. Domenico, Bologna. Younger realists Baldovinetti , A. Pollaiuolo, A. Verrocchio. INTRODUCTION 21 goldsmith, sculptor, and painter, constitute the two special groups, belonging to two successive gener¬ ations, of Florentine realists in the fifteenth century ; les energumenes du realisme , as M. Eugene Muntz somewhat harshly calls them. During the third and last quarters of the fifteenth century the opposition between these two differing tendencies of Florentine art began to disappear or become less trenchant. Fra Angelico was dead (1455) 5 his pupil Benozzo Gozzoli, on his return to Florence from Umbria in 1457, absorbed some of the influences of the naturalists ; and the vast series of scriptural and legendary illustrations with which he covered the walls of the Riccardi palace, of the Church of St. Augustine at San Gimignano, and of the Campo Santo at Pisa, are evidences of his facile super¬ ficial reconciliation of the two opposite tendencies. In the meantime the more powerful spirit of Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1463), the pupil and to some extent the heir of Masaccio, had instinctively held a middle course ; his gift being equally great for the charming and tender expression of devotional sentiment, and for the shrewd apprehension of everyday fact and character. From his studio issued Sandro Botticelli (born in 1447), and fused in the fire of his own imagina¬ tive temperament alike the influences which came from this master and from the workshops of the realist- goldsmiths Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio—including, as we shall see, in the days of his youth, apparently some share of influence from our own goldsmith-draughtsman of the Chronicle. Our draughtsman a But this is to anticipate. Enough for the present realist closely akin . . . .. to these: his special that to the second naturalist group, the group of r iaiuoio 10 P ° l ~ Pollaiuolo and of Baldovinetti, our draughtsman clearly and beyond all question belongs. Idealism, in a sense, is ever present with him : but only in the sense of an external and childish glamour of rich cos¬ tume and fantastic architecture. In the rendering of human types and countenances he is purely and even harshly realist. He seems to have lived among a set of remarkably plain-featured folk, members of his family, fellow-workmen and apprentices; and these, without the least compromise of their plebeian aspect, coarse mouths, and snub noses, he arrays in all (and doubtless more than all) that glory of Florentine holiday shows and spectacles which was also the imagined glory of Greece, Rome, and the East. Naturally it is for some only of his characters that he uses these familiar Florentine types, which we assume to be those of his home and workshop. For wise men and magicians of the East he goes, as we have already said, frankly to the denizens of the Jew quarter, while for biblical and classical prophets and sages he repeats for the most part the austere types of Masaccio and Castagno ; sometimes almost touching the dignity and power of the former, sometimes rather recalling the more brutal manner of the latter, or the plebeian commonness of his contemporary Baldovinetti ; some of whose characteristic actions and gestures he is also to be found repeating. But of the whole group it is to Pollaiuolo that he stands nearest. Like him he strives rudely—but far less successfully— for living energy of action and movement as well as of type and character. Like him he has one favourite action for the expression of vehement physical or mental perturbation, the action of the hand strained spasmodically at right angles to the wrist. And yet we cannot well take him to be a pupil of Pollaiuolo, or an imitator who has merely caught the other’s tricks. Rather his drawing is like Pollaiuolo’s in style and aim, but more incorrect and stiffer, as it were that of a less gifted elder brother trained in the same school. The question, then, that remains to ask and, if Who then can he be? possible, to answer is this : who is this anonymous draughtsman of our Chronicle ? Who is this Florentine goldsmith-draughtsman of the mid fifteenth century, this decorator intoxicated with the newly-learned forms and motives of the early Renaissance, this follower of Donatello and Masaccio, of Castagno and Paolo Uccello, this weaker, stiffer, quainter, seeming elder brother of Pollaiuolo ? Thinking over possible attributions among known Hypothesis: Maso and recorded artists, a name which cannot but suggest F '"‘S" erra - itself is the interesting one of Tommaso (or accord¬ ing to the customary abridgment Maso) Finiguerra. This master was one of the most famous Florentine goldsmiths of his time, and especially famous for his skill in niello-work : nielli being a kind of small engraved silver plaques, which were used for all sorts of ornamental purposes in the Middle Age, and most of all in the fifteenth century, and were so called from the technical name (Latin nigellum = niello) of the black enamel mixture which was used to fill in the engraved lines, and so show up the pattern in black on the silver ground. Maso Finiguerra was born in 1426, and therefore belonged to what we have called the second generation of Florentine fifteenth-century artists. He was two years older than Desiderio da Settignano, three years older than Antonio Pollaiuolo, and six years older than Verrocchio. Alessio Baldovinetti was one year his junior. He did not live to the age of any of these contemporaries, but died prematurely at thirty- eight on August 24, 1464. By his artistic and personal relations he belonged to that second group of naturalists whose position in the school we have above defined. He was the intimate friend and fellow-worker of Antonio Pollaiuolo, both being partners together in a goldsmith’s business, of which a third partner, and apparently the head, was one Piero di Bartolommeo Sail. He was associated with Alessio Baldovinetti in 22 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE Grounds of hypo¬ thesis. Finiguerra accord¬ ing to contemporary documents. designing figures for intarsiatura or inlaid wood-work, to be executed by Giuliano da Majano in the sacristy of the cathedral at Florence. Besides being a niello engraver of the first repute, he is associated by unanimous tradi¬ tion, though in a way not very clearly defined, with the invention and earliest practice of the art of engrav¬ ing on copper. He is also described as a prolific and excellent draughtsman, both of figures in the nude and of figures in costume, drawing much in companionship, and sometimes in competition, with Pollaiuolo, whom however he did not equal in skill : so that drawings by him (of which few have hitherto been recognised) are things naturally to be looked out for. Taking these rough outlines of Finiguerra’s history and position, it will be agreed that we have points enough to make the guess that our Chronicle drawings may be by his hand one well worth considering and putting to the test. But first it will be necessary to go more closely into what we know of his life and work, separating what rests on the solid ground of contem¬ porary documents from what is derived from the less certain source of literary tradition. The family of Finiguerra, then, or Finiguerri (for its members sign both ways), had long been established as artisans in Florence. Our artist’s grandfather, also named Tommaso, died in 1424 at the age of fifty-five, leaving three sons. Of these, one, Bartolommeo, was a carpenter; a second, Stefano, was a poet in his way, having contributed to the popular satiric literature of the time three pieces in terza rima , which have only been lately printed from manuscripts preserved in the Florence libraries. 1 A third son, Antonio, was a goldsmith, born in 1389, and living in 1427 in Sta. Lucia d’ Ognissanti. This was the father of the famous artist. In a statement of his property made in July that year, Antonio says that his son Tommaso is one year and five months old ; which gives us the birth-date, 1426, as above quoted. 2 The boy was brought up to his father’s trade of goldsmith, and the next documentary notice we get of him is in 1 The titles of these poems are La Buca di Monteferrato, Lo Studio d’ Atene, and 11 Gagno. They are printed, with a critical Introduction and Notes, by Ludovico Frati, in Scelta di curiosita letterarie, Bologna, 1884. In the same place is printed a genealogical table of the Finiguerri, from the manuscript of Sigr. Gaetano Milanesi. 2 “ Antonio di tomaso finiguerra orafo, quartierc di S. M. Novella, gonfalone del unichorno, populo Sea. Lucia dognisanti, 6 di prestanzonc mi tocha i mia parte s. 7. 10 ; c ora qui da pi& recherb tutti i mia beni encharichi. “ Una chasa, posta in borgo dognisanti, chomaserizic per mio uso e per mia famiglia. chonfini : prima via, sechondo salvi dandrea lavatore, 3 0 frati dogni santi, 4 0 picro . . . bechaio, 5 0 giovanni di iachopo bonachorsi orafo. “E pi a 6 avere da bartolomeo di tomaso finiguerra, mio fratello, fior. 11, quando io dividero ; chc ne fo pocha stima. “ In su la botega nonno nula, chc sono chonpagnio di sandro di Giovanni e dantonio di vencri, orafi. Incaricki : Io antonio di tomaso sopradetto deta danni 34 Mona antonia mia donna deta danni zo, mesi 6 Tomaso mio figliuolo deta danni . 1. „ 5 La nanna mia figluola deta danni . . 3. ,, 6 the year 1449, when the painter Alessio Baldovinetti notes that he is to deliver to a customer a sulphur of Tommaso Finiguerra ( i.e. a sulphur cast from a niello plate) in payment, or exchange, for a dagger received. 1 The fame that by about his twenty-fifth year he was already winning as a niellist is attested by an order he received from the Consuls of the Guild of Merchants, or Calimala, for a niellated silver pax for the Baptistery of St. John. 2 This was delivered and paid for in 1452, and has been the subject, as we shall see, of eager speculation and discussion in latter days. In the preceding year, 1451, Antonio Finiguerri reports himself as being in partnership in his goldsmith’s business with one Rinieri di Giovanni Manni, but says nothing about his son Tommaso ; from which we may infer that the latter was by this time a member of some other workshop than his father’s. 3 In 1457 Antonio again reports the number and ages of his family, giving his own age as sixty-eight, that of his wife Antonia as fifty-one, of his son Tommaso (by an error, apparently, of one year) as thirty, of a son Francesco (then absent at Venice) as eighteen, and of a third son Stefano (absent at Rome) as fifteen. Tommaso was by this time married, his wife’s name being Piera di Domenico di Giovanni ; and, as a note of his father’s in the same document adds, was working in partnership as a gold¬ smith and jeweller with one Piero di Bartolommeo di Sail. 4 We know that the great Antonio Pollaiuolo Mia debit's : “Buto di nicholo, proveditore dello stedale dell’ arte di porta S. Maria, db avere da me in due partite fior. 20 4. z. “ El chomune avere da me di prestanzoni vechi e nuovi e residi, in tuto mi tocha i mia parte fior. 5. “ Io antonio di tomaso 6 fa to di mia propria mano questa iscrita a di . . . di Luglio 1427.”—From Gayc, Carteggio if Artisti', vol. i. p. in. 1 “1449, 23 Luglio — Riceve da Bernardo d’ Agabito de’ Ricci un pugnalctto in vendita, del quale pugnalc gli debbe dare uno zolfo di Maso di Tommaso Finiguerri tornito a sue spese, per grossi 6 d’ argento, ossiano L. 1. 13.”—From Ricordi di Alesso Baldovinetti , Lucca, 1868. This is a small pamphlet of extracts, chosen by G. Milanesi and prefaced by G. Picrotti, from the original MS. Ricordi of the artist, which at the date of publication were preserved among the archives of Sta. Maria Nuova at Florence, but have since unhappily disappeared. 2 Sec Gori, Thesaurus veterum diptyckorum , vol. iii. p. 316; and Gaye, Carteggio if Artisti, vol. i. p. nz. 3 R. Archivio di State, Firenze. Portate al Catasto, Anno 1451, S' a - Maria Novella, Unicorno, Prirno, N°- verde 705 ,fol 355.—“ Yhs q. Sea M a - N“- G'- Liocorno 1451 adj xiiij° dagosto. “Dinanzj auoj signorj vficialj della nuoua gravezza si raporta per me Antonio ditomaxo finiguerra in detto ghonfalone. . . . “ Sustanzic in pr'ma “ Vnacasctta posta in borgho ognisantj confinj apr‘mo viaasecondo Giouannj di saluj lanatore di lana a 3 0 e fratj dognisantj a 4" lorenzo dapoppj messo a 5 0 herede di nannj cino orafo nel quale abito. . . . Sono abottegha allarte del- lorafo in conpagnia con Rinierj di Giouannj Mannj e sopra alle costienzie nostre giudichamo che abiamo piu debito che mobile in detta bottegha e grande famiglia. . . . “La bottegha douc facciamo 1’ arte c delle Rede di Jacopo di bartolo ciachj (?) vaiao paghiamo di pigione fiorinj 18.”—From a transcript by H. P. Horne, Esq. 4 Ibid. Anno, 1457, S' a - Mar. Novella, Unicorno, Primo, N° • verde 813. fol. 163. 4* S ft , M‘- N a - G'- Liocorno. “ Antonio di tomaxo finiguerra horafo. . . . “ Sustanzic “Vna casa per mio abitare posta in borgho ognisantj confinj da p° via ij° INTRODUCTION 2 3 was a partner in the same business at the same time ; and for this year, 1457, there is extant an order to the firm from the authorities of the Church of San Jacopo at Pistoia for a pair of fine silver candlesticks, no doubt incrusted with nielli, for the church altar. 1 In 1459 we get a mention of Finiguerra in the note-books of Neri di Bicci, that third-rate manufacturing painter and artist of all work, or, as it were, universal artistic provider of the day. Finiguerra pays him for a radiated sole , or figure of the sun (a device in use for many pur¬ poses, religious and other), carved in relief and gilt with the finest gold ; whence we may gather that this kind of article was not turned out in the shop wherein Finiguerra himself worked.' 2 In a manuscript zibaldone (commonplace-book or medley of useful facts, saws, records, and memoranda), begun in 1459 by the great Florentine citizen, Giovanni Rucellai, we find Fini¬ guerra coupled as a master in drawing, maestro di disegno , with Antonio Pollaiuolo, among the artists with whose works the Casa Rucellai is enriched : the other names mentioned include Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, Giuliano da Majano, Verrocchio, Castagno, and Paolo Uccello. 3 In the year 1462 we find our craftsman supplying a niellated open-work silver buckle for a belt or waistband (just such as we have seen figured in the Planet engraving already discussed) to Cino di Filippo Rinuccini, another wealthy Floren¬ tine citizen, whose note-books for these years have been preserved, and contain memoranda of presents bought for his wife and lady friends, as well as other purchases (including in one instance a Russian female slave. 1 ) Later in the same year, we find the same Rinuccini buying another buckle in the same shop from Antonio Pollaiuolo, and later again another from Finiguerra, in the French fashion (alia parigina ), to give to his wife when she has to wear mourning. In February of the next year he again buys from Finiguerra a dozen of silver forks for a christening present to a friend, and later on five silver spoons for a purpose unnamed. Our next notice is once more from the note-book of the painter Alessio Baldovinetti, and is of special importance to our present study, inasmuch as it refers to a work still in existence. Early in 1463 Baldovinetti notes that he has to receive on the 21 st of February in that year payment from Giuliano da Majano for his work in colouring the 1 Here is the text of these memoranda of Cino Rinuccini, interesting in all ways to students of the time :— “ A di r8 Maggio 1461 pagato fior. 8. c. d. 6 a Benozzo (Gozzoli) di Luca dipintore, quali restava avere per Mad\ Nanna sua sirocchia, moglie che fu di mastro Trombetto, il quale mori sulla galera, padrone Francesco Tedaldi, dove io era scrivano. “A di d’ Aprile 1462 speso fior. 4. d. 7, sono per un fornimento da cintola d’ ariento ebbi da Maso Finiguerra, che pcsb o. 3. d. 23, lavorato di niello e di traforo, il quale feci metterc a una fetta paonazza, peso detta fetta o. 2. d. 3 in tutto fu o. 6. d. 2, in conto al d° Maso fior. 4. 7. “A di 7 Luglio 1461. fior. 3. 4. 9 per valuta di on. 50 d’ ariento detti a Antonio del Pollaiolo orafo, per uno fornimento d’ ariento bianco da cintola con traforo e niello a 8 cignitoi, pesb o. 2, e la tolsi da lui per dare alia Ginevra che la donassi alia Sandra sua sirocchia, quando torno a casa sua, come e d’ usanza. “ A di 18 Luglio 1461, fior. trentatre si fanno buoni a Appollonio dipintore per un paio di forzieri dipinti e messi con oro coll’ arme nostra e de’ Martelli, i quali ebbi da lui fino a di 6. d° quando mcnai la Ginevra Bernardo di piero horafo di iij° lorenzo da poppj da iiij 0 Giouannj di saluj del Grassi. . . . “ Sustanzie e debitorj di bottegha per lamcta “I rouancj (?) in bottegha in conpagnia di Rinicrj di Giouannj manni nel- larte dellorafo in merchatantia stimata fiorinj c° lxxx tocha meza a Rinierj di Giouanni sopradetto e glialtrj mezj ame perche alpresente cidiuidiano enon voglio fare piu bottegha fiorinj 90. Piero di Giuliano Vespuccj de dare a lire 4 per fiorino fiorinj Tomaxo di luigi bartolj „ ,, fiorinj Giouannj di carlo macingnj „ „ fiorinj Cho simo dantonio di ser tomaso „ „ fiorinj Chericho di lorenzo „ „ fiorinj Ant° di mariano „ » fiorinj Mariano di uannj ,, » fiorinj [&c. &c.] . Antonio di tomaxo finiguerra deta danj 68 M a Antonia mia donna dannj Tomaxo mio figliuolo deta dannj Franc 0 mio figliuolo deta dannj Stefano mio figliuolo deta dannj Picra donna dj tommaso 3 “ Tomaso mio figliuolo sopradetto e conpagno di piero di bartolomeo disalj horafo e non a nulla dicorpo e braghono per meta. “adj 27 febrajo Rccho ant 0 detto.”—From a further transcript by H. P. Horne, Esq. 1 Quoted and discussed in Milanesi’s edition of Vasari, vol. iii. p. 288 note 4. 2 “ Ricordo cheil detto di, misi d’ oro fine a Tommaso Finiguerra orafo un sole intagliato e raggiato intorno di relievo mezzo da ognj parte, di grandezza di § intra | [d’ un braccio], a mia spesa d’ oro cd ognj altra cosa, fiorino uno largo : e a detto di lo vi ebbe portoglie. Giusto [che] sta meco per discepolo. Posto ‘deve dare’ a libro. D. a carta. . . Transcript by Mr. Horne from MS. Ricordi of Neri di Biccj ; preserved among the books and records belonging to the Gallery of the Uflizi, fol. 56 tergo. 8 G. Marcotti, Un mercante fiorentino e la sua famiglia nel secolo xv, Florence, 1881, p. 68. “A di 23 d’ Agosto fior. 6. 10. pagai contanti a Maso Finiguerra orafo, sono per uno fornimento alia parigina d’ ariento dorato ebbi da lui per la d a Ginevra per portare bruno, peso o. 4. d. 8, e colla fetta o. 6. d. 9. “ Rinaldo Ghini orafo e gioielliere in Mercato Nuovo avere fior. uno, per uno smalto da bacino ebbi da lui per mettre in un bacino da dare acqua alle mani, nel quale feci fare 1’ arme nostra e de’ Martelli. “ A di 17 di Diccmbre 1461. Si fanno buoni ai Rabatti fior. 6. 18. 6. che pagarono a Maso Finiguerra orafo, sono per uno fornimento d’ ariento, 1’ ha dorato e lavorato con traforo alia parigina, tolsi da lui per mettere a una fetta alia domaschina, pesb detto fornimento o. 4. d. 9, e la fetta o. 3. d. 19 in tutto o. 8. d. 16, a ragionc di fior.—6. 5. 1’ oncia. “A di 20 di Febbraio. Fior. 8 a Maso Finiguerra, c sono per una dozzina di forchettc d’ ariento di peso o. 8, ebbi da lui per donare alia moglie di Niccolo Martelli, quando fece il fanciullo ch’ ebbe nome Giovan Francesco. “A di Octprile 1462. Pagai contanti fior.—10. 8. a Antonio del Pollaiolo orafo, sono per d. 2 di tremolanti e 2 catenelle d’ ariento dorato, comprai da lui per la d a Ginevra per fare fruscoli a campanella. “Adi 2 di Luglio 1464, fior. 4. 4. 6. pagai a Maso d’ Antonio Finiguerra orafo, sono per 5 cucchiai d’ ariento comprai da lui, pcsorono o. 5. d. 6. “Fior. 61. 3. 4. buoni ai Rabatti che pagarono a Bartolommeo di Niccold Martelli per una schiava chiamata Marta d’ eta d’ anni 28 in circa comprai da lui (1464). “ 1466. Fior. 74. 10. 5 per una schiava de nazione Rossa chiamata Caterina d’ eta d’ anni 26 in circa, le quale mi mando di Vinegia Giovambatista Martelli a di 28 di Marzo 1466, quali fo buoni a’ Rabatti e Cambi di qui, i quali pagarono per me, come dissi lora, a Piero de’ Medici e Comp. “ A di 16 d’ Aprile 1466, Francesco d’ Antonio Finiguerra orafo deve avere fior. 7. 17. 6. che sono per uno fornimento d’ ariento per una cintola tolsi da lui per la Ginevra, pesb o. 6. d. 23, per mettre a una fetta nera domaschina. “A di detto fior. 6. 16. 5. sono per 12 forchette d’ ariento, pesarono o. 7. d. 2 lc quali ebbi da lui, e mandai alia donna di Pier Giovanni d’ Andrea di Bindaccio da Ricasoli. “A di 13 d’ Aprile 1467. Speso fior. 1. 7. per uno libriccino piccolo di nostra Donna per le carte, la scrittura, legatura e miniatura ed il serrame che & d’ ariento di peso d. 5.”—From Ricordi Storici di Cino di Filippo di Cino Rinuccini, per cura di G. Aiazzi, Florence, 1840, p. 251. 24 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE heads of five figures designed by Tommaso Finiguerri for the scheme of intarsiatura , or inlaid panel decoration, in the sacristy of the Duomo, which was then being carried out or about to be carried out by the said Giuliano. The subjects of Finiguerra’s cartoons are specified as being a group of St. Zenobio between two deacons, and a Virgin with an angel—that is, of course, an Annunciation. Baldovinetti at the same time records that he has himself to receive payment for a cartoon of a Nativity which he has made for the same place and purpose. 