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
greatest painter of Italy, Tiziano Vecelli: his Holy Family (575) seems
to be a work of Giorgione himself almost, that has suffered some change;
that change was Lotto.
Titian's own pupils, Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, and Schiavone, may also
be found here; the first in a Portrait of a Young Man (607), full of
confidence and force. Tintoretto has five works here, beside the
portrait of himself (378): the Bust of a Young Man (577), the Portrait
of Admiral Vernier (601), the Portrait of an Old Man (615), the Portrait
of Jacopo Sansovino (638), and a Portrait of a Man (649). His portraits
are full of an immense splendour; they sum up often rhetorically enough
all that was superficial in the subject, representing him as we may
suppose he hardly hoped to see himself. Without the subtle distinction
of Titian's art, or the marvellous power of characterisation and
expression that he possessed with the earlier men, Tintoretto's work is
noble, and almost lyrical in its confidence and beauty. In his day
Venice seems to have been the capital of the world, peopled by a race of
men splendid and strong, beside whom the men of our time, even the best
of them, seem a little vulgar, a little wanting in dignity and life.
Two pictures by Paolo Veronese, the early Martyrdom of S. Giustina
(589), and the Holy Family and St. Catherine (1136), bring the period
to a close. It is a different school of painting altogether that we see
in the Piazzetta of Canaletto (1064), perhaps the last picture painted
by a Venetian in the gallery.
THE NORTHERN SCHOOLS
Andrea Mantegna was born, not at Padua, where his greatest work is to be
found--three frescoes in the Eremitani--but at Vicenza. Here in the
Uffizi, however, we have two works of his middle period, certainly among
the best, if not the most beautiful, of his easel pictures. In one we
see Madonna and Child in a rocky landscape, where there are trees and
flowers (1025); the other is a triptych (1111), one of the many
priceless things to be found here. In the midst you may see the Three
Kings at the feet of Jesus Parvulus in his Mother's arms, while on one
side Mantegna has painted the Presentation in the Temple, and on the
other the Resurrection. Long ago this marvellous miniature, that even
to-day seems to shine like a precious stone, was in the possession of
the Gonzagas of Mantua, from whom it is supposed the Medici bought it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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