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Updated: June 8, 2025
Cyril Tourneur and John Marston are far more incomplete in genius than either Webster or Ford, although Tourneur sometimes obtains a lurid and ghastly tragic intensity which more than equals Ford when at his best; and Marston, in the midst of crabbedness and dulness, sometimes has touches of pathos and Michelangelesque foreshortenings of metaphor worthy of Webster.
Hence, throughout the fifteenth century, while there is a steady development of the artistic means required to realise those narrative themes which the Giottesques had invented, there is no introduction of any new artistic means unnecessary for this result, but which, like the foreshortenings of Michelangelo, and the light and shade of Tintoret, like the still further additions to painting represented by men like Velasquez and Rembrandt, could suggest new treatment of the old histories and enable the well-known events to be shown from totally new intellectual standpoints, and in totally new artistic arrangements.
On the altar of the Risen Christ in the Church of S. Antonio he painted the scene of Christ appearing to the Magdalene and the other Maries, in which he made a very beautiful view in perspective of a landscape receding into the distance; and in another chapel he painted the story of the Martyrs that is, their crucifixion in which work he made more than three hundred figures, what with the large and the small, besides a number of horses and trees, an open Heaven, figures both nude and clothed in diverse attitudes, many foreshortenings, and so many other things, that it can be seen that he did not execute it without extraordinary labour.
The active part of the body is more carefully studied than the rest, which is indicated by bold foreshortenings, placed in the second plane, and apparently only serves to throw into relief the raised arm or leg. This is no longer merely exact, it is true; it is a superior degree of truth. These pictures of dancers are psychologic documents of great value.
It did not exist in lines which she could measure, which she could follow. It seemed to have grown out of the canvas rather than to have been placed there. The faces were leaned over illusive foreshortenings which she could not hope to catch. The girl in front of her was making, it seemed to Mildred, a perfect copy. There seemed to be no difference, or very little, between her work and Reynolds's.
Other writers make different divisions, according to style or country; thus, Correggio, being by birth a Lombard, and the originator of a new style, the name of the Lombard school has been conferred by many upon the followers of his maxims, the characteristics of which are contours drawn round and full, the countenances warm and smiling, the union of the colors clear and strong, and the foreshortenings frequent, with a particular attention to the chiaro-scuro.
We must view it in every direction, "survey it," as Sterne says, "transversely, then foreright, then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings ;" and thus only can it be expected that we should adequately comprehend it. Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Chap. ii.
Of this art a sculptor in the round need not necessarily know anything, and, in fact, many of them, unfortunately, know altogether too little of it. The maker of a statue need not think about foreshortenings: if he gives the correct form the foreshortening will take care of itself. Sometimes it does so in a disastrous manner!
Still, whether we regard this fresco as closing the long series of "Last Judgments" to be studied on Italian church-walls from Giotto downwards; or whether we confine our attention, as contemporaries seem to have done, to the skill of its foreshortenings and groupings; or whether we analyse the dramatic energy wherewith tremendous passions are expressed, its triumph is in either case decided.
"For the chapel of the Pucci in the church of San Sebastian," says Vasari, "Antonio painted the altar-piece a remarkable and wonderfully executed work with numerous horses, many nude figures, and singularly beautiful foreshortenings. Also the portrait of S. Sebastian taken from life, that is to say, from Gino di Ludovico Capponi. This picture has been more extolled than any by Antonio.
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