The Incoronata however is, after all, the monument less of Ambrogio Borgognone than of the gifted Piazza family:--Callisto, himself born at Lodi, his father, his uncle, his brothers, his son Fulvio, working there in three generations, under marked religious influence, and with so much power and grace that, quite gratuitously, portions of their work have been attributed to the master-hand of Titian, in some imaginary visit here to these painters, who were in truth the disciples of another--Romanino of Brescia.
At Lodi, the lustre of Scipione Piazza is lost in that of Callisto, his elder brother; but he might worthily be included in a list of painters memorable for a single picture, such pictures as the solemn Madonna of Pierino del Vaga, in the Duomo of Pisa, or the Holy Family of Pellegrino Piola, in the Goldsmiths' Street at Genoa.
A single picture, a single figure in a picture, signed and dated, over the altar of Saint Clement, in the Church of San Spirito, at Bergamo, might preserve the fame of Scipione Piazza, who did not live to be old.
The figure is that of the youthful Clement of Rome himself, "who had seen the blessed Apostles," writing at the dictation of Saint Paul.
For a moment he looks away from the letters of the book with all the wistful intelligence of a boy softly touched already by the radiancy of the [99] celestial Wisdom.
"Her ways are ways of pleasantness!"
That is the lesson this winsome, docile, spotless creature--ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris--younger brother or cousin of Borgognone's noble deacons at the Certosa--seems put there to teach us.
And in this church, indeed, as it happens, Scipione's work is side by side with work of his.
At Lodi, the lustre of Scipione Piazza is lost in that of Callisto, his elder brother; but he might worthily be included in a list of painters memorable for a single picture, such pictures as the solemn Madonna of Pierino del Vaga, in the Duomo of Pisa, or the Holy Family of Pellegrino Piola, in the Goldsmiths' Street at Genoa.
A single picture, a single figure in a picture, signed and dated, over the altar of Saint Clement, in the Church of San Spirito, at Bergamo, might preserve the fame of Scipione Piazza, who did not live to be old.
The figure is that of the youthful Clement of Rome himself, "who had seen the blessed Apostles," writing at the dictation of Saint Paul.
For a moment he looks away from the letters of the book with all the wistful intelligence of a boy softly touched already by the radiancy of the [99] celestial Wisdom.
"Her ways are ways of pleasantness!"
That is the lesson this winsome, docile, spotless creature--ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris--younger brother or cousin of Borgognone's noble deacons at the Certosa--seems put there to teach us.
And in this church, indeed, as it happens, Scipione's work is side by side with work of his.