On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and LiteratureRuskin, John
General
On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature
Ruskin, John
Art; Essays; Literature
79. What Michael Angelo could do by expression of countenance alone, let
the Pieta of Genoa tell, or the Lorenzo, or the parallel to this very
head of Orcagna's, the face of the man borne down in the Last Judgment
with the hand clenched over one of the eyes. Neither in that fresco is
he wanting in dramatic episode; the adaptation of the Niobe on the
spectator's left hand is far finer than Orcagna's condemned queen and
princess; the groups rising below, side by side, supporting each other,
are full of tenderness, and reciprocal devotion; the contest in the
center for the body which a demon drags down by the hair is another kind
of quarrel from that of Orcagna between a feathered angel and bristly
fiend for a diminutive soul--reminding us, as it forcibly did at first,
of a vociferous difference in opinion between a cat and a cockatoo. But
Buonaroti knew that it was useless to concentrate interest in the
countenances, in a picture of enormous size, ill lighted; and he
preferred giving full play to the powers of line-grouping, for which he
could have found no nobler field. Let us not by unwise comparison mingle
with our admiration of these two sublime works any sense of weakness in
the naivete of the one, or of coldness in the science of the other. Each
painter has his own sufficient dominion, and he who complains of the
want of knowledge in Orcagna, or of the display of it in Michael Angelo,
has probably brought little to his judgment of either.
80. One passage more we must quote, well worthy of remark in these days
of hollowness and haste, though we question the truth of the particular
fact stated in the second volume respecting the shrine of Or San
Michele. Cement is now visible enough in all the joints, but whether
from recent repairs we cannot say:--
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