1 In 1466 Rinuccini goes to the same shop for another silver buckle for his wife. But on this occasion it is Tommaso’s younger brother Francesco (now, as we see, returned from Venice) who is named as the seller. The reason is that Tommaso himself was no longer living. He had died nearly two years previously, as we know both by the official records of his burial on the 24th of August 1464, and from a memorandum by his father Antonio, who survived Tommaso but a few months, leaving as heirs his two other sons Francesco and Stefano, and his grandson Pierantonio (the son of Tommaso). 2 Literary traditions : The account of our craftsman’s career which we f'7^rif / Bafdimcci thus g et from contemporary records is meagre but, so far as it goes, incontrovertible. It has to be filled out from biographical notices furnished by writers the earliest of whom was born nearly a full generation after his death. Such notices, of course, can only be trusted in a secondary degree. They record traditions which are likely enough to be well founded, but must be accepted or not according as they tally with the facts above given, and with the evidence of existing works of art. One such notice referring to the period of Finiguerra’s youth occurs in a letter of Baccio Bandinelli, who gives his name first among the list of young artists having assisted Ghiberti in the execution of the famous Baptistery gates, the others being Desiderio da Setti- gnano, the brothers Pollaiuolo, and Verrocchio. 3 This list differs from another given by Vasari ; but there 1 “E de’ dare a di 23 Settembre 1463 fiorino 3 larghi e qua’ danari sono per una storia gli disegnai di una Nativitk di Santa Liperata, colorito el Bambino e la testa di nostra Donna, e Giuscppo Fior. 3.” “ 1463. Giuliano di Nardo da Majano dc’ dare a di 21 di Febbrajo 1463 lire 3, e qua’ denari sono per cinque teste gli colorj a cinque figure disegnate di mano di Tommaso Finiguerri, cio6 una nostra Donna, uno angiolo, uno santo Zanobi con due diaconi da lato, le quali figure sono nella sagrestia di santa Liperata L. 3.”—From Ricordi di Ales so Baldovinetti , as above, p. 12. 2 “1464, 13 deebr. Actum florentie in populo S. Marie maioris de florentia, presentibus testibus Nardo antonii da maiano ct Simone francisci legnaiuolo etc. “ Antonius q. Tommasii finiguerre populi S. Lucie omnium Sanctorum de florentia, sanus mente ct corpore, suum nuncupativum condidit testamentum. “ Corporis sepulturam elegit in ecclesia omnium Sanctorum de florentia. In omnibus autem suis bonis instituit—Franciscum ct Stcfanum eius filios legitimos, et pierantonium eius nepotem, natum ex Tommasio eius filio premortuo. Tutores autem dicti eius nepotis reliquit dictos Franciscum et Stefanum ” (Archivio Gcneralc).—Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’ Artisti , vol. i. p. 113. 3 Letter, undated, of Baccio Bandinelli printed in Bottari, Raccolta di lettere, Rome, 1754, vol. i. p. 75. seems no reason why Bandinelli’s statement should not be true (except so far as concerns the younger of the Pollaiuolo brothers, who was only nine years old when the last gate was finished). Bandinelli’s great enemy Benvenuto Cellini, on his part, in his treatise on the goldsmith’s art, of which during the later Renaissance he was the foremost master, deplores the extinction of the art of niello, and celebrates Tommaso Finiguerra as its chief practitioner ; describes as particularly famous one of his works in that kind, a pax of the Crucifixion in the Baptistery of St. John ; adding that Finiguerra attended to nothing else but the niello business, and that, not being much of a draughtsman, his niello plates, including the aforesaid pax, were almost always done from drawings by Pollaiuolo. 1 These latter statements can evidently carry no weight. They are contradicted by the records which show Finiguerra, on the one hand, furnishing candlesticks, buckles, forks, spoons, and the rest of an ordinary jeweller’s wares to his customers, and on the other recognised as a maestro di disegno , or master draughtsman, and as such employed by Giuliano da Majano to furnish life-size cartoons for tarsia work. At the same time, Cellini’s words strengthen the tradition of Finiguerra’s close association with Antonio Pollaiuolo, and of the latter’s superiority to him as a draughtsman and designer. This tradition is further attested emphatically by both Vasari and Baldinucci. Vasari says that Finiguerra drew a great deal and very well :—“ In my own book I have a number of sheets by him with figures both draped and nude, and history subjects drawn in water colour. In competition with him Antonio also drew certain subjects, wherein he displayed equal diligence and better draughtsman¬ ship.” Filippo Baldinucci (1624-1688), the special protege of the great collector, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, whose cabinet was the chief source of the present riches of the Uffizi, develops further the same tradition. He says that in his patron’s collection he 1 “Maso Finiguerra fece 1’ arte solamente dello intagliare di niello ; questo fu un uomo che mai non ebbe nissuno paragone di quella cotale professione, c serapre operb servendosi dci disegni del detto Antonio. . . . “Martino [Schongauer] fu oreficc e fu oltramontano, di quelle citta todeschc. Questo fu un gran valent’ uomo, si di disegno e d’ intaglio di quella lor maniera. E perch6 gia e’ si era sparso la fama per il mondo di quel nostro Maso Finiguerra, che tanto mirabilmentc intagliava di niello (e si vedc di sua mano una Pace con un Crocifisso dentrovi insieme con i dua ladroni, e con molti ornamenti di cavagli e di altre cose, fatta sotto il disegno di Antonio del Pollaiuolo gia nominato di sopra, et £ intagliata e niellata di mano del detto Maso : questa £ d’ argento in nel nostro bel San Giovanni di Firenze); ora questo valent’ uomo todesco, nomato Martino virtuosamente e con gran disciplina si misse a voler fare la detta arte del niello. . . . “ E se bene quando io andai a imparare 1’ arte della orcficcria, che fu nel mille cinquecento quindici, che cosl correvano gli anni della mia vita, sappiate che la detta arte d’ intaglio di niello si era in tutto dismessa : ma perch£ quei vecchi, che ancora vivevano, non facevano mai altro che ragionare della bellezza di quest’ arte, e di quei buoni maestri che la facevano, e sopra tutto del Finiguerra ; e perch£ io ero molto volonteroso d’ imparare, con grande studio mi messi a imparare, e con i begli esempli del Finiguerra io detti assai buon saggio di me.”—Benvenuto Cellini, I trattati dell ’ orejiceria e della scultura, cd. Lemonnier, 1857, pp. 7, 12, 13, 14. INTRODUCTION 2 5 has seen a great number of drawings by Finiguerra, which at their best so much resemble those of Masaccio that he does not hesitate to affirm Masaccio must have been his master. Further, that he was so good a modeller of small figures in relief as to have been employed by the Consuls of the Merchants’ Guild to execute some of the subjects on the famous altar-table of the Baptistery (now preserved in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo) ; but that Pollaiuolo, being also employed in competition with him, was found to be much his superior in skill and draughtsmanship. 1 Now as to this last point, we know from documents that Pollaiuolo was employed at two different dates in connection with this famous masterpiece of the gold¬ smith’s art, which during intervals for more than a century was built up by the combined efforts of the first artificers of the city.' 2 Between 1456 and 1460 he worked on a portion of the crucifix which stood on it, and between 1477 and 1480 on some of the reliefs of the Life.of St. John. Moreover, Gori describes a drawing which he had made, illuminated and highly finished in colours, for a splendid tabernacle that was to stand upon the altar. (Where is that drawing now ? In Gori’s days it was in the cabinet of Baron Stosch, and his description of it is such as to make the collector’s and museum director’s mouth water.) There is, on the other hand, no published record which shows that Finiguerra was ever employed upon the altar at all. But the general facts of the close and competitive association of Finiguerra and Pollaiuolo, and of both being prolific and proficient draughtsmen, but Pollaiuolo the stronger 1 “Nc’ tempi che viveva in Firenze il celebratissimo pittorc Masaccio, insegnando la bclla maniera del dipignere da s& ritrovata, molti artcfici sotto la direzione di lui, e coll’ imitazione delle sue opere, diventarono uomini eccellenti. Uno di questi fu Tommaso, detto Maso Finiguerra fiorentino, di professione oreficc, il quale disegno tanto e cosi bene d’ acquerello, quanto in quella eta si poteva desiderarc. E che egli moltissimo operasse in disegno, io stesso posso essernc buon testimonio ; conciossiacosachc i soli disegni che io ho veduti di sua mano, gran parte de’ quali raccolse la gloriosa memoria del serenissimo cardinal Lcopoldo di Toscana, sono per cos! dire senza numero, cd i migliori tanto simili a quelli di Masaccio in ogni lor parte, che io non dubito punto di affermare, benchi ci6 non ritrovi notato da alcuno scrittore, che egli fosse discepolo dello stesso Masaccio. . . . Costui dunque attese principalmcnte all’ arte dell’ orcfice ; ma nello stesso tempo modelld e operd di mezzo rilievo cosi bene, che gli furon dati a fare molti nobili lavori d’ argento : e fra questi, a concorrenza del Pollaiolo e d’ altri valentuomini, alcune storic dell’ altarc del tempio di S. Giovanni, incominciato e tirato a gran segno per 1 ’ arte di Calimala, ciob de’ mercatanti, da maestro Cione aretino ecccllcnte orefice.”—Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno , 1845, vol. i. pp. 518, 519. “Era allora nella cittadi Firenze un altro orefice, chiamato Maso Finiguerra, accreditatissimo in lavorar di bulino e di niello : e che fino a’ suoi tempi non aveva avuto eguale ncl disporre in piccoli spazi grandissima quantita di figure : uomo, che, per quanto io ho riconosciuto da moltissimi disegni di sua mano, che ancora si trovano fra gli altri nella bellissima raccolta fattane dalla gloriosa memoria del cardinal Leopoldo di Toscana, aveva fatto grandi studi sopra le opere di Masaccio, e sopra il naturale ; che perb era divenuto buon disegnatore. Ad esso avevano i consoli dell’ arte dei mercatanti date a fare le storic dell’ altar d’ argento pel tempio di San Giovanni, ma avendo poi questi riconosciuto il Pollaiuolo in disegno e diligenza a lui molto superiore, vollero che ancora esso, a concorrenza del Finiguerra, molte ne lavorasse.”— Filippo Baldinucci, ibid. vol. i. p. 533 - 2 Gori, Thesaurus veterum diptychorum , vol. iii. pp. 310-318 ; Richa, Chiese Florentine, vol. v. p. 31. and more gifted of the two, may be taken as established on grounds of solid and unvarying tradition. There remains that which has been Tommaso Finiguerra’s chief title to fame from his own day almost until our own, his supposed invention of the art of engraving in the modern sense—of engraving, that is, with the burin on plates of copper, for the purpose of taking impressions on paper for distribution and sale. The attribution of this achievement to the Tuscan craftsman rests in the first instance on the authority of Vasari alone. He declares, in passages which are among the most familiar of his work, that the engraver’s art was invented by Tommaso Finiguerra in Florence about 1460, and was derived from his practice as a niello-worker. He had been in the habit, explains Vasari, of testing his niello plates, before he filled their engraved lines with the black-enamel substance from which they derived their name, by taking casts from them in sulphur, in which the incised lines, being filled with soot or smoke (the smoke of the sulphur?) and oil, showed up black on light. Presently he took to testing them more simply by means of wet paper pressed with a roller over the surface of the plate, having first inked the sunk lines which were afterwards to receive the niello enamel. Then he adapted the same method to plates engraved on copper. 1 Vasari, as usual, has little method in his thought, and no strictness in his language, and it is rather by in¬ ference than by direct construction of his words that we conclude the above to be his meaning. It is again rather by inference than by any exact statement that we must understand him to represent Finiguerra as having himself regularly practised, as well as invented, the new art of copper engraving. When he says that no one had ever been seen like Finiguerra for working with the burin and in niello, it would be hard to tell 1 “ Di questo lavorb mirabilissamentc Maso Finiguerra fiorentino, il quale fu raro in questa professione ; come ne fanno fede alcune paci di niello in San Giovanni di Firenze, che sono tenuti mirabili. Da questo intaglio di bulino sono derivate le stampe di rame, onde tante carte italiane e tedesche veggiamo oggi per tutta Italia, etc .”—Le Opere di Giorgio Vasari, cd. Milanesi, vol. i. p. 209. “Era in questo tempo medcsimo un altro orefice chiamato Maso Finiguerra, il quale ebbe norne straordinario, e mcritamente ; che per lavorare di bulino e fare di niello non si era veduto mai chi in piccoli o grandi spazj facesse tanto numero di figure, quantc ne faceva egli ; siccome lo dimostrano ancora certe Paci lavoratc da lui, in San Giovanni di Fiorenza, con istorie minutissime della Passione di Cristo. Costui disegni) benissimo e assai; e nel Libro nostro v’ & di molte carte di vestiti, ignudi, e di storic disegnatc di acquerello. A concorrenza di costui fece Antonio alcune istorie, dove lo paragono nella diligenzia e superollo nel disegno.”— Ibid. vol. iii. p. 286. “Il principio dunque dell’ intagliare le stampe venne da Maso Finiguerra fiorentino circa gli anni di nostra salute 1460 ; perch£ costui tutte le cose che intaglio in argento per empierle di niello, le improntd con terra ; e gittatovi sopra solfo liquefatto, vennero improntate e ripiene di fumo ; onde a olio mostravano il medcsimo che 1’ argento : e cio fece ancora con carta umida e con la medesima tinta, aggravandovi sopra un rullo tondo, ma piano per tutto; il che non solo le faceva apparire stampate, ma venivano come disegnatc di penna. Fu seguitato costui da Baccio Baldini orefice fiorentino, il quale, non avendo molto disegno, tutto quello che fece fu con invenzione e disegno di Sandro Botticello. Questa cosa venuta a notizia d’ Andrea Mantegna in Roma, fu cagionc che egli diede principio a intagliare molte sue opere, come si disse nella sua Vita.”— Ibid. vol. v. p. 395. Tradition represent¬ ing him as the in¬ ventor of engraving. 26 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE How these accounts fit our draughtsman. Hypothesis to be further tested by four main compari- whether he implied the practice of both crafts or only of one, inasmuch as the burin, or graver, is the instru¬ ment alike for engraving silver plates for the purposes of niello, and copper plates for the purposes of printing. But when he calls Finiguerra, in the same sentence, the finest hand at doing a great number of figures whether on small plates or on large, then it seems safe to infer that he certainly had the new craft of copper engraving in his mind ; inasmuch as niello is essentially a miniature art, and niello plates are always small ; whereas, in some of their earliest experiments on copper, we find the Florentine goldsmith-engravers attacking figures on a scale almost as large as has ever been used in later developments of the art. Further, it is clear that Vasari is thinking of the new craft of engraving on copper when he goes on to say that Finiguerra was followed in it by Baccio Baldini, who was not much of a draughtsman, and whose plates, in consequence, were mostly done from drawings by Botticelli. On this branch of our crafts¬ man’s activity Baldinucci has not much to add to the testimony of Vasari. He does but repeat with amplifications Vasari’s statement that Finiguerra was the inventor of the art of engraving on copper for the press; declares that this invention is his chief title to glory; and that it was derived from his prac¬ tice as niello engraver, in the course of which he began first to take trial impressions from the plates, first by means of sulphur casts, and afterwards by means of paper prints. We shall see later on how far these particular statements will stand the test of exact historical and technical inquiry. Having thus before us the facts and traditions con¬ cerning Finiguerra and his work, we can see plainly that our series of Chronicle drawings bears quite the characters which we might expect them to bear if they were indeed by his hand. They seem curiously to correspond both to his artistic place and connections in the school in general, and to what Vasari and Baldinucci relate of his qualities as a draughtsman in particular. But that, of course, is not enough to advance our conjecture beyond the stage of mere plausibility. To confirm or refute it, we must compare the drawings with such other existing works of art as may throw further light upon the matter. When we have done so, we shall find the Finiguerra hypo¬ thesis strengthened by four main conclusions, which, for the sake of clearness, I shall proceed first to state and then to prove, as follows :— (1) These Chronicle drawings are certainly by the same hand as another series of drawings in the Uffizi at Florence, which has been traditionally ascribed to Tommaso Finiguerra since the seventeenth century, and apparently on good grounds. (2) They are quite consistent in character with the only positively known and certified works of the master, namely, the tarsia compositions executed by Giuliano da Majano from his designs in the sacristy of the Duomo. (3) If the drawings were really by Finiguerra, we should expect, considering his known activity as a niello engraver, to find existing works of this kind bearing the marks of the same hand. And in fact, among the rare preserved impressions from niello plates of Florentine origin, we do find a special group which shows marked correspondences both with the Chronicle drawings and Uffizi drawings. (4) Again, if they were really by Finiguerra, we should expect, considering his reputed activity as the father of engraving on copper, to find existing works in that method also, which should in like manner bear the impress of his style. And in fact, among the primitive engravings produced at Florence in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, we do find again a whole group, and a very important one, which bear the closest relation to the Chronicle drawings, and are to all appearance either by the draughtsman’s own hand or by hands trained in his workshop. To make out and verify these several points it is necessary to compare, as our means of illustration enable us sufficiently to do, the drawings of the Chronicle series with specimens of the four classes of works on which our argument severally rests,— (1) the Uffizi drawings, (2) the tarsia-work of the sacristy, (3) Florentine niello prints, and (4) early Florentine line-engravings. But at this point it will be best that the reader should go on to study the facsimiles of the drawing for himself, with the accom¬ panying text and illustrations, and then come back to follow out, if he cares to do so, the arguments based on such comparisons. But first let the drawings be studied by themselves. INTRODUCTION 2 7 Comparison with drawings ascribed to Finignerra at the Uffizi. T AKING now, as our first term of comparison, the drawings of the Uffizi series:—on the interleaves facing the drawings, and on the page following this, the reader has the opportunity of seeing figured a sufficient number of specimens of these. They are done, like most of the Chronicle drawings, in pen outline and bistre wash {all' acquerello , as Vasari and Baldinucci call it). But while the Chronicle drawings are elaborate fancy com¬ positions, executed apparently from invention alone and without the model, the Uffizi drawings are for the most part simple studies taken from the life, and gain accord- ingly in freshness and vitality. In subject they are various and fall into several groups. One especially interesting group represents the artists and apprentices of a work¬ shop wearing their everyday dress and engaged in their everyday occupations. A young man sits on a three- legged stool, holding on another stool something which looks like the sole of a boot at which he is hammering (Fig. 22). Another sits with his foot also rested on a stool, working with a point or modelling tool at something which he holds on his knee (Fig. 23). Another sits resting with his head on one hand and holding his ankle in the other (Fig. 24). Another works apparently preparing a wax model of a face or mask. Another is cutting a block of wood with an adze. Another in workshop dress sits resting with folded arms. Another sits keeping the book which he reads open with both hands on a stool before him (Fig. 40). At the feet