United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Two painters, who eminently excelled in simplicity and purity of sentiment, are Gian Bellini of Venice, and Bernardino Luini of Milan. Squarcione, though often fantastic, has painted one or two of these Madonnas, remarkable for simplicity and dignity, as also his pupil Mantegna; though in both the style of execution is somewhat hard and cold.
This master was followed by Baccio Baldini, a goldsmith of Florence, who, not having much power of design, took all that he did from the invention and design of Sandro Botticelli. And this method, coming to the knowledge of Andrea Mantegna in Rome, was the reason that he made a beginning with engraving many of his works, as was said in his Life.
Pater's elder sister; engravings, if I remember right, from Botticelli, or Luini, or Mantegna; a few mirrors, and a very few flowers, chosen and arranged with a simple yet conscious art. I see that room always with the sun in it, touching the polished surfaces of wood and brass and china, and bringing out its pure, bright color.
He loved art and spent large sums upon his collection; yet, said he, "I should grudge the money for other occasions did it not furnish me with the entrancing spectacle of a middle-aged statesman panting after masterpieces, fingering this or that painted board, and staking his position in this world and the next upon the momentous question, Is this ear in the manner of Fra Angelico? or, Could Mantegna have so foreshortened a leg?
And so Mantegna, with his Roman kindness for whatever had breath and vigour and boldness of design, carved his Judith on the lines of a Vestal Virgin, and gave her the rapt, daemonic features of the Tragic Muse.
At the same time she promised the duchess a replica of a portrait of her brother, King Ferrante of Naples, which she valued too much to part with, but would have copied as soon as possible by Francesco Mantegna. Before satisfying her cousin's wishes, however, the prudent Isabella applied to the duke and ascertained that he had no objection to her action.
Though Mantegna seems to have owed all his training to Padua, it is impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque one among the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan impresario of third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest.
Botticelli, with all his Florentine precision, shows that, like Lionardo, he was a seeker and a visionary in his anxious feeling after curve and attitude. Mantegna seems to be graving steel or cutting into marble. It is easy to apply this analysis in succession to any draughtsman who has style.
In the great galleries of the Louvre at Paris he found abundant models which he could study in the works of the old masters; and there, poring over Michael Angelo and Mantegna, he could recompense himself a little in his spare hours for the time he was obliged to waste on pinky-white faces and taffeta gowns.
Thus we see the men and women of the Renaissance in the works of all its painters: heavy in Ghirlandajo, vulgarly jaunty in Filippino, preposterously starched and prim in Mantegna, ludicrously undignified in Signorelli; while mediæval stiffness, awkwardness, and absurdity reach their acme perhaps in the little boys, companions of the Medici children, introduced into Benozzo Gozzoli's Building of Babel.
Word Of The Day