Encyclopaedia Britannica - Bernardino Luini

( Originally Published 1907 )

ASERENE, contented, and happy mind, naturally expressing itself in forms of grace and beauty, seems stamped upon all the works of Luini. Along with this natural sweetness of character, a dignified suavity is the most marked characteristic of his works. They are constantly beautiful, with a beauty which depends at least as much upon the loving self-withdrawn expression as upon the mere refinement and attractiveness of form. This quality of expression appears in all Luini's productions, whether secular or sacred, and imbues the latter with a peculiarly religious grace—not ecclesiastical unction, but the devoutness of the heart. His faces, while extremely like those painted by Leonardo, have less subtlety and involution and less variety of expression, but fully as much amenity. He began indeed with a somewhat dry style, but this soon developed into the quality which distinguishes all his most renowned works; although his execution, especially as regards modeling, was never absolutely on a par with Leonardo's.

Luini's paintings do not exhibit an impetuous style of execution, and certainly not a negligent one. His method was simple and expeditious, the shadows being painted with the pure color laid on thick, while the lights are of the same color thinly used, and mixed with a little white. His coloring is mostly rich, and his light and shade forcible.

G. C. WILLIAMSON BERNARDINO LUINI'

LUINI was a master of fresco work. It was the suitable medium in which to express his thoughts; the vision of his mind could easily and rapidly be placed upon the wall, and the very rapidity of the work and its sketch-like character were all in his favor.

He was a shrewd and dexterous colorist, his frescos are luminous and brilliant but never gaudy, his easel-pictures rich, deep, and harmonious. In fresco his scale of coloring is a low one, and his colors grayish in tone, such tints as salmon, orange, pale brown, puce, and cold blue being his favorites. In his easel-pictures a different scheme prevailed, and his tints are velvety red, delicate roses and greens, and intense purples and browns; but the result is always harmonious.

His knowledge of landscape was but slight; buildings are well drawn, mountains are well suggested; but trees are beyond him, and the sky, with its clouds (which curiously enough is never really blue in his pictures), baffles him altogether.

He was neither so subtle nor so profound as Leonardo. He was not so archaic as are Borgognone and Foppa, nor so architectural as Bramantino,, nor so luscious and voluptuous in style and coloring as Gaudenzio Ferrari. His composition is not nearly so original as is Sodoma's, nor so well-balanced as is Bramantino's.

He was persevering, hard-working, and simple in his efforts, and has left behind him a vast quantity of work, very much of which is of the first order of merit. He was not dramatic in his expression, but rather lyric; not inductive, but deductive; not objective, but subjective. His visions were within his breast, they inspired his art, and his pencil reflected his own inner consciousness.

He cannot be called a great master. He was very weak in composition, his frescos are often too crowded. There is a poverty in his early efforts, a monotony and a sameness of feature, the domestic element is uppermost, the heroic or epic almost absent, the idyllic in the greatest demand. Later on, with the same general characteristics, comes the deep and intense religious devotion, and it is this which is the key-note of his life. Symonds recognized his wonderful power to "create a mood." His pictures, like a note of music, draw a corresponding chord from the heart; and this chord is, at the will of the painter, bright with joy or tremulant with sorrow and grief. His friends were, as Rio expressed it, "those who prayed and those who wept," and it is to them that he still appeals so forcibly.

The man's intense faith, his deep devotion, the truth of his religion, and his intimate knowledge of the mysteries alike of joy and of bitter sorrow are revealed by his pictures. His own tenderness of nature, the sweetness of his affection, his chivalry, thoughtfulness, serious disposition, and calm serene faith,—all these are elements of his life taught by his works.

JOHN RUSKIN 'QUEEN OF THE AIR'

LUINI is, perhaps, the best central type of the highly trained Italian painter. He is the only man who entirely united the religious temper which was the spirit-life of art with the physical power which was its bodily life. He joins the purity and passion of Fra Angelico to the strength of Veronese: the two elements, poised in perfect balance, are so calmed and restrained, each by the other, that most of us lose the sense of both. The artist does not see the strength, by reason of the chastened spirit in which it is used; and the religious visionary does not recognize the passion, by reason of the frank human truth with which it is rendered. . . .

