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Updated: June 12, 2025
In the Forster Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a notebook which contains his first memoranda for the wonderful design of this masterpiece. At Windsor are studies for the heads of S. Matthew, S. Philip, and Judas, and for the right arm of S. Peter. That of the head of the Christ in the Brera at Milan has been so much "restored" that it can hardly be regarded as Leonardo's work.
Little conception of his charm can be formed by those who have not seen his frescoes in the Brera and S. Maurizio Maggiore at Milan, in the church of the Angeli at Lugano, or in the pilgrimage church of Saronno.
The smile of the Virgin of the Rocks is a part of the mystery of her shadowy environment; the serenity of the Madonna in the Meadow belongs to the atmosphere of the open fields. The Madonna by Sodoma, recently added to the Brera Gallery at Milan, is an example in point. Among others who were affected by the influence of Leonardo and chief of the Lombards was Luini.
The National Gallery and the Brera contain others which are very similar in style and conception. The three enthroned Madonnas which have already been noticed are not less remarkable for religious significance. There is a peculiar freshness and vivacity in the San Giobbe picture. Both Virgin and child are alert and eager, welcoming the future with smiling and youthful enthusiasm.
Born of a noble family, and following painting as an amusement rather than as an actual profession, his works are rare, and one of the finest examples of his art is the Glorification of the Virgin, in the Brera Gallery, at Milan. The mandorla-shaped glory surrounds the Virgin's figure, studded with faintly discerned cherub heads.
"I had not observed," he went on, "that you have here a photograph of the Sposalizio of the Brera. What a picture! E stupendo!" and he turned back to his seat and smilingly lit a fresh cigar. I saw at once that I had hit on a point where his native garrulity was protected by the chain-mail of religious discipline that every Catholic priest wears beneath his cassock.
Finding, as I always did, that my first impressions were the liveliest, I confined my attention in the Brera chiefly to two pictures which confronted me as soon as I entered; they were Van Dyck's 'Saint Anthony before the Infant Jesus' and Crespi's 'Martyrdom of Saint Stephen. I realised on this occasion that I was not a good judge of pictures, because when once the subject has made a clear and sympathetic appeal to me, it settles my view, and nothing else counts.
Lodovico's strongly marked features and long dark hair are relieved by the richness of his dark blue mantle sown with gold stars, while Beatrice wears a gold ferronière on her brow. Her dark brown hair is coiled in a jewelled net, a lock strays over her cheek, as in Zenale's portrait in the Brera altar-piece.
The famous head of the Doge Loredano in the National Gallery must have been painted in or after 1501. In 1507, he completed the large picture of S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria, now in the Brera Gallery at Milan, begun by his brother Gentile. Within three years of his death, namely in 1513, he could produce such a masterwork as the altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo.
And always, in looking, I have thought of the "Sposalizio" of Raphael in the Brera at Milan, of the tiny dream of blue country framed by the temple doorway beyond the Virgin and Saint Joseph. The doorways of the temples of Egypt are very noble, and nowhere have I been more struck by their nobility than in Medinet-Abu.
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