Art
Court classics
David Wakefield
From Borso to Cesare d'Este 1450-1628 (Matthiesen Gallery till 14 August) Mantegna to Meryon (Colnaghi till 14 July) he most significant of all exhibitions 1 currently on view in London is, with- out a doubt, that devoted to the School of Ferrara, From Borso to Cesare d'Este 1450-1628, at the Matthiesen Gallery (7/8 Mason's Yard, Duke Street, SW1). Impor- tant from the point of view of the history of art, it is also a delight for the eye and emphasises the fact that good paintings, well hung, do not need extraneous gim- mickry to attract attention. The school of painting which thrived at the Court of Ferrara during the 15th and 16th centuries, under the auspices of the all-powerful Este family, has received very little attention from scholars in this country apart from the late Benedict Nicolson (whose name, curiously, is not mentioned in the cata- logue). This is, therefore, a properly pioneering exhibition, breaking new ground as exhibitions should but rarely do. The charm of the Italian schools of paint- ing is that each has its own distinctive tonality and character. The rich colours and love of ostentation of Venice, the linear purity and intellectualism of Flor- ence, the restrained but intense emotional- ism of Bologna — all these are easy enough to recognise. But when it comes to Ferrara — a northern city in close contact with its neighbours, Padua, Mantua, Verona and Venice — the indigenous school of paint- ing is more difficult to define, partly because many of its artists came from elsewhere. The Court of Ferrara was, in fact, wide open to outside influence — two of the greatest Italian poets, Tasso and Ariosto, who worked there and lent it prestige, were neither of them natives of the city.
Our first impression is of relatively small, tightly knit paintings, deep and rich in colour and portraying gentle emotion, as in 'The Holy Family with the Infant St John' by Dosso Dossi. This exquisite little panel is painted with an almost childlike candour, more reminiscent of the late mediaeval miniaturist style of the Maitre de Flemalle than contemporary artists of the High Renaissance working in Florence and Rome. Much the same could be said of most of the other works by Dossi, who nevertheless came into contact with Raphael in Rome but painted mainly ceilings and tapestry designs for the Dukes Alfonso and Ercole II of Ferrara. The artist's taste for obscure allegory is illus- trated by his strange painting 'Venus Awakened by Cupid', showing Venus lan- guidly reclining in a bower with overhang- ing fruit, while overhead a small Cupid rushes in on a bank of clouds; her expres- sion, as far as it can be read, is one of surprise. The catalogue entry suggests con- vincingly that this is a marriage picture, the theme probably taken from late classical poetry, but one cannot help feeling that Venus looks less than delighted at the prospect.
The other most prominent artist in this exhibition is Garofalo, who worked both in Rome under Raphael and in Venice, where he is said to have admired the work of that most elusive of painters, Giorgione. He was responsible for decorating most of the religious buildings in Ferrara. Though an artist of striking individuality and well represented in English public collections, Garofalo's work is relatively unfamiliar to most people. His reverential attitude to- wards Raphael is fully evident in the beautiful small panel of the 'Holy Family' from the Courtauld Collection; but where- as Raphael's paintings of domestic sub- jects, sometimes alienate by an excess of sweetness and purity, Garofalo's is simple, human and not too composed. Raphael may have been the greatest artist of all time, but one can have too much of a good thing. His all-pervasive influence can also be seen in Garofalo's 'Miracle of the Swine', an impressive but somewhat rigid painting in which the pupil was too obviously under the spell of his master.
To do justice in a short space to the many currents and cross-currents of this fascinating exhibition is impossible, The best I can do is select two other paintings worth particular attention: an intriguing small panel on copper by Scarsellino show- ing a group of nude women bathing in a cove and seeking for coral, and Marco Zoppo's charmingly naive painting of 'St Jerome' from the Thyssen Collection at Lugano.
Colnaghi's is currently holding an exhibi- tion of Old Master Prints: Mantegna to Meryon. The title itself suggests the twin poles of this exhibition, the Italian Re- naissance and mid-19th-century France, which at first sight appear to have little in common but which, on closer inspection, reveal a strong mutual affinity. This rela- tionship is underlined by the fact that Baudelaire frequently resorted to Renais- sance engravings, especially those of that elusive artist Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617) -- represented here by four superb plates — as a source of imagery in 'Les Fleurs du Mal'. Victor Hugo was equally fascinated by the engravings of Albrecht Diirer, whose `St Jerome in his Study' (1514), showing the hermit saint surrounded by his usual attributes and the shibboleths of his profession, is perhaps the finest in the whole exhibition. The hauntingly beautiful landscape of 'Three Trees' by Rembrandt, with its streaks of black rain falling obli- quely from a heavily overcast sky, was also the prototype for an almost exactly identic- al composition by Victor Hugo. Examples such as these could be multiplied inde- finitely to illustrate the profound reper- cussions exerted by great works of art
on the sensibility of later generations, trans- mitted largely through the medium of en- gravings.
Many of these plates can, however, simply be enjoyed for their own sake, without reference to any historical context. This goes primarily for the fine sequence of topographical views by Marieschi of Venice and Piranesi of Rome, both of whom seem to gain in power and concen- tration by the exclusion of colour. The exhibition is concluded chronologically by Charles Meryon's marvellously delicate and precise view of Paris, `Le Pont au Change', with the mock-mediaeval Palais de Justice on the right, so evocative of the city which provided such a fertile source of inspiration for artists and writers in the 19th century.
Previous page