of one of them, who sits draw¬ ing or engraving, is inscribed: “ Vo essere urn buono disegnatore e vo diventare urn buono architetto .” A rhyming proverb, about a man who sees foolishly being like one who puts a spur on one foot, appears below the figure of a vouth engaged in that action (Fig. 25). A second group seems to show the same members of the artist’s family or workshop set posing to him as models. These are, as we have said, extremely plain-featured people, and they are drawn from the life without flattery or compromise. Some of them stand simply or leaning on a staff in workshop dress (Fig. 67, facing Pis. XXVIII. XXIX.). Others are posed for Scripture characters. Thus we have David with the head of Goliath twice over (Figs. 49, 50, facing PI. VI.). A few of the studies, both of men and women, are nude. There is an Adam and Eve, not without recollections of Masaccio at the Carmine ; a naked youth seated holding a bow and arrow ; another seen from behind, blowing a trumpet ; a woman in a dramatic gesture, bare but for a floating scarf. There are several studies for saints ; a Magdalen at the foot of the Cross ; a kneeling saint, apparently St. Francis, seen from behind (Fig. 64, facing PI. XXIV.) ; and a St. Bernar¬ dino. There are also portrait heads, several of young men (Fig. 43, facing PI. XLII.), one or two of boys, and one of a plain-featured lady wearing a holiday head-dress of peacocks’ feathers (Fig. 89). There are several separate studies of heads and hands, and two of Jews in broad hat and cloak, with studies of hands on the same page (Fig. 87, facing PI. LIV.). Altogether the impression which the drawings give is that they are the work of a craftsman accustomed to model in the round, and a frank and vigorous student of common nature. That they are all by the same hand as our Chronicle drawings will not be doubted by any one who has attentively examined them. The rich costumes and ornaments are all, indeed, absent ; it is only the draughtsman and student of nature that is here, but his way of seeing and drawing is just the same. The forms of the figure are defined with the same slightly broken and tentative outlines; the planes of the body are modelled in the sepia wash with a similar feeling for the round, and similar care and definiteness; both according to the same method as we find practised with more advanced mastery by Pollaiuolo. There is precisely the same touch and accent in the drawing of hair,—light towards the origin of the locks and sharp at the points,—eyebrows, and the like ; the same prevailing tendency to heaviness in the lower limbs ; the same occasional hesitation, and effort of a conscious studentship, in the drawing of hands and feet; only in the Chronicle drawings, done out of the artist’s head, the extremities are sometimes more faulty than in the life-studies of the Uffizi series. Moreover, we find the sitters in several of these familiar studies to be exactly the same as those who occur in foreign bedizenment in the Chronicle. Thus the peculiarly snub-nosed, wide-mouthed Orpheus of the Chronicle appears here in everyday clothes as an apprentice leaning on his staff. The plain lady drawn here with peacock head-dress seems clearly to have furnished the model for the Hecubas and Didos of the Chronicle, and the features of a boy drawn more than once in profile in the Uffizi series can be recognised again both in the son of Tomyris and in Romulus. To clinch the evidence and make it irrefutable, we have in the Uffizi series the study from life of a kneel¬ ing woman weaving a garland (Fig. 115), and in the Chronicle picture of Sardanapalus among his women (Pis. XCIII. XCIV.) the same figure is introduced, with no changes except such as arise from the circumstance that the artist is now working without the model before him. (This sitter is the same whose head appears again in the Chronicle picture of Oromasdes raising the Dead.) Now, two of these drawings are inscribed in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century hand with the name Finiguerri. Another drawing in the Uffizi, not belonging to this series, which bears the same name in the same handwriting, is a profile portrait ■■I INTRODUCTION 29 of an old man wearing a heavy berretta, attributed in the catalogue to Paolo Uccello. (Much though not exactly in the same character, is a fine head, approaching life-size, of a younger man preserved in the Corsini Collection at Rome. 1 ) Among other scattered drawings in the same manner is a set of twenty-two in an album in the collection of M. Bonnat in Paris, bearing the traditional name of Pollaiuolo. They are studies of heads and figures, mostly of young men, some dressed and some nude, and are closely analogous to the Uffizi set, but for the most part weaker in character, the outlines in many cases retouched, and I should say are rather pupils’ copies than originals by the hand of our two men. We might well be justified, indeed, in accepting it out of hand, and so regarding the author¬ ship of our own drawings as settled. But it will be safer, as well as more instructive, to follow a stricter method, and go on with our other proposed comparisons. Let us turn, then, to the only extant works which are Comparison with ■ . , . . . tarsia work in known to be Finiguerras on the positive evidence or sacristy of Duomo. contemporary documents. These are the tarsia panels in the north sacristy of the Florence Cathedral, which were carried out, as above related, from his cartoons by Giuliano da Maja.no, the contractor and general designer of the scheme of decoration, and the heads of which were coloured in the cartoons by Baldovinetti. KIG. 26.—S. 2ENOBIO BETWEEN TWO DEACONS: AFTER CARTOONS BY MASO F1NIGUEKKA. From an inlaid wood Panel executed by Giuliano da Majano/or the Sacristy 0/ the Cathedral, Florence. draughtsman. The attributions to Finiguerra inscribed on two drawings of the Uffizi set date certainly as early as the days of the collector Cardinal Leopoldo ; they have been supposed to be in the hand of Baldinucci him¬ self ; at all events the whole set are certainly among those which Baldinucci believed to be by the master, and on which he formed his opinion of his style. The attribu¬ tion had always been traditionally and officially accepted, until a few years ago it was gratuitously changed, for all the drawings except three or four, to “ scuola di Pollaiuolo.” But there seems no reason to doubt the old tradition. The relation of these drawings to those of Pollaiuolo, though manifest, is not at all necessarily that of a scholar’s work to a master’s, but rather quite what we should expect from the known relations of the 1 Reproduced in Mttsei italianinazionali, vol. ii. p. 145. The subjects are an episcopal saint, St. Zenobio, seated in a niche between two standing deacons, and an An¬ nunciation to the Virgin. The former (now removed to the Museum of the Opera del Duomo) is here figured (Fig. 26). They are in a style closely resembling Baldovinetti’s own, and quite consistent with that of our draughtsman, but do not offer points enough of resemblance to make the identification sure. Two other figures in the same decoration, however, those of Amos and Isaiah, resemble certain figures of the Chronicle almost to identity in style and treatment, and in one case as to attitude and gesture (see Pis. XC. XCI. XCII. and Fig. 113). There is no record to show whether these particular figures are by Finiguerra or not ; but they are on the same wall, the window-wall, for the execution of which Giuliano 3 ° A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE Comparison with existing Florentine nielli and engrav¬ ings. History of this study: the Abbe Zani and the Florence pax. da Majano contracted at the same time, and in the absence of documentary proof it is at least reason¬ able to suppose that Finiguerra supplied the cartoons for them also. If this were so, it would be a strong point gained in favour of our hypothesis. Provisionally, let it be taken only for what it is worth. We come now to our third and fourth heads of comparison, the existing specimens, namely, of Floren¬ tine niello engraving and primitive Florentine engraving upon copper. But before approaching the considera¬ tion of these classes of works separately, it seems neces¬ sary, for the removal of possible misapprehensions, to go over briefly the history of this study since amateurs, collectors, and compilers began to take it up. Until within the last few years, the conception which prevailed of the origin and early history of engraving in Italy was founded exclusively on the account of the matter given by Vasari, and repeated and amplified by Baldinucci, in the several passages of their works above quoted. The names of Finiguerra as the first and Baldini as the second of early craftsmen in this kind (the latter associated with Botticelli) became traditional and established in all works upon the subject. Eighteenth-century connoisseurs and compilers, in deal¬ ing with the extremely rare and scattered specimens then known of early Florentine engraving, attempted to distribute them conjecturally between these masters. But what to give to Finiguerra was a question which puzzled them, in the absence of signed or authenticated pieces by his hand. (One of the most diligent of them, Heinecken, made what we shall show afterwards to have been a good guess in assigning him a set of early ornamental prints, which have become known as the “ Otto ” prints.) At the close of the century, however, a discovery was made which delighted the connoisseurs of the day, and had the effect for a long time afterwards of making students think of Finiguerra exclusively as a worker in niello, forgetting or ignoring the part attributed to him as the father of engraving on copper. There was in the Baptistery at Florence a beautiful niello pax with a crowded composition of the Coronation of the Virgin (now in the Museum of the Bargello). A very learned antiquary, the Abbate Gori, prior of the Baptistery from 1746-1757, had declared — on what authority or whether any does not appear — that this was the very work executed by Finiguerra in 1452, on the commission of the Calimala or Merchants’ Guild. His dictum was accepted without hesitation by another enthusiastic Italian antiquary and virtuoso, the Abbate Zani. Learn¬ ing that there was in the collection of the Governor of Leghorn, Count Seratti, a sulphur cast from a niello of the same subject, Zani went to see it ; found that the cast in question corresponded to the Florence pax; and naturally saw in the fact a perfect confirmation at once of Vasari’s text, and of the current ascription of the original silver pax itself to Finiguerra. Later, in the year 1797, in the course of researches in the National Library in Paris, he came across an impression, till then unnoticed, of this same design upon paper. At this, to use his own words, his heart was uplifted on a wave of joy inconceivable to one who has never felt the like. 1 His rapture over his discovery, his half-intelligible outcries (he was snuffy and stone deaf) in a broken jargon of French, Latin, and Italian, have been vividly recorded by an eye-witness, the French antiquarian Duchesne, and his portrait as he appeared in this moment of triumph was etched by another famous antiquarian and amateur, Baron Denon. Now at last, it seemed, the chain of evidence was complete. Here in Paris was the paper impression,— the earliest paper impression ever printed, and absolute first-fruit of the Florentine craftsman’s invention ; there at Florence was the original plate, and at Leghorn the intermediary cast in sulphur. Could anything more convincing be desired ? For the best part of a hundred years, accordingly, these several versions of the same Coronation in silver, sulphur, and on paper—the Seratti sulphur cast is now in the British Museum, and another since dis¬ covered in the collection of Baron Ed. de Roth¬ schild—have been famous as the undoubted original and only authentic works of Finiguerra. When Adam Bartsch, the first encyclopaedic cataloguer of ancient prints, came to deal, in his great work published thirteen years later, with the early copper engravings of the Florentine School, he was content to ignore the part traditionally given to Finiguerra in this branch of artistic production, assigning to the joint names of Baldini and Botticelli all those examples which he did not either leave anonymous or transfer, by mistake, to other schools. Subsequent critics and compilers, con¬ tinuing to take the authority of Vasari’s text for granted, have either left the main mass of unsigned Florentine fifteenth-century engravings under the generic name of Baccio Baldini, or else have endeavoured, like W. Young Ottley and Passavant after him, to assign specific shares in their production to famous painters, such as Botticelli or Filippo Lippi. 2 1 “Non val la mia penna ad esprimer 1 ’ altezza di mia sorpresa in que’ primi fortunati momenti. 11 mio cuore nuotava in un mar di gioja incon- cepibilc da chi non nc chiude in petto un eguale al mio; ma fu seguitataben presto questa letizia da una prudente tema, c mi agitarono a vicenda, e a ponderar mi mossero profondamcnte la mia discoperta.”—Zani, Materiali per servire, 1802, p. 49. 2 The object of these footnotes has been to put before readers the actual texts of all contemporary documents and early literary authorities on the subject. With later literature and critical speculation we have no reason much to concern ourselves. Catalogues, like those of Bartsch and especially Passavant for engravings, and of Duchesne and Dutuit (Pawlowski) for nielli, must be used until they are superseded by better; but for critical and scientific purposes there is relatively little that will stand of the work, done before the recent methods of comparative research and photographic repro- Parts assigned by later compilers to Baldini and Botti¬ celli. These speculations upset by recent research: the Florence pax not by Finigt/erra. INTRODUCTION 31 Such was the state of connoisseurship on this sub¬ ject until the present generation. But now the whole history of early engraving both north and south of the Alps has been re-examined with a new thorough¬ ness of research, and by the aid of comprehensive photographic reproductions, without which no exact comparison and no fruitful conjecture were really possible in regard to originals so rare and so widely scattered. The result has been that few of the old assumptions and conclusions have been left standing. First of all, as to Finiguerra as a niello-worker, it has become apparent that the famous discovery of the Abbate Zani was mistaken. It would have made him turn in his grave to know how first a German critic, Baron Rumohr, urged reasons against it in 1841, and how forty years later a great French collector. Monsieur Dutuit, and a great Italian explorer of archives, Signor Gaetano Milanesi, threw it into discredit on various internal and external grounds which seem unanswer¬ able. No early authority describes Finiguerra’s work for the Baptistery as an Assumption or Coronation of the Virgin ; Vasari speaks of Passion scenes, Cellini of a Crucifixion. And what is most of all against the attribution of the Coronation pax to Finiguerra is its style. This beautiful and accomplished work of the goldsmith’s art, which was the object of Zani’s just enthusiasm, is in fact evidently the product of quite another school than that to which Finiguerra belonged. He, as we have seen, was the intimate artistic associate of the harsher naturalists, Baldovinetti and Antonio Pollaiuolo. The pax of the Coronation, on the other hand, was manifestly produced in the school or under the influence of a master of a very different type, Filippo Lippi. In the National Museum at Florence and in guide-books the name of Finiguerra still re¬ mains attached to it ; but all competent students are agreed that the ascription cannot be maintained, and that the true work of Finiguerra in this kind, if it exists, has to be sought elsewhere. It has been sug¬ gested that a second niellated pax formerly belonging duction gave a new exactness to the study. Here is a list of the chief eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authorities, all more or less now obsolete, on early Italian engravings and nielli. Letters of Mariette and Gaburri in Bottari’ Raccolta di Lettere, Rome, 1757, vol. ii. ; Gori, Thesaurus Veterum Diptyckorum, Florence, 1759, vol. iii. pp. 31 5 W- 5 Mariette, Abecedario, Paris, 1851-1853, vol. i. pp. 51 sq. ; Strutt, A Biographical Dictionary of Engravers , London, 1785, vol. i. pp. 13 sqq. ; Huber, Manuel des curieux et des amateurs de I'Art, Zurich, 1800, vol. iii.; Zani, Material/ per servire alia storia dell' origine e de' progressi dell' incisione, etc, Parma, 1802 ; Hcinccken, Neue Nachrichten von Kiinstlern und Kunstsachen, Leipzig, r8o+, pp. 276 sqq.i Bartsch, Le Peintre-Graveur, Vienna, 1811, vol. m; W. Young Ottlev, An Enquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving , London, 1816, vol. i. chaps. 4-6; Id., A Collection of Facsimiles if Scarce Prints, London, IS26 ; Duchesne, Essai sur les Nielles, Paris, 1824; Cumber¬ land An Essay on the Utility of Collecting, etc, 1827; Cicognara, Manorie spettanti alia storia della calcographia, Prato, 1831; Passavant, Le Peintre- Graveur, Leipzig, 1864, vol. v.; Dutuit, Manuel de l'Amateur d Estampcs, Paris 1884-1888’ vol. i. Preface, and vol. ii. (by Pawlowski); Dclaborde, La Gravure en Italic avant Marc-Antoine, Paris, 1S83 ; Fisher, Introduction to a Catalogue of Early Italian Prints in the British Museum, London, 1886. to the Baptistery, and now in the Bargello Museum, may be in reality the one made by Finiguerra for the Merchants’ Guild, since it represents what, if we are to take Cellini’s evidence, is the subject of that piece, viz. Christ crucified between the two thieves, with mounted horsemen below. This is not a specimen of quite the finest workmanship ; in style it is rather neutral, not bearing the specific marks of the Pollaiuolo manner and workshop. I would not deny that it may be by Finiguerra, but no definite arguments can be built upon it. To find close analogies between our drawings and the extant works of the niellatori , we must go to another source, viz. the small stock still existing of impressions on paper from Italian niello plates. Such impressions,—whether from actual nielli, or from plates engraved in the niello manner though not actually intended to be niellated and used as ornaments, —are among the most treasured and the rarest contents of public and private cabinets of old prints. The demand for them at the beginning of this century caused a plentiful crop of forgeries to be produced by skilful craftsmen, carrying on their trade for the most part at Venice. Of those which are genuine, the greater part can be divided into two quite distinct groups. One of these groups bears unmistakably the impress of the school of Bologna, and specifically of the style and influence of Francia ; who, as is well known, was a great goldsmith before and besides being a great painter. Most of these Bolognese nielli, or prints in the niello manner, are signed with initials believed to be those of one Peregrino da Cesena ; a few seem to be by the hand of Francia himself. They date from late in the fifteenth century, and will not further concern us here. The other group, with which alone we have to do, is Florentine and of earlier date. It consists of little prints in which the figures appear (as of course is a necessary condition in this craft) in light on a dark ground, and which seem to have been taken as a regular practice, not from the plate itself before it was finished, but from a sulphur cast. The subjects are very various : scriptural and devotional, mythological, and familiar or purely decorative. This particular class of Florentine niello prints is rarer even than the similar products 01 the Bolognese workshops. The richest collection of them is that which formerly belonged to a Spanish owner, the Marquess of Salamanca, and now forms part, with others of the same class from different sources, of the priceless cabinet of Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris ; a certain number more are to be found in the great public collections of London, Paris, Vienna, etc. They are executed, on their tiny scale, in the true Florentine realistic spirit, and for the most part proceed evidently from the workshop or workshops of Pollaiuolo and his group. Examining them more closely, and But there exist paper impressions of nielli bearing the marks of our artist's hand. A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE comparing them with the works of our own draughts¬ man, the draughtsman of the Chronicle series and the Uffizi series, we find among them many which seem to bear almost certain marks of having been done by his hand or the hands of his assistants. The same sturdy, flat-headed, high¬ shouldered children derived direct from Donatello; the same tendency to exaggerate the scale of the lower limbs in proportion to the trunk ; the same predilection for cer¬ tain special decorative motives, especially that of the festoon¬ carrying boys; the same tricks and touches in the drawing of hair and the like. In the Chronicle series the best term of comparison with these niello prints is supplied by the little figures, drawn almost on the same scale, which cluster about the feet of the miracu¬ lous progenitors Deucalion and Pyrrha (PI. XLV.). I have accordingly placed op¬ posite these, reproductions of some specimens from the Rothschild Collection (Figs. 80, 81, 82, facing PI. XLV.). But there is in the Uffizi series a drawing which clenches the argument absolutely, inasmuch as a figure in it is actually INTRODUCTION 33 reproduced in one of these same niello prints. Here is the drawing, a study for two boys blowing trumpets (Fig. 29), and below (Figs. 30, 31, 32) are three niello prints of the group ; in the middle one of which, representing Venus and Cupids, the boy on the left hand is, it will be seen, taken direct from one of those in the drawing. 