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His patches of blues and reds in the frescoes of Monte Oliveto are oppressively distinct; his use of dull brown for the shading of flesh imparts a disagreeable heaviness to his best modelled forms; nor did he often attain in his oil pictures to that grave harmony we admire in his "Last Supper" at Cortona. The world of light and colour was to him a comparatively untravelled land.
The background to the circular "Madonna" in the Uffizzi, the "Flagellation of Christ" in the Academy at Florence and in the Brera at Milan, and the "Adam" at Cortona, belong to this grade. We may add the pages in a predella representing the "Adoration of the Magi" in the Uffizzi.
Meanwhile the affairs of the State were most flourishing. The strong-handed masters of the city not only held the Duke of Milan in check, and prevented him from turning Italy into a kingdom; they furthermore acquired the cities of Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo, Montepulciano, and Cortona, for Florence, making her the mistress of all Tuscany, with the exception of Siena, Lucca, and Volterra.
He bore a name which, if not noble, had been more than once distinguished in the annals of Tuscany. Residing at his native place, Cortona, he there enjoyed the highest reputation, and was frequently elected to municipal office.
Finding that Donatello had not been too lavish of his praise, he drew the vase, returned to Florence, and surprised his friends with the accurate drawing he had made, before they knew of his departure, they believing that he must be occupied with his inventions. This urn, or funeral vase, according to the Florentine editors of Vasari, is still in the Cathedral of Cortona.
GIORGIO VASARI, better known as the chronicler of the works of other artists than for the excellence of his own, was born at Arezzo, 1512 died at Florence, 1574. His father was a painter, and the family was connected by ties of relationship with Luca Signorelli of Cortona. Among the many masters under whom he studied was Andrea del Sarto.
He overtook him in the district of Cortona, where Hannibal, accurately informed of his antagonist's march, had had full time to select his field of battle a narrow defile between two steep mountain walls, closed at its outlet by a high hill, and at its entrance by the Trasimene lake.
Symonds, in his Renaissance of the Fine Arts, speaks of the Greek revival as entirely an age of sculpture; but the solitary glance into the more perishable art of painting among the Greeks, to be seen at Cortona, reveals the exquisite perfection to which this branch was also brought.
One of the brothers having taken it back, promising to give the woman something else instead, the Saint said immediately: "My brother, kneel down and acknowledge your fault; give the cloak back to the woman: she is poorer than I am." His companions got him another, and he gave it again to a man of Cortona, who came to solicit alms for the love of God, at the same convent at Celles.
Hence these innovations, the motive of which I wrapped up in mystery; each man was left to make his own conjecture, that all might be equally impressed by my oracular obscurity. There now! you are laughing at me; it is your turn this time. Mi. I am laughing much more at the folk of Cortona and Metapontum and Tarentum, and the rest of those mute disciples who worshipped the ground you trod on.
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