United States or Dominican Republic ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Nothing could be weirder than the effect of the scene in clear moonlight: the contrast of snowy beams and sable ground perfectly suited the uncanny look and the weird legends of the site. Beyond the Cima we made the gay little town of Telde, which lodges some 4,000 souls, entering it by a wide fiumara, over which a bridge was then building.
I mean to say it to you only once, for the statement is too important to be weakened by repetition. It may make this more believable to you if I put beside each other a piece of detail from each school. I gave you the St. John of Cima da Conegliano for a type of the colour school.
In size, in distribution, in the arrangement and characterisation of the chief groups, the two altar-pieces are so nearly related that the idea of a merely accidental and family resemblance must be dismissed. This type of Christ, then, of a perfect, manly beauty, of a divine meekness tempering majesty, dates back, not to Gian Bellino, but to Cima.
They are each from 2ft. 6in. to 2ft. 9in. long, and are curved, the chord being about 1-9/16in., in a length of 2ft. 6in. The first fragment is a cornice, or impost, carved on both sides, in three tiers: the upper, a cima with a leaf; the middle division, a Greek fret, not quite similar on each side the stone, and below is a running ornament.
Cima is well represented by 1259, Virgin and Child, with the Baptist and the Magdalen. 1351, A Holy Family, by Lotto, was formerly assigned to Dosso Dossi. 1350 is an early and charming little work, St. Jerome, by the same master.
The resemblance is not, however, one of colour and technique, since this last one of the earliest of Giorgiones still recalls Giovanni Bellini, and perhaps even more strongly Cima; it is one of type and conception.
From Cima we descend the western slope of the ridge by a series of grand, abrupt curves through the valley of San Lazar, after having thus crossed the range of mountains known as Las Cruces.
In Bellini, Carpaccio, Cima, and other early masters, the features, forms, and dress are mainly modern and Venetian; and Giorgione, Titian, and even the eclectic Tintoret, were more interested in the bright lights of a steel breastplate than in the shape of a limb; and preferred in their hearts a shot brocade of the sixteenth century to the finest drapery ever modelled by an ancient.
His pictures are to be fairly seen only at Venice, where, in out-of-the-way churches, over tawdry altars, his colors gleam undimmed by time, and the faces of his Virgins look down with a still celestial sweetness. But there is one picture here, by a Venetian contemporary of John Bellini, before which we shall do well to pause. It is a St. Catharine, by Cima da Conegliano.
They are not the exclusive possession of any single school of art; Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto of the Florentines, Francia of the Bolognese, and Bellini and Cima of the Venetians were particularly partial to them.