Luini has left nothing behind him that is not lovely; but of his life I believe hardly anything is known beyond remnants of tradition which murmur about Lugano and Saronno, and which remain ungleaned. This only is certain, that he was born in the loveliest district of North Italy, where hills and streams and air meet in softest harmonies. Child of the Alps, and of their divinest lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty religious creed, and a sufficient law of life, and of its mechanical arts. Whether lessoned by Leonardo himself, or merely one of many disciplined in the system of the Milanese school, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and enduringly to paint. His tasks are set him without question, day by day, by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who accept it without any harmful praise or senseless blame. Place, scale, and subject are determined for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as he is required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize gloriously; every touch he lays is eternal, every thought he conceives is beautiful and pure; his hand moves always in radiance of blessing; from day to day his life enlarges in power and peace; it passes away cloudlessly, the starry twilight remaining arched far against the night.

F. T. KUGLER, 'THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS OF PAINTING'

BERNARDINO LUINI holds perhaps the foremost rank among the Lombard painters indirectly influenced by Leonardo. He was not, as is generally supposed, a pupil of Da Vinci, but appears to have learned the elements of his art from one Scotto, a painter of whom nothing is known, passing afterwards into the school of Ambrogio Borgognone, who may be considered as his real master. It was not until much later that he established himself at Milan, and was influenced by the works of Leonardo. Whether he ever saw the master himself is doubtful. It was not until after 1510 that he imitated him, and adopted his second, or Leonardesque, manner, departing from that of his first teachers. It was more than ten years later that, in his third, or what is known as his "blond," manner, he completely developed his own style, showed himself a really independent master, and executed the works upon which his reputation is mainly founded. Luini was fortunately a very prolific artist, and painted in tempera, fresco, and oil. He rarely signed his pictures; only four, belonging to his last period, are inscribed with his name.

The great merit of Luini has been acknowledged only comparatively recently. The qualities of power and great individuality are not included within the range of his art; but in purity, grace, and spiritual expression, his works, in their appeal to the heart, take rank with the highest known. His career em-braced the period of transition from the earnestness of the older masters to the feeling for beauty which marked the perfection of Italian art, and his works, especially those of his later period, embody both. Pictures by Luini long passed under the name of Leonardo; yet his type is so decided and distinct that his hand is now easily recognized. His likeness to Leonardo, in pictures of his second manner, is confined to a smiling and pathetically beatific expression common to both, but much more frequent in Luini, whose heads of women, children, and angels present every grade from calm serenity, sweet cheerfulness, and innocent happiness, to ecstatic rapture. The transparency and refined delicacy of his coloring and the accuracy and freedom of his execution place him among the first of fresco-painters, and as a decorative painter he is also almost unrivaled.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 'RENAISSANCE IN ITALY'

WITHOUT Leonardo it is difficult to say what Luini would have been, SO thoroughly did he appropriate his teacher's type of face, and, in oil-painting, his refinement. And yet Luini stands on his own ground, in no sense an imitator, with a genius more simple and idyllic than Da Vinci's.

To the circumstance of his having done his best work in places hardly visited until of late years may in part perhaps be attributed the tardy recognition of a painter eminently fitted to be popular. Luini was essentially a fresco-painter. None, perhaps, of all the greatest Italian frescanti realized a higher quality of brilliancy without gaudiness by the scale of colors he selected and by the purity with which he used them in simple combinations. His frescos are never dull or heavy in tone,, never glaring, never thin or chalky. He knew how to render them both luminous and rich, without falling into the extremes that render fresco-paintings often less attractive than oil-pictures. His feeling for loveliness of form was original and exquisite. The joy of youth found in Luini an interpreter only less powerful and even more tender than in Raphael. While he shared with the Venetians their sensibility to nature, he had none of their sensuousness or love of pomp. The sentiment for naïve and artless grace, so fully possessed by Luini, gave freshness to his treatment of conventional religious themes. Under his touch they appeal immediately to the most untutored taste, without the aid of realistic or sensational effects. Among all the Madonnas ever painted, his picture of Mary with the trellis of white roses, and another where she holds the infant Christ to pluck a purple columbine, distinguish themselves by this engaging spontaneity. The fresco of St. Catherine carried by angels to Mt. Sinai might be cited for the same quality of freshness and unstudied poetry.

When the subject demanded the exercise of grave emotion Luini rose to the occasion without losing his simplicity. All harsh and disagreeable details are either eliminated or so softened that the general impression, as in Pergolesi's music, is one of profoundest and yet sweetest sorrow. Luini's genius was not tragic. The nearest approach to a dramatic motive in his work is the figure of the Magdalene kneeling before the cross, in the `Crucifixion' in Lugano, with her long yellow hair streaming over her shoulders, and her arms thrown backward in an ecstasy of grief. He did well to choose moments that stir tender sympathy—the piety of deep and calm devotion, How truly he felt them—more truly, I think, than Perugino in his best period—is proved by the correspondence they awake in us. Like melodies, they create a mood in the spectator.