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
In the gallery of the Louvre is his "Marriage at Cana." It is thirty by
twenty feet in size, and many of its figures are portraits. His pictures
are numerous and are seen in the European galleries. The "Family of
Darius," in the National Gallery, London, cost that institution the
enormous sum of thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty pounds; it was
formerly in the Pisani Palace, Venice, and was said to have been left
there by Veronese as payment for his entertainment during a visit he had
made in the palace. In 1868, at the Demidoff sale, a portrait of his
daughter sold for two thousand five hundred and twenty-four pounds.
At the close of the sixteenth century a family of a father and four sons
were busy painting what may rightfully be termed the earliest _genre_
pictures of Italy. This term is used to denote pictures that stand
between historical and utterly imaginary subjects; that is to say, the
representation of something that seems real to us because it is so
familiar to our imagination, or because it is something that we know might
have happened, that it has all the naturalness of an actual reproduction
of a fact. There may be interior or landscape _genre_ pictures. The first
represent familiar in-door scenes--the latter are landscapes with animals
or figures to give a life element and to tell a story.
The name of the family of which I speak was Da Ponte, but it was called
Bassano, from the birth-place of JACOPO DA PONTE BASSANO (1510-1592), the
father, who was the most important of the family. He studied in Venice,
but returned to his native town. His portraits are fine; among them are
those of the Doge of Venice, Ariosto, and Tasso. His works are very
numerous and are seen in all galleries. He introduced landscapes and
animals into most of his pictures, sometimes with great impropriety.
We come now to ANTONIO ALLEGRI, called CORREGGIO (1493-1534), who was born
at the end of the fifteenth, but did his work in the beginning of the
sixteenth century. His name of Correggio is that of his birth-place, and
as he was not born at any of the great art centres, and did not adopt the
precise manner of any school, he, with his followers, stand by themselves,
and yet, because his principal works were done at Parma, he is sometimes
said to be of the school of Parma.
When Correggio was thirteen years old he had learned to draw well. He
studied under Andrea Mantegna and his son Francesco Mantegna. From these
masters he learned to be very skilful in drawing, especially in
foreshortening, or in representing objects seen aslant. But though he
learned much of the science of art from his teachers, his grace and
movement and his exquisite light and shade are all his own, for they did
not possess these qualities.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--PORTRAIT OF CORREGGIO.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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