Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
This is one of Signorelli's finest altar-pieces, the colour being especially rich and harmonious, and it shows, even more than the Loreto frescoes, the strength of Florentine influences. For example, very close to Pollaiuolo is the figure of the angel tuning the lute, with its striped scarf, and so also is the powerful head of S. Ercolano.
An excellent sculptor, and likewise a Ferrarese, has been Maestro Girolamo, who, living at Recanati, has executed many works in marble at Loreto after his master, Andrea Contucci, and has made many of the ornaments round that Chapel or House of the Madonna.
On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest, between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the white stream of the Amazon. After having passed this tributary on the left, it peacefully arrived during the evening of the 23d of June alongside the large island of Jahuma.
Loreto was a hundred leagues distant; but this was no obstacle to the religious enthusiast, whose lifelong dream it had been to bear the faith far and wide among the barbarian peoples of the Spanish world.
And mingled with them were representations of saints, such as are sold at the fairs and festivals of Sicily, and are reverently treasured by the pious and superstitious contadine; San Pancrazio, Santa Leocanda, the protector of child-bearing women; Sant Aloe, the patron saint of the beasts of burden; San Biagio, Santo Vito, the patron saint of dogs; and many others, with the Bambino, the Immacolata, the Madonna di Loreto, the Madonna della Rocca.
The story is told in the frescoes of the chapel of Loreto, only a quarter of an hour's walk from Varallo, and no one can have known it better than D'Enrico. The frescoes are explained by written passages that tell us how, when Joachim was in the desert, an angel came to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and told him the Virgin was to be born.
I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto," that black Madonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "some of the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by explaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might be proved by the verse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. Others maintained that she became black during her sojourn in Egypt. . . . Priests, of to-day, say that extreme age and exposure to the smoke of countless altar- candles have caused that change in complexion which the more naive fathers of the Church attributed to the power of an Egyptian sun"; but the writer ruthlessly disposes of this supposition by pointing out that in nearly all the instances of black Madonnas it is the flesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of the lips, the white of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved their original colour.
It is whispered between ourselves, indeed, it is quite true that a short while ago the Indian divers discovered an extravagantly rich bed of pearls. Instead of reporting to any of the companies, they have hung them all upon our Most Sacred Lady of Loreto, in the Mission of Loreto; and there, by the grace of God, they will remain.
When free again, he modelled the figures he had seen in gold. The religious phase in Cellini's history requires some special comment, since it is precisely at this point that he most faithfully personifies the spirit of his age and nation. That he was a devout Catholic there is no question. He made two pilgrimages to Loreto, and another to S. Francis of Vernia.
However, the work as a whole is beautiful and much extolled; but while it was being executed Leo was overtaken by death, and so it remained unfinished, like many other similar works at Rome, Florence, Loreto, and other places; nay, the whole world was left poor, being robbed of the true Mæcenas of men of talent.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking