Tempera: see Webster, s. vv. “tempera” and “distemper”. {paint types}
Alesso Baldovinetti: Florentine painter, b. 1422, or later, d. 1499;
worked in mosaic, particularly as a restorer of old mosaics,
besides painting; he made many experiments in both branches of art,
and attempted to work fresco ‘al secco’, and varnish it so as to
make it permanent, but in this he failed. His works were distinguished
for extreme minuteness of detail. “In the church of the Annunziata
in Florence, he executed an historical piece in fresco,
but finished ‘a secco’, wherein he represented the Nativity of Christ,
painted with such minuteness of care, that each separate straw
in the roof of a cabin, figured therein, may be counted,
and every knot in these straws distinguished.”--Vasari.
His remaining works are much injured by scaling or the abrasion of
the colors.
28.
Margheritone of Arezzo,
With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret
(Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?)
Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion,
Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
If such remain, as is my conviction,
The hoarding it does you but little honor.
--
St. 28. Margheritone: Margaritone; painter, sculptor, and architect,
of Arezzo (1236-1313); the most important of his remaining pictures
is a Madonna, in the London National Gallery, from Church of
St. Margaret, at Arezzo, “said to be a characteristic work,
and mentioned by Vasari, who praises its small figures,
which he says are executed ‘with more grace and finished with
greater delicacy’ than the larger ones. Nothing, however,
can be more unlike nature, than the grim Madonna and the weird
starved Child in her arms (see ‘Wornum’s Catal. Nat. Gal.’,
for a description of this painting). Margaritone’s favorite subject
was the figure of St. Francis, his style being well suited to depict
the chief ascetic saint. Crucifixions were also much to his taste,
and he represented them in all their repulsive details.
Vasari relates that he died at the age of 77, afflicted and disgusted
at having lived to see the changes that had taken place in art,
and the honors bestowed on the new artists.”--Heaton.
His monument to Pope Gregory X. in the Cathedral of Arezzo,
is ranked among his best works. “Browning possesses the ‘Crucifixion’
by M. to which he alludes, as also the pictures of Alesso Baldovinetti,
and Taddeo Gaddi, and Pollajuolo described in the poem.”
--Browning Soc. Papers, Pt. II., p. 169.
29.
They pass; for them the panels may thrill,
The tempera grow alive and tinglish;
Their pictures are left to the mercies still
Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English,
Who, seeing mere money’s worth in their prize,
Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno
At naked High Art, and in ecstasies
Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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