THE VISION OF SAINT AUGUSTINE.

BENVENUTO TISIO.

THIS talented artist is perhaps better known by his cognomen of Garofalo, or Garofolo, which he obtained from marking his pictures with a flower which bears this name in the Italian language-we believe the gilliflower, which, however, does not make its appearance in the present performance; but his proper patronymic designation is as above. He was born. at Ferrara, in the year 1480, and received his rudimental education, as an artist, under Panetti, from whose school he removed to Cremona, and placed himself under the tuition of his maternal uncle, Niccolo Soriani. Lanzi, who pronounces Tisio to have been the most eminent among Ferrarese painters, says, that "on Niccolo's death he fled from Cremona," which, perhaps, may only be intended to imply, that he suddenly quitted that city, and not that he left it under any apprehension of punishment, since we find no crime imputed to him. He fled from Cremona to Rome; thence he travelled through various Italian territories; remained two years with Costa at Mantua, and finally returned to Rome, just at the season of Raphael's glory.

Tisio was the senior of this great artist by a single year; nevertheless, he immediately did homage to his superior genius, by becoming his disciple, and though but for a short time, it was sufficient to enable him to become the chief ornament of the Ferrarese school. He imitated Raphael in his style of design, in the characters of his heads, and in expression, with considerable success; blending with

the colour of that great master, something of superior warmth and richness, which he derived from his earlier Ferrarese practice, or from his own observation of nature, or of those local energies of his art, of which he had obtained the mastery. On these points, the Vision of St. Augustine affords ample testimony.

After a few years, Benvenuto's domestic affairs recalled him to his native city. Having arranged them, he would willingly have returned to Raphael and Rome, but the solicitations of his former preceptor, Panetti, and still more, the honourable commissions of Duke Alphonso, retained him at Ferrara, where he is believed to have died in the year 1559.

The St. Augustine, whose curious vision is here depicted, was not the bishop of that name who converted our Kentish King Ethelbert to christianity, and who has been emphatically styled "the Apostle of England," but was a bishop of Hippo, in Africa, and a father of the Christian church, who preceded him of Canterbury, about a century and a half; and, like him, was an intolerant zealot, fond of power, and of distinction as a polemic writer. Among the mysteries which he aspired to develope, and proposed to display before the Christian world, was that of the Holy Trinity! and whilst engaged in the necessary preliminary studies, he very opportunely dreamed that a little child, seated by the seaside, and holding a ladle, warned him that it would be easier for himself to transfer the contents of the ocean into a small hole which appeared in the earth before him, than for any exertion of human intellect to reach the sublime height of that most recondite of mysteries. The saintly student therefore desisted.

This was figuratively, and with a childlike simplicity, informing the Bishop, that he, who was human, and finite, could not possibly comprehend what was divine, infinite, and incomprehensible; and the artist, more thoroughly aware of this, than he supposed St. Augustine to have been, has distinguished him by a very capital polemic expression—self-sufficient, and as if he almost despised what he was compelled to submit to. This should, at least, in some measure, redeem Benvenuto from the imputation of servility, or complete subserviency to the purposes of other men, in the employment of his pencil, which has been cast upon him, perhaps mistakenly and undeservedly. It has been supposed that "the Holy Family, with angels in the sky, the figure of St. Catherine beneath, and that of St. Lawrence in the distance, were doubtless introduced by order of the person for whom it was painted, who wished it to contain the figures of all those saints to whom he was more especially devoted." The reader perceives that we are sceptical as to this submission on the part of the painter to the dictations of others, and rather incline to hold by our formerly asserted opinion, that the prevalent superstitious fiction, which we had nearly termed atmospheric, that pervaded all mental movements, during the dark ages of pilgrimage and chivalry, acted the romantic part of the poetry of more enlightened times, and that the artists were so nearly as much possessed by it as their patrons and employers, as to feel no repugnance, and perhaps scarcely any consciousness, that they were violating chronology, or "the verity of historical representation." It was as much matter of course in the painting of altar-pieces and monastic

D

decorations, as are the fictions of personification, the fabled existence of "the Muse," or fancied presence of "the Sacred Nine," to modern poets. It was like Dante's pressing Virgil into Christian service. It was what Pope would call the painter's "machinery," of that superstitious period. Have we not now our romances of history, as they are permitted to be called, in which as wild flights from truth are sometimes taken for the benefit the benefit? —Oh yes, for the benefit, no doubt, "of the discerning public."

The discerning public has, however, at length, discovered the limit of these sacred jokes, and that they may not be carried quite so far in the nineteenth, as in the fifteenth century: it has discovered that though old bizarre assemblages of this nature may continue to be tolerated (because they are old), new ones will not. An attempt at the romance of the Old Testament has lately failed, although the talents of our friend Martin were put in requisition for its support; and a day may come when the pure fountains of truth may no longer be polluted even by such sweet infusions as have lately palled upon our better sense.

The landscape passages of Tisio's performance, are preposterously heaped together in the style of Pelion upon Ossa; the rocky mountains being interspersed with trees, patches of cultivation, and clusters of buildings; among the latter may be distinguished a Christian church and some monastic edifices, seen across a bay of the sea. St. Laurence-if it be St. Laurence is at a distance, standing upon a little jutting cape, but without his symbolical gridiron.

Upon a sort of rock table, or table rock, is part of

the holy student's library: his mitre also is there, evidently too large for his head-either by inadvertency or inuendo. All the principal figures are distinguished by golden haloes, excepting the infant Christ, and the little Holy Ghost, or for whomsoever else the visionary monitor may be intended, who brandishes his ladle, and restrains the spiritual ambition of the bishop: yet these have sacred radiances emanating from the top and sides of their heads, in three distinct divisions, with some mystical trinitarian reference, as may be conjectured, but which (after contemplating the present picture) we may not, and do not, attempt to penetrate.

The action of this important little personage is well conceived, being at once infantile, and artlessly expressive of his purpose. He, as well as the infant Saviour, who stands gracefully on the lap of his mother in the regions of beatitude, is drawn and coloured with a degree of truth and delicacy, which other, less gifted, painters, have toiled after in vain; and they are both so free from every species of pictorial affectation, as to show that Tisio had traversed Italy to good account, well knowing how to avail himself of the infantile graces of his predecessors, and more especially those of Raphael and Parmegiano.

Neither are the countenance and figure of St. Catherine, who, holding her palm of martyrdom, stands somewhat awkwardly wedged among rocks, behind the bishop, less exquisitely beautiful; yet is in due subservience to the diviner beauty of the Madonna. The holy student himself, attired in his richly coloured episcopal robes, is excellently well painted, and without the least attempt at obtrusive