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Updated: June 18, 2025
There is curious evidence throughout all these frescos of Simon Memmi's having read the Gospels with a quite clear understanding of their innermost meaning. I have called this science Practical Theology: the instructive knowledge, that is to say, of what God would have us do, personally, in any given human relation: and the speaking His Gospel therefore by act.
Memmi has retained the dress and imitated the general effect of the figure in the roof so faithfully that you suspect no difference of mastership nay, he has even raised the foot in the same awkward way: but you will find Memmi's foot delicately drawn-Taddeo's, hard and rude: and all the folds of Memmi's drapery cast with unbroken grace and complete gradations of shade, while Taddeo's are rigid and meagre; also in the heads, generally Taddeo's type of face is square in feature, with massive and inelegant clusters or volutes of hair and beard; but Memmi's delicate and long in feature, with much divided and flowing hair, often arranged with exquisite precision, as in the finest Greek coins.
Now consider Simon Memmi's Rhetoric. The Science of Speaking, primarily; of making oneself heard therefore: which is not to be done by shouting. She alone, of all the sciences, carries a scroll: and being a speaker gives you something to read. It is not thrust forward at you at all, but held quietly down with her beautiful depressed right hand; her left hand set coolly and strongly on her side.
I daresay you will find, in the modern books, that Simon's real name was Peter, and Philip's real name was Bartholomew; and Angelo's real name was Taddeo, and Taddeo's real name was Angelo; and Memmi's real name was Gaddi, and Gaddi's real name was Memmi. You may find out all that at your leisure, afterwards, if you like.
The relation of the two modes of composition was lost by Michael Angelo, who thought to express spirit by making flesh colossal. For the rest, the figure is not of any interest, Memmi's own mind being intellectual rather than mystic. "Who goes forth, conquering and to conquer?" "For we war, not with flesh and blood," etc.
Accordingly, I have myself taken five weeks to see the quarter of this picture of Simon Memmi's: and can give you a fairly good account of that quarter, and some partial account of a fragment or two of those on the other walls: but, alas! only of their pictorial qualities in either case; for I don't myself know anything whatever, worth trusting to, about Pythagoras, or Dionysius the Areopagite; and have not had, and never shall have, probably, any time to learn much of them; while in the very feeblest light only, in what the French would express by their excellent word 'lueur, I am able to understand something of the characters of Zoroaster, Aristotle, and Justinian.
One farther and final lesson is given in the medallion above. Aristotle, and too many modern rhetoricians of his school, thought there could be good speaking in a false cause. But above Simon Memmi's Rhetoric is Truth, with her mirror.
On this, and the opposite side of the chapel, are represented, by Simon Memmi's hand, the teaching power of the Spirit of God, and the saving power of the Christ of God, in the world, according to the understanding of Florence in his time. We will take the side of Intellect first, beneath the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit. In the point of the arch beneath, are the three Evangelical Virtues.
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