United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We can trace his footsteps as he went, by those wonderful old pictures which he spread with loving care over the bare walls of the churches, lifting, as it were, the curtain that hides Heaven from our view and bringing some of its joys to earth. Then, at Assisi, he covered the walls and ceiling of the church with the wonderful frescoes of the life of St.
Instead of being lined with chapels the aisles are covered with mural paintings. These frescoes are of great archæological value on account of their great age and the evident Byzantine influence which characterizes them; artistically they are unimportant.
In either case, but particularly perhaps in Taddeo's picture, the answer to Christ's question, which Leonardo at Milan makes so dramatic, is a foregone conclusion. All the gates of Florence had religious frescoes in them, some of which still remain. The great bronze bishop is said to be by Donatello and to have been meant for Or San Michele; but one does not much mind.
I was greatly pleased to have seen this great work, which, I think, is one of the most beautiful and wonderful I have ever beheld. It is of priceless value. In this palace are also Damini's frescoes. We regretted we had not time to visit the university, which as late as 1864 had over a thousand students.
From Vienna we continue our journey to Prague, the capital of Bohemia, a quaint old city, founded in 1722 by the Duchess Libussa, and which has to-day nearly sixty thousand inhabitants. It is crowded with historical monuments, ancient churches, and queer old chapels, some of which are ornamented by frescoes hardly rivalled by the finest at Rome and Florence.
A decayed roadside chapel with faded frescoes a shepherd who played us some melodies on his pipe those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth the gateway of a farmhouse being repaired a reservoir of water full of newts a fascinating old woman who told us something about something the distant view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion for lingering.
Masaccio, we see, was peopling a visible world; the Spanish chapel painters were merely allegorizing, as agents of holiness. The Ghirlandaio choir in the same church would yield a similar comparison; but what we have to remember is that Ghirlandaio painted these frescoes in 1490, sixty-two years after Masaccio's death, and Masaccio showed him how.
His creation of Eve at S. Marcello at Rome, and his frescoes in the Doria place at Genoa, are well-known; at the Vatican he assisted Giovanni d'Udine in his arabesques, Polidoro in his antique chiaroscuri, and executed some of the most beautiful historical paintings of the loggie di Raffaello.
We know that his constitution gave him the staying-power, while his fiery Titanic spirit gave him the energy, to carry out and perfect his mighty frescoes and statues at the same heat that the creative hour yields other men for the production of a sketch alone.
What interests us in Giotto's work at Padua and Assisi is first of all the story that he has to tell, and secondly the human quality of the characters that he exhibits. His sense of setting is extremely slight; and the homely details that he presents for the purpose of suggesting the time and place and circumstances of his action are very crudely depicted. His frescoes are all foreground.
Word Of The Day