Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7): The Fine ArtsSymonds, John Addington
History
Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7): The Fine Arts
Symonds, John Addington
Art, Italian
It would be interesting to compare Signorelli's treatment of the antique
with Mantegna's or Botticelli's. The visions of the pagan world, floating
before the mind of all men in the fifteenth century, found very different
interpreters in these three painters--Botticelli adding the quaint alloy
of his own fancy, Signorelli imparting the semi-savagery of a terrible
imagination, Mantegna, with the truest instinct and the firmest touch,
confining himself to the processional pageantry of bas-relief. Yet, were
this comparison to be instituted, we could hardly refrain from carrying it
much further. Each great master of the Renaissance had his own relation to
classical mythology. The mystic sympathies of "Leda and the Swan," as
imaged severally by Lionardo and Michael Angelo; Correggio's romantic
handling of the myths of "Danaë" and "Io;" Titian's and Tintoretto's rival
pictures of "Bacchus and Ariadne;" Raphael's "Galatea;" Pollajuolo's
"Hercules;" the "Europa" of Veronese; the "Circe" of Dosso Dossi; Palma's
"Venus;" Sodoma's "Marriage of Alexander"--all these, to mention none but
pictures familiar to every traveller in Italy, raise for the student of
the classical Revival absorbing questions relative to the influences of
pagan myths upon the modern imagination.
Signorelli was chiefly occupied, during the course of his long career,
upon religious pictures; and the high place he occupies in the history of
Renaissance culture is due partly to his free abandonment of conventional
methods in treating sacred subjects. The Uffizzi Gallery contains a
circular "Madonna" by his hand, with a row of naked men for
background--the forerunner of Michael Angelo's famous "Holy Family." So
far had art for art's sake already encroached upon the ecclesiastical
domain. To discuss Signorelli's merits as a painter of altar-pieces would
be to extend the space allotted to him far beyond its proper limits. It is
not as a religious artist that he takes his rank, but as having powerfully
promoted the rehabilitation of the body achieved for art by the
Renaissance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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