The History Of Painting In Italy, Vol. 2 By Luigi Antonio Lanzi HISTORY OF PAINTING IN LOWER ITALY. BOOK III. ROMAN SCHOOL. I have frequently heard the lovers of art express a doubt whether the Roman School possesses the same inherent right to that distinctive appellation as the schools of Florence, Bologna, and Venice. Those of the latter cities were, indeed, founded by their respective citizens, and supported through a long course of ages; while the Roman School, it may be said, could boast only of Giulio Romano and Sacchi, and a few others, natives of Rome, who taught, and left scholars there. The other artists who flourished there were either natives of the cities of the Roman state, or from other parts of Italy, some of whom established themselves in Rome, and others, after the close of their labours there, returned and died in their native places. But this question is, if I mistake not, rather a dispute of words than of things, and similar to those objections advanced by the peripatetic sophists against the modern philosophy; insisting that they abuse the meaning of their words, and quoting, as an example, the vis inertiæ; as if that, which is in itself inert, could possess the quality of force. The moderns laugh at this difficulty, and coolly reply that, if thevis displeased them, they might substitute natura, or any other equivalent word; and that it was lost time to dispute about words, and neglect things. So it may be said in this case; they who disapprove of the designation of school, may substitute that of academy, or any other term denoting a place where the art of painting is professed and taught. And, as the learned universities always derive their names from the city where they are established, as the university of Padua or Pisa, although the professors may be all, or in great part, from other states, so it is with the schools of painting, to which the name of the country is always attached, in preference to that of the master. In Vasari we do not find this classification of schools, and Monsignor Agucchi was the first to divide Italian art into the schools of Lombardy, Venice, Tuscany, and Rome. He has employed the term of schools after the manner of the ancients, and has thus characterised one of them as the Roman School. He has, perhaps, erred in placing Michel Angiolo, as well as Raphael, at the head of this school, as posterity have assigned him his station as chief of the school of Florence; but he has judged right in classing it under a separate head, possessing, as it does, its own peculiar style; and in this he has been followed by all the modern writers of art. The characteristic feature in the Roman School has been said to consist in a strict imitation of the works of the ancients, not only in sublimity, but also in elegance and selection; and to this we shall add other peculiarities, which will be noticed in their proper place. Thus, from its propriety, or from tacit convention, the appellation of the Roman School has been generally adopted; and, as it certainly serves to distinguish one of the leading styles of Italian art, it becomes necessary to employ it, in order to make ourselves clearly understood. We cannot, indeed, allow to the Roman School so extensive a range as we have assigned to that of Florence, in the first book; nevertheless, every one that chooses may apply this appellation to it in a very enlarged sense. Nor is the fact of other artists having taught, or having given a tone to painting in the capital, any valid objection to this term; since, in a similar manner, we find Titiano, Paolo Veronese, and Bassano, in Venice, though all of them were strangers; but, as they were subjects of her government, they were all termed Venetians, as that name alike embraces those born in the city or within the dominions of the Republic. The same may be said of the subjects of the Pope. Besides the natives of Rome, there appeared masters from many of her subject cities, who, teaching in Rome, followed in the steps of their predecessors, and maintained the same principles of art. Passing over Pier della Francesca and Pietro Vannucci, we may refer to Raffaello himself as an example. Raffaello was born in Urbino, and was the subject of a duke, who held his fief under the Roman see, and who, in Rome, held the office of prefect of the city; and whose dominions, in failure of male issue, reverted to the Pope, as the heritage of the church. Thus Raffaello cannot be considered other than a Roman subject. To him succeeded Giulio Romano and his scholars; who were followed by Zuccari, and the mannerists of that time, until the art found a better style under the direction of Baroccio, Baglione, and others. After them flourished Sacchi and Maratta, whose successors have extended to our own times. Restricted within these bounds, the Roman may certainly be considered as a national school; and, if not rich in numbers, it is at least so in point of excellence, as Raffaello in himself outweighs a world of inferior artists. The other painters who resided in Rome, and followed the principles of that school, I shall neither attempt to add to, nor to subtract from the number of its followers; adopting it as a maxim not to interfere in the decision of disputes, alike idle and irrelevant to my subject. Still less shall I ascribe to it those who there adopted a totally different style, as Michelangiolo da Caravaggio, an artist whom Lombardy may lay claim to, on account of his birth, or Venice, from his receiving his education in that city, though he lived and wrote in Rome, and influenced the taste of the national school there by his own example and that of his scholars. In the same manner many other names will occasionally occur in the history of this school: it is the duty of the historian to mention these, and it is, at the same time, an incomparable triumph to the Roman School, that she stands, in this manner, as the centre of all the others; and that so many artists could not have obtained celebrity, if they had not seen Rome, or could not have claimed that title from the world unless they had first obtained her suffrage. I shall not identify the limits of this school with those of the dominions of the church, as in that case we should comprise in it the painters of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, whom I have reserved for another volume. In my limits I shall include only the capital, and the provinces in its immediate vicinity, as Latium, the Sabine territories, the patrimony of the Church, Umbria, Picenum, and the state of Urbino, the artists of which district were, for the most part, educated in Rome, or under the eyes of Roman masters. My historical notices of them will be principally derived from Vasari, Baglione, Passeri, and Leone Pascoli. From these writers we have the lives of many artists who painted in Rome, and the last named author has included in his account his fellow countrymen of Perugia. Pascoli has not, indeed, the merits of the three first writers; but he does not deserve the discredit thrown on him by Ratti and Bottari, the latter of whom, in his notes to Vasari, does not hesitate to call him a wretched writer, and unworthy of credit. His work, indeed, on the artists of Perugia, shows that he indiscriminately copied what he found in others, whether good or bad; and to the vulgar traditions of the early artists he paid more than due attention. But his other work, on the history of the modern painters, sculptors, and architects, is a book of authority. In every branch of history much credit is attached to the accounts of contemporary writers, particularly if they were acquaintances or friends of the persons of whom they wrote; and Pascoli has this advantage; for, in addition to information from their own mouths, he derived materials from their surviving friends, nor spared any pains to arrive at the truth, (see Vita del Cozza). The judgment, therefore, which he passes on each artist, is not wholly to be despised, since he formed it on those of the various professors then living in Rome, asWinckelmann has observed (tom. i. ); and, if these persons, as it is pretended, have erred in their judgment on the Greek sculptors, they have certainly not erred in their estimate of modern painters, particularly Luti, to whom I imagine Pascoli, from esteem and intimacy, deferred more than to any other artist. We have from Bellori other lives, written with more learning and criticism, some of which are supposed to be lost. He had originally applied himself to painting, but deserted that art, as we may conjecture from Pascoli (vita del Canini), and attached himself to poetry, and the study of antiquities: and his skill in both arts manifests itself in the lives he has left, which are few, but interspersed with interesting and minute particulars of the characters of the painters and their works. In his plan, he informs us he has followed the advice of Niccolo Poussin. He composed also a "Description of the figures painted by Raffaello, in the churches of the Vatican;" a tract which contains some severe reflections on Vasari, but is nevertheless highly useful. We also find a profusion of entertaining anecdotes in Taja, in his "Description of the Vatican;" and in Titi, in his account of the pictures, sculpture, and architecture of Rome.