United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the year 1336, just before Ambrogio began to paint, the Sienese Republic had concluded a league with Florence for the maintenance of the Guelf party. The Monte de' Nove still ruled the city with patriotic spirit and equity, and had not yet become a forceful oligarchy. The power of the Visconti was still in its cradle; the great plague had not devastated Tuscany.
Giovanni Pisano, to whom we owe the Spina Chapel and the Campo Santo at Pisa, the façade of the Sienese Duomo, and the altar-shrine of S. Donato at Arezzo four of the purest works of Gothic art in Italy showed a very decided leaning to the vehement and mystic style of the Transalpine sculptors.
Henry Wimbush was forced to sell some of his Primitives a Taddeo da Poggibonsi, an Amico di Taddeo, and four or five nameless Sienese to the Americans. There was a crisis. For the first time in his life Henry asserted himself, and with good effect, it seemed. Priscilla's gay and gadding existence had come to an abrupt end.
The Florentines put forward Cimabue as the first artist, but as the Sienese produce a picture, by Guido da Siena, dated before the birth of Cimabue, the victory is decidedly with them. As to pictorial merit, to my taste there is none in either of these old painters, nor in any of their successors for a long time afterwards.
The Florentines have overlooked the merits of their rivals, the Venetians and Sienese, who, in turn, have reciprocated; while Italy, as a whole, has had but small regard for the works of other nations. England has been slow to recognize the great merits of the Southern schools; and France, Holland, and Germany are equally in the bondage of local tastes or transitory fashions.
To Ralph the Sienese air was not only breathable but intoxicating. The sun, treading the earth like a vintager, drew from it heady fragrances, crushed out of it new colours. All the values of the temperate landscape were reversed: the noon high-lights were whiter but the shadows had unimagined colour.
Peter did not return the look; he stood with bent head, looking vaguely down at the Sienese chalice. That too was one of Hilary's finds. Hilary it seemed, had approved its seller in an article in the Gem. "Damme," said Lord Evelyn suddenly, with unusual explosiveness, "if I didn't like you better when you were fifteen! Now, you blasé and soulless generation, I suppose you want to play bridge.
The first great painter among the Sienese was Duccio di Buoninsegna. The completion of his masterpiece a picture of the Majesty of the Virgin, executed for the high altar of the Duomo marked an epoch in the history of Siena.
It must be admitted at the outset that he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict itself, as will probably be perceived in the course of this narration. He entertained himself greatly with his reflections and meditations upon Sienese architecture and early Tuscan art, upon Italian street-life and the geological idiosyncrasies of the Apennines.
The great Sienese names, Ugolino, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini, belong to the old world as much as to the new; but the movement that produced Masaccio, Masolino, Castagno, Donatello, Piero della Francesca, and Fra Angelico is a reaction from the Giottesque tradition of the fourteenth century, and an extremely vital movement.
Word Of The Day