1 So here, again, we get satis¬ faction under our third head. The argument, of course, does not set out by assuming that these niello prints are by Finiguerra, and then go on—“ they are also by, or from drawings by, our draughtsman, therefore our draughtsman is Finiguerra”: but runs thus—“if our draughtsman were truly Finiguerra, we should expect to find niello prints by the same hand ; we do find such niello prints, and to that extent the argument in favour of his being Finiguerra is strengthened.” Origins of copper Next, as to the origin and early history of engraving many t anHItaly 011 copper—that other and so much more important tie earliest Floren- b ranc h of the engraver’s art—recent researches have tine examples. ° caused these matters also to come out in a new light. It has been shown that Vasari’s account is merely one of those traditions by which, as in the eponymous myths of ancient Greece, a number of various and successive efforts in this or that field of human activity are apt to become condensed, in the imagination of posterity, into one sudden supposed act of invention, and to be associated with some one conspicuous name. And in later days the myth-making process has been carried still farther in this connection. Thus in the soliloquy which the poet, Robert Browning, puts into the mouth of Fust, the printer of Mainz, the “Tuscan artificer,” meaning Finiguerra, seems to be treated as the father of the printing arts in general, just as in Greece a Dibutades passed for the mythic father of painting, or as in the Bible Tubal Cain is the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. But in point of fact one kind of printing, viz. the method of taking impressions on paper from relief-blocks cut in wood, had already in Finiguerra’s time been practised for generations, both north and south of the Alps, for the production alike of playing cards and pious images. And the development of this craft for the purpose of printing from incised plates of copper was not in reality first practised in Italy at all. It had certainly been in use in Germany a dozen, or very likely a score, of years before its supposed invention by Finiguerra at Florence. To quote only two evidences out of many, there is the > I am glad at this point to have the independent agreement of Dr. Kristeller, a student of the younger generation who has done far more than anybody else to advance and methodise the study of the earliest Italian engravings and woodcuts, but from whose conclusions I on some points differ. Dr. Kristeller has perceived that some of the niello prints in question arc by the hand of the Uffizi draughtsman. But he says of that draughtsman that he is a pupil of Pollaiuolo’s to whom the name of Finiguerra has been given ‘‘ohnc Grund” without reason {Jakrb. der konigl. preuss. Knnstsammlungen , vol. xv. p. II S ) ; whercas we haVC SCen th3t thC ident ' fication rCStS ° n an anC1Cnt tradition’which there seems no reasonable cause to doubt. series of German Passion-prints dated 1446 which formerly belonged to Monsieur Renouvier at Mont¬ pellier, and is now in the Museum at Berlin ; and in an illuminated manuscript at Brussels, written in the same year, there is a copy from a print by the master known as the Master of the Playing Cards—and he is one whose skill both in cutting and printing proves already con¬ siderable practice in the art. Whether or no the Florentine goldsmiths of the fifteenth century took their first hints for the practice of the new craft from examples imported from beyond the Alps, it has lately been made clear on sufficient grounds that some of them also practised it in an experimental way, and to all appearance quite independently of their other practice of niello engraving, from about the year 1450 and prob¬ ably even earlier. 1 We shall not be here particularly concerned with the several isolated efforts of engraving at Florence which recent research, in the main, as I think, rightly, assigns to this date. They seem to be the tentative and disconnected production of various workshops, and vary much in merit, from the admirable female profile, recalling the design of Paolo Uccello or Domenico Veneziano, which was acquired for the Print-room at Berlin from M. Piot in 1872, down to others of rude and childish character. One of them can be accurately dated, namely, a Resurrection engraved together with a Paschal table in 1461, which was lately acquired for the British Museum from the Angiolini Collection at Milan ; and this is technically more advanced and evidently later than most of the class. Our concern, I repeat, is not with these, but with Baccio Baldini: , . , r 1 Us existence tincon- a much more extensive and attractive group or early fi rmc y. engravings engravings which comes historically just after or over- lapping these. This is a group usually classed in attribution. catalogues for the sake of convenience under the generic name of Baccio Baldini. The engravings composing it are so rare that they are scarcely known except to special students, and by them can only be studied in a few great public and private cabinets. Of public museums the richest by far in this kind are the British Museum and the Albertina at Vienna ; after which come Paris, at a long interval Berlin, the Harzen Collection at Hamburg, the Malaspina Collection at Pavia, the public collections at Bologna and Parma, and a few others both in Italy and the North. Among private collectors Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris 1 It has also been proved that the sulphur casts from niello plates were taken not merely for trial purposes, but to be used and framed as ornaments, and had a substantial market value of their own ; and, further, that from them and not from the plates themselves were taken the paper impressions which have come down to us, and which were probably intended to serve as trade patterns. These conclusions, both as to the earliest Florentine line- engravings and as to the practice of the niello engravers, have been arrived at after diligent comparison and research by Dr. Kristeller, and set forth by him (with other matters which are more disputable) in two essays :—see Arckivio Storico dell’ Arte, vol. vi. p. 391, and Jabrbuch der k.-pretiss. Kunst- sammlungen, vol. xii. p. 94. 34 A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE owns a cabinet of these rarities at least equal to that of any public museum; while important specimens are to be found in the library of the Principe Trivulzio at Milan, and a few at Chatsworth and elsewhere. The publications of the Chalcographical Society have made a selection among them known to a somewhat wider circle of iconophiles—lovers of images (to use the French-Greek compound coined to describe the harm¬ less class of enthusiasts of whom the Abbe Zani was so picturesque a type—those who find a special zest in these studies, and to whom I am now chiefly addressing myself). A number of these rarest of Italian prints, sufficient for the purpose of my immediate argument, are reproduced in the present volume. Though the traditional name of Baccio Baldini is still for convenience’ sake retained for them in catalogues and collections, it has in fact become more and more doubtful whether such an artist ever existed. The archives and records relating to the goldsmith’s craft in Florence have been ransacked to find his name, but without success. The name of Baccio (diminutive of Bartolommeo) was borne by many of the craft in that age, but none of them has been discovered bearing the family or customary name of Baldini. 1 We have no evidence, therefore, for his existence, except the tradition preserved by Vasari, whose lively records are invaluable when they agree with the testimony of documents, or are supported by the internal evidence of works of art, but in the absence of such confirmation must always be taken with reserve. The only sound method, in dealing with anonymous works of early art, is to examine and classify them in the first instance on internal grounds only ; to control the results so arrived at, if possible, by contemporary documents ; and then to see how far they agree with later literary and historical tradition. Tke “fine-manner" Rejecting, then, or leaving in doubt the name of “ner" grlupT^°tkeir Baldini, and studying apart from tradition or preconcep- tecknicaicharacter tion the body of engraved work commonly attributed and relations. _ .... to him, we find that it falls into two main divisions. The distinction between them rests primarily on techni¬ cal grounds. One is known as the “ fine-manner ” and the other as the “ broad-manner ” division or group. The fine-manner prints have more of the character of goldsmith’s work, and are engraved in a way analogous to and evidently adapted from that of niello engraving; 2 while those in the broad manner rather 1 I am reminded that the name Baccio Baldini is again mentioned by Vasari, in his Life of Filippino Lippi, but this time as that of a physician and art collector {Fite, ed. Milanesi, vol. iii. p. 475). Is it possible that this was the only real B. B., and that it is by some slip of memory or of pen that Vasari has repeated the name in his Life of Marcantonio as that of the engraver who succeeded Finiguerra ? 2 On this point it seems to me that Dr. Kristcller has gone astray. Tn order to prove his point that the art of copper-engraving in Italy had its origin quite independently of that of niello, he insists much on the technical differences in the manner of cutting and shading which distinguish the two products. In his main contention, I think, he is quite right; and his observa- resemble the freer work of a painter drawing with silver point or pen. In the prints of both classes the outlines are sharply and deeply incised, but in the fine-manner group the shading is effected by means of short, close hatchings crossing each other at various angles, often nearly at right angles, leaving little white interspace between the lines, and that somewhat blurred. Such blurring or want of sharpness may be due in some degree to want of care in clearing the slightly roughened edges of the engraved lines before printing, but accord¬ ing to the opinion of practical engravers, is rather the result of the very imperfect process of printing employed, whereby the paper was insufficiently pressed into the incised lines. The effect of this shading is to model forms and surfaces in somewhat cloudy patches of dark. In the broad-manner group, on the other hand, the shading is effected by means of lengthened open lines running downwards in one direction from right to left or left to right without cross-hatching, the lines them¬ selves being deeper and broader than in the other manner, and the spaces between them quite clear. Furthermore, in the design and handling of the fine- manner group, a diligence like that of the chaser and jeweller is shown in the patterning of clothes, orna¬ ments, decorated architecture,furniture, thrones,chariots, and the like. Landscape, trees, and water also are treated with some richness of detail, and the whole surface of the print offers an appearance of fanciful enrichment and a play of pattern. Whereas in the broad-manner group, costumes and all accessory parts are in comparison much plainer, leaving the figures themselves more salient to the eye, and giving a far greater effect of simplicity, even in compositions of numerous personages and groups. The chased and fretted surfaces of the tions arc just so far as concerns the group of primitive plates which he dates from the year 1450 or thereabouts, and still more with reference to the broad- manner group above discussed. But he is surely wrong when he extends the same remarks to the prints of the fine-manner group. On the contrary, the particular technical note of this group, especially in its more advanced examples, is its direct adaptation of the methods of the niellist to the pur¬ poses of the copper-engraver. The latter, of course, leaves his backgrounds clear, but when he requires a flat space of black, e.g. in the cloak of the Delphian Sibyl (Fig. 5), or the hood of the Sibyl of Erythrae, he gets it by precisely the same manner of hatching, in deep, sharp lines nearly at right angles to one another, by which the niellist gets his black backgrounds. And similarly the short, close, and fine cross-hatchings which model the surfaces of figures and objects, with their effect of a cloudy patch, is precisely the same in the niello prints and the fine-manner engravings, as can be judged even by our reproductions in this place. Two practical engravers (Mr. Holroyd and Mr. Strang) who have both worked in imitation of Italian prints, entirely confirm this view, which seems really not open to question. It should be added that the distinction of the fine-manner and broad-manner groups is due, in the first instance, to the late M. Kolloffof the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris (see his article on Baccio Baldini in Meyer’s Kiinstlerlexikon). But M. Kolloff stopped at the technical distinction, and did not note the more important underlying distinction of style and decorative aim. Moreover, he included in the group a series which does not belong to it, and which has nothing to do with Florence, though engraved in a manner doubtless derived from the Florentine — I mean the much-discussed series of the so-called Tarocchi cards, which early tradition gave to Mantegna. They arc, in truth, undoubtedly of North Italian origin, but nearest to the school of Ferrara, and especially to the manner and influence of Francesco Cossa. INTRODUCTION 35 fine-manner style disappear. Architecture and furniture are not loaded with ornament, but simply defined and drawn. The whole effect; as has been said, is less gold¬ smith-like, and more like that of a painter’s pen or silver- point drawing. We are enabled to realise the difference between the two styles the more fully, inasmuch as the engraver or engravers of the second, the broad-manner group, made copies of two of the series first executed in the fine manner, those, namely, of the Prophets and Sibyls with the texts of Feo Belcari. 1 These copies are for the most part literal, in all points except the manner realise the difference for himseif, I give here face to face the two versions, one in each manner, of the same Sibyl, Sibylla Agrippa. Putting aside the few isolated, tentative, and appar- Subjects of the ently earlier efforts which have to be grouped apart, the 5 ’ 0U> great bulk of the primitive engravings produced at Flor¬ ence during the period from about 1455-1460 to about 1480-1485 or somewhat later, are in one or other of these two styles. The characters of each style are so strongly marked that it is natural to suppose the two to have been practised in separate workshops, and each of them, VERtO DMN Gl^?TO ZANTEPREFgTTO WPfWA VENTRf AlVfFRNO CRlATO DftPlRlTp «>ANTO ER IV NKVPERNO POLO O/ASIODIA DEGLANCPUCHI CHOW A2CHOITA VNPOCHO E NOSTRO A/AARQDVtO E.REGG1 NO I ORE ALTlZSino ‘l ANTQJ XHCt^Q FIG. 66.—JOSHUA. XXVIII, XXIX ORPHEUS CHARMING THE BEASTS O' k RPHEUS (ORFEO). This double-page subject is one of the most enter¬ taining of the series. Orpheus, wearing a short tunic thickly edged with fur, and instead of boots a kind of buskins leaving the toes uncovered, stands bareheaded in an open landscape, playing with his fingers on a kind of harp or ghittern which he holds against his chest. Crowds of animals, real and imaginary, surround him. Nothing that has come down to us from Florentine art illustrates more completely the delight in natural history which animated painters like Paolo Uccello, Alessio Baldovinetti (according to the vivid account of Vasari), and Benozzo Gozzoli. Along with the familiar shapes of deer, sheep, dog, goat, hare, rabbit, pheasant, lizard, tortoise, parrot, screech-owl, duck, frog, eel, crab, all drawn with thorough spirit and truth to nature, are others of real animals less well understood, e.g. wolf, monkey, and several nondescript birds, besides a number wholly mythical, derived in part from the traditional imagery of the mediaeval bestiaries. Near the tree which the monkey is climbing on the left, is a bird human-headed and snake¬ tailed, probably the Sphinx ; near the feet of Orpheus to the right, a dragon of the regular type ; farther to the right beyond the fold of the paper, a Centaur seated on his haunches (his body half concealed behind what seems to be a porcupine) ; in the lake or river farther to the right, with bulrushes on the banks and ships in the distance, a Siren with two tails and holding up one tail in either hand (her regular traditional form and attitude). Lions, tigers, and the other great cats make no distinct appearance. The coarse features and common turned-up nose of Orpheus are characteristic of the realistic spirit of the draughtsman. He has simply taken the model who first came to hand, doubtless one of his own family or assistants. Here, by the same hand, is a drawing from life of the same man in his everyday dress (Fig. 67). The engraving at foot of the page is one of those which I also attribute to the same artist or his workshop. See especially the crouching dog below, which, in shape, attitude, tail tucked under hind leg, collar, muzzle, etc., repeats identically the same formula as we find here in the dog listening to Orpheus, and earlier in the drawings of Cain and Abel and Esau and Jacob (Plates I. and XII. XIII.). S ATURN and the city of Sutri (SATVRNO, 8VTRI). Sutri, the ancient Sutrium, here shown as a little walled town surrounded by a moat, is a village of Southern Etruria which boasted in the Middle Age that it had been the original seat of the Saturnian reign in Italy. The tradition was made up of false etymology (Sutrium = Saturnia) and recollections of the account of the golden age in the eighth book of the Aeneid. It is told thus by the fifteenth-century chronicler, J. P. Bergomensis : “ It happened therefore about this time that Saturn, when he had been driven out of Crete, and wandered long in fear of his son Jupiter, at length with difficulty found a place of refuge in Italy. He came dressed in rags to Janus, who was king there in those days ; and Janus received him with the greatest kindness, and gave him a share in the kingdom. And for a time Saturn dwelt in concealment not far from the city of King Janus [on Mount Janiculum], but afterwards founded a new city and called it Saturnia, or, as we now say, Sutrium, and established his own kingdom there, and tamed the rugged inhabitants, and taught them to build houses and till fields and plant vineyards.” In the foreground accordingly stands the god, richly armed, and having in his right hand his emblem of a bunch of corn, and at his feet a scythe, hoe, sickle, and pruning-hook. Have the old men’s heads set underneath the plume in his helmet anything to do with his legendary connection with Janus ? 30 J UPITER and the Island of Crete (IVPPITER, LISOLA DIHRETI : the artist was going to spell Crete as he pronounced it, with an initial H, but then remembered it ought to hare a C). Both the subject and the land¬ scape of this picture connect it with the last; and both are drawn in the same pale ink as the Orpheus, or only a shade darker. The youthful god, having dispossessed his father Saturn (which happened, say some chroniclers, in the year 3710 from the creation of the world), stands lording it over his subject island of Crete ; which is represented as not much longer than he is tall, and scattered with diminutive castles and temples. He wears a rich \ initio ancI'nlCTiIjicincptircropnmrftflTum D cfcrinf-• l>cu tantifnequicquain crcptc pcrtclif -^1 I NT FIG. 69.—DEATH OF ANCH1SES. in the illuminated MS. of Virgil in the Riccardi Palace. cuirass, of which the decorations can be distinctly traced to those of certain Roman portrait-statues, and stands stradd¬ ling with left hand on hip in the attitude (perhaps borrowed from Andrea del Castagno) of Nimrod on PI. VI. and Theseus on PI. XXXVIII., while his right leans on a long javelin held upright with the point grounded. Behind him is the Mediterranean with sloops and a boat. For the character and rigging of the vessels, compare the portion given on this page (Fig. 70) of an engraving (probably the earliest print of shipping extant) which I believe to be by our artist’s hand, and which moreover contains a sun exactly like the sun on Joshua’s saddle-cloth in his drawing, PI. XXVI. While we are on the chapter of ships, I have thought it might be interesting to add another of the same type, occurring in the scene of the death of Anchises which we find sketched in, but left uncoloured, in the beautiful illuminated manuscript of Virgil (contemporary with our artist) in the Riccardi Library. FIG. 70.