Note 56 — BOOK III. (continued 5)

Previous to the present edition, Gaetano Gandolfi breathed his last; Ubaldo, his elder brother, having already preceded him to the tomb, at the time he was preparing to decorate the cupola of S. Vitale in Ravenna. Ubaldo had been pupil to Torelli, to Graziani, and in particular under Lelli had exercised his talents in drawing successfully from the naked model, and to such a foundation added dignity of style. Of this, several works in painting conducted with extreme care, as well as some in clay and stucco, at Bologna, and other places in Romagna, are the proof. But to judge more particularly of his merits, we ought to examine his academical designs. In his ideas he was common, and not very natural in his colouring, and generally considered on this account inferior to his brother Gaetano, who was esteemed in Italy one of the most able artists of his day. Bologna, always grateful to its eminent citizens, expressed at his decease the degree of esteem in which he was held while living. His obsequies, of which a separate account was published in folio, equal what we read in Malvasia respecting those of Agostino Caracci; and the oration there recited in his praise by Sig. Grilli, deserves insertion in any of the most select works written on the art. There too, Gandolfi, very judiciously, is not held up as a model in painting; a forbearance which he himself displayed, even refusing to receive pupils, and observing that he was himself in want of instruction. Yet from the influence of his great reputation he was frequently imitated, and, as it happened, with most success in his worst qualities, more particularly in his tints. In this respect he had been ill grounded by his elder brother; but improved himself by studying for the space of a year at the fountain head of colourists, in Venice, and by copying for a Venetian dilettante the finest pieces of the Caracci at Bologna. It is difficult to account for his fine colouring in some paintings, equal at least to the good artists of his time, and his inferior colouring in others, as that of the Death of Socrates, at Monsig. Trenta's, bishop of Foligno. It is feeble and deficient in truth, owing either to caprice or to age. In his preparations of paintings he was more commendable: his first conceptions were sketched on slate with pencil, and more carefully on paper. He next began to select; modelled the figures in chalk, and draped them; afterwards forming the design on a large scale, and by aid of his experiments, and of the living model, he went on completing and retouching his work. He has been accused of borrowing a little too freely from ancient models; but whoever had seen him, aged as he was, devoting himself in the public academy to the practice of modelling, will not unjustly confound him with those plagiarists, so notorious in our own day. Moreover, he may be pronounced inimitable to most artists, in those rare gifts, which nature had lavished upon him: enthusiasm, fertility of invention, sensibility, and skill in depicting the passions; to which he added a correct eye, and ability both to design and compose, in the decoration of friezes for the institute, exotic plants and other rarities of nature, as well as to engrave with much elegance, and skill to paint in oil as well as in fresco. A really impartial biographer must pass his opinion on every man, and let his verdict result from an examination of his masterpieces. Such belonging to Gandolfi are his Assumption, in the ceiling at S. M. della Vita, and the Nuptials of Cana, at the refectory of S. Salvatore in Bologna; not to insist on the Martyrdom of S. Pantaleone, at the church of the Girolimini in Naples, with some other works scattered through various parts of Italy.