Chap. XV. FRANCIA BIGIO. 505 figures are seen. His hollow eyes are sunken under a marked bony brow. His hair,.cap, and dress are black. The forms of the face and hands are scant in flesh, and broken in contour, the cavities and retreating parts in deep unfathomable shadow. 1 Hundreds of students have copied this piece, round the melancholy charm of which a halo lias been thrown by the name of Raphael. Yet, critics have long agreed that that name is not to be sus tained; and in its stead have called that of Francesco Francia whose technical system is different, or of Bugiar- dini whose powers are too humble. The most obvious ob jection to the nomenclature hitherto preferred is derived from the essentially Florentine character of the likeness and its accessories. It discloses the studious effort of a highly accurate draughtsman, deeply impressed by the examples of Leonardo and his mode of handling, and fa miliar with the methods applied in more than one of Da Vinci’s heads. 2 It defines a skeleton of bone like that in the Virgin of the Turin Annunciation. Its features in stead of being simplified into grandeur, as Raphael would have done, are elaborated to the loss of simplicity, full of research rather than of feeling. One might apply to the author Vasari’s opinion of Francia Bigio; “a man of slight refinement, because he laboured too much, pro ducing with a certain hardness, but cautious and diligent in the measure of proportions”. 3 The colour is of a low tinted, hard, and glassy enamel unknown to Raphael, its shadows thin and dark, its execution that of Francia Bigio, and betraying an acquaintance with that of Andrea del Sarto. Had not other portraits of the same class presented themselves for comparison with this of the Louvre, it would have been becoming to put the question more in the light of an enquiry. But a whole series of similar •Louvre. No. 385. Under the “Portrait of a goldsmith”, No. 207, name of Raphael. A piece of dark at the Pitti. colour all round the edges, is new. 2 Ex. gr. and particularly in the 3 Vas. IX. 98.
