Maratta formed a most numerous school, but its chief characteristics were the studied composition and affected grace which are the blemishea of his own style.
Marotta has been termed the last of the Romans, and perhaps be may be safely termed the last of the 'Ionians who has merited the name of a great painter ; for neither Poinpeo Batoni nor Mengs can be said to dispute that claim with him, though both are deservedly celebrated names. The former gave too much importance to high finish; the latter was too blindly devoted to the antique. Batoni painted excellent portraits, and 3lengs drew correctly, but he was so eager after the ideal that be lost nature in the search of it ; in this respect Batoni has greatly the advantage over Menge. They were both eminently aca demic, and for mere technical excellence have not often been equalled; but there is a palpable absence of the "mena divinior" and moral senti ment in their works, which are more than ordinarily eonspiuotie for that insipidity and monotony so generally attendant upon the fastidious preciseness of academic art.
The Bolognese School divides with the schools of Tuscany, Rome, and Venice, the honour of having assisted in bringing about the great revival of painting in Italy in the 13th century. But unlike them its advance was slow ; it had no great painter to share in the glory of that brilliant epoch, the beginning of the 16th century, when the greatest mutters of Italian painting flourished contemporaneously. Its culmi nating point was reached much later, and then hardly as the result of original genius. The school of Bologna is chiefly remembered as an eclectic school. Its heads, the Carted, sought to Achieve the highest excellence by imitating and combining the peculiar excellencies of the great masters of other schools : and in the opinion of their contem poraries they succeeded. Not only by their countrymen, but by the painters of other schools their principles were adopted ; and their influence thus extending throughout Italy, and coinciding with the tendencies of the age, served to repress what little originality remained and to produce everywhere a uniformity of academia mediocrity. This school is therefore historically one of the most important in modern art, but we need not speak further of it here, having already treated of it under BOLOGNESE SCHOOL OF PAINTING.
Of other Italian schools our notice must necessarily be very brief. Chief of these aro the Schools of Lombardy, which however are so broken up and subdivided, almost every city claiming a school of its own, that even if our apace permitted, it would be tedious to retrace so often the same ground as would be necessary in speaking of them however cursorily. Iwnzi has given the history at length of no less than five Lombard schools; those neinely of Mantua, Modena, Parma, Cremona, and Milan. Of these the most famous, as having produced
Correggio and so imparted a distinct diameter to Lombard painting, is that of Parma. But Andrea Mantegua, a native of Padua (born 1431, died 1506) must be considered as the true founder of Lombard painting, he having settled in Mantua and established there the school whence proceeded many of the chief painters who have adorned the schools of Lombardy. Manteg,na's most famous paintings are his ' Virgin end Saints,' and ' Victory,' both in Mantua, but what Vasari and his contemporaries regarded as his masterpiece, the series of designs in water-colours, entitled The Triumph of Julius Onsar,' is now in Hampton Court Palace. The great influence of Lionardo da Vinci on the schools of Lombardy has been already noticed in speaking of the Tuscan school.
Antonio Allcgri, or, from his birth-place, Correggio (b. 1494, d. 1534), may have been instructed in the school of 3Iantegna, though after the death of Andrea, but he probably learnt more from the works of Lionardo da Vinci in Milan, and from the practice of that master's scholars ; and he appears to have studied the paintings of Giorgione and Titian. Nothing in the history of art seems so premature as the style of Correggio. His early pictures at Dresden show the same colouring which he afterwards carried to such perfection. His feeling for grace, tenderness, and delicacy of expreseiou led him sometimes to the verge of sentimentalism ; but nothing can be purer or more refined in feeling than some of his best works. Of colour and chiaroscuro his mastery was perfect. No other artist ever played with light and shadow as he was wont to do. His half tones and his reflected lights produce the effect of illusion. He knew his power, and delighted in displaying it in the conquest of difficulties from which other masters shrank. The finest works of Correggio are the frescoes in the cathedral of Parma, and in the convent of St. Paul, in that city, the Notts and other pictures at Dresden. In the National Gallery are some very fine easel pictures by him, especially the ' Ecce Homo," Venus instructing Cupid,' and the Vierge au Panier.' [Contmeoto, in Btoo. Div.] The tendency to affectation visible in Correggio was a dangerous legacy to the school of Parma, and its evil consequences are especially visible in the works of Francesco Mazzola, or Il Parmigiano (b. 1503, d. 1540), to whom however it is impossible to deny great power and great feeling for beauty. [PARNIGIANO, in Btoo. Div.] But the influence of Correggio was not lasting in the schools of Lombardy. Like those of the rest of Italy they became imbued with the principles of the Caracci, and the later painters of Lombardy are feebly eclectic or coldly academic.