—A SLOOP AT SEA. Prom a Florentine fifteenth-century Engraving. T HE Persian Sibyl (SlblLLA PERSICA PROFETESSA). No particulars are related of this Sibyl, except that she is the eldest of them all, according to the list adopted by Lactantius from Varro, and from Lactantius by Middle Age tradition in general. Accordingly she comes first of the sisterhood in our Chronicle drawings, as she does also in the engraved series which seems to have come from the same workshop. The engraved Sibyls are all seated, and those of the Chronicle series all standing: nor are the resemblances between them generally close, except in some points of costume and decorative feeling. In this instance, as will be seen, the Persica of the Chronicle has every advantage over her of the engravings. The architectural background is unusually sane and quiet, while it presents the customary features of a city enclosed by a wall with Guelf battlements ; a stream flowing beneath, a postern gate with a blank shield for arms and a wooden drop-bridge ; while conspicuous behind the battlements an end view of a temple having its wall and pediments heavily enriched with wreaths and the various forms of contemporary moulding with which we are already familiar. 2APA EFIA COMCEPTO EUm GOCHOKDO ElGhENbO DELIA VERGINE bEATA 2ALVTE FIADELLAGENTE DEl/AONDO 2ARAKNO EPiEBl 2VODNVERTA. MATA FORTE55A DA202TENERE OGNtPONDo VAMTICINaREVNA PAROtA bARTA XPOGE5V NA2CERA DELLACHA2TA FIG. 71.—THE PERSIAN SIBYL. T ROY (TROIA). This is only one half of a two-page picture. The other half is missing ; Laomedon or some other hero connected with the origin of Troy probably figured in it. The city view has no special feature except the number of towers with projecting upper stories surmounted by Ghibelline battlements, and the weather¬ cock, which this time is not the usual Florentine lion, but a winged monster of the griffin kind. 33 XXXIV THE LIBYAN SIBYL, AND THE ANGEL APPEARING TO GIDEON XXXV HERCULES AND ANTAEUS G IDEON, the Libyan Sibyl, Hercules and Antaeus (GEDEON, SIBILLA LIBICA, ERCHOLE, ANTEO). The chronologists calculated that Gideon the captain of the Israelites was a contemporary of the second or Libyan Sibyl, and both of Hercules. Hence these three otherwise disconnected subjects are arranged so as to form one picture with a common landscape background—the spears and banners of Gideon’s host appearing above the rocks in the middle, and extending nearly to the cave before which Hercules and Antaeus are at grips. Gideon in full armour kneels in awe before the angel appearing in the sky above. (“And Gideon saw that he was the angel of the Lord; and Gideon said, Alas ! O Lord God, forasmuch as I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.”) The Sibyl is a pleasing figure, in type and costume not far removed from the last and from one or two in the engraved series. The action of her left hand is characteristic both of our artist and of his contemporary Baldovinetti (compare Fig. 73). The group of Hercules and Antaeus, on the other hand, illustrates the still closer relations in which he stands to another contemporary, Antonio Pollaiuolo. This straining muscular energy, with the cramped spasmodic action of the hands, especially the left hand of Antaeus, reverted at a right angle from the wrist — is Pollaiuolo all over (compare also PI. LXVI. LXVII.). Not that our artist is an imitator or copyist ; the design oi this death-grapple is his own and well invented, especially the action of the two right legs. FIG. 72.— HERCULES AND ANTAEUS. We have no means of determining whether it is earlier or later—but it From a. fifteenth-century Engraving attributed to Poiiaiwto. may very well be earlier—than the several more masterly versions of the subject which exist by Pollaiuolo himself, viz. the small bronze group at the Bargello ; the little picture, of nearly the same composition, at the Uffizi ; another larger and very fine bronze (to all appearance also by the master) in private possession in Paris, and an engraving of a different design by or after him which is here figured (Fig. 72). The subject was also a favourite one with Mantegna and the engravers of his school ; and continued to attract draughtsmen, sculptors, and modellers throughout the Renaissance ; the general idea of their compositions being in most cases taken from antique gems and coins. ;. 73.—i VIRGIN OF THE ANNUNCIATION. 35 T HE Delphian Sibyl and the Temple of Peace (SIBILLA DELFICA, TENPLVM IN PACEM). The series of Sibyls is continued, still following the order derived by Isidore and the chroniclers from Lactantius. Temple and Sibyl are placed in a low rocky island (perhaps by a confusion of Delphi with Delos; see the same treatment in the engraved Sibyl, Introd. p. 8, Fig. 5). This figure is one of the most archaic of the series ; the action of the right arm especially a somewhat stiff experiment in foreshortening, entirely in the manner of Paolo Uccello. The great peaked cap, like many points of fanciful and enriched costume in the Italian art of the time, is borrowed from Byzantine use ; it occurs as early as in the work of some of the Giotteschi, and in the famous fresco of the Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo at Pisa; one of less extravagant size is worn by the Emperor John Palaeologus in the well-known medallion by Vittore Pisano, and in the anonymous engraved head of the Grand Turk at Berlin. The temple, with its frieze of garlands and children’s heads, is one of the soberest of our artist’s archi¬ tectural structures, in a form much affected by painters of the time in their architectural backgrounds ; compare PI. XXIV. and Fig. 65. The Temple of Peace was one of the structures which used to be drawn in procession, accompanied by the prophetic messengers of the New Dispensation, in the ceremonies of St. John’s Day (see Introduction). We get here for the first time the artist’s convention, which is free and effective enough, for the indication by pen-work of the undulating surface of a quiet sea : the engravers of the school employ almost the same system. mam tfnplvn INP/.CEM' feMBjMl T hes art which wer Storie and Medea anc lyta ; but Amazon. He does not attempt to tell the story dram Theseus and his enemy (afterwards his bride) stand apar T i He does not attempt to tell the story dramatically ; uul m ... .. -- j and his enemy (afterwards his bride) stand apart facing the spectator, each in an attitude—and Theseus JL lll.St.UO C111U UiO r. '-■'J “ —-/ - 1 co - - 1 • j . . also with a scowl—of heroic defiance. Theseus has a winged helmet; the enrichments of h.s armour, and h,s great sword with the belt wound round the scabbard, are of the kind with which we are already familiar. There is a real greatness and power in the action and gesture of the Amazon with her huge bow and spear ; but her face is of the uncomely type to which this harsh realist treats us almost always. Her drapery is fine in design, FIG. 74.—JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES. its arrangement suggested by Greek models, and much the same as was by and by carried out with more flutter and lightness by Botticelli in his classical and allegorical figures. It is interesting to note that she has served twice over at least, along with others of these Chronicle drawings, to help out the engravers of our artist’s school and workshop in their designs. Thus the Judith in the present page (Fig. 74) is made up from a combination of this Amazon in reverse, the Semiramis drawing of PI. VIII., and the David and Goliath of PI. LXXVIII. ; while the Medea of Fig. 92, facing PI. LVIII., is again a reduced and softened version (quite literal as to the cast of draperies) of this same Amazon. It is noticeable that in running his city background across the two pages the artist has made the wall and river fit duly where the pages join, but has forgotten to do so with the buildings. His love of the leaf-wreath moulding in season and out of season is shown by his using it as a rail or coping along the top of one of his fancy palaces. His Florentine contemporaries as a matter of fact so used it occasionally in minor and decorative — - u.,* -- • . .... . J designs, but of course in those only ; eg. Giuliano da Majano in the carved and inlaid panel-work of the cathedral sacristy (Fig. 52 facing PI. VII.) ; and especially Buggiano in the pulpit of Sta. Maria Novella (Fig. 3). S B . • * **■ T HE Erythraean Sibyl (SILILLA ERITEA). A fourth of the series of Sibyls. Presenting her book and scroll with one hand, and holding up a skirt of her long cloak with the other, she is chiefly remarkable for the extravagant and wiry fashion of her upstanding and outstreaming locks of hair. In popular art the various Sibyls were hardly at all individualised, and the name of any one might generally suit quite well for any other. But for us there is a special interest about the Erythraean, both because of the weight given by the Early Church to the oracular acrostic passing under her name (see Introd. p. 5), and because for the Greek world she had in fact been the most famous of these legendary prophetesses. She was supposed to have been called Herophile (though this name was also attributed to other Sibyls), and to have lived at Erythrae in Ionia (the modern Rythri or Lythri) ; and her name has lately come up again among scholars owing to the discovery in 1891 of her cave in the mountain acropolis of that place. In the cave was found a long metrical inscription of the age of the Antonines, declaring her to have been the daughter of a shepherd Theopompus by a nymph, and insisting that she was born at Erythrae and not elsewhere (the honour had also been claimed by Marpessus in the Troad). (SeeJ. G. Frazer, Pausanias ’ Description of Greece , vol. v. 291.) T HE Death of Hercules (ERCOLE). We have had the wrestle of Hercules with Antaeus ; here we have his death in the flames on Mount Oeta. The same subject also occurs among the miniatures to the MS. Chronicle of the world by Leonardo da Besozzo (see above, Introd. p. 8, Fig. 6). Our goldsmith-draughtsman excels in his treatment of this theme, wreathing the flames into a very spirited and agreeable pattern, with a happy mixture of convention and realism. And he shows an energy and power of drawing, little inferior to Pollaiuolo himself, in the figure of the voluntary victim standing firmly planted upon his feet and thrusting his hands into the blaze. J EPHTH AH sacrificing his Daughter (IETTE). Not a very frequent subject in Italian art. In one well-known case where it occurs —the graffiti of the Siena cathedral pavement—the two processions ofJephthah returning from his victory, and of his daughter coming to meet him with dances and with timbrels, fill the chief part of the com¬ position. Here these are altogether absent, and the scene is reduced to almost the same scheme as we are used to in the Sacrifice of Isaac. The victim, shown as little more than a child, kneels on an altar in an open country ; her father, in the act of sacrifice, grasps her hair with his left hand and with his right swings up his sword to the blow. The enrich¬ ments of his helmet are treated with even more than the artist’s usual love of detail and skill of hand. The fact of this subject coming next to the Death of Hercules is one of those which show that he was working from the text of some chronicler who had drawn from the regular sources of mediaeval history. Thus Vincent of Beauvais couples Jephthah and Hercules under date 2768 from the creation of the world. 1 This figure of Jephthah has been repeated by the artist almost literally in reverse, as that of a Roman soldier, in an engraving of which one corner is figured below (Fig. 75). It represents the March to Calvary, and is one of those which in its original form can with most certainty be attributed to our artist’s own hand. Not only in the figure of the soldier, but in the rest, and especially in the architecture and landscape, the reader will recognise the identical characters with which the Chronicle drawings have made him familiar at every turn. Unluckily our reproduction is taken from a spoiled and reworked state (if it is not rather an old copy) of the plate. Of the true original in its fresh condition the only known example is in private hands in Italy. 1 Vine. Bellovacensis, Speculum historiale, lib. ii. cap. lix., De Iepte et Hercule (nearly following Isidore). “ Post lair iudicavit Israel Iepte Galaadites. . . . Hie contra filios Amon populum Israel viriliter defendit. Sed de praelio reversus ex voto filiam immolavit, et in vovendo stultus, et in solvendo impius. Eo tempore Menelaus in Lacedacmone regnat, Agamemnon Mycenis imperat, Hercule in morbum pestilentum incidit, et ob hoc in remedium doloris in flammas se iecit, sicque mortuus est.” M IDAS (MIDA RE). A dull picture. The Cretan king, wearing a high head-dress half tiara and half crown, and rather awkwardly wrapped in a spreading cloak with arabesque border, stands in profile, and behind him is seen the usual city with the battlemented wall, towers, and postern bridge over a stream flowing beneath the wall. On one of the city towers the Florentine lion is seen ramping on the top of a ball. Of the two figure-weathercocks, one is again a griffin, another a Victory, or at least a winged female figure, which can be matched to-day from the Madonna dell’ Impruneta outside Florence (Fig. 76). T HE Temple of Themis (uninscribed). In the absence of an inscription, this name is a guess at the artist’s inten¬ tion. The landscape joins on with that of the next subject, which is Pyrrha and Deucalion, indicating that a connection was intended between the two. The artist shows himself acquainted with the particulars of the story as told by Ovid, and these include the visit of the pair to the sanctuary and oracle of Themis at Delphi (where she pre¬ sided before the advent of Apollo, and from whose answer they learned how the world was to be repeopled). L PROPHET. From the 1 FIG. 78.-SAMSON. it Door of the Baptistery at Flore The temple, as usual, is in the guise of a rich architectural casket, scarcely practicable, it would seem, except on the scale of jeweller’s work ; or is it conceivable that the ornate wooden castelli dragged in procession at the city festivals can at all have resembled this? (see Introd. p. 18, note i). This time the form is cylindrical, with a low dome surrounded by a balustrade. All the now familiar decorative features are lavished on every member, this time with a result really pleasing. Particularly to be noticed are the wreath-holding amoretti perched on the upper balustrade, and the evident reminiscences of Ghiberti’s East Gate in the little statues of heroes placed in scalloped niches in the wall (compare Figs. 77, 78). FIG. 79—HOY'S CARRYING FESTOONS: PART OF A FRIEZE BY GIUI.IANO DA MAJANO. From the Tarsia Dandling in the Sacristy of the Cathedra !, Florence. P YRRHA and Deucalion (PIRRA, DEUHALION). This subject is drawn almost wholly in pen and ink, with hardly any use of wash except in shading the sides of the altar. It shows the artist quite at his best, alike by dignity of type, energy of gesture, and power of drawing. Although he aspirates the C of Deucalion in his frankly illiterate way, it is plain that the authority he follows knew all the points of the story as told by Ovid. In the background is the altar bare of sacrifice {stabantque sine ignibus arae ), the couple have obeyed the oracle in covering their heads and ungirdling themselves (et velate caput cinctasque resolvite vestes ), or Deucalion at least has done the latter—see the belt which he holds up in his left hand. They throw stones backwards over their heads, and the stones in going through the air turn into human beings,—those thrown by Deucalion into men, and those thrown by Pyrrha into women. All this is strictly according to Ovid, 1 though it is the artist’s own fancy which has made the new-created race so diminutive in proportion to their progenitors. There is much spirit and an entertaining simplicity of invention, with some vigorous experiments in foreshortening after the manner of Paolo Uccello, in the way these little men and women are made to crowd nestling about the feet of their respective parents. Their style and proportions will remind the student of figures of about the same scale in Florentine nielli ; some of which are evidently by the same hand or from the same workshop (see Introd. p. 32, Figs. 30, 31, 32, and the further specimens on the present page). 1 Here are the lines from Ovid which specifically describe the action illustrated :— Disccdunt velantque caput tunicasque recingunt et iussos lapides sua post vestigia mittunt. saxa (quis hoc credat, nisi sit pro teste vetustas ?) ponerc duritiem coepcre suumquc rigorem mollirique mora mollitaquc ducere formam. mox ubi creverunt naturaque mitior illis contigit, ut quaedam, sic non manifesta, videri forma potest hominis, set uti de marmore coepta, non exacta satis rudibusque simillima signis. * * * * inque brevi spatio superorum numine saxa missa viri manibus speciem traxere virilem, et de femineo reparata est femina iactu.— Metam. i. 398 sqq. XLVI, XLVII THESEUS AND ARIADNE This is an Ovidian touch :— T HESEUS and Ariadne (TESEO, AbERINTO, TESEVS, GIOVE, EGEO). Another familiar classical story, set forth with elaborate richness of treatment in a two-page picture. The subject is one of the most interesting of the series, both in itself and in relation to the contemporary engraving figured below (Fig. 83). The Cretan labyrinth (vernacularised into Aberinto by the dropping of the initial) is represented as a lofty structure of solid masonry, designed according to the ground-plan which we find with variations on the coins of Cnossus and on some ancient gems. The Minotaur is not seen, but must be imagined as stationed within. Outside stands Theseus, holding the ball of thread (one end of Ariadne’s clew) in his left hand, and resting his right on his grounded club. At this stage of the story Ariadne does not appear, but her after fate is set forth fully in the background. To the right is a cliff of the island of Naxos, on which stands the deserted heroine, shouting and vainly waving her scarf, which she has tied to a stick ; 1 next she has thrown herself headlong into the sea—stick, scarf, and all; and is picked up and carried to the skies by Jove. Farther to the left we see how Theseus forgets to change the black sail with which he set out for the white sail which should have been the sign of victory ; and how Aegeus, who has been watching from his tower, throws himself into the sea in despair at the sight,—all these successive stages of action being set forth with the utmost naivete in different parts of the picture. In the engraving, obviously done from this drawing, whether by the master himself or, as is more likely, by some pupil in his workshop, the scene has been copied unreversed upon the copper, and therefore appears reversed in the print. Several modifications have been made ; in the foreground, Ariadne (Adrianna) is no longer missing, but is introduced in talk with Theseus and holding out to him a number of balls of silk in a fold of her gown ; her attitude, and in part her drapery and head-dress, seem to be borrowed from those of our draughtsman s Medea in PI. LXVIII. The figure of Theseus himself is repeated, disappearing into the entrance of the labyrinth. From the outer wall of the labyrinth the bas-relief of angels supporting a wreath (compare PI. III. and Fig. 45) has disappeared, and the architecture of Aegeus’s Athenian tower is altered. candidaque imposui longac velamina virgae, scilicet oblitos admonitura mei.