He left fine specimens of this art at Siena and in Rome, where he was followed by Polidoro, who carried it to the summit of perfection. Peruzzi practised it at the Farnese palace in those pictures in green earth, with which he covered the outside, and still more in the internal decorations. Not to mention F. Sebastiano, Raffaello himself was employed in the same place: and in one apartment, finished without assistance, the celebrated Galatea. Baldassare painted the ceiling and the corbels with some fables of Perseus, and other heroes: the style is light, spirited, and resembles that of Raffaello, but is unequal to that of his model. Though inferior in figures he was not behind in some other branches. His imitation of stucco ornaments appears so relieved that even Titian was deceived by it, and found it necessary to change his point of view before he could be convinced of his error. A similar ocular deception is produced by the hall where a colonnade is represented, the intercolumniations of which make it appear much larger than it really is. This work induced Pietro Aretino to say, that the palace "contained no picture more perfect in its kind."[294] And if the scenes which he painted for the plays, represented in the Apostolical palace for the amusement of Leo X. had survived to our days, the perspective paintings of Peruzzi would have obtained greater fame than the Calandra of Card. da Bibbiena; and it would have been said of him, as of the ancient, that he discovered a new art, and brought it to perfection. The observation of Vasari, Lomazzo, and other old writers, that Peruzzi was not to be surpassed in perspective, has been recently confirmed by Sig. Milizia in the Memoirs of Architects. In this art he appears to me to have given the first and most classic examples. When I have occasion hereafter to notice celebrated perspectives in Rome, in Venice, or Bologna, we must recollect, that if others surpassed him in the vastness of their works, they never did so in their perfection. Maestro Riccio is praised in Siena as second to him in perspective, and was his scholar for some time; but afterwards he imitated the figures of his father-in-law.
The merit of Baldassare in grotesque is better seen at Siena than in Rome. This sort of painting, always the offspring of a whimsical fancy, was congenial to Mecherino and to Razzi; and both practised it with success. The latter seemed born to conceive and to execute it with unpremeditated facility; he painted in this style in the Vatican, and obtained the approbation of Raffaello, who was unwilling to cancel his grotesques as he did his historical compositions: he also executed some at Monte Oliveto that are highly facetious, and may be called an image of his own brain. Cristoforo Rustici and Giorgio da Siena obtained great fame in this style; but none of them equalled Peruzzi. This artist, graceful in all his works, was most elegant in grotesque; and amid the freedom that a subject wholly capricious inspires, he preserved an art which Lomazzo has studied, in order to comprehend its principles. He employs every species of idea; satyrs, masks, children, animals, monsters, edifices, trees, flowers, vases, candelabra, lamps, armour, and thunderbolts; but in their arrangement, in the actions represented, and in every other circumstance, he bridled his caprice by his judgment. He distorts and connects those images with a surprising symmetry, and adapts them as devices emblematic of the stories which they surround. This man, living in the brightest period of modern art, is in short, one of the individuals most interesting in its history. He had many pupils in architecture, but few in painting: among the latter are a Francesco Senese, and a Virgilio Romano, who are commended by Vasari for their frescos, and to whom grotesques, of uncertain origin, are sometimes attributed in Siena.
Somewhat later, but certainly before the complete revival of the art at Siena, I am disposed to class a fresco painter, whom Baglione and Titi call Matteo da Siena; but who is named Matteino in his native place, that he may not be confounded with the Matteo of the fourteenth century. He lived at Rome in the time of Niccolò Circignani, in whose pictures, and in those of artists of the same class, he inserted perspectives and landscapes. The efforts of his pencil may be seen at S. Stefano Rotondo, in thirty-two historical pictures of martyrs painted by Circignani, which have been engraved by Cavalieri. Many of his landscapes are in the Vatican gallery, which are beautiful, although in the old style. At the age of fifty-five he died at Rome, where he was established in the pontificate of Sixtus V. These circumstances make it appear to me unlikely, that he had painted in the Casino of Siena, about 1551, or in the Lucarini palace, along with Rustichino: the first period I consider too early, and the latter too late.
I shall now give some account of the chiaroscuros executed in mosaic, which owe their perfection to the school of Siena, during the epoch of which we are about to finish our account. I have already mentioned the erection of the magnificent cathedral of Siena, a work of many years; and may now add, that though it was grand in all its parts, nothing shewed such originality, or was so generally admired as the pavement around the great altar, all storied with subjects taken from the New Testament, of which the figures were surrounded by appropriate ornaments, which served to vary and divide the immense ground of the painting. A succession of artists always labouring to improve this work, carried it in a few years to an astonishing pitch of excellence. The nature of the stone quarries in the Sienese territory, afforded also facilities to the art which could not be so easily attained in other places. It originated like other arts from small and rude beginnings. Duccio commenced this ornamented pavement. The part which he executed is constructed of stones, in which the limbs and contours of the figures are scooped out: it is a dry but not ungraceful production of the thirteenth century. The young woman in the choir who kneels with her arms leaning on a cross, and, as an inscription informs us, implores the mercy of the Lord, is the work of Duccio: it probably represents Christian piety; and certainly both the attitude and the countenance are expressive of what she asks. Those who continued the pavement immediately after Duccio, are not so well known. We read of an Urbano da Cortona, and an Antonio Federighi, who designed and executed the two Sybils; the rest was in like manner the work of artists of little note. They all, however, improved the art in some degree, cutting the figures with the chisel, and filling up what was removed by the iron, with pitch or some black composition; and this was a rude sort of chiaroscuro. To them succeeded Matteo di Giovanni, who, from an attentive consideration of what his predecessors had done, fell on a method of surpassing them. He remarked a vein of the marble in the drapery of a figure of David, which formed a very natural fold, and by the contrast of the colours made the knee and leg appear in relief: in like manner he discovered in a figure of Solomon a shade of colour in the marble, well suited to produce effect. He then selected marbles of different colours; and joining them after the manner of an inlaying with stained wood, produced a work that was entitled to the name of a marble chiaroscuro. In this manner he executed without assistance a Slaughter of the Innocents, a composition which he frequently repeated, as we before remarked. He thus opened the path for Beccafumi's histories, who wrought in a superior style a large part of that pavement, which his exertions, says Vasari, rendered "the most beautiful, the largest, and most magnificent that was ever executed." This work employed his leisure hours till he attained to old age; and though painting interrupted his labours, he did not abandon it until his death, and hence, some of the historical compositions were completed by other hands, as is supposed from his cartoons. He executed the Sacrifice of Isaac, in figures as large as life; and Moses striking the Rock, with a crowd of Hebrews rushing to catch the water, and slake their thirst; besides several other subjects, which are described by Vasari; and more minutely by Landi.[295] I shall subjoin a few observations on the mechanism of the art. The first attempt of Beccafumi was to compose a picture of inlaid wood, which was long preserved in the studio of Vanni, and afterwards was in the possession of the Counts of the Delci family. He represented the Conversion of S. Paul in this piece, by employing wood of the colours only that were necessary to produce a chiaroscuro. After this model he selected white marble for the light parts of his figures, and the very purest for the catching lights; grey marble for the middle tints, black for the shadows, and for the darkest lines he sometimes employed a black stucco. He cut the pieces of these marbles, which are all indigenous, and inlaid them so nicely that the joinings are not easily discernible. This has induced some to believe that white marble is alone employed in this pavement, and that the middle tints and shadows are formed by certain very penetrating colours, capable of softening the marble and of colouring it throughout. We learn from a letter of Gallaccini, that this idea was adopted by some natives of Siena, and it appears from another of Mariette, that this great connoisseur was impressed with
