The century of ColumbusWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
The century of Columbus
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Renaissance
A very great school of art of the Renaissance was that which took its
rise in Southern Tuscany and the Romagna, of whom the three best-known
representatives are Piero dei Franceschi, Luca Signorelli and Melozzo
da Forli. Piero's influence on Perugino has already been spoken of.
Berenson declares him "hardly inferior to Giotto and Masaccio in
feeling for tactile values; in communicating values of force he is the
rival of Donatello; he was perhaps the first to use effects of light
for their direct tonic or subduing and soothing qualities; and,
finally judged as an illustrator, it may be questioned whether another
painter has ever presented a world more complete and convincing, has
ever had an ideal more majestic, or ever endowed things with more
heroic significance."
Piero's two pupils, Melozzo and Signorelli, each of them starting, as
Berenson says, with the heritage Piero left him, yet following the
promptings of his own temperament and the guidance of his own genius,
touched excellence in his own splendid way. Melozzo was the grander
temperament, {66} Signorelli the subtler and deeper mind. Visitors to
Loretto, who see the music-making angels in a cupola there, are likely
to be surprised into an appreciation of the power of the painter to
express something of the witchery of music. Berenson says of them:
[Footnote 6] "Almost they are French Gothic in their witchery, and
they listen to their own playing as if to charm out the most secret
spirit of their instruments. And you can see what a sense Signorelli
had for refined beauty, if, when seated with Guido's 'Aurora,' you
will rest your eyes on a Madonna by him in the same pavilion of the
Rospigliosi Palace."
[Footnote 6: _Op. cit_, p. 81.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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