—Ovid, Heroid. XLVIII MINOS M INOS (MINOS). The story of Ariadne naturally leads to the thought of her father Minos, who is figured simply as king and lawgiver, standing reading in a landscape, and holding up in his right hand what seems not so much a sceptre as the rod of chastisement. On the ground about him is a litter of huge law-books, with hand¬ some embossed bindings such as the artist loves to draw (their ornaments being no doubt a regular branch of industry in his workshop), and such as he elsewhere bestows liberally on mage and necromancer (compare Plates XIV. L. LIII.). XLIX OROMASDES RAISING THE DEAD O ROMASDES raising the Dead (ARIMASRES RISICITO MORTI). This is one of the subjects which show in the artist a familiarity with Eastern ideas the source of which seems difficult to trace. Some later hand has half scratched out the tail of the R, probably thinking of the Arimaspians of Greek mythology ; but they cannot possibly be in question here ; and Arimasres evidently stands for Oromasdes—the Greek form of the Persian Ahura-mazda (our Ormuzd), the beneficent light-god of the Zoroastrian religion. His name was known to the Middle Age in vague connection with that of Zoroaster; and here he is represented as a kind of cloaked and turbaned mage himself, in the act of raising a dead woman from the tomb. Whence the notion was derived I cannot tell ; perhaps, as has been su gg este d above, from Jewish sources (which I believe would readily account for the conversion of the letter D into R, the two being in Hebrew much alike); perhaps in some roundabout way from a passage in a book wrongly current under the name of Plato , 1 which represents Oromasdes as the father of Zoroaster, and therefore by implication as a human personage. Our artist has gone sadly astray in the perspective of his carved sarcophagus. Plat. Alei Hades. HOSTANES H OSTANES (HOSTANES). A Persian sage, whose name does not, as does that of Zoroaster, occur in the ordinary compilations of universal history, yet was well known both in antiquity and the Middle Age to those specially interested in the wisdom of the East. He is mentioned by Herodotus ; 1 Pliny speaks of him as the earliest writer on magic or magianism, and as having accompanied Xerxes to Greece and infected the populations, not only with a zeal, but with a very frenzy, for occult arts. 2 His name is habitually coupled with that of Zoroaster as one of the founders of philosophy and astronomy. Apuleius so couples him in one place, and in another groups him with those natural philosophers, as Epimenides, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, who from the depth of their studies were falsely accused of practising magic, quasi facere etiam sciant quae sciant fieri. 3 Eusebius quotes from an Octateuch, or book of Eight Prayers, falsely current as his work. 4 There are still extant in libraries manuscript treatises on chemistry and the philosopher’s stone fraudently composed in the decay of antiquity under his name. 5 He takes a place among the Pagan sages who foresaw the coming of Christ in virtue of an oracle in like manner foisted upon him in the dark ages, which was interpreted as foretelling the history of the Virgin and the mystery of the Incarnation. 6 Probably it was for this last reason that his name was brought in by the unknown chronicler from whom our artist drew his subjects. But as in other instances, so in this, the artist takes the popular view of the character of all such personages, and represents him as a Jewish sorcerer standing within a magic circle, and evoking demons who bring him books and scrolls of writing. For the general type and appearance of the personage, compare the group of astrologers in the engraving from the Planet series, Fig. 17, Introd. p. 17. Herod, lib. iii. 68, 70. - Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxx. cap. i. 3 Apul. Apologia , cap. xc. ad Jin. and xxxvii. 4 Euseb - De Pra fP; Evan g- I'b. i. ad Jin. 1 Fabricius, Bibl. Grace, vol. i. p. 107, notes d, e. " Bentley, in giving the text of this oracle of the pseudo-Hostancs from a manuscript at Oxford, adds: “Ostancs magus et Zoroastres etiam indoctis cogmtissimi."— Epist. ad loannem Mil/ium, p. 10 ; appended to Chilmcad’s edition of the Chronographia of Johannes Malelas, Oxford, 1691. H ERMES TRISMEGISTUS (MERCVRIVS RE DEGITTO). Mercurius King of Egypt is of course that portentous mythical personage Hermes or Mercurius Trismegistus, the “ thrice-great Hermes ” of Milton (familiar also to readers of Tristram Shandy). He was a creation of the Alexandrian age, due originally to an identification of the Greek Hermes, in one of his aspects, with the Egyptian god of wisdom and inventions, Thoth. He became for the later Alexandrians, and through them to the Middle Age, an imaginary incarnation of all the wisdom of Egypt; was supposed to have been a king and legislator of that country at the beginning of its history, and to have written 20,000 books, in which were to be found the keys to all knowledge, human and divine. He was called Trismegistus, thrice-great, because of the prodigious volume and variety of his supposed attainments ; or, as some later pretended, because of his pre-knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity. In the dreams of East and West, his fame, like that of the Sibyls and Magi, underwent various phases of transformation. For the Church, he became one of the Gentile foretellers of the true religion ; this was chiefly by reason of two monotheistic treatises on God and the origin of things, which early became current under his name : the Asclepius, which was known in a Latin translation supposed to have been the work of Apuleius; and the Pimander , which existed only in Greek until Marsilio Ficino translated it for Cosimo de’ Medici in 1463 (see above, Introd. p. 7). Lactantius (Inst. Div. i. 6) counts Trismegistus among the champions of monotheism among the Pagans ; and the fifteenth century, eager to know such champions, admitted him, as we have seen (Introd. p. 6, note 1), into the company of the Prophets, Sibyls, and Mages, in the sacred shows and miracle-plays. Meanwhile, Jews, Platonists, Christians, and by and by Arabs, Freemasons, and all manner of schools and sects, especially those dealing with the mystical and the occult, took up his name, and used it for a cloak to cover their own ideas and practices. For the Middle Age and Renaissance imagination in general, he became and remained, as every one knows, a founder and master of occult sciences (called after him the Hermetic). The literature and legends connected with him in this character are without end. What story of him is illustrated in this curious drawing I do not know, and have not found in any of the obvious sources. He holds in his hand a mannikin or homunculus , doubtless of his own making, like the homunculus of Albertus Magnus and other magicians ; this homunculus he is apparently consulting ; and at the answer (or at the feat of his creation ?) a nude hero with a club, to all appearance Hercules, seems to stand aghast. Can any reader solve the riddle ? 6 > T INUS and Musaeus (LINVS MVSICCO E POETA, MVSEVS I J MVSICCO E POETA). The series of Persian and Egyptian thaumaturgists gives place to a series of ancient Greek poets, soothsayers, and fathers of medicine. Linus and Musaeus, as all scholars know, are names celebrated in Greek antiquity, along with those of Orpheus and Olen, as legendary fathers of music, poetry, and vaticination. Hesiod calls Linus a son of Urania, and says how all bards and lute-players are wont to invoke him at the beginning and end of their strains, whether in dirge, drinking- song, or dance, whereby he incurred the anger of Apollo, who killed him. Musaeus was supposed to be an Athenian, son of Eumolpus and Selene, and to have been the teacher of Orpheus ; and there were current under his name oracles, moral and medical precepts, odes, charms, and ritual formularies. But the drawing does not refer to any particular story concerning either master, and merely represents them typically. Linus is shown playing a small organ, 1 and wearing a bay-wreath outside his crown ; Musaeus as playing a lute, and wearing the poetic wreath with no crown; each is seated in a canopied throne of extraordinarily rich and fantastic design. Artistically the drawing is one of the most interesting of the series. The seated figures ot the ancient sages have the closest analogy with those of some of the seated prophets in the engraved set, which I attribute to the same workshop (see particularly the David, Fig. 85 below). In the thrones and their canopies the artist carries to the farthest extreme both his use of the late-Gothic system of florid scroll ornament, which we find also in Plates XVI.-XV 1 I. XXI. and LXII.-LXIII., and his crudely fanciful combination with it of the strictly antique and Renaissance motive of the Cupids carrying oak-wreaths. FIG. 84.—SCROLL CARVING WITH FIGURE OF BOY. From the Porta della Mandorla of the Cathedral, Florence. KaraXiWs, t be by a 1 ere coincidence that this action recalls the punning story current v opyavov (see Fabricius, Bibl. Graec. i. no sqq.). 1 reference to the reason of the poet’s name, tt/joitos rbv Xivo AVOl pftEfcfNn DOSWCHOLDIi^ONO 12.ENTO- D1GIEEV IKlVlklVfK VBHVTA CHONEiALMI MIA IWPAGONO CHENELL/vTERRA 3.ARA CONCIEPVTA IAVJPJTA WDDIO ZVO FICLiVOl bVONO INVERGJNE DAVOMO NON CONO&CVTA EDAblQ PERAPNORFIA MOL.TO AMATA EFfA PORTA EJIONNF MO/AINATA FIG. 85.— DAVID. From a Florentine fifteenth-century Engraving. Art-magicians and astrologues Rethors, logicians, theologues. And so here we have him in necromancer’s robes, with the usual magic circle and ministering demons, holding up with a quite heroical gesture his book of art in one hand, and with the other the jar, the contents of which he is professionally examining (this last is the action typical of the profession of medicine in Middle Age and Renaissance art, and down to the seventeenth century ; every one is familiar with it in the realistic treatment of the Dutch). The jumble of real and ideal in the background is not less curious. The sick man and his nurse are everyday Florentines, but the chamber in which he lies is marvellously enriched with all the architectural and decorative patterns which the artist loves,— Doric cymatium, leaf-moulding, frieze of winged heads, and oak- leaf festoons. I place here the reproduction of a portion of a large con¬ temporary engraving of the Judg¬ ment of Pilate (TEMPLVM PILATI) : partly because of the figure of the priest standing beside the throne, whose type, attitude, and drapery repeat so Portion reduced in scale from a large Florentine fifteenth-century Engraving. closely those of this Apollo. Blit the engraving presents, as every student who has got as far as this will perceive even from this fragment, resemblances, or rather identities, of style, drawing, decorative feeling, and architectural detail with our drawings in general (see particularly PI. XII. XIII. XVI. XVII. LXIV. LXX.}, which seem to put it beyond all reasonable question that drawings and engraving are by the same hand. APOLLO MEDICUS (APOLLINE MEDICO). Again one of the richest and most entertaining drawings of A the series (but, like the last, it has lost something in the reproduction). This is what the Greek Apollo in his character as god of healing, had come to in the popular mind of the fifteenth century. The fathers of the Church, in dealing with the ancient religious myths, had as far as possible followed the Euhem- eristic method, and represented them as perverted versions of the real facts of human history. For Eusebius, Apollo in this character was the name of a real physician who had flourished among the Phocians and Delians about the time of Joseph; 1 in course of time the inveterate association of medicine with magic in the popular mind had included him in the ranks of i Apollo medicus Vulcani ct Minervae primae filius his tcraporibus Eusebio testante Phocensibus et Deliis clarus habitus est Oui medicit repertor et herbarum vinura pnmus cognttor fuit dicente ipso ad virginem Daphnem apud Ovidium libro metamorphoseos primo : Invcntum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem Dicor et herbarum subiecta potentia nobis.—Foresti, Suppl. Chron. lib. iii. - — - A ESCULAPIUS and Machaon (ESCVLAPIO MEDICO CERUSlCl, MACHAON CERVSICI: the odd form Cerusicci is the artist’s vernacular for Chirurgicus or Chirurgico = surgeon). The thought of Apollo as the father of medicine leads on to that of his reputed son Aesculapius and of his son Machaon, celebrated by Homer as surgeon to the Greek army in the war of Troy. And we are thus brought back to the Trojan cycle of subjects, which opened with a view of Troy on PI. XXXIII., but has since been interrupted, and from this point continues to occupy the artist with one break until PI. LIX. These mythic Greek heroes of the healing art are again conceived as Eastern sages or magicians, though not this time engaged in the act of necromancy. Both wear Oriental robes and headgear ; Aesculapius holds up a box divided into compartments, apparently for various kinds of pills, from which Machaon (who is of a pronounced Jewish type) is about to take one with a forceps. FIG. 87.— HEAD OF A JEW, WITH STUDIES OF HANDS. From a Drawing attributed to Finigucrra in the Ufflzi, Florence. 54 AGAMEMNON and Menelaus (the names have been scratched out, but remain dimly legible) ; the reason /\ of the erasure was perhaps that Agamemnon occurred again later in the series, in the scene from the sixth book of the Iliad. A pair of the usual warriors, in the usual fantastically enriched armour and helmets ; Agamemnon carrying a club, Menelaus a sword with the belt wound round the scabbard. I give here, from the East door of the Baptistery, two figures of soldiers which show this fashion of armour, the delight of Florentine goldsmiths, sculptors, and painters in the early Renaissance, as treated in its simpler forms by Ghiberti; and in Fig. 108, facing Plate LXXXV., an example of its utmost richness in the hands of Verrocchio some thirty years later. FIG. 88.—TWO SOLDIERS. From a Braase Relief by Ghiberti on t) •he Baptistery Door, Ftor T-kRlAM and Hecuba (RE PRIAMO, REINA ECVBA). The Trojan king, gorgeously crowned, and having r both tunic and cloak embroidered with ermine, advances with sceptre on shoulder and orb outstretched. Hecuba standing a little in advance of him, turns to him with a movement and gesture of recoil; perhaps in prophetic alarm at the scene enacted in the next picture (which in the volume faces this), namely the seizure of Helen by Paris. She wears a huge two-horned head-dress, and is of the same round, snub-nosed, uncomely type of features as the companion of Aeneas in Plate LXXVI. To all appearance the model is the same (possibly the artist s wife) as is depicted wearing a Florentine holiday head-dress of peacock’s feathers, in the Uffiz. drawing here given (Fig. 89). FIG. 89.— HEAD OF WOMAN. From a Drawing attributed to Finiguerra in the Uffizi, Florence. P ARIS and Helen (ELENA RAPITA DA PARIS). The richest and finest drawing of the whole series, showing a surprising mastery of pen-work in the ren¬ dering— w ith a broad and elastic point— of the most intricate details of costume, ornament, and carving. Some of the fine¬ ness, both of the pen-work and the grada¬ tions of water-colour wash, are lost in the reproduction. The conception of the scene is very characteristic of the master : quite realistic as to the main point—the con¬ senting departure of the queen with her foreign lover {earn volentem rapuit , twice repeats an Italian chronicler of his day) ; and as to circumstances and surroundings childishly unpractical. Under a pulpit¬ like structure, probably meant to stand for the temple of Venus at Paphos, Paris has tucked the Queen of Beauty under his arm and walks away with her. His face, with parted lips and upturned eyes, is seen in profile ; hers is turned away ; perhaps the artist felt a diffidence, certainly justified, of his power to do justice to its beauty. But in the turn, seen from behind, of her throat and shoulders beneath the stiff two-horned hiennin , he has for once realised a charming effect of the kind sought by Piero della Francesca and others in dealing with the like costume and head-dress. For comparison, take one of the earliest and best known of such paintings, that of the Ricasoli-Adimari marriage in the Academy at Florence (Fig. 90). Both lovers wear clothes stiff with embroideries of the kind which the cassone painters of the time love to express by patterns stamped on rich surfaces of gold. The temple, in the guise of a pulpit on six columns without a staircase, is a striking instance of what I have called the master's intoxication with the artistic achievements and fashions of his own time. The frieze of dancing children will at once make every reader think of Donatello’s famous pulpit at Prato (Fig. 91), and the still more famous organ-loft fronts of Donatello and Luca della Robbia at Florence. In none of these’ however, do the children sport with wreaths : a motive for which our artist can never lay aside his predilection. -%■ v. 4 ‘ J ASON and Medea (GIANSON, MEDEA : the name of Medea twice repeated, over her head, and on the scroll held in her left hand). Another page where the artist is nearly at his best by vigour of design and character. He does not illustrate any given moment in the action of the story, but sets it forth symbolically in a standing composition. Jason stands bareheaded and in armour to the left, facing the spectator, and with his left hand holding by the top-knot the ram with the golden fleece ; while Medea, with flowing hair and drapery and winged head-dress, is seen in profile to the right, and with her right hand holds out the magic cup, a piece of rich and heavy jeweller’s design. The hint here for a symmetrical design of the two figures, the cup, and the ram, has been adopted with free modifications by some pupil or assistant of the draughtsman in the engraving reproduced below (Fig. 92), and intended, probably, for the decoration of a box or casket. The subject, it will be seen, has had to be fitted into a circular border, within which a space has been left blank for the arms or device of the purchaser. For Medea, the engraver, evidently having this book of drawings before him, has found the attitude and drapery of the Amazon (PI. XXXIX.) more convenient for his purpose than those of Medea herself in the present drawing, and has accord¬ ingly copied them almost exactly (just as this Medea, as we have seen, has in her turn been copied or adapted in the engraving of the Story of Ariadne, Fig. 84, facing PI. XLVI. XLVII.), Jason stands in profile ; both extend their hands to the cup ; both carry their names on scrolls, that of Jason being mis-spelt Gianson as in the drawing, and the ram at foot has had to be much reduced in size. ANDROMACHE the Wife of Hector (ADROMANCHA • MOGLIE • ETOR). The scene illustrated is of f\ course the famous one told in the sixth book of the Iliad, where Andromache beseeches her husband to be less rash, and their child Astyanax shrinks weeping from the sight of his father’s helmet and plumes. Unfortunately the picture is incomplete. The left-hand page, which formed a part of it and contained the figure of Hector, was in Mr. Ruskin’s possession, but had gone astray before the series was acquired for the British Museum ; and so far I have been able to find no trace of it. With what a riot of the hand and fancy Hector’s plumes would have been designed we can well imagine from the rest of the series. In the half which is preserved, Andromache, bearing a strong family resemblance to the Dido of PI. XLVII., kneels with agonised features, flowing hair, and soaring top-knot, and clasps with one arm her child Astyanax, swaddled in Italian fashion like a chrysalis (the student will, of course, remember Luca della Robbia’s swaddled foundlings ; but they are more fortunate than the grandson of Priam in having their arms free). Behind Andromache stands a page in fantastically rich clothes and headgear. For the attitudes, dresses, and general character, compare particularly the engraving Fig. 107, facing PL LXXX. LXXXI., which seems to be manifestly by the same hand as these drawings. The architectural background is fairly plain and practical. For the loggia , compare the almost exactly similar one from the picture already referred to, of the Ricasoli- Adimari marriage (Fig. 93, below). For the singularly-designed fountain approximate parallels are also to be found in pictures, but none, so far as I know, are extant in stone. .M ■VIEW OF A LOGGIA. re at the Academy, Flore,ic 59 U LYSSES and Diomed with the Palladium (VLIXCS • DIOMEDE • PALADIO). The Trojan cycle is continued. The actual scene of the seizure of the Palladium from the temple is not shown ; Diomed merely stands holding the sacred image which he has captured, while Ulysses, with drawn sword and plumed helmet (that of the lost Hector from the preceding subject can hardly have been more terrifying), stands facing him. Both are armed with the usual richness, only with swords longer than the usual. The Palladium is oddly conceived as the image or statuette of a boy, carrying in either hand an orb and sword, naked to the waist, but draped below with a sort of petticoat of the notched-leaf pattern. In a cassone picture of the Campana collection in the Cluny Museum at Paris, illustrating a different episode of the Tale of Troy, the spelling of Ulysses’ name beats even this, reading ubrixcs. FIG. 94-—MAN WEARING CLOAK AND SWORD, AND STUDIES OF HANDS. in the Uffisi, Flo. P YRRHUS and Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles (PIRRV, PVLISENA, CHVI GIACE EL CORPO DACHILLE). The Trojan cycle is still continued. Pyrrhus, or Neoptolemus, is seen sacrificing Polyxena the daughter of Priam on the tomb of his father Achilles. A very energetic and interestingly conceived subject, which however has lost something in the reproduction. The story was that, on the return of the Greeks from Troy, the shade of Achilles had appeared to them demanding the sacrifice of the damsel, who faced her doom with more than maiden fortitude : — utque Neoptolemum stantem ferrumque tenentem inque suo vidit figentem lumina vultu, “ utere iamdudum generoso sanguine,” dixit: “nulla mora est; at tu jugulo vel pectore telum conde meo,” iugulumque simul pectusque retexit.