The neo-classicists of the Cinquecento, the Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo the younger, San nicheli, Jacopo Sansoverino, Jacopo Tatti, better known, from his master, as Jacopo Sansavino, built edifices of antique solemnity. The old formulas of the ancient orders of architecture were not, as yet, rigidly observed, and archi tecture had still its appropriate colors. The Veronese, Palladio, alone constituted a sort of Roman authority; called, as he is °the founder of modern architecture* his was but a masterly revival of ancient styles.
The Seicento (17th century), as if in rear. don against the cold art of the mannerists of the end of the preceding century, chose strong contrasts of light and shade, delirious and dizzy forms. On account of this bewildering art appealing, as it did, to effect, to this magnifying of things, to this superabundance of material, ancient art, the flower of civilization, was cast aside. Even sculpture, under the followers of Michel Angelo in the Cinquecento seemed to be going into decay. Emilia, however, had still the terra cotta frescoes of Antonio Begarelli; Venice was adorned with the works of Jacopo Tatti (II Sansovino) and with the busts of Alessandro Vittoria, who rendered in plaster and marble portraits of Venetian noblemen, rivalling the pictures of Titian and Tintoretto. Painting in the Cinquecento, after the decline of the great generation that issued from its threshold, daily became weaker. Florence, after Fra Bartolomtneo who was the first, it is believed, to use the lay-figure, and Andrea del Saito, called *Andrea the errorless,* so fault less, then, seemed his work, triumphed no longer ; Siena, after having enjoyed fresh glory from Sodoma and from 'its Peruzzi, became insignificant; Parma lost its elegance after the death of Francesco Ferrara; and Mazzola better known as Parmigiano, the two Dossi being artis tically exhausted, the city's quondam splendor became but a memory. When the followers of Leonardo disappeared and when Solario, Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari died, Milan closed its school of painting. Venice, which like other Italian cities, had been tardy in art develop meat, advanced the more rapidly in her trium phal career. The contemporaries of Titian; among them Palma Vecchio and Sebastian del Piombo, Lorenzo Lotto and Bordenone, con+ tinued the great Venetian traditions, while facio, Paris 13ordone, Moretto da Brescia: Paolo Veronese, Gian Battista Moroni, da Bag solo transmitted them to all the Cinqtiecento through• their followers.
At the close of the Cinquecento when Flop. eace had her strength and Venice no longer showed her brilliant, glorious, Oriental coloration, Bologna and Naples, which had until then been inferior in artistic development began to dominate, one with the geclectic school* of the Carracci, the other with the naturalistic and forceful school of Michelangelo da Caravaggio.
The man who appeared to personify in him self all the art of the Seicento, the most ver satile that Rome had seen since Michel Angelo, was Lorenzo Bernini. In architecture he re tained the monumental feeling; he glorified Michel Angelo unconditionally as an architect and despised Borromini, who, he said, instead of being inspired by the human form, estab lished rules based on illusions. He considered
round 'forms, or those described within a circle, as the most perfect and particularly admired contrast, observing that things do not appear as they really are, but that their appearance is due to their surroundings. Bernini looked at architecture as an art allied to sculpture; and in architecture, as in sculpture, he saw with cor rect eyes. Bernini was the -architect who founded modern Rome.
Bernini brought pictorial knowledge to his sculpture, and his chisel over drapery, flesh and hair, ever changing facial delineation; ever varying the tonal effect, but never satisfy+ ing his inner vision. Sometimes he broke, and in rage, the sketches of his figures; sometimes in lighter mood he spun hair so soft it waved in the wind. The polishing of the marble would make his figures • flabby and . pendulous; the draperies swelled like willows in a storm, ing the figures and Strangling them. Bernini seems like an architect who strives to cor rect nature, which is too weak and contemptible for him who desires to make it gigantic in order that it may impose, subjugate and blast. Ber nini has been called the Rubens of the chisel. He is also said to examplify the Jesuit style — the and to have pandered to the poor taste of his day for favor and fortune, while he' was the arbiter in all art matters in Rome.' The plan of the Carracci was to return to the antique, but they only gathered the remin-' iscences of a by-gone great art, to reunite them in eclectic formulae, instead of producing a new, harmonious, potent style. The trium virate, Annibale, Ludovico and Agostino Car racci, created an Academy of Design, the first type of all academies of fine arts. Endowed by nature more highly than the others Annibale left in the Farnese Gallery in Rome the most splendid example of decorative art of the 17th century. In the princely palaces of Italy, in the vast churches of the Jesuits entered the art of the Carracci to exalt God and man in a lan guage full of eloquence, amid the odor of in cense, gaudy gold objects and a throng that was moved by the surrounding baroque statues. The efforts of the Carracci to impart dignity and vigor to the ancient tree of Italian art were not in vain; for the school produced Guido Reni, who painted Christ with the crown of thorns, his eyes languishing in pain and sorrow, as though his spirit were striving to return to the , Might. Albani, painter of cupids, gallant swains,. frail •nymphs, coquettish graces; .Do tnenichino, a Quattrocextisto astray in • the Seicento, timid among his bold contemporaries, conscientious among so many that were careless and slovenly; Guercino, who wrapped his com positions in gloom, enlivening them here and there with rays of light ; and Lanfranco, who placed colossi on arches and cupolas, were also products of the Carracci school.