TISIO
740
TISIO
Dutch school later. This new style forms the artistic that Garofalo's art consists in a clever handling of
glory of the House of Este, which had also the honour pure abstractions
of pensioning Ariosto. Its spirit can be still recog-
nized in the famous paintings (now in the Louvre)
executed in 1505 for the Duchess Isabella by Man-
tegna, Perugino, and Lorenzo Costa. It survives in
the works of Dosso Dossi — in the charming Judith of
the Modena gallery, and in the incomparable Circe of
the Casino Borghese.
Garofalo's real vocation lay in such work. His pe- culiar talent consisted in feeUng and giving naive ex- pression to the joy of hfe, the charm of the world around him, the beauty of elegant and rural customs
Nevertheless, despite his many ambitious but insig-
nificant (though never vulgar) works, the natural in-
stinct of the Ferrarese school had not quite forsaken
him. It asserted itself amid all his idealistic straining,
and led him to create a style of "tableaux de pi^te",
little pious scenes as helps to private devotion, to be
set up in bed-rooms and oratories. We have here the
Bible interpreted in a familiar mode, reduced to the
proportions of a "genre" picture and making a popu-
lar appeal. The vast number of these little paintings in
the Borghese, Doria, and Capitol galleries at Rome is a
and all that is now called "idyllic ", but as it appeared sufficient indication of their vogue. This was the style
to Italian courtiers of the Renaissance period. His so successfully developed by Elsheimer and Rem-
youthful works — the Boar Hunt in the Palazzo Sci- brandt in the seventeenth century. But, even in this
arra, the Knight's Procession in the Palazzo Colonna new departure, the false ideal with which Garofalo was
at Rome — gave promise of a Latin Kuyp, less com- smitten at Rome contiriued to stifle his native genius.
monplace, more romantic, more
artistic, and more refined than
the Dutch artist. This was
the result of his early study
under Panetti and Costa, and
of his companionship with liis
fellow pupil Dossi. In 1495
he had lessons at Cremon:i
from Baccaccino, who initial f!
him into the secrets of Vein
tian colouring. But a feu
years later, when entering on
early manhood, he fell unfor-
tunately under an influence
quite alien to his own genius.
It was at Rome, where he
spent three years (1509-1512),
that he succumbed to the
charm of the new idea. Ra-
phael was painting the "Ca-
mera" or hall of the Segnatura,
and that of the Hehodorus;
Michelangelo was decorating
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Garofalo was overcome by
these masterpieces; he was
unable to refrain from the con-
templation of a higher beauty
than that which he himself had
expressed.
From this moment disap- pears the charming artist, the delicate painter of con- temporary life, into which Garofalo was developing. The majesty of the Roman works imposed on him an ideal beyond his power to realize. The Ferrarese Garofalo might have been a master — of the second class of creative artists, indeed, but
VlKQlN AND Chii
Benvenuto da Tisio, the
Ever more and more he con-
demned himself to be but the
pale reflection of Raphael. One
can follow step by step the
progress of his self-imposed
decadence. The "Virgin in
the Clouds with four Saints"
(1518) in the Academy of Fine
Arts at Venice is an excellent
work; the "Pieta" (1.527) in
the Brera Gallery at Milan re-
veals an increasing frigidity
of treatment. If one Madonna
(15:52) in the Modena Gallery
is ;i ( harniing picture, another
of .li^ihtly later date no longer
iiKTit.-i this eulogy. The large
"Triumph of Religion" in the
Ateneo at Ferrara is a purely
"bookish" work, whose en-
semble is null and whose stray
pleasing episodes are hard to
discover. Later even his
sense of colour begins to fail;
year by year it grows colder
and finally deserts him. Hence-
forth he can produce only such
melancholy monochromes as
the "Kiss of Judas" in the
Church of San Francisco at
Ferrara.
Such was the gradual pro- cess of distortion under a foreign influence of this charm- ing genius, adapted by na- ture to feel and proclaim the poetry and homely realities of life, but rendered sterile by an unnatural endeavour to give expression to an ideal which was not its own. In the pursuit of this ideal, we see Gafo-
of true originality; after his visit to Rome, he was falo lose his native qualities one by one, his exquisite
but a "Raphael in miniature". It is not easy to sensitiveness as painter and colourist being the last to
criticise harshly works which are always sincere and forsake him. From 1550 till his death Garofalo was
whose greatest defect arises from the conscientious blind. His history is one of the most eloquent ex-
pursuit of an ideal. All Garofalo's works bear traces amples of a mistaken vocation. With him the Fer-
of this extreme conscientiousness of execution — a rarese school loses all its originality, and abdicates the
quality that became ever rarer in the school of place it should ha\-e filled in the history of art. Venice
Raphael. As a moral force Garofalo has no equal in
the group that surrounded the master; in this respect
he is vastly superior to such a painter as Giulio Ro-
mano. Even his least successful works retain, amid
soon occupies the vacancy; she is destined to trans-
late to canvas those fornuiUv for "painting from life",
which Ferrara had dinih' foreseen; Giorgione, Titian,
Palma, Bonifazio are to reap the laurels which Garo-
their somewhat frigid and commonplace purity, that falo refused, and to deprive him of the honour of inau-
transparency, glow, and harmony which are the
marks of all Venetian colouring. But though the
eye is charmed, all illusion as to the artistic
quality of the work soon disappears. The figures
have no life, the expression is uncertain, ideal
heads betray a lack of intellect. The larger the
figure the more emphatic are its defects. No ele-
gance of design or skill in execution can hide the fact
gurating a style so fruitful in the subsequent history of
painting.
Baropfaldi. Vile dei pittori Ferraresi (Ferrara. 1844); Crr- TADELL.I. NoHzie relative a Ferrara (Ferrara, 1864); Laderchi, Piltura Ferrarese (Ferrara, 1856): Documents iiiidits d'apris Campari in Crowe el Camlcaselle (German ed.), V, xxi; Lermo- LlEFF, Die Werke italienischer Meisler in den Galereien' von Miinchen, Drexden und Berlin (Leipzig, ■VSSO) ; Woermann and WoLTMANN, (leschichte der Malerei (Lr.p»:ig, 1SS2), XI; BeREN-
