Bernardino
LUINI

BY JAMES MASON
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I

A RETROSPECT

In the beginning of the long and fascinating history of Italian Art we see that the spirit of the Renaissance first fluttered over the minds of men much as the spirit of life is said have moved over the face of the waters before the first chapter of creation’s marvellous story was written. Beginnings were small, progress was slow, and the lives of the great artists moved very unevenly to their appointed end.

There were some who rose to fame and fortune during their life, and then died so completely that no biography can hope to rouse any interest in their work among succeeding generations.

There were others who worked in silence and without réclame of any sort, content with the respect and esteem of those with whom they came into immediate contact, indifferent to the plaudits of the crowd or the noisy praises of those who are not qualified to judge. True servants of the western world’s religion, they translated work into terms of moral life, and moral life into terms of work. Merit like truth will out, and when time has sifted good work from bad and spurious reputations from genuine ones, many men who fluttered the dovecotes of their own generation disappear from sight altogether; some others who wrought unseen, never striving to gain the popular ear or eye, rise on a sudden to heights that might have made them giddy had they lived to be conscious of their own elevation. They were lowly, but their fame inherits the earth.

Bernardino Luini, the subject of this little study, calls us away from the great art centres—from Venice and Florence and Rome; his record was made and is to be found to-day amid the plains of Lombardy. Milan is not always regarded as one of the great art centres of Italy in spite of the Brera, the Ambrosiana, and the Poldi Pezzoli Palace collections, but no lover of pictures ever went for the first time to the galleries of Milan in a reverent spirit and with a patient eye without feeling that he had discovered a painter of genius. He may not even have heard his name before, but he will come away quite determined to learn all he may about the man who painted the wonderful frescoes that seem destined to retain their spiritual beauty till the last faint trace of the design passes beyond the reach of the eye, the man who painted the panel picture of the “Virgin of the Rose Trees,” reproduced with other of his master-works in these pages.

To go to the Brera is to feel something akin to hunger for the history of Bernardino Luini or Luino or Luvino as he is called by the few who have found occasion to mention him, although perhaps Luini is the generally accepted and best known spelling of the name. Unfortunately the hungry feeling cannot be fully satisfied. Catalogues or guide books date the year of Luini’s birth at or about 1470, and tell us that he died in 1533, and as this is a period that Giorgio Vasari covers, we turn eagerly to the well-remembered volumes of the old gossip hoping to find some stories of the Lombard painter’s life and work. We are eager to know what manner of man Luini was, what forces influenced him, how he appeared to his contemporaries, whether he had a fair measure of the large