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Giovanni Barile was a coarse painter and a rough man; he had, however, generosity enough to see that the boy was worthy of better teaching, and got him entered in the bottega of Piero di Cosimo, who had attained a good rank as a colourist, his eccentricities possibly adding to his reputation. Accordingly in 1498, Andrea being then eleven years of age, a life of earnest study began.
Was not the cartoon at Florence a sufficient proof that he could do this if he chose, and had he not learned the art of fresco in the bottega of his master Ghirlandajo? Whatever his original reluctance may have been, it was speedily overcome; and the cartoons for the ceiling, projected with the unity belonging to a single great conception, were ready by the summer of 1508.
Raffaelle kissed him, and said, "Now listen!" A few days later Signer Benedetto informed his pupils in ceremonious audience of the duke's command and of his own intentions; he did not pronounce his daughter's name to the youths, but he spoke in terms that were clear enough to assure them that whoever had the good fortune and high merit to gain the duke's choice of his pottery should have the honor of becoming associate in his own famous bottega.
In sooth, the spirit of Messer Luca was more made for war and its risks and glories than for the wheel and the brush of the bottega; but he had loved Pacifica ever since he had come down one careless holy-day into Urbino, and had bound himself to her father's service in a heedless moment of eagerness to breathe the same air and dwell under the same roof as she did.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems to have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some memory of classic art. Magistri Comacini is a title frequently inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier middle ages, as synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to account for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a race in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had never been wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers, Bernardino and Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the Gothic and the Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture with which the Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of Maroggia, a village near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out into the world between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of Campionesi would probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left their native province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the Duomo had been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of the fabric in 1487. To complete the work by the addition of a tribune was his duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the fashion of those times, for criticism in his bottega; and the usual difference of opinion arose among the citizens of Como concerning its merits. Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was called in to advise. It may be remembered that when Michelangelo first placed his Piet
Both at Florence and at Perugia he opened a bottega; and by the exercise of his trade as a master-painter, he realised enough money to buy substantial estates in those cities, as well as in his birthplace. In all the greatest artworks of the age he took his part.
All this time I had had not a mouthful of breakfast, and we betook ourselves to Doney's bottega to get a cup of coffee before going home. But when we attempted this we found that it was more easily said than done. The Via dei Malcontenti as well as the whole of the Piazza di Santa Croce was some five feet under water!
The following was the method of work in the "bottega." The panels were prepared with a coating of plaster of Paris, over which, when dry, a coat of under colour, ground in oil, was passed. But the assistants, who were skilled artists, were called to put broad level tints of local colour on the buildings, &c., the master himself finishing the faces.
Now, the pottery was all to be placed on this forenoon in the bottega of Signor Benedetto; and the Duke Guidobaldo was then to come and make his choice from amidst them; and the master-potter, a little because he was a courtier, and more because he liked to affect a mighty indifference and to show he had no favoritism, had declared that he would not himself see the competing works of art until the eyes of the Lord of Montefeltro also fell upon them.
Giannotti, writing the life of one of the chief patriots of the republic, says: 'Egli stette a bottega, come fanno la maggior parte de' nostri, cosi nobili come ignobili. To quote instances in a matter so clear and obvious would be superfluous: else I might show how Bardi and Peruzzi, Strozzi, Medici, Pitti, and Pazzi, while they ranked with princes at the Courts of France, or Rome, or Naples, were money-lenders, mortgagees and bill-discounters in every great city of Europe.
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