LUINI
1475?-1532

Of Leonardo's followers, as apart from his directly taught pupils, one of the most attractive artists was BERNARDINO LUINI (1475 ?-1532), even though he lack force.

Born at Luini, on the Lago Maggiore, Bernardino Luini studied his craft under Borgognone, from whom he caught a spiritual sense which gave forth dreamy serenity and mystic charm, wedded to a feeling for beauty of a winsome and tender quality displayed in his many works in fresco and oils. But Luini, like all the Milanese painters, [164] fell at last under the compelling influence of Leonardo, and, without the force to be benefited by converse with the great, he became thenceforth little more than an imitator of the other, wholly lost his own vision, and sank into a Leonardesque.

Of his large and most important works-and he was a prolific painter-the frescoes from the Villa Pelucca, mostly now in the Brera at Milan and in the Louvre, though several were in the Kann collection, are the finest examples of his earlier and personal art, showing his gifts at their full, at the same time betraying his wonted lack of cohesion in composing. Of his later Leonardesque years, the Christ disputing with the Doctors or Christ arguing with the Pharisees in the National Gallery is a typical example, and was long attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

Luini reached to brilliancy in his frescoes, employing rich and luminous colour, that utters well his joy in youth. His naïve grace brought freshness to religious themes, as in his charming Mary with the Espalier of Roses.

BAZZI, NICKNAMED " IL SODOMA "
1477 - 1549

Of all Leonardo da Vinci's followers, beyond question the most gifted was BAZZI, known from his flagrant life by the grim and awful name of " Il Sodoma." Bazzi, from repute (and Vasari's gossip is likely enough true), gave himself up to flagrant and vicious living, and whether the tale of his transgressions be over-coloured or not, he at any rate by his eccentric, indolent habits, and above all by his lack of sustained effort, dragged down his very remarkable and great powers to a lesser achievement than should have been his. The unequal artistry and obvious carelessness of much of his work in his authentic pieces would [165] seem to prove at least that the repute of his sluggish and uncertain ways is justified.

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi was the son of a shoemaker. Born at Vercelli in 1477, he was early apprenticed to an insignificant painter of the place, called Spanzotto ; but, whilst still in his youth, he wandered to Milan, and, as a consequence, fell under the spell of Leonardo da Vinci; and was probably painting in Milan when catastrophe fell upon the Ducal house. In 1501, at twenty-four, he moved southwards and settled in Siena ; and it was at Siena that he chiefly created his masterpieces, and in the doing brought back life to the decaying art of that city.

Bazzi had been at work in Siena some six years when he was called to Rome in 1507 by Pope Julius II., to paint a series of frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura of the Vatican; but there had arisen the genius of a youth called Raphael, whose friend he became ; and all that remains of Bazzi's commission is the ceiling decoration round Raphael's tondi in the room that Bazzi was to have painted. But Rome possesses, in the Farnesina, a series of frescoes of remarkable beauty, painted for the banker Agostino Chigi when he again visited Rome seven years afterwards (1514).

In the cloisters of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, and in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, are fine frescoes that show Bazzi's remarkable powers. At the Uffizi Gallery is his most celebrated picture, the St. Sebastian Banner.

The Pope knighted Bazzi for a painting of Lucretia- which has vanished. Bazzi is at his best when dealing with simple arrangements. Dowered with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of the nude, he was always at his best when painting a single figure, as in his S. Sebastian at the Uffizi, which combines a Greek sense of beauty with a pathos that is wholly Christian.

[166] Bazzi created a considerable school in Siena, where he lived his rollicking life amidst his horses and many eccentricities.

Raphael placed Bazzi very high as an artist, and painted his portrait next to himself in his famous School of Athens fresco-the figure in the white cap and gown, long said to be Perugino ; but Perugino was then a much older man.

GAUDENZIO FERRARI
1470? - 1546

The mediocre painter Spanzotto must have been a better teacher than artist ; from his studio at Vercelli came another pupil to Milan, GAUDENZIO FERRARI, born about 1470, and therefore some seven years older than Bazzi; and he, too, found a revelation in the art of Leonardo da Vinci ; but he, like Bazzi, was too virile a painter to fall into flat mimicry and thus lapse into a Leonardesque, with mere prettiness as his aim. Gaudenzio had shown from youth a strength and originality, as in his paintings at the Sacro Monte of Varallo, which stood him in good stead ; and he never allowed the stupendous genius of Leonardo to overwhelm his personal vision. He painted superb frescoes, twenty-one scenes from The Life of Christ, at S. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo, which are of remarkable power ; and his frescoes at Vercelli bear witness to his forceful style and personal art.

Of the two best followers and fellow-townsmen of Gaudenzio, GIROLAMO GIOVENONE (1490?- 1555) never came to Gaudenzio's gifts, though a good colourist ; and Gaudenzio's pupil, BERNARDINO LANINI (1511 ?-1581), is best known by his many frescoes in his native town of Vercelli and the neighbourhood.

The whole lake-district of Italy is rich in works of [167] Leonardo's school ; and it had this advantage over the schools of Raphael and Michelangelo, that the neo-paganism of Rome and Florence did not touch the northern valleys of Lombardy ; the worldly patronage of splendour-loving popes and cardinals was unkown to the Milanese workers.