Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
History
Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
Architecture -- History; Art -- Study and teaching; Historic buildings
Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the heads of the mother and
the infant. In the efficacy of Madonna di San Brizio to ward off agues,
to deliver from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the storm, to
keep the lover’s troth and make the husband faithful to his home,
these pious women of the marshes and the mountains put a simple trust.
While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance-music of
the organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture to our minds
how the chapel looked when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its
plastered walls, and thought the thoughts with which they covered
them. Four centuries have gone by since those walls were white and
even to their brushes; and now you scarce can see the golden aureoles
of saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing robes of
prophets through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk’s dress,
kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint the angry Judge, the
Virgin crowned, the white-robed army of the Martyrs, and the glorious
company of the Apostles. These he placed upon the roof, expectant of
the Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli, the rich man
who “lived splendidly and loved to dress himself in noble clothes,” the
liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place upon the scaffold. For
all the worldliness of his attire and the delicacy of his living, his
brain teemed with stern and terrible thoughts. He searched the secrets
of sin and of the grave, of destruction and of resurrection, of heaven
and hell. All these he has painted on the walls beneath the saints of
Fra Angelico. First come the troubles of the last days, the preaching
of Antichrist, and the confusion of the wicked. In the next compartment
we see the Resurrection from the tomb; and side by side with that is
painted Hell. Paradise occupies another portion of the chapel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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