Renaissance Fancies and Studies: Being a Sequel to EuphorionLee, Vernon
History
Renaissance Fancies and Studies: Being a Sequel to Euphorion
Lee, Vernon
Art, Italian; Art, Renaissance -- Italy
The charm in all this is not so much that of the actual objects
themselves; it is that of their having delighted those people's minds.
We are pleased by their pleasure, and our imagination is touched by
their fancy. The effect is akin to that of certain kinds of poetry,
not the dramatic certainly, where we are pleased by the mere suggestion
of beautiful things, and quite as much by finding in the poet a mind
appreciative and desirous of them, constantly collecting them and
enhancing them by subtle arrangements; it is the case with much lyric
verse, with the Italian folk-rhymes, woven out of names of flowers
and herbs, with some of Shakespeare's and Fletcher's songs, with the
"Allegro" and "Penseroso," Keats, some of Heine, and, despite a mixture
of unholy intention, Baudelaire. The great master thereof in the early
Renaissance, the lyrist, if I may use the word, of the fifteenth century,
is of course Botticelli. He is one of those who most persistently
introduce delightful items into their works: elaborately embroidered
veils, scarves, and gold fringes. But being a man of fine imagination
and most delicate sense of form, he does not, like Angelico or Benozzo
or Carpaccio, merely stick pretty things about; he works them all into
his strange arabesque, half intellectual, half physical. Thus the screen
of roses[7] behind certain of his Madonnas, forming an exquisite Morris
pattern with the greenish-blue sky interlaced; and those beautiful,
carefully-drawn branches of spruce-fir and cypress, lace-like in his
Primavera; above all, that fan-like growth of myrtles, delicately cut
out against the evening sky, which not merely print themselves as shapes
upon the mind, but seem to fill it with a scent of poetry.
[Footnote 7: I learn from the learned that the Florence and Louvre
Madonnas, with the roses, are not Botticelli's; but Botticelli, I
am sure, would not have been offended by those lovely bushes being
attributed to him.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account