-—Ovid, Metam. xiii. 449 sqq. Some shadow of these lines of Ovid must have been preserved in the chronicle followed by our artist. The FIG. 95 -TOMB OF AVERARDO DE' MEDICI. BY DONATELLO. In the . sty of the Church of San Lore,mo, Florence. victim Cot the same uncomely type as Andromache, mao, ana the rest, wun nanQS Demna heT on herself to the executioner, who seizes her by the shoulder with one hand, and with the other drives a huge dagger perpendicularly into the point where throat and chest meet, thrusting his knee brutally against her breast at the same time. The tomb of Achilles, on which the slaughter is accomplished, is a richly designed mixture of Donatellian motives and personal invention. The general idea of a carved tomb placed beneath and protected bv a table seems certainly to be taken from Donatello's tomb of Giovanni d' Averardo de' Medici in San Lorenzo • but instead of the sarcophagus, the artist has put the hero's bones in a beautifully formed and decorated urn of his’own devising ; the wreath-bearing children are changed from bas-relief to the round, and the table legs are not plain legs like those of the San Lorenzo tomb but highly enriched examples of the favourite Florentine pattern closet resembling those of the pedestal of the Marzocco or symbolic lion of the city (Fig. 42, facing PI I ) 7 P ROSERPINE and Pluto (PRESERPINA, PRVTO : the phonetic change of R for L is too normal to call for comment). There is nothing surprising in finding a tale of the elder gods like this mixed up with tales of the Trojan War and the Old Testament; inasmuch as, according to the Euhemeristic reading of such tales adopted by the Christian Fathers, Pluto was simply the name of a Molossian prince who, about the age of Solomon, carried off a neighbouring princess called Proserpine. The design is again full of rude energy in the main action, and grotesquely rich decorative invention in the details. The ravisher, naked and beardless, has already got his victim on his chariot, but continues to grasp her violently by the waist : her hair and heavy draperies are disordered, and from her raised left and lowered right hand drop the flowers she has been gathering :— “ Ah ! Proserpina, For the flowers, now, which frighted, thou lettedst fall From Dis’s waggon.” Just or nearly so may two masquers have enacted the scene in a Florentine holiday show, and perhaps on a car not very dissimilar, though this is indeed of singular construction ; with a regular flight of six carriage steps to enter it by the back ; the body is carried on low wheels with enormous linch-pins ; the sides adorned with a splendid pattern (the finest in the book) of florid Gothic scroll-work ; the rail consisting of a cornice with egg-and-tongue moulding supported by legs of the type already several times illustrated (PI. V. LXII. etc.), and carrying at the angles four childishly grotesque ornaments in the shape of a mythic bird-monster grappling with a snake. This vehicle is drawn by two small dragons (probably they would have been larger had there been more room) of spirited design, of a type common in contemporary sculpture and carved furniture, and specially beloved by Verrocchio. Desiderio’s beautiful sphinxes of the Marsuppini monument are aristocratic members of the same decorative family. S AMUEL and King Aegisthus (SAMVEL PROFETA, EIVSTEV RE). There can be no reason for coupling these personages, Samuel the Hebrew king and prophet, and Aegisthus, king of Mycenae, the murderer of Agamemnon and adulterous husband of Clytemnestra, except the reason of chronology. And in fact they are made by the chroniclers contemporary or thereabouts ; thus in the Supplementum Chronicarum we find Samuel occurring under the year 4098 from the creation of the world, and Aegisthus the son of Thyestes under 4131. The page is an uninteresting one ; Aegisthus only another version of Midas or Cecrops, Samuel one of those somewhat uncouth aged types that most nearly remind one of the old men in the rare remaining pictures of Baldovinetti. LXV ABSALOM ABSALOM (ANSALON). A wood of the usual conventional trees, meant apparently to be orange-trees, /~\ with a few almost equally conventional cypresses in the background. Absalom, dressed in a close-fitting riding-suit, with ornate boots and large spurs, hangs by the hair from a bough, with helpless gestures of the arms and legs (which as usual are somewhat too large in proportion to the body). His horse is seen disappearing to the right. The student will be reminded of the nearly contemporary decorative treatment of this not very common subject in the graffiti (designs in inlaid and incised marble) of the Siena Cathedral floor. T HE Death of Dido (DIDO REGINA, CHARTAGINE). The scene is spread over two pages, the left- hand one containing a view of the coast and sea, with a glimpse of the stern of Aeneas departing ship. Carthage is a walled city of the usual type, with the usual stream flowing under the walls, separated from the sea by the narrowest possible belt of rocky ground. The queen, wearing the customary kind of high ornate tiara, stabs herself above the breast with a great dagger, not amidst her handmaidens in the chamber and on the couch of her and Aeneas’ loves, according to the tale told by Virgil, but alone on the shore outside the city gates. Her left hand is retracted from the wrist with the peculiar cramped movement which is a regular note of our artist’s style and of Antonio Pollaiuolo’s in common ; compare the cut below, reproducing a portion of a design by the latter in the British Museum. T HE Temple of Solomon (no inscription). Perhaps the most graceful and happily designed of those enriched architectural caskets which the artist gives us by way of temple and palace (compare Plates XII. and XLIV.). It is an open hexagonal structure covered by a dome (of which the ribs are fancifully adorned with an egg- and arrow-moulding), and having a projecting gallery with an arcaded balustrade. Every alternate column of the balustrade is twisted, in a manner common to the Romanesque and Gothic styles, but quite given up by the Renaissance. At each angle of the balustrade stand figures with scrolls ; like those placed in the niches in Plate XLIV. On the lower story the structure is flanked by flying arches surmounted by reversed consoles, of the type employed by Ghiberti in the lantern of Florence Cathedral (see below), and already introduced by the artist in the upper course of the Tower of Babel (Plate XII.). The space above the altar in the centre has been left blank by the artist, who has also forgotten to finish or decorate the lantern of his building. The identification of the subject as Solomon’s Temple rests upon the subject which faces it in the book (see next Plate). FIG. 99.—LANTERN OF BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME. From the Cathedral, Florence. FIG. ioo.—SOLOMON RECEIVING THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. From It Bronze Relief by Ghiberti on the East Gate of the Baptistery, Florence. close likeness which the work bears to our drawings in S OLOMON and the Queen of Sheba (REINA SAbA, SALAMON). Following the view of the airy structure meant, in all likelihood, for Solomon’s temple, comes the meeting of the King and Queen. Both are dressed in fine Oriental clothes, of less fan¬ tastic mode than usual. Solomon, with an action of dignified courtesy, holds out both hands to welcome his guest, who places her two hands in his, leaning , and looking up towards him reverentially. This action of the double grasp of the hands is usual in contem¬ porary representations of the subject. It occurs, slightly modified, in Ghiberti’s East Gate (see Fig. ioo) ; and again, in a manner almost identical with that of our draw¬ ing, in several furniture pictures of about the same date. One of the best of these is the fine cassone in the pos¬ session of the Earl of Crawford, of which a portion has been already given (Introd. p. 13, Fig. 13). Another portion is reproduced below, for the sake both of the action of the chief personages and of the general spirit and costume. Another good cassone picture of the subject is at the South Kensington Museum.' M. Foulc of Paris has an interesting version figured on : marriage-chest; and there are impressions from a diminutive niello of fine workmanship, nearly repeating the desigi of this last, at the British Museum and in the collection of Baron E. de Rothschild. osscssion of the Earl of Cranford. ■ in the fio S AMUEL and Elisha (SAMVEL PROFETA, HELIASEV PROFETA). The scribe has been in trouble with his spelling, and has half blotted the A in the second name with scroll-work. Forgetting that he has already paired Samuel with King Aegisthus, the artist here brings him in a second time, coupled with another Old Testament figure, that of Elisha. Neither prophet is identified by any more specific symbol than a book. Both are amply draped Oriental figures, of a gravity approaching grandeur, and nearly akin in character to the priests and councillors who stand in the judgment-hall of Pilate in the engraving Fig. 86, facing PI. LIII. LXXI TWO SIBYLS T WO Sibyls (without inscription). The artist or his scribe has been lazy or forgetful, and has failed to give names to his pair of Sibyls (to the improvement of the appearance of his page). They are of youthful, fairly pleasing type, and nearly resembling the engraved Sibylla Agrippa discussed in the Introduction (Figs. 33, 34). J ONAH and the Whale (GIONA). A comic example of the artist’s simplicity and rough energy of fancy. The monster has no relation to nature, but is an enlarged and elaborated specimen of the ordinary Florentine con¬ ventional or heraldic dolphin—as it were one of those from the monument of Giannozzo Pandolfini (d. 1456) at the Badia come alive with a rush (Fig. 102). With wide-open jaws and an angry frown upon his features, he is in the act of vomiting Jonah out upon the dry land ; the disgorged prophet having his headgear much awry, and his face distorted with an expression of alarm and remonstrance. N EBUCHADNEZZAR and the three children (NABVCHDINASOR, ANANIA, A 3 ARIA, MISSAEL). The Babylonian king is enthroned in a vestibule open to the air ; outside is seen the image of gold which he set up in the plain of Dura ; about its feet (probably to suggest its lustre) are clouds and rays, like those which commonly surround the visions of Saints. With an angry gesture of the left hand, the king condemns to the furnace the three children of Israel who will not worship the image. They are seen departing with their hands bound behind their backs ; and are (as frequently) represented as still children, not grown-up governors of provinces, and as having their original Hebrew names of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, not those which the governor of the eunuchs gave to them. No student who compares this seated figure of Nebuchadnezzar with some of the seated figures of the Prophets in the contemporary engraved series already mentioned, will resist the conclusion that they are from the same workshop, and in some instances probably designed by the same hand. As a good example for such comparison, the Samuel from the engraved series is here appended. FIG. 103.—THE PROPHET SAMUEL. S AMSON (SANSONE). A curious treatment of the subject, which without the inscription might be taken rather for one of the ordinary emblematic representations of Strength or Fortitude than for an illustration of the story of Samson. The hero, naked but for a cloak over one shoulder, is of no specially athletic proportions, and in type and features does not differ from any average elderly king or prophet of the series ; neither does his hair fall more amply on his shoulders than, say, Nebuchadnezzar’s in the last picture. He stands beside a detached column, on which his left hand is laid lightly ; the shaft of the column is broken, and its capital, carrying with it some portions of vaulting, and adorned by the inevitable leaf-wreath, falls crashing behind his right shoulder. Of a practicable building, or of Philistines assembled in it, there is no trace ; only the detached broken column, which is a common emblem of the personified Fortezza. T HE fall of Troy, with Aeneas, Ascanius, and Dido (TROIA, ENEA). In the background the blazing city ; then a river or strait, on the hither shore of which, in the foreground, appears Aeneas richly armed, moving to the right, and followed by the boy Ascanius. A woman wearing the two-horned head-dress (Dido) walks beside Ascanius, with her right hand on his shoulder in an attitude of protection. Immediately behind the group appears the stern of a ship. I think there is no doubt the figures in the foreground have to be understood as I have explained them. The shore on which they tread is the shore of Carthage (in illuminated manuscripts the landing of the wanderers in Africa is generally figured nearly according to this formula) ; and the strait which divides it from the burning city stands for the whole width of the Mediterranean. The only difficulty is that we have already had the Death of Dido some numbers back. But on the other hand, the alternative explanation would be that the scene should represent the flight of Aeneas and his family from Troy ; but then, where is Anchises ? and what is this strait between us and the burning city ? and how has Creusa come so far ? For a different treatment, in which the ruin of Troy alone is represented, I give one of the miniatures with which a contemporary artist has decorated the manuscript Virgil in the Riccardi Library (Fig. 104). In this the Virgilian text is illustrated literally, and the moment chosen is that when amidst the horrors of the night Venus appears to her son and bids him depart and seek safety with his household (. Aen . ii. 589-621). T> ixcrar ctfpiflifno&if 1ccondidit mnbnf FIG. 104.-THE SACK OF TROY: WITH VENUS APPEARING TO AENEAS. T HE Cumaean Sibyl (CVMANA). Another and later stage of the adventures of Aeneas. In the Western world the Cumaean was the most celebrated of all the Sibyls, supposed to have been she who brought the books to Tarquin, and also she from whom Virgil derived the famous prophecy in the Pollio , and whom he represents as conducting Aeneas to the kingdom of the dead in the sixth Aeneid. Heavily draped, and bearing in her right hand the scroll with her name, she is seen as if emerging from a great rocky cave ( spelunca alta fuit vastoque immanis hiatu ), and pointing with her left hand to another opening, probably meant for the true Taenariae fauces , alta ostia Ditis. Issuing from this are flames, amidst which (but confused in the reproduction) can be descried heads of fiends, and about its mouth are seen a snake, a scorpion, and a mole (the last a creature specially associated from antiquity with devilry and magic 1 ). The gesture of the Sibyl would pass well for that of bidding Aeneas to enter,— tuque invade viam, —but the artist’s notions of the Virgilian text seem somewhat dim. 1 Peculiare vanitatis sit argumentum, quod animalium cunctorum talpas raaxime mirantur [Magi], tot modis a rerum natura damnatas, tenebris etiamnum aliis defossas, sepultisque similes, etc.—PI in. Hist. Nat. xxx. 7. FIG. 105.— DAVID BEHEADING GOLIATH. From a Bronze Reliefl>y Ghiberti on the East Gate of the Baptistery , Florence. D AVID and Goliath (DAVIT, VGOLIA). David, dressed as a shepherd, but already by anticipation crowned as king, stands with a warlike scowl upon his features, and bearing the symbols of his victory—in his left, the huge head of the giant, with the pebble from the sling still embedded in the frontal bone, in his right the sling, and over his shoulder the bag of stones from the brook. Behind him the decapitated figure of Goliath lies tumbled prone. The rude energy of the artist’s feeling is present in full measure. The posture of the fallen corpse seems to be taken direct from the same scene—or rather the scene of the actual decapitation — in Ghiberti’s East Gate (see Fig. 105). It is further interesting to note the identical posture, and nearly the identical decapitated head, used for Holofernes in two contemporary decorative engravings, evidently from the workshop of our artist, in which the Judiths have been made up out of the Semiramis and the Amazon of this same drawing-book (see PI. VIII. XXXVIII. XXXIX., with Fig. 74, and Fig 106 below). HG. 106.— JUDITH WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES. C ODRUS and a warrior unnamed (CHODRE • ATENIESI). The last king of Athens (whose act of self-devotion to death was regarded by some of the Christian fathers as a Pagan type or prefigurement of the sacrifice of Christ) is represented pierced and hacked all over by the spears, swords, and arrows of his enemies ; which stick in his body, just as the arrows are always shown sticking in the body of St. Sebastian. His story, as told by Justin and other ancient writers, was that the Dorians coming to the assault of Athens had learned from the oracle that their enterprise would prosper if only they avoided killing the king. This they were accordingly most careful to do ; but Codrus, hearing of the oracle, determined that they should kill him against their will. So he disguised himself as a peasant carrying a load of fagots and a scythe, and, going into the Dorian camp, provoked the soldiers to a quarrel and struck one of them with his scythe, whereupon the others fell upon him and slew him ; and learning presently who it was that had fallen, the Dorian leaders gave up hope and raised the siege. With these particulars the artist was evidently familiar, and the scythe and bundle of fagots are not omitted. For his second figure, one of the usual richly-armed warriors, he or his scribe has found no name. Perhaps the figure may have been meant for one of the Dorian leaders ; more probably, only for some contemporary captain of Hebrew or Pagan story. S USANNAH and the Elders before Daniel (DANIEL, SVSANNA). A two-page picture representing the interior of a hall; to the left, a high dais of four steps on which sits Daniel enthroned ; towards the middle, a doorway into his bed-chamber ; and to the right, a buffet in several stages on which is set out a display of embossed metal ewers and dishes (a buffet similarly dressed is a feature in two small anonymous pictures, of the school of Filippo Lippi or Sandro Botticelli, exhibited in the corridor of the Uffizi. Behind are hung two scutcheons with coats of arms. The youthful Daniel, with his arm outstretched in the act of judgment, wears a high fantastic tiara and a short cloak embroidered with a sun and an armillary sphere ; facing him stand, in a row, Susannah with her hands bound behind her back and the two accusing elders,—all three figures of a harsh, somewhat coarse realism and energy of type. For special comparison with this drawing, and also with the drawing of Andromache (PI. LIX.), I place one of the rarest and most primitive of the group of “fine-manner” engravings which I attribute to the same hand, representing the subject of a “ Battle of the Hose.” 1 No student can well escape the conviction of theii common authorship. Note the whole style and manner of the folds in the women’s gowns, starting in little parallel pleats above the girdle, and then spreading stiffly and evenly towards the floor ; the identical form and character of Daniel s embroidered cloak with those of the cloaks worn by two of the women in the print; the actual identity of subject (phcenix rising towards the sun) in the embroidery on Susannah’s sleeve and the sleeve of the kneeling woman towards the right of the print; the upstanding forelocks of the women’s hair in both print and drawing ; and in the case of the woman and zany in the upper right corner of the print, the identity of plume and headgear with so many with which the reader is already familiar among the drawings. 1 This Italian print was copied in Germany by an engraver known as the “Master of the Banderoles,” the ascertained dates of whose work are between 1461 and 1468. The subject typifies the competition of many women for one man in time of war and depopulation, and it is a popular illustration of the text of Isaiah iii. 25, 26, iv. 1 : “ Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in war. And her gates shall lament and mourn ; and she, being desolate, shall sit upon the ground. And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will cat our own bread, and wear our own apparel : only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.” I owe this point to a private communication from Dr. Warburg, who has traced the subject, with references to the text, through various forms of later art. 1 I 'HE Death of Aeschylus (ECHILES : the orthography of the name has baffled the scribe, who has erased three X or four beginnings before contenting himself with the above ; just so the inscriptions of the engravings I attribute to the same workshop are often full of boggled spellings and erasures). The familiar story (of genuine classical, not mediaeval, origin) how the poet, having retired in advancing years to Sicily, was sunning himself one day in an open place when an eagle, flying aloft with a tortoise which it had seized and desired to crack, mistook his bald head for a suitable stone, and dropping the tortoise with a good aim hit the poet’s head and killed him. The tale (like that of Jonah) is told by the artist with a full and rather comic measure of the literalness and simplicity of his age and style. The landscape, partly disfigured by retouches, represents the island of Sicily (the hole in the ground on this side of the wood standing probably for the crater of Etna) ; in the foreground the poet is seated dozing with book on knee and head in hand; the eagle, poised carefully above him and looking down to watch the effect, drops from its claws the tortoise, which appears twice over, once at the beginning and once at the end of its fall. P ALAMEDES and Talthybius (PALAMIDES, TALTILEO • R •). At this point the artist recurs to the tale of Troy. The two personages here figured are unknown or insignificant to Homer, but important in the later versions of the story current in the Middle Ages. Palamedes, indeed, became prominent in classical times ; by the tragic poets and the sophists he is regarded as one of themselves, a man of eloquence and wisdom, and author of all manner of civilised inventions, lighthouses, weights and measures, the game of draughts, etc. His story was variously told ; but hinged mainly on the hatred which Diomed and Ulysses bore to him, and the fraud whereby they brought him under an accusation of treachery which caused him to be stoned to death by the other Greeks . 