The Roman school had now nearly merged in the gene ral mass into which the arts had sunk in Europe ; there are but the names of Ferri, Garzi. and Carlo Maratti, as distinctive supporters of its fame. Mengs attributes this merit to the talents of Maratti alone, who was an ardent admirer and follower of Raphael ; whose paintings in the Vatican and Farnesina he was employed to repair. His defect was want of vigour and originality ; practising all the rules of art, he had neither manifest defects nor strik ing beauties.
renelian School.
The Venetian school seems to have arisen from an at tentive contemplation of the effects of nature, such as they are simply presented to the eye, in all the glory of colour ing—studying to seize the true tone of nature in its most beautiful moments, to catch the mellow richness and har mony of its finest tints, and to blend them together with a correct and skilful distribution of light and shade. This was the leading star of the Venetian school, by which its followers were led away from the source of ancient excel lence, which had invited the Roman artists to the equally exclusive study of design, independent of the embellish ment of colour. The Venetian artist sought the beauties of nature alone for his guide, and these he cultivated with surprising success. Neglectful to a certain degree of the nobler qualities of design, he was exclusively alive to the fascinating charms of harmony, as applied to his art. This he studied to excite, by so skilful a disposition of colour as to show each tint to the greatest advantage, to heighten the effect by the contrast of light and shade, the magic of reflected light and reflected colour; by the judicious juxta position of such tints as seem to bear as distinct a relation to each other as the tones of music ; although we are equally at a loss, in both cases, to account for this myste rious rule of nature. They endeavoured so to dispose the subject of their picture, and to arrange the appropriate objects, as to admit naturally, and without restraint, of this melodious display of colours, (if we may so express it,) to fascinate the eye, in the same manner as the ear is fasci nated by the simple effect of harmony. The powers of reflection and mind are but little appealed to by the Vene tian school. Satisfied with the gratification of voluptuous ness, and the passive pleasure of the eye, the spectator is seldom called upon to read and ponder such elaborate and learned works as those of the Roman and Florentine mas ters, or to appreciate the intrinsic merits of design and invention;—which, in fact, constitute the poetry of paint ing abstracted from those qualities that address the eye alone. We find the graver subjects of sacred history, the
into nto which the other schools have so exclusively dug, little if at all the resort of the Venetian. Instead of the purposes of religion, to which the Italian pencil is so en entirely dedicated, as to people the cabinets of Europe with saints, madonnas, and Bible subjects, from Venice we have scarcely any thing but grave senators, gorgeous feasts, and naked beauties.
Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, Giorgione, and Bas sano, were the chief ornaments of this school. Its early progress in the arts was characterized by the same events and circumstances, which affected the general development of reviving taste in those parts of Italy which we have already considered. A marked tendency was given to the peculiar features of their style, from two circumstances is the history of this city ; namely, the great efforts that were made at so very early a period as the eleventh century, for the embellishment of the church of St Mark ; and the subsequent introduction of oil painting, in which Venice took the lead of the rest of Italy. The construction of St. Mark occasioned both Greece and Italy to be ransack ed for artists, and Constantinople for sculptured stones, pillars, and marbles. Every splendour that the art was then capable of, was summoned to assist the magnificence of this moresque temple ; so that the rich and gaudy or nament so profusely lavished upon this their greatest boast, could not fail strongly to influence their future taste in the arts in general. Accustomed to the gay dresses and sumptuous manners of eastern nations, with whom a long series of traffic and conquest had brought the Venetians into contact, and confined as they were to the narrow com pass of a wretched sand bank, hemmed in on all sides by the sea; the immense wealth that had accumulated in the families of many of these haughty merchant monarchs could only gain vent in the splendour of their persons and palaces. The fashion also of brilliant festivals and pom pous processions, where it was usual to display all the gor geous attire of eastern princes, naturally augmented the florid tone of their style of art.