Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.

  • Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 1794-1860.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    St Nicholas as bishop of Myra; 1 and a large altar-piece of the Worship of the Magi. The little sketch of Europa is a study for the splendid picture now at Verona. Before we close the list of the elder painters of Italy we must mention as flourishing at this time the Da Ponte family of Bassano. Giacomo or Jacopo da Ponte [born 1510], called Old Bassano, was the head of it. His father [Francesco] had been a painter before him, and he, with his four sons, Leandro, Francesco, Gian Battista, and Girolamo, set up in their native town of Bassano a kind of manufactory of pictures, which were sold in the fairs and markets of the neighboring cities, and became popular all over the north of Italy. The Bassani were among the earliest painters of the genre style; they treated sacred and solemn subjects in a homely familiar manner which was pleasing and intelligible to the people, and, at the same time, with a power of imitation, a light and spirited execution, and, in particular, a gem-like radiance of color which fascinates even judges of Art. There are pictures of the elder Bassano which at the first glance remind one of a handful of rubies and emeralds. His best and largest works are at Bassano [St. Martin dividing his Cloak with the Beggar, in the Munici- pal Gallery, and the Baptism of St. Lucilla in the church of S. Valentino] ; his small pictures are numerous, and scattered through most galleries. He painted sheep, cattle, and poultry well, and was fond of introducing them in the pastoral scenes of the Old Testament, where they are appropriate : sometimes, unhappily, where they are least appropriate they are the prin- cipal objects. His scenery and grouping have a rural charac- ter ; and his personages, even sacred and heroic, look like peasants. They are not vulgar, but rustic. The same kind of spirit informed the Bassani that afterwards informed the Dutch school—the imitation of familiar objects without ele- vation and without selection ; but the nature of Italy was as different from that of Holland as Bassano is different from Jan Steen. Like all the Venetians, the Bassani were good portrait painters. We have a fine portrait by Jacopo Bassano in our National Gallery, and at Hampton Court several very fine and characteristic pictures, which will give an excellent idea of his 1 For an account of this saint, sec Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 444.