d of realistic or sensational effects. Even
S. Sebastian and S. Rocco, whom it is difficult to represent with any
novelty of attitude or expression, became for him the motives of fresh
poetry, unsought but truly felt.[390] Among all the Madonnas ever painted
his picture of Mary with the espalier of white roses, and another where
she holds the infant Christ to pluck a purple columbine, distinguish
themselves by this engaging spontaneity. The frescoes of the marriage of
the Virgin and of S. Catherine carried by angels to Mount Sinai might be
cited for the same quality of freshness and unstudied poetry.[391]

When the subject demanded the exercise of grave emotion, Luini rose to the
occasion without losing his simplicity. The "Martyrdom of S. Catherine"
and the fresco of Christ after the Flagellation are two masterpieces,
wherein the depths of pathos have been sounded, and not a single note of
discord is struck.[392] All harsh and disagreeable details are either
eliminated, or so softened that the general impression, as in Pergolese'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 Magdalen kneeling before the cross, with her long yellow
hair streaming over her shoulders, and her arms thrown backwards in an
ecstasy of grief.[393] 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.

What Luini did not learn from Lionardo, was the art of composition. Taken
one by one, the figures that make up his "Marriage of the Virgin" at
Saronno, are beautiful; but the whole picture is clumsily constructed; and
what is true of this, may be said of every painting in which he attempted
complicated grouping.[394] We feel him to be a great artist only where the
subject does not demand the symmetrical arrangement of many parts.

Gaudenzio Ferrari was a genius of a different order, more robust, more
varied, but less single-minded than Luini. His style reveals the
influences of a many-sided, ill-assimilated education; blending the
manners of Bramantino, Lionardo, and Raphael without proper fusion. Though
Ferrari travelled much, and learned his art in several schools, he, like
Luini, can only be studied in the Milane