1 In the drawing his figure and action, as every reader will recognise, are borrowed, not without travesty, from the famous St. George of Donatello. The second figure, labelled Taltileo R •, is that of an aged man distinguished as a king by his ermine and top- heavy crown no less than by the initial after his name. At first sight he seems a puzzle. What personage of the Trojan cycle can be thus disguised under our artist’s eccentric orthography ? The solution Talthybius (in Italian Taltibio) is in all likelihood the right one. In Homer Talthybius is only the herald of Agamemnon ; but by the pseudo- Dictys he is made to play a part in helping the treacherous plans of Antenor and Aeneas for a surrender of Troy to the Greeks ; and this part is amplified in the Trojan History of Guido delle Colonne. Guido makes Antenor ask the Greeks to let Talthybius accompany him back to the Trojan lines, because of his reverend age which will help to command credence ; and speaks of him always as a king, Talthybius Rex. This in the vernacular versions is Taltibio Ke, which might easily be misread by our artist into Taltileo . 2 1 Euripides, Orest. 422 ; Pausanias x. 31 Philostracus, Her. 10; Ovid, Met. xiii. 54, sqq . ; pseudo-Dictys, ii. 15. The lines of Ovid are :— ille tamen vivit, quia non comitavit Ulixen ; mallet ct infelix Palamedes esse relietus, quern male convicti nimium memor iste furoris prodcre rem Danaam finxit fictumque probavit crimen et ostendit, quod jam praefoderat, aurum. mjmanlmlf,!. • ' , " '- um P ucr or me nrteentn century: Palamedes Naupli Eubocae reeis filius magnanimitatc praccipuus ; tempestate hac clarus fuit j hie contra Troianos una cum reliauis Craer’ f • 8 ! s “ 5 '’~ “ - ** * M -——„! D . En „, N , ■ Ig68 mltates contra Ulixen habuisset : inter caetera suae virtutis opera ^PAlAM&ESt TALTILEO'R' jt' £ v* <• > • P ARIS and Troilus (PARIS, TROIOLO). Continuing the succession of coupled figures, the artist now recurs to the tale of Troy, and in these personages of Paris and Troilus gives us his very best in the way alike of heroic character and proportions, magnificence of costume, and richness of detail. His hand has revelled in the tremendous sweeping plumes of Paris’s helmet, and in the delicate springy curves of that worn by Troilus, with its wings and recurved stalk ending in a clustered ornament. For comparison, here is the richest example of similar armour as rendered in bas-relief by one of the great Florentine artists contemporary with our draughtsman, viz. Verrocchio. The relief is in a panel of the celebrated silver-gilt shrine ( dossale ) now in the museum of the Cathedral (Opera del Duomo) at which so many of the best artists of Florence worked during a period of a hundred years ; see Introduction, p. 25. It dates from near twenty years after our book of drawings, but is obviously the fruit of an exactly similar inspiration. C ASSANDRA and Penthesilea (CHASSANDRA, REINA PANTASILEA). This group of two heroines of the Trojan war comes following the group of two heroes, Paris and Troilus, and is designed with not less energy of conception and richness of detail. Both personages were of course thoroughly familiar to the popular imagination from the current mediaeval versions of the tale of Troy, founded on the texts of the pseudo- Dares and the pseudo-Dictys. The prophetic daughter of Priam is conceived as in no way differing from a Sibyl, except by a somewhat statelier bearing and greater richness of dress. Her peaked and plumed Oriental head-dress is of enormous height, and all the borders of both tunic and cloak are richly embroidered, except where a band of royal ermine edges the tunic. In one hand she holds a book, while the other points across her breast in the peculiar action to which we have already drawn attention. The winged helmet of the warrior- queen Penthesilea is in like manner of extraordinary richness; so are the ornaments of her heavily-embossed shield. She wears over her armour a tunic gathered up above the knees, with a cloak falling at her back ; and brandishes over her head a huge scimitar. Like the last, this sheet is perfectly free from retouches, and is drawn entirely with the pen except for a slight wash on the shield of Penthesilea. A ENEAS, Latinus, and Turnus (ENEA, RE LATINO, TVRNNO). King Latinus, resting one hand on a /~\ circular embossed shield, and another on the hilt of his sword, stands fronting us, while Aeneas and Turnus on either side of him face each other in altercation, one with dagger and the other with battle-axe in hand. Arms and accoutrements are all of the usual elaborate fancy. FIG. 109.-HEAD OF BOV. From it Drawing attributed to Finiguemt in the UJJizi, Florence. R OMULUS and Remus (ROMOLO, REMVLO : that Remus should thus catch from his brother a diminutive termination to his name is a thing common in the vernacular language). Two of the figures best invented, draped, and posed among the whole class of personages standing thus coupled without action. Romulus (the shading of whose cloak is touched with pink, thus departing from the artist’s regular use of monochrome) has for some reason not been drawn upon the page like all the rest, but cut out with scissors from elsewhere, and pasted down upon the leaf. The profile of Remus resembles that of the boy drawn more than once from life among the studies of the Uffizi series (see above). Another study from the same series (Fig. 23, Introd. p. 28) is worth comparing because of the identical way in which the cloak is shown caught up under the forearm. The type of helmet seems to have been borrowed direct from that of Saul in Ghiberti’s East Gate (see Fig. no); it is worn also by Gideon in the graffiti of the Siena pavement. V IRGIL and Aristotle (VERGILIO, ARISTOTILE). Another group of two personages without action. Both the Roman poet and the Greek philosopher are presented, according to the mediaeval conception, in the character of Oriental sages or mages. In the art of the age they are often further coupled in another character, that of victims to, and warnings against, the wiles of women. But in this case the designer has not thought fit to tell the stories, so familiar to contemporary art, either of Virgil and the Neapolitan courtesan or of Aristotle and Phyllis ; he has simply shown each personage standing with book in hand—in the case of Aristotle both book and scroll—like any patriarch or prophet, and robed and crowned like any Eastern king : as for instance like Pollaiuolo’s King Herod, figured below, from the embroideries of the Baptistery altar-cloth. The execution is particularly neat and delicate, both in the washed shadows and the pen outlines and patterns. A MOS and Hosea (AMOS P£, OLEO PA). Another group of two, without action. Both prophets wear the usual long embroidered robe : Amos bears the emblematic book and scroll ; Hosea makes the gesture of one preaching. For this gesture, and the general design of the figure, compare the prophet Isaiah (Fig. 113 below) from the tarsia-work in the sacristy of the Cathedral, designed by Giuliano da Majano with help from Maso Finiguerra, Alessio Baldovinetti, and others. That the name “ Oleo ” stands for Hosea is a guess, and presupposes that (if this odd letter is really L) the artist miscopied it from some text, reading “ 1 ” for “s” ; just as in PI. VIII. we found him miscopying “ Ragan ” for “ Ragau. Below are figured the prophets Amos and Isaiah as executed, probably from the designs of Maso Finiguerra, by Giuliano da Majano in the sacristy of the Cathedral at Florence. The reader will observe their general resemblance to the prophets and poets of our Chronicle, and particularly the identity of the gesture of the right arm of Isaiah with that of Hosea in the drawing. The same gesture, and a still closer correspondence of general attitude, will be found in the Julius Caesar of the next drawing, PI. XCII. FIG. Hi.—THE PROPHET AMOS. From the Tarsia Panels executed by Giuliano , J ULIUS CAESAR and the City of Florence (IULIVS CAESAR, FLOREZIA). One of the most careless and ill-conceived of the series, disfigured moreover by childish late retouches on the- armour and helmet and the city gate. By an odd perversity, in designing a city to stand for his native Florence, the artist has copied no single feature of the real place, except his everlasting one of the Mugnone flowing under the city wall. (It seems impossible to suppose that the insignificant and ill-proportioned domed building on the left, surmounted by a crescent, should be meant to recall the dome of Brunelleschi.) For the rest, the buildings within the wall are a mere fantastic jumble in his worst taste. And the figure of Julius Caesar, over and above its disfigurement by retouches, stands but weakly on its legs. At the same time it is worth noting that it repeats, more closely even than that of the prophet Hosea in the last drawing, the scheme of the prophet Isaiah in the tarsia-work of the Cathedral sacristy (Fig. 113). The legend of the foundation of Florence by Julius Caesar, which has no foundation in fact, was a favourite one among the people ; readers will remember how complacently it is told, with a colouring of his own, by Benvenuto Cellini in the opening passage in his autobiography. On the whole we cannot but be reminded, greatly to our artist’s disadvantage, of another nearly contemporary view of Florence with a different presiding hero, painted on the walls of the Cathedral by Domenico di Michelino in 1465 (Fig. 114). 114—DANTE vD THE CITY OF FLORENCE. S ARDANAPALUS (RE SERDANAPAL). A double-page picture in the artist’s better manner. In illustrating the effeminacy of the King, wasting his time in the women’s apartments and over womens woik, he has not divested him of his dignity, but shows him seated, crowned and robed, on a throne of elaborate construction. As solemnly as though on the judgment-seat, he looks on at the group before him of one woman kneeling and weaving a wreath of leaves and berries, while another sits on the ground with hands folded over knees, and a child lies swathed and blanketed in its cradle. On the ground are scattered scissors and other womens gear. The architectural decorations of the chamber itself are simpler than usual. But the throne, with its canopy fashioned outside like a pair of bird’s wings meeting at the top, is very rich (compare the almost exactly similar tieatment of the throne of Mercury in the engraving. Fig. 17, Introd. p. 17) ; the panels of the bedstead are filled with carvings of an agreeable flowing pattern ; and to the right there stands a typical Florentine carved cassone or clothes-chest, drawn with an excellent free touch and in good perspective. For the figure of the woman tying the wreath, a preliminary study from life is found among the series of drawings in the Uffizi on which we have already drawn so freely (below, Fig. 115)- All possible doubt, had any existed, of the two series being by the same hand is thus removed. -WOMAN WEAVll 1 From the MS. chronicle already quoted as beii Sardanapalus :—“ E dopo lui costui rcngno in soria s condizione che tutto dl istava in zambra con sue do volte il vollono ucciderc ladondc egli vedendo questo vita dolorosamentc.” being nearly akin to that which must have furnished our artist with his materials, I take the following account of ia xxiiii anni insino a serdanapoli il quale fu 1’ ultimo Re di que’ di Soria questo serdanapoli fue lmomo di vile donne e donzelle a vedere filare e affare cotali atti feminili sinche piu volte da suoi cavalieri ne fu ripreso e piu ;to se ne prese tal dolore al chuore che fecie far un grande fuocho e ardendo vi si gitto entro e cosl morl e fini sua N UMA POMPILIUS and Isaiah (NUMA PONPILIO, ISAIA PA). The Roman law-giver and Hebrew prophet stand side by side, in the customary fantastic headgear and long robes (only this time the artist has been lazy, and has left the borders of cloak and tunic, with part of Isaiah’s tiara, bare of ornament). Numa Pompilius holds a book in either hand : Isaiah a scroll in one hand and a timber-saw in the other : compare the engraving fi om the same workshop figured below; which, however, is not from a drawing by our artist, but is adapted from a contemporary German engraving of another subject by the master known as the Master E. S. of 1466. The saw as an emblem of Isaiah is common but not universal in art ; being derived from a rabbinical tradition concerning his death which seems not to have been regularly accepted by the Church. 1 KCHOLNVERGMCHECHONCEPEAA ^ tpo PATOR1PA VEP,CIN£ 2TNDO UHOASE DELFIGLVOl SrCHWAEPA IMAKVEL CHIDETTO 1NTERPETPANDO IWXKH0ME220 NOI E/AAGEBA bnVPO EMELE ACC 10 CHENPROHDO SAPPl EVqciRE EL/AAL CHEE VKI02Q HUGGER: SLhcU CHEVIRTVOS.O FIG. 116.—THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 1 The story was that he was sawn in sunder by order of King Manasses (according to some accounts, having first taken refuge in a hollow tree) beside the pool Siloam, and buried under the oat Rogel. Petrus Comestor has it as follows Cumque argument eum prophetac missi a Domino, nemini corun) parcebat, sed plateas Jerusalem prophetarum sanguine purpurarit. Insupcr aliorum sanguinem innoiium fudit multum nimis, donee impleret Jerusalem, usque ad os : Jsaiam quoque avum matemum, secundum Hcbraeos, vcl affinem suum, ejectum extra Jerusalem cirea piscinam Slice serra lignea per medium sucari fecit. Qui dum in principle sccttoms august,aretur, petut sibt dan aquam, ut biberet, et cum nollent ei dare, Dominus de sublimi misit aquam in os snum, et exspiravk, nec tameu carmfices destiterunt a sectmne. Et ob hanc aquae mmtonem conSrmatum esc nomen Siloe, quod interpretatur missus, nec sepelierunt eum in scpulcro prophetarum, sed sub qucrcu Rogel juxta transitum aquartim, quern feoerat Eaecbias in memoriam miraculi, ,uod fecerat Dominus in a,uis illis ad prccos Isaiae.— Petr. Comestor, Hist. Sc hoi. 1. iv. c. 32 . C YRUS and the son of Tomyris (LO FIGLIOLO DA TAMERIS, CIRRO RE). The well-known story, derived from Herodotus (Hist. i. 211-214), of Cyrus the Great King; how he would not release the son of Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae, whom he had taken prisoner in battle; and how in revenge for her son’s death Tomyris renewed the war against Cyrus, and having overthrown him with a great slaughter, sought out his body and caused his head to be cut off and plunged in a vessel full of blood, saying, “In your life you thirsted for blood, and now you shall have your fill of it.” In the account given by Herodotus, the son of Tomyris (Spargapises by name) is commander of a division of her forces, and having been overthrown and taken prisoner by Cyrus during a fit of drunkenness, puts an end to his own life in captivity. But the story filtered down through the Middle Ages in a different form, in which Cyrus himself puts his prisoner to death, and the prisoner is a youth of tender years : as here exhibited. 1 Both Cyrus and his victim are richly armed, the former wearing a helmet in the shape of a monstrous head surmounted by a huge plume. The action is of a good realistic fierceness; the features of the suppliant boy, distorted with distress, seem to be the same as we have seen already in the personage of Remus (PI. LXXXVIII.), and as are shown in their everyday aspect in one of the drawings of the Uffizi series (Fig. no). 1 The proximate source of these mediaeval versions of the story is Paulus Orosius, Hist, ii. —Igitur idem Cyrus proximi tcmporis successu Scythis bcllum intulit : quern Thamyris regina, quae tunc genti praeerat, cum prohibcre transitu Araxis fluminis posset, transire permisit, primum propter fiduciam sui, dehinc propter opportunitatem ex obiectu fluminis hostis inclusi. Cyrus itaque Scythiam ingressus, procul a transmisso flumine castra metatus, insuper astu eadem instructa vino epulisque deseruit, quasi territus refugisset. hoc conperto regina tertiam partem copiarum et filium adulescentulum ad perscquendum Cyrum mittit. barbari veluti ad epulas invitati primum ebrietatc uincuntur, mox revcrtente Cyro universi cum adulcsccnte obtruncantur. Thamyris excrcitu ac filio amisso vel matris vel reginae dolorem sanguine hostium diluere potius quam suis lacrimis parat. simulat diffidentiam desperatione cladis inlatae paulatimquc cedendo superbum hostem in insidias vocat. ibi quippc conpositis inter montes insidiis duccnta milia Persarum cum ipso rege delevit, adjecta super omnia illius rei admiratione, quod ne nuntius quidem tantae cladis supcrfuit. regina caput Cyri amputari atque in utrcm humano sanguine opplctum coici iubct non muliebriter incrcpitans : Satia te, inquit, sanguine quern sitisti, cuius per annos triginta insatiabilis perscvcrasti. T HE Vengeance of Tomyris (?) (TAMIS). The subject of this singular representation is at first sight a puzzle. A great carved throne, a splendid specimen of Florentine fifteenth-century upholstery, having apparently been placed on two beams which cross from side to side of a deep well or tank, has slipped and tumbles sideways into the tank. Disappearing at the same time beneath the surface is seen what appears to be a crowned and plumed human head. On the ground to the left sits a figure enthroned, closely draped from head to foot so that the sex is doubtful, but apparently a woman, with lips parted and right arm and forefinger angrily extended. At the feet of the figure is written the name Tamis. In our artist’s haphazard orthography, this name might stand equally well for Themis, Goddess of Justice, or Thammuz, the Syrian deity identified with the Greek Adonis, or perhaps even Thammous, the Greek pilot who heard and repeated the ominous cry, “ Great Pan is dead.” But no story connected with any of these will fit the picture. What seems much likelier is that the name is really a repetition of the Tameris of the last page, with the middle syllable carelessly left out, and that the artist is here telling in a curious way of his own the sequel of the tale of Tomyris and Cyrus (see the preceding subject). Readers of Dante will remember that this is one of the stories of the ancient world which the poet found figured by way of warning on the floor of Purgatory : Mostrava la ruina, e ’1 crudo scempio Che fe Tamiri, quando disse a Ciro, Sangue sitisti, ed io di sangue t’ empio.— Purg. xii. 55. The appearance of the draped and veiled queen, and her gesture, non muliebriter increpitans , agree well with this story. The severed head, crowned and plumed, is there, only it is plunged, not, as according to the story, into a skin or bag full of blood, but into a great well or tank full of it : and the beams and the falling throne must be supposed to be a symbol added by the artist’s own fancy of the uncertain estate and final overthrow of the Great King and his sovereignty. M ILO of Crotona (MILON CLOTO). The well-known story of the athlete’s unhappy end : how a tree which he attempted to rive closed on his hands and held him fast, and how he was devoured by his own dogs. In the despairing fling of Milo’s action there is a freedom and power beyond the artist’s usual reach ; but the drawing is a sketch only—the trees in the background mere rounded lumps, with the detail of the fruit and foliage barely begun in one of them : and it is clear that the artist’s scheme of illustration had at this point been suddenly broken off; perhaps, we may conjecture, by his death. A few foolish retouches in the foreground, and perhaps also the strengthening of the shadows between the trees behind the figure, are due to a later hand. The subject occurs again in Italian Renaissance illustrations. There is a woodcut of it, treated quite differ¬ ently, by Nicolo Boldrini, supposed to be from the design of Titian ; and here, offering an entertaining com¬ parison with the handling of our primitive craftsman, is a spirited drawing of the same theme done nearly two centuries later by Salvator Rosa. I pi UMI