The History of Italian Painting - Luigi Lanzi

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Cortona. As learned in perspective as his brother was in figures, his style was so similar, that no architectural painter was so well suited to accompany the figures of the other. This will be allowed by all who view the ceiling in the church of S. Matthew at Pisa, which is their finest work, or their paintings in Siena, and at other places, where they were employed together. They educated a pupil worthy of them, in Tommaso Tommasi, of Pietra Santa, a man of vast conception, who succeeded in Pisa to the commissions bestowed upon his masters, and produced very pleasing specimens of his powers in the nave of the church of S. Giovanni. Ippolito Marracci, of Lucca, the scholar of Metelli, appears a successful rival of his master, either when he painted by himself, as in the Rotonda, at Lucca, or when associated with his brother, as was generally the case. Domenico Schianteschi, a disciple of Bibieni, lived in San Sepolcro; his perspectives in that city are to be seen in the houses of many of the nobility, and are much esteemed.

      Florence has boasted professed portrait painters, even to the present time; among whom Gaetano Piattoli is particularly extolled. He was pupil to a French artist, Francesco Riviera, who had resided and died at Leghorn, and was very much prized in collections for the excellence of his Conversazioni and Turkish ballets. He is well known too, in other countries; for he was employed to take portraits of the foreign nobility who visited Florence. The portrait of himself, which he painted for the ducal gallery, indicates the style of the rest. An illustrious female artist emanated from the school of Gabbiani, although assisted in her studies by other masters, and this was Giovanna Fratellini, who was not without invention, and was most expert in portrait painting. She executed in oil, in crayons, in miniature, and in enamel, various portraits of the family of Cosmo III. and of other princes, to paint whom she was sent by her sovereign to several cities of Italy. That which she painted of herself, is in the ducal gallery: in it she has blended the employment of the artist with the affection of a mother. She is represented in the act of taking a likeness of Lorenzo, her only son and pupil, who died in the flower of his age. It is painted in crayons, an art in which she may be called the Rosalba of her time. Domenico Tempesti, or Tempestino, is rather included among engravers than painters; though he was instructed by Volterrano in Florence, in the latter art, and exercised it with credit both in landscape and portrait. He is mentioned by Vianelli in the catalogue of his pictures. It would appear that he was the same Domenico de Marchis, called Tempestino, whom Orlandi casually notices in the article of Girolamo Odam, whom Domenico had initiated in the elements of landscape painting. Orlandi gives also a separate article, under the head of Domenico Tempesti, in which his voyages through Europe, and his long residence at Rome, are dwelt upon.

      Many landscapes, chiefly rural views, painted by Paolo Anesi, are dispersed through Florence, and there are also many of them in Rome. Francesco Zuccherelli, a native of Pitigliano, born in the year 1702, was his scholar. On going to Rome, he resided there a long time, and first entered the school of Morandi, and afterwards of Pietro Nelli. His first intention was to study figures, but by one of those circumstances which discover the natural predilection, he applied himself to painting landscape; and pursued it in a manner that united strength and sweetness; and has been highly extolled not only in Italy, but over all Europe. His figures also were elegant, and these he was sometimes employed to introduce in the landscapes and architectural pieces of other artists. His principal field in Italy was Venice, where he was settled, until the celebrated Smith made him known in England, and invited him to that island, in which he remained many years, exercising his pencil for the court, and for the most considerable collections of pictures. He enjoyed the particular esteem of Count Algarotti; in the possession of whose heirs are two landscapes by Tesi, with figures by Zuccherelli: of the first artist I shall again speak in the school of Bologna. Algarotti was commissioned by the court of Dresden to procure the works of the best modern painters, and suggested to Zuccherelli subjects for two pictures, in which he succeeded admirably, and was employed to repeat them for the king of Prussia. In his old age he returned to Rome, and was employed there, at Venice and in Florence, where he died in 1788. These anecdotes of Zuccherelli I obtained along with many others from the Sig. Avvocato Lessi, a gentleman deeply versed in the fine arts.

      The name of this artist brings to a fair conclusion the series of Florentine painters, which has been continued for little less than six centuries, in an uninterrupted succession of native artists, without the intervention of one foreign master in this school, at least one so eminent as to mark an era. With the exception of the last years, in which art was on the decline throughout Italy, the Florentine school, with all its merit, and that is undoubtedly very great, owes its progress to native genius. It was not unacquainted with foreign artists, but from them it disdained to borrow; and its masters never adopted any other style on which they did not engraft a peculiarity and originality of manner.

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