THE NORTHERN SCHOOLS

Andrea Mantegna was born, not at Padua, where his greatest work is to be found—­three frescoes in the Eremitani—­but at Vicenza.  Here in the Uffizi, however, we have two works of his middle period, certainly among the best, if not the most beautiful, of his easel pictures.  In one we see Madonna and Child in a rocky landscape, where there are trees and flowers (1025); the other is a triptych (1111), one of the many priceless things to be found here.  In the midst you may see the Three Kings at the feet of Jesus Parvulus in his Mother’s arms, while on one side Mantegna has painted the Presentation in the Temple, and on the other the Resurrection.  Long ago this marvellous miniature, that even to-day seems to shine like a precious stone, was in the possession of the Gonzagas of Mantua, from whom it is supposed the Medici bought it.

Five male portraits by the Bergamesque master Moroni are to be found here.  One (360) is said to be a portrait of himself, though it certainly bears no resemblance to the portrait at Bergamo.  I cannot forbear from mentioning the Portrait of a Scholar, which seems to me one of his best works.  Moroni was born at Bondo, not far from Albino, in 1525.  It is probable that Moretto, who, as Morelli suggests, was a Brescian by birth, though his parents originally came from the same valley as Moroni, Valle del Serio, was his master.  Moretto is, I think, a greater painter than Moroni, though perhaps we are only beginning to appreciate the latter.

Three pictures here are from the hand of Correggio:  the early small panel of Madonna and Child with Angels (1002), once ascribed to Titian, a naive and charming little work; the Repose in Egypt (1118), grave and beautiful enough, but in some way I cannot explain a little disappointing; and the Madonna adoring her little Son (1134), which is rather commonplace in colour, though delightful in conception.

It might seem impossible within the covers of one book to do more than touch upon the enormous wealth of ancient art in the possession of almost every city in Italy; and here in Florence, more than anywhere else, I know my feebleness.  If these few notes, for indeed they are nothing more, serve to group the pictures hung in the Uffizi into Schools, to win a certain order out of what is already less a chaos than of old, to give to the reader some idea almost at a glance of what the Uffizi really possesses of the various schools of Italian painting, they will have served their purpose.[126]

Of the sculpture, too, I say nothing.  Vastly more important and beloved of old than to-day, when the work of the Greeks themselves has come into our hands, and above all the Greek work of the fifth century B.C., there is not to be found in the Uffizi a single marble of Greek workmanship, and but few Roman works that are still untampered with.  For myself, I cannot look with pleasure on a Roman Venus patched by the Renaissance, for I have seen the beauty of the Melian Aphrodite; and there are certain things in Rome, in Athens, in London, which make it for ever impossible for us to be sincere in our worship at this shrine.