A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, ArchitectureWaters, Clara Erskine Clement
History
A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture
Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
Art -- History
I can give you no description of Duerer's many works, and although it is
true that he was a very great master, yet it is also true that his
pictures and engravings are not noted for their beauty so much as for
their strength and power. His subjects were often ugly and repulsive
rather than beautiful, and his imagination was full of weird, strange
fancies that can scarcely be understood. Indeed, some of them never have
been explained, and one of his most famous engravings, called "The Knight,
Death, and the Devil," has never yet been satisfactorily interpreted, and
many different theories have been made about it.
Many of the principal galleries of Europe have Duerer's paintings, though
they are not as numerous as his engravings, and, indeed, his fame rests
more upon the latter than the former, and very large sums are paid by
collectors for good impressions of his more important plates.
Duerer had several followers. His most gifted scholar was LUCAS SUNDER
(1472-1553), who is called Lucas Cranach, from the place of his birth. He
established a school of painting in Saxony, and was appointed
court-painter. Although there were a goodly number of German painters late
in the sixteenth century, there were none of great eminence, and, in
truth, there have been few since that time whose lives were of sufficient
interest to be recounted here, so I shall tell you of but one more before
passing to the artists of Spain.
ANGELICA KAUFFMAN (1742-1808) was a very interesting woman who gained a
good reputation as an artist; but there is such a difference of opinion
among judges as to her merits as a painter that it is difficult to decide
what to say of her. As a person, she excited an interest in her lifetime
which has never died out, and Miss Thackeray's novel, "Miss Angel," tells
what is claimed to be her story, as nearly as such stories are told in
novels.
She was born at Coire, in the Grisons. Her father was an artist, a native
of Schwarzenburg, and when Angelica was born he was occupied in executing
some frescoes at Coire. When the child was a year old he settled at
Morbegno, in Lombardy, and ten years later, when she had shown a taste for
music, her parents again removed to Como, where there were better
opportunities for her instruction. Her progress in music was remarkable,
and for a time she was unable to say whether she loved this art or that of
painting the better. Later in life she painted a picture in which she
represented herself, as a child, standing between allegorical figures of
Music and Painting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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