Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young PeopleBacon, Mary Schell Hoke
General
Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People
Bacon, Mary Schell Hoke
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painters -- Juvenile literature; Painting -- Juvenile literature
It is said of Raphael that whenever another painter, known to him or
not, requested any design or assistance of any kind at his hands, he
would invariably leave his work to perform the service. He continually
kept a large number of artists employed, all of whom he assisted and
instructed with an affection which was rather that of a father to his
children than merely of an artist to artists. From this it followed
that he was never seen to go to court, except surrounded and
accompanied, as he left his house, by some fifty painters, all men of
ability and distinction, who attended him, thus to give evidence of
the honour in which they held him. He did not, in short, live the life
of a painter, but that of a prince.
There is something wonderfully inspiring about such a life. We read of
emperors and the homage paid to them; of the esteem in which men who
accomplish deeds of universal value are held, but nowhere do we behold
the power of a beautiful and exquisite personality and character,
allied with a single art, so impressively exhibited.
He urged nothing, yet won all things by the force of his loving and
sympathetic mind. "How is it, dear Cesare that we live in such good
friendship, but that in the art of painting we show no deference to
each other?" he asked of Cesare da Sesto, who was Da Vinci's greatest
pupil.
In discussing the great ones of the earth, Herman Grimm, son of the
collector of fairy tales, says: "Can we mention a violent act of
Raphael's, Goethe's or Shakespeare's? No, it is restful only to recall
these wonderful men."
One of Raphael's most beautiful Virgins was modeled from a beautiful
flower-girl whom he loved, "La Belle Jardinière."
Raphael as well as Michael Angelo was summoned by Pope Julius II., but
how different were the two occasions! Michael Angelo had stood with
dogged, gloomy self-assertiveness before the pope, head covered, knee
unbent. Uncompromising, while yet no injury had been done him,
resentful before he had received a single cause for resentment, the
attitude was typical of his art and his unhappy life.
When Raphael appeared, his bent knee, his "chestnut locks falling upon
his shoulders, the pope exclaimed: 'He is an innocent angel. I will
give him Cardinal Bembo for a teacher, and he shall fill my walls with
historical pictures.'" The artist's behaviour was no sign of
servility, but the simple recognition of forms and customs which the
people themselves had made and by which they had decided they should
graciously be bound. The attitude of Angelo was not heroic but vulgar;
that of Raphael not servile, but in good taste, showing a reasonable
mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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