Bernardino Luini by James Mason

As we have said already nothing is known of Luini's early life, although the fact that he was born at Luino on the Lago Maggiore seems to be beyond dispute. The people of that little lake side town have no doubt at all about the matter, and they say that the family was one of some distinction, that Giacomo of Luino who founded a monastery in his native place was the painter's uncle. Perhaps the wish was father to the thought, and because every man who sets out to study the life and work of an artist is as anxious to know as was Miss Rosa Dartle herself, there are always facts of a sort at his service. He who seeks the truth can always be supplied with something as much like it as paste is to diamonds, and can supplement the written word with the aid of tradition. The early life of the artist is a blank, and the authorities are by no means in agreement about the year of his birth. 1470 would seem to be a reasonable date, with a little latitude on either side. Many men writing long years after the painter's death, have held that he was a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, indeed several pictures that were attributed to da Vinci by the authorities of different European galleries are now recognised as Luini's work, but the mistake is not at all difficult to explain. If we turn to "La Joconda," a portrait by da Vinci that hangs in the Louvre to-day, and is apparently beyond dispute in the eyes of the present generation of critics, and then go through the Brera in Milan with a photograph of "La Joconda's" portrait in our hand, it will be impossible to overlook the striking resemblance between Luini's types and da Vinci's smiling model. Leonardo had an academy in Milan, and it is reasonable to suppose that Luini worked in it, although at the time when he is supposed to have come for the first time to the capital of Lombardy, Leonardo da Vinci had left, apparently because Louis XII. of France, cousin and successor of that Charles VIII. who had troubled the peace of Italy for so long, was thundering at the city gates, and at such a time great artists were apt to remember that they had good patrons elsewhere. The school may, however, have remained open because no great rulers made war on artists, and Luini would have learned something of the spirit that animated Leonardo's pictures. For other masters and influence he seems to have gone to Bramantino and Foppa. Bramantino was a painter of Milan and Ambrosio Foppa known as Caradosso was a native of Pavia and should not be reckoned among Milanese artists as he has so often been. He was renowned for the beauty of his medals and his goldsmith's work; and he was one of the men employed by the great family of Bentivoglio.

THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE (In the Brera, Milan)