THE FLORENTINE PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE

WITH AN INDEX TO THEIR WORKS

BY

BERNHARD BERENSON

AUTHOR OF “VENETIAN PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE,” “LORENZO LOTTO,” “CENTRAL ITALIAN PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE”

THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press

COPYRIGHT, 1896
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London

COPYRIGHT, 1909
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
(For revised edition)

Made in the United States of America

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION

Years have passed since the second edition of this book. But as most of this time has been taken up with the writing of my “Drawings of the Florentine Painters,” it has, in a sense, been spent in preparing me to make this new edition. Indeed, it is to that bigger work that I must refer the student who may wish to have the reasons for some of my attributions. There, for instance, he will find the intricate Carli question treated quite as fully as it deserves. Jacopo del Sellajo is inserted here for the first time. Ample accounts of this frequently entertaining tenth-rate painter may be found in articles by Hans Makowsky, Mary Logan, and Herbert Horne.

The most important event of the last ten years, in the study of Italian art, has been the rediscovery of an all but forgotten great master, Pietro Cavallini. The study of his fresco at S. Cecilia in Rome, and of the other works that readily group themselves with it, has illuminated with an unhoped-for light the problem of Giotto’s origin and development. I felt stimulated to a fresh consideration of the subject. The results will be noted here in the inclusion, for the first time, of Cimabue, and in the lists of paintings ascribed to Giotto and his immediate assistants.

B. B.

Boston, November, 1908.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The lists have been thoroughly revised, and some of them considerably increased. Botticini, Pier Francesco Fiorentino, and Amico di Sandro have been added, partly for the intrinsic value of their work, and partly because so many of their pictures are exposed to public admiration under greater names. Botticini sounds too much like Botticelli not to have been confounded with him, and Pier Francesco has similarly been confused with Piero della Francesca. Thus, Botticini’s famous “Assumption,” painted for Matteo Palmieri, and now in the National Gallery, already passed in Vasari’s time for a Botticelli, and the attribution at Karlsruhe of the quaint and winning “Nativity” to the sublime, unyielding Piero della Francesca is surely nothing more than the echo of the real author’s name.

Most inadequate accounts, yet more than can be given here, of Pier Francesco, as well as of Botticini, will be found in the Italian edition of Cavalcaselle’s Storia della Pittura in Italia, Vol. VII. The latter painter will doubtless be dealt with fully and ably in Mr. Herbert P. Horne’s forthcoming book on Botticelli, and in this connection I am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Horne for having persuaded me to study Botticini. Of Amico di Sandro I have written at length in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, June and July, 1899.

Fiesole, November, 1899.

CONTENTS.

•  PAGE
• THE FLORENTINE PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE 1
• INDEX TO THE WORKS OF THE PRINCIPAL FLORENTINE PAINTERS 95
• INDEX OF PLACES 189

THE FLORENTINE PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE

I.

Florentine painting between Giotto and Michelangelo contains the names of such artists as Orcagna, Masaccio, Fra Filippo, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, Leonardo, and Botticelli. Put beside these the greatest names in Venetian art, the Vivarini, the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoret. The difference is striking. The significance of the Venetian names is exhausted with their significance as painters. Not so with the Florentines. Forget that they were painters, they remain great sculptors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and even men of science. They left no form of expression untried, and to none could they say, “This will perfectly convey my meaning.” Painting, therefore, offers but a partial and not always the most adequate manifestation of their personality, and we feel the artist as greater than his work, and the man as soaring above the artist.

MANYSIDEDNESS OF THE PAINTERS The immense superiority of the artist even to his greatest achievement in any one art form, means that his personality was but slightly determined by the particular art in question, that he tended to mould it rather than let it shape him. It would be absurd, therefore, to treat the Florentine painter as a mere link between two points in a necessary evolution. The history of the art of Florence never can be, as that of Venice, the study of a placid development. Each man of genius brought to bear upon his art a great intellect, which, never condescending merely to please, was tirelessly striving to reincarnate what it comprehended of life in forms that would fitly convey it to others; and in this endeavour each man of genius was necessarily compelled to create forms essentially his own. But because Florentine painting was pre-eminently an art formed by great personalities, it grappled with problems of the highest interest, and offered solutions that can never lose their value. What they aimed at, and what they attained, is the subject of the following essay.

II.

The first of the great personalities in Florentine painting was Giotto. Although he affords no exception to the rule that the great Florentines exploited all the arts in the endeavour to express themselves, he, Giotto, renowned as architect and sculptor, reputed as wit and versifier, differed from most of his Tuscan successors in having peculiar aptitude for the essential in painting as an art.

But before we can appreciate his real value, we must come to an agreement as to what in the art of figure-painting—the craft has its own altogether