Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
Fra Angelico may well have been the pupil of Lorenzo Monaco. Here in the
Uffizi are two of his works, the great Tabernacle (17), with its
predella (1294), and the great Coronation of the Virgin (1290), with its
predelle (1162 and 1178). The Tabernacle was painted in 1433 for the
Arte de' Linaioli, which paid a hundred and ninety gold florins for it.
It is an early work, but such an one as in Florence at any rate, only
Fra Angelico could have achieved. Within the doors is the Virgin
herself, with Christ standing on her knee between two saints, surrounded
by twelve angels of heavenly beauty playing on various instruments of
music In the doors themselves are St. John Baptist and St. Mark while
outside are St. Peter and St. Jerome. In the predella St. Peter preaches
at Rome, St. Mark writes his Gospel, the Kings come to adore Jesus in
Bethlehem, and St. Mark is martyred. The whole is like some marvellous
introit for St. Mark's day, in which the name of Mary has passed by.
The Coronation of the Virgin (1290) is like a litany of the saints and
of the Virgin herself, chanted in antiphon, ending in the simpler
splendour of Magnificat, sung to some Gregorian tone full of gold, of
faint blues as of a far-away sky, of pale rose-colours as of roses
fading on an altar in the sunlight, and the candles of white are more
spotless than the lily is. Amidst a glory of angels, the piping voices
of children, she in whose name all the flowers are hidden is crowned
Queen of Angels by the Prince of Life. This marvellous dead picture
lived once in S. Maria Nuova; its predelle have been torn away from it,
but may be found here, nevertheless, in the Birth of St. John Baptist
(1162) and the Spozalizio (1178).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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