Renaissance in Italy Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 473 pages of information about Renaissance in Italy Volume 3.

Renaissance in Italy Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 473 pages of information about Renaissance in Italy Volume 3.

FOOTNOTES: 

[197] “La man che ubbedisce all’ intelletto” is a phrase pregnant with meaning, used by Michael Angelo in one of his sonnets.  See Guasti, Le Rime di Michael Angelo, p. 173.  Michael Angelo’s blunt criticism of Perugino, that he was goffo, a fool in art, and his rude speech to Francia’s handsome son, that his father made better forms by night than day, sufficiently indicate the different aims pursued by the painters of the two periods distinguished above.

[198] Though Mantegna seems to have owed all his training to Padua, it is impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque—­one among the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan impresario of third-rate painting.  No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest.  His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating from the meagre means of study within his reach those elements which enabled him to divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt its reproduction.  In order to facilitate the explanation of the problem offered by his early command of style, it has been suggested with great show of reason that he received a strong impression from the work executed in bas-relief by Donatello for the church of S. Antonio at Padua.  Thus Florentine influences helped to form even the original genius of this greatest of the Lombard masters.

[199] Vasari, vol. v. p. 163, may be consulted with regard to Mantegna’s preference for the ideal of statuary when compared with natural beauty, as the model for a painter.

[200] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s History of Painting in North Italy, vol. i. p. 334, for an account of his antiquarian researches in company with Felice Feliciano.  His museum was so famous that in 1483 Lorenzo de’ Medici, passing through Mantua from Venice, thought it worthy of a visit.  In his old age Mantegna fell into pecuniary difficulties, and had to part with his collection.  The forced sale of its chief ornament, a bust of Faustina, is said to have broken his heart. Ib. p. 415.

[201] Painted on canvas in tempera for the Marquis of Mantua, before 1488, looted by the Germans in 1630, sold to Charles I., resold by the Commonwealth, bought back by Charles II., and now exposed, much spoiled by time and change, but more by villainous re-painting, on the walls of Hampton Court.

[202] An oil painting in the National Gallery.

[203] The so-called “Triumph of Scipio” in the National Gallery seems to me in every respect feebler than the Hampton Court Cartoons.

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Renaissance in Italy Volume 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.